‘Familiar to those who have lived under authoritarian regimes’: First Amendment experts implore judge to side with AP in dispute over White House access

President Trump poses with a new map.

President Donald Trump, from right, speaks to reporters accompanied by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Burgum’s wife Kathryn Burgum, aboard Air Force One where Trump signed a proclamation declaring Feb. 9 Gulf of America Day, as he travels from West Palm Beach, Fla. to New Orleans, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025 (AP Photo/Ben Curtis).

A group of First Amendment experts is imploring a federal court to order The Associated Press back into the select stable of journalists who make up the White House “press pool.”

In a Friday brief, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University says the government’s behavior necessitates giving AP journalists back their seats in the halls of power.

“Having created the press pool to enable access to the President in limited-space contexts ranging from the Oval Office to foreign travel, the White House has developed a forum — whether a ‘limited public forum’ or a ‘nonpublic forum,’ as the cases use those terms — from which it may not constitutionally exclude a news organization due to its viewpoints,” the amicus, or friend of the court, brief reads. “Yet that is precisely what the White House is doing, by its own admission.”

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