WASHINGTON, United States – The White House has excluded United States broadcaster CNN from traveling aboard Air Force One as the designated pool television crew for President Donald Trump’s official trip to Tennessee on Saturday, escalating an ongoing legal confrontation between the executive branch and national news organizations over press access, media correspondents reported in Washington on Saturday morning, September 26, 2026.
The exclusion was confirmed late Friday night after the White House Press Office issued its official daily travel schedule and pool roster for the president’s visit to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, where Trump is scheduled to attend a collegiate football match between the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas.
Okay News reports that CNN was scheduled in the long-standing five-network rotation—comprising ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News—to serve as the primary television pool outlet responsible for filming, recording, and distributing footage of the Commander-in-Chief on behalf of the entire national press corps during presidential flights and regional arrivals.
However, the official itinerary omitted CNN from the roster, assigning out-of-town television pool duties to conservative digital broadcaster Real America’s Voice, marking an unprecedented operational disruption to the traditional White House Correspondents’ Association pool framework.
The move follows a week of intensifying friction after President Trump announced a blanket ban barring journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House complex, accusing them of publishing dishonest coverage regarding his administration’s domestic policies and diplomatic talks.
The ban prompted a collective pushback from the major American television networks, which temporarily paused pool camera operations in solidarity with the excluded outlets before the White House launched its own streaming initiative, Trump TV, to broadcast executive engagements.
On Thursday morning, United States District Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued an emergency ruling granting the news organizations a 14-day temporary restraining order, determining that the administration’s summary suspension of press credentials without published criteria or administrative recourse was likely unconstitutional under Fifth Amendment due process protections.
While regular television pool coverage briefly resumed inside the executive mansion on Friday as reporters covered Trump’s bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the National Archives, White House officials maintained that the federal court order applied solely to hard-pass physical access to the 18-acre White House grounds and did not restrict executive discretion over passenger manifests on Air Force One.
Defending selective access policies earlier in the week, White House communications officials declared that news organizations do not hold an automatic right to unrestricted entry into every presidential forum, event, or travel call.
Lead constitutional litigator representing the media coalition, Theodore Boutrous Jr., affirmed that the legal team interprets Judge Kelly’s restraining order as encompassing the full scope of routine press pool operations, noting that the plaintiffs intend to raise the Air Force One exclusion before the federal court as they prepare their formal application for a preliminary injunction.
The White House Correspondents’ Association emphasized that the non-partisan pool system was instituted decades ago to guarantee continuous, independent observation of the presidency in confined operational settings where the entire press corps cannot travel, warning that replacing established rotating pool crews with politically favored outlets sets a damaging precedent for American press freedoms.
