The Trump White House is now sitting on any reporters’ pool reports it finds unflattering

Perhaps it’s surprising, perhaps not, but one thing has become clear about Donald Trump’s bizarre war with the Associated Press: The White House cares about it. It’s not just a symbolic gesture, red meat to throw MAGA’s way — it’s a conscious attempt to rewrite the rules of how the presidency interacts with the press. And the administration keeps pushing to see how far it can go.

If you’ll recall, the Trump administration announced in January that it was renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” The major digital map companies, like Google and Apple, went along with the change, having a policy of matching official government names for place names. But the Associated Press — like many other news outlets — decided to stick with Gulf of Mexico, the name that people have actually used for four centuries. For that thoughtcrime, the Trump administration blocked AP reporters’ access to the White House and presidential events.

This is, to be clear, unconstitutional, and on Wednesday, federal judge Trevor McFadden — a Trump appointee — said as much:

Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.

McFadden’s order does not officially go into effect for several more days, giving the government time to file an appeal. But it didn’t take long for the Trump administration to show its disdain for the ruling, blocking an AP reporter and photographer from a White House press pool.

Then came something even more troubling, as reported by Oliver Darcy at Status. The White House pool reporter on duty — The Dallas Morning News’ Joseph Morton — included in his report the following line: “A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press were turned away from joining the pool.”

It was likely that sentence, which came after a judge had ordered the administration to restore the AP’s access, that irked the White House. That specific pool report from Morton, I’ve learned, was never distributed by the White House to news outlets subscribed to its pool report mailing list — a notable omission and a clear break from precedent.

It also wasn’t the first time this week that the White House chose to censor the pool. On Monday, Philip Wegmann, a reporter for RealClearPolitics, filed a pool report noting that a scheduled press conference between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been “cancelled” and was “no longer taking place.” That report, too, was never sent out by the White House.

The selective distribution has raised alarm among some members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, particularly as the Trump White House seeks to exert a firmer grip over the press corps. Traditionally, pool reporters file dispatches about the president’s movements and remarks that are then distributed by the White House to the wider media ecosystem. Now, it appears the White House is withholding reports it doesn’t like — choosing not to distribute pool reports that contain information it finds inconvenient or unflattering.

A government deciding to scrap accurate news reports it finds unflattering is an obvious problem. But given that anti-press behavior on Trump’s part is hardly shocking at this point, I confess my main reaction was: Why is it up to the White House to distribute reporters’ pool reports to other reporters? Why are they in the loop in the process at all?

It turns out that the White House Correspondents’ Association distributes pool reports to its own members. But non-WHCA members rely on White House distribution to see the same reports. Maybe that made sense at some point in the past, but this White House obviously has no place playing middleman for news stories. The daily doings of the president of the United States is not some niche interest to be confined to a select email list; they should be public for every reporter and every American to read in real time. The WHCA should open up signups to the email list or post reports online — however it’s done, there’s no excuse for handing this administration veto power over news distribution. I emailed the association this morning to see if they had a reason for not taking this step; I’ll update here if they reply.