WASHINGTON: A federal judge on Monday refused to immediately order the White House to restore The Associated Press\u2019 access to presidential events, saying the news organization had not demonstrated it had suffered any irreparable harm. But he urged the Trump administration to reconsider its two-week-old ban, saying that case law \u201cis uniformly unhelpful to the White House.\u201d
\nUS District Judge Trevor N. McFadden\u2019s decision was only for the moment, however. He told attorneys for the Trump administration and the AP that the issue required more exploration before ruling.
\nMcFadden peppered both sides with questions during arguments over a lawsuit the AP filed Friday saying that its First Amendment rights were being violated by the ban, which began gradually two weeks ago. President Donald Trump said it was punishment for the agency\u2019s decision not to entirely follow his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the \u201cGulf of America.\u201d
\nMcFadden, discussing the composition of the \u201cpress pool\u201d that is chosen by the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association, questioned why the government was obligated to follow those choices. \u201cIt feels a little odd that the White House is somehow bound by the decisions this private organization is making,\u201d the judge told AP attorneys.
\nHe also questioned AP\u2019s noting of its longtime membership in the White House press pool. \u201cIs this administration somehow bound by what happened with President McKinley?\u201d the judge asked. But he noted that the correspondents\u2019 group had been tasked by the White House to choose the members of its pool.
\n\u201cThe White House has accepted the correspondents\u2019 association to be the referee here, and has just discriminated against one organization. That does seem problematic,\u201d McFadden said in an exchange with government attorney Brian Hudak.
\nLater, McFadden warned the government\u2019s attorney to reconsider its position, saying \u201ccase law in this circuit is uniformly unhelpful to the White House.\u201d
\nThe AP says it is adhering to the \u201cGulf of Mexico\u201d terminology because its audience is global and the waters are not only in US territory, but it is acknowledging Trump\u2019s rechristening as well.
\nAP says the issue strikes at the very core of the US Constitution\u2019s First Amendment, which bars the government from punishing speech. The White House says access to the president is a privilege, not a right.
\nEarlier this month, the Trump administration began barring the AP from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other areas that have been open to the agency for a century as part of the White House press pool. The dispute stems from AP\u2019s refusal to change its style in referring to the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump decreed the \u201cGulf of America\u201d via an executive order.
\nThe AP named three Trump officials \u2013 White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and press secretary Karoline Leavitt \u2013 as defendants. The agency, a nonprofit news outlet in operation since 1846, called the White House\u2019s move a \u201ctargeted attack\u201d of the sort barred by the First Amendment.
\n\u201cThe press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,\u201d the AP said in its lawsuit.
\nThe White House says its move to restrict AP is not an infringement of free-speech rights. \u201cThe only person who has the absolute right to occupy those spaces is the president of the United States,\u201d Wiles wrote to Julie Pace, AP\u2019s executive editor, in an email included in the agency\u2019s lawsuit. \u201cFor the rest of us, it\u2019s a privilege, and to suggest otherwise is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: A federal judge on Monday refused to immediately order the White House to restore The Associated Press\u2019 access to presidential events, saying the news organization had not demonstrated it had suffered any irreparable harm. But he urged the Trump administration to reconsider its two-week-old ban, saying that case law \u201cis uniformly unhelpful to the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77533,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77521\/revisions\/77533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}