Associated Press Wins in Court Against Trump

The White House’s decision to punish The Associated Press by eliminating its access to convicted felon  Donald Trump’s events, the Oval Office and Air Force One is unconstitutional, a federal judge said Tuesday. The preliminary injunction issued Tuesday afternoon against the White House by Judge Trevor McFadden, a first-term Trump appointee, is a major blow to the administration’s efforts to curtail the AP’s access to the president based on news coverage it dislikes.

And it’s a critical legal victory for one of the world’s biggest news outlets and wire services, whose reporting has been hamstrung by an administration with an axe to grind against it.  “The Government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP. The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office,” McFadden, of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote in the 41-page ruling. 

Earlier this year, Trump imposed a ban on the AP to punish the news organization over its decision to continue using the phrase “Gulf of Mexico” after Trump tried to rename the body of water the “Gulf of America.”

“The AP seeks restored eligibility for admission to the press pool and limited-access press events, untainted by an impermissible viewpoint-based exclusion,” McFadden wrote. “That is all the Court orders today: For the Government to put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets, despite the AP’s use of disfavored terminology.”