President Donald Trump took a victory lap after Congress formally passed his measure to claw back $9 billion in previously approved funding, including $1.1 billion for PBS and NPR — which public media execs have said could force dozens of local stations to shut down.
Early Friday, the House gave final approval to Trump’s rescission package by a 216-to-213 vote, after the Senate a day earlier had OK’d the measure in a 51-to-48 vote. The bill cancels about $8 billion in foreign aid and $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which provides funding to NPR and PBS) over the next two years. It now awaits Trump’s signature to go into effect.
Trump proudly noted that his effort to eliminate federal funding from PBS and NPR comes after decades of attempts by conservative lawmakers to do the same. The White House has alleged that public media outlets have “spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’” and that “NPR and PBS have zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.”
“HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform late Thursday night. “REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”
Trump and other Republicans have cited cost-cutting as a justification for zeroing-out funding for PBS and NPR. Meanwhile, the massive Trump-backed spending bill that was just approved by Congress is forecast to increase federal deficits by at least $3.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Most Americans support publicly funded media, according to surveys. About 53% of U.S. voters oppose eliminating all federal funding for public media, compared with 44% who support defunding it, according to an online poll conducted online by Peak Insights from June 29-July 1 among 1,000 likely voters, per the CPB. In addition, the survey found that 53% of respondents agreed that public media outlets report news “fully, accurately and fairly” compared with only 35% who said the same about media in general.
The rescission package slashes $535 million annually for the CPB for a two-year period starting in October.
PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement Thursday that the cuts “will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas.” She added, “Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead.”
NPR CEO Katherine Maher, in a statement after the final House vote, called the defunding “an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.” Maher said, “Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities — all will bear the harm of this vote.”
PBS and its member stations receive about 15% of their revenue from CPB’s federal funds. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, PBS reported $721 million in total revenue, investment gains and other support. According to NPR, about 2% of its annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments. For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2024, NPR reported $336.6 million in revenue, gains and other support.
However, smaller local NPR and PBS stations rely far more on federal funding for their operating budgets. An internal NPR report from 2011 estimated that up to 18% of its approximately 1,000 member stations would be forced to shut down if they lost federal funding and that up to 30% Americans would lose access to NPR programming, according to the New York Times.
Republicans criticized PBS and NPR for a perceived left-wing and “woke” bias. “American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize programming that glorifies radical gender ideology in schools or pushes to defund the police,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, said Wednesday.
Prior to the Senate vote approving the package, Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, said the funding cuts would devastate rural stations in his state and threaten children’s programming like “Sesame Street” and “Daniel Tiger” that would not be viable on commercial television. “For many families, public television is one of their only early childhood education tools,” the senator said.
CPB was established by Congress via the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The private, not-for-profit corporation’s mission is “to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services,” according to its website.
