NPR v. Trump

Court: U.S. District Court for District of Columbia

Date Filed: June 20, 2025

Background: Citing his disagreement with their news coverage, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May 2025 seeking to cancel direct funding to NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service, which receive federal funding from Congress to provide free, editorially independent public radio and television programming to communities across the United States. The White House claimed that NPR is “biased” and produces “left-wing propaganda.” The order also seeks to bar independent NPR member stations, locally controlled broadcasters that pay licensing fees for the right to air NPR content of their choice and for other services and partnerships, from using federal funds to purchase NPR content — effectively wresting control over programming decisions from local member stations.    

NPR and three of its member stations in Colorado sued the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the executive order is unconstitutional. The lawsuit argues that the order violates the First Amendment by punishing and retaliating against NPR and its member stations for airing speech that the president dislikes. It also argues, among other things, that the order violates the separation of powers principles in the U.S. Constitution, noting that Congress — not the president — has the authority to control the funding of public broadcasters.

NPR and the three member stations asked the district court to grant summary judgment in their favor and to block the Trump administration from enforcing the executive order.

Our Position: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by 29 nonparty NPR member stations from around the country, filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the district court to grant NPR’s motion for summary judgment.

• NPR member stations exist thanks to a carefully considered statutory framework, which affords locally accountable public broadcasters editorial independence and protects them from government interference, especially based on partisan politics.

• Communities around the country are uniquely served by these locally controlled NPR member stations; in many places, they are the sole newsroom and, in others, still the news organization most connected to and reflective of the local community. Yet Trump’s executive order would wrest away that control by imposing financial constraints based on what content these stations choose to air.

• Defunding NPR directly and indirectly, and blocking member stations from purchasing NPR programming with its congressionally allocated federal funds, violates both the First Amendment and constitutional separation of powers.

From the Brief: “What is at stake in this litigation is both the ability of Member Stations to control their own programming decisions — including their ability to report and present the news — as well as the public’s ability to receive information from their local stations.”

Related: The Reporters Committee, joined by the Committee to Protect Journalists, filed friend-of-the-court briefs in several cases urging federal district courts in New York and Washington, D.C., to block the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other international broadcasters.