Announcement comes just a week after board members cried about funding cuts in a meeting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down after President Donald Trump rescinded $1.1 billion in federal funding provided to NPR, PBS, and other public media outlets.
The nonprofit said Friday it will lay off a majority of its employees by the end of September as part of an “orderly wind-down of its operations.” The CPB will maintain a bare-bones staff through the beginning of next year to handle legal and compliance issues.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison.
The move comes after Trump signed a GOP-backed bill last week to rescind funding for the CPB over concerns about liberal bias at NPR, PBS, and other public media outlets.
Republicans have long criticized NPR and PBS, citing the outlets’ coverage of various news stories, as well as statements from NPR president Katherine Maher. Maher, who took over NPR in March 2024, has called Trump a “racist,” touted Kamala Harris’s campaign, and defended riots and looting after the death of George Floyd.
Maher denied during a congressional hearing this year that NPR harbors liberal bias. But Harrison acknowledged public media’s bias during a board meeting last week after Congress passed the bill to rescind federal funding.
“Is there bias?” asked Harrison, according to an audio recording of the meeting. “Sure, we’re not perfect, but we were working on that,” she continued, adding that the leftward slant of public media is “not a legitimate reason to shut down everything.”
The CPB shutdown seemingly brings an end to its bitter legal fight with Trump, who ordered the firing of three Biden-appointed members earlier this year to make way for his own nominees.
But the three members, Thomas Rothman, Diane Kaplan, and Laura Ross, filed a federal lawsuit in June to keep their jobs, saying Trump did not have the authority to fire them. The Department of Justice filed a countersuit last month, accusing the members of “unlawfully” participating in board meetings.
Ross resigned last week after Congress voted to rescind the CPB’s funding. Rothman and Kaplan took part in a board meeting on July 24, which devolved into a tear-filled struggle session over the funding cuts. Harrison recited a passage from the Shakespearean tragedy Henry V that cast public media as a “ragtag army” engaged in battle against a stronger foe, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Rothman, the president of Sony Pictures, recited a scene from the film Master and Commander to praise Harrison for “[standing] tall in the quarterdeck under heavy and unfair fire.”
Rothman resigned from the board on Friday, leaving it with just three members and six open seats.
According to the CPB, the board will remain intact “to address the legal, financial, and operational requirements of the closure.” It is unclear whether Trump plans to fill out the rest of the board.
