Trump White House Shakes Up Press Briefing Room With New Blow to Legacy Media

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that henceforth the White House press team—not the White House Correspondents’ Association—will determine which journalists are in the press pool.

“As you all know, for decades, a group of the D.C.-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States in his most intimate spaces,” Leavitt said in Tuesday’s press briefing. “Not anymore.”

The press pools are small, partially rotating subsets of the White House press corps that cover the president in smaller venues such as the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One.

Leavitt said legacy outlets will retain access, but “well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility” will be granted the opportunity to be in pool. The move restores power to the American people who elected President Donald Trump, she said.

“This is the ever-changing landscape of the media in the United States today,” Leavitt said.

“We will continue to rotate a radio pool and add other radio hosts who have been denied access, especially local radio hosts who serve as the heartbeat of our country,” she added. “And we will add additional outlets and reporters who are well-suited to cover the news of the day and ask substantive questions of the president of the United States, depending on the news he is making on that given day.”

This is what the Trump administration was elected to do, said 27-year-old Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary in American history.

“I have said since the first day behind this podium,” she said, “it’s beyond time that the White House press operation reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025, not 1925.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association quickly responded to Leavitt’s announcement.

“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” the White House Correspondents’ Association responded in a statement posted to X. “It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”