Trump's takeover of White House press pool selection isn't same as Biden's limits on press pass eligibility

On Feb. 25, 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced a consequential change to how the news media covers the U.S. president: The White House Correspondents' Association would no longer be in charge of selecting journalists for the White House press pool, a small group of journalists with privileged access who travel with the president at almost all times. Instead, President Donald Trump's administration would pick the members of the press pool itself. 

In a statement, WHCA President Eugene Daniels, a reporter for Politico, objected that the White House gave the WHCA no warning and said the decision "tears at the independence of a free press in the United States." WHCA board member and Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich added on X that the decision would not "give the power back to the people - it gives power to the White House." 

Following those criticisms, Fox News posted an article on Feb. 26 titled "FLASHBACK: Biden also changed White House press pool, cutting off more than 440 reporters' credentials." The article likened the Trump administration's press pool change to a decision about journalists' White House access made during the Biden administration.

However, comparing the two actions is misleading at best. The Biden administration's change tightened the requirements for obtaining a certain press credential, and, according to Heinrich, presidential administrations have always been in charge of press credentialing. What the Trump administration is trying to change is which small group of White House reporters travel with the president in the "press pool," something a presidential administration has never been in charge of.

What the Biden administration did

In 2023, the Biden administration tightened the requirements for the so-called "hard pass," a yearly credential that allows a White House journalist to "come and go at will" when the White House is open, according to The Washington Post. That article listed the revised eligibility requirements under Biden as follows: 

• Employed by a news organization.
• Live in the Washington, D.C., area.
• Have gone to the White House for work at least once in the last six months.
• Have a press credential for either the Supreme Court, the Senate or the House of Representatives. 

Crucially, one-day press passes still remain available for all journalists, even those who do not meet the above requirements.

According to Politico, the number of hard passes dropped from 1,417 to 975 after the new requirements came into effect simply because many journalists chose to not renew the pass — despite the stricter requirements, only one application was denied. A White House spokesperson told Politico that just before the change that "roughly 40 percent of hard pass holders had not accessed the White House complex in the prior 90 days."

As such, it's misleading to claim that the Biden administration "cut off" the credentials of more than 440 reporters — reporters had the chance to renew their credentials, but some decided not to. It is unclear how many of the journalists who did not renew their hard pass credential did so because they wouldn't qualify under the new guidelines (and again, such reporters could still attend news briefings with a day pass). 

Furthermore, because the general public might misunderstand the term "press pool" to mean "the large group of reporters covering the White House" instead of the smaller group of journalists that it actually is, it's also misleading to suggest that a change affecting the requirements for press credentials was a change comparable to giving the White House sole control of the makeup of the press pool.

What the Trump administration did

The Trump administration's decision did actually affect the small rotating group of journalists who travel with the president — or the people that "relay the president's activities to the public," as The New York Times wrote. The press pool, set by the WHCA, has been traveling with the president since Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in the 1930s and 1940s, according to the organization's website. 

The White House's announcement that it would control the press pool itself came not long after the Trump administration barred The Associated Press from the White House for not following its demand to replace the term "Gulf of Mexico" with "Gulf of America." According to The New York Times, the AP was subsequently kicked out of the pool entirely.