Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down after being defunded by Congress, targeted by Trump
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.
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.'
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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He also notes that gas power offers better grid stability with flexibility – able to be quickly started and stopped – and reliability – providing constant power generation to ensure continuous operations for data centres – in comparison to renewables. 'Renewable power, due to its intermittent nature, cannot be a sole solution [for data centres] without any backup power or storage.' However, Wamsted is dismissive of the notion that gas is absolutely needed, saying any rise in demand can be met reliably and economically by renewable sources in markets like Texas with significant renewable capacity. '[In Texas] the 24/7 power demand sought by data centres and other high load users can be supplied by the ERCOT system. Saying data centres require gas or nuclear since they are supposedly more reliable is misleading,' he argues. Do renewables have the power over gas? 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'Power generation companies, in order to secure turbine supplies, are engaging in aggressive procurement strategies such as making order requests years in advance, diversifying their supplier network, and coming up with different project designs and configurations to avoid any grid reliability shortfalls,' Vyakaranam notes. These considerations threaten Texas' new gas turbine plans as they 'cannot be resolved quickly, if at all', warns Wamsted, adding that engineering, procurement and construction companies have 'limited capability to meet the rapid proposed buildout'. 'Both of these capacity problems are raising the cost of gas-fired generation, which could put a brake on planned additions,' he continues. 'New gas pipelines will be needed for many of the planned expansion efforts, which will take time and have significant capital costs.' Are Malaysia and Texas part of a bigger picture? Vyakaranam believes that renewables alone cannot yet power the world through its AI revolution – instead, gas power has to be part of the mix. 'Although there will be a continued push towards renewables and battery storage innovations, which will eventually help meet data centres' demand,' he says, 'gas and nuclear will have to do some of the heavy lifting in the meantime.' Wamsted takes a different view: 'I would say it is renewables that can quickly and affordably meet the US' rising electricity needs, not gas, which may be sold out through 2030, or nuclear, which is unlikely to add significant new capacity before 2035 at earliest.' He also cautions against relying on gas alone. 'All generation systems require maintenance and have unforced outages during the year […] Relying on one resource – or worse, one facility – would be highly risky,' he says. 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To ensure a reliable and sustainable AI future, power capacity additions – regardless of energy source – will need to be paired with efforts to upgrade ageing grids, expand energy storage and decentralise energy systems as a whole, while tailoring energy solutions for each data centre to its local surroundings. "Gas versus renewables: how will the power demand of data centres be met?" was originally created and published by Power Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. 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