NPR sues Trump over executive order to cut funding

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — National Public Radio filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday, alleging that President Trump’s attempt to defund NPR is a “clear violation of the Constitution.”

Several NPR member stations from Colorado joined the national network in filing the suit, highlighting the local impacts of taxpayer-funded media.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, says Trump’s maneuvers against NPR violate both “the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.”

Moreover, it “threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information,” the lawsuit states.

Trump targeted both NPR and its television counterpart, PBS, in an executive order on May 1. The president accused the public media outfits of bias and said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting must stop funding them.

But the funds for public radio and TV have been allocated by Congress for decades — most recently in a bill that Trump signed into law earlier this spring.

Furthermore, the corporation, CPB for short, is a private nonprofit corporation that is set up to be free of presidential interference. CPB has filed its own lawsuit against the president’s attempt to fire three of its board members.

PBS has also been preparing to take legal action but has not yet filed suit.

Each year, the CPB disburses $535 million in taxpayer funds to public radio and TV stations nationwide and to producers of educational and cultural programming.

Stations, in turn, provide free and universal access to news, emergency alerts and a wide array of programming.

In Trump’s first term, he repeatedly tried to strip all funding from PBS and NPR, but Congress allocated the funds anyway. In Trump’s second term, he is trying new ways to shut down the public broadcasters, while charging that the networks “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

Public media executives say the White House is grossly mischaracterizing what NPR and PBS do.

Theodore Boutrous, one of the attorneys representing NPR in the suit, said Tuesday that listeners are the ultimate victims of Trump’s actions.

“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,” Boutrous said.

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