Last May, President Trump signed an executive order to halt federal funding to NPR and PBS. It was clear by the next day that the order would wind up in court and sure enough it did.
Today, a federal judge in Washington, DC who was appointed by President Obama issued a ruling that Trump’s executive order was insufficient to cut funding to these groups.
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Trump’s executive order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment.
Randolph Moss, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in his ruling that Mr. Trump’s order, signed last May, was unlawful because it instructed federal agencies to refrain from funding NPR and PBS because the president believed their news coverage had a liberal viewpoint.
“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,” Judge Moss wrote. But the First Amendment, he said, “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”
Unfortunately for progressives, the ruling won’t do anything about returning funding to their favorite government-funded mouthpieces. That’s because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting shut down last year after Republicans in congress stripped the money they were going to receive over the next two years.
While the ruling blocks Trump’s executive order, it doesn’t override Congress, which, at Trump’s urging, eliminated $1.1 billion it had appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in a rescission package last year. The CPB, which for decades directed congressional dollars to public media outlets including NPR, PBS and their respective member stations, shut down after a board vote in January.
Judge Moss called it an open and shut case and NPR’s president celebrated the win.
Moss wrote that NPR and PBS proved their cases definitively. “It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch,” he wrote. “To be sure, the President is entitled to criticize this or any other reporting, and he can express his own views as he sees fit. He may not, however, use his governmental power to direct federal agencies to exclude Plaintiffs from receiving federal grants or other funding in retaliation for saying things that he does not like.”
NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher called the ruling a “decisive affirmation of the rights of a free and independent press” and a win for NPR and its listeners. “The court made clear that the government cannot use funding as a lever to influence or penalize the press, whether as a national news service or a local newsroom.”
The White House had a very different take on the ruling.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Moss’ decision is “a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge attempting to undermine the law.”
“NPR and PBS have no right to receive taxpayer funds, and Congress already voted to defund them. The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue,” Jackson said in a statement.
Ultimately, this ruling doesn’t change anything in the near future. CPB is shut down and NPR and PBS are cut off, not because of Trump’s executive order but because congress took away their money. At best, this opens the door for some future congress to refund these entities without having to jump over the additional hurdle of Trump’s EO.
Will the Trump administration continue to fight this in court? The statement above from the White House suggests they will. But of course any action put in place by an executive order could be undone by a future executive order. So even a positive outcome from a court of appeals or the Supreme Court would only mean this would stand as an obstacle until a future Democratic president reverses it.
For now, nothing will change.
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