October 30, 2025; Washington, D.C. — Today NPR marked a significant milestone in our case to protect First Amendment rights for the public media system. The court hearing our challenge to the Trump Administration's Executive Order 14290 — which purports to prohibit federal funding to PBS and NPR, including grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and greatly infringes on the rights of all stations to determine their independent programming — indicated that it was inclined to find for NPR on the merits of its claim that CPB is violating the First Amendment by withholding federal appropriations from NPR for the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS).
At issue was CPB's abrupt reversal of its decision to fund NPR's management and operation of the PRSS. This reversal was a direct act of unconstitutional, viewpoint-based retaliation, compelled by political pressure from the Trump Administration.
The evidence brought to light unfortunately confirms that CPB willingly and knowingly violated the First Amendment rights of NPR and its Member stations, and jeopardized critical infrastructure that is relied on by all interconnected public radio stations. As the Court observed, NPR has made a "very substantial showing" that "CPB was motivated by a desire to show some compliance with the [Trump] administration's efforts to penalize NPR for its speech and for the content of its speech."
As a result of today's hearing, approximately $36 million will be set aside by CPB until a final ruling in this case, which will follow a bench trial scheduled to begin on December 1. This will preserve the funds for the benefit of the stations while CPB continues to wind down its operations. When CPB ceased full operations on October 1st of this year, it still had custodianship of more than $90 million of unspent, Congressionally appropriated funds for interconnection. NPR urges that the balance of funds not set aside while the case proceeds be distributed urgently and directly to all interconnected stations to cover future interconnection and distribution expenses.
NPR has pursued its claims against CPB with reluctance. CPB has been a crucial institution for the public media system, and we regret that they have chosen to comply with the Trump Administration's unconstitutional, retaliatory, and viewpoint-based pressure campaign, with direct and harmful consequences to NPR Member stations, the interconnected stations and the public media system. NPR will always defend the First Amendment, advocate for the future of public radio, and strive to serve the American people with factual news, information and music in the public interest.
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