(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Donald Trump’s administration is asking that the GOP-led House claw back some $9 billion in previously approved funding for public broadcasting outlets and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Hill reported on Monday that a White House official confirmed “that the package will be sent to Congress when lawmakers return from Easter recess on April 28. The package requests to eliminate $9.3 billion in spending, the official said.”
Trump has long been a critic of public broadcasters like PBS and NPR. The Hill noted that the White House request to Congress noted that “NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, described Trump as a “fascist” in old social media posts. Maher has apologized for those remarks.”
In late January, Brendan Carr, the Trump-allied chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the heads of NPR and PBS announcing an investigation into the public outlets for airing sponsorships, a longtime practice.
Carr wrote in his Wednesday letter, “I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials. In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
Maher replied at the time that generating ad revenue is a long-held practice of NPR, “We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR’s adherence to these rules. We have worked for decades with the FCC in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States.”
Carr’s investigation coincided with President Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on the outlets. “NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP,’” Trump fumed on his Truth Social platform last April. “THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!”
Elon Musk has also taken aim at NPR in the past and called for it to be defunded. The right has long slammed any government funding for NPR and PBS, despite those numbers dropping substantially in recent years and most Americans wanting PBS to be funded.
Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency led the charge against USAID and effectively shuttered the decades-old, Congressionally mandated aid agency. The Hill noted that the White House cited “numerous examples of funding from the State Department and USAID to be cut that are not in line with Trump’s agenda. Among those are $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda, $750,000 for reducing Xenophobia in Venezuela and $3 million for a children’s developmental television program in Iraq.”
Many of Musk’s claims of waste at USAID were quickly debunked, including the wild claim that tens of millions of dollars were meant to be sent to Gaza to buy condoms. Defenders of USAID have decried killing key levers of global soft power that enhance U.S. national security overseas, allowing for China to fill the void.
