Trump Issues Order to Defund U.S. Public Media, Including PBS and NPR

President Trump issued an executive order Thursday night ending federal funding of the public media, including PBS and National Public Radio.

In his order, Trump said “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

The order states that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that oversees government funding for PBS and NPR, “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

Officials at the corporation, PBS and NPR didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s efforts to shut down funding for public broadcasting are the latest of several battles with the media. Last December, Disney’s ABC News settled a defamation suit filed by Trump against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos by agreeing to contribute $15 million to his presidential foundation or museum.

Paramount Global’s CBS is currently in mediation with Trump , who sued the network last year, alleging it had deceitfully edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make her sound better.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is slated to receive $535 million a year to fund each of the next two fiscal years. The CPB has said more than 70% of its annual appropriation goes directly to more than 1,500 public television and radio stations.

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) logo and U.S. flag are seen in this illustration taken April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

NPR, PBS and many affiliated local stations rely extensively on donations and sponsorships. On average, about 10% of the funding PBS and its stations receive comes from the corporation, which also provides about 15% of revenue that funds NPR and its stations, according to NPR .

Trump’s order comes just days after he said he was removing three of the five CPB board members. The corporation subsequently sued Trump, saying he lacks the authority to remove board members.

Public media has long been a target of Trump and Republicans. In March, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) held a House hearing in which she called NPR and PBS “radical left-wing echo chambers.”

Many Republican lawmakers see public broadcasting as ripe for cuts at a time when the national debt stands at more than $36 trillion, and said eliminating support for NPR and PBS would be appropriate given their perceived liberal biases. “The United States of America is broke and can’t afford it,” Greene said.

Trump’s order noted that the media landscape has changed dramatically in the nearly 60 years since the CPB was created.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” the order says.

PBS and NPR leadership have argued that in many markets, particularly in small towns and rural America, public broadcasting is still a crucial source of local information.

“PBS stations provide something that cannot be found on commercial networks, Paula Kerger , president and CEO of PBS, testified before Congress at the March hearing.

Katherine Maher , NPR’s president and chief executive, also defended the agency in March testimony, saying that its data shows that it has listeners “across the ideological spectrum.”

“Although there is a perception that NPR only serves a liberal audience, NPR data shows us a different fact pattern,” she said.

At the hearing, Alaska Public Media CEO Ed Ulman told the subcommittee that cutting funding to public media would devastate small-market and rural stations like his, and force some to close.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Becky Magura, president and CEO of Nashville PBS, said federal appropriations account for less than 20% of her station’s budget, but nearly half of the budget for stations in other areas of the state including Cookeville and Martinsville.

Write to Joe Flint at Joe.Flint@wsj.com