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Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After Trump-GOP Defunding
"For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its congressional mission to build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country," said the organization.
Aug 01, 2025
The organization that has been funding public media in the United States for more than half a century said on Friday that it is shutting down its operations.
In a press release, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) said that "it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package" that clawed back more than $1 billion in previously approved funding for public broadcasting. President Donald Trump, who pushed for the rescissions, signed the package into law last month.
CPB also cited Senate Republicans’ release of an appropriations package that excluded public broadcasting funds "for the first time in more than five decades."
"For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its congressional mission to build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country," said CPB. "Through partnerships with local stations and producers, CPB has supported educational content, locally relevant journalism, emergency communications, cultural programming, and essential services for Americans in every community."
The majority of staffers at CPB will see their employment end after this coming September, though the organization plans to keep a small crew of employees on board through January "to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations."
CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison described the decision to shut down as a "difficult reality" and praised the role that the organization has played over the years in educating and informing Americans.
"Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country," she said. "We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people."
Throughout its existence, the CPB was responsible for distributing funds to regional National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service stations across the United States. These stations would air both local content relevant to their specific markets as well as nationally syndicated shows including "Sesame Street," "NOVA," and "Frontline."
Earlier this week, Kate Riley, the president and CEO of America's Public Television Stations, lambasted Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee who failed to restore CPB funding.
"With this vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee missed an opportunity to extend a desperately needed lifeline to local public media stations that are already cutting essential services and staff and, in some cases, planning for their closure as a result of the rescissions of public media funding earlier this month," she said.
She went on to say that the negative effects of the cuts to public broadcasting are "real and imminent" and have "already begun to dramatically impact the vital services that local stations provide to communities across our country."
"This bill was an opportunity to acknowledge the dire situation that local stations are in and reverse their devastating fate," she added. "Instead, today the Senate Appropriations Committee turned a blind eye to local public media stations and the communities that rely on them for critical services."
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PBS and NPR See Unprecedented Surge in Donations After GOP Votes for Defunding
"It is still early, and we hope the support will continue to grow," said the CEO of a firm that tracks and analyzes donations to public media.
Jul 24, 2025
Republicans in Congress may have voted to defund publicly funded media outlets in the United States, but American citizens are trying to fill the gap.
The New York Times reports that donations to public media have surged ever since the GOP voted to eliminate $550 million in annual funding for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).
Citing numbers from Contributor Development Partnership, a firm that provides analysis of public media fundraising data, the Times reports that donors this year have so far contributed $70 million more to NPR and PBS than they had done over the same period the year before. The numbers also show that "over the last three months, as the prospect of the cuts intensified, roughly 120,000 new donors have contributed an estimated $20 million in annual value," writes the Times.
Contributor Development Partnership CEO Michal Heiplik tells the Times that these donations, while impressive, are still a long way from being able to fill the $550 million hole left by GOP cuts.
"It is still early, and we hope the support will continue to grow," he said. "Next few weeks will be telling."
Heiplik also tells the Times that more donors in recent months have signed up to become sustaining members, which he says will be helpful in ensuring both entities have sustained finances instead of having to rely on one-time bursts of donations.
The vast majority of funding for public media has long come from donors, with only a small percentage coming from the federal government.
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Defunding Public Media Makes Perfect Sense If Destroying Democracy Is the Goal
The Trump purge of federal spending is about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms—including the sorts of journalism that hold our country’s rich and powerful accountable—and replacing it with propaganda.
Jul 18, 2025
U.S. Congress’ decision early Friday morning to completely defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a blow to anyone who cares about the role the media must play to sustain the health of a democracy. The move follows a request by President Donald Trump to claw back more than $1 billion lawmakers had already allocated to the entity, which supports National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service stations across the country.
Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But it’s one that, until now, never came true. Past efforts ran up against a noisy public—including people of every political persuasion—who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.
Many were engaged in the current fight, too; they dialed their members of Congress by the thousands to urge them to preserve essential funding for favorite local radio and television stations. But Republican members of Congress chose to listen to their Dear Leader instead. The week prior to the rescission vote, Trump threatened to withhold his “support or endorsement” in upcoming elections to any Republican who didn’t back the clawback. And with far too few exceptions Republicans willingly got in line
Clearing a Path for Destruction
The loss of CPB funding will be felt for years. “This is a vote to evade public accountability and hide the Trump administration’s destructive actions from independent scrutiny,” Free Press Action co-CEO Craig Aaron said.
It won’t be easy to rebuild what Trump has ruined, but we must because the health of our democracy depends on having independent public media. And the less than $2 per person that U.S. taxpayers willingly paid to fund the CPB was paltry by comparison with what other modern democracies spend on their own public media.
Congress is acting on the false belief that the November 2024 election—which Trump won with less than a majority of the popular vote—delivered them a mandate to remake the federal government in the president’s autocratic image.
The benefits in this public-interest equation far outweighed any expense. They include essential educational programming, invaluable accountability journalism, and the broadcast of emergency information.
As senators debated Trump’s defunding request on July 16, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck the Alaska Peninsula, prompting rural and island-bound public-radio stations to issue tsunami alerts to affected listeners throughout the region. It’s these rural stations that rely the most on public funds to air potentially lifesaving updates during emergencies and their aftermath.
Still, Congress is acting on the false belief that the November 2024 election—which Trump won with less than a majority of the popular vote—delivered them a mandate to remake the federal government in the president’s autocratic image, regardless of the costs.
Public Media Benefits Democracy
And those costs are very high. The Trump purge of federal spending is not just about downsizing the government so billionaires won’t have to pay their fair share in taxes. It’s about stripping our democratic system of all accountability mechanisms—including the sorts of journalism that hold our country’s rich and powerful accountable—and replacing it with propaganda.
If anything has a popular mandate, it’s the use of federal funds to support public media. Americans routinely rank PBS among the most trusted institutions in the country, and a “most valuable” service taxpayers receive for their money.
These benefits accrue to our democratic system. A 2021 study coauthored by University of Pennsylvania professor (and Free Press board chair) Victor Pickard finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country’s democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage, and lower levels of extremist views. Other studies strongly suggest that declines in such local news and information lead to drops in civic engagement.
There’s reasonable criticism of the public-broadcasting system that had been in place since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. For example, CPB needed to offer more support to the proliferation of local noncommercial outlets serving communities too often overlooked by legacy commercial media. In addition, tax laws need to better accommodate local commercial news outlets seeking to shift their fiscal models to not-for-profit.
But we should build these changes on the foundation the CPB has established over the decades. That foundation has been swept away by a leader who cares far more about himself than the health of our nation.
Rebuilding at the State and Local Levels
It’s hard to find a silver lining to such a dark cloud. If any exists it’s in the energy and organizing for better public media at state and local levels.
New Jersey just re-upped its commitment to fund the Civic Information Consortium, a groundbreaking state-level effort that supports trustworthy, community-based news and information sources throughout the state.
These solutions are needed in addition to a federal mechanism for funding public media, not in place of it.
Local lawmakers in other states—including California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington—are advancing policy solutions that increase public support for and access to nonpartisan and independent local news. Noncommercial media—including existing outlets like Capital & Main, City Bureau, LAist, Mississippi Today, Outlier Media and ProPublica—are offering an antidote to a hyper-commercial media system that is too fearful of political leadership (and protective of profit margins) to act as a check against official abuses of power.
One possible solution is to impose a small tax on advertising to fund the production and distribution of local news and civic information, something Free Press has long advocated for.
But these solutions are needed in addition to a federal mechanism for funding public media, not in place of it. We still need to mobilize behind efforts to restore the CPB or a similar entity to that role. The goal—building a media system that serves the interests of the American people, and not those of a unitary executive—is vital to saving our democracy.
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