Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) chaired a subcommittee hearing on defunding PBS and NPR on Tuesday, accusing the public broadcasters of becoming “radical left-wing echo chambers” and “grooming and sexualizing children.”
The hearing was called “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.” Democrats who spoke were quick to point out not only the hypocrisy of Republicans, who claim to champion free speech, but also the critical role public broadcasting plays in public safety. They also made sure people understood just how ridiculous they believed the entire hearing to be.
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Gay Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) jokingly asked PBS CEO Paula Kerger if beloved Sesame Street character Elmo is a communist, considering he’s red. He also asked if firing Cookie Monster would silence the “pro-cookie vote” in U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s war on junk food.
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He also asked Kerger if Ernie and Bert are “part of an extreme homosexual agenda.” Kerger said no.
Garcia then got serious. “A large majority of Americans say they trust PBS,” he explained, “and that’s exactly why extremists are trying to tear it down. Public broadcasting is a tool for education, for emergencies, and a cherished part of our national fabric. We get huge benefits from a tiny federal investment.” He accused Greene and the broader GOP of attempting to “silence media voices they don’t like.”
He then said “if were gonna get rid of any puppeteers,” it should be the one currently controlling the Executive Branch. “Fire Elon Musk and save Elmo,” he said.
Elon Musk and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to defund Sesame Street and dismantle PBS and NPR. Not on our watch.
— Congressman Robert Garcia (@RepRobertGarcia) March 26, 2025
Fire Elon Musk, and Save Elmo. pic.twitter.com/BQQUwnuYby
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) slammed Republicans for spending time on this matter instead of serious problems.
“It should not be surprising that the president is doing everything possible to make it more difficult for the media to hold him accountable and for the public to be informed about his reckless and illegal behavior, yet here we are,” she said.
“The Republicans have actually organized this goofy hearing to try to convince the American people that PBS and NPR are… ‘domestic threats,’ not the incompetent, unqualified secretary of defense who’s texting war plans to journalists, but its ya’ll, PBS and NPR, the American people are supposed to be worried about. You can’t make this up. It’s as stupid as it sounds.”
Crockett said Americans should not be worried about PBS or NPR but rather about the president “arresting reporters and stripping networks of their licenses for not saying nice things about him or not using Gulf of America.” She also quoted the Department of Homeland Security during the president’s first administration discussing the critical nature of public broadcasting.
She asked Alaska Public Radio President Ed Ulman, “Isn’t it true that without these stations’ broadcasts, Americans in rural communities would lack access to lifesaving information and public safety alerts?” He said yes.
Crockett then broad up the importance of public broadcasting in Greene’s own state and accused Republicans of not caring about protecting Americans from legitimate threats.
“Georgia Public Broadcasting serves as the official distributor of evacuation route information during state-ordered evacuations, and the chairwoman is here advocating to strip their funding.”
“Look, the DOGE agenda isn’t about government efficiency; it’s about breeding corruption at the expense of the safety of the American people, particularly Americans that live in rural and remote parts of the country. They don’t care about public safety. They don’t care about emergency management, and they don’t care about free speech, all of which are harming American people.”
“To be clear, free speech is not about whatever it is that y’all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bulls**t,” Crockett said. “We need to stop playing because that’s what y’all are doing in here. You don’t want to hear the opinions of anybody else. “
Greene has also been mocked in the aftermath of the hearing for being disgusted by video of a drag queen singing to children, which Kerger even pointed out “was mistakenly put on the website of our New York City station” and “was immediately pulled down” and “never broadcast.”
The video depicts the drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess singing non-vulgar lyrics to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus,” an excerpt from her children’s book, The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish Swish Swish.
“The hips go swish, swish swish?” Greene said in the hearing. “The shoulders go shimmy shimmy shimmy? That’s repulsive. That’s not what children… should ever be watching. A grown biological man posing as a woman.”
Regardless of the harmless nature of the song, Kerger clarified that the video was part of a collaborative project between the New York City Department of Education and New York’s public broadcasting parent company, WNET, and was not funded or distributed by PBS.
PBS and NPR receive part of their budgets from the federal government. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which runs both PBS and NPR, receives about $500 million in federal funding each year, or about $1.60 from each American, on average. The stations have been the targets of rightwing ire about excessive government spending for decades, despite the tiny impact they have on the federal budget.
Ahead of the hearing, Greene accused the networks of “transing children” and “brainwashing children about gender.”
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