Trump Announces Plan To Cancel NPR For ‘Bias,’ Is Immediately Sued For FIRST AMENDMENT, HOW DOES IT GO?

Another day, another lawsuit prompted by the president’s compulsion to announce his intent to violate the law. This time the complaint is by National Public Radio, along with three public radio stations out of Colorado who seek to restore funding cuts unilaterally imposed by the White House.

The president wasn’t subtle about this (or any other) one. In a May 1 executive order, he ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” An accompanying “Fact Sheet” was even more brazen.

“NPR and PBS have fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars, which is highly inappropriate and an improper use of taxpayers’ money,” it blared, accusing the public broadcasters of making “significant in-kind contributions to the Democrat party and its political causes.”

A list of those “contributions” include “avoided the term ‘biological sex’ when discussing transgender issues,” “defending looting and suggesting that crime fears are racist,” “featured drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess on a program meant for kids ages 3-8,” “insisted COVID-19 did not originate in a lab and refused to explore the theory,” and “refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story, calling it a waste of time and a distraction, despite that it was highly relevant to the presidential election.”

Also, ummm …

NPR ran a Valentine’s Day feature around “queer animals,” in which it suggested the make-believe clownfish in “Finding Nemo” would’ve been better off as a female, that “banana slugs are hermaphrodites,” and that “some deer are nonbinary.”

The mating habits of mollusks and political offspring aside, this is an unabashed declaration that the government is engaging in viewpoint discrimination. The president is openly retaliating against public broadcasters because he doesn’t like their content — a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. And the White House went one further in his effort to kneecap NPR and PBS, decreeing that CPB should “cease indirect funding to NPR and PBS, including by ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds, do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.” This would effectively bar local stations from carrying NPR’s content, including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition, three staples of most public radio stations’ lineups. And it implicates freedom of association, along with freedom of the press — a twofer!

“The Order is 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 and editorial discretion,” the plaintiffs argue.

They also note that Congress allocated $535 million to CPB for fiscal years 2025, 2026, and 2027, to be distributed in accordance with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. That law specifically prohibits “any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over public telecommunications, or over the Corporation or any of its grantees or contractors, or over the charter or bylaws of the Corporation, or over the curriculum, program of instruction, or personnel of any educational institution, school system, or public telecommunications entity.” The law also obligates CPB to spend 25 percent of that allocation to support public radio and 75 percent to support public television. And so the president’s personal belief that “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence” is entirely irrelevant.

The broadcasters are represented by a team from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher that includes: famed First Amendment lawyer Ted Boutros; former Legal Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Katie Townsend; and Miguel Estrada, who served in the solicitor general’s office under both the Bush and Clinton. They designated the case related to CPB’s pending suit over termination of board members, securing a spot on Judge Randolph Moss’s docket in DC.

No hearing has yet been set in the matter, but presumably by the time the parties appear in court, the president will have reiterated several more times that this decision is based wholly on his disgust with NPR’s programming.

And PS Banana slugs are hermaphrodites, you absolute weirdos.

NPR v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

The post Trump Announces Plan To Cancel NPR For ‘Bias,’ Is Immediately Sued For FIRST AMENDMENT, HOW DOES IT GO? appeared first on Above the Law.