White House blocks CNN from covering Trump’s Tennessee trip

The White House on Friday night removed CNN from joining President Donald Trump on his trip to Tennessee on Saturday, where it was supposed to cover the president on behalf of major TV networks.

According to media guidance sent out by the White House on Friday night, CNN was removed from the list of outlets designated for pool coverage of Trump’s trip, in which he is set to attend a college football game in Knoxville.

The pool is a rotating group of networks that share duties of filming the president both in Washington and on official trips. Other member networks — Fox News, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News — briefly boycotted participating in the pool this week after Trump banned CNN from serving as a member.

CNN on Friday reported that it had been scheduled to fly with Trump on Air Force One on Saturday as part of its pool duties covering the president’s trip to the game between the University of Texas and the University of Tennessee. However in the president’s schedule released Friday night, CNN was not listed as a member of the pool and no other network was listed as replacing it.

The move is the latest development in the White House’s attempt to restrict access by CNN and other outlets to cover the White House. The president last week had banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from accessing the White House before a judge temporarily blocked that move Thursday and ordered the administration to restore their reporters’ credentials for 14 days.

But while the order restored the outlets’ access to the White House, it didn’t explicitly require the administration to restore CNN’s participation in the television pool.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.