NPR Hits Trump With Major Lawsuit That Goes Beyond First Amendment

NPR is suing President Trump. 

National Public Radio and three local Colorado affiliates filed a suit Tuesday morning against the president on the grounds that his executive order to cut the organization off from federal funding is a violation of free speech rights—and an attempt to usurp Congress’s power of appropriating federal funding. 

Trump’s  May order barred the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a congressionally authorized private corporation, from sending funds to NPR and PBS. 

“The Executive Order is a clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press,” said NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher.

Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, and KSUT are the other represented stations on the suit. 

Trump has been attacking NPR and other liberal media institutions for some time now, pushing the tried and true conservative narrative that the network is a propaganda arm of the U.S. left. 

“NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote in March. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

This story has been updated.

Incredibly unsurprising news: The people who paid millions of dollars to get into Trump’s lavish cryptocurrency dinner did so to directly influence the president’s financial policy in their favor.

“I will definitely not hesitate to share my perspective,” Vincent Liu, CIO of Taiwanese-based crypto firm Kronos Research, who bought enough of Trump’s crypto to attend the dinner Thursday night, told The New York Times. “It’s great to see the current direction that everything’s going.”

“It’s kind of a fund-raiser” for Mr. Trump, Korean crypto executive Sangrok Oh and another dinner attendee, told the Times. “And he’ll always be good to his sponsors.”

The dinner was held at Trump’s private golf club in northern Virginia on Thursday evening for the top 220 holders of the president’s meme coin cryptocurrency—after an auction that brought in $147,586,796.41. Protesters lined the entrance to the building, chanting “Shame, shame, shame!” and holding up signs while attendees arrived.

The event was promoted as the “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world,” according to an email. While the top 220 buyers got into the gala, the top 25 buyers received a much more personal, “ultra-exclusive private VIP reception” and “Special VIP Tour” with Trump, allowing them unfettered access to the president.

There were also some other high-profile attendees there (with much smaller pockets than the likes of Liu and Oh). Embattled former NBA player and reality TV star Lamar Odom posted a video on X of himself walking into the event while boos and jeers rained down on him from the crowd.

“I’m just about to pass through security and officially walk into the Trump Gala.

Honestly … I’m fired up. Think about it—what meme coin has ever done this?” Odom wrote on X, plugging his own meme coin, as well. “$ODOM isn’t just a token, it’s taking the stage at a presidential gala tonight!”

Trump’s cryptocurrency has been widely condemned as a blatant conflict of interest that completely blurs the lines between executive power and private business.

“Donald Trump’s dinner is an orgy of corruption. That’s what this is all about,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said that evening. “Donald Trump is using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto, and he’s doing it right out there in plain sight. He is signaling to anyone who wants to ask for a special favor—and is willing to pay for it—exactly how to do that.

Crypto-investors anonymously shelled out a total $148 million to purchase access to Donald Trump, but all they got was a low-quality steak.

Guests at Trump’s supposedly “intimate” gala for the 220 top buyers of the $TRUMP memecoin gathered at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia Thursday night, hoping for a little facetime with the president. But they were left entirely unsatisfied.

Nicholas Pinto, a 25-year-old social media influencer who spent a whopping $360,000 on the president’s memecoin, told Fortune that he was distinctly underwhelmed by the affair.

Trump, rather than cozy up to his guests, gave an address to the room that was “pretty much like bullshit,” Pinto said. Most guests struggled to get any face time with the president, according to Pinto. The event’s host Caitlin Sinclair, an anchor at OANN, said that she didn’t even get a picture with the commander-in-chief, Pinto recalled.

Christoph Heuermann, who shared a series of photographs from the event on his Instagram page, wrote that Trump gave a brief 20-minute speech “and didn’t interact with the crowd other than enjoying being celebrated.”

Only the 25 biggest investors were given access to a small VIP reception with Trump. The rest were left with only their halibut or filet mignon.

During the banquet, Pinto texted Fortune to say that the food was “trash.”

“Walmart steak, man,” he wrote.

Guests reportedly included the coin’s top buyer Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron, and former Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that a list of attendees would not be made public because the president was attending the event off-the-clock—which doesn’t even begin to resolve the conflicts of interest issues at play for the president of the United States.

On average, each person had spent roughly $1.8 million on the president’s meme coin, in what many critics have called a blatant pay-for-access scheme.

Days after the president signed a bill focused on curbing revenge porn, Nancy Mace’s former political adviser has accused the South Carolina lawmaker of displaying nude photos taken by her ex-fiancé to extort two properties out of him.

In an April deposition tied to a Charleston County civil case, veteran strategist Wesley Donehue said that Mace intended “to use all the information that she found as leverage to gain 100 percent ownership” of homes the former couple had in Washington and South Carolina’s Isle of Palms.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, Mace showcased what she described as her “naked silhouette” from a video taken by Patrick Bryant without her consent. Mace said that in 2023, she discovered a trove of hidden-camera nude images of women that she claimed were taken by Byrant, also without those women’s consent. Mace displayed some of the images of the other women in the hearing, though she said she had gotten permission from them to do so.

Citing the example of her ex-lover, Mace encouraged the committee to pass two pieces of legislation she introduced in February centered on further prohibiting “video voyeurism” and expanding a “civil right of action for victims.”

In a statement, Bryant denied Mace’s “false and outrageous claims,” specifying that he had not raped or harmed anyone and that he had “never hidden cameras.”

“My mistake was loving and trusting someone who later weaponized our relationship,” Bryant wrote.

“Nancy Mace made these claims only while standing in Congress, purportedly shielded by legal immunity,” the Charleston-area businessman continued. “If she believed them to be true and there was evidence to support her accusations, she would say them outside the chamber—away from her public role and protections and pursue them through proper legal channels. She has not done so, because she cannot.”

And Donehue—per an 81-page deposition—appeared squarely against Mace’s record of events.

“I don’t believe a word that comes out of Nancy Mace’s mouth about anything,” said Donehue, who claimed to have known Mace for years. Donehue further painted Mace as an individual keen to play the “victim card” in order to get what she wants. “And that has nothing to do with this specific incident. I just believe that Nancy Mace will say and do anything for personal and political gain.”

From Donehue’s perspective, the photos on Bryant’s phone became an issue when Mace discovered he had dating apps downloaded, prompting concerns that the entrepreneur was cheating on her.

“Nancy talks about her sex life in a way that I’ve never heard a client or a woman talk,” he continued. “It’s like every conversation would devolve into what’s going on in her sex life.”

A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students. 

In a brief filing Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order preventing the Department of Homeland Security from revoking the university’s Student Exchange Visa Program certification. 

Harvard had filed a lawsuit earlier Friday seeking the order, following the DHS announcement from the previous day that the university “can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.” International students make up about a quarter of Harvard’s student body.

Harvard, which has long been the target of the Trump administration, slammed the DHS’s  “unlawful and unwarranted action” in its Friday lawsuit, calling the move a “blatant violation” of the law.

In a separate ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in California barred the government from changing international students’ legal status until cases challenging previous visa revocations are resolved. He said that the government’s actions had “wreaked havoc not only on the lives of Plaintiffs here but on similarly situated F-1 nonimmigrants across the United States and continues do so.”

The Trump administration sought to bar all international students on F- or J- nonimmigrant visas from enrolling in Harvard for the 2025–2026 academic year, including those already pursuing a degree at the school. In a statement, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Noem claimed that the university had created an unsafe environment by failing to shutter pro-Palestinian speech, and alleged that they’d collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party.

Noem has claimed that Harvard can avoid the ban on future foreign student enrollment by agreeing to dox all of its current foreign students to the Trump administration. 

These international students have found themselves in the crosshairs of the government’s simultaneous crackdowns on immigration and free speech, as well as the president’s ongoing vendetta against the Ivy League institution.

This story has been updated.