There sure is a lot going on right now, and Donald doesn’t act like a president who intends to leave office in 3 years. Trump has destroyed the East Wing, and remodeled the Lincoln bathroom to presumably appear more Mar-a-Lago-ish.
The self-described most transparent administration in American history just issued a memo further restricting media access at the White House. The new rules block journalists’ access to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s office and to the workspaces of other top communications officials near the Oval Office.
Politico reports:
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.”
On the Bad App, White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung wrote a lengthy post to defend this move, saying, in part, “Cabinet Secretaries routinely come into our office for private meetings, only to be ambushed by reporters waiting outside our doors.”
Oh no, they were doing their jobs as journalists! How awful. It sounds like Leavitt can’t fulfill her duties as press secretary.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang released a statement, saying, “The White House Correspondents’ Association unequivocally opposes any effort to limit journalists from areas within the communications operations of the White House that have long been open for newsgathering, including the press secretary’s office.”
“The new restrictions hinder the press corps’ ability to question officials, ensure transparency and hold the government accountable, to the detriment of the American public,” she added.
Statement on New Restriction on Journalists at White House. pic.twitter.com/rE7F4Ou1hh
— WHCA (@whca) October 31, 2025
On social media, MAGA approves of the new rules, but it’s hard to fathom why any American would want less transparency into the office of the most corrupt President in recent history.
