The White House is punishing the Associated Press for defying President Donald Trump’s petty and Orwellian censorship. Trump insists that journalistic outlets refer to the Gulf of Mexico solely as the “Gulf of America.” The AP has continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. In retaliation, Trump barred the AP’s reporters from attending presidential press availabilities.

But the AP refused to knuckle under. The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance to tyranny, and a model for free speech, that much of American media needs right now.

The dispute over the name of the Gulf of Mexico seems trivial, especially compared to a range of other horrors Trump is currently perpetrating. But tyrants are tyrants in part because they insist on asserting control over even trivial matters.

Trump wants to make the AP fall in line to show his dominance, and to show other outlets he’s willing to vindictively target them over any show of independence at all. The AP, for its part, is providing a rallying point for press freedom organizations and drawing a line in the sand for its colleagues and competitors.

If Trump is denying access to outlets that refuse to lick his boots, then any media outlet that has access is compromised. Journalists who want to be worthy of the name have a moral obligation to follow the AP’s example in enraging the toddler in chief.

No, it’s still the Gulf of Mexico

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office, claiming that the body of water known as the Gulf of Mexico for four centuries years is now the Gulf of America. He said, with his usual mix of illogic and nativist bigotry, that the US does the “most work” on the gulf and that therefore it should be named after America “because it’s ours.”

Trump’s executive order is in force for American government publications and workers. But the US does not own the gulf. It is an international body of water, and a major waterway for trade used by the US, Mexico, and Cuba.

Google, however, caved to Trump and changed the name of the gulf on its maps for users in the US, claiming its “longstanding practice” is to follow government naming conventions. Though, of course, had it wanted to, Google could have refused to take part in this ugly exercise in xenophobia.

We know that Google could refuse because the AP did. In a stylebook update, the AP told its users to “refer to [the gulf] by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.” The AP explained that the Gulf of Mexico has been the Gulf of Mexico for 400 years, that it is not solely within the United States, and that other nations do not have to recognize the name change.

“As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” the AP’s style guidance states.

The AP, then, made an editorial decision based on its own news judgement and on its assessment of the best way to communicate with its readers. It even said that it would refer to Mt. Denali as Mt. McKinley in accordance with Trump’s revocation of Obama’s 2015 executive order. The AP did not rebuke Trump, or point out that he is a foolish white supremacist dingbat. Though maybe it should have.

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Trump reacted to the mild, polite defiance of his will as he always does; with a massive tantrum. When pressed on his decision to exclude the AP, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was telling “lies” when it referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico, and insisted it would continue to bar AP reporters from press avails.

Then, in a moment reminiscent of Sean Spicer’s infamous first press briefing back in 2017, Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that “it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that.” (Watch below.)

Leavitt might as well have turned the microphone over to Big Brother to let him say, “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

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Resistance builds resistance

Despite the demands of Trump, Leavitt, and Big Brother, the AP is not changing their style to suit the whims of a would-be tinpot dictator. And by defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well.

Eugene Daniels, President of the White House Correspondents’ Association, issued a forceful denunciation of the attack on the AP.

“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news,” Daniels said, “nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions.” He concluded that the White House treatment of the AP was “unacceptable” and said the administration needed “to immediately change course.”

Daniels wasn’t alone. The executive director of Reporters Without Borders said, “The level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation.” The president of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said the White House “obviously does not have a legitimate basis” for its actions against the AP. FIRE said the White House’s actions constituted “viewpoint discrimination” and that they were “unconstitutional.”

The National Press Club, Pen America, and the Society of Professional Journalists also issued statements supporting the AP. During a hearing Wednesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin described the White House’s attack on the AP as “straight up press censorship based on retaliatory viewpoint discrimination.” (Watch below.)

The pushback from organizations and politicians devoted to press freedom is a welcome departure. So far in the second Trump era, a chilling number of institutions and media outlets have rushed to fall on their bellies for the privilege of crawling before Trump.

Meta and ABC both settled frivolous lawsuits with Trump, effectively paying him millions in bribes for his goodwill. LA Times owner and billionaire MAGA propagandist Patrick Soon-Shing altered an op-ed headline to make the column appear to be more favorable to RFK Jr., Trump’s freshly confirmed anti-vax, pro-child death HHS boss. The Washington Post killed an editorial cartoon that showed the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, kneeling before Trump and offering him bags of money. (The cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, resigned.)

The AP, in contrast, has refused to comply in advance. It has also refused to comply afterwards. In a letter to Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said the organization “is prepared to vigorously defend its constitutional rights” — which means it is gearing up to sue.

 

 

Vice President JD Vance has floated the idea that the lawless executive branch under Trump should simply defy court orders. It’s possible that the Christofascist Supreme Court may ultimately decide to erode the First Amendment by judicial fiat. There’s no guarantee that the AP will win its fight to regain access to the White House.

But as ABC, Meta, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and Google demonstrate, you lose 100 percent of the fights you preemptively and despicably surrender. The AP has already won an important victory by refusing to change the Gulf of Mexico to some random other name at the whim of a power-mad orange gas bag. If any portion of Trump’s agenda is to be stopped, we need people and organizations who are willing to defy him and speak truths he doesn’t want to hear.

Despite Trump, the AP still calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it’s reminding us what freedom looks like. It’s also demonstrating us that if you don’t want to lose your freedoms, you have to use them.

That’s it for this week

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