Trump Is Right on the White House Correspondents' Association—and Speaker Johnson Should Follow Suit

It’s been a lousy week for the White House Correspondents' Association. President Donald Trump cut the organization off at the knees when he announced on Tuesday that the White House, not the WHCA, would select the members of the presidential press pool, the rotating group of reporters and photographers who cover the president in places like the Oval Office and Air Force One where space is tight. Cue the hysterics.

The White House has always had the discretion to grant or deny reporters access to White House grounds and, once on those grounds, over which reporters are called on in press briefings. It stands to reason that the White House has the right to decide which outlets get access to tight space that the White House itself is providing.

But taking control of the press pool, the WHCA says, is an assault on the First Amendment. "In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps," the organization’s president Eugene Daniels said Tuesday, shortly after announcing his departure from Politico for MSNBC. "For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets."

Would that it were true! And, if it were … we might even join the fight!

Alas, in the real world, participation in the presidential press pool is hardly an equal-opportunity affair. The White House Correspondents' Association restricts participation to outlets that hold a congressional press pass.

For many outlets, those are doled out by another journalistic cartel known as the Periodical Press Gallery, which requires news outlets to demonstrate they are supported "chiefly by advertising or by subscription." That gallery is controlled by an executive committee composed of reporters from Politico, The Hill, and Punchbowl News, among others.

Not a single one of our colleagues in the mainstream media has raised hackles over this assault on our First Amendment rights—one that has for over a decade been in their power to rectify.

House Speaker Mike Johnson would be wise to follow in the White House’s footsteps and exercise his constitutional prerogative to take control of the congressional press gallery, too. The result would be a press corps on Capitol Hill and the White House that is freer and more inclusive—not less.

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