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May President Trump Exclude CNN from Air Force One? Very Likely Yes

Eugene Volokh | 9.26.2026 1:03 AM

After being blocked in his attempt to keep CNN out of the White House altogether (including the main press briefing room), President Trump has excluded CNN from traveling with him on Air Force One. This, though, he is quite likely allowed to do.

As you likely recall, last year Trump kicked AP out of the Oval Office press pool, because the AP had refused (in my view correctly refused) to call the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of America." A D.C. Circuit panel majority, to oversimplify slightly, concluded that this was constitutionally permissible, both as to the Oval Office and as to Air Force One. An excerpt from that 2025 decision (AP v. Budowich):

The White House is likely to succeed on the merits because these restricted presidential spaces {Oval Office, … Air Force One, and … the President's home in Mar-a-Lago} are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion. The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.

The majority concluded that those spaces differed from some more broadly open spaces in the White House:

Reporters and photographers have long been permitted access to the White House complex to cover the President and his administration. The White House manages access by requiring journalists to obtain a press credential called a hard pass. More than one thousand journalists hold hard passes, through which they may access spaces such as the James S. Brady Briefing Room, where the White House Press Secretary delivers regular briefings.

Hard pass holders may also sign up via a reservation system to attend larger events hosted in the East Room, which is often used for meetings with foreign leaders, executive order signings, and press conferences. Because the White House has opened these press facilities "to all bona fide Washington-based journalists," hard passes may not be denied arbitrarily or based on the........

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