President Donald Trump gestures to a poster that says “Gulf of America” in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025 (Pool via AP).
A coalition of former Republican government officials and legal experts is asking a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to intervene in the case involving the exclusion of The Associated Press from the White House press pool. The wire service was removed from the select group of journalists because it declined to use the term “Gulf of America” instead of the traditional “Gulf of Mexico.”
The coalition, in a 17-page amicus brief submitted to U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, is stressing the importance of upholding the First Amendment rights. They are urging the judge to reverse the Trump administration’s decision, arguing that excluding the AP from the press pool and limiting its coverage of presidential events goes against fundamental principles.
“There is no more important directive in the Constitution than to preserve the freedom of speech and of the press. Our country was founded on the principles of free speech and a free press,” the filing states. “Retaliation against the AP, and the Administration’s efforts to intimidate the press generally, could not be more at odds with the principles animating our founders when they wrote the Constitution. Permitting this kind of government interference would inhibit robust critical reporting, and encourage the press to tailor its work to please the President and avoid sanctions of the sort experienced by the AP.”
Among the amici are former Republican governors Arne Carlson, William Weld, and Christine Todd Whitman, ex-Trump administration attorney Ty Cobb, 12 former GOP members of the House of Representatives, and a retired federal appellate judge.
The press pool is a nearly 144-year-old institution whose members have, for decades, been under the purview of the 111-year-old White House Correspondents Association, a nonprofit famously responsible for its annual, eponymous, comedy-themed dinner. The concept of the pool itself, however, was essentially invented by the AP.
On Feb. 11, White House officials informed the AP its text-based reporters would be barred from entering certain areas as a member of the press pool “unless the AP began referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, following President Donald Trump’s renaming of that body of water in Executive Order 14172,” which was titled, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” Later, AP photographers were allegedly banned as well, the organization said.
On Feb. 21, the AP filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., accusing the White House of engaging in “content- and viewpoint-based discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment. The complaint requested a temporary restraining order and asked the court to reverse the ban. An amended filing added the photographer ban to the complaint and pushed for a preliminary injunction.
Following a hearing earlier this month, McFadden refused to grant the “extraordinary” relief of an injunction, but signaled that the administration would have a difficult time defending its decision when it came time to argue on the merits.
“It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” McFadden said.
The amicus brief asserts that permitting such viewpoint discrimination would have wide-ranging and devastating repercussions on the state of journalism, leading to a climate where reporters “seek to curry favor with government officials rather than pose challenging questions that foster robust public debate.”
The filing highlights a recent press conference with Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — from which the AP was excluded — as an example:
[T]he first question from the press permitted in the room was, “You are both very popular leaders in your respective countries. You have spoken about a commonsense diplomatic doctrine. So what’s a Trump-Modi doctrine that we should expect from the USA?” A subsequent question was, “President Trump, first of all, congratulations for the fantastic 24 days of your presidency, historic and unprecedented decisions that you made, transformational reforms.” The President responded to the latter question, “I like her, I like her.” This kind of exchange fails to provide the American public with any real information to understand and evaluate critical public matters, in this example an important international relationship.
According to the brief, should Trump’s ban on the AP be allowed to stand, it will set a precedent for future administrations of both political parties to view such action as a “legitimate tool to advance their agendas.” That concern is likely why conservative outlets like Fox News and Newsmax have both sided with the AP, the filing postulates.
“When powerful government officials exclude the press from access to information, as the White House has done with The Associated Press here, they violate one of the most fundamental principles of our democracy,” brief said. “In sum, granting the injunction against restricting the AP’s access will help prevent a political environment in which tools of intimidation by the party in power drive the nature and content of reporting.”
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