Trump signs order to cut funding to PBS and NPR

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that seeks to restrict public funds to NPR and PBS, two independent public news organizations that have faced Republicans’ ire for reporting they claim is biased.

The extraordinary order, which the president signed behind closed doors aboard Air Force One and the White House announced around midnight, is the biggest escalation yet in the Trump administration’s assault on the media.

The order claims that NPR and PBS produce “biased and partisan news coverage” and calls for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation to which Congress appropriates more than $500 million annually, to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and … decline to provide future funding” to the news organizations.

“Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter,” the order says. “What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”