Tangle - Trump signs order to defund NPR and PBS.

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and all executive departments to end federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order claims that the outlets fail to offer “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens” and instructs the CPB to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law” and “decline to provide future funding.” Executives at NPR and PBS called the order unlawful and said they would challenge it. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of the budget proposal? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone and now I use it non-stop. The other day, I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended and instead of spiraling into a 40 minute social media scroll, I just asked Gemini on my Pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store. This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place you get views from across the political spectrum,

some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about President Donald Trump's efforts to defund NPR and PBS. Actually, I kind of alluded to this story yesterday, but today we're gonna get into it with a bit more depth, and I think it's pretty interesting. My take here is complicated, I guess you could say. Before we jump in though, I want to give you a quick heads up though that earlier this

week we had an interview with Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, also known as FIRE, whose organization is involved in high profile cases like Mahmoud Khalil's deportation challenge and President Trump's lawsuit against Iowa, Pulsar and Seltzer. It was a great conversation. Will came back from the editorial team, interviewed him. I think it's very much worth your time. Just want to let you know that that interview

is up in our podcast feed. If you scroll back a couple of days, you can see it and it is worth listening to. All right, with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main pod and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the Department of Education said it is freezing billions of dollars in future

research grants and other aid to Harvard University until the school implements policy directives from the Trump administration. Number two, President Donald Trump announced he had authorized the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to begin the process of implementing a 100% tariff on films produced outside of the U.S. Number three, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the U.S. will offer $1,000 stipends and travel assistance to unauthorized migrants who voluntarily self-deport. Separately, Rwanda's foreign minister said the country is in talks with the Trump administration to accept migrants deported from the United States. 4. The Justice Department asked a federal judge

to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to restrict access to the abortion pill Mifepristone, arguing that the case did not meet the legal standard to be heard in the court where it was filed. At number five, Germany's Friedrich Maus won a parliament vote to become the country's next chancellor, succeeding on the second ballot after failing to secure enough votes on the first. President Donald Trump is going to try to single-handedly defund public media in America. Within the last hour, President Trump signed an executive order ending federal funding for PBS and NPR.

It's the latest stage in the president's attacks on news outlets that have covered him critically. The order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies to stop funding national public radio and PBS. It also says that they must work to root out indirect sources of public financing for those news organizations. On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed

an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and all executive departments to end federal funding for national public radio and the public broadcasting service. The order claims that the outlets fail to offer a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens and instructs the CPB to cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and declined to provide future funding. Executives at NPR and PBS called the order unlawful and said they would challenge it.

The CPB is a private non-profit corporation established by Congress in 1967 to steward the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. In March, Congress allocated the corporation $535 million for the next two fiscal years. PBS says that it and its stations receive 15 percent of their revenue from federal funding, while NPR says its stations receive 10 percent. NPR itself only receives 1 percent directly from the CPB. In April, the CPB sued President Trump after he attempted to fire three members of the corporation's five-member board, arguing that the president lacked the authority to do so. In addition to its claims of partisanship at NPR and PBS, the order argues that the need for publicly funded media has dissipated since

the formation of the CPB. Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options, it reads. NPR and PBS can test that view, noting that rural areas and small towns, among others, still rely on public media as a critical source of local information. Many Republicans support the order, arguing that PBS and NPR should not receive public funds due to long-standing partisan bias. Following testimony from the outlets in a House hearing in March, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia, said, For far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news. This needs to come to an end, and it needs to come to an end now. Democratic lawmakers largely framed the order as an attack on a vital service. Senator Andy Kim, the Democrat from New Jersey, called the order a shameful, short-sighted

betrayal of the public good, while Representative Dan Goldman, the Democrat from New York, said the president was taking away Sesame Street, emergency alert systems, rural stations, and educational shows for kids. PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger denounced the executive order, saying it threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming. NPR president and CEO Catherine Mayer called the order an affront to the First Amendment rights of NPR and the locally owned and operated stations throughout America to produce and air programming that meets the needs of their

communities and said that the outlet would challenge the action using all means available. Today, we'll cover Trump's executive order with views from the left and the right, and then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf, and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone, and now I use it nonstop. The other day, I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended, and instead of spiraling into a 40 minute social media scroll I

just asked Gemini on my pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials? The book you're likely thinking of is Phantasma by Kaylee Smith. Here's a breakdown of why it fits your description. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. All right, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left opposes the order suggesting that it's unpopular even among Republicans. Some say the action poses a threat to American democracy. Others argue that many undeserved groups would be affected if public media were defunded.

In the American Prospect, David Dayen wrote, Trump's weakness shows through. NPR and PBS are perpetually under threat of losing funding when Republicans are in power, but they never pull the trigger because a critical mass of lawmakers in the party don't actually want to vote against Big Bird This time was supposed to be different The GOP was determined to use a mechanism to vote down currently funded initiatives that the president wants to ditch, Dayan said Trump was supposed to send over the rescission bill this week. Then it got delayed and now the timeline is the end of the month Meanwhile Republican lawmakers have started to grumble about cutting even this tiny fraction

of spending. The only durable way to defund public media is to defund CPB, and Trump was on the road to doing that with a simple majority vote in Congress. Then he apparently pulled the plug and won it alone. Reading between the lines, we can presume that there are enough votes for rescinding CPB funding, or for a rescission package that is toxic because it's attached to a president with a 39% approval rating," Dan wrote. Trump governs by executive order because he has to, because his ideas are an anthem even

to a party that's supposed to be putty in his hands. In common dreams, Tim Carr called the order an assault on American democracy. The White House made it clear that it's taking this action based on Trump's unfounded claims about coverage from NPR and PBS. Yet the First Amendment very clearly and succinctly prohibits the federal government from making any laws,

and by extension, any executive orders, abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," Carr wrote. In poll after poll, people of all political stripes say that federal support for NPR and PBS is taxpayer money well spent. To eliminate funding for these media institutions clearly goes against the will of the majority of Americans, and it's not the way a democracy is supposed to function. As local newsrooms downsize or outright shut down, public media stations fill a void. Penny Abernathy at University of North Carolina's Center for Media Law and Policy has extensively

documented the spread of news deserts across the country. Local newspapers are closing at an exponential rate, and many local radio stations have hollowed out their newsrooms and replaced programming with nationally syndicated talk formats, often hosted by far-right figures, Carr said. The expansion of news deserts across the country is a democratic issue with profound implications for our communities. In USA Today, Mark Brown said, Trump's PBS funding cut is a loss for kids everywhere. About 50 percent of children in America are not enrolled in preschool.

Given that the unregulated digital landscape for kids can be toxic, dangerous, and for profit, with advertisers trying to sell everything from bad snacks to toys their parents might not be able to afford, public media is the last safe place for our children," Brown wrote. It is non-commercial and free, accessible over broadcast even in remote areas, there to provide any children, regardless of means or circumstance, the ability to learn and grow all while being entertained. While each of America's 356 local public television stations would be affected by funding

cuts, those serving rural, island, and tribal communities would face the most severe consequences, Brown said. A 2023 study by Protect My Public Media found that without funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 26 stations would go off air and 23 more stations would need to reduce their coverage areas, cutting off rural audiences due to the high cost of reaching these communities. That's as many as 46.1 million Americans losing access to public media, which plays a critical role in public safety, education, and connecting communities.

Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right supports the order, saying the outlets brought this scrutiny on themselves. Some suggest NPR and PBS strayed from their mission and are now paying the price. Others say publicly funded media is not vital to democracy. National Review's editors argued defunding PBS and NPR is long overdue. In principle, there's no reason why the federal government should be in the business of funding news and entertainment programming. It does not serve an essential purpose and could easily be financed privately. But if the government is going to be in the broadcasting business, it should at least not be one-sidedly political," the editors wrote.

Instead, both NPR and PBS have abandoned any pretense of neutrality or balance, regularly pushing left-wing ideology and woke sensibilities in their news coverage and other programming. NPR, PBS, and their defenders often perform a dishonest dance. They simultaneously dismiss the money contributed by the federal government as a small percentage of their overall budgets while crying that cutting off those funding sources will destroy them. It's time at long last to end this charade. They have every right to operate as left-wing propaganda outlets, but they are not entitled to pursue this goal with taxpayer money," the editor said.

Successfully ending federal funding for left-wing broadcasting networks would, after Republicans have talked about it for so long with no effort, be a nice feather in the administration's hat. In The Hill, Jonathan Turley wrote, NPR's undoing is a cautionary tale for the media. Some of us have objected for years to the government subsidizing one radio outlet. It only made it worse that NPR was overwhelmingly democratic in both its staff and its coverage. For years, NPR ignored complaints over its bias. It had a lock on federal funding to subsidize operations even though its audience was shrinking,

Turley said. Some of us oppose NPR's funding as a form of state-sponsored media, a fundamental contradiction with principles of freedom of speech and the press. However, this is a moment the rest of the media should not let pass. NPR was ultimately undermined by its own arrogance. Editors and journalists did not have to worry about the fact that its shrinking audience was overwhelmingly white, liberal, and affluent. Due to its support in Congress, it could make the vast majority of the country, which does

not listen to its programming, help pay for its programming, Turley said. It will now have to choose between sustaining its bias or expanding its audience. It certainly has every right to be a left-leaning outlet, as do right-leaning outlets, but it has to sustain itself in the marketplace. In Racket News, Matt Taibbi said, No, state media and democracy don't go hand-in-hand. The office of my first full-time reporting job with the Moscow Times was in the Pravda building. I used to spend lunch hours walking through the doors shown in the photo above Bearing it up in the cafeteria with writers from the sports section of Komsomolskaya Pravda at the time the Guinness Book World

Record holder for the world's largest circulation Tayyipi wrote With over 21 million readers Komsomolka sure as hell qualified as strong public media But hardly went hand-in-hand with democracy With over 21 million readers, Komsomolka sure as hell qualified as strong public media, but hardly went hand-in-hand with democracy. Like the rest of ex-Soviet media, it owed its circulation to decades of forcing insane lies on readers. People who grew up reading BBC or AFP might imagine a correlation between a state media and democracy, but a more dependable indicator of a free society is whether or not obnoxious

private journalism like the Russian Top Secret, whose editor, Artem Berovik, died in a mysterious plane crash, is allowed to proliferate. As for those once storied European networks, most have now become parodies, operating in concert with multiple official review operations like BBC Verified or the trusted flaggers of the EU's Digital Services Act. This layered messaging system essentially guarantees favorable coverage of public policy and is more dangerous than asking listeners of stations like NPR to pay for media they like.

All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. Alright, that is it for the left and the right of saying which brings us to my take. So first and perhaps most importantly, I do not think the federal government should be in the business of funding domestic media organizations. Accordingly, I am not fundamentally opposed to the government cutting funding for the corporation for public broadcasting.

I don't think that stance is really that controversial. Great media organizations like great businesses should be able to stand on their own two feet. If I were to open tangle up to taking a corporate sponsor and we depended on that sponsor's money for day-to-day operation, then Tangle would be corporate media, no matter how editorially independent I strive to be.

The same is true of PBS and NPR with government funding. If they rely on funding approved by politicians to operate, then they are essentially state media. In the media space, where independence is a key pillar of journalism, that arrangement creates an enormous and predictable problem. To be clear, whether NPR is a perfectly centrist,

conservative or liberal news outlet does not matter to me. For the record, I think it is obviously liberal today. That is really besides the point though, which is that outlets like NPR and PBS already have a perfectly workable news organization without funding from the government, and their reliance on that money is an obvious conflict of interest. NPR does not help its case by having identifiable bias in its story selection, staff, language, choice, or coverage. When Democrats are in power, the optics are a threat to their credibility. And when Republicans are in power,

their slant is a threat to their business model. This is not an easy position for me to take because I care a great deal about healthy media ecosystems which require local newsrooms thriving. And right now, our free press is struggling. NPR, whatever you may think of their editorial slant, employs a lot of great journalists and does a ton of important local news reporting,

which is needed at a time when most people focus on national news. Programs like This American Life are some of my favorite sources of journalism, even when they aren't covering Tangle. I'm heartened by the many CPB initiatives across the country that support journalism. People care and they want newsrooms

to work, but that doesn't mean the best way to help them work is with the government. This position, as you might expect, comes with some nuance as it relates to the current environment, so let me flesh out a few caveats here too. First, I don't mean to say that all journalism initiatives should be excluded from public funding. If federal or state governments want to offer grant programs to encourage new journalists to enter the fray or for specific projects in regions with limited news outlets,

or to help translate media into new languages or to make news accessible for people of a certain age or with a disability, all of that seems fine. Second, I do think a reasonable argument can be made for the US funding media organizations abroad, specifically in places where free press is being suppressed. For all the spreading democracy that the United States does with bullets and jets, we could promote freedom more effectively and humanely with laptops and pens.

And third, while I support President Trump ending public funding of many media organizations in his recent budget proposal, I do not support him specifically targeting NPR and PBS through executive orders or any specifically targeted executive orders. I'm even more opposed to the Trump administration's pressure campaign on private media organizations, which has come in the form of threatening to arrest journalists, suing media organizations, and engaging in all kinds of shady arrangements that produce positive outcomes for the Trump family. Some people might read all this and think, well, in places like Europe, publicly funded news organizations do great work. And they do.

But they're also susceptible to enormous risks. For instance, the BBC is a publicly funded media organization that now has to operate within the ecosystem of the Digital Services Act, which imposes penalties on platforms for spreading misinformation. BBC stood up BBC Verified to combat disinformation and fact-check content in that ecosystem. So now, the UK government has a government-funded media organization helping decide what is and isn't true in the context of a government-pass media organization helping decide what is and isn't true

in the context of a government-passed bill that helps punish organizations for spreading disinformation. I think this system will quite predictably lend itself to more favorable coverage of government policies and activities, as well as a more favorable view of what the government says is or isn't true or fact. That should raise the hackles on your neck. It certainly does for me. To put a neat bow on all of this, Trump's targeting of NPR and PBS through executive action is just the latest salvo in his quest to gather and exercise power.

At the same time, it's the predictable outcome of having publicly funded media organizations, which is a good reason not to have publicly funded media organizations in the first place. So while I don't support Trump's executive push to target these outlets, I do support Trump's legislative push to end that funding. And I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised how most of these media organizations will be able to stand up on their own feet without the funding and operate as a genuinely free

press. We'll be right back after this quick break. Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone and now I use it non-stop. The other day I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended and instead of spiraling into a 40 minute social media scroll, I just asked Gemini on my Pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials?

The book you're likely thinking of is Phantasma by Kaylee Smith. Here's a breakdown of why it fits your description. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from an anonymous reader in Birmingham, Alabama, who said,

I am concerned about access to information in general. I read an article about BEED, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act and a Commerce Director's warning. From reading that article, I think the project has progressed too slowly in not having broken ground yet.

Are the ways we're receiving information getting narrower? Is control of broadband the next big information war? And how concerned should I be? Okay, so there's an old saying called Hamlin's razor that often applies in government. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. To describe how the IRA's $42 billion Bede program to expand rural broadband and internet connectivity in underserved areas hasn't made any physical progress since it was authorized in 2021,

we're going to turn to two people, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein. Recently, Thompson and Klein co-wrote a book critiquing liberal governance from a liberal perspective, and they both use Bede as an example of poor liberal governance while promoting their book. It turns out that in order for states to get access to that pot of $42 billion, they had to go through a 14-step process to get access to the money, Thompson said.

And this has taken so long that of the 56 states and localities that have started the 14-step process, only three by March 2025 have gotten through the entire process. This is an example of the goals of government running up against the processes of government, such that the processes overwhelm the goals. Klein described this process in more detail in a viral interview with Jon Stewart.

However, Thompson and Klein's telling didn't paint the entire picture. They implied democratic lawmakers alone were to blame for enacting a Byzantine system of review, but their story left out another reason for the resulting complexity. Internet service providers, the ISPs. In short, ISPs helped draw maps to define the areas where government required them to improve service, and localities had to be aware of the law, which the ISPs were actively lobbying to change,

and the map in order to access Bede's service. To his credit, Thompson admitted that he inclined got some of this wrong when describing how the law failed. But whether you blame ISPs for setting up roadblocks or the government for failing to remove them or both, it's clear that the reason Bede hasn't made meaningful progress to provide rural broadband isn't due to a malicious scheme to restrict access to information,

but due to the system Bede created. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the podcast and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. Wednesday, May 7th, is the first day that commercial travelers must present a Real ID compliant license or another accepted document to board an aircraft in the U.S. In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act, which sought to improve identity verification at airports in the wake of this September 11th attacks.

However, implementation of the law was delayed several times and the enforcement deadline was last extended in 2022. According to the Transportation Security Administration, travelers without a Real ID will need to provide an acceptable alternative form of identification, such as a passport or permanent resident card, and should prepare for additional identity verification and screenings at the airport. Axios has the story and information about obtaining a real ID, and you can check that out with the link in today's episode description. Alright, next up is our numbers section.

The year that Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was 1967. The approximate number of total weekly listeners across NPR stations is 43 million according to the network. The approximate number of people who watch PBS annually is 130 million according to the network. The approximate number of people who watch PBS annually is 130 million according to the network. The number of radio grantees receiving funds from the CPB representing 1,216 public radio stations

is 386. The number of television grantees receiving funds from the CPB representing 365 public TV stations, is 158. The approximate percentage of CPB's federal funding allocated directly to local public media stations is 70%. The percentage of US adults who say the federal government should continue to fund NPR and PBS is 43%, according to a March 2025 Pew Research survey.

The percentage of US adults who say the federal government should remove funding from NPR and PBS is 24%. And the percentage of Republicans and Democrats respectively who say the federal government should continue to fund NPR and PBS is 19% and 69%. And last but not least our have a nice day story. percent and 69 percent. And last but not least our have a nice day story. Decommissioned wind turbine blades are challenging to recycle and repurpose.

However, a collaboration between Draft Surf and Acciona recently unveiled a creative solution – surfboards. The prototype boards have strips of turbine blades built into the deck for flex control and strength, using recycled fiberglass for the fins, and incorporate recycled blade particulate into the outer shell's fiberglassing process. We know that in the next five to ten years, countries like Australia will have a large volume of decommissioned wind turbine blades, so we're acting now," Axionos Mariola Dominic said.

Nice news has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dyett75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com. Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf, and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone, and now I use it nonstop. The other

day I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended, and instead of spiraling into a 40-minute social media scroll, I just ask Gemini on my pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials? The book you're likely thinking of is Phantasma by Kaylee Smith. Here's a breakdown of why it fits your description. It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com