John, Jimmy Kimmel was just a preview of the real fight ahead.

If you want the real story, look at what happened this summer – when Congress paired $1.1 billion in PBS and NPR cuts with a major tax break for billionaires, and exposed their real motives in the process.

This was never about saving money, it’s about power — and about silencing the last truly independent news institutions that millions of Americans still trust.

PBS and NPR are among the few outlets left that tell the plain truth, without bending to political pressure or advertiser influence. For decades, they’ve been the antidote to propaganda, the refuge from disinformation, and the educators for families who had nowhere else to turn.

That is exactly why Donald Trump – and his handpicked FCC Chair Brendan Carr – wanted them to go away.

Trump has never pretended to be a leader who tolerates dissent. And for years, Brendan Carr has been the devil on his shoulder: demanding fewer owners, more control, and less room for journalism that doesn’t serve his right-wing agenda. 

Now that they’re back in power, Trump and Carr don’t even need to censor outright – just apply a little bit of pressure to executives, and let them do all the dirty work. 

That’s exactly what happened when they kicked Jimmy Kimmel off the air over a joke Trump didn’t like. That was a clear warning to anyone who might tell inconvenient truths. 

But their biggest targets –who we need to protect at all costs – are the ones that this kind of profit-driven pressure won’t ever work on:  PBS and NPR.

In communities where local newspapers have collapsed, public media is the last source of real reporting. In rural areas, these stations are lifelines during emergencies. For children across the country, PBS has been the doorway to learning when nothing else was available. 

And for everyday people exhausted by lies and chaos, public media remains one of the few places where honesty is still non-negotiable.

Taking these stations down — or starving them until they fail — pushes the country toward something far more dangerous: a media system shaped by fear, controlled by political pressure, and stripped of the facts people need to make decisions about their own lives. It’s how democracies begin to fail.

And Congress did it anyway:  ignoring the overwhelming public support for PBS and NPR, ignoring the people who rely on these stations, and ignoring the damage already done to communities – many that voted for Trump – that have no alternatives.

Common Cause isn’t letting this slide:

• We’re exposing every attempt by Trump and Carr to silence independent voices because the public deserves to see the authoritarian tactics behind it. 

• We’re fighting the media consolidation Carr has pushed, because a democracy cannot survive when a handful of executives — or politicians — decide what counts as news. 

• And we’re mobilizing people across the political spectrum to demand Congress restore every penny of the $1.1 billion they cut from PBS and NPR.

John, if you’ve ever felt steadier because of something you heard on NPR, or watched a child grow and learn because of PBS, then you understand what’s at risk. 

This isn’t just programming. It’s the truth itself — and whether it will remain accessible to the public rather than controlled by the powerful.

If you want to fight back against the censorship, propaganda, and authoritarian pressure behind these cuts, I hope you’ll make your first donation today. Your support helps continue leading the charge to restore this funding and defend the future of public media.

Thank you for being someone who refuses to look away when our democracy is under pressure.

— The team at Common Cause