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(CNN) — National Public Radio filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday, alleging that President Trump’s attempt to defund NPR is a “clear violation of the Constitution.”
Several NPR member stations from Colorado joined the national network in filing the suit, highlighting the local impacts of taxpayer-funded media.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, says Trump’s maneuvers against NPR violate both “the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.”
Moreover, it “threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information,” the lawsuit states.
Trump targeted both NPR and its television counterpart, PBS, in an executive order on May 1. The president accused the public media outfits of bias and said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting must stop funding them.
The White House reiterated its claims of bias on Tuesday, saying CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Public media executives say the White House is grossly mischaracterizing what NPR and PBS do. But the allegations of bias are at the heart of the lawsuit; the suit says the defunding order is “textbook retaliation” for the network’s perceived point of view. In the realm of First Amendment law, this is known as viewpoint-based discrimination.
Trump’s move against NPR “really is just pure viewpoint discrimination,” Theodore Boutrous, one of the veteran attorneys representing NPR in the suit, told CNN.
Boutrous also said that the 1967 law creating public broadcasting was clearly meant to “insulate” the networks from “precisely this type of political coercion.”
The corporation, CPB for short, is a private nonprofit corporation that was set up to be free of presidential interference. CPB has filed its own lawsuit against the president’s attempt to fire three of its board members.
Each year, the CPB disburses $535 million in taxpayer funds to public radio and TV stations nationwide and to producers of educational and cultural programming.
Stations, in turn, provide free and universal access to news, emergency alerts and a wide array of programming.
In Trump’s first term, he repeatedly tried to strip all funding from PBS and NPR, but Congress allocated the funds anyway. In Trump’s second term, he is trying new ways to shut down the public broadcasters.
In so doing, he is usurping Congress, NPR charges.
The Republican-controlled House and Senate allocated funds for public radio and TV as recently as this March — in a bill that Trump signed into law.
That very funding is what Trump is now trying to erase and what NPR is trying to preserve.
PBS has also been preparing to take legal action but has not yet filed suit. “PBS is considering every option, including taking legal action, to allow our organization to continue to provide essential programming and services to member stations and all Americans,” a spokesperson told CNN.
Liam Reilly contributed reporting.
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