UPDATED, with additional comments: PBS, NPR and public stations are facing the loss of $1.1 billion in federal funding, as the House cleared final passage of a package of cuts likely to alter the landscape of public media.
The House voted 216 to 213 early Friday for the so-called rescissions package, which was sent to Congress at the request of President Donald Trump. The $9 billion in cuts also include rollbacks in funding to foreign aid and health programs. The package will now go to the White House for Trump’s signature.
The move will leave the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity set up by Congress to distribute funds to public media outlets, with zeroed out federal funding for the first time since it was formed in 1967. The rescinded money had already been allocated by Congress for the next two fiscal years, starting on April 1.
Katherine Maher, the president and CEO of NPR, said that the funding cuts were “an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.”
“Despite promises from some members of Congress to fix anything the bill breaks, this will be an irreversible loss,” she said. “If a station doesn’t survive this sudden turn by Congress, a vital stitch in our American fabric will be gone for good.”
She said that “with support from listeners and readers in communities around the nation,” they “will work to rebuild.”
Public media advocates, PBS producers and personalities, station managers and viewers and listeners have been lobbying congressional representatives in recent weeks to preserve the funding, pointing to the unique mandate of the non-commercial outlets to provide educational, cultural and local programming, among other content.
But Trump has targeted PBS and NPR, and their news programming in particular, as biased toward the left. That has long been a common complaint on the right, but the president this time around threatened to withhold support or endorsements from any lawmakers who did not support the package.
“Here’s the truth: If this rescissions packages was not put forth and passed by Congress, taxpayer dollars would still be funneled to ideologues at PBS and NPR,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC).
But Democrats said that funding for public media and foreign aid were being sacrificed after Republicans pushed through the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax and spending legislation, which passed earlier this month, will add more than $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
Republicans “blow up the budget for billionaires and then they nickel and dime everyone else to pretend that they care about the debt and deficit,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). “It’s nuts.”
Advocates had hoped to win over enough Republicans to defeat the measure. Only two, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) joined with all Democrats in voting against it. Two other Republicans, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), voted for the rescissions after voting against them when the bill first came before the House last month.
After the vote, Trump posted on Truth Social, “HOUSE APPROVES NINE BILLION DOLLAR CUTS PACKAGE, INCLUDING ATROCIOUS NPR AND PUBLIC BROADCASTING, WHERE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR WERE WASTED. REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!”
