Another reason has reportedly emerged for the White House’s decision to temporarily ban The Associated Press from covering certain events during the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second term.
At the time, the White House said the widely condemned restrictions were imposed over the AP’s refusal to adopt Trump’s chosen name for the Gulf of Mexico, the “Gulf of America.”
But The New York Times reported this weekend that another dispute was also at play.
In a report by Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg, the Times said it also stemmed from the largely politically neutral news wire service’s decision not to give the “Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist” following the attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.
White House aides “tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo,” which Trump used during his winning 2024 campaign, during a private lunch with Trump and network anchors in 2025, according to the Times report.
AP reporters were barred in February 2025 from attending multiple White House events, including a Q&A with Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who temporarily headed the federal government-cutting effort known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
The AP said at the time that it would continue to refer to the international body of water by its original name “while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”
A federal judge later ruled that the ban was a violation of the First Amendment.
Trump’s renaming campaign has continued since the AP dispute.
He has signed an executive order changing Lake Ontario to “Lake America” and, most recently, floated rebranding New Mexico as “New America.”