WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to stop blocking The Associated Press’ from presidential events refused Friday to take immediate steps to get White House officials to comply — an incremental development in a two-month dispute between the global news agency and administration officials over access.
The case, which has significant free-speech implications under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, centers on the government blocking AP’s access to cover events because the outlet won’t rename the Gulf of Mexico in its reports.
U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, who handed the AP a victory last week in its efforts to end the ban, said it’s too soon to say that President Donald Trump is violating his order — as the AP suggests.
“We are not at the point where we can make much of a determination one way or another,” said McFadden, ruling from the bench. “I don’t intend to micromanage the White House.”
The AP’s lawyer, Charles Tobin, wouldn’t comment about the judge’s decision after the proceedings. The White House issued no immediate comment.
The decision comes after a new press policy at the White House
For two months, the White House has essentially banned AP reporters and photographers from their traditional spot covering events in smaller spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One. The AP says it’s a violation of its free-speech rights, enshrined in the First Amendment, to punish a news outlet for an editorial decision — an argument McFadden has endorsed.
In response, the White House this week issued a new press policy that occasionally lets the AP and other wire services into events it used to routinely cover at all times.
Since McFadden’s ruling took effect, an AP photographer was allowed into the Oval Office on Thursday after three days of being blocked. A reporter has yet to be allowed back in, but the White House said an AP reporter will be part of the coverage rotation on Saturday — when reporters will follow Trump in a van to where he plans to play golf.
In court, Tobin said the new policy is gamesmanship designed to diminish the outlet’s influence. “We think that the new policy really is a thumb in the nose at The Associated Press and this court,” he told McFadden.
The White House took clear steps to put last week’s ruling into effect, said Jane Lyons, an assistant district attorney who was representing the Trump team. “It is way too soon … to say that it is a problem,” Lyons said.
The judge said he had concerns about the government’s actions
McFadden said that the first few days since his order took effect gave him concerns that Trump’s team is “not proceeding in compliance here, or perhaps malicious compliance.” But the judge, appointed to the court by Trump during the president’s first term, said he has to assume that the administration is operating in good faith unless time proves otherwise.
He also wasn’t swayed by the AP’s argument that it’s unconstitutional for the president to have sole discretion over who covers him at these smaller events. The AP, mindful that a dispute over journalists’ access isn’t likely to move many in the public, has cast it as a broader issue of freedom of speech.
The AP’s decisions on what terminology to use are followed by journalists and other writers around the world through its influential stylebook. The outlet said it would continue to use Gulf of Mexico, as the body of water has been known for hundreds of years, while also noting Trump’s decision to rename it the Gulf of America.
It’s an issue likely to take months to wend its way through the courts The AP went before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals Thursday on the same issue about compliance. The Trump administration has said that it will appeal McFadden’s initial ruling.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social
