The White House barred a credentialed AP reporter and photographer from boarding Air Force One on Friday, citing the news agency's stance on how to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. It represented a significant escalation by the White House in a four-day dispute with the AP over access to the presidency. The administration has blocked the AP from covering a handful of events at the White House this week, including a news conference with India's leader and several times in the Oval Office. It's all because the news outlet has not followed Trump's lead in renaming the body of water, which lies partially outside US territory, to the "Gulf of America." AP reporters and photographers travel with the president virtually everywhere as part of a press "pool" and have for decades.
Journalists consider the administration's move a violation of the First Amendment—a governmental attempt to dictate what a news company publishes under threat of retribution. The Trump administration says the AP has no special right of access to events where space is limited, particularly given the news service's "commitment to misinformation." AP calls that assertion entirely untrue. "The actions taken to restrict AP's coverage of presidential events because of how we refer to a geographic location chip away at (freedom of speech) enshrined in the US Constitution for all Americans," AP rep Lauren Easton said Friday. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who on Wednesday used the word "lies" in describing AP content, posted on X Friday about executive orders Trump had signed before his departure. She ended her post: "The @AP was not invited."
The body of water in question has been called the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years. AP, whose influential stylebook is used by news outlets as an arbiter of language and usage, advised that because of its broad set of global customers, it would both refer to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico and also reference Trump's order changing the name to the Gulf of America within the United States. At the same time, the AP switched style last month from Denali to Mount McKinley for the mountain in Alaska that Trump ordered renamed. That location lies entirely within US jurisdiction.
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