PBS and CPB sue Trump administration after defunding, marking a historic defense of public media

The story of the Trump administration's war on public media has been inverted in some coverage. It was not the administration that sued PBS — it was PBS, NPR, and local stations like Colorado's KSUT that sued the administration. In May 2025, after President Trump signed Executive Order 14290, titled 'Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,' PBS and NPR filed a federal lawsuit challenging the order, alongside small rural stations that feared retaliation. Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS, described the decision as the most difficult of her career: 'The most sobering moment of the year, maybe even my life, was signing the lawsuit against the president.' Her words capture the fear of reprisal that local stations like KSUT expressed — but also the conviction that the public's access to independent journalism was worth the risk.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint that guides this administration, explicitly called for defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and transferring its spectrum to politically aligned outlets. Once funding was rescinded by Congress in July 2025 — $1.1 billion — CPB began dissolving, a process that has left 1,500 local stations scrambling. The lawsuit remains pending, but the damage is already material: rural stations that depend on CPB grants for children's programming, local news, and emergency alerts are now at risk of license revocation and sale. The administration's goal, as media scholar Josh Shepperd notes, is not just to starve the system but to replace it. The PBS/CPB lawsuit is not an act of aggression by the government; it is a defensive suit by public broadcasters trying to preserve a civic commons.