President Trump Signs Order to Block PBS Funding

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS.

“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump said in his latest executive order.

“At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.”

President Trump has ordered the CPB to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and decline to provide future funding.” Further, he has directed his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to investigate PBS and NPR for possible discrimination in hiring practices.

In a statement, Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the CPB, pushed back, noting, “CPB is 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. In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors…’ 47 U.S.C. § 398(c).”

Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, called President Trump’s order “blatantly unlawful.” Her full statement reads: “The President’s blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years. We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”