NPR Wins Challenge to Trump’s Anti-Media Executive Order (1)

National Public Radio Inc., Public Broadcasting Service, and others demonstrated that President Donald Trump’s anti-media funding executive order is unlawful, a Washington, D.C., federal court said Tuesday.

The executive order is unconstitutional because the president can’t use governmental power to direct federal agencies to bar grants in “retaliation for saying things that he does not like,” Judge Randolph D. Moss of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said. His order grants the plaintiffs a permanent injunction from the government implementing or enforcing the executive order’s instruction to cease funding NPR and PBS.

The First Amendment doesn’t tolerate “viewpoint discrimination and retaliation,” Moss said.

NPR and others sued in May 2025 challenging the Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media order, which directs federal agencies to stop NPR from receiving federal funds.

NPR said the order is unlawful because it violates statutes Congress enacted and that it violates separation of powers and the spending clause by “unilaterally imposing restrictions and conditions on funds in contravention of Congress.”

PBS separately alleged in a May 2025 suit that the executive order order violated constitutional protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. PBS said that Trump is retaliating against them due to “perceived political slights in news coverage.” The court consolidated the cases in a Feb. 20 order.

The government may consider content of work it subsidizes, the US Department of Justice argued in a July 2025 court filing. The executive order chooses not to fund the plaintiffs, as opposed to discriminating against them based on their viewpoint, it said.

But the government goes too far in suggesting the president may single out private speakers for disfavored treatment or that terminating funding for private speech can’t be a cognizable retaliatory action under the First Amendment, the court said.

The president’s executive order “clearly crosses the line” from maintaining the proper functioning of a government program to punishing or suppressing disfavored expression, Moss said.

The executive order has all the hallmarks of a government action aimed at suppressing ideas, the court said, because it singles out only two speakers for adverse treatment based on the viewpoint of their speech.

The president sought to exclude NPR and PBS from funding because they provided more positive coverage of his political opponents, because their news coverage “tips left” in his opinion, and because they were critical of him, the court said.

There’s “no doubt” the executive order targeted the plaintiffs because the president viewed their speech as unfavorable to him and the Republican party, the opinion said.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and in house counsel represent NPR. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP represents Public Broadcasting.

The case is Nat’l Pub. Radio Inc. v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 25-cv-1674, 3/31/26.