President Trump issued an executive order overnight, instructing the corporation for public

broadcasting to halt all funding for PBS and NPR, which would impact those two networks,

the roughly 1,500 public media stations nationwide, as well as national programs like the

News Hour. William Brangham is here now to explain the latest. So William, the president

has long said that he wants to cut funding for public media. This is another approach to doing

just that. So what exactly does the executive order say? That's right, Omna. This has been a long

on the president's wish list. I mean, many GOP administrations have wanted to do this.

His administration, though, has been much more forceful about pushing for these cuts. This executive order, as you noted,

directs the corporation for public broadcasting to stop all direct federal taxpayer funds from going to NPR and to PBS.

And as we've reported in the past, that would have quite a few impacts across the network all over this country.

The president argues that public media in general has a liberal bias and that taxpayers should not be supporting that. Last month,

the president wrote this, quote, Republicans must defund and totally disassociate themselves from

NPR and PBS, the radical left monsters that so badly hurt our country. We should say, as we have before, the heads of PBS and NPR

reject that categorization. But again, this executive order tries to zero out funding for those

organizations. And William, what about the corporation for public broadcasting, the CPB, which we

should reiterate is a congressionally created

corporation that directs about $500 million to both PBS and NPR every year. What have they

said in response? The head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Pat Harrison,

cited that fact that you just stated, which is that CPB was

created by Congress, not by the White House. And so the executive office has no authority over

their governance. In her statement, she went on to say, quote, in creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade any department agency officer or

employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational

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