President Donald Trump lost a major legal battle on Tuesday when a federal judge agreed to permanently block his efforts to end federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
"It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch," wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama. Citing Trump’s past comments about how he would “love to” defund NPR and PBS because they criticize him and his policies, Moss argued that Trump clearly violated the First Amendment’s protections for citizens against government punishment for their speech.
"The Federal Defendants fail to cite a single case in which a court has ever upheld a statute or executive action that bars a particular person or entity from participating in any federally funded activity based on that person or entity's past speech," Moss explained, adding that Trump’s “message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their 'left wing' coverage of the news.”
Trump’s attacks on NPR and PBS were far from his only assaults against the First Amendment. Regarding the administration’s banning of reporters from the Pentagon briefing room in response to critical coverage, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said that Trump’s administration is “trying to radically transform not just the news media, but the confines of the First Amendment. You have to fight for it if you're going to defend it. There's no way around that. And what this shows us [is] that they are going to counterpunch each time, and you have to be girded to grind through this, otherwise they will inevitably win through attrition.”
The Bulwark’s conservative writer Sam Stein responded that this proves Trump supporters never sincerely cared about free speech, despite claiming otherwise.
“Heading into this administration, there was this big conventional wisdom among a lot of the tech bros and people in certain parts of the commentariat that this was an administration that really, truly appreciated the First Amendment, that they were gung-ho about protecting the rights of reporters and journalists and free speech and free thinkers. And it is obviously bs,” Stein explained. “It has been proven to be wrong, and I think those people should live in shame for the idea, which was fallacy to begin with, that this would be some sort of beacon of freedom of First Amendment rights.”
Last year free speech attorney Nora Benavidez argued Trump has systematically assaulted the First Amendment since taking office.
"Since returning to office," Benavidez wrote, "Mr. Trump and his administration have tried to undermine the First Amendment, suppress information that he and his supporters don't like and hamstring parts of the academic, legal and private sectors through lawsuits and coercion — to flood the zone, as his ally, Steve Bannon, might say. Some examples are well-known, such as when ABC briefly took Jimmy Kimmel off the air after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, objected to a reference in one of Mr. Kimmel's monologues about the killing of Charlie Kirk."
Benavidez concluded, "Other examples received less attention, but by my count, this year there were about 200 instances of administration attempts at censorship, nearly all of which I outline in a new report."
