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Senate approves Trump administration cuts to public broadcasting and overseas support : NPR


Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arrives to talk with reporters about Senate Republicans’ efforts to claw again $1.1 billion of funding authority from the Company for Public Broadcasting and about $8.3 billion from overseas support applications focused by DOGE, on the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 15, 2025.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The Senate has accredited the Trump administration’s $9 billion rescission package deal aimed toward clawing again cash already allotted for public radio and tv — a significant step towards winding down practically six many years of federal funding for the Company for Public Broadcasting.

CPB stands to lose $1.1 billion {dollars} meant to fund it by the following two years, whereas the invoice additionally cuts $7.9 billion in different applications. CPB acts as a conduit for federal cash to NPR, PBS and their member stations.

In a marathon “vote-a-rama” session that lasted into the small hours Thursday, senators introduce quite a few amendments, earlier than in the end voting 51-to-48 to approve the package deal that features cuts to overseas meals and well being applications. One senator, Minnesota’s Tina Smith, was not current on the vote on account of hospitalization.

The senate’s approval tees up a closing showdown within the Home, which accredited an earlier model final month.

The Senate vote was largely alongside social gathering strains, with Democrats voting towards the invoice and all however two Republicans voting for it. The GOP exceptions have been Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who voted on Tuesday to not advance debate on the invoice, prompting Vice President JD Vance to forged a tie-breaking vote, nonetheless accredited the ultimate measure.

In a press release instantly after the vote, NPR stated: “Practically 3-in-4 People say they depend on their public radio stations for alerts and information for his or her public security,” including, “We name on the Home of Representatives to reject this elimination of public media funding, which immediately harms their communities and constituents, and will very effectively place lives in danger.”

In a separate assertion, Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Tv Stations, stated the group was “devastated that the Senate voted to eradicate federal funding to the native public tv stations all through this nation that present important lifesaving public security providers, confirmed instructional providers and neighborhood connections to their communities daily at no cost.”

Throughout the voting, quite a few motions by Democrats to carve out funding for NPR, PBS and their member stations from the package deal have been largely symbolic, as Republicans had the numbers regardless of the defections.

In one of many late proposed amendments, Murkowski sought to revive CPB funding whereas barring any of federal cash from going to NPR. She talked about a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island on Wednesday and an alert she’d acquired from public radio station KACB in Unalaska, within the Aleutian islands.

“I am a textual content that I acquired from the station supervisor there,” she stated relating how the station’s three workers members broadcast emergency messages regardless of a tsunami warning that was later lifted. The textual content stated the area people was instructed to take heed to the native public radio station.

“I’ve an modification that protects public media, their independence, their skill to offer native information, climate experiences and, sure, emergency alerts,” Murkowski stated. “We’re reminded right this moment these items issues, so I’d hope my colleagues would acknowledge what’s at stake and vote for my modification.”

However a majority voted towards it.

Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin stated that if the cuts to public broadcasting stand, “native tv and radio stations will shut down — and it will likely be rural stations that would be the first to shut.”

“These points weren’t even raised as part of our appropriation course of throughout the previous two years,” Baldwin stated. “So to take this extraordinary step and say that these points are actually so grave and so pressing that we now have to deal with them like this — what are we doing right here?”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, talking towards the movement, stated public broadcasting “has lengthy been overtaken by partisan activists. Plain and easy.”

“NPR and PBS have revealed their left-wing bias time and time once more,” he stated. “If you wish to watch the left-wing propaganda, activate MSNBC. However the taxpayers shouldn’t be compelled to subsidize it.”

Senate Majority Chief John Thune, R-SD, famous that the U.S. is $36 trillion in debt. “What we’re speaking about right here is 1/10 of 1% of all federal spending,” he stated. “But it surely’s a step in the fitting path.”

The White Home despatched the request to Congress in early June – the primary such rescission in additional than 1 / 4 century. The Home shortly handed it and the chamber is anticipated to approve the adjustments made by the Senate earlier than a midnight Friday deadline. The deadline marks 45 days since President Trump despatched the rescission request to Congress by which period lawmakers are required by regulation to both affirm the cuts or do nothing and permit the cash to be restored.

Trump and GOP lawmakers have stepped up assaults on public broadcasting for the reason that election, with the president writing on his social media platform this week that “(a)ny Republican that votes to permit this monstrosity to proceed broadcasting is not going to have my help or Endorsement.”

In April, NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO and President Paula Kerger testified on Capitol Hill earlier than the Home subcommittee on authorities effectivity chaired by Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The executives defended public media towards costs of political bias, however Greene concluded the listening to by saying: “We imagine that you just all can hate us by yourself dime.”

PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger, left, and NPR CEO Katherine Maher

NPR, which produces information applications Morning Version and All Issues Thought-about, will get about 1% of its funding immediately from the federal authorities. Its member stations, which function over 1,300 retailers, obtain about 8% to 10% of their funding from the federal authorities. With its nightly PBS Information Hour and high-quality youngsters’s programming, reminiscent of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, PBS and its stations get round 15% of their income. The funds for each networks come by the Company for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

Leaders within the public broadcasting neighborhood have warned that shedding CPB funding would cripple small stations, particularly in rural areas underserved by business media, and weaken all the public media community.

A Harris Ballot performed final week on behalf of NPR discovered that general two-thirds (66%) of People help federal funding for public radio, with the identical proportion agreeing that such funding is an efficient worth for taxpayers. Greater than half of Republicans (58%) and greater than three-quarters of Democrats (77%) stated the help public radio funding. The web ballot served 2,089 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of +/- 2.5%.

The Home model consists of eliminating $7.9 billion in overseas support funding, together with for PEPFAR, the U.S. AIDS reduction initiative initiated beneath President George W. Bush. However Collins, chair of the Appropriations Committee, and different Republicans emphasised chopping life-saving overseas support applications like PEPFAR went too far. They determined to exclude this system from the ultimate Senate model.

Murkowski was amongst a handful of Republicans in rural states who expressed concern about shedding funding for public radio stations that cater to under-served populations. Amongst them, South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds on Tuesday introduced that he had struck a deal for the White Home to divert Inexperienced New Deal cash to funding 28 stations serving Native American listeners in 9 states.

However in a letter to Rounds, Native Public Radio President and CEO Loris Taylor known as the compromise “structurally impractical,” including that whereas the community appreciates the efforts to maintain Tribal media, “The Inexperienced New Deal is primarily a framework for local weather and financial reform, not a devoted funding supply for communications infrastructure or media providers.”

Disclosure: This story was written and reported by NPR Correspondent Scott Neuman and Congressional Correspondent Deirdre Walsh. It was edited by Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Beneath NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no company official or information government reviewed this story earlier than it was posted publicly.



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