'Gut-wrenching': Public broadcasting nonprofit mourned as GOP cuts force shutdown

President Donald Trump's funding cut package, passed last month, has led to the end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the federally funded 60-year-old nonprofit announcing on Friday they will begin "an orderly wind-down of its operations" starting in September and continuing through the rest of the year.

The organization provides grants to local TV and radio broadcast stations that air content from National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. While NPR and PBS themselves will carry on, funded by viewer and listener donations and corporate sponsorships, the end of CPB could have devastating consequences for stations in lower-income and lower-population areas that rely on federal funding to operate.

The news triggered an outpouring of alarm and mourning by media observers.

"RIP Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1967-2025)" wrote Georgia State law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

"I was raised by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is terribly tragic," wrote former New York Daily News and Boston Herald reporter Helen Kennedy.

"We’re losing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting but worry not, the part-time golfer president is getting a golden ballroom," wrote Gabe Ortiz of America's Voice, referencing Trump's controversial and gaudy new plans to add a massive $200 million ballroom wing to the White House that is larger than the entire existing structure.

"I can’t begin to enumerate the ways the Corporation for Public Broadcasting made my life better, literally from my earliest memories until today. This is gut wrenching," wrote Muhlenberg College associate professor of public health Kathleen Bachynski.

"Totally insane — shutting down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is like if one removed the spine from a body and all that was left was a glob of organs," wrote Josh Shepperd, University of Colorado Boulder associate professor and fellow with the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force.

"Trump take Mr. Rogers?" wrote Virginia Commonwealth University education professor Jon Becker.

In response to the news, Eric Columbus, former Justice Department official and special litigation counsel for the House January 6 Committee, posted an image of convicted Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking associate Ghislaine Maxwell strangling Big Bird.