The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press. This freedom performs the important function of keeping public officials accountable. Presidents and other government officials have generally exercised the right to decide which news organizations to which they want to give one-on-one interviews and whom they want to call upon at press conferences.
Trump bars Associated Press from press events
But a controversy about the degree to which presidents can exclude a news organization from press events raised new questions in January 2025 when Donald Trump barred the Associated Press from press events and other access overs its use of "Gulf of Mexico."
On Feb. 21, 2025, the Associated Press filed a lawsuit against three Trump administration officials over the termination of access, saying its claims were about an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech. On April 8, 2025, a judge ruled in favor of the Associated Press, enjoining the Trump administration from excluding the news organization because of its viewpoint.
AP Stylebook guidance on Gulf of Mexico
The issue involving the Associated Press began after President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Shortly thereafter, The Associated Press Stylebook editors issued guidance about the name change with an updated entry:
Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The body of water has shared borders between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump's order only carries authority within the United States. Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.
The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. Refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.
Per the AP Stylebook, you may also use Gulf or Gulf Coast to describe the body of water along the Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida coasts.
When Associated Press journalists continued to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico in news stories, while also noting the name change by the president, the White House decided in February to indefinitely exclude AP’s reporters from press events in the Oval Office and the Diplomatic Room of the White House, as well as from traveling with the press on Air Force One.
Leavitt: Calling body of water 'Gulf of Mexico' is a 'lie'
Calling the AP’s continuing use of the name the “Gulf of Mexico” a “lie,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt informed the AP that the administration would exclude its reporters until it began referring to the body of water as the Gulf of America.
"I was very up front in my briefing on Day One that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable," Leavitt said. "And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I'm not sure why news outlets don't want to call it that."
The AP Stylebook editors explained its decision by saying that 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. The AP regularly reviews its style guidance regarding name changes, in part to ensure its guidance reflects common usage. We’ll continue to apply that approach to this guidance and make updates as needed.”
Judge focused on unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination
Judge Trevor N. McFadden (a Trump appointee) of the U.S. Court for the District of Columbia said in his ruling that the First Amendment “does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government space,” that it “does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer,” and that it “does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views.”
But, McFadden ruled, “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.”
After a meticulous examination of the actions that the Trump administration had taken against the AP, as established through witness testimony, Judge McFadden noted that the government had not even contested that it had based its actions on the viewpoint the AP had expressed as it continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico.
He further found that the government’s actions had an adverse effect on the AP’s news gathering capabilities that “have poisoned the AP’s business model.” Moreover, because the government was generally limited by the doctrine of sovereign immunity from providing monetary damages in such cases, he thought that his injunction was needed to prevent further financial harm.
Examining modern case law related to public forums, Judge McFadden denied that the case involved the government speech doctrine since the reporters present were not spokespersons for the government.
Rejecting the government’s contention that the AP was asking for “extra special access,” McFadden said that “All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”
The Trump Administration’s subsequent action, eliminating a permanent spot for wire services like AP in the White house press pool, cast doubt as to whether he has compiled with the spirit of this decision (Vazquez and Barr 2025).
Blocking press access can involve First Amendment issues
The situation is not entirely new. In 2009, President Barack Obama was rebuffed by other news organizations when he tried to exclude Fox News from a pool interview with Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury’s so-called “Executive Pay Czar.”
During Trump’s first presidential term, he tried to revoke the press credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after a testy exchange with him, but a U.S. District Judge ruled that they had to be restored because the executive branch had not acted in a fair and transparent manner.
In 2022, after Arizona officials allowed state election officials to block press access to a reporter from Gateway Pundit on the basis of the content of his coverage, he won a suit for damages in court (Terr 2025).
Although the specific dispute between the President and The Associated Press appears trivial, it potentially involves First Amendment issues. As the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals indicated in its opinion in Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc., 805 F.2d 1 (1st Cir, 1986), “There is the potential for an infringement of the First Amendment whenever the government prohibits free speech or publication.”
One of the key steps that Great Britain took toward freedom of speech and press, that the U.S. Supreme Court emulated in Near v. Minnesota (1931), was to prevent prior licensing of publications. Although the Associated Press situation probably does not fall directly under this rubric, allowing only favored media to participate in presidential press events is akin to such regulations.
First Amendment forbids viewpoint discrimination
Even more to the point, a long-standing principle of First Amendment law forbids viewpoint discrimination. Under such a principle, a government entity could ban reporters for improper decorum involving the manner in which they carried out the job, but not on the basis of what questions reporters asked or what political stance they embraced.
In this case, the White House was clear that it based its exclusion simply on AP’s failure to bend to its will on nomenclature. The attempt to control such language appears akin to attempts, which the Trump White House has consistently opposed, to impose what it has called political correctness or wokeness, often involving naming.
In similar fashion, the idea that a newsperson or a news organization can be excluded based on the acceptance of a particular governmental policy or edict is likely to have a chilling effect on the willingness of such individuals and organizations to express any contrary viewpoints.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.