Budget recisions kill off CPB
During the post-Helene storm recovery in Asheville last fall, I was safe but offline for a week. Digby reported that readers missed me. I appreciate it. Power was out most everywhere. Water was out for weeks. The Internet was out. Cell service was out.
What wasn’t out? Our local public radio station, our only source for information about recovery efforts, assistance and emergency supplies.
So Trump and his Project 2025 lackeys in Congress want public broadcasting dead. Russ Vought and Stephen Miller must be toasting this news with flutes of liberal tears:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package and the release of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-H) appropriations bill, which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades.
A little history from The New York Times:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created in 1967 by the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act, part of an ambitious domestic policy agenda labeled “the Great Society” by President Lyndon Johnson. Congress was responding, in part, to the growing popularity of commercial television, which had been derided by Newton Minow, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as a “vast wasteland.”
[…]
Now, public broadcasters are turning to foundation funders, philanthropists and local donors to help resolve the coming cash crunch. Local stations across the United States have seen an outpouring of financial relief, with members in their areas turning out in droves to support their favorite programs.
And now? Jamelle Bouie tweeted, “the republican party hates public goods and wants to force feed you and your family slop produced by its billionaire allies.”
They also want to feed you data slop produced by tRump-sniffing hacks. Trump just fired Erika McEntarfer, the Biden-appointed Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner behind the bad jobs report issued on Friday.
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research summarizes:
The unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent in July as the rate of job growth slowed to just 73,000 in the month. Perhaps more striking than July’s figure was the sharp downward revisions to the prior two months’ data, putting May and June job growth at 19,000 and 14,000, respectively. The average for the last three months now stands at just 35,000. Furthermore, all of the job growth was in health care, which accounted for 142 percent of the gains.
While the 4.2 percent overall unemployment rate is still relatively low by historical standards, Black workers have been disproportionately affected. Their unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent, the highest since October of 2021, 2.4 percentage points above the low hit in April of 2023. The employment-to-population ratio for Black workers is down 3.6 pp from its peak in March of 2023.
His Lordship was not pleased:
“I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said, after baselessly accusing McEntarfer of having “faked” statistics.
McEntarfer has served in the federal government for 20 years, including positions at the U.S. Census Bureau, the Executive Office of the President, and the Department of Treasury, according to the BLS website.
It was only a matter of time before Trump reached the Queen of Hearts stage and started calling for heads. In the CPB case, talking heads. We’re there.
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