NPR Sues to Block White House Order to Defund Public Broadcasting

It targets as defendants President Donald Trump, OMB Director Russell Vought, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Department of Treasury, along with CPB. NPR and the public media stations said Trump's order violates the First Amendment: “It is hard to conceive of a more blatant scheme to regulate the exercise of editorial discretion by Executive fiat.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment from Communications Daily but told NPR reporter David Folkenflik that CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime” and that Trump “is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS.” He “was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”

The order halted all direct and indirect funding from CPB to NPR, barred NPR from applying for federal grants, and threatened to halt CPB funding to local stations that carry NPR programming.

It “threatens the existence of the public broadcasting system, upon which tens of millions of Americans rely for vital news, information, and emergency alerts,” said NPR CEO Katherine Maher in a release. “By basing its directives on the substance of NPR's programming, the Executive Order seeks to force NPR to adapt its journalistic standards and editorial choices to the preferences of the government” to continue to receive federal funding. NPR’s complaint said “Congress is not obligated to support independent public radio with federal funds,” but “government funding decisions cannot constitutionally ‘be aimed at the suppression of ideas thought inimical to the Government’s own interest.’”

Without federal funding from CPB, NPR “would need to shutter or downsize collaborative newsrooms and rural reporting initiatives and, at the same time, also eliminate or scale back critical national and international coverage that serves the entire public radio system,” said the complaint. That level of reporting is “not replicable at scale on the local level,” NPR said. “Loss of all revenue from local public radio stations would dramatically harm NPR’s ability to execute its journalistic mission.” Maher added that if NPR “cannot receive funds for broadcast infrastructure, station service areas will shrink, dismantling universal service.”

The order violates constitutional protections for free speech and association because it would force public media stations to choose between working with NPR and federal funding, said the complaint. It's “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association.”

Trump’s past statements and White House releases issued alongside the order demonstrate that “the sole, express basis of the Order is the President’s disapproval of the content of the speech and news reporting of NPR and PBS,” said the complaint. It quoted White House news releases and social media posts from Trump, including an April 10 Truth Social post in which he said NPR is “A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE” and “TOTAL SCAM” that shouldn’t be funded. “NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!” A White House news release last month also called NPR’s reporting “trash.” The order’s “text and the materials that accompanied it make unmistakably clear that the Order is intended to -- and does -- retaliate against NPR because of its protected speech,” the complaint said.

NPR and the public media stations have “a very strong claim that the First Amendment has been violated because the Executive Order singles out and retaliates against NPR and the member stations based upon their content,” said Freedom Forum Vice President Kevin Goldberg in an email. “Government gets a little bit of leeway in terms of how it spends its own money, but it crosses a line when the conditions it places on receipt of funds violate the First Amendment and that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

The statutes that govern public broadcasting explicitly bar the government from making judgments on content when determining eligibility for funding, Goldberg said. The order “not only steps across that line, it tramples all over it in the process by seeking to impose the government’s own editorial judgment as to what constitutes viewpoint neutrality.”

"The First Amendment prohibits the government from retaliating against speech it doesn't like," said Ari Cohn, lead counsel-tech policy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "But by the President’s own words, the executive order does exactly that." If the CPB isn't performing acceptably, there are "processes established by law for addressing the issue in a viewpoint-neutral fashion," he said in an email. "Going outside of those processes to target speakers with whom the President disagrees is impermissible."

The courts should also block the order because it usurps Congress’ power to disburse funds and because the president doesn’t have authority over CPB, NPR said. “The power of the purse is reserved to Congress, and the President has no inherent authority to override Congress’s will on domestic spending decisions.” The complaint asked the district court to declare the order unconstitutional and permanently enjoin the White House and federal agencies from enforcing it.