PBS nixes 15% of its staff after Trump took sledgehammer to public broadcasting

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is cutting 15% of its staff and eliminating 100 positions as a result of President Donald Trump’s rescissions package that cut $500 million in annual funding for the network.

Trump’s rescissions package, which passed in July, slashed $9 billion in previously appropriated funding toward PBS, NPR and foreign aid, prompting the two public networks to make major staffing changes. The new staffing cuts were reportedly a last resort for PBS after it had already froze funding, paused pay raises and cut its budget by 21%, The New York Times first reported.

“These decisions, while difficult, position PBS to weather the current challenges facing public media,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger said.

The current cuts include 34 immediate layoffs and the shutdown of dozens of open positions, the Times reported.

BREAKING: PBS is cutting 15% of its workforce after President Trump defunded it.

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— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 5, 2025

PBS and NPR have notably shown left-wing bias and have promoted race-based and gender ideologies. In 2020, PBS’ former White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor characterized Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore as a love letter to “white resentment” on MSNBC. In 2017, PBS put together an entire panel to educate its viewers on what it means to be “woke” and how to define “white privilege,” and further produced an entire movie called “Real Boy,” which promoted a teenager’s so-called “changing gender identity.”

PBS also put together a roundtable in 2023 which attempted to cover-up former President Joe Biden’s mental decline in 2023. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg appeared on the program to call Biden “quite acute” while another panelist accused Republicans of “lying” about the then-president being “senile.”

NPR refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election and downplayed the idea that COVID-19 originated in a lab in  Wuhan, China. The outlet also falsely reported that Donald Trump Jr. lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his September 2017 testimony about plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, which actually referred to an entirely different project.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced on Aug. 1 that it is shutting down as a result of Trump’s package. The majority of staff positions are expected to be eliminated by Sept. 30.

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