President Donald Trump opened up a new front in his assault on public media on Monday, asserting that he was removing three of the five board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The corporation sued Trump on Tuesday morning in response, pointing to federal law and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to argue that he does not have the power to take these actions.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss set a court hearing for Tuesday afternoon to take up the CPB's motion for a temporary restraining order preventing Trump's decree from taking effect.
"As numerous courts have repeatedly affirmed, the Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a comment emailed to NPR. "The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue."
The CPB distributes more than $500 million annually to public broadcasters, primarily to local television and radio stations. PBS and its stations each receive, on average, 15% of their revenues from the corporation; NPR stations receive 10% of their funds from the CPB while NPR itself receives about 1% directly from CPB. (NPR receives a bit more indirectly because local member stations pay NPR for the right to air its programs.)
Under the law that created CPB more than five decades ago, the president has the authority to appoint members of its board, in consultation with Senate leaders of both parties.
The law does not, however, establish any authority for a president to remove them. As the CPB lawsuit notes, that law does not include the clause common to U.S. government agencies that its board members "serve at the pleasure of the President."
Indeed, the law specifically states that the CPB "will not be an agency or establishment of the United States Government" and sets up a series of measures intended to "afford the maximum protection from extraneous interference and control."
The board members targeted by Trump are Tom Rothman and Diane Kaplan – both appointees of former President Joe Biden – and Laura Gore Ross, who was appointed to the board by Trump in his first term and then reappointed by Biden.
"Not a federal agency"
In recent weeks, the Trump administration similarly took control of the boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Trump appointed himself chairman of the former and shut down the latter. The two organizations are hybrids — duck-billed platypuses of Washington fauna: The Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership; the peace institute an independent nonprofit corporation with the secretaries of defense and state as board members by virtue of their offices.
In a statement, CPB says, "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is not a government entity, and its board members are not government officers. Because CPB is not a federal agency subject to the President's authority, but rather a private corporation, we have filed a lawsuit to block these firings."
In its lawsuit, CPB's legal team cites the statute authorizing CPB, which specifically states that no officers or employees of the U.S. government can serve on the board – and no board member can be considered a federal employee.
Trump's sweeping actions to remake the federal government and workforce have inspired a raft of litigation. Along with many wins, the White House has been handed numerous defeats in court, among them cases filed by law firms objecting to executive orders and staffers of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia seeking to reinstate funding for their networks.
A chilling effect
Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck says the CPB's lawsuit "has legs."
But he adds a warning to those who oppose Trump's actions:
"The Trump administration is not trying to win all these lawsuits," Vladeck says. "A lot of its behavior is patently unlawful. And a lot of its behavior will not survive litigation. But it's nevertheless designed to intimidate, to chill, to shift the conversation, to consume the oxygen."
Trump's assault on public broadcasting is part of his broader war on the media, which encompasses his own private lawsuits, regulatory pressures, restrictions on journalists' access, mass cancellation of news subscriptions used by federal agencies, scaling back protections against prosecutors' investigations of reporters and more.
In an interview with the Atlantic published this week, Trump praised Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who killed a drafted presidential endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris last fall and reshaped his opinion pages away from its criticisms of Trump.
"He's 100 percent. He's been great," Trump said of Bezos.
More broadly, Trump has targeted independent institutions that often serve as a platform for critical voices, which include non-profits, foundations, and universities.
Public media, because of the taxpayer subsidy, hits a rhetorical sweet spot for the president.
In a recent U.S. House subcommittee hearing, the president's conservative allies sought to portray public media as a plaything for liberals and Democrats. Yet the CPB chief executive now suing Trump, Patricia de Stacy Harrison, is a former co-chairperson of the Republican National Committee and State Department official under President George W. Bush.
A two-line email
News of the president's intent arrived Monday evening in an email to the three board members from Trent Morse, the deputy White House director of presidential personnel for the executive office of the president.
It read, in full: "On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service."
As the CPB noted in its legal filing, the message did not state the authority Trump was invoking to fire them.
A vow to take back funding
The White House's email to the CPB board members dovetails with Trump's efforts to shut down the corporation altogether. He has said that he will ask Congress to claw back the $1.1 billion it has already granted to support the nation's public broadcasters through September 2027.
Once they receive a formal request, the U.S. House and Senate would each have to affirm the withdrawal of those funds — called a "rescission" — by a simple majority within 45 days for it to take effect. While Republicans who control each chamber have publicly signaled support, it is not clear whether they have enough support within their own ranks to do so. Congressional leaders say they have not yet received the request.
Congress's decision to authorize money for CPB for two years at a time was a further effort to insulate the corporation, and public media more generally, from political pressures; a 1975 House Committee report said the advance funding would "go a long way toward eliminating both the risk of and the appearance of undue interference with and control of public broadcasting."
Other government pressures on public media
Trump has used other levers of government to exert pressure on public media. On social media, he has repeatedly pounded NPR and PBS to contend they should receive no taxpayer funds.
His chief broadcasting regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, has opened up a formal investigation into NPR and PBS stations and the networks' practices for running underwriting spots for corporate sponsors. He says they are indistinguishable from commercials; NPR and PBS and public media stations say they closely adhere to the guidance they have received from commission staffers over the course of decades as they have been encouraged to broaden their revenue streams beyond public coffers.
The investigation carries implications, however, as Carr's agency oversees who is granted licenses to broadcast on the airwaves — and who can beam their signals using the desired noncommercial range of terrestrial broadcasting frequencies.
The chapter on media in The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term — disavowed by the president on the campaign trail and closely followed by his aides once back in office — calls for NPR, PBS and public media stations to be "shorn" of their noncommercial status.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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