Judge Strikes Down NPR & PBS Defunding

• A federal judge in Washington has permanently struck down part of President Trump’s 2025 executive order targeting funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Tuesday, ruling that it was unconstitutional retaliation that violated their press freedom rights under the First Amendment.

As The Washington Post reports, “The May 1, 2025, executive order, titled ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,’ cut off funding to public media — with Trump calling out what he perceived as left-wing bias in NPR’s and PBS’s news reporting.” NPR and PBS sued, saying that the president’s targeting of them violated their First Amendment rights.

Now, nearly a year later, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama appointee to the federal bench, sided with NPR and PBS, issuing his opinion that states, “The message is clear. NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” adding that the action amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”

“The First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power — including the power of the purse — ‘to punish or suppress disfavored expression’ by others,” Moss wrote, quoting a 2024 Supreme Court ruling.

Trump’s executive order targeting NPR and PBS “crosses that line,” Moss wrote, “because it singles out two speakers, and on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs.

Moss’s ruling now has now halted the federal government from permanently cutting off funding to the two entities.