President Trump speaks to the press before signing a proclamation renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans, Louisiana on Feb. 9, 2025. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images/AFP)
The Associated Press says the White House blocked it from covering an official event on Tuesday because it did not refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said that the White House informed the news agency that its journalists would be barred from attending President Trump’s signing of a new executive order because it had not aligned its editorial standards with Trump’s preferred name for the body of water.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” Pace wrote in a statement posted on its website. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”
The event was newsworthy; Trump and his adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, spoke of the sweeping cuts they were making to the federal government as part of Musk’s government efficiency effort known as DOGE.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day renaming the Gulf “in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people,” according to the order.
The White House has not replied to NPR’s request for comment. It comes as the Trump administration applies increasing pressure on mainstream news outlets, through limiting access to key venues and launching investigations.
AP’s Stylebook is used not only by its own journalists, but by other news outlets and institutions around the globe. In its guidance, the AP advises that the body of water to the east of Mexico that stretches from Texas to Florida should retain its historic title.
“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” the updated Stylebook entry states. “Refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”
The U.S. Geological Service has officially adopted “Gulf of America.” Apple and Google Maps also call it by that name when searched by users based in the U.S.
Outside the country, “Gulf of Mexico” is still used.
As the AP Stylebook notes, “Trump’s order only carries authority within the United States. Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change.”
Other news organizations offered support for the AP. “The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” said Politico’s Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “The move by the administration to bar a reporter from The Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable.”
The move is in keeping with others against the press.
Under Defense Secretary and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has dislodged eight news organizations from their work stations there, including NPR, the New York Times, NBC News, CNN, the Washington Post, Politico, the Hill, and the War Zone.
Seven conservative and right-wing sites took their spots, including Breitbart radio, One America News Network, Newsmax and the New York Post. A liberal-leaning site that also was offered a workstation, HuffPost, had not asked for one.
Trump had filed lawsuits against ABC News and Facebook; their parent companies recently settled his suits by paying millions of dollars apiece to his future presidential library. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, appears poised to settle another lawsuit Trump filed over a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential race, according to several people with knowledge. They spoke on condition of anonymity given the ongoing litigation.
Legal observers say the strength of Trump’s cases ranged from weak (ABC) to frivolous (Meta and CBS).
Trump’s chief regulator over broadcast media, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, has opened investigations of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR. On Tuesday, Carr sent a letter to the chairman and chief executive of Comcast, the parent company of NBC, over its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts companywide.
“Promoting invidious forms of discrimination cannot be squared with any reasonable interpretation of federal law,” Carr wrote, according to Newsmax, which first reported on his letter Tuesday. The FCC did not reply to NPR’s request for comment.
In a statement shared with NPR, Comcast said it would respond to the FCC’s questions and that its company “has been built on a foundation of integrity of respect for all our employees and customers.”