On Friday evening, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sent out a memo announcing a new restriction on press access in the West Wing. According to the memo, members of the White House press corps will now be restricted from accessing the area known as “upper press” without an appointment.
The move comes amid extensive changes to the Washington press corps under President Trump. At the White House, the Trump administration has taken the unprecedented steps of choosing partisan, right-wing organizations to fill seats in the briefing room for daily press conferences and to join the pool reporters who accompany the president to events. Those tasks had long been the domain of the White House Correspondents Association. Some of the reporters who are not part of the hand-picked, partisan element have been subject to insults from top White House staffers.
The changes echo others at the Pentagon, where recent restrictions on the press have been even more dramatic. Reporters there were asked to sign a pledge vowing not to gather information that has not been authorized for release. That move led several news organizations — including prominent conservative news outlets — to vacate the facility. They were summarily replaced by a slew of hand-selected media figures that include conspiracy theorists and extremists.
One White House correspondent who spoke to TPM on Friday said the new restrictions in upper press were a sign of worse things to come in the West Wing.
“They already kicked all the legitimate news organizations out of the Pentagon. Now they want to do the same thing here,” said the correspondent, who requested anonymity to offer a candid assessment.
Traditionally, White House press pass holders have been able to have relatively free access to several areas of the complex, including the press workspaces adjoining the briefing room, the briefing room itself, and the North Lawn, where TV networks film standups and reporters often question officials as they enter the building. Along with these areas, reporters with hard passes can enter an area behind the briefing room podium known as “lower press” as well as “upper press,” which is located one floor above. While lower press contains the offices of relatively junior press aides, upper press includes the offices of the press secretary and communications director. Reporters stake out upper press when they are seeking to speak to these more senior aides.
Accessing upper press requires going by a Secret Service checkpoint where your hard pass must be displayed. Often, after major breaking news events, reporters will come into the hallway outside the press secretary’s office seeking a comment. Other officials — including Cabinet members and, very rarely, the president — sometimes pass through upper press and speak with reporters there.
The memo from Cheung and Leavitt attributed the new restrictions to “recent structural changes to the National Security Council.”
“The White House is now responsible for directing all communications, including on all national security matters,” the memo said. “In this capacity, members of the White House Communications Staff are routinely engaging with sensitive material.”
The memo said the new limits would “ensure adherence to best practices pertaining to access to sensitive material.” It also noted reporters will “continue to freely engage with White House Press Aides in the Lower Press Area outside of the Briefing Room.”
Cheung did not respond to an email from TPM inquiring whether there had ever been a specific national security disclosure issue related to upper press. He also did not address questions about the pattern of insults, indignities, and increased partisanship in the White House press shop.