Everyone knows authoritarian governments seek to control the media in order to control the perceptions of the public. Trump is trying to de-fund public media, the nation’s largest provider of nonprofit local news and rural journalism.

Free Press Blog

Vanessa Maria Graber and Julio Ricardo Varela

The U.S. public-media system is facing its most serious threats yet.

On April 14, news outlets reported that the Trump White House planned to send Congress a request to claw back nearly $1.1 billion in already-approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Congress had already approved $535 million a year in federal spending for CPB through the end of 2027. Both chambers of Congress will need to pass a simple-majority vote to approve Trump’s request to zero out both years of funding.

This move comes after earlier attacks on public media from Trump’s allies. Last November, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) called for ending federal support of public media. After chairing a DOGE subcommittee hearing in March called “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Georgia) co-sponsored legislation to completely defund the CPB. And earlier this year, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for a federal investigation into the underwriting arrangements that NPR and PBS use, claiming they’re disguising commercial advertising.

A coordinated attempt to defund public media

This is an attempt to dismantle public media and push everything into corporate hands. It is straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, a right-wing blueprint for the Trump administration. Project 2025 lays out plans to entirely eliminate the CPB and turn the FCC into a partisan weapon. This is all about using government power to threaten, punish and defund media outlets that don’t fall in line with the MAGA agenda.

All of this is part of a larger campaign to control the flow of information. Right-wing lawmakers and operatives want to punish independent journalism while elevating platforms their allies own. That includes Elon Musk’s X, where government disinformation and hate speech thrive unchecked.

This is a fight over who gets to shape the media agenda about government policy and whether the American public still believes in journalism that serves the people — not private interests, party agendas or billionaires.

Public media’s most vocal opponents want to rewrite the story of how we got here. But the facts tell a different story. And that story shows how their plans will deny the American public free, accessible and nonpartisan journalism.

Here’s what you should know about this debate and why the context about what CPB funds and why it was established matters.

What is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and what does it fund?

During the congressional hearing featuring the heads of NPR and PBS, it was clear that many Republican lawmakers don’t know how the CPB, NPR and PBS actually work — and what federal funds provide to local stations.

CPB is an independent nonprofit organization established after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The legislation was a result of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television’s report “Public Television: A Program for Action,” which recommended “that Congress act promptly to authorize and to establish a federally chartered, nonprofit, nongovernmental corporation, to be known as the ‘Corporation for Public Television.’”

The Public Broadcasting Act was part of President Johnson’s “Great Society” initiative, which included a series of laws passed to provide more resources for education, to fight poverty and expand civil rights. This law requires CPB to fund the development of content that addresses the needs of underserved audiences, especially children and communities of color. To that end, CPB funds the operations of more than 1,500 local public and community radio stations across the United States.

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