Public Media Cuts, Waltz Out As National Security Advisor, Alien Enemies Act Ruling
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A new executive order is trying to stop federal funding to PBS and NPR. It's the latest attack on public media. What happens to local stations in news deserts if the money dries up? I'm Laila Faldil, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is leaving the White House. He's nominated for a new job as U.N. ambassador. Is it a promotion or a punishment for Signalgate? And a federal judge in Texas dealt a major blow to the president's efforts to deport non-citizens. This decision protects everyone who's detained in the Southern District.

of Texas, it means that they cannot be removed anywhere under the Alien Enemies Act, much less to a brutal Salvadoran prison. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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Late last night, President Trump issued an executive order that attempts to end federal funding for NPR and PBS, accusing the organizations of political bias. It's the latest in a string of attacks on public media by the administration and Republican leaders in Congress.

The move bans direct federal funding for the public broadcasters. It also bans local public radio and television stations from using taxpayer dollars to support them. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR executive reviewed the story before it airs. With us to talk about all of this is NPR's Ryland Barton. Hi, Ryland.

Hi, Leila. So tell us exactly how Trump is trying to defund NPR and PBS through this executive order. Well, Trump is directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, to stop sending money to NPR and PBS, saying that federal funding should not support what he calls biased and partisan news coverage.

NPR and PBS have repeatedly said they are fair in their coverage. CPP is this independent nonprofit created by Congress in 1967 to partially fund public broadcasters. And currently NPR receives about 1% of its funding directly from CPP and PBS gets about 15%. But the other part of this executive order tries to get at the indirect ways that the news organizations get federal dollars. And that's through local stations.

They are banned from using CPB funds to pay for NPR or PBS content under the order. Now, I should say CPB is also fighting a different move by the president earlier this week to fire board members. So it's unclear how they will respond to this order. They sued saying they're not a federal agency and that board members don't serve at the

pleasure of the president. Okay, so what have NPR and PBS said about this executive order and what they plan to do? So not a whole lot so far, but in a statement, NPR said that the Constitution gives the power to Congress over these funding decisions, not the president, and that the executive order will, quote, have a devastating impact on local communities across America that rely on public radio for trusted local and national news, life-saving emergency alerts, and public safety information.

Okay, this appears to be the most direct attack on public media, but we all know this has been building for a while.

Yeah, Layla, listeners might remember that back in late March, the heads of NPR and PBS testified at this House hearing called Anti-American Airwaves, holding the heads of NPR and PBS accountable. It was headed up by Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Here she is speaking to NPR CEO Catherine Maher. Let me inform you so that your federal funding is also paid for by the other half of the country.

the 77 million Americans who voted for President Trump, someone you called a deranged, racist sociopath. Green was referring to a social media post Maher made before she became NPR CEO. Maher said she regretted the post and wouldn't have made it today. And Maher and her PBS counterpart rejected accusations that their coverage is biased. Okay, tell us about how this would affect local stations.

Yeah. So stations like Louisville Public Media, where I happen to be based and I'm sitting right now, they get an average of 8% to 10% of their revenue from CPB. That number is much, much higher for smaller rural stations, sometimes over 50% of their funding. Stations have been sounding the alarm on this in recent months. You can hear it in their fund drives saying it's an existential threat to their operations and their communities.

And it's unclear what this executive order means for them, but a lot of content on stations is national NPR and PBS programming. NPR relies on these number stations to cover breaking news and provide context that national reporters just can't always do. And they're sometimes the only news option for people in remote places, providing life-saving emergency alerts about things like severe weather. Right, operating in a lot of news deserts too. Now there's another attempt to defund NPR.

public broadcasting that could be in the works. Tell us about that. Right. A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Trump was planning to ask Congress to claw back two years worth of funding for CPB. That's $1.1 billion. We still haven't seen that materialize though. NPR's Ryland Barton. Thank you, Ryland. Thank you.

In a statement, CPB said that it is, quote, not a federal executive agency subject to the president's authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government. The head of PBS is now calling the executive order blatantly unlawful.

President Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, is leaving the White House. The announcement comes after he took the blame for accidentally adding a journalist to a group chat of top Trump officials, a chat where they discussed plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen. It's the first big shakeup in White House staff since Trump started his second term. NPR's Franco Ordonez is traveling with the president, and he joins us now from West Palm Beach. Hi, Franco.

Hey, Layla. Okay, so tell us more about how this went down and what it all means. Well, I'll say the White House is trying to put a good spin on it. President Trump says he's nominating Mike Walz to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as interim national security advisor while continuing to do his current job as well. And

And it's very unusual, I'll say, for one person to hold both major roles. And it's not clear how it's going to work. And we really don't know who's going to replace Walz either. This is all happening just a couple weeks before Trump's first major foreign trip to the Middle East.

Now, there has been or there was a lot of turnover in Trump's first term, especially at the head of the NSC. But this is the first big shakeup of Trump 2.0. For Waltz, his new job will depend on confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

So that means actually that the issue of how Waltz handled that group check is likely to be front and center again. And that could really make the confirmation process tricky. We spent a lot of time over the past month talking about the Signal incident. How did that controversy factor into Trump's decision here?

I mean, it was embarrassing for the White House. Waltz did take responsibility for accidentally inviting the editor of The Atlantic into a private signal chat, which was made up of top officials. They were discussing sensitive plans for U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.

Trump initially defended Waltz and downplayed the incident as a, quote, glitch. I was actually with Trump yesterday and he didn't talk about moving Waltz, but Vice President J.D. Vance did. And he insisted that the signal chat was not the reason for this change during an interview on Fox News. I like Mike. I think he's a great guy. He's got the trust of both me and the president. But we also thought that he'd make a better U.N. ambassador as we get closer.

beyond this stage of the reforms that we've made to the National Security Council. By reforms, Vance means staffing the NSC with people who are more loyal to Trump and support his policies. Trump has a lot of people around him on national security issues. How did Waltz fit in there?

You know, Walt's had kind of a diminished role in recent months. He was more of a traditional Republican hawk compared to some of the other advisers who want to get America out from foreign involvement. And Trump loyalists never really trusted him. And we've seen Trump lean more heavily on other aides when it comes to big conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and even in talks with Iran.

Those included Rubio, as well as the Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and even Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett. Walsh just never seemed to fully align with Trump's approach to Moscow and other adversaries. But I will note that Vance also said in that Fox interview that that's not what this is all about. And finally, Franco, before we go, we hear that the army is planning a parade to mark the president's birthday. Sounds unusual. What can you say about it?

Yeah, it's a big military parade to mark the Army's 250th anniversary, as well as Trump's 79th birthday, which falls on June 14th. That's according to a source familiar with the planning who wasn't permitted to talk publicly, who told my colleague Tom Bowman. The source said the plan is awaiting White House approval. That's M. Pierce Franco-Ordonez. Thank you, Franco. Thank you. Thank you.

A federal judge says that President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants is unlawful. It's the first ruling of its kind. The decision comes from U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in South Texas. I'll note he was appointed by President Trump, and this ruling is a blow to the president's efforts to remove migrants from the country.

NPR's immigration correspondent Sergio Martinez Beltran has been following the case and joins me now. Hi, Sergio. Good morning. Good morning. So can you tell us more about this case and the ruling from Judge Rodriguez?

Yes, so the men in this Texas case have been threatened with imminent removal under the Alien Enemies Act. It's never been used in the way the Trump administration has. The men are accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, and they're currently in detention at El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas.

Now, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. wrote in his ruling that Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act exceeds the scope of the statute. The government he ruled does not possess the lawful authority under the Alien Enemies Act to detain Venezuelan immigrants or remove them from the country. OK, so if the government doesn't have the authority to do it, well, they've already done it. They've used the act to remove people.

Right, right. I mean, Trump has used the act to remove more than 130 Venezuelan men from the U.S. and send them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. The administration has accused all of them of being Trenderagua, but government officials have conceded not all of the Venezuelans have criminal records.

Other courts have sought to block the Trump administration from deporting individuals under the act. But this is the first time a judge has ruled that Trump's use of the act is unlawful. And it all comes down to language and also evidence. How does that work? Well, Lila, President Trump issued a proclamation in March accusing the Tren del Agua gang of, quote, "...perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."

Judge Rodriguez did an extensive analysis of the historical record and he concluded the ordinary meaning of invasion or predatory inclusion when the Alien Enemies Act was enacted in 1798 required a military incursion or a hostile takeover. He found that the criminal activities of Trenaragua members described in Trump's proclamation, while harmful, did not amount to an invasion or predatory incursion as understood under the act.

De Chaldriguez wrote that Trump's proclamation does not suggest an armed group is trying to take over the U.S. So what does this mean for the men named in this lawsuit?

Yeah, so the lawsuit names three Venezuelan men, but they're also representatives of a bigger class action. Here's the lead counsel for the men, the ACLU's Lee Gelernt. This decision protects everyone who's detained in the southern district of Texas. It means that they cannot be removed anywhere under the Alien Enemies Act, much less to a brutal Salvadoran prison. And that's an important point here, Leila. This decision only

applies to the Southern District of Texas, which includes Brownsville, McAllen, and Houston. So what's next in this case? Well, the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment, but it's almost guaranteed that the Trump administration will appeal this decision. The ACLU is certainly expecting that. If they do so, the appeal would go to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considered one of the country's most conservative courts. That's NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran. Thank you. You're welcome. ♪

In Syria, women were often detained along with their children during the Assad regime. Sometimes security forces took the kids away. But some women wouldn't let go. So the guards came in and took their children by force. This Sunday on Up First, what happened to the missing children of Syria? NPR's Dia Hadid investigates. Listen to the Sunday story right here on NPR's Up First podcast. ♪

And that's a first for Friday, May 2nd. I'm Layla Fulton. And I'm Michelle Martin. You can listen to this podcast sponsor free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jerry Holmes, Roberta Rampton, Eric Westervelt, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent, and our technical director is Carly Strange. Our executive producer is Jay Shaler. Have a great weekend. ♪

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