Media
You deserve
honest news.
The government defunded public broadcasting, threatened TV networks with license revocation for critical coverage, and turned Voice of America into a propaganda channel. A free press is not a luxury. It is the mechanism by which citizens hold power accountable. We have to build it back.
The Crisis in Numbers
The information ecosystem is broken by design.
When public broadcasting is defunded and the FCC becomes a political weapon, the people who lose most are those with no alternative.
in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding rescinded by Congress in 2025 - forcing CPB to dissolve entirely on January 6, 2026
Voice of America staff cut from 1,300 to fewer than 100 employees - gutting service to 280 million people across 47 languages
Local newspapers closed since 2005 - leaving communities with no local accountability journalism and no commercial replacement
FCC rules eliminated under FCC Chairman Carr's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative - 90 years of public interest protections gone
Why This Happened
The government weaponized the airwaves.
Project 2025 was explicit: it wanted the FCC to stop being an independent regulator and start being an instrument of presidential power. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter himself. When Trump appointed him on January 20, 2025, he immediately made good on the blueprint. He opened investigations into ABC, NBC, and CBS. He threatened broadcast license revocations for coverage the administration called unfair. When Paramount sought merger approval, the FCC delayed the review while Trump's lawyers simultaneously negotiated a $16 million payment to Trump's future presidential library. That is not regulation. That is extortion using a federal license as leverage.
Public broadcasting was a specific, named target. Project 2025 called for CPB to be "privatized or eliminated." In May 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing CPB to stop funding PBS and NPR. Congress followed with a $1.1 billion rescission - clawing back the two years of forward funding Congress had specifically appropriated to protect CPB from exactly this kind of political attack. By January 6, 2026, the CPB board voted to dissolve the organization that had supported public broadcasting since 1967. Approximately 170 public television stations and hundreds of public radio stations lost their primary source of federal support overnight.
Voice of America - which had served audiences of 280 million people in 47 languages - was dismantled from the inside. Kari Lake, installed as USAGM director with no journalism or management credentials beyond personal loyalty to the president, cut the workforce from 1,300 to fewer than 100 and reduced the agency from 49 language services to four. She partnered with One America News Network to provide content and, in January 2026, personally appeared on VOA's Persian-language service to deliver pro-Trump promotional content - a direct violation of the statutory editorial firewall at 22 U.S.C. § 6202(b). An agency legally required to deliver honest, independent journalism was used to broadcast domestic political propaganda to Iranian audiences.
This is what happens when the government treats the press not as a check on power but as a threat to be neutralized. The institutions destroyed between 2025 and 2026 took decades to build. Rebuilding them - and hardening them against the next attack - is a constitutional obligation.
What Project 2025 Did to Media
- ● Used FCC merger review as political leverage - Paramount paid $16 million to Trump's presidential library fund to secure regulatory clearance for a media merger
- ● Dissolved CPB and defunded PBS and NPR - leaving rural communities, tribal radio stations, and low-income families with no public broadcasting alternative
- ● Cut Voice of America from 1,300 staff to fewer than 100 - abandoning 280 million people who relied on it for uncensored news in authoritarian countries
- ● Eliminated net neutrality - allowing ISPs to throttle streaming, create paid "fast lanes," and favor affiliated content over independent journalism
- ● Eliminated children's educational programming requirements, local ownership caps, and broadband privacy rules protecting subscribers' browsing data
The Plan
What Project 2029 proposes.
Based on Chapter 8 (FCC, CPB, USAGM) of Project 2029. Specific legislation. Real legal authority. A plan that can actually pass.
FCC Independence and License Protection Act
The public airwaves cannot be a political weapon
Prohibit the FCC from initiating or threatening broadcast license revocation proceedings against any major network based on editorial content - requiring independent judicial review before any such proceeding may proceed. Codify FCC commissioner independence with for-cause removal protections. Reverse Carr's 'Delete, Delete, Delete' deregulation: restore children's educational programming requirements, diversity hiring standards, local ownership caps, and broadband consumer privacy rules that required ISPs to obtain opt-in consent before selling browsing data. Prohibit FCC merger review from being used as leverage in unrelated presidential litigation - a practice that constitutes extortion under any reasonable reading of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Public Broadcasting Restoration and Protection Act
Rebuild CPB, PBS, and NPR - and make them impossible to defund by executive order
Re-establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with tripled federal funding - $1.5 billion annually, up from the pre-dissolution level of approximately $500 million. Authorize CPB on a 10-year forward-funding basis and prohibit executive rescission without a two-thirds congressional vote - closing the mechanism that allowed the $1.1 billion clawback. Establish a statutory Local Journalism Preservation Fund within CPB providing $500 million annually in grants to local news organizations, nonprofit newsrooms, and tribal radio stations. The United States currently spends approximately $1.40 per capita on public broadcasting annually; peer democracies average $60-$90. This is a choice, not a necessity.
Voice of America Independence Restoration Act
America's credibility abroad depends on honest journalism - not a propaganda channel
Rebuild USAGM and Voice of America to pre-2025 operational capacity: restore the workforce from fewer than 100 to at least 1,300 employees; restore service in all languages eliminated under Kari Lake's tenure; rescind the partnership with One America News Network. Codify the editorial firewall at 22 U.S.C. § 6202(b) with criminal penalties for any USAGM official who directs or influences the content of broadcasts - making a repeat of the January 2026 Persian-language propaganda incident prosecutable. Require Senate confirmation for the USAGM CEO and establish an independent bipartisan oversight board. Restore the visa program for foreign national journalists that formed the foundation of VOA's multilingual reporting capacity.
Net Neutrality Permanence Act
An open internet is not a privilege - it is infrastructure
Enact net neutrality through statute, permanently classifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service - ending the cycle of FCC orders being vacated by courts applying post-Chevron statutory construction. Prohibit ISPs from throttling, blocking, or creating paid fast lanes for any lawful content. Restore FCC authority to enforce these rules without relying on rulemaking authority alone. The Sixth Circuit's 2025 vacatur of the Biden FCC's net neutrality order demonstrated that administrative rulemaking is insufficient - only a statute will hold. Without net neutrality, ISPs can slow down a competing news service, degrade a streaming platform that hasn't paid for priority treatment, or favor their own affiliated content over independent journalism.
Local Journalism Investment and Media Ownership Reform
Fund the reporters who cover your city council - and break up the monopolies that replaced them
Reinstate FCC media ownership rules gutted since 2017: restore the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership prohibition, lower the national broadcast ownership cap from 39 percent to 25 percent of TV households, and prohibit any single entity from owning more than one television station in a single market. Require FCC to weigh diversity of ownership - including race, gender, and local ownership - in all license proceedings. Provide payroll tax credits of up to $25,000 per journalist annually for local news organizations with fewer than 50 editorial staff. Conduct an immediate review of all media mergers approved since 2017 for anticompetitive harm under the Sherman Act.
Take Action
Fight for an honest information environment.
The press cannot hold power accountable when power controls the press. Here is what you can do.
Support Local News
Subscribe to your local newspaper. Donate to nonprofit news organizations. A community without local journalism is a community without accountability - and there are 2,500 fewer of them than there were 20 years ago.
Find Local News →Demand FCC Reform
Contact your congressional representatives. Ask them specifically to support the Public Broadcasting Restoration Act and to oppose any use of FCC licensing authority as political retaliation against news networks.
Find Your Rep →Read Chapter 8
The full FCC, CPB, VOA, and USAGM reform blueprint - with every policy, legal authority, and implementation timeline.
Read the Plan →Share This
Help others understand what's at stake.