As part of its ongoing war against both public services and media that reports on the Trump regime critically, the heads of NPR and PBS were dragged before a congressional subcommittee run by noted fascist freak Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose language made it clear the Trump regime is borrowing a playbook from one of the darkest periods of US history:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/npr-pbs-mtg-hearing-doge
NPR and PBS testify in heated hearing of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Doge panel
"NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical leftwing echo chambers,” said the Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene during her opening remarks, accusing NPR of having a “communist agenda”.
The hearing, called “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable”, was chaired by Greene who is head of a “delivering on government efficiency” group within the House oversight committee.
The Doge subcommittee hearing comes as the Trump administration, including the senior presidential adviser Elon Musk, wage a months-long campaign against public broadcasters and critical media more broadly. The FCC, led by a recent Trump appointee, opened an investigation into NPR and PBS in January. A day before the hearing, President Donald Trump said he would “love to” end public funding for the public broadcasters."
I know there's a tendency among "respectable" people to ignore everything Greene says and does because she's a raving nazi crank, and often a circus-level distraction from "serious" politics; but in this case I think doing so would be a grave mistake. Why? Because she just turned a govt efficiency panel into a House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) session right out of the darkest days of McCarthyism, before using the regime's reactionary grievances with NPR and PBS to further its war on media, public broadcasting, and programs funded for the education and edification of the American public.
If you think I'm going too far with that comparison, consider the title of the hearing (Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable) and keep in mind that the purpose of calling it is ostensibly "efficiency." This is a funding recommendation panel. Greene doesn't have the authority to "hold the heads of NPR and PBS accountable" but before she even spoke a word, she'd already cast the networks' programing as anti-American and a danger to the nation.
If that doesn't convince you, consider the lines of questioning Greene pursued and the content of her arguments. She literally accused NPR of having a "communist agenda," cast critical reporting of the Trump regime as anti-American, and grilled PBS's Paula Kerger about LGBTQ+ content like it was some kinda crime.
"The attacks on PBS, meanwhile, heavily focused on opposition to LGBTQ+ content in its programming. “They are now part of transing children, brainwashing children about gender,” Greene said of PBS on Tuesday during an interview on the rightwing channel Newsmax.
Greene repeatedly attacked PBS during the hearing over claims that it featured a drag performer on one of its shows, holding up a poster of the performer who she described as “child predator” and “monster.”
Folks, this is an official representative of the govt seriously arguing that showing a fully-clothed drag performer singing a children's song is an anti-American plot to "trans" and "brainwash" US children. No really; and she accused the singer of being a child predator without evidence to boot. She also accused both networks of being a "radical leftwing echo chamber" which would be an absurd comment on its face given the milquetoast, barely left of center content found on both networks, if not for the inclusion of the sinister-sounding word "radical" and the larger context of the hearing.
Please keep in mind that after seizing control of the typically independent FCC (see article at the top of this thread), Trump minion and Project 2025 author Brendan Carr immediately opened up clearly ideological investigations into NPR and PBS, and Downmarket Mussolini himself has been threatening to revoke the licenses of ostensibly "liberal" media that criticizes him or reports on his unlawful activities, including PBS and NPR. In that context, all of this, including this hearing, is designed to manufacture consent for ideological policing every bit as reactionary and malicious as the HUAC and McCarthyism.
In terms of spending, the government doesn't provide very much of NPR and PBS's funding; which only goes to demonstrate the purpose of this hearing was ideological policing, not govt efficiency. Because these people use the whole cow however, Greene still seized the moment to advocate for dismantling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, even though it won't shut down NPR or PBS, because doing so will shut down local media and these fascists want you ignorant and reliant on their propaganda outlets for the news.
disturbing attack on the freedom of the press 
“true free-speech emergency”, media experts have warned, 
investigations into 
lawsuit against CBS over the way that a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was edited last year, we can confirm.
️But Paramount Global is seeking the greenlight for its sale to Skydance, something that requires the regulatory approval of the Trump administration. 
