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.
