The Trump administration must allow Associated Press journalists access to events in the Oval Office and other spaces, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction, holding that the Trump administration cannot discriminate against the A.P. because the organization refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
Under the First Amendment, the judge wrote, “if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.”
The judge also stayed his decision for five days, allowing the administration to ask an appeals court to block the injunction.
An AP spokesperson said the wire service is “gratified” by the decision.
“Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation,” said the spokesperson, Lauren Easton. “This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. Constitution. We look forward to continuing to provide factual, nonpartisan and independent coverage of the White House for billions of people around the world.”
The AP sued three Trump administration officials in February over the White House’s ban on the news organization’s access to presidential events. The White House blocked the AP after the outlet decided to continue to refer to the body of water as the “Gulf of Mexico,” even after Trump decreed that it should be known as the “Gulf of America.”
The AP has framed the case in explicit free-speech terms, arguing that Trump was seeking to compel speech in violation of the First Amendment. McFadden previously denied the AP’s request for a restraining order to immediately restore the organization’s access to pooled events while the case was pending.
The Justice Department, representing the administration officials named in the suit, had argued that the AP has not been prevented from covering White House events because its reporters are able to rely on the reporting from other members of the pool. The AP’s lawsuit named White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and press secretary Karoline Leavitt as defendants.
According to the AP, it has been at a competitive disadvantage because of the White House ban, which began Feb. 11. That included when D.C.-based staff were prevented from covering the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting during which Trump attacked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for being “disrespectful” to the U.S. for not showing gratitude over the administration’s efforts to broker a peace deal with Russia, which launched a war on Ukraine in 2022.
“We’re basically dead in the water on major news stories,” Evan Vucci, the AP’s chief photographer in Washington, testified at the March 27 hearing, per CNN.
“For anyone who thinks the Associated Press’s lawsuit against President Trump’s White House is about the name of a body of water, think bigger. It’s really about whether the government can control what you say,” AP executive editor Julie Pace wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published March 26. She offered a thought experiment: “Imagine this dispute outside the U.S. context. If you discovered that the AP caved to a different government trying to control its speech, would you ever again trust anything the AP reported from that country — or for that matter, from anywhere?”
Trump, on his first day back in the White House for a second term, issued an executive order on Jan. 20 renaming the body of water the Gulf of America. The AP refused to adopt that name for its influential style guide, the Associated Press Stylebook, noting that the body of water has been called the Gulf of Mexico for 400 years.
“The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen,” the news outlet said in a Jan. 23 update on usage guidance. “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
