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Last week, in Olympia, Washington, a group of three right-wing media figures filed a lawsuit confronting a question that is becoming increasingly fraught across the United States: who is and is not a journalist in a government building. The plaintiffs—Brandi Kruse, a podcaster; Ari Hoffman, a talk radio host; and Jonathan Choe, a freelancer and senior journalism fellow at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank—wish to be provided permanent press passes to the statehouse and to have press credentialing guidelines overhauled. The defendants—the Capitol Correspondents Association and the Washington House of Representatives—have denied them access because of their involvement with political advocacy; all three have accepted payment from political organizations.
The lawsuit emerged from a series of recent events that have complicated life for political journalists in Olympia. For some fifty years, press credentialing at the statehouse had been overseen by the Capitol Correspondents Association, a loose-knit group with little or no budget that approved passes, set guidelines on decorum, and gave legislative leaders a place to go on matters affecting the press corps. Last March, however, that changed: Kruse and Choe sought access, which the association denied; the pair threatened to sue, and soon the association voluntarily transferred its credentialing authority to legislators. “We don’t have lawyers,” Jerry Cornfield, the association’s president and a senior Olympia reporter for the Washington State Standard, told Investigate West. “We chose not to litigate on behalf of the legislature. It’s their building. They ultimately control access to the chambers. We were not going to fight their fight for them.” (That was his sole comment on the matter; he declined to speak with me.)
The decision suddenly put elected officials in the position of managing access to themselves. “The legislature is pissed that the news organization crumbled,” Rowland Thompson—the executive director of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, who has worked in Olympia for decades—told me at the time. As Denny Heck, Washington’s lieutenant governor, put it, “We don’t want that authority.” Michele Matassa Flores, the executive editor of the Seattle Times, noted that legislators have a vested interest in which reporters get credentials: “It’s a slippery-slope question,” she said—and some news organizations have since tried to work out arrangements to bolster the Capitol Correspondents Association, including by providing resources to handle legal challenges. That effort remains a work in progress.
For the rest of the 2025 legislative session, anyone claiming to be press was allowed onto the floors of the state senate and house chambers. This year, the senate has continued that practice. In the house, Bernard Dean, the clerk, said his office determines who gets credentials, leaning on the correspondents association’s longtime guidelines. Recently, when Kruse and Choe—now joined by Hoffman—wanted in, they were again denied. “It is important that a line be established between professional journalism and political or policy work,” according to association guidelines quoted in a rejection letter from the house clerk’s office. “The press should act as an independent observer and monitor of the proceedings, not as an involved party.”
By turns, Kruse, Choe, and Hoffman have all been involved with journalism and politics. (None of the three responded to my requests for comment.) All of them live in the Seattle area—and rarely make the sixty-mile drive to Olympia. Kruse, who identifies as a “rugged individualist,” hosts unDivided with Brandi Kruse, which bills itself as “political commentary for the anti-fringe.” Sometimes, she calls herself a journalist; other times, she says she isn’t one; in late 2021, she left Seattle’s Fox 13 television station. One of her podcast advertisers is Future 42, a conservative activist organization linked to state ballot initiatives—including one seeking to ban trans girls from participating in middle and high school sports. She has spoken at Republican rallies, including for a gubernatorial candidate named Dave Reichert, and been a paid speaker for local Republican fundraisers. “Legacy media is notoriously biased in favor of Democrats. I am at least transparent about my political beliefs,” Kruse recently told KUOW, Seattle’s NPR station. “You can call me many things, but inconsistent isn’t one of them.”
Hoffman—a fixture of 570 KVI, which bills itself as America’s first conservative talk radio station, and a onetime candidate for Seattle City Council—has also been a paid speaker at Republican Party events, and has lately campaigned for legislative initiatives including the one blocking trans girls from sports. “Access to the people’s House is not a privilege reserved for a select few,” he said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “When the government controls who can report on it based on vague or subjective criteria, that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.”
Choe, a former reporter for Seattle’s KOMO television station, was fired in 2022 for filming boosterish coverage of a Proud Boys parade in Olympia and posting it on his Twitter account without permission from his bosses. These days, in addition to his role at the Discovery Institute, he contributes to Turning Point USA, Newsmax, and other conservative outlets. He has also done video work and consulting with political campaigns in the state—one Republican, one Democratic. “I’m having to hustle and look for opportunities to simply get a byline in or to get my story on air,” he told KUOW, “and every time I do, I get paid.” In the press release, he said, “The Capitol belongs to the people of Washington, not to political gatekeepers. Journalists must be able to cover their government without arbitrary barriers.”
These three are not the first to be denied press credentials because of political affiliation: years ago, the local Sierra Club was denied passes to the Olympia statehouse for the same reason. On her podcast, Kruse said the house clerk’s office is “using outdated rules to deny people access.” She compared herself, Choe, and Hoffman to editorial-page contributors—and noted that a bill, currently before a state senate committee, aims to use taxes on tech companies to support local news in Washington. The bill, she claimed, would amount to state-controlled media. Now, she declared, “new media is taking over. Old media is dying off.”
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