NPR sues--in DC circuit court--to block Trump's EO cutting their taxpayer funds

Believe it or not, back in my naive days I was a fan of NPR and PBS, but slowly started to realize who they really were.

Today (Tuesday, May 27) NPR sued Trump over his executive order to stop giving tax dollars to fund their socialist propaganda.

The wording of the filing shows how utterly divorced from reality these bastards are:

The order “threatens the existence of [the] public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on,” NPR wrote in the lawsuit.

Wait...on other occasions when conservatives have threatened NPR's funding, the org bleats that it only gets a TINY percentage of its money from taxpayers--around one percent or so.  But now that Trump has issued the EO cutting it off, *suddenly the loss of that one percent "threatens the existence of the system that millions of Americans rely on"???

And sure enough, the CNBC story on this says just 1% of NPR’s revenue comes directly from the federal government, "according to the organization."

NPR claims the cutoff "violates freedom of speech and the press."

No, you lying sons of bitches, you're still totally free to lie all you want.  The EO just says taxpayers can't be forced to fund your lies.

NPR claims Congress "has long recognized that the speech NPR uses tax dollars to fund is fully protected from censorship, retaliation or other forms of governmental interference.”  

The implied argument here is that cutting taxpayer funding is "governmental interference with speech"--or in NPR's case, propaganda.  But NPR is still free to say what it likes--just without whatever amount of public money it was and is getting.

"The Executive Order thwarts the Plaintiffs First Amendment rights to be free from the government’s attempts to control their private speech, and their rights to be free from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech, journalistic activities, and expressive association.
   “The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination that violates the First Amendment.”

If you read the above 'graf fast, you might have missed the subtle hook: if the judges of the utterly liberal DC court support that reasoning (as they will), it will mean that once ANY organization--government or NGO-- gets annual taxpayer funds, it can't ever be de-funded, since its attorneys can always find something it wrote that the govt didn't like, and thus that any funding cut would be "retaliatory" and would "chill free speech."

Now it's hard to believe that attorneys--even ones in the bubble of leftist DC--really believe their arguments above.  But just wailing "Dat OUAH money, so yew mus' gibs it back!" isn't persuasive to lots of non-residents of DC.

SO...anyone wanna bet how the leftist DC district court will rule?

Of course you already know.  And the court of appeals will agree that the EO is "retaliatory," as if NPR is entitled to taxpayer funding forever.  And certainly Trump said he issued the EO because NPR has always been biased.  But the half of voters who are essentially uninformed will believe that a) this was and is a free-speech issue; and b) NPR is entitled to taxpayer funds forever.

Source.
 
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/27/trump-npr-lawsuit-funding-order.html