NPR sues Trump over executive order cutting federal funding

National Public Radio on Tuesday sued President Donald Trump over his executive order to cease all federal funding for the nonprofit broadcaster.

Trump’s May 1 order violates the First Amendment’s protections of speech and the press and steps on Congress’ authority, NPR and three other public radio stations wrote in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.

The order “also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information,” according to the legal complaint against Trump and a handful of top officials and federal agencies.

NPR and three of its member stations — Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio — want Trump’s order permanently blocked and declared unconstitutional.

It “expressly aims to punish and control Plaintiffs’ news coverage and other speech the Administration deems ‘biased,'” attorneys for the news outlets wrote. “It cannot stand.”

NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, had previously vowed to challenge Trump’s order, which asserts that government funding of the news is “not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

Founded in 1970, NPR says it employs hundreds of journalists whose work is broadcast by more than 1,000 local stations. While most of its initial funding was allocated by Congress and delivered through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, the arrangement was changed in the 1980s as the Reagan Administration sought to shrink public media funding.

Now, the CPB sends federal money to local member stations, who then buy NPR programming. Those member station fees comprise 30% of NPR’s funding, while just 1% of NPR’s revenue comes directly from the federal government, according to the organization. The largest share of its funding, 36%, comes from corporate sponsorship, NPR says.

The CPB “is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to CNBC.

“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective,” Fields said.

The lawsuit argues that Congress has long recognized that the speech it supports with public funding “remains private—and thus fully protected from censorship, retaliation or other forms of governmental interference.”

“Yet the President—criticizing what he perceives as ‘bias’ in the award-winning journalism and cultural programming produced by NPR—has issued an Executive Order that thwarts Congress’s intent and the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs 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 attorneys wrote.

“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment,” they wrote.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the lawsuit.