The House Follows the Senate and Claws Back All Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

WASHINGTON — Early Friday morning, a House Republican majority voted to accept President Donald Trump’s recommendation to strike $1.1 billion from the previously approved federal budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

The measures narrowly passed the Senate in the early hours of Thursday morning. In the House, members voted largely along party lines with only two GOP holdouts. In June, Trump’s rescission request passed the House by a razor-thin margin, but had to be reconsidered so representatives could accept or reject any Senate changes to the package. 

Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But this vote marks the first time they’ve succeeded. Past efforts ran up against an outspoken public — including people of every political persuasion — who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent. 

Hardest hit by the rescission will be smaller, more rural stations, some of which receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the CPB.

Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:

“With this vote, Congress has abandoned local communities, abdicated its constitutional responsibilities and dealt a devastating blow to what’s left of our democracy. This is a vote to evade public accountability and hide the Trump administration’s destructive actions from independent scrutiny. The clawback measure also deals a devastating financial blow to global health programs.

“The CPB cuts are a tremendous loss for journalism in the country and will result in countless job losses for the many reporters and producers trying to tell the stories of their communities. The loss of emergency communications will cost people their lives even as the climate crisis worsens — and that preventable but tragic outcome will be on the hands of this Congress, too.

“Congress has failed. But today the work starts anew for the rest of us. We need to channel our outrage into creating the kind of locally grounded and controlled publicly funded media that’s fiercely independent of political and corporate meddling, resistant to propaganda, and committed to education, journalism and meeting civic needs. This won’t be about gluing together the shattered pieces of what we used to have. The urgent task is to build a public-media system capable of resisting autocracy and restoring democracy.”

Background: 
In February, Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the Trump administration’s censorship of media viewpoints the president dislikes, calling it a “free-speech emergency.” In May 2024, he testified about false claims of bias at NPR and PBS. Free Press Action is leading grassroots efforts to craft public policy that supports local noncommercial news and information.

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