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As President JOE BIDEN’s helicopter descended on Miyajima Island just south of Hiroshima last Friday night, a group of journalists trailed him in a helicopter nearby. They took note of the dense woods below and the deer gamboling about indifferent to the whir of Marine One’s rotor blades.

For that small group of reporters and photographers, it was about as interesting as anything they’d seen on the first day of the G-7 summit. That’s because they hadn’t seen much else at all.

Widespread complaints about limited press access were common among the reporters who accompanied the president on his trip to Japan. As Biden sat down for dinner that night with other leaders, an administration official was briefing reporters on a Zoom call about all that had occurred behind closed doors and what they should expect the following day. When it came time for questions, Bloomberg’s JORDAN FABIAN, who’d spent the day in the travel pool, made the pool’s frustrations clear.

“You just said that, you know, we’re going to see a lot of things happen at the summit. But the reality is that the media covering the President hasn’t been able to see much of anything,” Fabian said. “How is the White House planning to make sure the American public knows, you know, what the President is doing here?”

The official brushed the question aside, blaming Japan, the host country, for the limited press access. But concerns like Fabian’s are likely to lead to a post-mortem meeting between Biden’s team and the White House Correspondents’ Association once everyone is back in Washington.

The initial frustrations stemmed largely from the pool being almost entirely shut out of a “photo spray,” when the small group of reporters and photojournalists are allowed into a meeting to capture images and the opening remarks from participants — and, in most cases, to shout questions at them. When G-7 leaders gathered for their first working lunch Friday inside a cavernous, shoreside hotel in Hiroshima Bay, only one photographer was allowed in. That prompted a phone call from one of the poolers, the New York Times’ longtime White House reporter PETER BAKER, to WHCA president TAMARA KEITH.

Roused near midnight back in Washington, Keith explained that Japan had imposed severe restrictions on G-7 press coverage and that she, as the press corps’ elected representative, had determined that a still photographer, not a reporter, should be the pool’s representative in that particular spray because the leaders were not expected to speak. Pool reporters were subsequently passed a television feed of the meeting only to see that Japanese Prime Minister KISHIDA FUMIO was, in fact, making remarks.

In the past, White House correspondents have fought against having only a photographer in a pool when reporters are barred, wary of establishing any precedent that might enable an administration to seek out positive images while avoiding difficult questions.

The pool did see Biden at various points over the final two days of the summit, and a shouted question about debt talks from Bloomberg’s JENNY LEONARD did elicit a newsy response from the president.

“We went to bat for expanded access for the traveling press throughout the G7 despite not being in control of the sites,” said principal deputy press secretary OLIVIA DALTON. “The President held a full, formal press conference on Sunday. KARINE JEAN-PIERRE and National Security Adviser JAKE SULLIVAN gaggled en route to Japan and held another press briefing on Saturday. Press had access to multiple pool sprays, background briefings, and off-record briefings with senior administration officials throughout the trip.”

But numerous meetings that would typically have been open to the full pool were still restricted to one representative or a smaller subset. Japanese officials at one point Saturday informed U.S. officials that sprays they thought would be open to two reporters had been reduced to one, citing a decision from the local fire marshal.

On Sunday, as press wranglers prepared to lead the one-person pool to observe the official photo of the G-7 leaders with Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, they initially gave the pool card for that event — essentially, the admission ticket — to the print pooler, COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN of the LA Times. But quickly they took it back, following another WHCA directive, and gave it to a still photographer, AP’s SUSAN WALSH.

Frustrations with covering summits — from holding in narrow hallways or elevator loading docks to jostling with competing journalists for space, to the closed door nature of the gatherings and the 47-page euphemism-laden communiques that come from them — are hardly unique to Hiroshima.

But journalists who went to Japan, traveling at considerable expense, spent much of the weekend buzzing about the uniquely restrictive policies at this annual gathering of the world’s most powerful democratic leaders. That’s especially true for those outlets which remain on the hook for more than half of the expense of a charter flight that would have flown the press corps from Hiroshima to Sydney, Australia had Biden not canceled the second leg of his trip.

There were a few exceptions: An off-the-record gathering at the press hotel Friday night that had been organized by the WHCA and was well attended by reporters and several administration officials, and as Dalton mentioned, a Saturday morning briefing by Sullivan and Jean-Pierre, and Biden’s closing press conference Sunday night.

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With help from the White House Historical Association

Which president started the tradition of planting commemorative trees on the White House Grounds?

(Answer at bottom.)

CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC: Before his meeting with the president, House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY expressed a bit of optimism about a debt ceiling deal being reached before the June 1 deadline. “We should’ve gotten it done by the weekend. It does make it more difficult but I think we can still make that all happen,” McCarthy told reporters Monday. Our SARAH FERRIS has the latest.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by NYT’s DON CLARK about how Applied Materials, the biggest maker of machines for producing semiconductors, announced Monday that it would invest up to $4 billion in a massive new research facility near Santa Clara, Calif. “The plan is the latest in a string of chip-related projects spurred by the CHIPs Act,” Clark writes, noting that Vice President KAMALA HARRIS was attending an event in California on Monday to discuss the project. White House chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS shared the piece on Twitter.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This article by CNBC’s SILVIA AMARO about how European Union officials are “quietly preparing” for a Biden loss in 2024. One EU official told CNBC that there has been “close cooperation and coordination between the EU and the current U.S. administration” since Biden’s election, but that the region is “aware that this [cooperation] is not a given and such approach might change when there is someone like [former President Donald] Trump in the White House again.”

AND ALSO, MAYBE: This new AP-NORC poll which found “public approval of Biden’s handling of the economy remains low in a time of high inflation, a difficult housing market and concerns about a potential U.S. government debt default. American opinion is also gloomy about Biden’s efforts on gun policy and immigration, with only 31 percent saying they approve of the president’s performance on those hot button issues.” AP’s AAMER MADHANI has more.

TENSION IN THE AIR: In remarks at the G-7 Summit, Biden said tensions between the U.S. and China were going to “begin to thaw very shortly,” after talks were paused following the Chinese spy balloon discovery earlier this year. But within hours of the president’s prediction, China moved to place restrictions on U.S. chipmaker Micron, throwing another wrench in U.S.-China relations, Financial Times’ DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO, ELEANOR OLCOTT and JOE LEAHY report.

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: ISABEL ALDUNATE has left the Office of Management and Budget where she served as deputy associate director for communications, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. Aldunate, a Biden campaign and Sen. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.). alum, will start as the director of media relations at the AFL-CIO in the coming weeks.

MORE PERSONNEL MOVES: JASON ISRAEL has joined the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for defense, Lippman reports. He was most recently a transatlantic leadership fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and is an Obama NSC and DOD alum. He will work closely with NSC coordinator for defense policy and arms control CARA ABERCROMBIE.

— TIMOTHY WHITE has also been promoted to be assistant press secretary at OMB, Lippman (again) has learned.

STACKING UP THE FCC: The president announced three nominees for the Federal Communications Commission on Monday — ANNA GOMEZ, who is currently a senior adviser for international information and communications policy at the State Department and renominations of current commissioners GEOFFREY STARKS and BRENDAN CARR. Our JOHN HENDEL has more for Pro subscribers.

A BLIZZARD OF IN CASE YOU MISSED IT EMAILS: The White House press shop sent out three “ICYMI” emails to reporters on Monday flagging stories about how everyday Americans could be impacted if the U.S. defaults on its debt.

The pieces included one from the WaPo’s ABHA BHATTARAI about how small business owners are starting to panic about a government default and another from NPR’s SCOTT HORSLEY about how a default would affect veterans, seniors and government employees. The White House also shared a piece from POLITICO’s KELLY HOOPER and DANIEL PAYNE breaking down key areas of health care that would be affected by a debt limit breach.

VETO VOW: The White House said Monday the president would veto the Congressional Review Act resolution, a Republican effort to overturn his administration’s student debt relief program, should it get to Biden’s desk, our MICHAEL STRATFORD reports for Pro subscribers. The House is preparing to vote on the legislation later this week.

SUMMER IS HERE: Ok. It’s not technically here yet. But with the busy summer travel season upon us, questions remain as to how the Federal Aviation Agency will handle it, as it’s struggled to keep flight costs down and navigate airline delays and cancellations in recent months. “A major misstep could increase political pressure on lawmakers and regulators to take a harder line against airlines and the [agency],” NYT’s NIRAJ CHOKSHI reports.

Seniors are flooding homeless shelters that can’t care for them (WaPo’s Christopher Rowland)

An apparently AI-generated hoax of an explosion at the Pentagon went viral online — and markets briefly dipped (Insider’s Rebecca Cohen)

Colorado River states reach deal with Biden to protect drought-stricken river (WaPo’s Joshua Partlow)

Marianne Williamson loses top two campaign officials in a matter of days (POLITICO’s Brittany Gibson)

Deputy agriculture secretary XOCHITL TORRES SMALL never really considered running for public office. So when a spot opened up to represent New Mexico in the House, she wrote a list of potential candidates before having an “aha” moment that she may be the best fit.

Torres Small, who was working as an attorney at the time, would go on to become a New Mexico representative before serving in the Biden administration. She said running for office was not “something I was planning.”

“Honestly I was thinking of other people,” she told CSPAN in 2018. “I was thinking about who I could call and there was this moment while I was writing that list that I realized maybe it was my job, maybe I had to step up and do this work.”

In the 1870s, President RUTHERFORD B. HAYES began the tradition of planting commemorative trees. Today, the south lawn features more than three dozen special commemorative trees, according to the White House Historical Association.

A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.