Dear MoveOn member,
Public broadcasting is facing its most serious attack ever.
Donald Trump recently—and baselessly—called PBS "horrible and completely biased" and "a giant SCAM."1 His handpicked FCC chair launched a politically motivated investigation into PBS.2
And Trump has empowered extremist billionaire allies like Elon Musk to threaten lawmakers who don't get in line with his extreme agenda—which includes the elimination of government funds for public broadcasting.3
It's Congress—not Trump and Musk—who decide how much money public broadcasting gets. But at an outrageous House committee hearing last week, titled "Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable," Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who chairs the committee, called for "the complete and total defund and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting"—the agency that provides federal support to more than 1,500 local public broadcasting stations across the country.4
We've held off attacks like this one before—even when Republicans were in charge before. Right now, with a razor-thin Republican majority in Congress, it's time to sound the alarm.
MoveOn members are flooding Congress with calls and marching in the streets to say, "Hands off public media. No cuts!" And the American public is on our side: 76% of Americans oppose the cuts.5
But we can stop the cuts only if we make our voices heard.
Will you donate $5 a month to provide immediate and ongoing support for MoveOn's emergency campaign to save public broadcasting?
Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Let's be clear: The federal public broadcasting budget is less than 1/10 of 1% of the federal budget.6,7
So why do Trump and Musk want to shut it all down? To have control.
Public media reports the truth.
That's why Trump, Musk, and Greene are working together to destroy all independent media—and replace it with propaganda. The MAGA movement knows that it can't control PBS, so they're trying to get rid of it.
Please, if you can afford it, will you donate $5 monthly to provide immediate and ongoing support for MoveOn's emergency campaign to save PBS?
Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Trump and Musk are doing everything in their power to kill public broadcasting in this country:
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The FCC is actively investigating PBS member stations—claiming that legally accepted sponsorship messages are actually illegal "advertisements."8
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Greene accused PBS of being "anti-American" in a public hearing and called for its total defunding.9
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Trump is pressuring Congress to slash all support—while his allies purge public broadcasters from government buildings and grant access to far-right outlets like Breitbart and One America News.10
If these cuts happen, it'll be rural stations and small-town PBS affiliates that will be hit hardest. These stations depend heavily on federal support to stay on the air. In many places, they're the last remaining source of local news and a vital tool for civic engagement, cultural connection, and emergency communication.11
What Trump and his MAGA allies are trying to destroy isn't only the trusted educational programs like "Sesame Street" and "Nature." It's also the infrastructure that brings lifesaving emergency alerts and thoughtful, well-researched journalism to millions of people—including communities abandoned by corporate media.
When public media thrives, democracy works better.
According to the Knight Foundation, "Research shows that people exposed to news on public television are better informed than those exposed to news on private TV. They are likelier to vote, and they have more realistic perceptions of their societies, especially on issues related to crime and immigration. They are less likely to express negative attitudes toward immigrants. Countries with strong public broadcasters have higher levels of social trust, and the people who live in them are less likely to hold extremist political views."12
The bottom line? It’s our country's democracy that's at stake.
That's why MoveOn is going all-in. But we can't do it without your help.
Will you chip in $5 a month to help us do everything necessary to save PBS before it's too late?
Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
We've helped stop attacks before, thanks to MoveOn members and grassroots people power. This attack is bigger. It's part of a larger authoritarian agenda to suppress dissent, destroy trusted journalism, and take over the information space.
But, together, we can fight back. For Big Bird. For local journalism. And importantly, for our democracy.
Thanks for all you do.
–Alexis, Aliya, Noor, Jaira, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "Will Trump Defund NPR And PBS? Here’s What We Know As President Attacks The Broadcasters," Forbes, March 27, 2025
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/03/27/will-trump-defund-npr-and-pbs-heres-what-we-know-as-president-attacks-the-broadcasters/
2. "Trump's FCC chief opens investigation into NPR and PBS," NPR, January 30, 2025
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281162/fcc-npr-pbs-investigation
3. "Elon Musk's Plan to Defund Public Media and Defend Trumpism," Free Press, November 25, 2024
https://www.freepress.net/blog/elon-musks-plan-defund-public-media-and-defend-trump
4. "Marjorie Taylor Greene attacks NPR and PBS as ‘communist,’ calls for funding to ‘end,’" CNN, March 26, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/media/npr-pbs-marjorie-taylor-greene-hearing/index.html
5. "Americans more likely to support than oppose continuing federal funding for NPR and PBS," Pew Research Center, March 26, 2025
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/26/americans-more-likely-to-support-than-oppose-continuing-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs/
6. Ibid.
7. "How much has the U.S. government spent this year?" Treasury.gov, accessed April 2, 2025
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
8. "Trump's FCC chief opens investigation into NPR and PBS," NPR, January 30, 2025
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281162/fcc-npr-pbs-investigation
9. "Marjorie Taylor Greene attacks NPR and PBS as ‘communist,’ calls for funding to ‘end,’" CNN, March 26, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/media/npr-pbs-marjorie-taylor-greene-hearing/index.html
10. "Pentagon to swap traditional media with pro-Trump outlets under new rotational program for Defense Department workspace," CNN, February 1, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/media/pentagon-press-rotation-defense-department/index.html
11. "Republicans push to defund accessible free news and children’s programming," The Objective, March 28, 2025
https://objectivejournalism.org/2025/03/push-to-defund-public-media-continues/
12. "Public broadcasting: Its past and its future," Knight Foundation, 2017
https://knightfoundation.org/public-media-white-paper-2017-gardner/
Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with us?
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