It was 7 p.m., below freezing, and the White House campus was close to empty. All that remained was the White House press pool, the small group of rotating reporters assigned to covering the president.
Once a month, I am a member of the press pool. Other outlets, such as Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press (AP), make up the wire seat and get to be in the pool nearly every day.
Thursday, February 20th, as a member of the press pool, I was loading up into the presidential motorcade with my colleagues to go to the National Building Museum for President Trump’s remarks to the Republican Governors Association. Just as we were about to go, a White House official turned to the AP reporter and photographer.
“Sorry, guys, you can’t come.”
The reporter and photographer retreated back into the White House, and we carried on our travel with the president.
This was the weeks-long battle between the AP and the White House. Twenty-four hours after I watched a White House official turn the AP away from the presidential motorcade, the outlet sued.
And 72 hours later, the White House won the legal battle.
How did this start? How did the White House and one of the world’s most famous outlets end up in a legal battle? It all begins with President Trump’s infatuation with the body of water resting between Mexico and Florida.
Weeks before taking office, Trump told his advisers that he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, the Washington Post reported.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring, that covers a lot of territory,” Trump said. “The Gulf of America, what a beautiful name, and it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate, and Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country, they can stop them and we’re gonna put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada.”
On Feb. 10, 2025, the idea became real, and Trump’s executive order designating the Gulf of Mexico to be called the Gulf of America within the United States went into effect. At first, there was little pushback—Google complied, and Apple Maps changed the name.
But the AP did not. Explaining that it has a global audience that needs geography to be “easily recognizable to all audiences,” the AP wrote that it would continue to call the body of water the Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging Trump’s name change. The AP has recognized various name changes over the years of schools and cities, including the renaming of military bases that were renamed amid the racial unrest in 2020.
With that, the White House barred the AP from an event in the Oval Office on the 12th. Two days later, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich announced that AP would be banned from not just the Oval, but Air Force One and the press pool. The administration argued that it is a privilege, not a right, to be in the Oval Office.
The legacy press revolted. The White House Correspondents’ Association sent a private letter to the White House, arguing that new organizations “must be free to make their own editorial decisions without fear of government intrusion.” Forty outlets signed on, including Newsmax and Fox News.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained that the AP hasn’t lost its credentials to the White House or its spot in the press briefing room.
“They are still welcome to cover this administration, but nobody has a right to enter the Oval Office,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Megyn Kelly on Friday.
“It is a privilege to cover the United States, and I said it in my first briefing. We are going to hold people accountable that push lies, and the President believes deeply that American news outlets should be reporting the truth about the Gulf of America,” she added.
Leavitt also added that refusing to call the Gulf of America by its new name is not the Trump administration’s only complaint with the AP stylebook. As the AP refused to comply with Trump’s executive order, media pundits and social media users pointed to the same thing.
“AP refuses to call it the Gulf of America. Meanwhile… ‘Kiev’ became ‘Kyiv.’ ‘Black’ but not ‘white’ is capitalized. ‘Riot’ became ‘unrest.’ This isn’t a new outlet, it’s propaganda,” Mike Cernovich tweeted. The AP style choices, which can be influenced by the outlet’s politics, become the new lingua franca of the professional press across the board.
Right after Leavitt appeared on the Megyn Kelly show, the AP filed a lawsuit against the press secretary, Budowich, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Suing for injunctive relief to lift the White House’s ban on its outlet, the AP argued that their First Amendment rights were being violated. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden denied the request but scheduled a March 20 hearing for the case. McFadden wrote that his decision was because he wasn’t persuaded that the AP was facing “irreparable harm.”
With that the White House celebrated, and it led them to make another big decision, to uproot the press pool altogether. For decades upon decades, the WHCA, a legacy media-led organization, has dictated who was a member of the selective press pool.
Leavitt announced during Tuesday’s press briefing, that in light of the ruling with the AP, the WHCA would no longer dictate who was in the press pool—the White House would.
According to Leavitt, legacy outlets that have participated in the press pool for decades will still be a part of the press pool, but new media outlets will be added at the White House press office’s discretion.
“As you all know for decades, a group of D.C. based journalists the White House Correspondents’ Association has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States, and these most intimate spaces,” Leavitt said.
“Not anymore.”