Undergraduate Law Review at Florida State University

Examining the First Amendment Concerns Regarding the Defunding of the American CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

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by

Undergraduate Law Review at FSU
in

Writer: Alayja Dodd

Article Editor: Tatum Cempella

Associate Editors: Harper West & Kelsie Fernandez

I. Introduction

Heated Rivalry, a new series, has achieved global acclaim for its authentic and distinctive depiction of LGBTQIA+ relationships in mainstream media. The show is based on the novel series, Game Changers, written by Canadian author Rachel Reid, which follows the ten-year clandestine romance of two male professional hockey players from opposing teams: Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov.1 Produced by Accent Aigu Entertainment and Bell Media for the Canadian streaming service Crave, Heated Rivalry is considered an independent project, with a total production budget of around CAD $11–12 million.2 The production was funded through a combination of sources, primarily Bell Media and Crave, alongside more unorthodox methods such as incentivized tax credits, foreign distribution pre-sales, and financial support from the Canada Media Fund (CMF).3 The CMF is a government-backed program designed to promote Canadian audiovisual projects.4 The only eligibility requirement to receive grants from CMF, in terms of content, is that the project must feature Canadian stories and culture. The lack of ideological or political limitations has allowed diverse storytelling about marginalized groups to flourish organically, as seen through Heated Rivalry. 

Like Canada, the United States had an independent, non-profit, government-funded entity called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).5 Yet, unlike Canada, the United States under the current administration has taken steps to defund public broadcasting institutions that receive CPB funding, such as Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), citing alleged political bias.6 These outlets have historically aired documentaries and stories amplifying underrepresented voices, particularly LGBTQIA+ individuals. On January 5, 2026, the CPB officially began shutting operations,7 raising serious concerns not only about the future of reliable public media and the preservation of original, diverse content, but also about the broader implications for the First Amendment and the potential for increased government interference with public media.

 II. Background

On November 7, 1967, under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, the CPB was established through the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The Act defined the purpose of the CPB, stating that it “is to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes.”8 The statute also defines CPB’s role in shaping content, stating that programming in the public interest should include “programming that involves creative risks and addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities; [that] which will constitute an expression of diversity and excellence” and be “responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States.” The Act’s discretionary language permits creative interpretation among stations, with the only decisive decree being that the programming must be able to be argued as relevant and showcase a myriad of perspectives. To further ensure that the CPB maintained its autonomy in storytelling, the code states that although the CPB was established by Congress, it would not be a federal agency but rather a private corporation, “to afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control.” Due to the CPB being a private non-profit corporation, the statute forbids “any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States” from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.”9 This establishes that the actions taken by the current administration to dictate programming are not only in direct conflict with the CPB’s founding principles but also illegal under First Amendment principles.

III. The First Amendment and the Constitutionality of CPB Defunding 

During its 58-year existence, the CPB has faced numerous funding threats under previous administrations, those of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.10 The argument for budget restriction due to alleged political bias within public broadcasting was first coined by Richard Nixon.11 Trump, when first running for the presidency in 2016, was akin to the conservative presidents before him and proposed cuts to the CPB, but his stance was purely argued as a budgeting issue, unlike Nixon.12 The proposed defunding of CPB then became inherently political when President Trump first spoke publicly regarding his intent to defund NPR in early January of 2020, following a contentious interview on NPR’s radio show, All Things Considered, when a disagreement between co-host Mary Louise Kelly and then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the administration’s policies in Ukraine led Pompeo to accuse Kelly of violating journalism etiquette.13 Trump, in support of Pompeo, retweeted a post questioning the continued existence of the CPB.14 Since the incident, discussion and political tension regarding the funding of the CPB have increased significantly. Eventually, it devolved into Trump signing Executive Order 14290, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” on May 1, 2025.15 The order called for the CPB to cease all forms of federal funding to NPR and PBS, due to the alleged argument that the CPB was violating its governing statute,16 which states that it may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party.” The White House later published, “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends the Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” on its official website and listed the exact instances of alleged political bias. The list ranges from PBS producing a documentary called Real Boy in 2016, about a transgender teen boy, to PBS News Hour using the term ‘far-right’ 162 times and the term ‘far-left’ only six times during the same six-month period. Trump’s grievances with NPR included NPR insisting that COVID-19 did not originate in a lab and describing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices as “inseparable” from its content.

This is not the first time the CPB has received complaints regarding its broadcasting entities, PBS and NPR. In 1975, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) responded to a complaint regarding two allegedly biased public television programs. The FCC held that it could enforce no stronger requirement than the fairness doctrine, which required that broadcasts must maintain a balanced coverage of issues over a station’s overall programming. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld that decision, ruling that requiring the FCC to demand balance within each individual program or series would “threaten broadcasters’ expressive freedom.”17 Even before the fairness doctrine was utilized to defend programming, when Nixon attempted to defund the CPB, he was faced with congressional and constituent backlash, and as a compromise, the CPB underwent internal restructuring.18 The CPB’s programming power was then decentralized and allotted to local stations.

Ultimately, the CPB is not unfamiliar with adjusting its internal infrastructure to abide by current administrations while staying true to its founding doctrine; however, under the current administration, the expectation is that broadcasters will avoid discussing specific minority groups and prioritize stories the administration finds relevant. Trump’s executive order also comes after PBS removed its DEI offices, whose primary role was researching and allocating funding to projects centered around marginalized individuals. They also removed a documentary about Albert Cashier, a transgender Civil War soldier, from its platforms.19     
 
On May 27, 2025, in response to Trump’s executive order, a lawsuit was filed by NPR and CPB against the Trump administration. The lawsuit was later settled, with $36 million in funding being restored to NPR,20 proving the order was considered unlawful, as the power to fund the CPB lies with Congress, not the executive branch.21 However, unlike Nixon, who was met with congressional pushback, in July 2025, Congress passed the Rescissions Act of 2025, which rescinded all previously approved federal funding for the CPB for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.22
While it is not illegal for Congress to defund the CPB, the circumstances surrounding the initiation of the CPB’s defunding raise serious First Amendment concerns. When the decision to withdraw funding is motivated by disagreement over viewpoints discussed on public broadcasting, the issue moves farther from rudimentary government budgeting but into the realm of political retaliation. The First Amendment prohibits the government from encroaching upon the freedom of speech, whether it is through direct or indirect methods of suppression.23 Congress exited the realm of standard budgeting procedures when it backed Trump’s unlawful executive order. With the CPB specifically structured as a private corporation to protect from political and partisan interference, the argument to withdraw funding sets the precedent of the government being permitted to enforce viewpoint-based restrictions, even on non-governmental entities. However, while the government is not obligated to subsidize public broadcasting, it is not justified in its grounds of using funding decisions to penalize or silence viewpoints that disfavor it. Such actions can undermine the diversity of perspectives available to the public as retaliatory policies encourage ideological conformity, which could be used by current and future administrations as a tool for societal coercion.

IV. Conclusion
The defunding of the CPB not only prevents unique stories such as Canada’s Heated Rivalry from being created, but also forces over 120 rural stations relying on CPB for at least 25 percent of their revenue to disband.24 In areas such as Alaska, radio stations like KUCB and KMXT provide entertainment but also essential emergency information.25 Many of the stations most dependent on federal funds are located on reservations, with Native communities fully relying on them.26 The CPB, whose purpose under its founding was to showcase a multitude of perspectives and provide content relevant to the communities it serves, was never designed to function as a mouthpiece for the federal government. Congress, by backing the initial illegal order by Trump, created a chilling precedent of the executive branch overreaching into independent media, undermining the set constitutional safeguards against government retaliation based on speech.

  1. Jessica Murphy & Annabel Rackham, No Big Names. No Big Budget. But Heated Rivalry Is a Big Hit, BBC News (Feb. 2026), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3edk87vqljo (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  2. Teesta Prakash & Mikaela Lui, Heated Rivalry: Canada’s Soft Power Flex, Lowy Inst. (Jan. 2026), https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/heated-rivalry-canada-s-soft-power-flex (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  3. Max Gao, How ‘Heated Rivalry’ Changed the Game for Canadian TV, L.A. Times (Feb. 2026), https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2026-02-03/how-heated-rivalry-changed-game-for-canadian-tv (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  4. Can. Media Fund, Core Production Guidelines (2025–2026), https://cmf-fmc.ca/document/core-production-guidelines/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  5. Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, 47 U.S.C. § 396 (2024). ↩︎
  6. Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media, White House (May 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/ (on file for the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  7. Urge Congress: Save Our Stations, Protect My Public Media, Protect My Pub. Media (2026), https://protectmypublicmedia.org/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  8. Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, 47 U.S.C. § 396 (2024) (The Act was then codified into the United States Code under 47 U.S. Code § 396, which allowed the CPB to manage federal funding and created a uniform federal regulation of telephone, telegraph, and radio communications). ↩︎
  9. D.C. Bar Pro Bono Program, Officer Duty to Inform, LawHelp.org (Jan. 2012), https://www.lawhelp.org/files/7C92C43F-9283-A7E0-5931-E57134E903FB/attachments/D3A98507-7FD7-48D7-92C6-DB32115FE38E/alert-officer-duty-to-inform-jan-2012.pdf. ↩︎
  10. William Branham & Sam Lane, A Look at the History of Public Media in the U.S. as Republicans Target Federal Funding, PBS NewsHour, (Mar. 2025),  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-the-history-of-public-media-in-the-u-s-as-republicans-target-federal-funding (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  11. Steve Behrens, The Nixon Administration & Public Broadcasting Papers: Summary of 1972, Current, (Feb. 1979),  https://current.org/1979/02/the-nixon-administration-public-broadcasting-papers-summary-of-1972/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  12. Joe Concha, Trump Proposes Eliminating Federal Funding for PBS, NPR, The Hill (Dec. 2017), https://thehill.com/homenews/media/373434-trump-proposes-eliminating-federal-funding-for-pbs-npr/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  13. Nina Golgowski, Trump Suggests NPR Shouldn’t Exist After Heated Mike Pompeo Interview, HuffPost (Feb. 2020), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-npr-mike-pompeo-interview_n_5e2db132c5b6779e9c34fc02 (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  14. Elizabeth Jensen, Aftermath of an Interview, NPR Pub. Editor (Jan. 2020), https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2020/01/28/800381609/aftermath-of-an-interview (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  15. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends the Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media, White House (May 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-ends-the-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  16. Public Broadcasting Act, 47 U.S.C. § 396. ↩︎
  17.  In re Complaint of Accuracy in Media, Inc., 57 F.C.C.2d 182 (1975). ↩︎
  18. Watergate and Public Broadcasting, Am. Archive of Pub. Broad., https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/watergate/watergate-and-public-broadcasting (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  19.  Alex Zimmerman, LGBTQ History Videos Find New Home After PBS Pulls Content Due to Trump Executive Orders, Current (Feb. 2025), https://current.org/2025/02/lgbtq-history-videos-find-new-home-after-pbs-pulls-content-due-to-trump-executive-orders/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  20. Corporation for Pub. Broad. v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-01305 (D.D.C. 2025). ↩︎
  21. Cong. Rsch. Serv., The Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Background and Funding, R48545, 118th Cong. (2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48545 (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  22. Rescissions Act, H.R. 4, 119th Cong. (2025). ↩︎
  23. S. Comm. on Appropriations, Fact Sheet: CPB Cuts (June 2025), https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/250625_cpb_cuts_fact_sheet.pdf. ↩︎
  24. Michael Copley, Public media stations in rural America say emergency alert funding is in jeopardy, NPR (Aug.  2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/08/28/nx-s1-5519337/public-media-emergency-alert-funding (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  25. Report for America Steps In to Support Alaska Public Radio Amid Federal Funding Cuts, Report for America (Aug. 2025), https://www.reportforamerica.org/2025/08/25/report-for-america-alaska-response/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎
  26. Tribal Stations at Risk as Trump Defunds CPB, The Circle News (Aug. 2025), https://thecirclenews.org/environment/tribal-stations-at-risk-as-trump-defunds-cpb/ (on file with the Undergraduate Law Review at FSU). ↩︎

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