In an escalating showdown between the press and the presidency, the Associated Press says it’s being iced out of the West Wing—despite a federal judge’s explicit order to let them in.
According to a new court filing, the AP accuses aides to Donald Trump of flatly ignoring a ruling that should’ve restored the agency’s full access to White House events. The dispute stems from a peculiar flashpoint: the name of a body of water.
The AP refused to comply with the Trump administration’s directive to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America,” standing firm in its editorial independence. That refusal, the judge ruled, led to the AP’s unlawful exclusion from the coveted press pool that covers Oval Office events and presidential travel—prompting the court to step in.
But now, the AP says the ban hasn’t lifted. Instead, the White House quietly rewrote the rules, stripping permanent pool access from all wire services—Reuters, Bloomberg, and AP included—and placing them into a larger rotation with dozens of outlets, many of which don’t have a full-time Washington presence.
The AP calls foul. In its eyes, the rule change is just a thinly veiled attempt to keep its reporters out, dressed up as a broader shakeup of access. The court, it argues, ordered reinstatement—what it got instead was reshuffling.
While the administration argues there’s no “right” to special access, it also framed the new policy as a move to tailor media attendance to match subject-matter relevance and target audience reach.
Still, the stakes go well beyond who gets to stand near the Resolute Desk. Wire services like the AP provide real-time dispatches that ripple out to local papers, international outlets, and financial markets across the globe. Cutting them off, even indirectly, amounts to a chokehold on how information flows from the presidency to the public.
The appeals court is set to weigh in shortly, as Trump’s team pushes to freeze the lower court’s decision. Until then, the AP remains on the outside looking in—camera gear packed, notebook ready, but no invitation in hand.
As for the “Gulf of America”? The AP isn’t budging. Its stylebook stands by centuries of cartographic consensus: it’s the Gulf of Mexico. And it’s not changing course for politics.
