The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has voted to dissolve after Congress approved a rescissions law eliminating about $1.1 billion in CPB funding for future fiscal years, a move that accelerates a wind-down already underway as public media groups face renewed political pressure from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) said its board voted on Monday, January 5, 2026, to dissolve the nonprofit created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, bringing to a close an organization that has long administered federal support for public media stations and national programming.
The decision follows congressional passage of a rescissions measure in July 2025 that eliminated roughly $1.1 billion in CPB funding that had been set aside for upcoming budget years. CPB leadership has said the loss of the federal appropriation left the organization unable to operate as envisioned by the 1967 law.
CPB had already begun an orderly wind-down. In an earlier statement about its operations after the funding loss, the organization said most staff positions would end at the close of the federal fiscal year on September 30, 2025, with a smaller transition team continuing into January 2026 to complete the shutdown.
The funding fight has unfolded amid long-running conservative criticism of public media, including allegations of ideological bias at NPR and PBS. President Trump urged Republicans in Congress to “DEFUND” public broadcasting in a mid-July post on his Truth Social account, calling it “worse than CNN & MSDNC put together.”
Some of the sharpest scrutiny has focused on editorial decisions at NPR and PBS. Conservative media watchdog Media Research Center has published a study of PBS’s “Washington Week with The Atlantic,” alleging overwhelmingly negative treatment of Republicans and the Trump administration over a three-month period. Separately, House Republicans questioned NPR chief executive Katherine Maher during a July hearing about claims of bias, including how NPR handled reporting related to the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 campaign.
Uri Berliner, a former NPR editor who resigned after publicly criticizing the network’s editorial direction, told The New York Times in a text message that NPR should acknowledge what he described as a progressive orientation and decline federal support.
Public media advocates have warned that removing CPB’s federal funding threatens smaller local stations, particularly in rural and underserved areas, that rely on CPB support to provide news, educational programming and emergency information.
