A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the White House to restore The Associated Press’s full access to President Trump, finding that the effort to ban the outlet over objections to its coverage violated the First Amendment.
The order dealt a blow to Mr. Trump, who, in a departure from decades of tradition, has moved to leverage access to presidential events as a way of asserting more direct control over how news organizations cover his administration. Trump officials began barring the outlet from physically covering events with the president in February, citing the wire service’s refusal to adopt the administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The outlet sued, with the dispute raising profound questions about the independent news media’s role in covering presidential administrations and the lasting implications of Mr. Trump’s efforts to refigure the White House press corps.
In a sharply worded opinion, Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration must “immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial” of The Associated Press from presidential events.
“The government repeatedly characterizes The A.P.’s request as a demand for ‘extra special access.’ But that is not what The A.P. is asking for, and it is not what the court orders,” he wrote. “All The A.P. wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”
Moments after issuing the opinion, Judge McFadden paused his own order from taking effect until Sunday, giving the government five days to file an emergency appeal. The injunction he ordered would stay in place until the case is over, or a higher court intervenes.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit The Associated Press filed in February, which asked that its longstanding access to smaller press events at the White House be reinstated.
Since the lawsuit was filed, the administration has prevented the publication from participating in the press pool, a rotating group of reporters that covers the president’s day-to-day activities, and blocked it from covering the president in intimate settings such as the Oval Office and Air Force One.
At issue is whether the White House’s moves amounted to a suppression of the outlet’s free speech rights and denied its journalists the same level of access as its competitors.
Judge McFadden, a Trump appointee, concluded that they did.
“Under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” he wrote. “The Constitution requires no less.”
He noted that the Trump officials had been “brazen” in repeatedly and publicly acknowledging that it had banned the outlet precisely because of the standoff over its language.
As one of the world’s premier wire services, The Associated Press distributes articles, photographs and video to over 3,000 U.S. news outlets, as well as 900 international sites.
“Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation,” Lauren Easton, a spokesman for the outlet, said in a statement. “This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. constitution.”
The White House has argued that it did not intend to inflict punishment on The Associated Press specifically, but wanted to narrow the group of journalists who attend those events, bringing in more specialized outlets with expertise on a given subject, or that write for an audience more attuned to a given day’s events. Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, has said the moves are meant to expand access by bringing in smaller digital publications alongside the legacy media outlets that have long dominated the press corps.
But The Associated Press, in its complaint, asserted that it had been singled out over its decision not to recognize the new name, and that its business was predicated on its ability to quickly and reliably cover the president at every turn.
Lawyers for the wire service have contended that the White House effectively seized control of the pool rotation previously organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association. As a result, the lawyers said, officials had sidelined mainstream news sources in favor of more conservative voices who would cover Mr. Trump more sympathetically.
During an hearing nearly two weeks ago, Judge McFadden asked both sides to weigh in on the level of access at stake in the case. For any publication, he said, the opportunities for access appeared to exist on a spectrum ranging from a one-on-one interview with the president to the ability to participate in the more expansive press briefings, where representatives from about 50 outlets vie for the chance to query the White House press secretary.
Judge McFadden said he viewed access to the smaller press pools — the loss of which The Associated Press is contesting — as falling somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and that it was not immediately obvious what power the president has to restrict one outlet from participating. The president of course has total freedom to grant or deny one-on-one interviews.
The Associated Press’s journalists have continued to attend the larger press briefings, which take place in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room located in the West Wing of the White House.
Its journalists sit front row center and have traditionally been offered the first question. But the Trump administration has also reportedly considered changing the seating chart in the room, moving some outlets to a less prominent position.
At the hearing, Charles Tobin, a lawyer representing the outlet, said that The Associated Press had been placed in the “penalty box,” routinely excluded from access to the president. Because of its largely neutral reporting and vast distribution, The Associated Press has historically been among those in the pool of journalists covering the president on every trip and at every public appearance.
To better relay the consequences of the White House’s new policy, two journalists for The Associated Press testified in court.
Its chief White House correspondent, Zeke Miller, and its chief Washington photographer, Evan Vucci, recounted covering the White House for decades, bringing news of the president’s daily activities to about four billion people who read its coverage.
Mr. Vucci described taking one of the most recognizable photographs of Mr. Trump seconds after a gunman took aim at him last year at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. In the picture, Mr. Trump is raising his fist in defiance, blood streaking down his right cheek. Mr. Trump chose the image as the cover art for his coffee table book “Save America.”
While Brian Hudak, a lawyer for the Justice Department, argued that the White House had not categorically banned The Associated Press because it had since allowed its photographers in to capture the president on a few occasions, Mr. Vucci countered that the selection process appeared to be random.
“The only thing that’s been consistent is we’re not allowed,” he said.
Mr. Miller said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable about relying on other outlets to inform The A.P.’s reporting secondhand. He said those concerns had grown as he had observed a “softening tone” in White House coverage, with companies adjusting to meet Mr. Trump’s demands.
“We don’t know what we’re not there to see,” he said.
Both men described the effect of the ban on the company’s business. Forced to cover events secondhand or to rely on freelancers and its journalists overseas, the publication had become slower than its competitors, unable to deliver as quickly the sort of informed reporting that the papers that license its content expect, they said.
The Justice Department did not call any witnesses, and at times Mr. Hudak appeared to be misinformed about the reality facing A.P. journalists.
In one exchange, Mr. Hudak insisted that the White House had just allowed a member of The Associated Press to cover a Women’s History Month event held a day earlier. But lawyers for the outlet noted that the reporter had in fact been denied entry despite being assured he could attend.
In another telling moment, Judge McFadden asked Mr. Hudak to clarify a sworn statement by Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff, who asserted that the outlet remained “eligible” for small pool events, even though its reporters had not been included in 44 days.
Mr. Hudak said that the news agency was eligible in the same sense he was eligible to play for a professional baseball team, but that neither he nor The Associated Press met the appropriate standards. The outlet had not been invited for weeks, he said, “because they refuse to adhere to what the president believes is the law of the United States.”
Mr. Hudak contended that the restrictions on The Associated Press were largely superficial, ticking through recent visits by foreign leaders at the White House where a journalist from the news agency had been in the room.
But in each case, Mr. Tobin noted, the reporters had been able to attend because they were traveling with the leader of another country that continued to protect independent press freedoms. When President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain each met with Mr. Trump in recent weeks, it fell to an overseas correspondent for The Associated Press to cover the meeting.
Hours after Judge McFadden’s order came down on Tuesday, a reporter traveling with the president to a dinner in Washington sent an update to news organizations in the White House Correspondent’s Association: A reporter and photographer with The Associated Press had been turned away from joining the pool.
