Donald Trump and Elon Musk are coming after NPR and PBS.

Elon Musk, co-chair of Donald Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has proposed eliminating all $535 million budgeted for public broadcasting—and House Speaker Mike Johnson is already on board.

The public broadcasting budget is small potatoes compared to Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022, which, at $44 billion, cost more than 80 times as much as the full amount allocated for public broadcasting annually. And another of Musk's companies, SpaceX, relies on billions in defense funding, which neither he nor Congress seem eager to touch.

Our nation's entire public broadcasting budget could be covered many times over by trimming the Pentagon budget or implementing a common-sense wealth tax on billionaires like Musk.

Although federal funding for public broadcasting has faced threats in the past, NPR reports that this time, the scale and intensity of criticism from Trump and Musk suggest "it would be unwise to assume that events will play out as they have in the past."

Not only do NPR and PBS offer beloved programs like "All Things Considered" and "Sesame Street," they also provide a nationwide network of stations offering local news, educational programming, and critical support for the emergency alert system.

And while corporate news outlets like ABC News and The Washington Post capitulate to Trump with bogus legal settlements and self-censorship, and as disinformation runs wild on social media, NPR's more than 1,000 public radio stations reach over 98% of Americans. Former NPR executive Eric Nuzum warns that, if the public broadcasting budget is slashed, "The most vulnerable stations serving the most vulnerable people are going to be the ones that are hurt the hardest. We're talking about very rural parts of the United States."

Please sign the petition to urge members of Congress to keep full funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and save NPR and PBS! The petition says:

Public broadcasting is a valuable resource that is well worth the modest public investment. Please protect funding for NPR and PBS.