President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that ends public government funding of NPR and PBS in yet another culturally polarized attack on anything deemed “woke.”

“Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,” the executive order reads. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

This order is more symbolic than anything, as both NPR and PBS receive most of their funding from independent sponsors. And yet the order would limit funding to rural areas in particular, as those stations receive the most of the sliver of government funding that NPR and PBS receive.

“This order defies the will of the American people and would devastate the public safety, educational and local service missions of public media—services that the American public values, trusts and relies on every day,” said America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley. She went on to note that those rural stations provide a “lifeline in hundreds of communities where there is no other source of local media.”

Donald Trump is trying to force Harvard University into subservience, and on Friday he announced that the institution will lose its tax-exempt status.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The move comes after weeks of threats following Harvard President Alan Garber’s announcement last month that the university would not give in to the Trump administration’s demands, outlined in a letter from the Department of Education. These included discontinuing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reforming Harvard’s admissions process for international students, and dismantling programs with “egregious records of antisemitism.”

Following Harvard’s reply, Trump cut $2.2 billion in grants to the school along with a $60 million contract. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem also demanded records on the “illegal and violent” activities of the institution’s international students, threatening to end Harvard’s ability to enroll any future international students if it didn’t comply.

Trump followed up with plans to pull $1 billion in medical grants to the university, accusing Harvard of “grandstanding” by publicly refusing to defy the White House. But the university isn’t backing down, and has the support of its staff: Over 80 faculty members have pledged to donate 10 percent of their salaries for up to a year to support the university’s cause, with the list growing.

It’s all part of conservatives’ war on higher education, which they see as a liberal bastion in American life. Many on the right were also incensed at university protests across the country against Israel’s war in Gaza over the past year. Now, it seems that Trump is threatening the existence of America’s oldest university as a show of force.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration has shut down a Biden-era program to end sewage backups into central Alabama homes, labeling the whole thing “illegal DEI.”

NBC News reports that Trump ended the $26 million effort to rebuild water infrastructure in Lowndes County earlier this month, with an executive order. The program was meant to end 14 years of sewage backing up into homes in the majority-Black area. The Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, said, in accordance with the order, that the DOJ “will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens.”

In 2023, an independent investigation by the DOJ found that the county’s low-income residents, mostly Black, have not had basic sanitation for generations. Human wastewater is piped into ditches and poorly constructed systems instead of wastewater systems, leaving sewage to collect in yards, open areas, and woods.

Increased rainfall in recent years due to climate change has led to contaminated water flooding into homes, vegetation, and even drinking water. It’s not uncommon for untreated sewage to back up into residents’ backyards, or even sinks and bathtubs. A 2017 study found that a third of the county’s adults suffered from ringworm, an intestinal parasite that was thought to have been eradicated in the U.S. More than 300 families in Lowndes County have to deal with this problem.

“We have to be extra sanitary because people getting sick can be a problem,” Annye Burke, a local resident, told NBC. “The health concerns are real. In 2025 we shouldn’t have to deal with this, but it is what it is.”

The Alabama Department of Health had neglected the problem, showing “a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with exposure to raw sewage,” according to the DOJ’s 2023 investigation. The ADH told NBC that “the installation of sanitation systems and related infrastructure is outside the authority or responsibilities.”

According to the Trump administration, it’s not the federal government’s responsibility either. The White House has also moved to end

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