Trump Keeps Doing Sh*t Nobody Voted For, Like Eliminating 'PBS Kids'

Kids' programming on PBS defunded, once again illegally.

‘Rude Panda! Chengdu, China.’ Photo by ‘Andy,’ Creative Commons License 2.0

Donald Trump’s war on everything halfway good and decent continues apace, with the gratuitous cancellation of an Education Department grant that funds children’s educational programming on PBS. That’ll save $23 million that can now go to about a minute and a half of tax cuts for billionaires, or a month or so of Donald Trump’s golfing trips. (Haha, stupid libs! Complaining about the millions of dollars his golfing costs is so 2017! Everyone’s fine with it now, get some new material!)

Did anyone really vote for this? We don’t remember Trump promising during the campaign that he’d gut children’s programming on public TV; maybe it slipped in there somewhere between the shark-or-electric-boat musings and the weird dancing. Still, it’ll probably win some support from the Usual Gang of Shitheads who think trolling is the entire purpose of government, i.e., the entire Republican Party.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said yesterday that it was informed of the cancellation of the “Ready to Learn” grant Friday. The grant has funded PBS Kids programming for preschool and early elementary kids, including “Lyla in the Loop,” “Work It Out Wombats!” and “Molly of Denali.” The main characters in the two non-wombat shows are little girls of color, which may have had something to do with the defunding. For all we know, somebody at Education may have thought “Molly of Denali” was a sneaky attempt to violate Trump’s renaming of that Alaskan mountain to “Mt. McKinley,” although the show debuted in 2019.

Madi Biederman, an Ed Department comms bot, explained the final $23 million tranche of Ready to Learn funds had to be eliminated because the program was funding “racial justice educational programming for 5-8 year-old children. This is not aligned with Administration priorities.” Wouldn’t want kids in the Lower 48 knowing that there are Native Alaskans, after all, because all Americans are equal, meaning exactly the same, meaning white. Certainly not African-American / Jamaican like that jerk Lyla.

Biederman went on to explain that the “Trump Department of Education will prioritize funding that supports meaningful learning and improving student outcomes, not divisive ideologies and woke propaganda.” We haven’t watched any of these shows, but previous Ready to Learn grant recipients included shows like “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” which were full of terrible diversity, a wonderful actor who was Kunta Kinte and probably made kids gay with those rainbows, and also a big red dog, which is probably racist to white dogs.

The Ready to Learn grants were established by Congress in 1992, so if PBS sues over this, the network can point out that Trump is violating the Constitution again. Maybe a court will think that matters. Whether that results in the funding being restored is another question; maybe ask all the federal employees who got their jobs back but were then placed on leave forever.

The most recent five-year Ready to Learn grant, which was supposed to run from 2020 through September of this year, was actually approved during Trump’s first term, under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, including continued funding for “Molly of Denali” and for “Lyla in the Loop,” although the latter show only reached the air last year. Guess DeVos just wasn’t racist enough somehow.

This latest shitty move follows up Trump’s executive order attempting to kill PBS and NPR. CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison noted that Ready to Learn has been funding PBS Kids programming for over 30 years, and that the grants have always received strong bipartisan support during that time, thanks to the shows’ “proven educational value in advancing early learning skills for all children.” Yes, even the children who are Black or Native Alaskan. She promised to “work with Congress and the Administration to preserve funding for this essential program,” for all the good it will do.

More dangerously, Harrison said that “Nearly every parent has raised their kids on public broadcasting’s children’s content,” a statement that no doubt prompted howls of outrage from some fundagelicals who have been boycotting PBS ever since that demon-spawned 2019 episode of “Arthur” with the gay wedding, or who have been mad at “Sesame Street” from the start over all that godless race-mixing. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for including a kid whose family was food insecure. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for Oscar the Grouch watching “Pox News.” Or mad at “Sesame Street” for causing Benghazi, yes really. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for Big Bird getting the COVID vaccine (not even on the show, but in a tweet). Or mad at “Sesame Street” for that 2020 CNN town hall about racism, which doesn’t exist anymore except against white people.

OK, well then we suppose we should rethink our initial position. Obviously some people voted for this. The very worst people.

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[Deadline / NYT / Open Culture]

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