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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent nonprofit organization that distributed federal funds to PBS, NPR, public media programming and more than 1,500 public media stations across the country for nearly 60 years, voted Monday to dissolve itself. The board’s vote in the new year came after Congress voted last summer, at the Trump administration’s request, to defund the corporation and claw back about $1.1 billion of federal funding for public broadcasting. The corporation determined that remaining dormant without funding left the organization “vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse, threatening the independence of public media and the trust audiences place in it,” according to a statement. Since its inception with the enactment of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the corporation has distributed funding to programs such as “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Sesame Street,” films by Ken Burns and the PBS News Hour. “For more than half a century, CPB existed to ensure that all Americans — regardless of geography, income, or background — had access to trusted news, educational programming, and local storytelling,” Patricia Harrison, the president and CEO of the corporation, said in the statement. “When the administration and Congress rescinded federal funding, our board faced a profound responsibility: CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.” In its remaining time, the corporation said it would finish distributing its remaining funds, continue its support of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s digitization and preservation work. The corporation said its own archives will be preserved in partnership with the University of Maryland and made publicly available.