On May 1, Trump issued an executive order titled, "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media," in which he ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and all US agencies to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS. The White House had previously alleged that NPR and PBS "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'"

NPR's lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia asked the court to declare Trump's executive order and all actions to implement it unconstitutional. NPR's lawsuit said that Trump "has no authority under the Constitution to take such action. On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress, and the President has no inherent authority to override Congress's will on domestic spending decisions. By unilaterally imposing restrictions and conditions on funds in contravention of Congress, the Order violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause of the Constitution."

Trump violated the First Amendment, the lawsuit said. "The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR's and the Local Member Stations' freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion," NPR wrote.

Besides Trump, the defendants named in the lawsuit include the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury Department, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the CPB. The lawsuit seeks orders preventing the NEA and CPB from withholding funding based on the executive order.

NPR and the local stations "bring this action to challenge an Executive Order that violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment's bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information," the lawsuit said.

Congress appropriated $535 million in general funding for the CPB in fiscal years 2025, 2026, and 2027, the lawsuit said. "NPR is funded primarily through sponsorships, donations from individuals and private entities, membership and licensing fees from local public radio stations, direct funding from the Corporation, and direct funding from other government grants, including grants awarded by the NEA," the lawsuit said.

NPR: Funding loss “would be catastrophic”

NPR said the loss of federal funding and fees from stations that would otherwise acquire programming from NPR "would be catastrophic" to the organization. NPR receives about 31 percent of its operating revenue through membership fees and licensing fees from local stations "and additional millions of dollars from CPB to support NPR's coverage of particular issue areas, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine," the lawsuit said.

The loss of funding could force NPR "to shutter or downsize collaborative newsrooms and rural reporting initiatives," and "eliminate or scale back critical national and international coverage that serves the entire public radio system and is not replicable at scale on the local level," the lawsuit said.

The NEA terminated a grant award to NPR one day after Trump's executive order, the lawsuit said. "This termination confirms that NEA is complying with the Order and has rendered NPR ineligible to apply for grants going forward," the lawsuit said.

One legal problem with the executive order, according to NPR, is that it "purports to require the Corporation to prohibit local stations from using CPB grants to acquire NPR's programming, notwithstanding a statutory requirement that stations must use 'restricted' funds to acquire or produce programming that is distributed nationally and serves the needs of national audiences."

Local stations would be forced "to redirect those funds to acquire different national programming—in contravention of their own editorial choices—and to take additional, non-federal funds out of their budgets to continue acquiring NPR's programming," the lawsuit said.