The White House has cast Donald Trump’s crackdown on public media as an effort to cut off government funding from “left-wing propaganda.” But if Trump intended to hurt the stereotypical coastal yuppies listening to All Things Considered in their Subarus on the way to the food co-op in coastal cities, his aim is way off.
The president signed an executive order Thursday instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cut federal funding for NPR and PBS and is reportedly pressuring Congress to rescind $1.1 billion in funding for the CPB, which would drain local television and radio affiliates, too.
But experts argue Trump’s attempt to dismantle public media exceeds the powers of his office and will most likely hurt the states that put him into that office in the first place. “The ones who are harmed probably aren’t NPR and PBS, who are the main targets,” said Eric Nuzum, the former vice president of programming at NPR, who is now co-founder of the audio production consulting company Magnificent Noise. “The local stations get harmed, and then the communities get harmed, and it’s one more thing that disadvantages them.”
Just look at who uses federal funding for public broadcasting the most. According to one recent report, West Virginia’s public broadcasters were most reliant on federal funding in 2023, followed by Alaska, New Mexico, and Montana. Indeed, among the 20 states that relied the most on federal funding for public broadcasting that year, 15 were states Trump won in 2024.
The group Protect My Public Media surveyed 230 stations across America in 2023 about what would happen if they lost their federal funding: 26 stations said they would have to shut down completely, particularly in rural, island, and tribal communities, while another 23 said they would need to cut off access to rural areas that are more expensive to serve. “Defunding public media, of course, doesn’t just hurt the left because public media doesn’t just serve the left,” said Craig Aaron, president and co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press. Research shows that when local news dries up, corruption in the local community explodes. “The public good provided by accountability journalism goes far beyond daily listeners and donors. The whole community benefits, whether they tune in or not,” Aaron said.
The executive order signed Thursday is, in a way, only the tip of the iceberg. It instructs the CPB to cease funding of NPR and PBS “to the maximum extent allowed by law.” It also bars CPB from funding either entity in the future and seeks to prevent local TV and radio affiliates from using federal funds to pay NPR and PBS for popular shows. But it does not directly seek to restrict funding to those local affiliates.
The biggest issue with the order is not what the loss of funding would do for NPR and PBS—which derive a relatively small amount of their operating income from CPB money. The biggest issue is that the president is exerting power he doesn’t have. As Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB noted in a statement Friday, “CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority.” It is, instead, authorized and funded by Congress, as an independent non-profit.
Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, similarly called the president’s order “blatantly unlawful.” And Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, vowed to “challenge this Executive Order using all means available.” The CPB is already suing the Trump administration, after three members of its board received emails saying they had been fired, something CPB argued in its lawsuit “is of no legal effect given that the President has no power to remove or terminate CPB’s Board members.”
This is not the first time Trump has tried to take over an organization given independent status by Congress. In March, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seized control of the independent US Institute of Peace in what the former CEO called “an illegal takeover.” A lawsuit surrounding that case remains ongoing, and Thursday’s order targeting NPR and PBS seems destined for the same fate. Meanwhile, both entities are facing an investigation by Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, who wrote in a letter in January that they “could be violating federal law by airing commercials.” (Both entities have argued they’re in compliance with the law).
But an arguably even more catastrophic outcome for public media would be if Trump succeeded in pressuring Congress to rescind the already allocated $1.1 billion in funding to CPB. Nuzum says this is likely to hurt small, rural communities the most because they likely won’t be able to recover the funds from donors as readily as stations in big cities. “It’s not going to accomplish what they think it is going to accomplish,” Nuzum said of the Trump administration.
Nuzum said it’s for this very reason that some Republicans have, in the past, stood up to defend funding for public broadcasting. After Carr announced his investigation into NPR and PBS and floated the possibility of pulling federal funding, Nevada Republican Mark Amodei, who co-chairs the Public Broadcasting Caucus, joined his Democratic colleagues in the House in a letter to Carr. “In states such as Alaska, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Texas, rural public radio stations are often the only weekly or daily news source in their communities,” they wrote. “Even in places with other daily or weekly news sources, those outlets may not be directing resources toward original or locally based stories, leaving it to public stations to fill the gap.” But Amodei, who did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment, has been a lonely voice in the Republican Party on this issue of late.
Beyond the damage Trump’s actions would do to the communities that support him, Aaron of Free Press underscored that this is the definition of the type of government censorship Trump once claimed he was ending when he took office. “It’s one thing to complain about coverage you dislike, it’s another to try to impound congressionally approved funds and try to silence and shake down your critics,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of government censorship the First Amendment is supposed to prohibit.”
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