NPR in three Colorado public radio stations today filed suit against the Trump administration in federal court over the president's executive order targeting NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, also known as CPB.

The order signed earlier this month, bars congressionally approved funds from being distributed to the public media

organizations. The lawsuit contends the president's order is a violation of the first amendment.

We should note that PBS has not joined this lawsuit, but in a statement today said,

PBS is considering every option, including taking legal action to allow our organization to

continue to provide essential

programming and services to member stations and all Americans. Catherine Marr is the president and

CEO of NPR, and she joins us now. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So how precisely

does President Trump's executive order against NPR and PBS violate the First Amendment. What's the case that you're making against

the Trump White House? Well, it's interesting because the executive order is very specific in that

it accuses NPR and PBS of not airing fair or unbiased news. And so it is a textbook example of

viewpoint of viewpoint from a First Amendment standpoint. Essentially, by blocking funding

to NPR and PBS, it is a form of retaliation against our organizations for airing editorial

programming that the president might disagree with. The safeguards for our editorial independence

go very far back. They go back to the Public Broadcasting Act.

It was one of Congress's sort of paramount objectives was to ensure that public media was independent from government influence.

And so you have the editorial safeguards that should exist for our organizations.

But then you also have the member stations.

We have a network of stations

across the country in the case of NPR. That's 246 stations. And the order functionally says that

they can't use their funding, federal or private, to be able to acquire programming for NPR,

to remain NPR members, which is also a violation of their First Amendment rights

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