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Every episode of “South Park” opens with a disclaimer: “All characters and events in this show — even those based on real people — are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated … poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone.”

While some of that language must be required by an exhausted legal team behind the scenes, the long-running satirical cartoon is known for pressing hot-button topics and rapidly churning out searing parodies. Season 27, which premiered in July, is no exception, focusing on President Trump, his associates, policies and other current events. Some members of Trump’s cabinet have been outspoken about their likeness appearing in “South Park,” but others have shrugged it off. Over the years, the animated series has depicted conservatives and liberals alike, leaving almost no public figure, politician or activist shielded from critique or crude depiction.

This season has had an unusual cadence of episodes, with the first two arriving on a weekly schedule, then biweekly before the arrival of Episode 5, which aired three weeks later on Wednesday. The delayed episode arrived after the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose debate style was depicted in the Episode 2. However, “South Park” creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone told the Denver Post the delay was unrelated to recent events, like Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, or the content: “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true.” The pair had issued a statement on Sept. 17 saying the episode wasn’t finished in time. Future episodes will air every two weeks through Dec. 10.

Here is a guide to every parody and reference so far on this season of “South Park.”

This story will be updated with each new episode.

‘Sermon on the ‘Mount,’ Episode 1

Cartman in “Sermon on the ‘Mount.”

(Comedy Central)

Cutting funding to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting

Cartman is dismayed to find out National Public Radio has lost its federal funding after he tunes in to hear static — an NPR program is his “favorite show,” he says, where “all the liberals b— and whine about stuff.” He rants to his friends about how the government “can’t cancel a show” and wonders what might be next on the chopping block.

In July, the Senate voted to approve the Trump White House’s proposal to claw back roughly $1 billion in federal funding previously allocated for public broadcasting. NPR and PBS are still operating despite the funding cuts, but layoffs and reduced programming are expected.

Christianity in public schools

Head of South Park Elementary PC Principal, whose name was a play on the initialism for politically correct, announces to the school that his name now stands for “Power Christian Principal.” He holds an assembly where he says that “our Lord and savior Jesus Christ” is the only thing that can bring back some normalcy to these “corrupt times.” He proceeds to welcome Jesus to the assembly as a guest speaker. When the students go back home, their parents and the people of South Park are alarmed to hear about the emphasis on Christianity — and the presence of Jesus — in the town’s public school.

Trump has previously endorsed displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms amid a push to incorporate more Christianity into public schools.

‘Woke is dead’

The phrase frequently used by Trump was inscribed on a T-shirt Cartman wears after he realizes the concept of “wokeness” is no longer prominent. “Everyone hates the Jews, everyone’s fine with using gay slurs,” he says, lamenting that he no longer feels purpose if there’s no wokeness to contest.

Karoline Leavitt

The White House press secretary is depicted corralling the president, sporting a large cross necklace, as she often does during press briefings. Leavitt tells Trump a lot of his supporters are starting to turn against him and begs him to talk to them, adding that they’re “really riled up.” Trump’s base has expressed frustration over the administration’s approach to sharing information about the Jeffery Epstein case after he promised more transparency about the convicted sex offender, who died by suicide in 2019, and the sex trafficking investigation involving the late financier.

President Trump

Trump appears this season with an image of his face over an animated body, frequently repeating the phrase “Relax, guy” and threatening lawsuits against anyone who’s in his way. He is shown berating a White House portrait painter for an unflattering depiction of him and there are references to the size of the president’s genitalia. He’s also depicted as being in an abusive relationship with Satan — in which Trump is the abuser. “South Park” has previously depicted Satan as being the victim in an abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein.

The Epstein list

Satan laments the speculation that Trump’s name is on the “Epstein list,” a purported list of his alleged clients. In reality, the Justice Department has said no such list exists, walking back comments Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi made in a Fox News interview earlier this year that the list was “sitting on my desk” in preparation for release. When the list is brought up in the series, fictional Trump says, “Are we still talking about that?,” mirroring comments he made in real life.

CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ and Paramount drama

The stopwatch featured in the introduction to “60 Minutes” is strapped to a bomb when it appears on “South Park.” The hosts of the show are visibly nervous and continue praising the president while covering his lawsuit against the town of South Park, adding that they don’t agree with Trump’s detractors.

The scene references the legal tussle between Trump and Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, which airs “60 Minutes.” The president sued over edits to a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which led to Paramount agreeing to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit in July; shortly after, the Federal Communications Commission, led by a Trump appointee, approved Paramount’s merger with Skydance.

Between the settlement and merger approval, CBS announced it is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” Colbert frequently skewers the president on his show, and Trump praised the cancellation. Paramount also recently bought the global streaming rights to “South Park” in a lucrative $1.5-billion deal for Parker and Stone.

During the episode’s fictitious “60 Minutes” segment over Trump’s lawsuit against the town, Jesus comes to visit the townspeople. Through whispers, he tells them, “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount.”

“The president’s suing you?” a protester asks.

Jesus, through clenched teeth, explains: “The guy can do what he wants now that someone backed down. … You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount! You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys gotta stop being stupid. … If someone has the power of the presidency and also has the power to sue and take bribes, then he can do anything to anyone.”

“All of you, shut the f— up or South Park is over!” Jesus says.

The people of South Park end up settling their lawsuit with the president for $3.5 million, saying it will be fine as long as they cut some funding for their schools, hospitals and roads. And as part of the settlement, they have to agree to “pro-Trump messaging.” Cut to a live-action deepfake video of Trump trekking through the desert in a show of loyalty to his supporters before he strips naked.

‘Got a Nut,’ Episode 2

Cartman becomes a podcaster in Episode 2.

(Comedy Central)

Note: This episode aired on Aug. 6, more than a month before political commentator Charlie Kirk, who is parodied throughout the episode, was shot and killed.

ICE recruitment and immigration raids

This episode is focused on the ongoing raids carried out across the country by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security officials since earlier this year.

When South Park Elementary counselor Mr. Mackey is fired — the government is doing away with needless spending in schools, he’s told — he signs up for a job with ICE, enticed by a generous signing bonus and a higher salary. Mackey watches a promotional video, complete with animations of officers wearing gaiters and a theme song: “We don’t ask for experience, just show up / We don’t care if you’ve read a book or grown up / If you’re crazy or fat and lazy, we don’t care at all … If you need a job, it’s a job to have.”

Mackey is hired with alarming speed and proceeds to go on his first raid, targeting a “Dora the Explorer” live show, which has a not-so-intimidating audience of young children and abuelitas. After ICE agents hear from protesters that there are “many Latinos in heaven,” they make the pearly gates their next stop.

Kristi Noem

The Department of Homeland Security secretary leads ICE agents through a series of raids this episode, but she first appears in an orientation video. She tells the new recruits, “A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” and she proceeds to going on a shooting spree targeting yelping puppies (including Krypto the Superdog) throughout the episode. In her 2024 book, Noem wrote about how she killed her 14-month-old dog for exhibiting aggressive behavior.

She’s also seen rounding up as many immigrants as possible in raids, shouting orders like, “If it’s brown, it goes down.”

And in a running gag, her face periodically melts off, requiring a glam squad equivalent to a pit crew, and at one point, it seems to take on a life of its own. Trump also says her face “freaks me out” during the episode.

Noem responded to the depiction on Glenn Beck’s podcast, calling it “lazy” to target her looks. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can’t, they just pick something petty like that,” she said.

Right-wing debate podcasts

While conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk does not appear as a character in this episode, his style of debate content — and his name — are featured.

Loudmouthed Cartman is frustrated that so many others, namely his classmate Clyde Donovan, are profiting off of “his shtick” of arguing against liberal views.

Clyde has a debate podcast, inviting viewers to watch as he “totally destroys these woke liberal students.” He’s set up in a tent on a college campus where he waits as a line of students come to speak with him, and he challenges them to “prove me wrong.” Cartman eventually takes over, saying that he is the “master debater” and sporting a haircut similar to Kirk’s. He shuts down his opponents’ arguments with phrases like, “You just hate America and you love abortions.”

Clyde and Cartman’s content replicates Kirk’s well-known style. The founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA frequently toured college campuses and hosted events just like the one depicted in the episode. The phrase “prove me wrong” was used frequently by Kirk to promote his events, inviting students to challenge his political and cultural views.

On Sept. 10, Kirk was shot and killed while hosting such an event at Utah Valley University, the first stop of his “American Comeback” tour. Weeks before he was killed, Kirk responded to the episode with a 30-minute YouTube video, finding it humorous.

“I think a lot of it was hilarious towards me,” he said. “Some of it was very funny and I don’t think we should have too thick of skin.”

He also touched on the reach of his organization and events, noting that his name is enshrined in “The Charlie Kirk Award for Young Masterdebaters” that Cartman and Clyde compete for in the episode. “So a campus thing I’ve been doing for 13 years to debate random college kids has now been so important that it gets prominent prime-time placement on Comedy Central?” he asked through laughs. “I think the whole thing is just awesome and hilarious.”

Mar-a-Lago

When Mr. Mackey is rewarded for good work as an ICE agent, he’s flown to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where he frequently stays and hosts events.

He’s greeted by giggling women who hand him a drink and put flower leis around his neck before the president meets him and gives him a brief tour of Mar-a-Lago. While there, Mackey accidentally walks in on two older men receiving massages from younger women, one of whom is a tearful Dora, detained in the raid that took place earlier in the episode. The scene is likely a reference to Epstein and accounts from survivors who say they were forced to give massages to him and his associates. Trump said this summer that Epstein “stole” young women who worked at the Mar-a-Lago spa, which caused them to have a falling-out.

JD Vance

The vice president is depicted as a version of Tattoo, the character from late-’70s drama “Fantasy Island,” and is animated similarly as Trump, except the photo used for his face is lifted directly from viral memes. He often does the president’s bidding, calling him “boss.” In turn, Trump frequently calls Vance “stupid.” Acknowledging the caricature, Vance wrote on X, “Well, I’ve finally made it.”

‘Sickofancy,’ Episode 3

Randy begins microdosing ketamine and Towelie goes to Washington, D.C., in this episode.

(Comedy Central)

Immigration raid at cannabis farm

Randy’s hemp farm business, Tegridy Farms, is the site of an immigration raid at the the beginning of this episode. While Randy is shooting a commercial, complete with calming guitar music and a trite script, ICE officers interrupt by detaining almost all the workers. “You sons of b—,” Randy screams after the vans as they drive away. “Those are my Mexicans!”

In July, chaotic raids targeting a cannabis company’s growing site and greenhouse in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties drew national attention after a man who was fleeing immigration officials died.

Microdosing ketamine

With his business in shambles, Randy rethinks his strategy with the help of an over-complimentary AI chatbot. Perhaps in a nod to Trump’s former ally and onetime “special government employee” Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman behind Tesla, SpaceX and X, Randy turns to ketamine. Randy insists a slew of “tech guys” are taking small doses of ketamine and the drug “gives their minds the edge to work with AI.” Ketamine “bolsters our focus and creativity,” he tells his partner Towelie. Under the influence of the drug, Randy transforms Tegridy Farms from a “quaint farm” into an “AI-powered marijuana platform for global solutions.”

Musk’s use of ketamine and other drugs has been previously reported, with the tech leader saying in a 2024 interview that ketamine has been prescribed to him and is “helpful for getting one out of a negative frame of mind.” He has denied abusing it. “If you use too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done. I have a lot of work, I’m typically putting in 16-hour days,” he said. “So I don’t really have a situation where I can be not mentally acute for an extended period of time.”

Musk supported Trump’s campaign and served as an advisor to the president, helming the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year with the goal of slashing spending.

Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook

Meta and Apple chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook, who were both present at Trump’s inauguration and have maintained friendly relationships with him, are both portrayed in this episode as members of a long line outside of the Oval Office waiting to bestow a gift on the president.

“Mr. President, your ideas for the tech industry are so innovative,” Cook says to Trump. Cook gives the president a gift on behalf of Apple, which actually happened this summer. Zuckerberg is later seen giving the president a gift that appears to be a gold and bejeweled Meta virtual reality headset.

Luxury jet from Qatar

Qatar’s leader is also seen in line holding a model gold plane with a tag that says “Air Force One.” Like everyone else, the leader compliments the president and insists his genitalia is not small before giving him the gift. Trump and the Defense Department accepted a luxury Boeing 747 aircraft from Qatar for President Trump to use as Air Force One this summer, despite ongoing questions about the ethics and legality of taking the expensive gift from a foreign nation.

Washington, D.C.

When Towelie takes a trip to the capital in this episode, he sees armed troops guarding monuments like the Washington and Lincoln memorials and the Capitol surrounded by tanks and jets. In the episode, the Lincoln Memorial has been replaced by a statue of a stern-faced Trump with exposed genitalia.

In August, Trump called up National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to assist federal law enforcement in his bid to “reestablish law and order” by targeting criminals — though crime has been down in the city — and the homeless. Although troops were not initially armed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later ordered them to carry service-issued weapons.

Reclassifying marijuana

Randy sends Towelie to meet with Trump and give him a gift in hopes of persuading him to reclassify marijuana on the national level. (The gift is Towelie himself.) Randy, in the form of a hologram, tells Trump he thinks they can work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Trump said in an August press conference that his administration was considering reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, which would be a significant change in policy but would not make the drug legal across the country.

‘Wok is Dead,’ Episode 4

Butters buys a Labubu for his girlfriend.

(Comedy Central)

Tariffs and Labubus

The clerk at the City Pop-Up — rebranded from City Wok — the lone purveyor of Labubus in the area, says the popular dolls are hard to keep in stock, and they’re very expensive because of tariffs. The “mystery box” that Butters has to purchase for the chance of getting the exact Labubu his girlfriend wants sets him back $85, and later, the price shoots up to $120 to offset a rise in tariffs. (The real-life dolls often fetch much more than that on resale sites, especially if they are rare.) When Butters balks at the price, the store owner explains that the cost of tariffs is passed onto the customer.

Fox News

This episode shows a clip from a Fox News segment where an anchor is overly complimentary of the president. The anchor says the president will take questions from a “diverse crowd of reporters” after returning to the U.S. from a historic tariff summit, only to reveal all of the reporters are from Fox.

The Fox News reporters also fixate on President Trump’s relationship with his wife, Melania, and his increasingly frequent appearances with Satan. There’s a heavy use of wordplay that suggests the anchors could be asking about the affair between the president and Satan or about whether Trump is actually the devil himself.

Kid Rock

Fox News reporters check in with Trump ally Kid Rock after breaking the news that — buckle up — Trump has impregnated Satan. A sobbing Kid Rock tells the reporters, “I’m just so happy.” The musician is a friend and ardent supporter of Trump, having performed at his inaugural rally in January and spoken many times publicly about his support of the president.

‘Conflict of Interest,’ Episode 5

South Park Season 27, Episode 5 “Conflict of Interest”

(Comedy Central)

Israel and Gaza

Kyle becomes irate when his classmates place bets on a popular market prediction app that his mother would “strike Gaza and destroy a Palestinian hospital.”

This episode marks the first time this season that the show has touched on the current conflict in Gaza, and it referenced real-life Israeli strikes on hospitals in the area.

Donald Trump Jr.

Trump’s eldest son appears in this episode as someone with many roles — he’s a strategic advisor for predictive markets, he answers the phone for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and also acts as a special advisor to Israel. Although he wears all those hats, the series doesn’t portray him as particularly bright — he has a complete conversation over the phone with himself.

He’s also animated to look as if he’s had extensive plastic surgery and he speaks with a strained voice, as if he can’t move his face.

Trump Jr. holds several key roles in his family’s business and his father’s political sphere in real life, and he serves as an advisor to both Polymart and Kalshi, two prediction market apps that are named and spoofed in this episode.

Trump’s stance on abortion

Less keen on the baby he’s expecting with Satan, Trump looks for different ways to harm the pregnancy in hopes of terminating it. He asks Satan if he wants to smoke and hang out in a hot tub, holds up a wire hanger, tries to get him to trip down the stairs or fall under a pile of cat feces, and even makes Satan a soup full of emergency contraceptive pills.

In reality, Trump has repeatedly shifted his messaging on abortion but has most recently said he believes specific abortion policies and access should be decided not by federal law but by individual states.

Brendan Carr

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission comes into the fold this episode when Kyle goes through several hoops to try to file a complaint over the bet involving his mom, which he finds offensive. The FCC is “dealing with all the offensive stuff now,” Kyle is told.

Carr says he needs to speak with the president after learning about the offensive content, but he ends up falling victim to all of Trump’s antics in his attempt to terminate Satan’s pregnancy, which send him to the hospital. The doctors say they’re “afraid he may lose his freedom of speech.”

Vance later threatens Carr, who keeps interfering with Trump’s attempts to end Satan’s pregnancy (Vance doesn’t want anything to mess with his proximity to the presidency). “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Vance says to Carr.

Those words match the phrase Carr said in real life a week before this episode aired in reference to his call on ABC to act on comments late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made about Kirk’s suspected killer and his death. Carr has remained in the headlines since then as backlash grew against the FCC’s role in Kimmel’s suspension.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Frustrated by the bet about her and the ongoing conflict in Gaza, Kyle’s mom storms into the office of the Israeli prime minister. “Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism?” she says. “You’re making life for Jews miserable and life for American Jews impossible.” She continues to berate him and a group of officials while the credits roll. Netanyahu does not say anything in response.

The number of foreign visitors to the United States continues to decline, as a range of policies put forth by the administration of US President Donald Trump has made tourists wary of travelling to the country.

In July, foreign visits to the US decreased by 3 percent year-over-year, according to recently released preliminary government data.

That decrease follows a trend that has been seen almost every month since Trump took office in late January. For five out of six months, the US has experienced a drop in foreign visitors.

“Everyone is afraid, scared – there’s too much politics about immigration,” Luise Francine, a Brazilian tourist visiting Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera.

Experts and some local officials say Trump’s tariffs, immigration crackdown and repeated jabs about the US acquiring Canada and Greenland have alienated travellers from other parts of the world.

Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute, told Al Jazeera that the decline in tourism was tied to both Trump’s rhetoric and policies.

“[The decrease] can be put down to the president’s trade wars and some of the fallout about fears about getting ensnared in immigration enforcement.”

Travel research firm Tourism Economics predicted last week that the US would see 8.2 percent fewer international arrivals in 2025 – an improvement from its earlier forecast of a 9.4 percent decline, but well below the numbers of foreign visitors to the country before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The sentiment drag has proven to be severe,” the firm said, noting that airline bookings indicate “the sharp inbound travel slowdown” of May, June, and July would likely persist in the months ahead.

While the July 2025 figures don’t account for neighbouring Canada and Mexico, Canadian visitors in particular have been plummeting in number. One-quarter fewer Canadians have visited the US this year compared to the same period in 2024, according to Tourism Economics.

In a major U-turn, more US residents drove into Canada in June and July than Canadians made the reverse trip, according to Canada’s national statistical agency.

Statistics Canada stated that this was the first time this had occurred in nearly two decades, except for two months during the pandemic.

‘Visa integrity fee’

Mexico, by contrast, has been one of the few countries to see tourism to the US increase. Overall, US government figures show that travel from Central America grew 3 percent through May and from South America 0.7 percent, compared with a decline of 2.3 percent from Western Europe.

But countries that have typically sent huge numbers of visitors to the US have seen major dips.

Of the top 10 overseas tourist-generating countries, only two – Japan and Italy – saw a year-over-year increase in July. Visitors from India, which ranks second, dipped by 5.5 percent, while those from China dropped nearly 14 percent.

India has seen previously warm relations sour under the Trump administration, amid steep tariffs and geopolitical tensions, while a trade war and Trump’s (since-reversed) broadsides against Chinese students have raised concerns among Chinese tourists.

Deborah Friedland, managing director at the financial services firm Eisner Advisory Group, said the US travel industry faced multiple headwinds – rising travel costs, political uncertainty and ongoing geopolitical tensions.

Since returning to office for a second term in January, Trump has doubled down on some of the hard-line policies that defined his first term, reviving a travel ban targeting mainly African and Middle Eastern countries, tightening rules around visa approvals, and ramping up mass immigration raids.

At the same time, the push for tariffs on foreign goods that quickly became a defining feature of his second term gave some citizens elsewhere a sense that they were unwanted.

A new $250 “visa integrity fee”, set to go into effect on October 1, adds a hurdle for travellers from non-visa waiver countries like Mexico, Argentina, India, Brazil and China. The extra charge raises the total visa cost to $442, one of the highest visitor fees in the world, according to the US Travel Association.

“Any friction we add to the traveller experience is going to cut travel volumes by some amount,” said Gabe Rizzi, president of Altour, a global travel management company. “As the summer ends, this will become a more pressing issue, and we’ll have to factor the fees into travel budgets and documentation.”

International visitor spending in the US is projected to fall below $169bn this year, down from $181bn in 2024, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

In May, the group projected that the US would be the only country among the 184 it studied where foreign visitor spending would fall in 2025. The finding was “a clear indicator that the global appeal of the US is slipping”, the group said.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public radio and television stations in the United States, has announced it would be shutting down as the result of funding cuts under President Donald Trump.

On Friday, the group issued a statement saying it had launched an “orderly wind-down of its operations” in response to recent legislation that would cut nearly $1.1bn of its funding.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” its president, Patricia Harrison, wrote.

According to the statement, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would remain in operation for the next six months, albeit with a reduced staff.

The majority of its employees will be let go on September 30. Then, a “small transition team” will remain through January 2026 to “ensure a responsible and orderly closeout”.

The death knell for the nonprofit came last month in the form of two legislative actions.

The first was the passage of the Rescission Act of 2025, which was designed to revoke funding that Congress approved in the past. The Rescission Act targeted federal programmes that Trump sought to put on the chopping block, including foreign aid and federal funding for public broadcasters.

The Senate voted to pass the act by a margin of 51 to 48, and the House then approved it by a vote of 216 to 213.

The second legislative wallop came on July 31, as the Senate Appropriations Committee unveiled its 2026 funding bill for labour, health and human services, education and related agencies.

That bill earmarked $197bn in discretionary funding, but none of it went to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Never in five decades had the corporation been excluded from the appropriations bill, according to the nonprofit.

Both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans, and party members have largely fallen in line with Trump’s legislative priorities.

Defunding public media has long been a priority of Republicans, stretching back to President Richard Nixon’s feud in the 1970s with public broadcasting personalities like Sander Vanocur.

Nixon, like Trump, had an adversarial relationship with the media, and in 1972, he vetoed a public broadcasting funding bill, forcing Congress to return with a slimmed-down version of its funding. That move helped establish a trend of Republicans seeking to whittle down federal support for public, non-commercial TV and radio.

Trump, during his second term, has made it a priority to slash at what he considers government “bloat”, and that includes reducing federal spending.

He and his allies have accused news outlets like National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of being left-wing soapboxes.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes its funds to NPR and PBS member stations. NPR boasts a weekly audience of 43 million. PBS, meanwhile, reaches 130 million people each year through its television offerings alone, not counting its online presence.

Still, in the lead-up to the passage of the Rescissions Act, Trump threatened to yank his support from any Republican who opposed his efforts to defund the corporation.

Trump also said public broadcasting was worse than its commercial counterparts, including MSNBC, which he frequently misspells as “MSDNC” to imply alleged bias towards the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together,” Trump wrote on social media on July 10.

“Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

But Harrison, the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, framed the organisation’s closure as a loss for education and civic engagement.

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said.

“We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

Vera, the heroine of Gary Shteyngart’s sixth novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is a whip-smart 10-year-old Manhattanite, but she’s not quite smart enough to figure out her parents’ intentions. Why is dad so concerned about “status”? Why does her stepmom call some meals “WASP lunches”? How come every time they visit somebody’s house she’s assigned to see if they have a copy of “The Power Broker” on their shelves? She’s all but doomed to be bourgeois and neurotic, as if a juvenile court has sentenced her to live in a New Yorker cartoon.

Since his 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” Shteyngart has proved adept at finding humor in the intersection of immigrant life, wealth and relationships, and “Vera” largely sticks to that mix. But the cynicism that has always thrummed underneath his high-concept comedies — the dehumanizing algorithms, the rapacious finance system — is more prominent in this slim, potent novel. Vera is witnessing both the slow erosion of her parents’ marriage along with the rapid decline of democracy in near-future America. Her precocity gives the novel its wit, but Shteyngart is also alert to the fact that a child, however bright, is fundamentally helpless.

Not to mention desperate for her parents’ affection, which is in short supply for Vera. Her father, the editor of a liberal intellectual magazine, seems constantly distracted by his efforts to court a billionaire to purchase it, while her stepmom is more focused on her son’s ADHD and the family’s rapidly dwindling bank account. Things are no better outside in the world, where a constitutional convention seems ready to pass an amendment awarding five-thirds voting rights for “exceptional Americans.” (Read: white people.) Vera, the daughter of a Russian father and Korean mother, may be banished to second-class citizenry.

Even worse, her school has assigned her to take the side of the “five-thirders” in an upcoming classroom debate. So it’s become urgent for her to understand the world just as it’s become inexplicable. Shteyngart is stellar at showing just how alienated she’s become: “She knew kids were supposed to have more posters on their walls to show off their inner life, but she liked her inner life to stay inside her.” And she seems to be handling the crisis with more maturity than her father, who’s drunk and clumsy in their home: “If anyone needed to see Mrs. S., the school counselor with the master’s in social work degree, it was Daddy.”

It’s a challenge to write from the perspective of a child without being arch or cutesy — stories about kids learning about the real world can degrade to plainspoken YA or cheap melodrama. Shteyngart is striving for something more supple, using Vera’s point of view to clarify how adults become victims of their own emotional shutoffs, the way they use language to at once appear smart while covering up their feelings. “Our country’s a supermarket where some people just get to carry out whatever they want. You and I sadly are not those people,” Dad tells her, forcing her to unpack a metaphor stuffed full of ideology, economics, self-loathing and more.

Every chapter in the book starts with the phrase “She had to,” explaining Vera’s various missions amid this dysfunction: “hold the family together,” “fall asleep,” “be cool,” “win the debate.” Kids like her have to be action-oriented; they don’t have the privilege of adults’ deflections. Small wonder, then, that her most reliable companion is an AI-powered chessboard, which offers direct answers to her most pressing questions. (One of Shteyngart’s most potent running jokes is that adults aren’t more clever than computers they command.) Once she falls into a mission to discover the truth about her birth mother, she becomes more alert to the world’s brutal simplicity: “The world was a razor cut … It would cut and cut and cut.”

Shteyngart’s grown-up kids’ story has two obvious inspirations: One, as the title suggests, is Vladimir Nabokov’s 1969 novel “Ada, or Ardor,” the other Henry James’ 1897 novel “What Maisie Knew.” Both are concerned with childhood traumas, and if Shteyngart isn’t explicitly borrowing their plots he borrows some of their gravitas, the sense that preteendom is a crucible for experiencing life’s various crises.

In its final chapters, the novel takes a turn that is designed to speak to our current moment, spotlighting the way that Trump-era nativist policies have brought needless harm to Americans. A country can abandon its principles, he means to say, just as a parent can abandon a child. But if “Vera” suggests a particular vision of our particular dystopian moment, it also suggests a more enduring predicament for children, who live with the consequences of others’ decisions but don’t get a vote in them.

“There were a lot of ‘statuses’ in the world and each year she was becoming aware of more of them,” Vera observes. Children will have to learn them faster now.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”