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CV NEWS FEED // Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, introduced a bill Thursday to pull federal funding from NPR and PBS, accusing the outlets of pushing “radical left propaganda” at taxpayers’ expense, as Fox News first reported.
“Hardworking Americans are sick of footing the bill,” Jackson told Fox News, arguing that the “chronically biased” NPR and PBS have turned into “taxpayer-funded propaganda machines for the radical left.”
Jackson’s defunding effort follows a contentious House DOGE Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, where NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher attempted to defend NPR against accusations of deep-seated bias.
Republican members cited specific examples, including NPR’s decision to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “distraction” during the 2020 election–a decision that Maher admitted was a “mistake.”
When Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan asked if NPR operates with any political bias, Maher replied: “I have never seen any instance of… political bias determining editorial decisions.”
Republicans pointed to a former NPR report that revealed that 87 out of 87 editorial staff in the D.C. area are registered Democrats.
“I think from what we have heard here today, the American people will not continue to allow such propaganda to be funded through the federal government with their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Subcommittee Chair and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Meanwhile, Paula Kerger’s PBS was called “one of the founders of the trans child abuse industry” by Greene because of programs encouraging “transgenderism” in children.
Jackson’s bill comes after a Senate hearing earlier this week where Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., condemned “the Left’s war on the First Amendment.”
As CatholicVote previously reported, Schmitt alleged that the Biden administration had used federal agencies, universities, and taxpayer-funded NGOs as tools to suppress free speech.
“Over the past decade, an alliance of activists, academics, journalists, big tech companies, and federal bureaucrats designed a system to suppress and silence their critics,” Schmitt testified. “They did so in unprecedented ways: using new novel tools and technologies of the twenty-first century.”
President Donald Trump voiced his support for defunding NPR and PBS amid his own efforts to protect free speech.
“NPR and PBS, two horrible and completely biased platforms (Networks!), should be DEFUNDED by Congress, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Republicans, don’t miss this opportunity to rid our Country of this giant SCAM, both being arms of the Radical Left Democrat Party. JUST SAY NO AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
