President Donald Trump Thursday called for defunding National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, two partially federally funded groups under scrutiny in the DOGE era.
Trump’s comments come after heads of both NPR and PBS defended their work at a Wednesday Congressional hearing.
“NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party.”
At the Wednesday hearing, Republican critics honed in on aggressively anti-Trump coverage, inclusion of trans content in children’s programming, and a former senior editor at NPR who uncovered that 87 registered Democrats and not a single registered Republican worked in NPR’s D.C. office.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who chairs the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee in the House, led the hearing Wednesday.
Greene argued that the internet has made NPR and PBS obsolete. She also pointed to the liberal bias in the groups’ content, including a 2015 PBS Frontline documentary called “Growing up trans,” not the only controversial transgender-related content that came up at the hearing.
“PBS news is not just left-leaning, but it actively uses taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical left positions like featuring a drag queen on the show ‘Let’s Learn,’ a show targeted at young children ages 3 to 8 years old,” she added.
As The Center Square previously reported, during that “Let’s Learn” episode, a drag queen read a children’s’ book titled, “The hips on the drag queen go ‘swish, swish, swish.’ ”
Republicans strongest criticism for NPR and PBS may have come from one of its own, Uri Berliner, a long-time senior editor at NPR, who wrote an opinion piece in 2024 blasting NPR.
“In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.” Berliner wrote, as The Center Square previously reported.
“So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting,” he continued. “When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference.”
Paula Kerger, chief executive officer and president of PBS, and Katherine Maher, chief executive officer and president of NPR, testified at the hearing. Both defended their respective groups’ work and pointed to polling showing Americans trust their content.
Both also said smaller stations would be hit hardest by any cuts.
“Public radio is an essential resource for elected officials to speak to their constituents in an era in which nearly all local newspapers have shuttered their Washington bureaus,” Kerger said in her prepared testimony.
