Queer ducks, drag queens for kids, and more: Why it’s time to defund PBS and NPR

The Trump administration is moving forward with defunding PBS and NPR, two media outlets that receive government funding and are widely recognized for their left-wing editorial line. The White House has stated that "for years, American taxpayers have been responsible for subsidizing National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which disseminated radical, progressive propaganda disguised as 'news.'"

The White House is working to ask Congress to cancel $9.3 billion already approved for foreign aid initiatives related to USAID funding and public broadcasting through radio and other programs. These cuts will be focused on PBS and NPR.

To be fair, the programming on these two outlets is not just left-wing; it's radical extremism. In 2024, for example, NPR aired a Valentine's Day story about "queer animals," in which it claimed, among other things, that "some deer are non-binary." In 2022, it did a broadcast on "queer dinosaurs" and "transceratops." It also ran a report titled "What 'Queer Ducks' Can Teach Teens about Sexuality in the Animal Kingdom."

But PBS is no slouch when it comes to indoctrination with gender ideologies. In 2021, it aired a "children's program" with a drag queen named "Lil' Miss Hot Mess." The program aired on March 31, 2021, in which a trans man read from his "children's" book titled "The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish." During the episode, he encouraged children to "get comfortable with their bodies."

These two media outlets have also addressed the issue of race and championed movements like BLM. In 2020, amid the violent Black Lives Matter protests, the PBS program Sesame Street partnered with CNN and aired an episode to "address racism," replicating several of the ideas of the leftist group that were wreaking havoc in different cities at the time. That same year, NPR also decided to talk about "the racial origins of fatphobia."

The left-wing bias is also evident in the way they cover political news. According to the Media Research Center (MRC), an analysis of the labels used by anchors, reporters and contributors to the "PBS NewsHour" program between June 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024, makes the bias clear: labels such as "far right" were used 162 times, while the label "far left" was mentioned only six times. Another MRC study found that PBS coverage of the Republican National Convention was 72% negative, while that of the Democratic National Convention was 88% positive.

Congress will receive the request to rescind part of the approved resources for the two media outlets when lawmakers return from their two-week recess at the end of April. To approve the formal request, the House and Senate will need to vote and reach a simple majority. President Trump has said that publicly funding biased content on NPR and PBS is a "waste," and this request would be the first step in eventually stopping taxpayer money from going to those media outlets.

In a world where every person has access to information within minutes just by looking at their phone, it is completely unnecessary for taxpayer money to fund media outlets, but when the programming on those outlets is far-left propaganda that even indoctrinates children in trans ideology, it is not only a waste, it is a danger.