2 May 2025

PBS chief decries Trump’s executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR as unlawful

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By DAVID BAUDER, AP Media Writer

The head of PBS said Friday that President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR was blatantly unlawful.

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Public Broadcasting Service CEO Paula Kerger said the Republican president’s order “threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years.”

“We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans,” Kerger said.

Trump signed the order late Thursday, alleging “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies to “cease Federal funding” for PBS and National Public Radio and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funnels public funding to the two services, said that it is not a federal executive agency subject to Trump’s orders. The president earlier this week said he was firing three of the five remaining CPB board members — threatening its ability to do any work — and was immediately sued by the CPB to stop it.

The vast majority of public money for the services goes directly to its hundreds of local stations, which operate on a combination of government funding, donations and philanthropic grants. Stations in smaller markets are particularly dependent on the public money and most threatened by the cuts of the sort Trump is proposing.

Public broadcasting has been threatened frequently by Republican leaders in the past, but the local ties have largely enabled them to escape cutbacks — legislators don’t want to be seen as responsible for shutting down stations in their districts. But the current threat is seen as the most serious in the system’s history.

It’s also the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with.

Since taking office in January for a second term, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has also pushed to withhold federal research and education funds from universities and punish law firms unless they agree to eliminate diversity programs and other measures he has found objectionable.

Just two weeks ago, the White House said it would be asking Congress to rescind funding for the CPB as part of a $9.1 billion package of cuts. That package, however, which budget director Russell Vought said would likely be the first of several, has not yet been sent to Capitol Hill.

The move against PBS and NPR comes as Trump’s administration has been working to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which were designed to model independent news gathering globally in societies that restrict the press.

Those efforts have faced pushback from federal courts, which have ruled in some cases that the Trump administration may have overstepped its authority in holding back funds appropriated to the outlets by Congress.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

2 May 2025

At UT, a Day of Drag and Defiance

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On an average school day, harried students at the University of Texas at Austin rush across Speedway to get to class, stopping only to dodge a dangerously fast Lime scooter. On Monday, however, several students made a pitstop to get their makeup done by one of over a dozen drag performers, each in vibrant outfits and elaborate makeup of their own. The students then continued to class, a little more colorful and sparkly than before. 

The performers showed up—some even calling out of their day jobs—for the student-run initiative called the Day of Drag, which encouraged students to show up to class in drag to protest the University of Texas System’s ban on drag performances. As university systems across the state have enacted similar bans and the Texas Legislature continues to attack LGBTQ+ rights, students are shouldering the weight of advocating for their rights. 

On March 18, the UT System Board of Regents said its universities cannot sponsor or host drag shows in their facilities The decision also followed a similar ban from the Texas A&M System Board of Regents on February 28 banning drag show events on campus. The Texas A&M resolution cited President Donald Trump and Governor Greg Abbott’s executive orders that prohibit using funding for “promoting gender ideology.” The resolution also said drag performances could “create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.” On March 28, the University of North Texas system followed suit and paused drag performances on its campuses. 

Texas A&M’s ban came just ahead of the scheduled date for Draggieland, an annual drag show hosted by student-led Queer Empowerment Council. After first hearing about the new policy, members of the Council, including Alex Gonce, the event chair and treasurer, began fielding questions from reporters and administrators about their event being banned. “We were completely blindsided,” Gonce told the Texas Observer. “It was very scary and all at once.”  

Within a week, the Council teamed up with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil libertarian legal group that advocates for free speech on college campuses, to sue A&M for infringing on their First Amendment rights. A federal judge temporarily blocked the university’s policy on March 24. In her ruling, Judge Lee Rosenthal suggested the students would prevail in their free speech claim and wrote: “Anyone who finds the performance or performers offensive has a simple remedy: don’t go.”  

Three days later, Draggieland went on as planned at the A&M campus in College Station. 

Gonce first joined the Council as a representative for a different student organization, Transcend. They said they enjoy being able to do more activism work as part of the Council, because Transcend focuses more internally on resources for its members. “Having a central place to go to make our voices heard has been really good,” Gonce said. 

At UT-Austin, Isabella Thomas, a government and Spanish junior, didn’t see any advocacy groups organizing after UT announced its own ban, so she took action by planning the Day of Drag. She later learned other groups tried to challenge the ban, but learned it would be more difficult to fight than A&M’s because the UT System did not publish a written resolution—Board Chairman Kevin Eltife merely announced the policy in a written statement.

Thomas decided to have students go to class in drag because the decision, while vague, did explicitly forbade the university from hosting drag performances, not drag altogether. “We’re definitely pushing the line a little bit,” Thomas told the Observer. “But we’re not actually crossing the line.” Thomas got the event approved by the Office of the Dean of Students, which handles requests for campus events. 

A steady stream of students came by to get glammed up by the artists, each with their own strong personal style. Some students walked away with faces donning pastel glitter and rhinestones, others with strong contours in deep blue or purple. Graduate student Savvy Cornett said they were looking forward to wearing their full face of makeup, complete with sparkly blue eyeshadow, to the animal physiology class they TA for. “I’ve always wanted to have my makeup done via a drag queen, so this is a dream come true, and I’m so excited to go to class later” Cornett said. 

Last session, Abbott signed Senate Bill 12, which would have criminalized “sexually oriented” drag performances performed in front of minors. A federal judge ruled the bill unconstitutional in September 2023. 

Thomas has found that sense of community and hope through drag performances. In particular, she said, she goes to drag queen Brigitte Bandit’s weekly “LegiSLAYtion & Liberation” show in downtown Austin, which makes her feel less alone. 

“I feel hopeful for a future, which is something that not a lot of people can say, and probably something that I wouldn’t say all the time,” Thomas said. But during the two-hour show each Tuesday,  “I feel hopeful. I feel like we are going to get past this.” 

Brigitte Bandit came to the event in pink, blue and white chaps—the color of the trans flag—danced to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” and read from drag icon Sasha Velour’s memoir, The Big Reveal, as part of a drag queen story hour. “Whenever they try to ban drag, we just put students in drag, bitch,” Brigitte Bandit said at the event. “Ain’t nothing illegal happening here. We’re just having fun.”

This session, the Senate passed Senate Bill 18, which would cut funding from public libraries that host events in which people “dressed as the opposite gender” read a story or book. Republican legislators have also targeted LGBTQ+ rights in higher education, building on last session’s passage of Senate Bill 17, which prohibited DEI offices and practices, and shut down spaces for queer students, like the Gender and Sexuality Center at UT-Austin.

Now, Thomas said there’s more pressure on students to take the lead. “I’m happy we haven’t given up,” Thomas said. “[But students are] having to take on this extra work to continue providing space for their community.” 

At A&M, Gonce said the Queer Empowerment Council had to take on several initiatives formerly hosted by its Pride Center, like Lavender Graduation, after SB 17 forced the Center to close. 

The Lege has also continued its crusade against “DEI” in higher ed. Senate Bill 37, authored by Republican Senator Brandon Creighton, would prohibit core curricula courses that “require or attempt to require a student to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political or religious belief are inherently superior,” which would likely target gender and ethnic studies courses. 

Zoey Gonzales told her friend she didn’t care if she was late to class — she was getting her makeup, dramatic red and pink winged eyeshadow, done. “This is way more important than my classes right now,” Gonzales said. “If I myself as a trans person won’t be here to stand for my rights, then who will?” 

Arwyn Heilrayne, who helped organize the event, danced around in a “Moo Deng Says Trans Rights” shirt, with blue eyeshadow and deep pink blush and glitter on her cheeks. She said she contributes to student organizing with her energy. “It’s so hard in this world to have fun sometimes,” Heilrayne said. “Movements are only sustained through joy, So we have to have joy as much as possible.” 

Thomas, the Day of Drag organizer, says events like these are important to foster a sense of community. “Even though this is most likely going to be a one-off event, celebrating the artistic value of drag, just celebrating queerness on campus, we want students to continue to plug in with the queer community,” Thomas said. “Having support and knowing that there are other people like you that love you unconditionally is just so incredible.” 

The post At UT, a Day of Drag and Defiance appeared first on The Texas Observer.

2 May 2025

Trump re-ups his threat to strip Harvard University’s tax-exempt status

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By SEUNG MIN KIM, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday re-upped his threat to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, escalating a showdown with the first major college that has defied the administration’s efforts to crack down on campus activism.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote on his social media site Friday morning from Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending the weekend. “It’s what they deserve!”

The president has questioned the fate of Harvard’s tax-exempt status — which a majority of U.S. colleges and universities have — ever since the school refused to comply with the administration’s demands for broad government and leadership changes, revisions to its admissions policy, and audits of how diversity is viewed on the campus. That prompted the administration to block more than $2 billion in federal grants to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution.

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The Treasury Department directed a senior official at the Internal Revenue Service to begin the process of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status shortly after a social media post from Trump in mid-April questioning it, although the White House has suggested that the tax agency’s scrutiny of Harvard began before Trump’s public comments targeting the school.

The White House has also said any IRS actions will be conducted independently of the president. Federal tax law prohibits senior members of the executive branch from requesting that an IRS employee conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.

Democrats say Trump’s actions against Harvard are purely political. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, along with Massachusetts’ two Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Ron Wyden of Oregon, called for an inspector general investigation into Trump’s attempts to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status.

Trump’s move “raises troubling constitutional questions, including whether the president is trying to squelch Harvard’s free speech rights and whether the revocation of its tax-exempt status will deprive the university of its due process rights,” the senators wrote in a letter Friday to Heather Hill, the acting Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

Trump’s battle against Harvard is part of a broader campaign the administration is framing as an effort to root out antisemitism on college campuses. But the White House also sees a political upside in the fight, framing it as a bigger war against elite institutions decried by Trump’s loyal supporters.

The “next chapter of the American story will not be written by The Harvard Crimson,” Trump said Thursday night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he delivered the commencement address at the University of Alabama. “It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide.”

The Harvard Crimson is that school’s student newspaper. The Crimson Tide refers to the Alabama school’s football program.

In addition to threatening Harvard’s tax-exempt status and halting federal grants, the Trump administration wants to block Harvard from being able to enroll international students.

2 May 2025

White House comes out with sharp spending cuts in Trump’s 2026 budget plan

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By LISA MASCARO and JOSH BOAK, AP Congressional Correspondents

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget plan would slash non-defense domestic spending by $163 billion while increasing expenditures on national security, according to statements released by the White House on Friday.

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The budget showed a desire to crack down on diversity programs and initiatives to address climate change. But the administration has yet to release detailed tables on what it wants income taxes, tariffs or the budget deficit to be — a sign of the political and financial challenge confronting Trump when he’s promising to cut taxes and repay the federal debt without doing major damage to economic growth.

Budgets do not become law but serve as a touchstone for the upcoming fiscal year debates. Often considered a statement of values, this first budget since Trump’s return to the White House carries the added weight of defining the Republican president’s second-term pursuits, alongside his party in Congress.

It also arrives as Trump has unilaterally imposed what could hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases in the form of tariffs, setting off a trade war that has consumers, CEOs and foreign leaders worried about a possible economic downturn.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, provided contours of a so-called skinny version of topline numbers, with more details to come.

“Details soon,” Vought said during a Cabinet meeting this week at the White House.

The nation’s estimated $7 trillion-plus federal budget has been growing steadily, with annual deficits fast approaching $2 trillion and the annual interest payments on the debt almost $1 trillion. That’s thanks mostly to the spike in emergency COVID-19 pandemic spending, changes in the tax code and climbing costs of Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, largely to cover the nation’s health needs as people age. The nation’s debt load, at $36 trillion, is ballooning.

This year’s presidential budget request is expected to reflect cuts already made by Trump’s actions and adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, including the slashing of the government workforce. It also could point to potential new revenue streams, possibly from Trump’s tariffs program.

Democrats are prepared to assail Trump’s budget as further evidence that the Republican administration is intent on gutting government programs that Americans depend on.

Congress is already deep into the slog of drafting of Trump’s big bill of tax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered funds for the administration’s mass deportation effort — a package that, unlike the budget plan, would carry the force of law.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who spoke with Trump multiple times this week, is racing to have the president’s “big, beautiful bill” approved by the House by Memorial Day and sent on to the Senate.

“We had a very productive and encouraging meeting at the White House this morning, and the remaining pieces of ‘The One, Big Beautiful Bill!’ are coming together very well,” Johnson, R-La., said in a statement after Thursday’s meeting with Trump and various committee chairmen.

But deep differences remain among the Republicans, who are trying to pass that big bill over the objections of Democrats.

“We are awaiting some final calculations on a few of the tax components, and we expect to be able to complete that work on a very aggressive schedule,” Johnson said.

Meantime, Cabinet officials are expected to start trekking to Capitol Hill to testify about their various requests in the president’s budget.

It’s Congress, under its constitutional powers, that decides the spending plans, approves the bills that authorize federal programs and funds them through the appropriations process. Often, that system breaks down, forcing lawmakers to pass stopgap spending bills to keep the government funded and avoid federal shutdowns.

Vought is also expected on Capitol Hill in the weeks ahead as the Trump administration presses its case to Congress for funds.

Among the more skilled conservative budget hands in Washington, Vought has charted a career toward this moment. He served during the first Trump administration in the same role and, for Project 2025, wrote an extensive chapter about the remaking of the federal government.

Vought has separately been preparing a $9 billion package that would gut current 2025 funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which involves the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Trump signed an executive order late Thursday that instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies to cease funding for PBS and NPR.

Vought has said that package of so-called budget rescissions would be a first of potentially more, as the Trump administration tests the appetite in Congress for lawmakers to go on record and vote to roll back the money.