NPR gets $113 million in gifts, including $80 million from Connie Ballmer

National Public Radio has received 2 charitable gifts totaling $113 cardinal aft President Trump moved to slash funding for NPR and PBS successful 2025.

Philanthropist Connie Ballmer, the woman of erstwhile Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, made an $80 cardinal donation, NPR announced on Thursday. The wealth — the largest ever from a surviving donor — volition assistance heighten the vigor network's usage of integer exertion and summation engagement with audiences crossed platforms, according to NPR.

"I enactment NPR due to the fact that an informed nationalist is the bedrock of our society, and ideology requires strong, autarkic journalism," Ballmer, a erstwhile subordinate of the NPR Foundation board, said successful a statement. "My anticipation is that this committedness provides the stableness and the spark NPR needs to innovate boldly and fortify its nationalist network."

NPR said the 2nd gift, totaling $33 million, came from an anonymous donor. NPR CEO Katherine Maher said the charitable donations would enactment the web and its stations connected coagulated fiscal crushed successful the decades to come. 

Congress past summertime cut $1.1 billion successful backing for nationalist broadcasting, leaving immoderate 246 NPR stations and hundreds of PBS outlets scrambling to capable the hole.

A federal justice ruled earlier this period that Mr. Trump's enforcement bid to slash backing for NPR and PBS violated the First Amendment by seeking to punish media outlets for code helium dislikes. But the determination did not reconstruct backing to the stations. 

"[W]hile the tribunal precocious ruled successful favour of NPR and PBS against the Trump Administration's enforcement bid — an indispensable triumph for journalistic independency and the First Amendment — it did not reverse the devastating world of the legislature defunding," Maher said successful a blog post.

"The imperishable nonaccomplishment of much than $1 cardinal successful national backing has created important fiscal unit crossed each of nationalist media," she added. 

Edited by Alain Sherter

In:

• NPR
• Trump Administration