Federal judge rules Trump order ending NPR and PBS funding was unconstitutional

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a key part of President Trump’s executive order targeting NPR and PBS was unconstitutional, blocking the administration from denying federal funds based on editorial viewpoint.

The ruling will not reverse the Trump-led campaign to strip NPR and PBS stations of federal funding. Last summer, Republicans in Congress rescinded federal support over objections from public media advocates.

Nevertheless, the ruling is a First Amendment victory. “Today’s ruling is a decisive affirmation of the rights of a free and independent press — and a win for NPR, our network of stations, and our tens of millions of listeners nationwide,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement.

“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,” Maher said.

The ruling could — emphasis on could — lead to some funding for PBS and NPR in the future.

That’s because public broadcasters have also received grants from federal agencies in the past. For instance, in May 2025, the Department of Education scrapped $23 million in funding for educational TV shows — a move tied to Trump’s executive order that Judge Randolph Moss has now deemed unlawful.

The executive order that prompted the public broadcasters to sue, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” directed agencies to terminate “any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS.”

“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 Tuesday, 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.”

“The First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type,” Moss wrote.

The judge issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from implementing the executive order.

Trump’s order was part of a multi-pronged effort to weaken public broadcasting in the United States. It culminated with the congressional rescission of future funding that had already been allocated for public media.

The cutbacks took effect last fall and have had a variety of impacts on local stations across the country, as well as the national PBS and NPR operations. Some stations have laid off staffers and cut back on programming.

But the networks have remained on the air, despite Trump’s remark in January that “they’re sort of gone now, I guess, I heard they closed up. They were terrible.”

Both NPR and PBS filed lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations — in part, public media executives said, to defend the principle that the government cannot use the levers of power to punish speech.

On Tuesday afternoon PBS said in a statement, “We’re thrilled with today’s decision declaring the executive order unconstitutional.”

“As we argued, and Judge Moss ruled, the executive order is textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, in violation of longstanding First Amendment principles,” the network said. “At PBS, we will continue to do what we’ve always done: serve our mission to educate and inspire all Americans as the nation’s most trusted media institution.”

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