AP says journalists blocked from Oval Office after judge’s order

The Associated Press on Monday said its journalists were barred from covering an Oval Office event featuring President Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in defiance of a court injunction.

“Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today,” a spokesperson for the wire service said. “We expect the White House to restore AP’s participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order.”

A federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to restore The Associated Press’s access to key White House spaces after it banned AP reporters over the outlet’s refusal to use “Gulf of America” in its widely-cited stylebook.

The White House recently took control of deciding which outlets are allowed in the White House Press pool, a small group of reporters covering and traveling with the president, a privilege previously held by the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The AP was not included in Monday’s press pool, the first day the judge’s order went into effect.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The AP sued three top White House officials over the ban earlier this year, which came because the outlet refused to change its stylebook guidelines to use Gulf of America after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico.

The AP argued much of the world and many of its readers recognize the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico. It suggested the Gulf of America be mentioned as a second reference, in part to reduce confusion over what body of water was being referenced.

In U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden’s order ruling for the AP, he noted his injunction “does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events. It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces.”

“It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer,” the judge wrote in his opinion. “And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views.”