White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (right) announced the White House was taking control of the pool during Tuesday’s press briefing, saying it needed to ensure access to new news outlets.

Donald Trump’s White House kicked a HuffPost reporter out of the pool of journalists set to follow the president on Wednesday, breaking with decades of precedent, and insisting they have the ability to pick and choose which reporters cover the president.

The White House also kicked the Reuters wire service out of its spot in the pool, escalating a fight which began after the White House insisted The Associated Press comply with Trump’s decision to arbitrarily rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

The moves fit in with the increasingly authoritarian nature of Trump’s second term, which has seen him deploy the federal........

© HuffPost