How PBS, NPR lost funding — and bipartisan support — under Trump : NPR

Analysis, July 18, 20255:00 AM ET

By David Folkenflik

When President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke after signing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, he marveled at technologies like radio and television and satellites, and echoed the words of Samuel Morse in sending the first telegraph message.

“What hath man wrought?” Johnson asked. “And how will man use his inventions?”

Johnson offered an answer to his own question: “While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of this act.”

The years that followed brought forth the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR, largely with bipartisan support. It also led to a framework of laws intended to ensure those organizations were protected from political pressure.

CPB began funneling an ongoing subsidy to hundreds of public media outlets across the country. Out of that system came original programs that have become familiar to all corners of the country: Sesame Street. PBS NewsHour. All Things Considered. Tiny Desk. NOVA. Antiques Roadshow. Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!

They were on the air, online, and on platforms that Johnson could never have envisioned.

All helped foster a sense there was something for everyone.

That seeming consensus, under sustained attack, was shattered this week.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have passed legislation on a narrow, party-line basis to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting for the next two years. That’s $1.1 billion previously approved by the Republican-led Congress and President Trump. The reversal is notionally due to the need to cut funds to help pay for new Republican priorities, including an expansion of immigration enforcement and extension of Trump’s prior tax cuts.

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