White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Tuesday that the Trump administration would restore media credentials to 440 reporters who were stripped of them under the Biden administration in 2023, and declared that the White House was opening the door for members of the nontraditional media — including bloggers and and podcasters — to apply for access. The policy changes reflect a campaign promise from President Donald Trump to fundamentally reshape operations in the White House briefing room.
Kicking off her first appearance as the new White House press secretary, the 27-year-old Leavitt said her team was going to “work diligently to restore” the passes for those journalists, which she said were “wrongfully revoked by the previous administration.”
The decision reverses stringent rules implemented by the Biden administration in 2023 that required permanent “Hard Pass” holders to have a physical address in the “Washington, D.C. area,” and to have “accessed the White House campus at least once during the prior six months for work, or have proof of employment within the last three months to cover the White House.” The changes resulted in a little more than 440 reporters losing their passes.
Simon Ateba, the proprietor of a website called Today News Africa and former member of the briefing room who filed a lawsuit against the White House when his pass was revoked, heralded the news on social media, writing on X, “I am all in.”
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Before his ejection from the room, Ateba gained a reputation for often voicing his displeasure with Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, for her refusal to call on him.
Leavitt added that her team would be making the White House briefing room more available to “media voices who produce news-related content, whose outlet is not already represented by one of the seats in this room.” She said the goal was for more “independent journalists, podcasters, social-media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials” to cover the White House.
The move is one that President Donald Trump said he planned to pursue during his 2024 campaign, in addition to a promise to rearrange the White House briefing room. Both actions have roiled the White House Correspondents’ Association, which has traditionally assigned the room’s 47 seats. The seven news organizations that held coveted front-row seats under both the Biden administration and the last Trump administration included five television outlets — CNN, NBC News, CBS News, ABC News and Fox News — along with two wire services, Reuters and the Associated Press.
Leavitt offered a glimpse on Tuesday into what the new landscape of the briefing room might look like, engaging with reporters from several conservative organizations.
Breitbart’s Matt Boyle asks the White House press secretary a question for the first time in televised history pic.twitter.com/uBbzvbe778
— The Washington Observer (@WashObserver) January 28, 2025
One, Monica Paige Luisi, a White House correspondent for Turning Point USA, a student group that supported Trump’s campaign, inquired about a potential presidential visit to East Palestine, Ohio, a town still grappling with the aftermath of a 2023 train derailment that unleashed toxic chemicals into the environment. Leavitt said a visit had not been planned. A second reporter, Matt Boyle, the long-time White House correspondent for Breitbart News, asked Leavitt to elaborate on her comments about opening up access to the briefing room.
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She also fielded a question from Brian Glenn, a reporter from Real America’s Voice, a conservative streaming platform established in 2020, who sought insight into whether the diplomatic tussle with Colombia’s president over the weekend signaled a new “global respect” for Trump. Leavitt replied, “Peace through strength is back.”