Feb. 25, 2025, 6:38 p.m.
One hundred forty-four years after the White House allowed the first pool reporter to sit outside James Garfield’s bedroom as the president died, and 88 years after the pool system was made official, the Trump White House blew it up Tuesday in a brazen attempt to guarantee more favorable coverage.
“We’re going to be calling those shots,” boasted President Trump, shortly after press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the administration was ending the influence of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which has controlled the makeup of the pool since it was formed as a reaction to the sudden growth of the White House press corps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Leavitt cast the power grab as giving “the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows, and who listen to your radio stations.” The correspondents who cover the president saw more sinister motives.
Veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker likened it to the act of a dictator.
“Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access,” he posted on X. “Every president of both parties going back generations subscribed to the principle that a president doesn’t pick the press corps that is allowed to ask him questions. Trump has just declared that he will.”
Jacqui Heinrich, the senior White House correspondent for Fox News and a member of the WHCA board, also challenged the decision.
“This move does not give the power back to the people,” she posted on X. “It gives power to the White House.” She said the news organizations themselves need to make pooling decisions because only they know if they have the financial and staffing resources needed.
The WHCA, which was not consulted before its longtime power was stripped, made a similar point.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” read a statement issued by WHCA President Eugene Daniels of Politico. “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.”
White House press pools are necessary when a president is in a space too small to allow open access to the hundreds of reporters, photographers, and producers who congregate at the White House. When a president is on Air Force One, in a motorcade, in the Oval Office, or meeting with a foreign leader, for example, only a small group of journalists can attend. Usually, it is a 13-person group, comprising one television correspondent and crew, one print reporter, one radio reporter, and reporters and photographers from the major wire services. They are allowed to keep no news to themselves. Print poolers must provide reports to the wider press corps, sharing everything they see and hear.
The system has been tweaked over the decades, but the founding principle remains the same. The first known use of a pooler came after Garfield was shot in 1881. As he lingered from July to September, one reporter from the Associated Press—Franklin Trusdell—was permitted to stay on the second floor of the White House around the clock to monitor the president’s health. Trusdell famously made one report at 3 a.m. after listening at the president’s door and hearing him breathe. His report: The president still lived.
Subsequent pools were formed for the travels of Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley. When Cleveland tried to block reporters from covering him while he was on his honeymoon, the reporters would not back down, establishing the precedent that reporters had the right to always travel with a president even when the trip was private.
When reporters flocked to the White House in greater numbers after the Depression, it became clear that a more formal pool system was needed. FDR’s press conference on Nov. 23, 1937, was the first known instance in which the pool was formed by the WHCA. Roosevelt explained the rationale when he went on a 10-day boat trip in 1940.
“I would like to have all 200 of you with me,” he said. “But we haven’t got that many bunks.”
On Tuesday, Leavitt portrayed the pool system as unfairly excluding reporters from newer media, saying she will invite other organizations to take part without them being first cleared by the WHCA as genuine reporters. She said she wants to offer “the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.”
The takeover is an escalation of the White House battle with the Associated Press, the world’s largest news organization, after the AP refused to change its widely used Stylebook to shift from the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America.” Leavitt exulted in a partial court victory on Monday on AP’s suit against the White House, saying, “We want to double down.”
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was appointed by Trump, did not grant a temporary restraining order to make the White House restore the AP’s pool access. He did not throw the suit out, though, and he seemed sympathetic to AP’s argument when he scheduled a hearing for March 20.
When the president later held an event in the Oval Office—covered only by the day’s pool—he used the occasion to take a shot at the Associated Press: “AP has been terrible. I think they’re radical left.” Behind him was a large “Gulf of America” sign. “I’m just admiring it as I look at it,” he said. “I’m getting teary eyed.”
The White House drew support from one of Trump’s first-term press secretaries. Sean Spicer called it “AMAZING NEWS!” on X, saying Trump “is taking back charge who is part of the @whitehouse press pool from the LEFT WING @whca….” He called it “a HUGE victory for the American people.”
