- A federal judge ruled that Trump's ban barring The Associated Press from certain presidential events violated the First Amendment.
- He said that AP News cannot be treated worse or better than other outlets.
- This is the latest event in a long history of Trump's conflict with mainstream media.
A federal judge ordered the White House to restore The Associated Press’ access to presidential events.
“Under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” McFadden wrote in his decision, issued Tuesday. “The Constitution requires no less.”
The conflict between the president and The Associated Press started several months ago when the news outlet refused to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The AP has not been permitted to cover Trump in the Oval Office or on Air Force One since Feb. 11. The AP then sued the Trump administration, arguing that the president’s policies violated the First Amendment.
The Trump administration has not yet responded to McFadden’s decision.
Trump’s legal battles with the media
McFadden’s decision does not grant AP News permanent access to any presidential event. Nor does it provide the AP with “first in line every time,” which the White House Correspondents Association had granted its reporters due to the outlet’s size and history.
Trump has feuded with mainstream media for decades. Prior to his first presidential term, he and his supporters popularized the term “fake news” in reference to mainstream outlets that he believed provided negative coverage about him.
When he banned the AP from covering his events, he called AP News “radical left lunatics” and said “we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree it’s the Gulf of America,” referring to the AP’s refusal to change their stylebook on how to refer to the body of water.
In addition to his issues with the AP, Trump has sued CBS News and The Des Moines Register for deceptive advertising, accused outlets like The New York Times of acting as agents for the Democratic Party and ordered investigations into NPR and CBS, per The New York Times.