On Capitol Hill, the reporters run free. GOP senators are fine with it

President Trump has barred news outlets from the White House, and a prominent GOP congresswoman is making noise about restricting press access to parts of the Capitol.

But Republicans in the Senate, where reporters have more direct access to lawmakers than anywhere in Washington, say they’re content with the status quo.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said the “courts will decide” the rightness of Trump’s move, but banning certain outlets is “not my policy.”

In fact, Congress allows reporters broad and generally indiscriminate access to speak directly with members of both chambers every day.

The general public can freely access the hallways of the office buildings in the House and Senate, and reporters — who are credentialed by the nonpartisan press galleries — are allowed almost everywhere that staff are throughout the Capitol, including most underground trains, tunnels and staircases that members use to get around.

And while there have historically been efforts to restrict or change access to the Capitol, Republican lawmakers who spoke to The Hill generally maintained that they’re comfortable with the freedom of movement reporters have.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said he’s been “thinking a lot about” Trump’s move, because he’s had problems with certain outlets being “incredibly untruthful in their reporting,” causing him to decline to comment for their stories.

“So I understand the emotion of it,” Lankford said. “The challenge is they’ve got to have some kind of access because they still have [to be able] to report a story, especially if you’re a pool. We got to be able to have that.”

When The Hill asked if he was comfortable with how much access reporters have to senators, he said he was. He said banning outlets from the building entirely, as Trump did, is different than letting reporters into the Capitol, where lawmakers can still decline to answer questions if upset with the coverage.

“They have access to the building, but I’m just not going to answer the question because I just can’t trust what’s going to run,” Lankford said.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Rules Committee, made headlines last week when she said many lawmakers are “irritated” with the presence of reporters in the Speaker’s Lobby, a narrow room directly off the House floor where members wander, take meetings and calls, and sometimes rest on benches in between votes. That space has been closed to the press for periods in the past, including the COVID-19 pandemic, but was reopened in 2021.

Besides Foxx, even Republicans who support Trump’s right to ban certain outlets aren’t looking to do the same around the Capitol. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told The Hill that “that’s his option,” and that “he’s probably tired of the fake news.”

“I’m fine with it, but he deals with 100 times more than we do,” Tuberville said of press access in the Senate.

The three outlets that Trump blocked — Politico, MS NOW and CNN — presented arguments in court against the move on Wednesday. A judge initially seemed skeptical of the administration’s case.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) told reporters he expected the White House press ban problem to get resolved quickly and that it is just Trump sending a message about coverage.

“I think he’s sending them a message like, ‘Hey, be fair.’ And I think at some point they’ll be able to cover him, and we’ll move on. That’s my guess.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) a retiring Republican who is regularly swamped with crowds of reporters as he’s become more prone to criticizing the Trump administration, told reporters Tuesday that Trump’s move to limit the press corps over unfavorable reporting is “silly.”

“The American people don’t like that,” Tillis said.

“Didn’t work for Victor Orbán … it hasn’t worked for [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth. Look, be proud of what you have to say. Have a counter. I mean, every discussion with the press should be like a good debate. If you’ve been doing your job, you should be able to pivot and either discredit the question or have compelling information for why the premise of the question is wrong. But to just eliminate people because they don’t give you favorable reviews or favorable questions to me is silly.”