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AP legal setback and still in the dog house at the White House [1]

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Date: 2025-06-07

The Associated Press has their Stylebook, which other news organizations around the world use for all kinds of writing instructions and how to refer to people, places and events.

AP would not change the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, but noted Trump's order for it to now be called the Gulf of America. The rest of the world is laughing at Trump and still calls it the Gulf of Mexico.

For their crime of not bowing down to Trump, AP was summarily kicked out of Oval Office news gaggles, space on Air Force One, Mar-a-Lago, and the press briefing room at the White House.

AP filed suit and won on the basis of the First Amendment. Trump completely ignored the win and still kept AP off the list of approved media. AP filed a motion for Judge McFadden to enforce the injunction against the White House, which he denied. Then Leavitt just plain abolished a spot for wire services entirely. Reuters was not happy about it, either.

Trump appealed the April ruling, and yesterday, in a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, upheld the ban except for larger spaces such as the White House East Room.

Trump posted on Truth Social multiple times about the win. A third one is a screenshot of a CNN News article..

"Big WIN over AP today. They refused to state the facts or the Truth on the GULF OF AMERICA. FAKE NEWS!!!"

Not truth, Donald. The fact is that the rest of the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico, and has for 400 years. In the US, only MAGA are stupid enough to call it the Gulf of America. Google Maps has set it up so IP addresses in the US see it as Gulf of America. Apple Maps made the change. MapQuest still shows Gulf of Mexico and has a page where you can name it to anything you want and download the map.

In the April decision that AP won, Judge Trevor McFadden 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."

On Friday, the appeals court had a different answer. "Restricted presidential spaces" such as the Oval Office and Air Force One "are not First Amendment fora [plural of forum] opened for private speech and discussion. The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted." The two judges in favor of Trump, Naomi Rao and Gregory Katas, are Trump appointees.

They also shot back at the First Amendment ruling in April. "The First Amendment does not control the president's discretion in choosing with whom to speak or to whom to provide special access."

Dissenting Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, wrote that "My colleagues assert a novel and unsupported exception to the First Amendment's prohibition of viewpoint-based restrictions of private speech --- one that not even the government itself advanced. If the White House were privileged to exclude journalists based on viewpoint, each and every member of the White House press corps would hesitate to publish anything an incumbent administration might dislike."

AP has not given up and is reviewing its options. This is a stay of the April decision, so they could go for an expedited review of the merits of the case, or even go to the Supreme Court.

This control of the press at the White House started when the White House Corresspondents' Association was removed from the decision making process. The Association had determined, on a rotating basis, who was in the press briefing room at the White House, the Oval Office, Air Force One and Trump's private residences. Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, took over that authority at the end of February.

Since then, there has been a steep decline in the quality of questions asked at the press briefings and Q&A with Trump. Questions start with statements sucking up to Trump followed by the softball query. Peter Doocy of Fox News is always called upon. Real news organizations rarely. When aimed at Trump, and he doesn't like them, the reporter gets hit with, "That was a nasty question" or "You're nasty fake news" and "Who are you with?"

Karoline Leavitt cheered the ruling:

The "new media" are right-wing podcasters and influencers. Hardly the class of AP, which reaches 4 billion people daily.

This is still a First Amendment case. Small spaces on Air Force One and the Oval Office are not "private" when some newspeople are invited into them, and not others. That was the whole purpose of the Correspondents' Association handling the rotation. They knew who had what resources and where. It was not a problem until Karoline Leavitt, and without a doubt Donald Trump, made it one.

The Court of Appeals should have seen this as simple viewpoint censorship and enforced the April ruling. The two Trump appointees making the decision are suspect in this case for bias. AP could make a case for that, but they won't. Only Republicans make claims like that about judges whose rulings they dislike.

This is a setback for AP, but not the end of the line. They're carrying on the fight for all the other news organizations. When it's only Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Breitbart, Sinclair Media Group and the New York Post asking the questions, it's not news, it's directed propaganda.

The AP case is about the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. When one group gets access to the Brady White House Press Briefing Room, and a news organization is denied access permanently, that is censorship. When newspeople are also permanently denied access to "private spaces," it's no different. It's all or nothing at all.

AP is fighting the fight for all news organizations, not just themselves. Others see that if it can happen to AP, it can happen to them. An almost complete win for Trump just emboldens him to do more. It allows Karoline Leavitt to think she can control not only the news organizations, but the news itself.

After AP was first banned, 40 news organizations signed a letter to the White House to rescind it's decision. While their on air hosts said they supported the White House position, Fox News and Newsmax were among those who signed. That tells you how bad this really is.

This is just one facet of Trump's attack on the news. There the CBS and ABC lawsuits, and regular attacks on the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. There will be more as op-eds and polls go against Trump.

News integrity is under attack, not just the First Amendment. Real news cannot be allowed to become fake news because of Trump.

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