NPR CEO Katherine Maher once called the First Amendment the "number one challenge" in fighting disinformation.
Now the woman who called the First Amendment the enemy of truth is celebrating it as her shield.
And Katherine Maher celebrated an Obama judge’s decision to block Trump’s defunding of NPR.
Trump Executive Order to Defund NPR and PBS Blocked by Federal Judge
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss – an Obama appointee – issued a permanent injunction Tuesday blocking Trump's executive order to cut all federal funding to NPR and PBS.
Congress already voted to defund them.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funneled federal dollars to both networks for decades, shut its doors in January 2026.
None of that mattered to Judge Moss.
He ruled Trump's executive order violated the First Amendment by targeting NPR and PBS for their "viewpoints" – the left-wing viewpoints every conservative in America has watched them push for 30 years with taxpayer money.
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The White House didn't mince words.
"This is a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge attempting to undermine the law," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital. "NPR and PBS have no right to receive taxpayer funds, and Congress already voted to defund them."
She's right on both counts.
Trump's executive order – signed May 1, 2025 – cut Education Department grants to PBS that funded children's programming and barred all federal agencies from routing any money to either network.
Judge Moss said that went too far.
He acknowledged Congress had already rescinded the direct appropriations through the CPB.
But he ruled the broader executive order – covering grants from any federal agency – crossed a constitutional line because it singled out NPR and PBS based on their speech.
"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," Moss wrote.
NPR CEO Katherine Maher Has a History of Calling the First Amendment a Problem
Here's what your media won't tell you.
Katherine Maher – the NPR CEO now celebrating this First Amendment victory – spent years treating the First Amendment as an obstacle.
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In 2021, Maher told the Atlantic Council that the First Amendment was the "number one challenge" in fighting what she called disinformation.
She dismissed the idea of objective truth as a relic getting in the way of fighting disinformation.
When Trump was deplatformed from social media in 2020, Maher posted online about the satisfaction of deplatforming what she called fascists.
She openly worked to "get out the vote" in Arizona for Joe Biden.
She called Trump a "deranged racist sociopath."
When longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner published an essay exposing NPR's liberal groupthink – Berliner had worked there 25 years – Maher suspended him without pay.
He resigned days later.
Now this same woman stood before the cameras Tuesday and declared Judge Moss's ruling "a win for a free and independent press."
The same press she spent years trying to control through government censorship partnerships.
The same free speech principles she called a challenge to overcome.
Congress saw through it.
Republicans rescinded $1.1 billion in future funding on a party-line vote last July – money previously appropriated for public broadcasting.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was direct: "This is, in our view, the misuse of taxpayer dollars. They're not objective. They pretend to be so."
NPR Taxpayer Funding Is Still Gone Despite the Ruling
Here's the reality behind the victory lap.
The CPB is gone – dissolved by its own board in January 2026.
Over 100 local NPR and PBS stations face eventual closure without federal support.
Even the judge acknowledged the ruling's practical effect was uncertain – both because it will be appealed and because the structural damage is already done.
The billions are still gone.
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What Maher actually won is the right to apply for smaller agency grants – not the $535 million annual appropriation that kept the whole system alive, which no federal court is giving back.
The administration has made clear it will fight this to the finish.
The Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, is the ultimate destination for this case.
And a court that has repeatedly expanded presidential authority over the executive branch is unlikely to look kindly at a lower court telling the president he cannot enforce viewpoint-neutral funding restrictions on two of his most outspoken institutional critics.
Katherine Maher called this ruling a win for a free press.
What she actually got was a temporary shield – handed to her by an Obama judge – before a much harder fight in courts that won't be as sympathetic.
Sources:
- Louis Casiano and Bill Mears, "Federal judge blocks Trump executive order to cease funding for NPR and PBS, cites First Amendment," Fox News, March 31, 2026.
- Christopher Rufo, "Quotations from Chairman Maher," City Journal, April 17, 2024.
- Christopher Rufo, "Ten Questions for Katherine Maher," City Journal, March 26, 2025.
