Undaunted: NPR

"When we see [our] rights infringed upon, we have an obligation to challenge them..."

We have to look beyond politicians these days to find inspiration for the battle to preserve democracy. Dire as this time may feel, there is no shortage of that inspiration, so long as you know where to look.

From Scott Pelley’s graduation speech at Wake Forest: “In this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack…”) to Bruce Springsteen’s appeal, delivered at a concert in Manchester, England: “The America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” artists, journalists, educators, judges, and ordinary Americans have been finding ways to stand up in defense of our Constitutional system. “The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people... you and me,” Springsteen said. “It's in the union of people around a common set of values. Now, that’s all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism.”

Institutions, as well as individuals, are drawing a line in the sand. This week, WilmerHale became the third law firm to succeed in challenging Donald Trump’s noxious attempt to violate the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights of lawyers and candidates, while Harvard continued to battle against the most egregious assault on higher education since the McCarthy era.

In addition, National Republic Radio joined the fight. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Colorado, NPR and several Colorado NPR stations challenged “an Executive Order that violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

At issue is not just the separation of powers (which allocates the power of the purse to Congress) but the First Amendment’s prohibition on viewpoint discrimination:

Congress has for decades promoted, supported and protected from governmental interference the speech of private entities in the public broadcasting system…. In so doing, Congress recognized not only that promoting and supporting public broadcasting serves the public interest, but also that such speech remains private—and thus fully protected from censorship, retaliation or other forms of governmental interference, consistent with the Constitution and our country’s democratic traditions. …

[T]he President—criticizing what he perceives as “bias” in the award-winning journalism and cultural programming produced by NPR—has issued an Executive Order that thwarts Congress’s intent and the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs to be free from the government’s attempts to control their private speech, and their rights to be free from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech, journalistic activities, and expressive association

Once more, Trump and his bellicose MAGA minions have made clear the intent behind an unconstitutional order, namely retaliation. “[T]he ‘Fact Sheet’ and press release accompanying the Order, which echo prior statements by President Trump and members of his Administration, only drive home the Order’s overt retaliatory purpose,” the suit alleges. “They deride NPR’s content as ‘left-wing propaganda,’ and underline the President’s antipathy toward NPR’s news coverage and its editorial choices.”

Frankly, at a time when corporate and billionaire media is laying off journalists, focusing on our previous president’s age rather than the current one’s nuttery, or wasting time speculating on the future of the Democratic Party’s 2028 pick, NPR remains one of the best fact-based sources of information for all Americans. Which is precisely why Trump wants to disable it.

“We are not choosing to do this out of politics. We are choosing to do this as a matter of necessity and principle,” said NPR CEO and president Katherine Maher. “All of our rights that we enjoy in this democracy flow from the First Amendment: freedom of speech, association, freedom of the press. When we see those rights infringed upon, we have an obligation to challenge them. And that’s what’s at stake here.”

NPR was savvy in selecting acclaimed litigator Ted Boutrous to represent it. He stressed that the Trump crew made it easy to sue by being so brazen about its motives. Michel Martin, one of the brilliant NPR veteran journalists, asked Boutrous about a sentence in the lawsuit declaring, “This wolf comes as a wolf.” He replied:

It’s so obvious. And usually, government will sort of try to hide what it's doing. If it’s trying to censor, it will say, we’re doing it for some other purpose. But here, the executive order and statements by the administration before and after the executive order say things like, NPR is woke. NPR is biased. It's the arm of a political party. All of that is false. They just don't like the content, which is fine. The government officials—everyone has the right to say, I don’t like this content. I’m going to read something or listen to something else. But here, on its face, explicitly, the executive order is a wolf. It’s a censoring mechanism meant to control and interfere with NPR’s content and the local stations who subscribe to and license NPR content, who would be barred from doing that by this denial of funding by the executive order if it were to go into effect.

In its sustained effort to present high-quality news, risk the MAGA wrath by suing, and helping educate the American people about the centrality of the First Amendment, NPR showed itself to be an undaunted champion of the free press, and thereby, of our democracy. Although, as Pelley put it, “Power can rewrite history, with grotesque, false narratives. They can make criminals heroes, and heroes criminals,” people of conscience can also turn the world right-side up and restore our moral order. We salute NPR for making motions in that direction, and reminding us who are the true heroes.