The House has approved a Trump administration plan to rescind $9 billion in previously allocated funds, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — a move that cuts all federal support for NPR, PBS and their member stations — and about $7 billion in foreign aid.
The vote was 216-213, with two Republicans joining all of the chamber's Democrats against the cuts. The bill goes next to President Donald Trump for his signature.
Immediately after the vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher issued a statement calling the cut an "irreversible loss" to the public radio system. She said the effect would be "an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will."
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"Public funding has enabled the flourishing of a uniquely American system of unparalleled cultural, informational and educational programming, and ensured access to vital emergency alerting and reporting in times of crisis — all for about $1.60 per American, every year. Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities — all will bear the harm of this vote," Maher said.
North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams was among the Democrats who rose to defend public broadcasting. "When Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last year, public broadcasting was there when traditional communications failed," she said. "Widespread power, cellular and internet outages meant that for thousands of North Carolinians, public radio was how they received their news."
The House move follows a "vote-a-rama" late Wednesday and into early Thursday in the Senate to consider a series of amendments to the rescission package — all but one of which failed on largely party-line votes. Republicans repeatedly voted to block changes to Trump's request, known as a rescission. The single amendment that passed was aimed at protecting PEPFAR, the U.S. AIDS relief initiative created under President George W. Bush.
What this means
The House vote on Thursday means CPB will lose $1.1 billion meant to fund it through the next two years, while the bill also cuts $7.9 billion in other programs. CPB acts as a conduit for federal money to NPR, PBS and their member stations. Although NPR, which produces news programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, relies on direct federal funds for only a small portion of its budget, its approximately 1,000 member stations get a heftier portion of their operating revenue through CPB.
The network has warned that many of those stations — especially those broadcasting to rural areas or to underserved audiences, such as Native Americans — could be forced to shut down as a result of the funding rollback.
South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds announced earlier this week that he had struck a deal to use money allocated during the Biden administration to continue funding 28 stations serving Native American listeners in nine states. However, Native Public Media President and CEO Loris Taylor called the compromise "structurally impractical," in a letter to Rounds.
PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger said Thursday that the move to cut public broadcasting "goes against the will of the American people, the vast majority of whom trust PBS and believe we provide excellent value to their communities."
PBS — with its nightly PBS News Hour and children's programming, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood — gets around 15% of its revenue through CPB.
"These cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas," Kerger said. "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."
A Harris Poll last week found that 66% of Americans support federal funding for public radio, with the same share calling it a good value. Support included 58% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats. The online poll surveyed 2,089 U.S. adults with a 2.5 percentage point margin of error.
How we got here
In recent years, NPR has landed increasingly in the crosshairs of conservatives, who have accused the network of left-wing political bias and "woke" programming. The publication last year of an essay authored by then-NPR business editor Uri Berliner critical of the network's coverage only reinforced the notion, providing ammunition to NPR's detractors.
In the piece published by the Free Press, an online site embraced by journalists who believe the mainstream media is too liberal, Berliner argued that an NPR drive for greater diversity in its workforce had actually narrowed the network's viewpoint.
Shortly after the piece was published, Berliner was suspended and later resigned and became a contributing editor for the Free Press. NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, responded to Berliner's essay by saying the network covers "a wide range of challenging stories" and that inclusion among its staff and sourcing "is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."
On Thursday, Nevada Republican Rep. Mark Amodei echoed remarks made by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski this week about the need for lawmakers to protect local stations while acknowledging conservatives' anger at NPR and PBS.
"If you're mad at the editorial people, that's fine. But you shouldn't be mad at the stations," he said, speaking to reporters Thursday. "And, oh, by the way, you ought to look at where those stations are, because it's a lot of Trump country, and they're not the problem. And so cutting them off of funds doesn't seem very well thought out."
Democrats and Republicans alike have also raised concerns about the rescission process — a rare move that hasn't been attempted in a quarter century. The lawmakers said rescission would make it harder for lawmakers to pass future appropriations bills to fund the government ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.
"The only way we can fund the government is to get at least seven Democrats to vote with us at the end of Sept. 30, or we can go into a shutdown," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "If I'm a Democrat, and you're trying to get me to vote and get to a 60-vote threshold to fund the government, and you've just betrayed a prior agreement and a prior appropriation — what are the likelihood that they're going to do that?"
In a letter to Senate Democrats this month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the rescissions package "an affront to the bipartisan appropriations process."
"That's why a number of Senate Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes," Schumer wrote.
More rescissions are "likely"
Ahead of Thursday's expected House vote, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told reporters that the administration will "likely" send another rescissions package to Capitol Hill soon.
"There is still a great enthusiasm for these rescissions bills, because Congress wants to be a part of voting for these cuts and making them permanent," Vought said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Meanwhile, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called the Senate's version of the bill "better than the one we sent over" because it removed $400 million worth of cuts to PEPFAR. Bacon, an initial Republican holdout who flipped his vote to support the package last month, said House Speaker Mike Johnson had given him assurances that local public TV stations will be funded in future appropriations processes.
"I sat down, I said, 'I will vote for [it] if you can assure me that PBS will get funded this coming cycle.' And they huddled up, and they came back and said yes," Bacon said. "I take the speaker at his word."
He added that he hasn't had additional conversations with Johnson about how that would work.
Disclosure: This story was written and reported by NPR Correspondent Scott Neuman and NPR Washington Desk Producer Lexie Schapitl. It was edited by Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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