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White House restricts media access in the West Wing

Members of the media who cover the White House will no longer have free access to an office in the West Wing used by communications staff, the Trump administration said Friday in its latest move to rein in the press corps.

Reporters seeking to speak with White House officials in the office will now need an appointment, according to a memo released Friday by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Steven Cheung, the communications director, both of whom work in the now restricted area.

The White House said the move was motivated by “recent structural changes” that require communications staff to be responsible for matters pertaining to the National Security Council. “In this capacity, members of the White House Communications Staff are routinely engaging with sensitive material,” the memo said.

But the change appears to also reflect White House limits on journalists that have included excluding certain news organizations from closed briefings and events and imposing a new set of rules and restrictions at the Pentagon that drove most of the reporters who work there to turn in their media badges and cover the military from outside the headquarters building.

President Donald Trump has also floated the possibility of moving the press corps off the White House grounds.

“We have an option here,” Trump said earlier this month. “We could move them very easily across the street.”

Under the new rules, reporters will maintain regular access to a separate office adjacent to the briefing room where lower-level communications staff are located, the memo said.

White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang said in a statement the new limits “hinder the press corps’ ability to question officials, ensure transparency, and hold the government accountable, to the detriment of the American public.”

In a social media post, Cheung justified the restrictions by claiming White House reporters have secretly recorded video and audio of the West Wing office, entered restricted rooms in the West Wing and eavesdropped on private meetings.

Earlier this year, the White House sought to ban the Associated Press from covering White House events after the news organization declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following Trump’s executive order to change the name. A federal judge ruled the White House could not legally block AP from White House events, but the outlet’s access remains limited as the White House seeks an appeal.

Trump has separately pursued legal action against several media outlets he viewed as covering him and Republican allies unfavorably.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton banned reporters from that part of the West Wing, known as upper press, shortly after he entered the White House. But more recent administrations have allowed reporters to roam the area to speak with members of the communications staff.

LP Staff Writers

Writers at Lord’s Press come from a range of professional backgrounds, including history, diplomacy, heraldry, and public administration. Many publish anonymously or under initials—a practice that reflects the publication’s long-standing emphasis on discretion and editorial objectivity. While they bring expertise in European nobility, protocol, and archival research, their role is not to opine, but to document. Their focus remains on accuracy, historical integrity, and the preservation of events and individuals whose significance might otherwise go unrecorded.

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