President Trump’s executive order to defund NPR and PBS was met with fiery pushback on Friday, as the organizations challenged the legality of the move and said it could jeopardize access to vital information.
The order issued late Thursday instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives and distributes over $500 million in taxpayer money to public TV and radio stations annually, to eliminate millions of dollars in federal funding to the two public media organizations. It amounts to perhaps the most significant threat in a decades-long campaign by Republicans to weaken NPR and PBS.
Patricia Harrison, the chief executive of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private company, said in a statement that the White House had no legal authority over the company. NPR vowed to challenge the order, calling it “an affront to the First Amendment.”
Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, also called Mr. Trump’s executive order illegal. “The president’s blatantly unlawful executive order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” Ms. Kerger said.
Mr. Trump and other Republicans have long argued that NPR and PBS have a liberal bias and that taxpayers should not fund their journalism as a result. The executive order used the same argument, accusing the news outlets of producing “left-wing propaganda.”
Mr. Trump’s executive order was the fourth effort by Republicans to weaken public media in as many months: A bill is working its way through Congress to defund NPR and PBS; the White House asked Congress on Friday to rescind federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and this week, Mr. Trump sought to fire three directors from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a move that was delayed by the courts.
The president’s order on Thursday also instructed federal agencies to cut any funding to NPR and PBS. Some federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, have historically awarded grants to public media outlets.
The change, if it survives a legal challenge, would have significant effects on NPR and PBS, though those organizations could survive without government funding. Roughly 2 percent of NPR’s budget comes from federal grants; for PBS, that number is around 16 percent. Both organizations receive government support indirectly through dues and program licensing fees from their member stations.
But the executive order could fundamentally alter NPR’s and PBS’s relationships with their member stations. For decades, local TV and radio stations across the United States have used federal money to buy popular programming, like “All Things Considered” from NPR and “PBS NewsHour.”
Mr. Trump’s order could forbid local stations to spend their money on those programs, barring indirect federal support of those organizations, even if it does not explicitly eliminate funding for local TV and radio stations scattered across the United States, many of which rely on government support to survive.
It would probably not have immediate effect, since the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has already distributed much of its money for 2025.
Amanda Mountain, the chief executive of Rocky Mountain Public Media in Colorado, urged her members to stay informed, donate and speak up for public broadcasting.
“Make your voice heard,” she wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times. “If you value free, public‐service media, contact your representatives.”
Susan Goldberg, the president and chief executive of GBH, a public broadcaster in Boston, said the loss of federal funding “would be a crippling blow for the millions of people who rely on our services for news and education, especially children.”
Richard H. Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at the New York University School of Law, said the executive order could run afoul of a federal law that prohibited the president from rescinding federal funding without permission from Congress.
“As a general matter, Congress controls the purse strings,” Professor Pildes said. “The president doesn’t have the power to refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated for specific purposes.”
He also said it was unclear whether Mr. Trump had the authority to order the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to do anything, since it is a private, nongovernmental entity.
A spokeswoman for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The specter of defunding has loomed over public media organizations for so long that executives have developed contingency plans. In 2011, NPR put together a secret plan to assess what would happen if all federal funding was eliminated from public media. According to the analysis, NPR could lose between $1 million and $27 million, with as many as 181 local stations shutting down. A contingency plan from this spring called the prospect of total and defunding “akin to an asteroid striking without warning.”
Mr. Trump’s order came down just as public radio executives from across the United States met in Washington for NPR’s spring board meeting. Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, addressed the order during the board meeting, saying existing laws prevent any employee of the U.S. government from exercising control over public broadcasting.
“We will strongly defend our work and the editorial and independence of our journalists and continue to tell the stories of the country with accuracy, objectivity, and fairness,” Ms. Maher said.