The House of Representatives narrowly approved legislation Thursday to claw back two years of federal funding for public media outlets. President Donald Trump, who has attacked the mainstream media more broadly, has accused NPR and PBS of bias against conservative viewpoints.
The measure passed largely along party lines, 214 to 212.
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The legislation is the first request by the Trump administration for Congress to take back money it already has approved through annual spending bills. The bill reflects a list of cuts totaling $9.4 billion that were requested by the Office of Management and Budget. The bulk of the cuts — $8.3 billion — are to foreign aid programs addressing global public health, international disaster assistance and hunger relief.
The remainder would slash $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates nearly all of the funds to local stations, for the next two fiscal years. By law, that money is supposed to be approved in advance as part of an effort to insulate public broadcasting from political influence over fleeting issues.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise formally introduced the legislation last week, saying it "codifies President Trump's cuts to wasteful foreign aid initiatives within the State Department and USAID, as well as woke public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS, at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a business the federal government shouldn't even be in."
Heated partisan debate before the vote
Republicans attacked the programs they targeted for cuts in speeches Thursday before the vote. "Don't spend money on stupid things and don't subsidize biased media," Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan said.
Democrats defended public broadcasting as providing essential services. They cited the need for local information during natural disasters and balanced news coverage.
"NPR and PBS are targeted here today precisely because they are so good at delivering the truth," Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett said. He pointed to Trump's social media attacks on the outlets, saying, "Trump doesn't want a country of engaged, informed Americans. He prefers those who salute on command."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has accused Republicans of rubber stamping Trump's agenda despite their own misgivings, held up a doll of Elmo, the Sesame Street character, on the House floor.
"The letter of the day is 'C'. How appropriate because this bill is cruel, and it cuts children's programs all across the country," he said.
While a handful of Congressional Republicans have expressed support for their local public radio and television stations, there is intense pressure on them to side with the president. Heritage Action, a grassroots conservative group, designated the vote on the rescissions bill as the first "key vote" included on their scorecard tracking lawmakers' voting records this session of Congress.
Some of Trump's supporters have been frustrated that Congress has not moved sooner to officially back the cuts recommended or put into motion already by the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, launched by Elon Musk. Musk initially vowed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, then scaled back to $1 trillion. The actual amount so far has been a small fraction of the trillion promised. But Musk's imprint slimming down or gutting some federal agencies has already reverberated in fallout in the U.S. and around the world.
Musk's recent departure from the administration and high profile public feud with the president haven't affected the plans of top GOP leaders on Capitol Hill to schedule votes to formally wipe out spending for the targeted agencies and programs. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he expected additional votes on rescissions requests based on DOGE's efforts.
After the heads of both NPR and PBS testified before a House oversight panel in March, the speaker argued in a statement on social media that NPR and PBS "have consistently and knowingly betrayed the public trust. Instead of fair and balanced reporting, they routinely ignore facts to advance a far left agenda." He added, "The American people support the free press, but will not be forced to fund a biased political outlet with taxpayer funds." This is in alignment with criticism from the Trump administration.
Conservative views on public media have changed
Two former Republican lawmakers say that the GOP sentiment toward public broadcasting has shifted over time — from frequently backing public broadcasting to being skeptical of it, to viewing it as a hostile force.
"I always supported PBS on the rationale that just because Barnes and Nobles sold books didn't mean public libraries were no longer needed," former Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, who served from 1997 to 2009, tells NPR. "But even in those days, I would admonish my friends in PBS to strive for better political balance. This, they haven't done."
Smith says he gave the same advice after later becoming chief of the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group to which PBS and NPR do not belong. "Given the size of the public debt and PBS's ability to find other financing and sell advertising, well, they've left themselves vulnerable," Smith says.
Former U.S. Rep. Charles Bass came to office with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich's big Republican wave. Bass went on to represent New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District for 14 years.
"The debate over whether to fund public television or public radio networks is more divisive than it was," Bass says. "By that process, it is likely to be more imperiled."
"To some extent it's influenced by the perception that it's more liberal than it actually is," Bass says. "There is a bent to it, but it's not as significant as the commercial networks — Fox and MSNBC on either end and CNN in the middle. They really are."
Bass says public broadcasting stands apart for avoiding commercial priorities. But, he says, technological changes in how people consume media have raised valid questions about the need for federal subsidies.
He says that the shift in formats from music to all news and public affairs talk by many NPR member stations increased content that has proved controversial and attracted scrutiny by critics, especially on the right.
Yet he also says the lines have hardened within Republican ranks toward public broadcasting as cultural warfare has become increasingly important to the party faithful: first with Gingrich, then with the Tea Party, and now MAGA Republicans with Trump at the lead, each of which have sought to present public media as unworthy of taxpayer dollars.
"I would be pondering this seriously. I wouldn't be a lock-step supporter or opponent of public radio or television funding," Bass says. "That's true even though I probably listen to [New Hampshire Public Radio] as a news source more than any other source of news."
History of public media funding
Congress created CPB, a private nonprofit entity, in 1967. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law making CPB the entity to oversee federal grants to more than 300 public television stations and more than 1,000 public radio stations.
In the early years, there were questions about the federal role for CPB. In 1969, Fred Rogers, the host of the popular children's show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," testified about the benefit of continued federal funding. His defense of CPB was credited with changing the mind of a key senator, John Pastore, D-R.I., who had pressed Rogers on the value of public television.
Rogers described themes in his half-hour program addressing children's feelings and offering ways to handle them. He told the congressional panel, "I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable we will have done a great service for mental health."
Lawmakers from both parties frequently appear on their local public stations for interviews. They participate in debates hosted by local stations during House and Senate campaigns.
But for decades, Republicans in Congress have vowed to defund public media outlets. In 1994, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued for zeroing out CPB's budget. That didn't advance, but in more recent years Republicans have included provisions in annual spending bills to strip all federal money for NPR and PBS. But these have failed to be included in final versions of government funding bills enacted by presidents of both parties.
In 2011, the GOP-controlled House approved a bill to bar NPR from receiving any additional federal funding, but that measure failed to advance in the Senate. Seven House Republicans voted against that bill, including then-Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, who now serves as Trump's transportation secretary.
More recently during years of divided government, GOP leaders had to rely on Democrats to approve must-pass funding bills to avoid shutdowns. The debate over the issue of federal funding for public media became more of a backburner issue. CPB received $535 million for 2025. The spending bill approved with bipartisan votes in the House and Senate and signed by Trump in March approved the same level for the next two years.
Just two months later, Trump issued an executive order to block funding for NPR and PBS. And this first effort by the Office of Management and Budget to ask Congress to rescind federal money lumped in public media with foreign aid — two areas the GOP base frequently holds up as priorities Washington needs to scale back or eliminate altogether.
Concern for rural areas
In advance of the vote, the two House co-chairs of the Public Broadcasting Caucus, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev, and Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., released a statement urging the Trump administration to "reconsider" clawing back money for CPB.
They touted public media's role in communicating during emergencies and its news coverage, and pointed out that rural areas are "particularly vulnerable" if funding is cut.
"Public broadcasting represents less than 0.01% of the federal budget, yet its impact reaches every congressional district," the two noted. "Cutting this funding will not meaningfully reduce the deficit, but it will dismantle a trusted source of information for millions of Americans."
Goldman told NPR that Trump's role in pushing this issue is "100%" making this a tough vote for GOP lawmakers to break with the president. "I think if they looked at the merits of it they would recognize it's essential funding — and public media, independent journalism plays an essential role." He added that Trump's issue is "effectively that independent media that exposes facts that may look unfavorable to him is therefore somehow biased, but the First Amendment protects freedom of the press specifically because the press is an essential form of accountability in our democracy."
Some Republicans have defended their own local public television and radio stations and expressed a willingness to work with Democrats to avoid cuts that would force them to scale back coverage or staffing.
Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, a Republican, pressed by Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, in a hearing on the bill on Tuesday, said Alabama Public Television "has not been subject to these woke policies that some of these other states have," and suggested he could join a bipartisan effort to continue grants to local stations.
But Aderholt noted "NPR is in a different category" and said most GOP lawmakers have had concerns about the outlet for some time.
Public television and radio stations have mounted a grassroots lobbying effort to urge lawmakers to oppose the package. The Protect My Public Media campaign says more than 2 million messages have been sent to House and Senate offices. "This support is driven by the deep connections Americans have to their local public media stations and the essential services stations provide to their communities."
The rescissions package now moves to the Senate. Under the rules, it needs a simple majority to pass and must be approved within 45 days of the president sending the request to Capitol Hill. That means if the Senate fails to pass the bill by mid-July, the administration would be required to release the $9.4 billion in funding for the foreign aid programs and CPB. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has indicated the Senate would take up the rescissions request soon.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Congressional Correspondent Deirdre Walsh and Media Correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp, Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. 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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