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.
But the funds for public radio and TV have been allocated by Congress for decades — most recently in a bill that Trump signed into law earlier this spring.
Credit: cnn.com
