You Won't Believe Why the White House Banned an AP Reporter...

Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants the Gulf of Mexico to be called the Gulf of America. Big tech companies, like Apple and Google, have even made changes to their maps to reflect this information, and some members of Congress and even the Florida Senate have been trying to pass a bill to make it official. 

The Associated Press (AP), however, has decided that it's gonna be contrary. Well, it claims it's going to stick to saying "Gulf of Mexico" because the AP Style Guide says so, something the organization could easily update if it wanted to because it literally manages it.  

So, the White House told the AP that if it wasn't going to follow the rules, it wasn't going be allowed access to executive-order signing in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon. It happened again on Tuesday evening when a reporter was banned from  a "late-evening event in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room." 

Julie Pace, the AP’s senior vice president and executive editor, made a statement on the situation: "Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing." 

She added: "It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. 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." 

But White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt made an even better statement: 

Let me just set the record straight: It is a privilege to cover this White House. It's a privilege to be the White House press secretary. And nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions.

She added: 

I was very upfront in my briefing on day one, that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I'm not sure why news outlets don't want to call it that, but that is what it is.

Here's the whole exchange with the CNN reporter who asked her about it: 

🚨🔥Karoline Leavitt shuts CNN hack Kaitlan Collins down after whining about an AP reporter losing access over ‘Gulf of America':

“Let me just set the record straight. It is a privilege to cover this white House. It's a privilege to be the white House press secretary. And… pic.twitter.com/a7M9CjC1Lo

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 12, 2025

As I said, the AP can and has made significant changes to its style guide over the years. I've worked as a writer and journalist for about 15 years, and almost every job I've had has used it for guidance. We even use it here for our own writing at PJ Media (though we avoid the woke stuff). And speaking of woke stuff, I specifically remember the moment at an old job when we were told to stop using "he or she" for singular pronouns and use "they" instead. 

So, let's don't pretend the AP can't make changes. If it was a President Kamala Harris — ew, just typing that made me nauseous — making the request, you know they'd have done it on January 20 and shared the update proudly, far and wide.