The Daily Fuckup

On Aug. 13, 2025, the Associated Press’s fight with the Trump White House was still working its way through federal court, but the key procedural moves had already happened. A district judge had ruled in AP’s favor in April, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had already issued a June 6 stay that kept the White House’s restrictions in place while the appeal moved ahead.

The dispute began after the White House restricted AP access over the outlet’s decision not to adopt the administration’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. AP sued, saying the government had singled it out for punishment because of its editorial choices. The White House argued it had the right to decide who gets access to restricted presidential events.

The April ruling gave AP a victory at the trial-court level, but it did not end the case. The June 6 appellate order narrowed the practical effect of that win by leaving the limits in place during the appeal. By Aug. 13, the legal battle was still unresolved, with the underlying court fight continuing on a separate track from the earlier injunction and stay rulings.

That sequence mattered. The case was not a fresh showdown on Aug. 13, and it was not over. What had changed by then was the posture: the legal fight had already produced an injunction, then an appellate pause, and the White House was still enforcing the restrictions while the courts kept sorting out whether access to presidential events can be used as leverage against a newsroom’s speech choices.