Major TV networks are resuming their pool coverage of President Donald Trump this week after uniting to suspend it following Trump’s move to ban multiple media outlets from the White House. But with uncertainty lingering over CNN’s access, two people familiar with the situation tell TIME that coverage will be decided on a day-by-day basis moving forward.
The five networks that currently make up the White House TV pool—CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC—suspended their pool coverage of the President last week in a display of solidarity against the White House’s decision to bar CNN, along with POLITICO and MS NOW, from the grounds.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government,” the networks said in a joint statement on Sept. 21, when CNN—whose journalists had their press credentials revoked by White House officials days earlier—was scheduled for pool duty. “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
After the Trump Administration began granting journalists from CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW access to the White House grounds again following a judge’s order on Thursday, the network pool decided to make a good faith effort to resume normal operations on Friday, according to a person familiar with the situation. CBS resumed its normal, rotational pool duty, and CNN was granted access to complete a pool assignment at an event at the National Archives, the person familiar with the situation says.
But, according to that individual, later on Friday, the White House contacted the pool and wanted to know if it would replace CNN for its scheduled pool duties on Saturday. The person says that the White House told the pool that it was going to make a day-by-day decision on the situation. The White House ended up blocking CNN from traveling with the President on Air Force One on Saturday.
CNN declined to comment.
The pool decided not to replace CNN with another TV network for its pool duties on Saturday, according to the person familiar with the situation. The networks individually decided whether to cover any events that were open press that day.
The person familiar with the situation says that the TV networks are continuing pool coverage this week, but the situation is fluid. Going forward, if the White House won’t grant CNN access when it’s CNN’s turn on pool duty, the TV pool will decide whether to replace CNN that day or not, depending on if the news that day merits it. The person says that there will likely be a high bar to meet to justify replacing CNN with another network on pool duty, if something is very newsworthy that day.
The White House press pool comprises journalists from multiple news organizations who accompany the sitting President to events. Space at these gatherings is often limited, so the pool system enables news organizations to collaborate and share resources. The five networks in the TV pool are tasked with recording video footage of the President at pool-designated events on a rotating basis.
It is rare for a sitting Commander-in-Chief to travel or hold events without the TV pool in attendance. The White House Correspondents’ Association, which acts as a “go-between” for journalists and the White House and helps ensure that journalists have access, has called pool duty “an essential element of the work of White House correspondents because one never knows when the world will need good information about precisely where the president of the United States is and what he is doing at any moment.”
“The press is acting as a representative of the public in these spaces and they need access to these spaces because they can get information that they can’t get over the phone or watching a video feed or being outside of the grounds of the White House,” says Erin Carroll, a professor at Georgetown Law. “You can see things, you can ask questions, you can have conversations when you’re in these spaces that are not possible if you’re not allowed into them.”
Trump previously told reporters that there weren’t any specific stories that spurred him to bar CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW from the White House, but that “it’s really just cumulative stories over the last few years, you get sick of it,” adding that “they purposely write negative news.”
Carroll pushes back on Trump’s complaint.
“The press’s key role under the Constitution is to act as a watchdog,” she says. “In acting as an independent watchdog, it may be that those stories or things that journalists print feel ‘negative’ or ‘critical.’ That is the press’s constitutional role, and so that is what the press is doing in these situations. For Trump to complain that stories are overly negative is unfair because, in one sense, that’s the press’s job—they’re there to check the three branches of government.”
Where do Trump’s efforts to ban CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW stand?
On Sept. 18, Trump announced that he was banning CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW from the White House grounds. The following day, journalists from those three organizations were not allowed into the White House and officials revoked their press credentials.
On Sept. 21, CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW sued the Trump Administration, saying in a joint statement that they were doing so “to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.” Trump said later that morning that “the White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” but that “it is instituting an assault on the FAKE News.”
On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the White House’s decision to bar the three news outlets from the grounds, saying that the ban “likely violated” the “constitutional due process rights” of CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW. The judge ordered that the Trump Administration grant access to journalists from the three news outlets, effective immediately “until further order of the court or the expiration of this temporary restraining order.”
Following the order, journalists from the affected news outlets have once again been permitted to access the White House grounds.
The judge’s temporary order will expire on Oct. 8, but the three news outlets on Monday requested that the court extend their journalists’ access to the White House and ensure that the Trump Administration grants the three news outlets “the same access to the White House and the President that they had before September 18, 2026, including the restoration of all hard passes revoked on or about that date.”
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer representing CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, argued in a statement shared with news outlets following the latest court filing that the White House’s effort to block his clients was “a blatant violation of the First Amendment and due process.”
“The President and his administration have continued to make clear that this ban has only one purpose: to punish reporting he doesn’t like. That’s retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple,” Boutrous argued in the statement. “With the district court’s temporary restraining order expiring next week, it is critical to ensure that the White House continues to be prevented from implementing this unconstitutional ban on the free press.”
What does that mean for CNN’s access to perform its White House pool duties?
Whether or not CNN will be allowed access to resume its pool duties going forward is unclear.
Although CNN was blocked from traveling with the President on Saturday, the network is currently scheduled to be on pool duty this coming Thursday. But it remains unclear if CNN will actually be called to perform its pool duty that day; Trump is scheduled to travel this coming Wednesday, when CBS is scheduled for pool duty. According to the person familiar with the situation, CBS will stay on pool duty until Trump returns to D.C., which, at the moment, is scheduled to be this coming Friday.
The person familiar with the situation tells TIME that it is unclear what will happen with CNN’s next shift on pool duty next week.
In a statement to TIME, a White House official called Trump “the most accessible President in history,” adding that he is “holding open press events, regular gaggles and interviews, taking questions nearly every day, and speaking directly to the American people through social media.”
“But if a reporter walks into an interview with their headline and narrative already decided, why do they need to be in the room? They can write their garbage from anywhere,” the official said. “Even after outlets were given access to the White House, they declined to cover various events proving this isn’t about access. It’s performative and dishonest.”
The statement did not address TIME’s question about the current status of CNN’s participation in the press pool.
Carroll says that the federal judge’s order from last week is limited to ordering the Trump Administration to give back CNN, POLITICO, and MS NOW their press credentials to the White House grounds; the temporary restraining order doesn’t say anything about the press pool.
In a separate case, The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against Trump Administration officials in 2025, after the organization’s journalists were banned from the White House press pool following the news outlet’s decision to continue using the original name for the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage, instead of “Gulf of America,” per an Executive Order issued by Trump.
A federal judge in that case ruled that The Associated Press had to be allowed back into the press pool, but a federal appeals court later issued a temporary ruling that paused that decision, with one of the judges writing that the White House “retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted” to what the judge called “private workspaces” of the President, such as Air Force One and the Oval Office. That case is still ongoing.
It’s unclear what will happen going forward in terms of whether CNN will be granted access to resume its pool duties, Carroll says.
Caroll says it was “very heartening” to have seen the TV network pool band together in protest of the White House blocking CNN’s access, adding that “the more that press entities can stand together” in these situations, “the better off the free press generally is and democratic institutions are.”
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