CPB fires back at Trump’s executive order pulling funding for NPR, PBS

The Non -Profit Corporation, which heads the National Public Radio and the Public Air Force Service, returns to the executive order of President Donald Trump to withdraw funding for the two popular media.

The public broadcast corporation said Congress controls its financing, not the president.

“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the president’s powers,” Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of CPB, said on Friday. “The Congress directly authorized and financed CPB for a private non -profit corporation, entirely independent of the federal government.”

It continued, “when creating CPB, Congress explicitly prohibited” any department, agency, officer or employee of the United States from exercising any direction, supervision or control on educational television or radio broadcasting or above [CPB] or any of his recipients or contractors. “

Trump signed the executive order that instructs the public broadcast corporation to “suspend the direct funding of NPR and PBS” on the way to Florida of Air Force One on Thursday

The order blocks the federal funding of NPR and PBS to the maximum extent permitted by law, according to actually a White House sheet. It also prevents indirect financing of PBS and NPR by prohibiting local public radio and television stations and all other CPB fund recipients to use taxpayer dollars to support organizations.

The order requires CPB to review its common provisions for 2025 in order to ban NPR and PBS directly directly or indirectly. It directs all federal agencies to terminate any direct or indirect funding to NPR and PBS and to review existing grants and conformity contracts. She also instructed the Federal Communication Commission and agencies to investigate whether NPR and PBS were involved in illegal discrimination.

In the information sheet, the White House claims that the two news organizations “nourish guerrilla and leftist propaganda with dollars of taxpayers.”

In an interview with ABC News on Friday, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said the loss of federal funding would affect the public in rural communities. Kerger said that their access to stations was historically dependent on state funding and that the content of programming children to archiving emergency signals could be negatively influenced by redundancies.

“They formed PBS as a way we can collect dollars from all over the country from all our stations,” Kerger said. “This would help us create the child’s content that people have loved for many decades and which have really raised generations of children.”

For some stations, the situation may be terrible, she said.

“For a number of smaller stations, this can really be an existential challenge,” Kerger said. “This means the existence of these many stations.”

Kerger and the head of NPR testified at a hearing of the house in March for their financing.

“I hear, respect and understand your concerns about bias and whether public media are relevant in the commercial landscape,” NPR President and Central Cedar Catherine Maher said at the hearing. “It is crucial that the NPR newsroom works with the highest journalistic standards. This means that they do their job independently and as CEO I have no editorial role in NPR.”

NPR and PBS are funded mainly by a combination of public and private sources. CPB, Federal Agency, provides part of the funding, together with private donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. CPB has observed dozens of media organizations in addition to NPR and PBS, including all-US public media to local public media and public media in the middle of America.

Those in the Senate and the Chamber quickly reacted on party lines.

“The fact that taxpayers are forced to subsidize an extremely left propaganda retail outlets such as NPR is outrage,” writes Senator Tom Cotton, R-ARK.

“President Trump again directs us to authoritarianism by removing PBS and NPR funds, claiming that he will stop” bias and guerrilla news reflection “,” Representative Adam Smith, D-Wash. “

“These organizations were created in accordance with an act of Congress and therefore cannot be eliminated in executive order,” he continued. “We need these programs and we need to challenge this decision in the courts.”

ABC News’ Max Zahn, Lalee Ibssa and Docquan Louallen Contribution to this Report.