This Ruling Is Judicial Activism at Its Worst
An Obama-appointed federal judge in Washington stepped in today and told President Trump he cannot cut off the federal spigot to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. Judge Randolph Moss ruled that Trump’s executive order directing every federal agency to stop funding NPR and PBS violates the First Amendment because it amounts to illegal viewpoint discrimination. The order, issued last May, called out these outlets for their blatant bias and ordered the money flow shut down. Moss said no. He permanently blocked it, claiming the government cannot punish or suppress speech it dislikes by withholding the public purse. This decision is not some neutral application of the law. It is a naked power play to keep taxpayer dollars flowing to outlets that have spent years attacking Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular with one-sided drivel, half-truths, and outright falsehoods.
The Ruling That Landed Just Hours Ago
Moss, sitting on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, made it official this afternoon. He declared the executive order unlawful and unenforceable. His reasoning boiled down to this: the First Amendment does not allow the government to single out speakers based on their past expression and bar them from all federally funded programs. He wrote that it was “difficult to conceive of clearer evidence” that the order targeted viewpoints the President dislikes. The message, according to Moss, was that NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because their coverage leans left and criticizes the administration.
This came after Trump’s order explicitly aimed to end the subsidies once and for all. Congress had already yanked over a billion dollars in prior appropriations last summer, forcing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to start winding down operations by January. But the executive order went further, trying to slam the door on any remaining federal support. NPR and PBS sued, and Moss sided with them. The operational impact remains murky because the funding tap had already been largely turned off, but the ruling keeps the legal fiction alive that these outlets deserve continued protection from any real consequences for their content.
🚨 BREAKING: An Obama judge has just BLOCKED President Trump from defunding NPR and PBS via executive order
But PBS and NPR won’t be celebrating, because Congress ALSO pulled their funding
So they’ll continuing circling the drain 🤣🔥 pic.twitter.com/MmPldesemW
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) March 31, 2026
The First Amendment Twist That Ignores Basic Reality
Moss hung his entire decision on the idea that defunding equals retaliation against protected speech. He claimed the order crossed a line the government may not cross when it uses the power of the purse to punish disfavored expression. On paper, the First Amendment bars the government from suppressing speech. It does not, however, require the government to subsidize it. Especially not when that speech is not neutral, not balanced, and not in the public interest. Taxpayers have no constitutional duty to finance outlets that function as an extension of one political party’s messaging machine.
The ruling pretends that NPR and PBS are just innocent journalists exercising free speech. That is laughable. Year after year, their coverage has been a relentless assault on conservative ideas, Republican leaders, and Trump specifically. Stories framed every policy disagreement as a threat to democracy. Every border enforcement move became cruelty. Every economic win got buried under doom-and-gloom predictions that never materialized. Internal admissions from their own ranks have shown editorial staffs stacked overwhelmingly with one ideological bent, producing content that treats conservative viewpoints as fringe or dangerous. Untruths and selective omissions piled up while they collected hundreds of millions in taxpayer support.
The First Amendment protects the right to speak. It does not protect the right to a government grant while you speak. Private media outlets survive or fail on their merits and their audiences. Public broadcasting was sold to the country decades ago as a neutral, educational service. It long ago abandoned that mission for activism dressed up as journalism. Moss’s decision pretends otherwise because admitting the truth would mean admitting that the government has every right to stop writing checks to its critics.
The Bias That Makes Continued Funding an Insult to Every Taxpayer
No one with eyes and ears can deny the pattern. NPR and PBS have operated for years as reliable amplifiers for progressive causes while hammering Republicans with loaded language and one-sided narratives. Coverage of Trump ranged from breathless hysteria to outright contempt. Stories on immigration, energy, crime, and foreign policy consistently tilted hard left, ignoring or downplaying facts that contradicted the narrative. Viewers and listeners who tuned in for “public” broadcasting got something closer to partisan propaganda funded by their own tax dollars.
This is not viewpoint neutrality. It is viewpoint monopoly. When an outlet spends its airtime attacking one side of the political aisle with near-religious fervor while soft-pedaling or ignoring the other, it forfeits any claim to public subsidy. The American people did not consent to their hard-earned money bankrolling outfits that treat them and their elected leaders as the enemy. The overwhelming leftist tilt, the constant attacks, the obvious untruths—these are not abstract complaints. They are the daily product that taxpayers have been forced to purchase.
America First Means No More Subsidizing the Propaganda Machine
The question is simple: are we still obligated to spend taxpayer funds on this drivel? The answer is no. Not one dime. The First Amendment does not create a constitutional right to public funding for biased media. It protects speech from government censorship. It does not protect speech from the consequences of losing public support. Congress already moved to cut the funding last year. The executive order tried to finish the job. One Obama-appointed judge in one courtroom does not get the final word on how Americans spend their own money.
This ruling will be appealed. It should be overturned. And even if it stands in the short term, the larger point remains: public broadcasting as currently constituted has no legitimate claim on the federal treasury. Let them survive on voluntary donations, corporate sponsorships, and whatever audience they can actually earn without the crutch of taxpayer support. If their content is as valuable as they claim, the market will sustain them. If not, they fade away like any other failing enterprise.
The American people voted for fiscal sanity and an end to subsidizing institutions that despise them. Judge Moss just tried to overrule that verdict from the bench. He cannot. Taxpayers are not obligated to keep writing checks to outlets that have proven, time and again, they cannot be trusted with the public trust. Defund them. Completely. Permanently. The country will be better off the day the last federal dollar stops flowing to NPR and PBS.