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PBS has caved to President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI push and announced the closure of its diversity, equity, and inclusion office.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump ordered the termination of “radical and wasteful government DEI programs.”
“In order to best ensure we are in compliance with the President’s executive order around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion we have closed our DEI office,” a PBS spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter in a statement.
The staff members in PBS’ DEI office are also leaving the company, the spokesperson said, adding: “We will continue to adhere to our mission and values. PBS will continue to reflect all of America and remain a welcoming place for everyone.”
According to PBS’s 2023 DEI report, Black, indigenous, and people of color employees comprised 48 percent of new hires and 35 percent of promotions in 2022; 43 percent of PBS’s senior leadership were women and 29 percent were people of color that year.
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Beyond Trump’s DEI executive order, the broadcaster is also the subject of a Federal Communications Commission investigation. FCC chair Brendan Carr wrote a January 29 letter to PBS and NPR, which are both licensed to operate by the FCC, that the commission would be looking into whether the stations violated federal law by airing commercials “on behalf of for-profit entities.”
“Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming,” Carr wrote. “To the extent that these taxpayer dollars are being used to support a for profit endeavor or an entity that is airing commercial advertisements, then that would further undermine any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars.”
PBS and NPR are funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, created by Congress in 1967. Congress has appropriated more than $500 million to CPB in 2025
Earlier this month, Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, called to defund NPR: “It should survive on its own.”
“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last April. “THEY ARE A LIBERAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE. NOT ONE DOLLAR!!!”
Republican members of Congress are planning on renewing efforts to do just that.
Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is sponsoring a bill to slash federal funds to the PBS and NPR, told Fox News Digital Tuesday: “Americans have hundreds of sources of news and commentary, and they don’t need politically biased, taxpayer-funded media choosing what they should see and hear. PBS and NPR are free to compete in the marketplace of ideas using donations, but their public subsidy should end.”
Less than 1 percent of NPR’s annual operating budget comes from federal funds, while PBS says government funds account for about 16 percent of its budget.
