The White House told reporters Friday night that CNN will not fly aboard Air Force One when President Donald Trump travels to Knoxville, Tennessee, on Saturday, replacing the cable network with the conservative outlet Real America's Voice News. The announcement comes as the administration's ongoing dispute with news organizations raises fresh questions about First Amendment protections for journalists covering the president.
Trump's Saturday itinerary includes a trip to Tennessee and an appearance at a college football game pitting the University of Tennessee against the University of Texas at midday. The decision about which outlets are credentialed for the trip arrived in the form of White House guidance issued Friday, roughly 12 hours after the president's motorcade was photographed departing the White House for the National Archives, where Trump was scheduled to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan.
Air Force One — the call sign used for any Air Force aircraft carrying the president — has long served as one of the most coveted assignments in American journalism. The small group of reporters who accompany the president on any given trip, known collectively as "the pool," is responsible for producing the reporting, photographs and broadcasts that make up the public record of a presidency. Access to that group is determined by the White House, and the exclusion of a specific network is a significant step beyond the routine credentialing decisions made for any trip.
The timing of the announcement is notable. It came just hours after journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico — three outlets Trump banned from the White House grounds the previous week — were allowed back into the executive complex, cameras in hand, after a federal judge granted them a temporary reprieve.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly struck down the ground-access ban in an overnight ruling early Thursday. But his decision was narrow: it addressed "hard passes," the credentialing that grants journalists continuing access to the White House grounds, and did not directly address pool duties. Nothing in the temporary order spoke to Air Force One, leaving a gap between what the ruling protected and what the White House went on to do.
That gap is at the center of the legal fight now unfolding. Attorneys for the three banned outlets believe the court's ruling should be read to cover the traveling press pool as well as the physical grounds of the White House complex. Theodore Boutrous Jr., who represents the news organizations, said earlier Friday on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" that the plaintiffs view the recent decision as encompassing the pool access question. Boutrous did not immediately respond to an email and phone call from The Associated Press seeking comment late Friday night. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Legal observers say the dispute highlights how executive-branch control over press access operates through a series of smaller, individually discretionary decisions rather than a single written policy. A credential to the grounds, a seat on the plane, a slot in the motorcade, an invitation to a briefing — each is handed out or withheld by the White House, and each can be used to reward friendly outlets and marginalize others without any formal order that could be challenged as censorship.
The stakes are not abstract. Outlets excluded from Air Force One lose the ability to file reports from inside the president's traveling operation, to hear his remarks in unscripted settings and to capture images of him interacting with world leaders. For a cable network such as CNN, the practical effect is a diminished ability to compete with the favored replacement outlet for the breaking news of the president's day.
The trip itself carries diplomatic weight. Trump is set to take in a marquee college football matchup in the middle of a week that began with a meeting at the National Archives involving the president of China — a visit that also placed the motorcade, and the journalists tasked with covering it, at the center of the White House's decision-making about media access.
It remains unclear how long the exclusion will last, or whether the three banned outlets will press the issue in federal court. What is clear is that the ruling from Judge Kelly appears to have settled only the first phase of the fight. The White House's move on Air Force One suggests the administration is prepared to keep drawing lines that the temporary order did not address, and the outlets' lawyers are likely to argue that those lines fall within the scope of what a court has already reviewed.
For now, at least, one of the three outlets restored to the White House grounds this week will be watching from the ground as the president's Saturday trip takes off without it.
— The Associated Press
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