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Illegal To Defund NPR?

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Peter Suderman | 4.1.2026 9:31 AM

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(Illustration: Lex Villena; Jakub Gojda)

You can't defund NPR? Last May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media." 

The order targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which at the time doled out funds to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Trump's order directed the CPB to cease funding to NPR and PBS.

Trump's reasoning for the order was quite explicit: "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." 

Yesterday, a U.S. district judge said the ruling was illegal. The judge, Randolph Moss, ruled that Trump had violated the First Amendment with the order because it amounted to punishment for politically disfavored speech. 

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The judge said the order "clearly crosses the line" into something like politically motivated censorship. "The message is clear," Moss wrote. "NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the president disapproves of their 'left-wing' coverage of the news." Trump's order, the judge wrote, amounted to government "retaliation" for speech.

There were several things to like about Trump's initial executive order. It noted that today's media market "is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options," and it declared that "government funding of news media in........

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