Updated April 09, 2025 at 13:22 PM ET
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump White House to let Associated Press journalists return to the Oval Office and other spaces immediately to cover news events, ruling it was unlawful to block the news service in a dispute over its choice of words.
The judge nonetheless stayed his order through Sunday to give the White House time to seek a reversal from a higher court. Nearly two hours after his ruling was issued, administration aides turned back an AP reporter and photographer from a reporting pool in a presidential motorcade. On Wednesday, the administration filed a notice of appeal.
The AP had angered the White House because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by President Trump's preferred name for it: the Gulf of America. The AP acknowledges in its coverage that the U.S. government now calls it the Gulf of America, but the news service still relies on the more familiar, traditional designation — especially as the AP serves clients internationally.
Trump and his aides have barred the news service's White House reporters from dozens of events since February, including events limited to the reporting pool that shares details with other outlets. The AP has participated in such pool coverage for more than a century. The White House has argued it is a privilege to cover Trump up close — one that he controls.
U.S District Court Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled that the Trump administration's reason for barring AP reporters mattered.
"[T]he Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, 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 those viewpoints," he wrote. "The Constitution requires no less."
The judge wrote that he was not preventing the White House from choosing to whom the president grants interviews. McFadden added that he also was not requiring the administration to admit all eligible journalists, or even any journalists, to government spaces that are not open to the public, such the Oval Office.
"The Government repeatedly characterizes the AP's request as a demand for 'extra special access'," McFadden wrote. "But that is not what the AP is asking for, and it is not what the Court orders. All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field."
President Trump, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich have pointed publicly to the dispute over the Gulf's name as the reason why AP's White House reporters have not been allowed in the Oval Office or on Air Force One since the issue arose. In some instances, photographers and AP reporters based abroad have been allowed in.
After AP Executive Editor Julie Pace lodged a formal complaint in mid-February, Wiles wrote back to say the AP's editorial choice "denies the appropriate authority of the duly elected President."
Wiles said other choices reflected in the AP's Stylebook, which inform those in other newsrooms around the world, reflected bias.
"We believe strongly that the American public deserves neutrality from those privileged enough to enjoy close up access to some of the most important moments of history," Wiles wrote.
The White House did not respond to NPR's request for comment on McFadden's order, which found that the wire service would likely prevail in a full trial, or on its decision to turn away AP journalists once more on Tuesday evening.
AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said the wire service was gratified by the court's decision.
"Today's ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation," Easton said in a statement. "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."
After seeking to get the White House to drop its punishment in February, the Associated Press sued, noting that it had been part of the rotating pool of news outlets that cover the White House for more than a century. It argued that prior court rulings set precedents preventing the White House from punishing journalists for coverage it does not like.
Yet, as the AP's lead trial attorney, Charles Tobin, argued, Trump officials have repeatedly done that. The administration has wrested control of who determines which journalists participate in that pool from the White House Correspondents Association, a group of media outlets whose reporters routinely cover the White House.
"The AP has now spent 44 days in the penalty box," Tobin said in a court hearing on March 27. "They have created some sort of opaque system that has some rotation process to it that happens to exclude the AP every single time."
McFadden's ruling paid close attention to the evidence developed in that hearing, at which the government brought forward no witnesses. The AP had two of its most senior White House journalists testify in open court.
The wire service's chief photographer in Washington, Evan Vucci, testified that the AP has relied on Reuters and the New York Times for images from smaller events in the Oval Office, Air Force One and Mar-a-Lago. He called his rivals "heroes" for sharing, but said they withheld their best photographs and often sent them 45 minutes after sharing with their own clients. That meant the AP lagged behind its competitors in serving clients hungry for material. Usually, Vucci told the court, he can transmit photos to his editors within 30 to 40 seconds.
He pointed to the coverage of Trump's tense exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office: the primary photo the AP transmitted, taken by an AP videographer based in Ukraine, showed the two leaders appearing calm; their shouting match was anything but.
"We're basically dead in the water on major news stories," Vucci testified. "That's what we're all about — speed and quality."
In an earlier session, Judge McFadden denied the AP's request for a temporary restraining order. At the hearing in March, he appeared to struggle to see how the dispute had damaged the AP — one component required for the preliminary order that the AP had sought. In his ruling on Tuesday, however, the judge found the AP's evidence and logic compelling, writing that it had "suffered significant, concrete harm."
The Trump administration's treatment of the AP is just part of a growing war against the U.S. news media. Trump earlier sued ABC and CBS; the former settled. His chief broadcasting regulator, FCC chairman Brendan Carr, has launched investigations of ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and PBS. Notably, the Fox broadcast network, owned by Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, is not among them.
"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," Pace wrote in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal (also owned by Murdoch) in late March. "It's really about whether the government can control what you say."
In her piece, Pace argued the spat involved significant stakes.
"The AP has no corporate owner and no shareholders," Pace wrote. "If we don't step up to defend Americans' right to speak up freely, who will? Today the U.S. government wants to control the AP's speech. Tomorrow it could be someone else's."
Judge McFadden affirmed the broad sweep of her news service's argument.
"The Court merely declares that the AP's exclusion has been contrary to the First Amendment, and it enjoins the Government from continuing down that unlawful path," he concluded.
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