‘D’ Is for Defund: Trump Signs Executive Order to Halt Taxpayer Funding of PBS, NPR

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end federal funding for Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), accusing them of biased coverage and "left-wing propaganda."

The order seeks to eliminate the roughly $535 million Congress allocated to public broadcasters in the current fiscal year and any funding appropriated through Sept. 30, 2027.

"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," the executive order reads. "No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize."

A fact sheet issued by the White House explains that NPR and PBS "have fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars, which is highly inappropriate and an improper use of taxpayers’ money."

🚨 BREAKING: @POTUS just signed an executive order ENDING the taxpayer subsidization of NPR and PBS — which receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as “news.”

Here is the text of the order:

By the authority vested in me as President by the…
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025

PBS and NPR CEOs Feel the Heat As Marjorie Taylor Greene Comes Loaded for Bear at DOGE Hearing

Congressional Republicans grilled the CEOs of PBS and NPR during a March DOGE subcommittee hearing.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) blasted the networks as no longer being viewed by the American people as trusted news sources, citing PBS as having spread a hoax that Elon Musk had given a Nazi salute and accusing them of promoting drag queen programming toward children.

NPR famously refused to run the Hunter Biden laptop story in an attempt to sway the 2020 presidential election.

“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR Managing Editor for News at the time, Terence Samuel, said when the laptop first surfaced.

NPR was taxpayer-funded. They refused to provide taxpayers and voters with vital information during a consequential election. They scoffed at a very legitimate news story as a "waste of time."

They should have immediately been dismissed as a fair and honest news source. President Trump is right to end the taxpayer subsidization of such sources.

The White House Rapid Response team included several more examples of left-wing propaganda from NPR and PBS on social media.

🧵 Here are some examples of the trash that has passed as “news” at NPR and PBS:https://t.co/Q2xi7Vmke8
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025

Among those examples were an NPR story eviscerating the Declaration of Independence as having "flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies," another story claiming the founding document "contains offensive language," and a PBS roundtable segment insisting former President Joe Biden was actually “quite acute" when his cognitive decline had already been well-established.

While most taxpayers will be thankful for not having to fund left-wing propaganda, critics of the president will likely be pulling their hair out. Comedian Jon Stewart, who fancies himself a newsman at times, said Trump's attempt to defund NPR and PBS is "authoritarian."

The president's work to ensure taxpayer dollars are no longer wasted on progressive pet projects but rather used to benefit hardworking Americans proves the exact opposite.

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