Amid the rash of sweeping changes brought by the Trump administration in its first few weeks, an insidious pattern intended to curtail the free press in the United States is emerging. At recent White House press events, one longstanding organization, the Associated Press, has been absent, and the A.P. was also disinvited from its usual seats aboard Air Force One. Ostensibly, the White House blocked the A.P. from official events because it, among other complaints, refused to go along with the president’s directive that the Gulf of Mexico be henceforth known as the Gulf of America on official documents.
The A.P. doesn’t make changes to its policies willy-nilly; its decisions have broad impact because it functions broadly, throughout international media, as an exhaustive guide to language and writing style. Some on the right dislike what they see as liberal language in the A.P. style guide, including terms used in transgender coverage, a rejection of the term “illegal immigrant,” and capitalizing “Black” but not “white” when referring to race. These might seem like petty distinctions, but the attack on the A.P. because it is not seen as ideologically aligned with Trumpism is something more sinister: an attack on free speech itself.
In the matter of the gulf, A.P. based its decision on the observation that it had been called the Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years. Moreover, it observed, the gulf is not owned by the U.S. alone; rather, sections of it are claimed by a number of countries, each of which uses the nomenclature that is internationally familiar. Note, too, that the A.P. was not basing its recent place-name decisions on ideological grounds but on precedent and context: It had already said it would indeed go along with the president’s order that Alaska’s Mount McKinley revert to its older name from Denali, the name used by the region’s Indigenous residents. But only instant and total compliance will please the ideologues.
It is not only the A.P. that is dealing with White House retaliation. During his campaigns, the president frequently called the news media the “enemy of the people.” Now in control, the Trump administration has unleashed a wave of smears and is penalizing the press in general. It has launched at least 29 media-related lawsuits. These require a costly legal response and are intended to chill press freedom and bring the press in line with the Trump agenda.
Under Trumpist leadership, the Federal Communications Commission is investigating National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, alleging that some sponsorship underwriting instances cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements. Separately, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the suspension of its spending threatens a wide range of news organizations worldwide that cannot operate without external funding because of restrictions they face in their own countries or regions. These news organizations, in many cases, are the bulwarks of democracy.
The administration has also removed several news organizations’ access to workspaces set aside for the press at the Pentagon. And the persecution gets personal, too. From the president and Elon Musk on down, there now comes a nearly nonstop stream of negative personal remarks that could encourage not just online bullying but, as we saw in 2016, potentially lead to physical violence.
All of this is thoroughly un-American. As the checks and balances of our government come under attack, shudder, and fall, reporters are one of our last remaining protections against the control of autocrats, against corruption, and against unchecked executive authority. From where we sit, it would appear that the power of a free press is exactly what the administration is afraid of as it works to undermine the Constitution itself.