BY SRH
More Trump BS
On Tuesday, federal judges prohibited government agencies from cutting funds to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service and granted orders to stop the construction of the White House ballroom.
President Obama “is the caretaker of the White House for future generations of First Families,” according to U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who spoke at the ballroom. But he’s not the owner!
Trump asserts, according to Leon, that existing statutes grant the president the ability to construct the East Wing ballroom "and to do it with private funds."
According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the president does not have the right to do so according to current legislation. The judge has ruled that a preliminary injunction is necessary to prevent irreparable harm. -Epoch Times Leon continued by granting a preliminary injunction and ordering that "the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion." He further stated, "I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have."According to U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, who is headquartered in Washington, Trump’s order specifically targeted the broadcasters, namely NPR and PBS, because of the viewpoints they expressed.”This type of viewpoint discrimination and retaliation is not tolerated by the First Amendment,” he wrote in a 62-page decision.
The Epoch Times reports that Trump ordered the termination of financing for NPR and PBS on May 1, 2025. “What matters most is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens,” he said later, adding that “government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” He went on to say that it didn’t matter which viewpoints NPR and PBS promoted, but rather that their funding undermined journalistic independence.
The White House said in a fact sheet that public broadcasting stations like NPR and PBS had used taxpayer funds to “fuel partisanship and left-wing propaganda.”
Some examples cited by the officials include NPR’s initial refusal to publish a story on a laptop that had belonged to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and PBS’s choice to air a drag queen on a show for children as young as three years old.
Subsequently, NPR and PBS launched independent lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the budget reduction.
The directive was deemed a violation of “the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association,” according to NPR’s lawsuit.
The government’s legal team had argued in court documents that the order “simply aligns the Government’s sponsorship of activities with its policy priorities” and “declines to extend federal funding for Plaintiffs’ programs,” rather than imposing illegal speech restrictions.
Moss stated that he was nullifying and voiding Trump’s executive order and prohibiting the aforementioned federal agencies from carrying it out or carrying it out by force.
An activist judge is trying to undermine the law with this ludicrous order, according to White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, who emailed The Epoch Times. It is unacceptable for NPR and PBS to receive taxpayer monies, and Congress has previously decided to cut their funding. The Trump administration is eagerly anticipating a successful resolution to the matter.
The choice has made PBS quite happy, according to an email from a PBS representative who communicated with The Epoch Times.
The representative spoke about how the executive order violates long-standing First Amendment principles and is textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, as they argued and Judge Moss ruled. Here at PBS, we’re committed to staying true to our roots: being the most trusted media institution in the country and fulfilling our mission to educate and inspire all Americans.
