1. United States
2. Letter

You work for the American people. That is not a slogan, and the presidency is not a private business. You hold public office. You exercise public power. You spend public money. You make decisions in the name of the United States and its citizens. I am one of those citizens. I do not owe you personal loyalty, admiration, or trust. I have every right to scrutinize what you do as President, to disagree with you, to criticize you, and to demand independent information about the actions you take in my name and with my tax dollars. That is one of the reasons we have a free press. I do not want any president deciding which news organizations I may rely upon to observe my government. I do not want a Republican president doing it. I do not want a Democratic president doing it. And I emphatically do not want journalists granted access based on whether the President approves of their reporting. You have announced that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico are banned from the White House because you object to their coverage. Reverse that decision. The White House is not your house in the ordinary meaning of that word. It is not a private residence or corporate headquarters where the owner gets to decide who may observe what happens there. It is the seat of the executive branch of my government. I want journalists there who will ask questions you do not like. I want journalists there who will investigate claims made by your administration. I want journalists there who will report things that are inconvenient, embarrassing, critical, or politically damaging when those things are true and newsworthy. I want them there precisely because I cannot personally stand in the White House and watch what my government is doing. The press does that work for the public. Your administration already has the ability to communicate its own account directly to the American people. What it does not get to do is substitute government messaging for independent journalism. I do not want a polished presentation of what the administration wants me to see. I want independent journalists examining what the administration is actually doing. That distinction is fundamental. You are not entitled to control the information Americans receive about their government by rewarding favorable coverage with access and punishing unfavorable coverage with exclusion. Criticism is not insubordination. Journalists are not your employees. You are ours. Every president temporarily occupies an office belonging to the American people. The authority of that office is entrusted to you for a limited period of time. It does not become your personal property while you hold it. I therefore expect you to restore access for legitimate independent news organizations and stop using access to the White House as leverage over the press. I am not asking you to like these journalists. I am not asking you to agree with them. I am telling you, as an American citizen whose government you currently lead, that I expect independent journalists to be able to scrutinize my government whether the President enjoys that scrutiny or not. That is their job. And being subject to that scrutiny is part of yours.