The Associated Press announced Friday that it has sued three Trump administration officials after its reporters were blocked from covering White House events, citing violations of the First and Fifth amendments.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Washington D.C.’s district court, named White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich as defendants.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” wrote the AP in its complaint. “The Constitution does not allow the government to control speech. Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”
The legal action marked the latest development in an escalating feud between White House officials and the AP after the outlet refused to add the “Gulf of America” to its editorial guidelines, citing the Gulf of Mexico’s 400-year-old name and international recognition.
In the filing, the outlet asked the court to acknowledge the White House violated First Amendment rights and restore its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other White House-related spaces.
The AP referred the Daily Beast to its lawsuit for comment.
In response to the filing, the AP reported that Press Secretary Leavitt said, “We’ll see them in court.”
According to the lawsuit, Leavitt informed the AP’s chief White House correspondent Zeke Miller on Feb. 11 that it would bar the outlet from White House events until it adopted “Gulf of America” into its editorial guidelines. The White House later barred a journalist from an Oval Office event featuring Elon Musk that afternoon, and another reporter from a press conference that evening.
Budowich wrote in a Feb. 14 post on X that the AP was indefinitely banned from “access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” until it complied with the executive order. Budowich also told Axios on Monday that the administration’s problem with the AP is not just about the Gulf of America, but “weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world.”
After AP executive editor Julie Pace repeatedly emailed Wiles to protest the decision, Wiles said Tuesday that the outlet’s influence “has been misused, and at times weaponized, to push a divisive and partisan agenda.” She acknowledged the “Gulf of America” name had not caught on internationally, but “given the AP’s role, it should also appropriately make the distinction as an American guideline,” said Wiles, according to AP’s lawsuit.
President Donald Trump called the wire service “obsolete” on Tuesday and vowed to keep the ban “until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.” A Wednesday meeting between Pace and Wiles in Florida did not change the White House’s position, according to the lawsuit, and the ban remained in place.
Dozens of media outlets—including the Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and conservative outlets like Fox News and Newsmax—have called for the ban to be reversed.
In a statement, Newsmax added, “We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports the AP’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting. We fear a future administration may not like something Newsmax writes and seek to ban us.”
On Friday evening, White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement describing the AP’s suit as “frivolous and demented.”
“They are clearly suffering from a severe, debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted their peanut-sized brains,” Cheung continued. “We will defeat them in court just like we crushed their leftist reporters at the ballot box.”
Earlier in the day, Cheung issued a similar statement to the Daily Beast—this time in response to allegations made about Trump in Michael Wolff’s new book—in which he claimed that the author “routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
