On Friday, the Associated Press (AP) sued three Trump White House officials – Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – alleging they violated the First Amendment (and somehow the Fourth Amendment too) by using their stance on the Gulf of America to deprive the AP of their seemingly God-given right to participate in a small, rotating subset of the press corps (known as the press pool) sent to cover the President at smaller events and ride aboard Air Force One.

The 18-page lawsuit said “[t]he White House has ordered The Associated Press to use certain words in its coverage or else face an indefinite denial of access” that began on February 11 when they believe the news media “have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against” and thus “a threat to every American’s freedom.”

All because the Associated Press won’t go along with the renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (and don’t get us started on what they think about abortion and there being more than two genders).

One can be indifferent to or even agree with the AP’s position (even our friends at Newsmax do), but this lawsuit was dripping with sanctimoniousness.

In establishing itself, try and not role your eyes (click “expand”):

3. The AP is one of the world’s oldest and most trusted news organizations. Since its inception in 1846, the AP, which is a not-for-profit organization, has been known for its accurate, factual, and nonpartisan reporting, including on the President of the United States and the White House. The AP’s journalism reaches four billion people per day via major news outlets around the world, whatever their political orientation, and has received 59 Pulitzer Prizes for its courageous coverage of key moments of world history.

4. The AP has participated in the White House press pool since its creation over a century ago, which has made it possible for the AP to deliver to the public timely and thorough reporting on the President almost everywhere he goes, which is information critical to the public.

5. On February 11, 2025, without prior notice, White House officials informed the AP that it would be barred from entering certain areas in the White House as a member of the press pool unless the AP began referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, following President Trump’s renaming of that body of water in Executive Order 14172. The White House began banning AP journalists from events open to the press pool within hours.

               (….)

7. On February 14, the White House made its ban of the AP indefinite, announcing on X (formerly Twitter) that, because the AP had not complied with its demand to use the name Gulf of America, AP journalists were now indefinitely banned from “access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One.” To date, the AP’s reporters and photographers remain\ banned from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other locations open not only to pool members, but also to a larger group of journalists with White House press credentials.

The suit explained Wiles wrote them a February 18 e-mail that correctly noted the AP Style Guide is the be all, end all for formatting in most of professional journalism and thus carries particular importance if they refuse to comply with such a massive landmark.

“Defendants gave the AP no prior or written notice of, and no formal opportunity to challenge, their arbitrary determination that the AP would indefinitely lose access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited areas as a member of the press pool…Defendants’ actions are impermissibly based on their dislike of the content of the AP’s expression,” it added.

It even cartoonishly asserted their pool access is a “constitutionally protected” right and their inability to be present around-the-clock would threaten the journalism profession’s ability to “free[ly] to report on the Administration without fear of selective, arbitrary denials of access.”

The suit also provided some background on the pool (click “expand”):

20. The White House press pool consists of journalists who regularly report to the public about the President, the White House, and other Executive Branch activity in Washington, DC and globally. The press pool accompanies the President almost everywhere he goes, ensuring that the public is informed of his activity and that the President and his administration are held accountable to the public.

21. Because there often is not enough space in the Oval Office or on Air Force One to
accommodate every journalist who covers the President, a minimum 13-person press pool serves as the eyes and ears of the full press corps, and of the public.

22. In all of its permutations the press pool consists of, at minimum, three wire reporters (one each from the AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg), four photographers (one each from the AP, Reuters, AFP, and The New York Times), three network television journalists, a radio correspondent, and at least one print reporter. Membership in the pool is determined at the sole discretion of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) and the press corps itself.

(….)

26. The AP has been a member of the White House press pool since the pool’s inception well over a century ago, and as a result, has been able to report to the public first-hand on some of history’s most defining events. In fact, an AP reporter became the first recorded presidential “pooler” in 1881, providing updates to fellow reporters from his post outside the White House sick room of President James A. Garfield after he was shot. AP pool journalists were also in the motorcade in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated, providing the nation with contemporaneous, fact-based reporting as the story developed, and as conspiracy theories spread. And, AP journalists were in the pool with President George W. Bush when he learned of the September 11 terrorist attacks during an event in Florida, and they accompanied him on Air Force One to secure locations in Louisiana and Nebraska and back to Washington. Pool members like the wire services have the broadest reach and thus the information they report gets to the widest possible audience.

They explained this hubbub started on February 11 with AP’s chief White House correspondent Zeke Miller being informed by Leavitt that they’d be barred from the pool until the AP’s style guided complied, which they refused to do since the body of water surrounding Mexico and five U.S. states had “been known as the Gulf of Mexico for over 400 years.”

No word on why the AP won’t apply that same logic to there being only two genders.

The next part of the suit delved into the attempts by AP’s D.C bureau chief Julie Pace to e-mail and meet with White House officials, including Wiles, and then events they missed out on. Budowich was named as he made public the AP ban on February 14.

Citing “irreparable harm,” the AP warned siding with the White House “would chill the speech of similarly situated reasonable individuals” and deprives Americans of “accurate and nonpartisan reporting on the President and White House to the thousands of global news outlets that republish the AP’s news reports and to billions of readers globally.”

After again saying this violated their free speech rights and (somehow) Americans writ large, the AP demanded a return to the pool as well as “[a]ward to the AP its costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in this action; and [g]rant such further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.”