When NPR sued Donald Trump Tuesday, it had an easy argument to go with. Normally, in First Amendment retaliation cases against the government, you have to pull together a bunch of disparate strands to prove the retaliatory intent of the actions. But as NPR noted in its filing, and as Justice Scalia once wrote about obvious constitutional violations: “this wolf comes as a wolf.”
Trump’s executive order cutting public media funding doesn’t even pretend to hide its retaliatory nature — it literally calls NPR and PBS “biased media” in the title.
Republicans have been gunning for public media for decades, but historically, every time Congress tries to cut funding, outcry from their constituents is so overwhelming that nothing ever happens. It turns out tons of people (including Republican voters) actually like NPR and PBS. But Trump skipped Congress entirely and simply declared that public media wouldn’t be receiving any more federal funding — because he thinks their coverage hurts his feelings.
The money is not their main driving goal, they know, or realize that Trump can shaft them on the payments.
What they do think they’ll gain is to be seen as a legal force to be reckoned with.
It does not matter if their legal strategy is a twisted mess of lies and wrong assumptions, they see trump controlling the courts and any win he is given by a corrupt judge reflects on them as a pure win on the case. And that is something they can wear as a badge while he is in office.
They also just bet on this regime sticking around for a long time so they can clutch to their status for quite a while, perhaps it leads to some lucrative advisory contracts down the line.