Did Biden revoke more than 400 press passes? How changes compare to Trump’s media ban

On Sept. 18, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was banning journalists from the outlets CNN, MS NOW and Politico from accessing the White House. Journalists from the three outlets had their White House access revoked the following day, according to The Associated Press. The three outlets publish “fake news,” the president said of his unprecedented decision, which is already being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. 

It’s not the first time Trump has sparked backlash over his efforts to meddle with the way the media covers him and his administration. 

For instance, on Feb. 25, 2025, then-White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that members of the White House press pool, a small group of rotating journalists who travel with the president at almost all times, would no longer be selected by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association, which was created specifically to prevent the president from restricting press access. 

Members of Trump’s administration now pick the press pool journalists themselves. 

Amid the 2026 controversy, posts popped up on social media purporting to compare Trump’s actions with those of his predecessor, Joe Biden. Snopes previously covered the claim in February 2025, and we are refreshing our reporting accordingly. At that time, the main source of the rumor was a Fox News article titled “FLASHBACK: Biden also changed White House press pool, cutting off more than 440 reporters’ credentials.” 

In September 2026, the conservative One America News Network, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and the White House itself spread the rumor.

In a news release on Sept. 21, the administration called press access to the White House access a “privilege, not a right,” and listed several examples of Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s administrations purportedly attempting to curtail press access. 

(Snopes previously reported on the allegations against the Obama administration.)

The actions simply are not comparable.

The Biden administration’s change tightened the requirements for obtaining a certain press credential. According to Fox News’ White House reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who is also the president of the WHCA, presidential administrations have always been in charge of press credentialing. 

Trump’s administration, meanwhile, first took control over which White House reporters travel with the president in the “press pool” (something a presidential administration had never previously been in charge of), and then banned specific outlets from the White House, something a presidential administration has never officially done.

What the Biden administration did

In 2023, the Biden administration tightened the requirements for the so-called “hard pass,” a yearly credential that allows a White House journalist to “come and go at will” when the White House is open, according to The Washington Post. That article listed the revised eligibility requirements under Biden as follows: 

• Employed by a news organization.
• Live in the Washington, D.C., area.
• Have gone to the White House for work at least once in the last six months.
• Have a press credential for either the Supreme Court, the Senate or the House of Representatives. 

Crucially, one-day press passes still remain available for all journalists, even those who do not meet the above requirements. 

According to Politico, the number of hard passes dropped from 1,417 to 975 after the new requirements came into effect simply because many journalists chose to not renew the pass — despite the stricter requirements, only one application was denied. A White House spokesperson told Politico that just before the change that “roughly 40 percent of hard pass holders had not accessed the White House complex in the prior 90 days.”

As such, it’s misleading to claim that the Biden administration “cut off” the credentials of more than 440 reporters. Reporters had the chance to renew their credentials, but some decided not to. It is unclear how many of the journalists who did not renew their hard pass credential did so because they wouldn’t qualify under the new guidelines (and again, such reporters could still attend news briefings with a day pass). 

What the Trump administration did

The Trump administration decided in February 2025 to put government officials in charge of picking the small rotating group of journalists who travel with the president — the people that “relay the president’s activities to the public,” as The New York Times wrote. 

The press pool, historically set by the WHCA, has been traveling with the president since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s and 1940s, according to the organization’s website. 

Because the general public might misunderstand the term “press pool” to mean “the large group of reporters covering the White House” instead of the small group of rotating journalists that travel with the president, it’s misleading to suggest that a change affecting the requirements for press credentials is comparable to giving the White House sole control of the makeup of the press pool.

The White House’s announcement that it would control the press pool itself came not long after the Trump administration barred The Associated Press from the White House for not following its demand to replace the term “Gulf of Mexico” with “Gulf of America.” The AP sued to rejoin the pool, and a judge ordered in favor of the AP in April 2025.

Then, in September 2026, Trump pulled the press credentials (read: hard passes) of CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters.

There have certainly been cases where the president and the media find themselves at odds. Richard Nixon is said to have ordered a ban on The Washington Post after the Watergate scandal, which arguably served as precedent for Trump’s actions in 2026. 

However, Nixon’s administration never confiscated Post reporters’ credentials, according to a 2016 report from NBC News. George Condon, a long-term White House reporter and former WHCA president, told NBC News he could not think of any instance of a publication having its credentials pulled by an administration. According to Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, the Post simply was excluded from covering social events at the White House. 

Sources