President Donald Trump is celebrating a big legal win that he recently scored over the Associated Press.

CNN reports that a federal appellate court is allowing the White House to continue to exclude the Associated Press from press briefings in the Oval Office, at Mar-a-Lago, and on Air Force One.

The decision was made on Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

🚨 #BREAKING: A federal appeals court has just sided with President Trump — allows him to BAN AP from the Oval Office

GOOD!

The fake news has NO RIGHT to the most sacred office in the world.

Report your fake news from the sidewalk, @AP 🤣🤡 pic.twitter.com/RoL3pOKbmS

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 6, 2025

Background

The Trump White House restricted the Associated Press's press access following the outlet's refusal to refer to the Gulf of America as "Gulf of America." Instead, it has continued to refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico.

The New York Post reports:

The legal dispute erupted in February when the White House barred the outlet from the Oval Office in response to the agency’s refusal to update its style guide to reflect Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The AP, which manages the media’s go-to style guide “Associated Press Stylebook,” argued the large ocean basin has been called the Gulf of Mexico for “more than 400 years” and other international groups have not acknowledged the change.

The Associated Press responded by taking the situation to the courts.

At the lower court level, a judge blocked the Trump administration from restricting the Associated Press from privileged areas.

The Trump administration, however, appealed the matter, and now it has obtained a victory.

Access denied

The appellate court granted the Trump administration's appeal by a 2 to 1 vote.

The Post explains:

The court ruled Friday that certain White House spaces aren’t open to the public or large press pools – effectively giving officials the power to decide which journalists and outlets get access.

Trump is already celebrating the decision. He, on social media wrote, "Big WIN over AP today. They refused to state the facts or the Truth on the GULF OF AMERICA. FAKE NEWS!!!"

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, similarly, wrote:

VICTORY! As we’ve said all along, the Associated Press is not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in other sensitive locations. Thousands of other journalists have never been afforded the opportunity to cover the President in these privileged spaces. Moving forward, we will continue to expand access to new media so that more people can cover the most transparent President in American history rather than just the failing legacy media. And by the way @AP, it’s still the Gulf of America.”

The Associated Press, for its part, said, "We are disappointed in the court’s decision and are reviewing our options."