Trump’s Executive Order To Restrict Federal Funding To NPR And PBS Violated Constitution, Judge Rules

A federal judge blocked Donald Trump‘s executive order that prohibited federal agencies from providing funding to NPR and PBS.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, in a ruling issued on Tuesday, wrote that the president’s executive order “singles out two speakers and, on the basis of their speech, bars them from all federally funded programs.”

“Although there are many lawful reasons that the government might decline to make ‘a valuable governmental benefit’ available to someone, punishing disfavored private speech is not one of them,” the judge wrote.

Read the judge’s ruling in the PBS and NPR case.

Part of his ruling is now moot. Last summer, the Republican-controlled Congress rescinded all federal funding to the entity that distributed public media money, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB later dissolved.

But Moss noted that PBS and NPR still received grants from other federal agencies and entities. He wrote, “The message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news. Because the First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type, the Court will issue judgment against the federal- agency defendants declaring Section 3(a) of the Executive Order is unconstitutional and will issue an injunction barring those defendants from implementing it.”

In the executive order, Trump stated that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

More to come.