White House must allow The Associated Press full access to Trump, judge rules

President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Jan. 23, 2025. A federal judge in Washington rejected the White House’s effort to keep The Associated Press from routinely covering President Trump, siding with the wire service and finding that it had faced political retaliation over its editorial decisions. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By Zach Montague

A federal judge ordered the White House earlier this week to restore The Associated Press’ full access to President Donald Trump, finding that the effort to ban the outlet over objections to its coverage violated the First Amendment.

The order dealt a blow to Trump, who, in a departure from decades of tradition, has moved to leverage access to presidential events as a way of asserting more direct control over how news organizations cover his administration. Trump officials began barring the outlet from physically covering events with the president in February, citing the wire service’s refusal to adopt the administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

The outlet sued, with the dispute raising profound questions about the independent news media’s role in covering presidential administrations and the lasting implications of Trump’s efforts to refigure the White House press corps.

In a sharply worded opinion, Judge Trevor McFadden of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration must “immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial” of the AP from presidential events.

“The government repeatedly characterizes the AP’s request as a demand for ‘extra special access.’ But that is not what the AP is asking for, and it is not what the court orders,” he wrote. “All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”

Moments after issuing the opinion, McFadden paused his own order from taking effect until Sunday, giving the government five days to file an emergency appeal. The injunction he ordered would stay in place until the case is over, or a higher court intervenes.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit The Associated Press filed in February, which asked that its long-standing access to smaller press events at the White House be reinstated.

Since the lawsuit was filed, the administration has prevented the publication from participating in the press pool, a rotating group of reporters that covers the president’s day-to-day activities, and blocked it from covering the president in intimate settings such as the Oval Office and Air Force One.

At issue is whether the White House’s moves amounted to a suppression of the outlet’s free speech rights and denied its journalists the same level of access as its competitors.

McFadden, a Trump appointee, concluded that they did.

“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,” he wrote. “The Constitution requires no less.”

He noted that the Trump officials had been “brazen” in repeatedly and publicly acknowledging that it had banned the outlet precisely because of the standoff over its language.

As one of the world’s premier wire services, the AP distributes articles, photographs and video to over 3,000 U.S. news outlets, as well as 900 international sites.

“Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation,” Lauren Easton, a spokesperson for the outlet, said in a statement. “This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. Constitution.”

The White House has argued that it did not intend to inflict punishment on the AP specifically, but wanted to narrow the group of journalists who attend those events, bringing in more specialized outlets with expertise on a given subject, or that write for an audience more attuned to a given day’s events. Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, has said the moves are meant to expand access by bringing in smaller digital publications alongside the legacy media outlets that have long dominated the press corps.

But the AP, in its complaint, asserted that it had been singled out over its decision not to recognize the new name, and that its business was predicated on its ability to quickly and reliably cover the president at every turn.

Lawyers for the wire service have contended that the White House effectively seized control of the pool rotation previously organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association. As a result, the lawyers said, officials had sidelined mainstream news sources in favor of more conservative voices who would cover Trump more sympathetically.

At the hearing, Charles Tobin, a lawyer representing the outlet, said that the AP had been placed in the “penalty box,” routinely excluded from access to the president. Because of its largely neutral reporting and vast distribution, the AP has historically been among those in the pool of journalists covering the president on every trip and at every public appearance.

To better relay the consequences of the White House’s new policy, two journalists for The Associated Press testified in court.

Its chief White House correspondent, Zeke Miller, and its chief Washington photographer, Evan Vucci, recounted covering the White House for decades, bringing news of the president’s daily activities to about 4 billion people who read its coverage.

Vucci described taking one of the most recognizable photographs of Trump seconds after a shooter took aim at him last year at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the picture, Trump is raising his fist in defiance, blood streaking down his right cheek. Trump chose the image as the cover art for his coffee table book “Save America.”

While Brian Hudak, a lawyer for the Justice Department, argued that the White House had not categorically banned the AP because it had since allowed its photographers in to capture the president on a few occasions, Vucci countered that the selection process appeared to be random.

“The only thing that’s been consistent is we’re not allowed,” he said.

Miller said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable about relying on other outlets to inform the AP’s reporting secondhand. He said those concerns had grown as he had observed a “softening tone” in White House coverage, with companies adjusting to meet Trump’s demands.

“We don’t know what we’re not there to see,” he said.