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donald trump
As Trump Targets AP, Media Urged to Resist Moves Like 'Gulf of America' Renaming
"It's at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership," asserted one campaigner.
Feb 14, 2025
First Amendment defenders are calling on media organizations and journalists to stand up to bullying and intimidation by U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration on Friday confirmed the indefinite exclusion of one of the world's largest news agencies from White House press briefings and Air Force One flights over its refusal to adopt the Republican leader's new name for the Gulf of Mexico.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich said that because The Associated Press "continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change" of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it will be indefinitely banned from White House news conferences and the president's official airplane.
"The level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation."
The New York-based AP, which provides news content to roughly 15,000 media outlets in over 100 countries, has explained that, because the gulf is an international body of water, it will continue to call it the Gulf of Mexico because Mexico—whose president on Thursday threatened to sue Google for adopting Trump's name change—and other countries do not recognize the new name.
In contrast, the AP said it will call Denali, the highest peak in North America, Mt. McKinley following a name change by Trump because the Alaska mountain is located entirely inside the United States.
Budowich said the AP's decision on the Gulf of Mexico exposes the agency's "commitment to misinformation."
"While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces," he argued.
But critics said the Trump administration's behavior is about a lot more than just a spat over a name change.
"Of course, this is just more petty behavior by a president seeking to punish any news organization that doesn't follow his dictates, regardless of how ridiculous they may be," Timothy Karr, the senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, told Common Dreams on Friday.
"It's at times like these that journalists need to put down their pens and advocate for accountable leadership," Karr stressed. "They need to advocate for themselves, their colleagues, and for journalism writ large."
"The good news is that more than a dozen of the mass market news outlets have refused to adopt Trump's name change for the Gulf of Mexico," he added. "That's a start. They now need to speak out against his First Amendment threats, despite the consequences. There is much more at stake now than just having access to the White House."
"By defying Trump, the AP has created a rallying point for other organizations and individuals to find their spines and defy him as well."
Writing for Public Notice Friday, Noah Berlatsky commended the AP for "not changing their style to suit the whims of a would-be tin-pot 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," Berlatsky added.
Those include the heads of the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, National Press Club, PEN America, and Society of Professional Journalists.
"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," WHCA president Eugene Daniels said earlier this week.
RSF USA executive director Clayton Weimers said in a statement that "the level of pettiness displayed by the White House is so incredible that it almost hides the gravity of the situation."
"A sitting president is punishing a major news outlet for its constitutionally protected choice of words," Weimers added. "Donald Trump has been trampling over press freedom since his first day in office."
President Trump banning the Associated Press from an event over their usage of "Gulf of Mexico" instead of "Gulf of America" may seem more absurd than alarming, but Trump's attacks on the free press are no joke.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) February 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Numerous experts highlighted what they called the unconstitutionality of banning a media outlet from press briefings for political reasons.
"The AP—a major news agency that produces and distributes reports to thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and TV broadcasters around the world—has had long-standing access to the White House," Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote on Friday.
"It is now losing that access because its exercise of editorial discretion doesn't align with the administration’s preferred messaging," Terr added. "That's viewpoint discrimination, and it's unconstitutional."
Berlatsky wrote: "As ABC, Meta, the LA Times, The Washington Post, and Google demonstrate, you lose 100% 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 gasbag."
"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," he added. "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."
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Trump Executive Order Would Defund Schools That Require Covid Vaccines
Although the move was "largely symbolic" due to lack of such mandates, one expert still warned it is "legitimization of anti-science and anti-vax noise."
Feb 14, 2025
Amid fears of what U.S. President Donald Trump's second term will mean for global health and public education, the Republican on Friday signed an executive order to defund schools that require Covid-19 vaccination for students.
Trump's order bars federal funding "from being used to support or subsidize an educational service agency, state education agency, local education agency, elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education that requires students to have received a Covid-19 vaccination to attend in-person education programs," according to a White House fact sheet.
The order, first reported by Breitbart News, also directs the secretaries of education and health and human services (HHS) to develop a plan "to end coercive Covid-19 vaccine mandates, including a report on noncompliant entities and a process for preventing federal funds from supporting educational entities that impose Covid-19 vaccine mandates."
While signing the order in the Oval Office, Trump—who was president during the onset of the pandemic and has received intense criticism for his handling of the public health crisis—said, "OK, that solves that problem."
The White House claimed that "parents are being forced into a difficult position: comply with a controversial mandate or risk their child's educational future." However, according toABC News, Trump's move was actually "largely symbolic" considering that no states currently require K-12 students to have the Covid shots.
The Associated Pressreported that "some colleges started requiring students to be immunized against Covid-19 during the pandemic, but most have dropped the requirements. A few continue to require vaccines at least for students living on campus, including Swarthmore and Oberlin colleges. Most of those colleges allow medical or religious exemptions."
As ABC noted:
One open question is whether the new administration could opt to go beyond Covid vaccines and put pressure on schools to drop requirements for other vaccines.
Currently, all 50 states mandate that students receive certain vaccinations, including to prevent the measles. Many states, however, offer religious exemptions.
"This is anti-vax pandering," Timothy Caulfield, a professor focused on public health and law at Canada's University of Alberta, said of Trump's order. "Still worrisome, however. It is yet more normalization and legitimization of anti-science and anti-vax noise."
The new measure came a day after Senate Republicans voted to confirm vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary and Trump signed another executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission.
Also on Thursday, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a confirmation hearing for Linda McMahon, the billionaire GOP megadonor and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO nominated to serve as education secretary, even though Trump has signaled that he ultimately intends to fully dismantle the department.
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Raskin Condemns Trump DOJ's 'Illegal Intimidation' of Anti-Corruption Division
"It's time to do your job and stop this outrageous sabotage of justice in the interests of naked political corruption," said the lawmaker.
Feb 14, 2025
Amid reports that attorneys in the Public Integrity Section at the U.S. Department of Justice—those tasked with fighting political corruption—were being intimidated into dismissing the federal criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Friday, Congressman Jamie Raskin demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi "immediately halt" the actions of DOJ leaders.
A day after three top federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned following a demand from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to drop the case against Adams, MSNBC legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade reported that DOJ leaders had given the remaining lawyers in the anti-corruption unit an ultimatum.
They "put all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with one hour to decide who will dismiss [the] Adams indictment or else all will be fired," said McQuade.
Reutersreported Friday afternoon that one of the attorneys, veteran prosecutor Ed Sullivan, agreed to file a motion to dismiss the charges in order to spare the jobs of his colleagues in the Public Integrity Section.
On Thursday, Danielle R. Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned after receiving a memo from Bove saying the charges against Adams would interfere with his ability to fight "illegal immigration and violent crime."
The acting head of the Public Integrity Section and the acting head of the DOJ's Criminal Division also refused to drop the case and resigned.
Adams was charged with bribery, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy offenses last year, with U.S. attorneys saying an investigation had found that he allegedly took bribes from foreign nationals, including to allow a skyscraper in Manhattan to open without a fire inspection.
In a letter to Bondi, Sassoon wrote that "Adams' attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed."
A lawyer for Adams toldThe New York Times Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was "a total lie," but President Donald Trump's border czar, Thomas Homan, alluded to the deal in a Fox News appearance with Adams on Friday.
"If he doesn't come through," said Homan, "I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'"
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of immigrant rights group America's Voice, said the Trump administration's engagement in the alleged deal reflected the president's "obsessive focus on mass deportations."
"His obsession to purge America of immigrants seems to have no limit: cutting a quid pro quo with Mayor Adams, to drop criminal charges in return for immigrant roundups; diverting resources from stopping fentanyl at ports of entry to deport workers; gutting entire immigrant-dependent industries that put food on the table and keep prices low; and intruding into the homes and apartments and going door-to-door to instill fear among people mostly legal, many citizens," she said.
Raskin (D-Md.) demanded that Bondi "put an immediate halt to this illegal and unconscionable intimidation campaign."
"Your Department of Justice has been caught engaging in a corrupt deal with Mayor Adams and now attempting to cover it up," he said in a statement. "It's time to do your job and stop this outrageous sabotage of justice in the interests of naked political corruption."
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