Donald Trump‘s war on “woke” escalated with a shock late-night order slashing federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
The move marks the latest strike by the second Trump administration against media organizations it accuses of promoting progressive ideology, as the president pushes to purge the government of what he calls “woke” policies and programs. Critics, meanwhile, warn that the administration’s growing hostility toward the press poses a threat to media independence.
In the order, Trump claimed NPR and PBS “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”
It directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation, to halt all funding to the two networks “consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides broadcasters with about half a billion dollars in public funds annually. Federal funding makes up about one percent of NPR’s budget, and 15 percent of PBS’s annual revenue, according to Politico.
The directive also instructs all federal agencies to “identify and terminate” any direct or indirect funding streams to the organizations.
In a savage swipe, the White House compiled a lengthy thread of content by NPR and PBS which it apparently has major issues with.
“Here are some examples of the trash that has passed as ‘news’ at NPR and PBS,” the White House said on X.
These included, in the White House’s words:
- NPR ran a story titled “Cannibalism: It’s ‘Perfectly Natural,’” in which an author describes eating another human’s placenta.
- In 2021, NPR declared the Declaration of Independence to be a document with “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.”
- NPR sounded the alarm about young men who abstain from masturbating to pornography.
- NPR featured a Valentine’s Day story around “queer animals,” in which it suggested the make-believe clownfish in Finding Nemo would’ve been better off as a female, that “banana slugs are hermaphrodites,” and that “some deer are nonbinary.”
- PBS devoted a panel to what it “mean[s] to be woke” and “white privilege.”
- NPR routinely promotes the chemical and surgical mutilation of children as so-called “gender-affirming care” without mentioning the irreversible damage caused by these procedures.
- In 2021, a PBS station aired a “children’s program” that featured a drag queen named “Lil’ Miss Hot Mess.”
- NPR reported on the “cousin of diet culture” known as “healthism, which is the idea that we have to be healthy” — as if that was a bad thing.
- NPR assigned three reporters to investigate how the thumbs-up emoji is racist.
- NPR suggested doorway sizes are based on “latent fatphobia.”
- PBS produced an entire movie celebrating a transgender teenager’s so-called “changing gender identity.”
- NPR absurdly claimed “limited scientific evidence of physical advantage” exists between male and female athletes.
- NPR lamented that “animals deserve pronouns, too.”
In March, the White House also went after outlets that are overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Radio Free Asia (RFA).
In a press release titled “The Voice of Radical America,” the Trump administration said an executive order would “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”
That order has since been blocked by a judge.
The U.S. has seen painful federal spending cuts driven by Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-led task force set up to reshape the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE claims to have slashed $160 billion in wasteful spending since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20.