White House Excludes CNN from Coverage of Trump's Tennessee Trip

The White House on September 25, 2026, removed CNN from the list of outlets designated for pool coverage of President Donald Trump's trip to Tennessee, scheduled for September 26. The trip includes attending a college football game in Knoxville. The pool is a rotating group of networks that share responsibilities for filming the president during official trips. Other networks in the pool include Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, which briefly boycotted participation after Trump banned CNN from the pool. CNN reported that it had been scheduled to fly with Trump on Air Force One as part of its pool duties. However, in the president's schedule released on September 25, CNN was not listed as a member of the pool, and no replacement network was named. This action follows a recent attempt by the White House to restrict access to CNN and other outlets, which included a ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from accessing the White House. A judge temporarily blocked that ban on September 24, ordering the administration to restore the reporters' credentials for 14 days. However, the order did not explicitly require the administration to restore CNN's participation in the television pool. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.