The AP and the Trump administration are due back in court in their fight over White House access
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press is returning to a federal courtroom on Thursday to ask a judge to restore its full access to presidential events, after the White House retaliated against the news outlet last month for not following President Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
In a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor N. McFadden refused the AP’s request for an injunction to stop the White House from barring reporters and photographers from events in the Oval Office and Air Force One. He urged the Trump administration to reconsider its ban before Thursday’s hearing. It hasn’t.
“It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden told the government’s attorney at the time.
The AP has sued Trump’s team for punishing a news organization for using speech that it doesn’t like. The news outlet said it would still refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its style guidance to clients around the world, while also noting that Trump has ordered it renamed the Gulf of America.
“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,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “It’s really about whether the government can control what you say.”
The White House said it has the right to decide who gets to question the president, and has taken steps to take over a duty that has been handled by journalists for decades.
The president has dismissed the AP as a group of “radical left lunatics” and said that “we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”
The AP has still covered the president, and has been permitted in White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s press briefings, but the ban has cost the organization time in reporting and impeded its efforts to get still images. Even if McFadden rules in favor of the news organization, it’s unclear how the White House will respond to the judge’s order.
The White House Correspondents’ Association has asked its members to show solidarity with the AP on Thursday, perhaps by showing up at the courtroom or wearing a pin that signifies the importance of the First Amendment.
The case is one of several aggressive moves the second Trump administration has taken against the press since his return to office, including FCC investigations against ABC, CBS and NBC News, dismantling the government-run Voice of America and threatening funding for public broadcasters PBS and NPR.
A Trump executive order to change the name of the United States’ largest mountain back to Mount McKinley from Denali is being recognized by the AP. Trump has the authority to do so because the mountain is completely within the country he oversees, AP has said.
Writing in the Journal, Pace said the AP didn’t ask for the fight and made efforts to resolve the issue before going to court, but needed to stand on principle.
“If we don’t step up to defend Americans’ right to speak freely,” she wrote, “who will?”
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David Bauder covers media for The Associated Press.