By Scott Nover, washingtonpost.com, 3-31-26
A federal judge in Washington struck down part of President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on March 31, ruling that it was unconstitutional retaliation that violated their press freedom rights under the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama appointee to the federal bench, wrote in an opinion that the executive order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”
While the ruling blocks Trump’s executive order, it doesn’t override Congress, which, at Trump’s urging, eliminated $1.1 billion it had appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in a rescission package last year. » Read More