Variety; NPR Sues Trump Over Executive Order to Cut Funding: ‘Clear Violation of the Constitution’

Story from Variety:

National Public Radio sued President Trump, alleging his executive order seeking to cut all federal funding to NPR and PBS is a “clear violation” of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

NPR — along with Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio and KSUT, a public radio station in Colorado — filed suit Monday, May 27, against Trump in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Trump on May 1 issued an executive order to eliminate federal funding to NPR and PBS, alleging they have engaged in “biased and partisan news coverage.” The order instructs the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS” to the “maximum extent allowed by law.”

NPR CEO Katherine Maher alleged that Trump’s actions are intended to “punish” the public media organizations over “programming the president dislikes.”

“President Trump has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of editorial decisions reflected in programming offered by NPR and PBS. He has disparaged NPR’s news and other content as ‘left-wing propaganda,'” she said in a statement. “His Executive Order states that our coverage is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased,’ building on prior statements making clear the President’s disapproval of NPR’s news coverage and editorial choices. The intent could not be more clear — the Executive Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes.”

According to NPR, on average approximately 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments. For individual public radio stations, CPB funding comprises on average about 8% of their budgets; NPR says that percentage is highest among rural stations or stations in areas that are otherwise underserved “due to the challenges they face in raising additional revenue.”

Trump, as part of his attack on public media, last month attempted to fire three CPB board members. On April 29, the CPB and the trio of board members — including Tom Rothman, film chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment — sued the president and other White House officials over the move, alleging that Trump has no authority to remove them.

Maher said Trump’s May 1 order “is a clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press. It is an affront to the rights of NPR and NPR’s 246 Member stations, which are locally owned, nonprofit, noncommercial media organizations serving all 50 states and territories. Today, we challenge its constitutionality in the nation’s independent courts.”

The Trump executive order, Maher continued, “is directly counter to Congress’s long-standing intent, as expressed in the Public Broadcasting Act, to foster vibrant institutions that achieve that mission, serving all Americans independent of political influence. The Order threatens the existence of the public broadcasting system, upon which tens of millions of Americans rely for vital news, information, and emergency alerts.”

According to Maher, more than 43 million Americans tune in to NPR each week through its network of local public radio stations. The organization also “provides critical infrastructure services to 379 public radio stations and more than 1,200 radio signals,” she said.

The lawsuit filed by NPR and the others seeks a court order declaring that Trump’s Executive Order 14290 (titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization Of Biased Media”) and all actions implementing it “are unlawful and unconstitutional” and an injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the action. The suit also seeks compensation for the plaintiffs’ “reasonable costs and attorney’s fees in accordance with law.”

In addition to Trump, the lawsuit names as defendants Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Department of the Treasury; the Office of Management and Budget and OMB director Russel Vought; and the National Endowment for the Arts and NEA chair Maria Rosario Jackson; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.