In the blizzard of paperwork that has characterised Donald Trump’s first weeks back in the White House, we may have missed the finer detail of Executive Order 14172, which was signed by the new President on the day of his inauguration in January.
It was entitled “Restoring Names That Honour American Greatness”. Its directives did not include renaming Snickers as Marathon bars, or Meta to Facebook, or even Cif back to Jif, but rather to redraw the map of the region and to “take all appropriate actions to rename as the ‘Gulf of America’… the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
Why should we care? Bound in typically grandiose Trumpian rhetoric – “As my Administration restores American pride in the history of American greatness,” he said, “it is fitting and appropriate for our great Nation to come together and commemorate this momentous occasion and the renaming of the Gulf of America” – this could be dismissed as a piece of grandstanding that doesn’t really touch people’s everyday lives.
Instead, it has become a touchpoint in Trump’s nascent second term, a trial of strength between government and the press, and one which has now turned into a legal battle that goes to the very heart of the American Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects the rights of all citizens to freedom of speech.
The news that Associated Press (AP) – a not-for-profit global news organisation “dedicated to factual reporting” – is suing three members of the Trump administration for banning its reporters from White House press briefings and withdrawing admittance to Air Force One should send a chill through anyone who cares about the higher purposes of two of the most important instruments of democracy: government and the press.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” AP’s lawyers wrote in the news-gathering organisation’s legal petition. “The Constitution does not allow the government to control speech. Allowing such government control and retaliation to stand is a threat to every American’s freedom.”
At this point, we should have in mind that AP was founded in 1846 as a co-operative exercise between news organisations who sought to pool resources in order to cover events far from home. Its earliest assignment, curiously, was the Mexican-American war of 1846.
Since then, AP has grown into a global news behemoth with 235 bureaux worldwide, and its journalists have won 59 Pulitzer Prizes. So this is not an insignificant operation, and on any level a legal dispute with the President should not be taken lightly – particularly as this appears to be a fight Donald Trump would like to have.
When he made his executive order, AP reflected Trump’s decree in their style book, the bible for many journalists worldwide in terms of grammar and usage. “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” it said. “The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.”
In essence, a measured and reasonable response. That the President reacted by denying AP’s journalists basic access to briefings was anything but reasonable, and a significant overreach of his authority. It suggests that this fight suits Trump’s purposes. It plays into his assault on the mainstream press, it shows his authoritarian muscle, and – most important – it removes another respected source of independent oversight.
Some of Trump’s cheerleaders in the media – even Fox News – are joining the fight in support of AP, which indicates the seriousness of the threat to free speech. If the President is not successfully challenged, a further, giant step is taken towards a post-truth world, a world in which leaders can make you believe what they want you to believe.
So treat this legal battle as a minor skirmish in the grand scheme of things, if you will. It’s not a matter of life and death. But something almost as precious is at stake here.
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