Trump Ignores Another Court Order
District Court order to allow Associated Press into White House
Should you happen to encounter Donald Trump, say at an Ultimate Fighting Championship or in a Tesla dealership selling Model Xs, don’t tell him you disagree with his renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
I would also be careful in questioning Trump’s decision to refuse to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man deported by the now-infamous El Salvadoran prison by mistake. The action could result in wrongful and illegal punishment. And if you challenge it and win in court, including the Supreme Court, that may not help you.
On April 8, a Trump-appointed Federal District Court Judge, Trevor N. McFadden, ordered the White House to allow AP back into the Oval Office and prohibited the White House from denying news organizations access to the White House based on disagreement with the President’s viewpoints. In part, the Court ordered:
1. Defendants [The White House] shall immediately rescind the denial of the AP’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited spaces based on the AP’s viewpoint when such spaces are made open to other members of the White House press pool.
2. Defendants shall immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial of the AP’s access to events open to all credentialed White House journalists.
3. This preliminary injunction shall remain in effect until further order of this Court.
4. This preliminary injunction issues without the requirement of any security bond.
Lest anyone conclude that Judge McFadden is a deranged, Marxist lunatic who should himself be deported to El Salvador with no due process rights, read the Judge’s decision. In part, it reads:
Today, the Court grants that relief [ordering AP to be admitted to the White House to cover the news]. But this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events. It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer. And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views. Case 1:25-cv-00532-TNM Document 46 Filed 04/08/25 Page 1 of 41 2
No, the Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.
The Judge’s order is not a “nationwide injunction” of the type that Republicans are condemning as one of the worst judicial decisions in American history. That is worth noting.
Could it be Thant the administration refuses to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia is because he is dead? Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder says: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.”