The First Amendment is very clear: “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Nowhere, though, does the First Amendment say that the press has an inherent right to have the government fund its free speech. Indeed, the Founding Fathers would have been horrified at the thought, because they understood that a government-funded press is anything but a “free” press.

President Trump’s thinking aligns with the Founders’, which is why he has been working to defund National Public Radio (“NPR”) and the Public Broadcasting System (“PBS”). His reasoning is that, to the extent that these outlets hew strictly to the Democrat party line, they are partisan outlets, and taxpayers, more than half of whom (to go by the last election) disagree with those partisan views, should not be required to fund them.

Edited public domain image.

To that end, on May 1, Trump issued an executive order aimed at “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.” Trump noted that the original law creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“CPB”), which writes those taxpayer-funded checks to NPR and PBS, insisted that “the CPB may not ‘contribute to or otherwise support any political party.’ 47 U.S.C. 396(f)(3); see also id. 396(e)(2).” However, the CPB, Trump wrote in his executive order, has abandoned its statutory obligations:

The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS.  Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter.  What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.

For that reason, Trump instructed the CPB to stop sending money to NPR and PBS (currently set at $535 million per annum) because all three entities are violating federal law. In addition, Trump told other agencies to stop the money flow to the same entities.

Given how friendly the Courts are to anyone who opposes Donald Trump and his agenda, it was to be expected that NPR, PBS, or CPB would file suit. I’m only surprised that NPR waited more than three weeks to do so. This morning, the lawsuit hit the D.C. courts, where it will surely find a sympathetic judge (perhaps Judge Boasberg?).

CNN’s Brian Stelter, an unrelenting Democrat partisan, explains:

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.”

Think about that: NPR’s lawyers are arguing that the First Amendment requires taxpayers to subsidize someone else’s speech. Now, imagine what would happen if Congress amended the law to say that, to provide balance, it would also fund a conservative media outlet. The shrieking would be heard to Mars and back.

Part of the shrieking is because American leftists are incapable of conceding that they are biased. If 92% of their coverage against Trump is negative, that’s because the facts demand it. And if all of them participated in covering up Biden’s dementia and probable terminal illness, that wasn’t because they were biased; it was the result of their innate goodwill and respect for the institution of the president. And the bias, of course, is that they are incapable of recognizing the disconnect between those two defenses.

I assume we can expect an injunction within the next 24 hours. The real test will be whether upper-level courts (appellate and the Supreme Court) will agree with an anti-Trump lower court that the Constitution requires that the government subsidize speech that the Democrat party wants.