What Trump and the GOP have planned next for NPR and PBS should scare you

Defunding the public broadcasters is only the first step.

By Jeff Nesbit

The Republican Congress has voted almost unanimously to strip public broadcasters NPR and PBS of their federal funding. President Donald Trump will soon make it official when he signs the rescission cut into law. Both NPR and PBS are now at significant risk, along with the dozens of local radio and television stations in their networks.

“It is very important that all Republicans...DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSNBC put together,” Trump wrote on Truth Social prior to the Senate vote.

“Border crossings at their lowest levels in history last week and NPR defunded. Two big wins!” Vice President JD Vance, who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate this week slashing more than $9 billion from PBS and NPR and international aid agency USAID, crowed on X.

But stripping NPR and PBS of federal funding is just the first step in the Trump/GOP master plan for both public broadcasting networks. What the Trump White House will almost certainly propose next should send deep shivers down the spines of everyone in America.

According to Project 2025 – the Heritage Foundation’s policy and political blueprint that the Trump administration has hewed to religiously since Trump’s inauguration to a second term in January—defunding NPR and PBS was just the first step.

The second shoe to fall would be to reclassify both NPR and PBS and strip both public broadcasters of their noncommercial, educational status .

“They (NPR and PBS stations) should no longer be qualified as noncommercial education stations (NCE stations), which they clearly no longer are,” Project 2025 said in its blueprint, which advocates stripping NPR stations of their status and place on the FM radio dial.

From Project 2025:

Being an NCE comes with benefits. The Federal Communications Commis-
sion, for example, reserves the 20 stations at the lower end of the radio frequency
(between 88 and 108 MHz on the FM band) for NCEs. The FCC says that “only
noncommercial educational radio stations are licensed in the 88–92 MHz ‘reserved’
band.”

For this reason, the Project 2025 authors say the next step after defunding NPR and PBS is to strip them of their educational, non-commercial status. Trump should “instruct the FCC to exclude the stations affiliated with PBS and NPR from the NCE denomination and the privileges that come with it,” wrote the Project 2025 authors.

Such a move, which Trump would likely do by executive order—almost certainly triggering legal action that would land at the Supreme Court—could force NPR off its current FM dial frequencies that are protected and held specifically for non-commercial, educational stations and programming.

And then? What would most likely replace NPR stations on those FM dial frequencies should they be stripped of their protected status as public broadcasters?

Religious programming—specifically, conservative, evangelical Christian programming—which has competed with NPR and local public radio stations on the FM dial for decades.

Religious programming is abundant on FM radio. But it is NPR and local public radio stations that currently sit in protected dial frequencies.

Everyone should be clear-eyed about what’s at stake here. “To stop public funding (for NPR and PBS) is good policy and good politics,” wrote Mike Gonzalez, one of the Project 2025 authors. “Public broadcasting … became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism … but the government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views.”

Project 2025 wasn’t shy about the four key elements of its blueprint for public broadcasting in America, which the Trump White House is now executing.

First, it argues that public broadcasting federal expenditures are wasteful. In arguing to defund NPR and PBS, the Project 2025 plan says that public broadcaster funding represents “half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year.”

Second, Project 2025 argues for stripping the public broadcasters of their noncommercial, educational status, forcing NPR off its current FM dial frequencies and potentially opening them up to religious programming.

Third, the Project 2025 blueprint notes that NPR and PBS leaders have repeatedly claimed that they will, in fact, survive without federal funding support.

And fourth, the Project 2025 authors believe that their core argument that these public broadcasters have a liberal bias—and the perception that NPR and PBS simply fail to represent conservative viewpoints—will win the day with the American people.

All of which paves the way for religious programming to replace the public broadcasting model across the airwaves and the country.

Skeptics of Trump’s embrace of Christian nationalism have long claimed that there’s no real way for the White House to blur the lines separating church and state in official, state-sanctioned programming and communications.

There’s just no way the American people would tolerate religious programming as official, state-sponsored media here and abroad, they argue. The constitutional separation of church and state is absolute.

Well, those constitutionally protected lines separating church and state are being blurred now. Or, more accurately, erased.

And they’re about to be tested.

Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments and agencies under four presidents.

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