Big Bird’s Obituary
About two weeks old but still a good read. Trump defunding public TV. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”
“Big Bird’s Obituary: Greatly Exaggerated”
Joyce Vance April 13
With apologies, tonight’s column runs a little longer than I like them to. But sometimes, the best way to explain a judge’s decision is with context. And I think you’ll appreciate it, especially the bit at the very end.
It all started like this on May 1, 2025: An executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.”
After mentioning National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Trump opined, “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.” The President, who had and would continue to sue the media over fair but unfavorable coverage, accused NPR and PBS of being unfair, inaccurate, and biased, and asserted that they offered a partisan take on the news.
By now, it’s a familiar refrain. Anyone who opposes Trump is the enemy. If you disagree with Trump, you’re the problem, you’re “weaponizing” the system against him. The secret sauce for Trump is that he’s always right, which means any news outlet that engages in even mild criticism of him and is within his reach has to be punished.
A “fact sheet” and press release accompanying the executive order laid out the president’s complaints. It claimed that “NPR and PBS have fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars,” and lists the news and editorial choices with which the president disagrees, ranging from coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic to content featured on Valentine’s Day—Trump objected to coverage regarding “queer animals.” Here is an excerpt from that part of it:
It came as something of a shock at the time—Congress, after all, has the power of the purse, and they had included funding for these programs in the budget. That was when we learned that this Republican-led Congress lacked the spine to oppose Trump, even when it meant giving up its own power. Republicans caved, and Congressional Democrats lacked the power to do anything about it on their own. So, the lawyers went to court.
We discussed the lawsuit over NPR and PBS in depth when it was filed in late May of 2025. When it was first filed, and we read it, I told you, “It’s a winner.” It contained strong arguments about violating separation of powers and the First Amendment. The plaintiff stations argued the government was retaliating against them for exercising their First Amendment rights: “this wolf comes as a wolf,” the complaint says, alleging that Trump’s order acts to “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” They also argued the order violated freedom of association and due process rights.
But lawsuits can take a long time. The case was barely underway in July of 2025, when Trump signed a bill Congress had sped through in order to implement his executive order, canceling about $9 billion in funding that had already been approved for foreign assistance programs like USAID and other programs, based on recommendations from DOGE. About $1.1 billion of that was earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds NPR and PBS and sends money to 150 public radio and TV stations across the country. It was roughly two years of funding.
It wasn’t until March 31, 2026, that a court ruled in favor of the public broadcasters. In a 62-page opinion, Judge Randolph Moss for the District of Columbia held that the executive order violated the First Amendment by perpetrating “viewpoint discrimination and retaliation.” Judge Moss said Trump’s executive order was “unlawful and unenforceable.”
But here’s the catch. Congress had already gone a step further than Trump was able to in his executive order, canceling the funding, which, of course, is their prerogative. A future Congress could restore that funding, yet another good reason to work for the midterm elections. But as of now, this decision may not do much to help public broadcasting; it doesn’t reinstate the federal funding Congress rescinded last July and doesn’t award new funding to the public media stations. And Judge Moss’ order still faces the government’s appeal.
Trump’s executive order was a classic authoritarian move. At the time he issued it, I wrote,
“This is how dictators disguise themselves in the clothing of democracy. Sure, there’s a First Amendment still in place. But the president tries to get around it by threatening to pull essential funding and claiming he’s protecting taxpayers, not restricting speech. The executive order is intended to create an environment of fear where public media ‘voluntarily’ avoids drawing even close to the line of anything that might offend. Censorship, accomplished with the stroke of a pen. Just like the administration has tried to bring universities and law firms, protectors of the First Amendment, in line with its views, they’re doing it again here to NPR and PBS.”
NPR and PBS were not inclined to bend the knee, but they faced devastating budget cuts. Nonetheless, they expressed commitment to reporting the news with journalistic integrity, to the extent that they could. The cuts were offset, in some part, by Americans who love public radio and public TV. In the first three months, about 120,000 new donors contributed an estimated $20 million, and overall, donations for the year were up about $70 million. In December, John Oliver devoted his closing show for the season to public media and announced he would auction real Bob Ross paintings and other Last Week Tonight relics—he raised over $1.5 million. But even the unprecedented surge in donations wasn’t enough to fill the gap. The stations were forced to cut back. PBS cut 15% of its workforce in September of 2025 as the cuts hit.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) dissolved in January 2026. Hundreds of local NPR stations faced severe budget shortfalls, and more than 80 stations were at risk of being forced to shut down. And in January, PBS announced that it would stop its weekend news offerings. “Due to federal budget cuts,” they tweeted, “PBS News had to make the difficult decision to rework our staffing and programming. This Sunday, our PBS News Weekend team will sign off the air.”
But the donations have continued. A few stations closed, but the New York Times reported at the end of January that, “Many have scraped together a patchwork of funding from concerned donors, philanthropies or government grants. Others, facing insurmountable budget issues, have resorted to mergers with bigger stations to stay online. NPR and PBS have not gone anywhere.” At least not yet. They’re holding on in hopes that the public that has done its best to support them will vote in a Congress that understands the importance of the First Amendment.
And they’re still at work reporting the news. Last Wednesday, NPR filed for a court order to force the release of some January 6-related trial exhibits regarding Marc Anthony Bru, who was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison in 2023 for obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder.
Trump pardoned Bru.
NPR is arguing that it’s entitled to access the trial exhibits so it can share them with the public. “The public has an extraordinary interest in accessing the Requested Exhibits. The events of January 6 are ‘of deep national importance and public interest both as to the offense conduct and individuals involved, and the efforts of federal law enforcement agents, prosecutors and the courts in handling the cases arising out of the events on January 6th.’” In other words, NPR is not interested in currying favor with Trump in hopes their funding might be restored. They continued, “The public’s interest in accessing the requested exhibits is only heightened by Defendant’s pardon. The effect of Defendant’s pardon is not that he is adjudicated innocent of the crimes … the public maintains a significant interest in accessing them not just to evaluate the efficacy of the judicial proceedings that produced that conviction, but the wisdom of his pardon.” NPR has issued its own response to Trump’s funding cuts, and it’s not the one he wanted.
It’s very good news that a judge has declared what Trump did unconstitutional; it’s a start. It will be up to the new Congress after the midterms to declare it reprehensible and restore public funding.
So far, this has been about news reporting. But what of Big Bird? What about Arthur, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, and the Magic School Bus? PBS Kids laid off approximately 30% of its staff, removed numerous educational games from its website as a result of the cuts, and has slowed the production of new content. But Netflix made a deal with Sesame Street, which now airs on PBS and Netflix, with the show that has educated so many of our kids remaining freely accessible. PBS Kids is still operating, still beloved.
When Trump issued his executive order, I wondered why an American president would want to eviscerate cherished American traditions like NPR and PBS. Speculating about murdering an unnamed person on Fifth Avenue is one thing, but killing off Sesame Street? Who does that?
Maybe it’s the childish response of a man who can’t take a joke.
Trump was portrayed as a “trash-hurling Muppet” on Sesame Street before he was president. In 2017, just after Trump took office for the first time, USA Today reminded us that, “Sesame Street has a long history of portraying Donald Trump in Muppet form, not always in the most flattering ways. In fact, the show’s fascination with parodying the president stretches back four decades, starting with a late ’80s segment that first introduced viewers to ‘Donald Grump.’”
At one point, there would have been strong pushback if anyone had suggested Trump would gut public media in this country in retaliation for his portrayal on a kids’ show. But now that we are in the advanced stages of the execution of the president’s revenge agenda, with former FBI and CIA directors as targets of criminal prosecution, it doesn’t seem far-fetched.
The First Amendment gives us the ability to oppose a government that would take away our rights. It’s our armor against a president who would try to turn us, like Orbán did in Hungary until voters rejected him yesterday, into an “illiberal democracy,” which is to say, no democracy at all. Whether it’s listening to the news on NPR during your morning commute, watching PBS NewsHour at night, or laughing along to Clifford or Sesame Street with your kids, it’s quintessentially American. No president should try to take that away from us. No decent one would.
We’ll follow the government’s appeal of the district court’s decision with interest, and see what arguments acting Attorney General Todd Blanche will offer to support Trump’s position that he can turn off our TVs and radios if he doesn’t like what’s playing. But at least for now, Big Bird is alive and kicking.
We’re in this together,