National Public Radio (NPR) and three affiliated public radio stations have filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump to challenge an executive order eliminating federal funding for public radio.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., argues that the executive order violates the First Amendment by retaliating against NPR for content the administration deems unfavorable.
This executive order, signed by Trump on May 1, directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease direct and indirect funding to NPR and PBS and prohibits local stations that receive CPB funds from using taxpayer dollars to support these organizations.
The White House also wrote in the order that government funding of the news is “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”
NPR’s lawsuit states that this directive “threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that Trump has displayed “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination,” adding that it is an “egregious form of content discrimination.”
NPR and the three affiliate stations, Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and KSUT Public Radio, are seeking to have the executive order permanently blocked and declared unconstitutional.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher wrote in a statement that the 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.”
“Public media was established to inform the American public and uphold American democratic values,” continued Maher.
“The President’s Executive Order 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.”
Theodore Boutrous, an attorney representing NPR in this lawsuit, took a different approach and said the real victims of this executive order are listeners who rely on public radio.
“By seeking to halt federal funding for NPR, the executive order harms not only NPR and its member stations, but also the tens of millions of Americans across the country who rely on them for news and cultural programming, and vital emergency information,” he said, per CNN.
Although NPR has spoken out against the President’s claims, some officials from within the federal government have also seemingly noticed the trends the broadcaster is pushing.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) recently grilled Maher over posts on social media in which she claimed the U.S. was addicted to “white supremacy,” with Maher replying that her views have “evolved since that post,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The White House also detailed some of the station’s alleged left-wing tendencies in the executive order, writing that one editor for NPR discovered that “registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans 87 to zero in the newsroom’s editorial positions.”
Additionally, Maher said during a TED Talk in 2022, when she was working as the CEO of Wikipedia, that “reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground.”
The Dallas Express reached out to the White House for comments regarding this lawsuit but has not received a response.