United States of America (USA)

The United States of America is a federal presidential constitutional republic in North America, a G7 and G20 member, with a population of approximately 343 million and an economy that IMF April 2026 data place at around US$32 trillion in nominal GDP and roughly US$94,000 in nominal GDP per capita. The country operates under the Constitution of the United States of 1787, ratified in 1788 and in force from 4 March 1789, supplemented by the Bill of Rights of 1791 and subsequent constitutional amendments. The federal system comprises 50 states, the District of Columbia, and inhabited and uninhabited territories. The currency is the United States dollar (USD). English was designated as the official language of the United States by Executive Order 14224 of 1 March 2025, the first federal-level designation of its kind. The order revoked President Clinton’s Executive Order 13166 of 2000 on language access for persons with limited English proficiency, while stating that agencies were not required to stop providing services or documents in languages other than English.

The Head of State and Head of Government is President Donald J. Trump, the 47th and current President of the United States, sworn in for a second non-consecutive term on 20 January 2025. The Vice President is JD Vance. Senior administration figures relevant to this profile include Marco Rubio, Secretary of State since 21 January 2025 and designated Acting National Security Advisor from 1 May 2025; Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury; and Pam Bondi, Attorney General. The 119th Congress convened on 3 January 2025 with Republican majorities in both chambers. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was elected Speaker of the House at the opening of the Congress, and John Thune (R-SD) succeeded Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader after McConnell’s 18 years in the leadership role. Republicans opened the 119th Congress with one of the narrowest House majorities in modern history; by June 2026, the House Clerk’s official list showed 217 Republicans, 212 Democrats, one independent and five vacancies.

The State Media Monitor 2026 dataset includes two U.S. public-media organisations: the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), classified State-Controlled (SC), and National Public Radio (NPR), classified Independent Public (IP). A third U.S. public-media organisation, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), was removed from the SMM dataset under a “Defunding/Closure in progress” designation in the August 2025 cycle; the 2026 cycle retains that exclusion with the rationale reframed as PBS no longer having the regular CPB federal-funding mechanism that previously supported PBS and its member stations, rather than PBS itself being in closure.

The 2025/26 cycle has been defined by the most consequential structural transformation of U.S. public broadcasting since the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. President Trump’s 14 March 2025 executive order directing the dismantling of USAGM “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” was followed by the executive-branch installation of Kari Lake as Senior Advisor and, later, de facto acting CEO at USAGM. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled on 7 March 2026 that Lake’s exercise of acting CEO authority from 31 July to 19 November 2025 violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, voiding her actions during that specific period. The 1 May 2025 Executive Order 14290 directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and federal agencies to cease federal funding to NPR and PBS. NPR, PBS and several public-radio stations challenged the order, and U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled on 31 March 2026 that the key funding provision of EO 14290 was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation in violation of the First Amendment, permanently enjoining its enforcement. The ruling did not reverse Congress’s separate rescission of CPB funding. Congress passed the Rescissions Act of 2025 on 17 July 2025, clawing back approximately US$1.1 billion in already appropriated CPB funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027; CPB’s Board voted to dissolve and entered final closeout in January 2026 after 58 years of activity. USAGM’s FY 2026 appropriation under Public Law 119-75, signed by President Trump on 3 February 2026, provided roughly US$650 million, down from prior-year levels but about US$500 million above the administration’s US$153 million shutdown request.

Press-freedom conditions in the United States deteriorated materially during the cycle. In its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States 64th of 180 countries, a fall of seven places from 57th in 2025 and the United States’ lowest-ever position in the Index. RSF North America Director Clayton Weimers characterised President Trump as “pouring gasoline on the fire” of a decade-long American press-freedom decline, and RSF specifically identified USAGM workforce reductions and the dismantling of public-broadcasting funding as contributing factors to the United States’ historic fall in the rankings.

The wider U.S. media landscape remains dominated by privately owned outlets across television, newspapers, digital-native publishers and streaming services, with public broadcasting representing a relatively small but distinctive non-commercial segment. The United States has no general press regulator. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates broadcast licensing and certain broadcast-content rules, and under the second Trump administration its leadership adopted a more aggressive posture toward broadcast licensees in disputes touching on news coverage and alleged distortion. National AI governance under the second Trump administration shifted toward deregulation and accelerated adoption, with emphasis on competitiveness and national security rather than public-service-media AI governance. No public-sector generative AI framework specific to U.S. public broadcasting was promulgated during the cycle, and AI policy at the public-broadcasting level remains a self-regulatory matter handled through institutional editorial standards.

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