First Amendment

Shuttering the Corporation for 

Public Broadcasting Will Undermine

Democracy, Endanger Communities

    WASHINGTON — (FreePress) -- 8-5-2025 -- On Aug. 1 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it would shut down operations later this year. The move follows Congress’ mid-July decision to claw back $1.1 billion in funding from the previously approved federal budget for the corporation, which provides federal support for the operations and programming at hundreds of NPR and PBS affiliates across the country.

    CPB has reportedly told its employees that a majority of positions will be eliminated on Sept. 30 with a small transition team staying on through January 2026. “We now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement.

    Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But the congressional vote, which was prompted by a rescission request from the Trump White House, marks the first time they’ve succeeded. Past efforts ran up against an outspoken public — including people of every political persuasion — who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.

    Hardest hit by the closure of CPB will be smaller and rural stations, some of which receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the federal government.

    Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron:

    “The shuttering of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — and the many dedicated public servants losing their jobs — is devastating for this country. It puts vital outlets in communities all across the country in jeopardy and endangers essential educational programs, news coverage, and life-saving emergency alerts. The ripples will be felt far beyond Washington, D.C..

    “The end of CPB is the direct result of the deep and corrupt failure of Congress and the Trump administration to invest in informing the American public. They have trashed decades of democracy-building work and will deny many journalists, artists, educators and creators the opportunity to be heard. The cost of their decisions is almost incalculable in terms of lost opportunities, untold stories, closed minds — and yes, the lives of people who won’t know about the next earthquake, wildfire or tsunami before it’s too late.

    “Public broadcasting is far from perfect, and for too many years the leadership of institutions like CPB, NPR and PBS have tried too hard to placate the politicians who were committed to their destruction. Despite incredible popularity — and even greater public need — the public media system has been starved and sidelined by partisan attacks and poor choices. But the promise of public media is still worth fighting for, and so are the many journalists, producers, engineers and employees who have committed their careers to these institutions and produced incredible work under trying circumstances.”

    “But this is about far more than one government agency or the embarrassingly low public investment the United States makes in public media compared to the rest of the world. The elimination of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting is about trying to end accountability, pump out propaganda, and sow the kind of chaos and disinformation under which authoritarianism thrives. We won’t stop that march with pledge drives and tote bags.

    “It will take years of organizing to rebuild what the Trump regime has demolished in six months. And that will require a vision that goes far beyond what we lost today — one that doesn’t just replace what’s been lost but reinvents public media as a bulwark against authoritarianism that meets the civic needs of all our communities. This is about fighting for democracy and recognizing that if we don’t keep fighting we stand to lose a lot more than this.”

Background:

    In February, Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the Trump administration’s censorship of media viewpoints the president dislikes, calling it a “free-speech emergency.” In May 2024, he testified about false claims of bias at NPR and PBS. Free Press Action is leading grassroots efforts to craft public policy that supports local noncommercial news and information.

Free Speech

Oklahoma Supreme Court Decision

Called a Win for Academic Speech

    OKLAHOMA CITY (ACLU) -- 6/18/2025 -- The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled on July 17 that the state’s 2021 classroom censorship law does not apply to academic speech in higher education. The decision also leaves in place a preliminary injunction that prevents the enforcement of vague and borderline nonsensical prohibitions on instruction in K-12 schools. The suit was originally filed in 2021 on behalf of a diverse group of plaintiffs in K-12 and higher education.

    “Almost four years since the initial filing, students and professors at Oklahoma’s universities and colleges have a clear answer: HB 1775 does not apply in Oklahoma’s higher education classrooms,” said Adam Hines, legal fellow at the ACLU of Oklahoma. “For far too long our educators have felt the impact of HB 1775 and its attempt to censor discussions about race and gender in the classroom. But the government is certain to appeal this victory, and parts of HB 1775 remain in effect in K-12 schools. We will continue to fight for the rights of Oklahoma’s K-12 students and families to receive an equitable education where they can freely learn and talk about the history, experiences and viewpoints of all marginalized communities in this country.”

    Last year, a lower court also blocked the enforcement of two provisions restricting K-12 instruction because they are vague, fail to let educators know what course material is prohibited, and could prevent discussions of a wide variety of ideas, including those that are the subject to current political debates. These provisions remain enjoined. The state Supreme Court did not weigh in on the constitutionality of any of the provisions.

    “This decision provides needed clarity to Oklahoma’s higher education instructors, and we are pleased with the outcome,” said Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Students in higher education expect to be challenged and to debate difficult ideas, and they expect their instructors to help them learn and grow – not stick to government-approved talking points.”

    The lead authors of the law in the state House and Senate declared the intent behind HB 1775 was to prohibit conversations related to “implicit bias,” “systemic racism,” and “intersectionality,” among other concepts. In the lawsuit, the groups argue that HB 1775 unlawfully silenced students’ and educators’ speech through its vague and overbroad terms. It also intentionally targeted and denied access to equitable, culturally relevant teaching and ideas that reflect the history and lived experiences of students of color, LGBTQ students, and young women and girls.

    The case will now go back to federal court where a partial preliminary injunction is in place. Cross-appeals have been filed in the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit which are expected to proceed shortly.

    “This ruling is another significant victory in the fight to end classroom censorship in Oklahoma” said Douglas Koff, partner at pro-bono cocounsel Schulte Roth & Zabel. “By confirming that HB 1775 does not apply to the higher education classroom, this decision allows Oklahoma’s college students and professors to have open and honest conversations about their history. We look forward to working alongside the ACLU, ACLU-OK, and Lawyers’ Committee in the continued fight to invalidate this law.”

    “Today's decision ensures that at colleges and universities in Oklahoma, teachers can teach and students can learn about our country's history in full – including topics like systemic racism, gender inequality and LGBTQ+ rights,” said Maya Brodziak, senior counsel with the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Our country needs to acknowledge and reckon with its history of systemic racism — this includes being able to teach and talk about these concepts in our schools. A prohibition on talking honestly about issues of race and racism hurts all students and society.”

    The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Oklahoma, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and pro bono counsel Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP on behalf of plaintiffs the Black Emergency Response Team (BERT); the University of Oklahoma Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (OU-AAUP); the Oklahoma State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP-OK); the American Indian Movement (AIM) Indian Territory on behalf of itself and its members who are public school students and teachers; a high school student; and Oklahoma public high school teachers Anthony Crawford and Regan Killackey.

    For more information about the lawsuit, please see here.

Press Freedom

Court Urged to Unseal 

Documents Related 

to FBI Raid on Journalist

    TAMPA, Fla. (ACLU) - Jan. 6, 2024 - The American Civil Liberties, the ACLU of Florida, and their partners filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Jan. 2 in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that a search warrant authorizing a raid on Florida journalist Tim Burke’s home should be unsealed to preserve press freedoms and increase transparency. The ACLU previously joined more than 50 organizations to send a letter to the Department of Justice demanding transparency about how the government believes Burke’s newsgathering broke the law.

    “The First Amendment protects the vital role journalism plays in keeping powerful institutions accountable to the public. But it appears that the government is interpreting computer crime laws in a dangerously overbroad manner — despite Supreme Court case law warning against this kind of overreach. This is both impermissible and unwise,” said Jennifer Stisa Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

    The FBI raided Burke’s home after he obtained outtakes of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) where Ye made antisemitic and other offensive remarks. The investigation, according to court filings, involves alleged violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, and a federal wiretapping law. The CFAA is the federal anti-hacking law that prohibits unauthorized access to a computer. But Burke says he got the outtakes from websites where Fox News uploaded unencrypted live streams to URLs anyone could access, using publicly accessible login credentials.

    The brief argues that the meager information available about the government’s investigation of Burke chills newsgathering by generating fear that journalists will be prosecuted for First Amendment-protected activity. Importantly, the brief also calls on the government to return seized materials that are not related to the case, and to allow access to materials that enable Burke to fulfill his newsgathering function. It does not appear that the government has taken Burke’s newsgathering activities into account in conducting this investigation. That failure demonstrates “callous disregard” for Burke’s First Amendment rights.

    “A key function of the press is to report news that might embarrass powerful people and companies,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “If Burke is being investigated for locating and publicizing publicly available interview outtakes merely because Fox News would’ve preferred the footage remain secret, that poses serious First Amendment problems. Countless other journalists who use the internet to find news need to know whether the government believes they’re breaking the law by doing their jobs.”

    The brief also takes issue with prosecutors’ suggestions that Burke is not actually a journalist, in part because he did not work for an established news outlet at the time he obtained the outtakes. Burke has a long history in journalism. Unsealing the search warrant and any additional documents related to the raid will confirm whether the court was informed that Burke was a journalist — and whether the government considered him to be one. Federal policy requires that the government provide journalists notice before any search of their newsgathering materials or work product occurs, and no such notice was given to Burke.

    The organizations submitting the brief raise concerns — and demand answers — regarding whether the government’s apparent belief that Burke was not a journalist led it to eschew procedures for searches of journalists’ newsgathering materials required under the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 and the DOJ’s own policies. Those policies were revised last year to better protect journalists’ rights in light of Trump-era abuses.

Related Documents

• TIMOTHY BURKE v. UNITED STATES -- Amicus Brief