Late Thursday night, President Donald Trump kept another promise, signing an executive order terminating federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
The move escalates a decades-long conservative campaign against publicly subsidized media outlet that has long been criticized for its bias. For example, in 2017, NPR labeled the Declaration of Independence as having offensive language.
Yes, they really did it. https://t.co/AKF1uNnQaE https://t.co/0EhF4nvlfW
— Byron York (@ByronYork) May 2, 2025
The order targets the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the quasi-governmental entity through which federal funds flow to NPR, PBS, and their local affiliates. Describing the public financing of journalism as “outdated and corrosive,” Trump argued that continued subsidies distort the perception of independence in an already saturated media marketplace. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary,” the president wrote, “but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” explained The New York Post.
The directive sets a June 30 deadline for the CPB to end all direct and indirect support to the two broadcasters. It also instructs every federal agency to review and terminate any grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements that benefit NPR or PBS. While these outlets receive the majority of their funding from private donations, corporate sponsorships, and foundation grants, smaller affiliates—particularly in rural areas—depend heavily on the CPB, which was allocated $535 million for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. That pot comprises roughly 15% of PBS member station budgets and about 10% of NPR affiliate revenues. NPR itself receives only about 1% directly from the CPB.
But the executive order does not stop at funding. It also mandates a sweeping review of hiring and employment practices at NPR and PBS to ensure compliance with federal anti-discrimination statutes—a review to be overseen by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of institutional overreach and political bias in public health and media alike.
The two outlets were recently investigated for breaking their rules that are supposed to govern them.
In an accompanying fact sheet, the White House accused NPR and PBS of functioning as “de facto advocates for the Democratic Party,” an assertion meant to frame the move not merely as an exercise in fiscal discipline, but as a corrective to perceived partisan malpractice. The administration cited the CPB’s statutory obligation to maintain political neutrality—a standard it claims has long been ignored.
Reaction was swift and predictably split. Liberals cast the order as authoritarian overreach, like always, and a blow to cultural and civic programming (which they ultimately control) that has long served the public good. Supporters hailed it as a long-overdue correction—one that reins in taxpayer funding for institutions they say have abandoned neutrality in favor of ideological activism.
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