Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down after being defunded by
Congress, targeted by Trump
[August 02, 2025]
By TED ANTHONY and KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cornerstone
of American culture for three generations, announced Friday it would
take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by Congress —
marking the end of a nearly six-decade era in which it fueled the
production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and
even emergency alerts.
The demise of the corporation, known as CPB, is a direct result of
President Donald Trump's targeting of public media, which he has
repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical
to those the United States should be espousing. The closure is expected
to have a profound impact on the journalistic and cultural landscape —
in particular, public radio and TV stations in small communities across
the United States.
CPB helps fund both PBS and NPR, but most of its funding is distributed
to more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the
country.
The corporation also has deep ties to much of the nation’s most familiar
programming, from NPR’s “All Things Considered” to, historically,
“Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood” and the documentaries of
Ken Burns.
The corporation said its end, 58 years after being signed into law by
President Lyndon B. Johnson, would come in an “orderly wind-down.” In a
statement, it said the decision came after the passage through Congress
of a package that clawed back its funding for the next two budget years
— about $1.1 billion. Then, the Senate Appropriations Committee
reinforced that policy change Thursday by excluding funding for the
corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a
broader spending bill.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called,
wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we
now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said Patricia
Harrison, the corporation’s president and CEO.
A last-gasp attempt at funding fails
Democratic members of the Senate Appropriations Committee made a
last-ditch effort this week to save the CBP's funding.
As part of Thursday's committee deliberations, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.,
authored but then withdrew an amendment to restore CPB funding for the
coming budget year. She said she still believed there was a path forward
“to fix this before there are devastating consequences for public radio
and television stations across the country.”
“It's hard to believe we’ve ended up in the situation we’re in,” she
said. “And I’m going to continue to work with my colleagues to fix it.”
But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., sounded a less optimistic tone.
“I understand your concerns, but we all know we litigated this two weeks
ago,” Capito said. “Adopting this amendment would have been contrary to
what we have already voted on.”
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An entrance to the Arizona PBS offices in the Walter Cronkite School
of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix is photographed, May
2, 2025. (AP Photo/Katie Oyan, File)
 CPB said it informed employees
Friday that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on
Sept. 30. It said a small transition team will stay in place until
January to finish any remaining work — including, it said, “ensuring
continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to
the public media system.”
“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,” Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners
across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering
dedication to serving the American people.”
The impact will be widespread
NPR stations use millions of dollars in federal money to pay music
licensing fees. Now, many will have to renegotiate these deals. That
could impact, in particular, outlets that build their programming
around music discovery. NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher
estimated recently, for example, that some 96% of all classical
music broadcast in the United States is on public radio stations.
Federal money for public radio and television has traditionally been
appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which
distributes it to NPR and PBS. Roughly 70% of the money goes
directly to the 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country,
although that’s only a shorthand way to describe its potential
impact.
Trump, who has called the CPB a “monstrosity,” has long said that
public broadcasting displays an extreme liberal bias, helped create
the momentum in recent months for an anti-public broadcasting
groundswell among his supporters in Congress and around the country.
It is part of a larger initiative in which he has targeted
institutions — particularly cultural ones — that produce content or
espouse attitudes that he considers “un-American.” The CPB’s demise
represents a political victory for those efforts.
His impact on the media landscape has been profound. He has also
gone after U.S. government media that had independence charters,
including the venerable Voice of America, ending that media outlet’s
operations after many decades.
Trump also fired three members of the corporation’s board of
directors in April. In legal action at the time, the fired directors
said their dismissal was governmental overreach targeting an entity
whose charter guarantees it independence.
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