Your Freedoms Under Siege

Why Trump’s fight with the AP is a big deal

Credit: Getty Images

The number of topics we could and should discuss here on Steady is suddenly a mile long and growing quickly. Donald Trump has been in office for exactly four weeks, and every day brings a new deluge of disorder with commandments from on high designed to overwhelm, confuse, and unsettle us. Some of the noise coming from the Oval Office is just silly. But a lot of it matters plenty.

Into the latter column falls Trump’s sudden attack on the Associated Press (it’s not just about the Gulf of Mexico) and the First Amendment.

First, a quick review of some basic civics:

The Bill of Rights is one of three foundational documents of the United States, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Those first 10 Amendments spell out the rights of Americans in relation to their government. The framers added the Bill of Rights because they believed the Constitution as first created lacked enumerated limits on government power. Oh, how prescient they were.

While all 10 Amendments are vital to the success of the nation, the First Amendment is first for a reason. As a refresher, the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring the speech of its citizens, including the press. This guarantee, this protection of the freedom of speech and the press, is the backbone of our democracy. Without it, all our other rights become endangered. Without it, order breaks down.

Over the past week, Trump and several members of his administration have trampled all over the First Amendment.

TRUMP VS. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
One of Donald Trump’s first executive orders was to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America — a showy political stunt meant to discredit Mexicans and puff up Trump’s ego. The body of water between present-day Mexico and the United States was named El Golfo de Mexico by European explorers in the 16th century. For the 400 years before Trump, the name was just fine.

The Associated Press, an independent, international, nonprofit news gathering organization with a sterling reputation, has thus far chosen to maintain the Gulf’s original name rather than change to Trump’s new, politicized name.

“The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

The White House quickly retaliated. While the AP has retained its credentials, AP’s reporters and photographers have been barred from several recent Trump events and were not allowed onto Air Force One with other members of the press corps for the president’s weekend trip to Florida.

But there is more to the story than just a name. The fact that it is the AP refusing to use the new name is important because of the AP Stylebook. This guide, published by the wire service, is a reference used by most U.S. news organizations. We use it here at Steady. It contains best practices for spelling, grammar, nomenclature, and punctuation as well as principles of reporting. It also contains proper names, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump would like nothing more than to discredit legacy media, and by his reckoning, the Associated Press is the perfect target. Founded in 1846, the AP is the largest news-gathering operation in the world. As a cooperative, the AP distributes news to its thousands of member organizations. It has been criticized by the far-right for perceived wokeness.

Opponents point to AP’s capitalization of “Black” but not “white” in describing someone’s race. They also take issue with AP’s not endorsing the term “illegal immigrant.” AP says to “use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.”

White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich told Axios: “This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world.”

The nonpartisan Ad Fontes Media, which rates all U.S. news organizations on bias and reliability, gives the AP high marks for reliability and rates it in the middle for bias. The only thing more middle of the road than the AP are yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

MUSK VS. JOURNALISTS
Last week Elon Musk called for the firing of journalists who have written less than glowingly about his Department of Government Efficiency. He has gone so far as to call their writings “possibly criminal.” This would fall under the heading “abridging freedom of speech.” At the same time, Musk amplifies lies and baseless claims to his 217 million followers on X. Because he owns the platform, he is also dictating content moderation rules. The fox is in charge of the hen house.

From his never-before-seen power position as owner of a huge social media network and head of a government agency that seems to have no limits, no rules, and no oversight, Musk’s ability to threaten anyone who questions him is well beyond obstructing free speech.

“People do not feel safe speaking out in this country against the government. Because the government in the form of Elon Musk and President Trump himself will catalyze retribution,” law professor Ryan Calo of the University of Washington told The Washington Post.

VANCE VS. EUROPE
To top off the week of offenses against the First Amendment we have Vice President JD Vance and his trip to Europe. Much to the disbelief of his German hosts, Vance met with the head of Alternative for Germany, a radical, far-right political party. His meeting was a tacit backing of the extremist group with ties to neo-Nazis, just weeks before Germany’s national election.

Vance then gave a speech to European leaders meeting in Munich, admonishing them for suppressing “conservative voices” — in other words, curtailing freedom of speech — while his boss is sitting in the Oval Office telling the world’s biggest news organization what they can and cannot say.

Freedom of speech means everyone’s speech. The government cannot pick and choose whose speech to protect and whose to suppress. Not lawfully, anyway. Not in this country.

Importantly, someone, a respected news organization, needs to chronicle this chaos and these attempts to shatter the Constitution so future generations will have a clear record of what we lived through. There is no better organization to do that than the AP, so long as it doesn’t cave to pressure from Trump, Musk, and their allies.

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Stay Steady,
Dan