It Turns Out That Trump Cannot Defund NPR And PBS

Donald Trump recently signed an executive order stripping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of $500 million in funding and prohibiting it from getting any future funds, but there is a problem.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is not part of the federal government.

Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in a statement on Friday:

CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority. Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.

In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors…’ 47 U.S.C. § 398(c).

Trump has as much legal authority to defund NPR and PBS as he does to defund Wendy’s, which is another way of saying that he has none.

Rep. John Larson (D-CT) pointed out that many local NPR and PBS stations depend on federal funding: