Did Biden revoke 440 press passes? Fact-checking Trump allies after White House bans news outlets

After President Donald Trump announced Sept. 18 on Truth Social that he was banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House because they write “fake news,” many of his supporters defended the move by pointing to actions by former President Joe Biden’s administration.

A TikTok video with 72,000 views said, “Biden changed the White House press pool and CUT OFF 440 reporters’ credentials, yet got ZERO outrage from the fake news media.” 

Other social media posts shared a 2025 Fox News headline that read, “FLASHBACK: Biden also changed White House press pool, cutting off more than 440 reporters’ credentials.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., also compared Trump’s ban with a press policy change by Biden in 2023.

“Go look at Joe Biden,” Scalise told ABC’s “This Week” host Jonathan Karl on Sept. 20. “Joe Biden removed the press credentials from over 400 different agencies. You know, what President Trump’s done has brought a lot of those back in.” 

Karl pushed back. “They were not banned from the White House,” he said.

The White House doubled down on its ban the next day. “White House access is a privilege, not a right,” a Sept. 21 press release said, citing instances in which it said Biden or former President Barack Obama targeted journalists, including 440 reporters having their credentials “restricted” by Biden in 2023.

The White House Correspondents’ Association said Trump’s decision violates the Constitution; the three affected outlets said Sept. 21 they were suing the administration; and major television networks said they would suspend pool coverage of the White House in solidarity with the affected outlets.

More than 400 reporters did see changes to White House access under Biden in 2023, but Biden did not remove their ability to be in the White House to cover the president, which is what Trump has ordered for three news outlets.

Tim Zick, a constitutional law professor at William & Mary Law School, said the Biden rules were changed in part to address concerns about maintaining press briefing decorum and to reduce the number of unused press passes, which the administration considered a national security risk.

“The Biden policy was a far cry from President Trump’s abrupt and process-free announcement of a ban on targeted media with whom he frequently clashes,” Zick said, calling it “a blatant and clear violation of the First Amendment.”  

What Biden did in 2023

In May 2023, the White House changed policies for journalists to receive a “hard pass,” which allows them unaccompanied access to the White House’s press areas. The yearly passes expired in July that year, and journalists were told they had to reapply under a new set of criteria. 

Then, as now, reporters without hard pass access were required to apply for day passes, which mandate they be escorted to those press areas.

Among the Biden administration’s new rules for a hard pass, according to a court filing, a journalist seeking one:

• must be employed by a news organization.
• must be accredited for a press gallery in the U.S. House or Senate, or U.S. Supreme Court.
• must have a physical address (personal or professional) in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and
• must have accessed the White House for work at least once in the past six months.

After the changes, about 500 fewer journalists had hard passes, the court filing said. A Politico report in August 2023 said there were 442 fewer hard passes, which matches the numbers used in some social media posts defending Trump.

Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a Sept. 21 TikTok video that “there were a lot of people with hard passes out there that had not used it in several years.”

Simon Ateba, a journalist with Today News Africa who lost his hard pass after the change, filed the lawsuit against the White House in 2023, but a court ruled the new policy did not violate his First Amendment rights, a decision upheld in April 2025 by the D.C. United States Court of Appeals.

The court ruling found Biden’s new hard pass policy both “reasonable and viewpoint neutral” and said it did not violate the First Amendment.

Psaki said journalists from right-leaning news outlets such as Breitbart, Fox News and Newsmax all got hard passes “because the criteria had nothing to do with how you were covering the administration.” 

Andrew Bates, former deputy press secretary for Biden, said no reporters were banned as a result of Biden’s policy.

“Most of the reporters Trump’s aides are trying to exploit by citing that number had stopped covering the White House and didn’t even apply for a new hard pass,” Bates said. “And all of those reporters were eligible to apply for day passes whenever they wanted. No one was ‘banned,’ regardless of how negative or friendly their coverage was.”

Anytime a government seeks to impose standards for journalists, Zick said, there are concerns that those standards could be used to exclude or sanction reporters based on their coverage: “Free speech and press advocates raised such concerns, suggesting that the Biden standards were not clear enough.”

Some reporters did lose the hard pass credentials and some may have decided not to apply, Zick said, but that’s not the same as what Trump is doing.

Our ruling

A TikTok video said Biden “CUT OFF 440 reporters’ credentials.”

In 2023, the Biden administration changed its policy on how reporters can qualify for a hard pass, which lets them move more freely around White House press areas without an escort. About 500 fewer reporters had hard passes after the change, but they weren’t “cut off.” They could still apply for a day pass, a more cumbersome process, but they weren’t banned from the White House.

We rate this claim Mostly False.