A man wears a red “Gulf of America” hat as Donald Trump arrives in Houston’s Ellington Airport, on Aug. 27, 2026, ahead of a Republican National Committee fundraiser.
Photo: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Donald Trump received
Chinese President Xi Jinping and the visiting Chinese press pool last week as reporters from news outlets he had
banished
stood outside the White House gates. At one point, Trump joked that China, the world’s leading
jailer of journalists
, “has the friendliest press corps.” Now, his acolytes in Alabama are taking up Trump’s cause, emulating the Chinese Communist Party’s mastery of information control at the local level by decreeing what supposedly independent public radio reporters are allowed to say.
The Alabama legislature
passed
a bill in late March requiring all state and local entities to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” in line with
one
of the many executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office. The legislation does not set forth penalties for noncompliance, but its sponsor, state Rep. David Standridge,
called
it “an opportunity to make a patriotic statement” on the House floor in January. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Trump ally,
signed
the bill into law.
Birmingham public radio station WBHM told its listeners
in a letter
from Will Dahlberg, the station’s executive director and general manager, that due to the law, which took effect October 1, the
University of Alabama at Birmingham is forcing it
to use the legislature’s preferred language in its reporting. The move puts it at odds with NPR, of which it is a member station; The Associated Press, which publishes the style guide used by newsrooms across the country; and other journalistic institutions. The station is licensed to the university, making its employees both state and UAB employees. Still, WBHM’s
Journalism Code of Integrity
emphasizes the newsroom’s independence and states that the university “should not
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