The judge orders the White House to restore AP access to Trump

Tuesday a federal judge ordered the White House to restore the full access of the Associated Press to President Trump, discovering that the effort to ban the outlet on the objections to its coverage violated the first amendment.

The order gave a blow to Mr. Trump, who, in a departure for decades of tradition, moved to exploit access to presidential events as a way to affirm a more direct control over how journalistic organizations cover his administration. Trump officials started blocking the outlet of events physically with the president in February, citing the refusal of the service of thread Adopt the renaissance of the administration of the Gulf of Mexico in the Gulf of America.

The outlet sued, with the dispute that raised deep questions about the role of independent media in covering the presidential administrations and the lasting implications of the efforts of Mr. Trump to refresh the body of the White House.

In A strongly formulated opinionJudge Trevor N. McFaddden of the Federal District Court for the Columbia district wrote that the Trump administration must “immediately revoke the denial based on the point of view” of the Associated Press from the presidential events.

“The government repeatedly characterizes the request of the AP as a request for” special access “. But this is not what AP asks, and it is not what the court orders,” he wrote. “Everything AP wants, and everything he gets, is a field of equality.”

A few moments after issuing the opinion, the judge McFadden paused his order From the attack on Sunday, giving the government five days to present an emergency appeal. The injunction he ordered would remain in force until the end of the case or a superior court intervenes.

The sentence came in response to a cause that the Associated Press filed in February, which asked that his long -standing access to smaller printing events to the White House was restored.

Since the cause was presented, the administration has prevented the publication from participating in the press pool, a rotating group of journalists who covered the president’s daily activities and has blocked the president in intimate contexts such as Oval Office and Air Force One.

In question it is whether the moves of the White House amounted to a suppression of the rights of freedom of the outlet of the outlet and denying its journalists the same level of access as its competitors.

Judge McFadden, appointed to Trump, concluded that he had done it.

“Under the first amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists – whether it is Oval Office, East Room or elsewhere – it cannot therefore close those doors to other journalists because of their points of view,” he wrote. “The Constitution does not require less”.

He observed that Trump’s officials had been “brazen” in recognizing repeatedly and publicly that he had banned the outlet precisely because of the stall on his language.

As one of the main wire services of the world, the Associated Press distributes articles, photographs and videos a Over 3,000 US newsin addition to 900 international sites.

“Today’s sentence affirms the fundamental right of the press and the public to speak freely without government retaliation,” said Lauren Easton, spokesperson for the outlet, in a note. “This is a guaranteed freedom for all Americans in the Constitution of the United States”.

The White House claimed that it did not intend to inflict in particular punishment on the Associated Press, but wanted to narrow the group of journalists who attend those events, bringing more specialized stores with experience on a certain topic or who write for an audience more tuned for the events of a certain day. Karoline Leavitt, a press secretary, said that the moves have the purpose of expanding access by bringing smaller digital publications together with the Legacy media that dominated the press body for a long time.

But the Associated Press, in his complaint, said that he had been identified for his decision not to recognize the new name and that his activity was based on his ability to quickly and reliably cover the president at each shift.

The lawyers for the Filo service claimed that the White House has effectively seized the control of the rotation of the swimming pool previously organized by the association of the correspondents of the White House. As a result, the lawyers said, the officials had put aside the sources of traditional news in favor of more conservative voices that would have covered Mr. Trump in a more nice way.

During an audition almost two weeks ago, judge McFadden asked both sides to evaluate the level of access at stake in case. For any publication, he said, the access opportunities seemed to exist on a spectrum that goes from an individual interview with the president in the ability to participate in the most expansive Briefing Printwhere the representatives of about 50 points of sale compete for the possibility of questioning the press secretary of the White House.

Judge McFadden said he saw access to the smaller press pools – the loss of which the Associated Press is being contested – as falling somewhere in the middle of that spectrum and which was not immediately obvious what power the president must to prevent the participation of an outlet. The president obviously has the total freedom to grant or deny individual interviews.

The journalists of the Associated Press continued to participate in the largest briefing of the press, which take place in the briefing room of the press of James S. Brady located in the west wing of the White House.

His journalists sit in the center of the front row and traditionally the first question was asked. But the Trump administration also has According to reports Considered to change the seats table in the room, moving some stores in a less important position.

At the hearing, Charles Tobin, a lawyer who represents the outlet, said that the Associated Press had been placed in the “penalty box”, regularly excluded from access to the president. Because of its largely neutral report and a vast distribution, the Associated Press was historically among those in the pool of journalists who cover the president on each trip and to every public apparition.

To better convey the consequences of the new White House policy, two journalists for the Associated Press testified in court.

His main correspondent of the White House, Zeke Miller, and his chief photographer of Washington, Evan Vucci, told to cover the White House for decades, bringing news about the President’s daily activities to about four billion people who read his coverage.

Mr. Vucci described by taking one of The most recognizable photographs By Mr. Trump a few seconds after an reinforced man targeted last year during an event for the campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the photo, Mr. Trump is raising his fist in challenge, the blood tightened along the right cheek. Mr. Trump chose the image as the cover for his table book “Save America. “

While Brian Hudak, a lawyer for the Department of Justice, argued that the White House had not categorically banned the Associated Press because since then he had allowed his photographers to capture the president on some occasions, Vucci contrasted that the selection process seemed to be accidental.

“The only thing that has been coherent is that it is not allowed,” he said.

Mr. Miller said he had become increasingly uncomfortable in relying on other stores to inform the second hand of the AP reporting. He said that those concerns had grown as he had observed a “softened tone” in the coverage of the White House, with the companies that adapted to satisfy the requests of Mr. Trump.

“We don’t know what we are not there to see,” he said.

Both men described the effect of the ban on the company’s business. Forced to cover second -hand events or rely on freelancers and on his journalists abroad, the publication had become slower than his competitors, unable to deliver the type of informed report that the documents that licensed his contents are expected to be as quickly, they said, they said.

The Department of Justice did not call any witness and, sometimes, Mr. Hudak seemed to be bad for the reality that the journalists AP faces.

In an exchange, Mr. Hudak insisted that the White House had just allowed a member of the Associated Press to cover an event of the month of history of women who held the day before. But the lawyers of the outlet noticed that the journalist had actually been denied the entrance despite having been assured that he could participate.

At another significant moment, judge McFadden asked Mr. Hudak to clarify a sworn declaration By Taylor Budowich, the deputy head of the White House staff, who said that the outlet remained “suitable” for small events, even if his journalists had not been included in 44 days.

Hudak said that the news agency was admissible in the same sense that it was suitable for playing 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 join what the president believes is the law of the United States”.

Hudak claimed that the restrictions on the Associated Press were largely superficial, placing through recent visits to foreign leaders to the White House where a journalist from the news agency had been in the room.

But in any case, Tobin observed, the journalists had been able to participate because they were traveling with the leader of another country that continued to protect independent freedoms of press. When president Emmanuel Macron of France, president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the Prime Minister Keir Starmer Each of Great Britain has met Mr. Trump in recent weeks, he has fallen into a correspondent abroad for the Associated Press to cover the meeting.

Hours after the order of judge McFaddden went down on Tuesday, a journalist traveling with the president at a dinner in Washington sent an update to the news organizations in the association of the correspondent of the White House: a journalist and a photographer with the Associated Press had been removed from joining the swimming pool.

Katie Robertson Reports contributed by New York.