The Trump administration has banned the Associated Press for refusing to say what he wants them to say.
The Trump administration’s war on free speech is continuing with the Associated Press being the latest victim of the massive censorial arm of the presidency. This has long been known to be a threat because even before the election, the Trump team was threatening reporters with jail time and revoking broadcast licenses for the unspeakable crime of hurting the presidents feelings.
This situation only escalated after Trump sent legal threats to the New York Times and Penguin Randomhouse for the crime of giving Trump the sads. These actions didn’t go unnoticed.
Other mainstream media outlets started caving to the Trump administrations personal ego by silencing their journalists, blocking criticisms of Trump from being published, heavily surveillance of headlines that might upset Trump, and even re-writing whole articles without the authors permission to appease Trumps fragile ego.
Disturbingly, the heavy handed censorship didn’t end there. The Heritage Foundation, a critical component and policy writer for the current American regime (via Project 2025), said that they were going to start doxing Wikipedians for daring to publish anything they personally disagree with. This happened as Jim Jordan and Elon Musk have begun weaponizing the government to silence criticism.
Today, we are learning that the massive censorial arm of the Trump regime has gotten even bolder with their war on free speech and freedom of the press. Recent reports suggest that the Trump administration has silenced the Associated Press for refusing to regurgitate far right propaganda. Don’t worry, it’s even more petty than it sounds. From CNN:
The Trump White House said Friday that The Associated Press is banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely.
The AP, one of the world’s biggest news outlets, was singled out by the White House earlier this week over three words: “Gulf of Mexico.”
President Donald Trump said last month that the US government would rename the body of water the “Gulf of America.” The change has taken effect at government agencies. But other countries do not recognize the new name, and the AP has customers around the world, so it still refers to the Gulf of Mexico while also acknowledging Trump’s decree.
Other global news outlets have made similar decisions.
But this week the White House singled out the AP and barred its reporters from presidential events.
In a statement on X, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich pointed to the Gulf dispute, saying the AP’s decision “is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ 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, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” Budowich wrote. “Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration.”
This reiterates the long-standing message of the Trump administration that only those who sing the praises the glorious leader will be permitted to speak. Those who do otherwise will get punished to the fullest extent of the law. It’s a very fascist thing to do, but fascism is increasingly tightening its grip on the United States as we speak, so not entirely surprising either.
The latest move has alarmed free speech advocates who consider this a marked escalation on the war on the press. From TechDirt:
This is all equal parts silly, dangerous, and twice an obvious infringement of the First Amendment. The silly portion of this is the most obvious. Taking any action against literally anyone simply because they don’t recognize that Trump put his scrawled signature on a piece of paper that renames an international body of water is beyond petty. That the Department of the Interior went along with this lunacy means nothing at all. That body of water has been named the Gulf of Mexico for something like four centuries. Trump’s EO doesn’t even rename the entire body of water; it intends only to rename the continental shelf portion of the body. Are you seeing how stupid this all is yet?
So why is it dangerous? Because the Orwellian themes are starting to be delivered at such a velocity that the term “Orwellian” is becoming stale. While the concept of “doublespeak” only tangentially comes from Orwell, it’s omnipresent in the administration’s comments on this whole dispute, as it also is with the talking heads the administration deploys to news outlets covering it. Calling the Gulf of Mexico by its historical name is not “telling lies.” In fact, saying so is a lie in and of itself, which is classic doublespeak. And we got even more doublespeak directly from Trump’s Press Secretary.
At a regular briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “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.”
This will result in a lawsuit, of that I have no doubt. The barring of reporters in retaliation for their protected speech is, as I said earlier, twice a violation of the First Amendment. It is both an attempt by a government body to regulate the protected speech , as well as an attempt to punish the press over that speech. All the constitutional lawyers and professors I’ve heard speak on this topic have spoken in unison: this is an open and shut case. CNN went through a similar issue when the first Trump administration revoked Jim Acosta’s press pass due to his tough questions (though a lame attempt to accuse him of pushing an intern’s arm was made as well), only to back down due to the lawsuit CNN filed.
With all these dictatorial moves over the last month or so, it does make one wonder how long before there is a propaganda system in place similar to what is seen in Just Cause 2. Seriously, it is getting really screwed up in the US.
The ironic thing in all of this is the fact that while all of this is going on, US Vice President, JD Vance, is in Europe berating the countries their for a supposed downfall of free speech on that continent. From the BBC:
US Vice-President JD Vance has launched a scalding attack on European democracies, saying the greatest threat facing the continent was not from Russia and China, but “from within”.
It had been expected that Vance would use his speech at the Munich Security Conference to address possible talks to end the war in Ukraine.
Instead, he spent the majority accusing European governments – including the UK’s – of retreating from their values, and ignoring voter concerns on migration and free speech.
But Vance’s address otherwise focused on culture-war issues and key themes of Trump’s campaign for the US presidency – a departure from the usual security and defence discussions at the annual conference.
He alleged European Union “commissars” were suppressing free speech, blamed the continent for mass migration, and accused its leaders of retreating from “some of its most fundamental values”.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, characterised Vance as “trying to pick a fight” with Europe, home to some of the US’s closest allies.
Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, told Politico Vance’s remarks were “insulting” and “just empirically not true”.
This does suggest that the Trump administration is certainly looking at taking their speech suppression national tour internationally. The problem with that is that it is going to be a much more difficult task to start censoring speech internationally. Already, the Trump administration is pushing another wave of inflationary tariffs on not just Canada and Mexico, but to the rest of the world by pushing a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum. So, the effort to try and do some foreign interference and political meddling in other countries is certainly there – even in Europe.
While we are a ways off from using tariffs to demand the suppression of speech in other nations among other things, we are certainly heading in that direction the way things are going. Just today, we learned that Trump signed an Executive Order pushing so-called “reciprocal tariffs”. From the Associated Press:
President Donald Trump on Thursday rolled out his plan to increase U.S. tariffs to match the tax rates that other countries charge on imports, possibly triggering a broader economic confrontation with allies and rivals alike as he hopes to eliminate any trade imbalances.
“I’ve decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff,” Trump said in the Oval Office at the proclamation signing. “It’s fair to all. No other country can complain.”
Trump’s Republican administration has insisted that its new tariffs would equalize the ability of U.S. and foreign manufacturers to compete, though under current law these new taxes would likely be paid by American consumers and businesses either directly or in the form of higher prices. The rates to be charged would be studied over the weeks ahead, which could create the potential space to resolve challenges or prolong a degree of suspense and uncertainty.
One of taxes being targeted appears to be the Value Added Tax or VAT. From the BBC:
Concerns are growing the UK could be more exposed to US trade taxes after President Donald Trump announced he would target VAT in his latest move.
Trump has instructed his staff to develop custom so-called “reciprocal tariffs” for individual countries based in part on trading agreements, including imports and exports, with the US.
The UK’s trading relationship with US had suggested it would be less exposed to tariffs than others, but the surprise inclusion of VAT to calculate potential tariffs has prompted questions over the impact on British businesses.
Analysts have suggested tariffs of 20% or more could be placed on the UK as well as the European Union, but the outcome remains uncertain.
The whole thing is plain dumb but moving ahead. At this point, we are aware of at least four rounds of tariffs at this point. First, there is the so-called “study” to determine where additional tariffs are going to hit. That study is going to conclude in a couple months time. Then there is the 25% across the board tariffs on Canada and Mexico that was placed for no real good reason. That’s apparently going to take hold early next month. Over top of that, there is the steel and aluminum tariffs of an additional 25% (which means steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico would get hit with a total 50% of tariffs because these tariffs stack). That is going to hit worldwide early next month. Now, over top of that is the so-called “reciprocal tariffs” that is going to, in part, hit Europe and the UK. Moreover, it’s entirely possible that Trump will keep slapping its trading partners with even more tariffs for the reason of whatever his warped and deluded mind comes up with.
Either way, the threat of the Trump administration is growing at an alarming rate and it’s a good thing that leaders from affected nations are speaking to each other to work out agreements to try and weather that storm. There’s not a lot of time to really implement much that would be substantive, but those political leaders now don’t have much choice in the matter. It’s either that or become a vassal state to a fascist run nation. That, of course, would be much much worse.
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