A US judge struck down Trump's NPR and PBS defunding order as viewpoint retaliation

A United States federal judge has held that the president may not use the federal purse to punish two named news organisations for their journalism. On 31 March 2026, Judge Randolph Moss of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the key funding provision of Executive Order 14290 was unconstitutional, unlawful and unenforceable, and permanently enjoined federal agencies from carrying it out. The decision runs to 62 pages and resolves consolidated claims brought by National Public Radio (case 1:25-cv-01674) and the Public Broadcasting Service.

The order it struck down is unusually explicit about its own motive. Signed on 1 May 2025 and titled Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media, Executive Order 14290 states that government funding of news media is "not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence", asserts that neither NPR nor PBS presents accurate portrayals of current events, and directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board to cease direct funding to both. It further instructs the heads of all agencies to "identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS".

That drafting was the government's problem. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Moss wrote that "the First Amendment draws a line, which the government may not cross, at efforts to use government power to punish disfavored expression". Newsweek reported him finding it "difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like". Radio Ink reported the court's central structural point: the order singled out two speakers, and only two, "for adverse treatment based on the viewpoint of their speech", while leaving every other public broadcasting entity eligible for the same federal money. WLRN quoted the judge drawing the distinction that decides the case: the president may criticise the reporting, but "he may not, however, use his governmental power to direct federal agencies to exclude Plaintiffs from receiving federal grants or other funding in retaliation for saying things that he does not like".

The sums at stake were not abstract. Radio Ink itemised what followed the order: the National Endowment for the Arts terminated two NPR grants the day after it was signed, the Department of Education terminated a $78 million Ready to Learn grant held by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paused an emergency warning system grant to PBS member stations, and NPR was passed over for $57.9 million in interconnection funds. Radio Ink put the Ready to Learn job losses at 22. Newsweek described the same cut as forcing roughly a third of that staff out. The two accounts are not reconcilable from the public reporting.

The ruling does not restore the larger money, and the sources differ on when that money went. WLRN reported that Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding in July 2025, ending the corporation itself. Newsweek placed the congressional elimination of those appropriations in August. Either way, the judgment reaches only the executive order, and so reaches only the agency grants, the interconnection funds and the educational and emergency programmes that sat outside the rescission.

The White House has signalled an appeal to the DC Circuit. Its spokeswoman Abigail Jackson called the outcome "a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge". PBS described the order as textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Lisa Zycherman of the Reporters Committee said the decision "affirms that the government cannot use its power to punish reporting that it does not like".

The judgment arrived into a measurably worse global picture. Reporters Without Borders published its 2026 World Press Freedom Index on 30 April 2026, reporting the lowest average country score in the index's 25 years, more than half of all countries (52.2 per cent) classified as difficult or very serious, and under 1 per cent of the world's population living where press freedom is rated good, down from 20 per cent in 2002. RSF said the sharpest fall was in its legal indicator, which it called "a clear indication that journalism is increasingly being criminalized worldwide". The United States fell seven places to 64th, its worst position since the index began.

Australia fell four places to 33rd in the same index. RSF's stated concern was structural rather than prosecutorial: ownership concentrated in three private groups, and close relationships between proprietors and political leaders. Australia also has no explicit constitutional guarantee of press freedom, only the implied freedom of political communication that the High Court has read into the Constitution.

What is not yet known is whether the reasoning survives. The appeal has not been decided. It is also unclear how far the principle extends: the order named its targets, and a subsidy withdrawal drafted without names may be harder to characterise as retaliation. The wider American position remains unsettled on other fronts. Poynter reported that on 29 June 2026 the Supreme Court declined 7 to 2 to hear a defamation suit against CNN, leaving the actual malice standard of New York Times v Sullivan intact over a dissent from Justice Thomas, and that on 30 June 2026 Chief Justice Roberts stayed an order that would have required a former Fox News reporter to identify a confidential source or pay $800 a day.