Matthew Nussbaum

President Donald Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media may be rooted in statistical reality: An extensive review of subscription data and election results shows that Trump outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn't do nearly as well in areas with heavier circulation. There's  a clear correlation between low subscription rates and Trump’s success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and when compared to Romney in 2012.

President-elect Donald Trump was very clear: “I will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office,” he said in January, after getting a US intelligence assessment of Russian interference in 2016’s elections and promising to address cybersecurity. April 20, President Trump hits his 90-day mark. There is no team, there is no plan, and there is no clear answer from the White House on who would even be working on what. It’s the latest deadline President Trump’s set and missed — from the press conference he said his wife would hold last fall to answer questions about her original immigration process to the plan to defeat ISIS that he’d said would come within his first 30 days in office.

President Donald Trump overcame more than a dozen Republican opponents, Hillary Clinton, an array of scandals and daunting electoral math to land in the Oval Office. But now, he may have finally met an opponent he cannot slay: Big Bird.

Republicans argue that they do not want to see the demise of the stations, only the demise of taxpayer funding for them. “The idea is that it can be privately financed,” said Paul Winfree, the White House’s director of budget policy and a Heritage Foundation alum. However, wealthy metropolitan areas would likely be able to continue to support their public stations, while poorer rural areas — places that lack access to quality news programming to begin with — would lose out. That could give pause to a number of Republican representatives. The universality of public broadcasting that supporters argue make it so crucial also make it tougher to eliminate for purely political reasons. There are many federal programs with far fewer fans — and far smaller budgets — whose elimination would be more politically palatable.