NPR Sues Trump, Claims Cutting Its Taxpayer Funding Amounts To ‘Free Speech’ Violation

National Public Radio (NPR) announced Tuesday that it is suing President Donald Trump over a recent executive order that cuts its federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

NPR and other radio stations claim that Trump’s May 1 executive order cutting federal funds to both NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is unconstitutional, and that it violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. Trump’s executive order maintains that NPR and PBS are biased news companies that taxpayers have no duty to fund.

Trump’s May 1 executive order, Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media, says that “No media outlet  has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies,” and that “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

Russ Vought, White House budget director named as a co-defendant in the suit alongside Trump, said in a Fox News interview in April that while “we’ve known for decades that put out liberal information,” it is only now coming to light the extent to which the news networks are “pioneering the cultural indoctrination of our kids.” Other defendants named in the case include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts Maria Rosario Jackson.

In a Tuesday press release, Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, called the executive order “a clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press,” adding that “NPR will never agree to this infringement of our constitutional rights.”