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White House bars journalist over ‘Gulf of America’
A US journalist has been barred from a White House event amid demands for a leading American news service to use Donald Trump’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico.
The Associated Press said on Wednesday (AEDT) it had been told that if it did not “align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office”.
Soon after, an AP reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing in the Oval Office that turned into a question-and-answer session with Trump and unofficial “first buddy” Elon Musk.
AP senior vice president and executive editor Julie Pace said the move was unacceptable.
“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” she said.
“Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”
Trump signed an executive order to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the “Gulf of America” as soon as he was in office.
The AP’s guidance on Trump’s order states it will “refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.
The agency said that was because the body of water had been known as the Gulf of Mexico for “more than 400 years” and that other countries and international bodies did not have to recognise the name change.
This week, Google Maps began using “Gulf of America”, saying it had a “long-standing practice” of following the US government’s lead on such matters.
Trump also decreed that the mountain in Alaska known as Mount McKinley and then by its Indigenous name, Denali, be shifted back to commemorating the 25th president.
On a trip to Germany, Hegseth hinted at a wholesale reversal of the Biden administration’s effort in 2023 to remove names that honoured Confederate leaders, including from nine Army bases.
Hegseth said the original name was a legacy for troops who lived and served there and it was a shame to change it.
The North Carolina base was renamed Fort Liberty in 2023.
Its original namesake, General Braxton Bragg, was a Confederate general from Warrenton, North Carolina, known for owning slaves and losing key Civil War battles, contributing to the Confederacy’s downfall.
Hegseth is renaming the base to honour soldier Roland L Bragg, who the Army said was a World War II hero who earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart for exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge.
The choice of the World War II private first class got around a law prohibiting the military from naming a base after a Confederate leader.
It sets up the potential for the Defence Department to do the same for the other eight Army bases that were renamed — searching through massive military records for service members with the same last names who could be cited to revert to the former names.
Democrat Senator Jack Reed called it a “cynical manoeuvre” that violates the spirit of the law and reflected Trump’s “obsession with fighting culture wars” instead of supporting troops and their families.
In a video posted on X announcing the renaming, Hegseth said, “That’s right. Bragg is back!”
In reality, the base had still been widely known as Bragg, the new name having not really taken hold.
The 2022 base renaming commission estimated that renaming Bragg, including all the signs, paint on police and emergency responder vehicles and other items, would cost at least $6.3 million. In 2023, the base said the total costs were going to be about $8 million.
-with AAP