US Federal Court rules: White House may lock out AP reporters - for now

The White House has a 13-member press pool with journalists who have access to report at virtually any time. However, the new administration has excluded AP from this after differences of opinion. The agency is suing and is now subject to the Trump administration. However, the decision is not final.

A US federal judge has ruled that the White House does not have to grant the AP news agency access to attend government meetings. AP has not proven that the news agency suffered irreparable harm as a result of the Trump administration's decision, argued Judge Trevor N. McFadden.

However, his decision was only provisional. McFadden said he would have to investigate the matter further. He called on the White House to reconsider excluding the AP, saying it was not very helpful.

AP is demanding that its reporters be allowed back into the Oval Office at the White House, the presidential plane Air Force One and other areas where the agency has long worked as part of the 13-person White House press pool. But it was precisely this reasoning that Judge McFadden questioned.

Although he considered the exclusion of a news agency problematic, he doubted whether the current government was actually bound in any way to the composition of the press pool of which AP has been a member for more than a century.

dispute over "Gulf of America"

The administration of President Donald Trump denied the news agency access after it decided to continue to call the sea between the United States, Mexico and Cuba the Gulf of Mexico. Trump, however, had decreed shortly after taking office that the marginal sea of ​​the Atlantic should henceforth be called the Gulf of America.

AP said it wanted to use the name Gulf of Mexico, which has been used for centuries, to ensure that foreign audiences could easily identify the place name. Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt, however, accused the agency of lying and said the government would continue to exclude news organizations that ignore Trump's line.

The agency believes that the White House's actions violate the core of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits the government from punishing free speech. The White House, however, argues that access to the president is a privilege and not a right.