National Public Radio is taking its feud with President Donald Trump to the next level.
And it appears that next level of this feud will involve a courtroom and legal representation.
NPR officially sued Trump and various parts of his administration in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., over what the organization calls a violation of “the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.”
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, as well as the entire Treasury Department are named as defendants, alongside Trump and a few others.
NPR is being joined by several other radio stations in this lawsuit.
The issue at hand is a May 1 executive order that Trump signed, dubbed “ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF BIASED MEDIA.”
The president outlined a number of issues with pumping taxpayer funds into media that has been notoriously anti-conservative and anti-Republican — to say nothing of the media’s disdain for Trump himself.
“At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage,” Trump wrote in his order. “No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.”
The order directly stripped NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service of taxpayer subsidization.
Should NPR ever receive another dollar of taxpayer funding?
The order also included a number of provisions and orders to ensure that NPR and PBS aren’t back-dooring any taxpayer money.
“The [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] Board shall 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,” Trump added.
Trump also noted: “The heads of all agencies shall identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS.”
It’s a sweeping and comprehensive hit against NPR and PBS, and the “BIASED MEDIA,” to quote the president, is pushing back.
NPR’s lawsuit claims that this executive order violates the Constitution.
“The Order is unlawful in multiple ways,” the lawsuit states. “It flatly contravenes statutes duly enacted by Congress and violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause by disregarding Congress’s express commands.
“It also violates the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press. The Order’s objectives could not be clearer: the Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country.
“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.”
NPR’s lawyers provided additional statements to Politico’s Josh Gerstein:
Statement from one of the attorneys for NPR, Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn: pic.twitter.com/sMLPEISTEd
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) May 27, 2025
“[B]y seeking to to halt federal funding to NPR, the Executive Order harms not NPR and its Member stations, but also the tens of millions of Americans across the country who rely on them,” the attorney said.
The attorney added that “[t]he Executive Order is blatantly unconstitutional.”
It will be fascinating to see how the courts handle this, because it appears the two sides are fighting about completely separate issues.
Trump and his administration have made this a money issue, noting that no entity is entitled to taxpayer subsidization in perpetuity, and that it’s well within the government’s rights and fiscal responsibility to periodically address those issues.
NPR, PBS and their ilk, meanwhile, are contending that this is a free speech issue, which may be difficult to prove, since Trump has never once said that NPR or PBS can or cannot say certain things (a textbook example of a First Amendment violation), but rather made this a money matter.
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