Judge invalidates Trump executive order, but Congress also cut off all funding.
A federal judge ruled that Trump’s executive order defunding NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment and issued a permanent injunction stating that executive branch agencies cannot enforce it.
The Trump order’s “instruction that all federal agencies stop funding NPR and PBS constitutes a penalty for engaging in speech disfavored by the President and cannot be lawfully implemented by any executive department or agency,” Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama appointee in US District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled yesterday.
The ruling against Trump in the case filed by NPR, PBS, and several stations may not have much practical impact. Trump’s May 2025 executive order was followed by Congress rescinding the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) budget of $1.1 billion for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
It’s also written by people in an agrarian culture so different than our culture today. The fact that it is still relevant at all is amazing. Like this is around the time germ theory was first proposed. Imagine if we still relied on a single document as the guiding principle for medicine established before germ theory was widely accepted.
There are faults with the founding fathers and their documents, but it amazes me how well the constitution has endured, not as an important document, but as a relevant document addressing issues we have today.