Civil Discourse – Trump Versus the Free Press

By Joyce Vance, Apr 9

You can be forgiven if, in the crush of lawsuits involving illegal deportations and the firing of hard working, high performing federal employees, you’ve forgotten that The Associated Press (AP) sued Donald Trump after he excluded them from the Oval Office and White House pool events because of their refusal to redesignate the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in their reporting.

On February 11, 2025, they reported that they “were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.” After that, they were systematically excluded, and their lawsuit, Associated Press v. Budowich, followed.

The lawsuit alleges that the administration is violating the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment by barring the AP from spaces it has used “for over a century” without any prior notice and no opportunity to challenge the decision before it took effect or since then.

It also argues that the administration is violating the First Amendment because it is trying to compel the AP’s speech and retaliating against the AP for using its right to free speech. The AP asked the court for both a declaratory judgment calling the decision to deny it access to the president unconstitutional and an order requiring the White House to rescind its new policy. (continued)

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