Trump's rescission package

Senate votes to kill entire public broadcasting budget in blow to NPR and PBS

Senate votes to rescind $1.1 billion from Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Jon Brodkin – Jul 17, 2025 1:35 pm | 295

People at a rally urge Congress to protect funding for public broadcasters outside NPR headquarters in Washington, DC, on March 26, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Saul Loeb

The US Senate voted to rescind two years' worth of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), delivering a blow to public radio and television stations around the country. The CPB is a publicly funded nonprofit corporation that supports NPR and PBS stations.

The 51-48 vote today on President Trump's rescissions package would eliminate $1.1 billion that was allocated to public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. All 51 yes votes came from Republicans, while Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted against. The $1.1 billion includes $60 million for "costs associated with replacing and upgrading the public broadcasting interconnection system" and other back-end infrastructure for public media.

"Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down. Parents will have fewer high quality learning resources available for their children," CPB CEO Patricia Harrison said. "Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives. Cutting federal funding could also put Americans at risk of losing national and local emergency alerts that serve as a lifeline to many Americans in times of severe need."

The Rescissions Act also targets the State Department, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other agencies, rescinding $9.4 billion overall. "The senate's approval of the cuts tees up a final showdown in the House, which approved an earlier version last month," NPR wrote.

An amendment by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to preserve public broadcasting funding was rejected in a 52-47 vote. Murkowski, who expressed concern about emergency alerts during disasters, was the only Republican to vote for that amendment. Murkowski separately proposed an amendment "to restore CPB funding while barring any federal money from going to NPR," but it was defeated, NPR wrote.

“Republicans bent knee to wannabe King Donald”

Democrats slammed Republicans before and after the votes. "In the middle of the night, Republicans once again bent the knee to their wannabe King Donald, rubber-stamping his cruel and callous cuts while robbing kids and communities of free, high quality public programming," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said. "By eliminating public media funding, Republicans are silencing rural broadcasters. They are stripping communities of essential emergency alert infrastructure. They are taking away trusted educational programming from millions of children."

The White House called for an end to federal funding for NPR and PBS in April, claiming that they "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" Trump also fired the CPB's three Democratic board members, who refused to leave their posts. Trump sued them this week in an attempt to force them out.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during debate that public broadcasting "has long been overtaken by partisan activists," according to NPR. Cruz said that "NPR and PBS have revealed their left-wing bias time and time again. If you want to watch the left-wing propaganda, turn on MSNBC. But the taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize it."

America's Public Television Stations, a membership group representing public stations, said it is "devastated that the Senate voted to eliminate federal funding to the local public television stations throughout this country... This elimination of federal funding will decimate public media and put local stations at risk of going dark, cutting off service to communities that rely on them—many of which have no other access to locally controlled media."

The group urged the House to stop the cuts before they take effect in a few months. "As the rescissions package moves back to the House for its final consideration, we urge the House to oppose the package and the elimination of public media," the group said. "If this package passes the House, all funding to local stations will be cut off starting October 1, 2025 and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down."

CPB expenses in fiscal year 2025 are $545 million, of which 66.9 percent goes to TV programming. Another 22.3 percent goes to radio programming, while the rest is for administration and support.

The CPB distributes over 70 percent of its funding to about 1,500 public radio and TV stations. Those stations pay fees to NPR and PBS, which also get money from sponsorships, donations, and grants.

Emergency alerts system at risk

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) talked about the funding's impact on emergency alerts in a speech from the Senate floor. Stations "running on backup generators are built to broadcast through disasters" and can send alerts even when people don't have Internet access, she said. Cantwell said that PBS WARN works "when everything else goes dark... ensuring that warnings about tornadoes, fires, floods and evacuations reach your cell phone in seconds."

As the Corporation for Public Broadcasting explains, "PBS WARN enables all public television stations to send WEAs [Wireless Emergency Alerts] out over their transmitters to provide a 'hardened, redundant' alternate path for the cellular companies' connection. Between January 1 and December 31, 2024, more than 11,000 WEAs issued by federal, state, and local authorities were transmitted over the PBS WARN system, a 30 percent increase over 2023. Public television stations save lives in their communities, even those who might never turn on a television."

NPR manages the Public Radio Satellite System, which "receives a national Emergency Alert System feed directly from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to send Presidential emergency alerts to local public radio stations," the CPB said.

NPR CEO Katherine Maher issued a statement, pointing to an NPR-commissioned survey which found that over 75 percent of Republicans and Democrats rely on public radio emergency alerts and news for public safety. "We call on the House of Representatives to reject this elimination of public media funding, which directly harms their communities and constituents, and could very well place lives at risk," Maher said.

Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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