Latest news with #Republican-preferred
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump-appointed judge orders White House to restore Associated Press access
In February, Donald Trump and his White House team announced that they'd already won their case against The Associated Press in the 'Gulf of America' case. In fact, following a procedural development in February, the White House heavily promoted images featuring the Republican-preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico and a giant 'VICTORY' stamp over the southeastern United States. Those inclined to believe the president and his political operation likely assumed that the case was over. It was not. In fact, as NBC News reported, a federal judge has now ruled against the White House. A federal judge on Tuesday called The Associated Press' exclusion from White House events 'contrary to the First Amendment' and ordered the Trump administration to treat the newswire as it would any other media publication. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ... ordered the administration to 'put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets, despite the AP's use of disfavored terminology.' '[U]nder 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,' McFadden added in his ruling. For those who might benefit from a refresher, it was in early February when the White House prevented Associated Press journalists from attending official events for an exceedingly misguided reason: AP reports referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. Trump and his team want news organizations to instead use the Republican-endorsed name — the 'Gulf of America' — so the White House punished the AP over it. What was not immediately obvious at the time was whether the incident was a one-day retaliatory tantrum or the start of something larger. It quickly became apparent that the White House had settled on the latter. The wire service took the matter to court, and in legal filings, White House officials acknowledged that the president personally approved the access ban for AP journalists. Trump and his team were likely delighted to learn that the case would be heard by McFadden — a Trump-appointed conservative and longtime Federalist Society member. They were far less pleased when he ruled against the White House anyway. The president and his lawyers are expected to appeal the ruling (McFadden's order won't take effect until Sunday, giving the administration several days to file an emergency appeal), but as the case proceeds, it's worth re-emphasizing the fact that there are larger principles at stake that are far broader than what people call a body of water. Indeed, this controversy, at its root, is about a White House waging an aggressive campaign against the free press and, in this instance, is also trying to bully one of the nation's leading news organizations into submission as part of an Orwellian campaign. Team Trump appears to have embraced a vision of the First Amendment in which people and businesses are free to use the words and phrases that Republicans like — or face the consequences. A conservative federal judge has now told the White House that such a position is unconstitutional. This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In education order, Trump revives failed ‘1776 Commission'
As part of his strange and brazenly dishonest presidential inaugural address, Donald Trump declared that the United States has 'an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country.' The Republican assured the public that this would 'change very quickly.' In reality, of course, the president was peddling a bizarre and baseless myth. But as NBC News reported, that didn't stop him from issuing an executive order on the subject. The White House announced [Wednesday] evening that Trump signed an executive order aimed at 'ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling,' according to its title. The order directs several Cabinet members within 90 days to 'provide an Ending Indoctrination Strategy to the President' that includes 'protecting parental rights' and eliminating funding for 'illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools.' For those concerned about their local schools, all of this might sound alarming, but some caveats are in order. In fact, the phrasing in the executive order itself reflects a degree of hollowness: Trump has directed officials to provide him with a 'strategy' that meets his expectations. The president didn't literally say, 'Go figure something out,' but he might as well have. But a large chunk of the same executive order was devoted to something called the 'President's Advisory 1776 Commission and Promoting Patriotic Education,' the point of which is to apparently promote patriotism — or at least a Republican-preferred version of patriotism — into school curricula. To that end, the EO allows Trump to handpick 20 people to serve as commissioners of this 1776 initiative, who will work with the White House on 'promoting patriotic education.' The whole thing will be financed by way of funds from the U.S. Department of Education, which is a federal cabinet agency the president has vowed to destroy. This stood out for me, not only because it's a misguided idea, but also because it's a return to a misguided idea. As regular readers might recall, one day before Election Day 2020, Trump signed an executive order establishing what the White House described as the '1776 Commission.' Explaining its value, the Republican said the initiative would help 'clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms,' adding that versions of history at odds with conservatives' values constituted 'a form of child abuse.' On the last full day of his first term, the White House issued a rather pitiful document, which, as The New York Times reported, was quickly denounced by scholars as ridiculous. 'This report skillfully weaves together myths, distortions, deliberate silences, and both blatant and subtle misreading of evidence to create a narrative and an argument that few respectable professional historians, even across a wide interpretive spectrum, would consider plausible, never mind convincing,' James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, told the newspaper. 'They're using something they call history to stoke culture wars.' The Times also noted a highly relevant detail: Trump's 'commission' featured conservative educators, but it did not include a single professional historian of the United States. Four years later, Trump apparently wants to do it all again — as if the first go around was a success. It was not. In 2021, the Republican's 1776 initiative was largely ignored and forgotten. In the president's second term, it's hardly unreasonable to wonder whether it might be more menacing. This report updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
