Left-leaning National Public Radio (NPR) is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over an executive order that halts its federal funding, which Republican lawmakers have been trying to achieve.
NPR levied the lawsuit on Tuesday and it is also concerned about PBS losing funding, CBS News reported.
The executive order Trump filed a few weeks ago halted funds to PBS and NPR and claimed the organizations which are funded via taxpayer money have exercised political bias, according to Breitbart News.
The CBS article continued:
Filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the suit was brought by NPR and three Colorado-based public radio stations. It argues that Mr. Trump’s executive order violates the First Amendment and provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act, which was passed by Congress in 1967. The plaintiffs also assert that Mr. Trump did not have the authority to stop federal funding for NPR and PBS, and his order should be invalidated as unconstitutional.
Trump’s executive order states in part that American citizens have a right to expect that “if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.”
“No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize,” the order read.
In January, Trump’s head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS over concerns the public broadcasters might have been breaking federal law by airing commercials, Breitbart News reported at the time.
The following month, Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) introduced legislation to end taxpayer subsidizing of NPR.
Sen. Tex Cruz (R-TX) recently called out NPR for left-wing bias against Trump after he signed the executive order, per Breitbart News.
NPR on Tuesday noted that PBS is not a party to the recent lawsuit and its statement on the matter read, “PBS is considering every option, including taking legal action, to allow our organization to continue to provide essential programming and services to member stations and all Americans.”
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