PBS sued President Trump on Friday to keep his executive order to end its federal funding from taking effect, calling the government's action unconstitutional. The suit filed in US District Court in Washington contends that the Trump administration violated the public broadcaster's First Amendment rights and the law that established the nonprofit that oversees federal funding of PBS and NPR, the Washington Post reports. NPR filed a similar lawsuit on Tuesday.
"The executive order makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is cutting off the flow of funds to PBS because of the content of PBS programming and out of a desire to alter the content of speech," the PBS suit says, per the New York Times. "That is blatant viewpoint discrimination." Trump's order accused PBS and NPR of being "biased and partisan." The filing argues that federal law prohibits the president "from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS's programming." A station that serves viewers in rural Minnesota, Lakeland PBS, joined the suit, per the AP. The station described Trump's order in the filing as an "existential threat."
Content dispute: In its objections to PBS programming, the White House cited a 2017 panel discussion about "white privilege," a 2020 Sesame Street town hall to discuss racism during the Black Lives Matter protests, and the appearance of a drag queen in a 2021 children's show, per Variety. The lawsuit says, "PBS disputes those examples and assertions as inaccurate—and misrepresentative of the variety of PBS programming." (In a congressional hearing, Democrats sarcastically addressed the political agendas of Sesame Street characters.)
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