CNN has announced a number of on-air staffing changes the Monday morning after Thanksgiving, highlighted by Phil Mattingly being elevated to the No. 1 White House reporting role.
Mattingly is now CNN chief White House correspondent, taking over for Kaitlan Collins who moved over to CNN This Morning earlier this fall.
Most recently the network’s senior White House correspondent, Mattingly covered the Biden administration where he reported in depth on the policy and personnel driving the administration’s first two years in office. He broke news around the administration, including the news that Biden would sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, details on a new multinational coordinated effort to target Russian supply chains, developments in Biden’s OPEC negotiations, and more.
Prior to moving to the White House beat in January 2021, Mattingly was a congressional correspondent. He joined CNN in December 2015 as a New York-based correspondent and spent 2016 on the campaign trail covering Republican presidential candidates Chris Christie, John Kasich, and Donald Trump, which included a series of investigative pieces into Trump’s business history, finances, and taxes.
Before joining CNN, Mattingly worked at Bloomberg News and TV in Washington.
With Mattingly becoming the lead White House correspondent, MJ Lee has been promoted to senior White House correspondent.
She began covering the White House for CNN in 2021, and has broken news on some of the Biden administration’s policy decisions around the nationwide baby formula shortage, the White House’s student loan debt forgiveness plan and public health emergencies like monkeypox and Covid-19. She has traveled abroad on Biden’s key foreign trips, covering the president’s relationship with world leaders and his position on the global stage.
Lee was previously based in CNN’s New York bureau and covered the 2020 presidential election as a political correspondent for the network, focusing on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign during the primaries before reporting on Biden’s general election campaign and the transition.
Before joining CNN in 2015, Lee was a finance and politics reporter at Politico.
Finally, Priscilla Alvarez is moving to the White House team as a reporter, and will also continue to cover immigration. She joined CNN in January 2019 as a reporter covering immigration politics and policy, traveling across the country and on the border to provide first-hand accounts on the ground. She’s broken dozens of stories, including on the 2021 surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the US southern border and on immigration policy changes.