---
title: "NPR sues Trump over order to cut funding"
description: "☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here! In today’s email: 🔥 Featured story The tensions between President Donald Trump and U.S. public broadcasters continued to play out this week with two major developments:  About a quarter of U.S. adults (24%) say Congress should remove federal funding […]"
date: "2025-05-29"
authors:
  - name: "Emily Tomasik"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/newsletter/the-briefing/npr-sues-trump-over-order-to-cut-funding/"
---

# NPR sues Trump over order to cut funding

**☀️ Happy Thursday!** *The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information*.* [**Sign up here!**](https://www.pewresearch.org/sign-up-for-the-briefing/)*

**In today*’*s email:**

- **Featured story:** NPR sues Trump over order to cut funding

- **New from Pew Research Center: **News influencers on Bluesky

- **In other news:** California, Google reduce their funding to local journalism initiative

- **Looking ahead:** New restrictions on Pentagon press coverage

- **Chart of the week:** More news influencers on Bluesky posted there as first three months of 2025 progressed

🔥 **Featured story**

The tensions between President Donald Trump and U.S. public broadcasters continued to play out this week with two major developments:

- **NPR** [sued the Trump administration](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/27/trump-npr-lawsuit-funding-order.html) over an executive order aimed at cutting all the organization’s federal funding.

- Reports emerged that the executive producer of a **PBS** documentary [pushed to remove a scene critical of Trump](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/arts/television/art-spiegelman-documentary-edited.html). Some see this as part of a recent pattern of media executives trying to [temper coverage of Trump in fear of political retribution](https://www.axios.com/2025/05/27/trump-journalism-pressure).

About a quarter of U.S. adults (24%) say **Congress should remove federal funding from NPR and PBS,** according to a [Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2025](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/26/americans-more-likely-to-support-than-oppose-continuing-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs/). A larger share (43%) say NPR and PBS** should continue to receive funding from the federal government,** while 33% say they are not sure.

Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to regularly get news from NPR and PBS and to trust them as sources of news.

🚨 **New from Pew Research Center**

Last year, we identified a sample of 500 **news influencers** on major social media sites. [A new analysis reexamines this group of influencers](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/05/29/bluesky-has-caught-on-with-many-news-influencers-but-x-remains-popular/) to see how many of them are now on **Bluesky,** which many have described as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter).

The share of news influencers in our 2024 sample with a Bluesky account roughly doubled in the four months after Election Day 2024, from 21% beforehand to 43% by March 2025. Influencers who explicitly identify with the political left are especially likely to be on Bluesky. At the same time, most of these influencers – including left-leaning ones – are also on X and post there frequently.

📌 **In other news**

- **California, Google** [reduce their funding](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/22/californias-google-journalism-deal-00365927) to **local journalism initiative**

- [Press freedom advocacy group threatens to sue](https://www.wired.com/story/freedom-of-the-press-foundation-paramount-trump-settlement/) if **Paramount** settles with **Trump** over 60 Minutes interview

- [FTC investigates Media Matters](https://www.axios.com/2025/05/23/ftc-media-matters) over **ad boycotts** targeting **Elon Musk’s X**

- **Business Insider** [to cut 21% of staff](https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/business-insider-layoffs-shift-toward-ai-live-events-1236412950/) amid shift toward AI and live events

- **The New York Times **and **Amazon **[sign AI licensing deal](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/29/the-new-york-times-and-amazon-ink-ai-licensing-deal/)

- **Washington Post** Tech Guild [votes to form a union](https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/406142/washington-post-tech-workers-vote-to-form-a-unio.html?edition=138576)

- A look at [teen-led local newspaper](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/style/ditch-weekly-montauk-newspaper-hamptons.html) on **Long Island**

- Former **LA Times reporter** [sues Los Angeles County](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-27/former-times-reporter-files-1st-amendment-suit-against-former-sheriff-villanueva-county), alleging violation of **First Amendment rights**

📅 **Looking ahead**

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced new [restrictions on journalists covering the Pentagon](https://www.npr.org/2025/05/24/nx-s1-5410513/defense-sec-hegseth-press-access-pentagon), **banning reporters from many areas of the building **unless they are accompanied by a government escort. While Hegseth said the moves were to protect national security, the Pentagon Press Association [called them](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/23/hegseth-press-access-pentagon-leaks) “a **direct attack on the freedom of the press** and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

Seven-in-ten Americans are at least somewhat concerned about potential restrictions on press freedom, according to a [Center survey conducted earlier this year](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/24/americans-remain-concerned-about-press-freedoms-but-partisan-views-have-flipped-since-2024/). At the time of the survey in February and March, **Americans who had been paying closer attention to news about the actions and initiatives of the Trump administration were more likely to be concerned.** Among those who said they had been following news about the administration very or fairly closely, about half (49%) were extremely or very concerned, compared with 29% of those who had not been closely following such news.

📊 **Chart of the week**

This week, our chart comes from a [new analysis of posting habits by news influencers](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/05/29/bluesky-has-caught-on-with-many-news-influencers-but-x-remains-popular/) on Bluesky and X (formerly Twitter). During the first three months of 2025, an increasing share of news influencers on Bluesky posted on the platform. About half (54%) of news influencers on Bluesky posted there at least once in the first full week of January. This share grew to 66% in the last full week of March.

During the same period, X remained popular but saw a small decline in posting: 92% of news influencers on X posted there in early January, compared with 87% in late March.

![A line chart showing that news influencers increased activity on Bluesky, stayed relatively consistent on X in early 2025.](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/05/SR_25.05.29_bluesky_4.png?resize=420,528)

*👋 That's all for this week. *

The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by Anna Jackson.

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