Updated June 12, 2025 at 6:56 PM EDT
The House of Representatives narrowly approved legislation Thursday to eliminate the next two years of federal funding for public media outlets.
It did so at the direct request of President Trump, who has accused NPR and PBS of bias against conservative viewpoints as part of his broader attacks on the mainstream media.
The measure passed largely along party lines, 214 to 212, with two key Republican lawmakers switching their votes from "no" to "yes" to push it over the finish line.
The legislation is the first request by the Trump administration for Congress to claw 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 allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes nearly all of the funds to local television and radio 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. That spending had been approved by both Republican-led chambers of Congress and signed into law by Trump earlier this year.
CPB, which is privately incorporated in Washington, D.C., is suing the Trump administration over his efforts to exert control over its board. CPB, PBS and NPR put out separate statements decrying the vote. Executives from the two networks urged the Senate to put a stop to the legislation.
"Americans who rely on local, independent stations serving communities across America, especially in rural and underserved regions, will suffer the immediate consequences of this vote," NPR Chief Executive and President Katherine Maher said in a statement. "If rescission passes and local stations go dark, millions of Americans will no longer have access to locally owned, independent, nonprofit media and will bear the risk of living in a news desert, missing their emergency alerts, and hearing silence where classical, jazz and local artists currently play."
Similarly, Paula Kerger, PBS's chief executive and president, said the fight to protect funding for public media does not end with Thursday's vote. She said the services provided by public television "cannot be replaced by commercial media."
"If these cuts are finalized by the Senate, it will have a devastating impact on PBS and local member stations, particularly smaller and rural stations that rely on federal funding for a larger portion of their budgets," Kerger said. "Without PBS and local member stations, Americans will lose unique local programming and emergency services in times of crisis."
A coalition of local public media officers, emergency readiness officials, Native American tribal representatives, educators and others had joined with listeners and viewers to lobby lawmakers against the bill.
Support for public media has, historically, been fairly bipartisan. But the idea of getting government out of the business of subsidizing public media has always struck a cord in more conservatives parts of the Republican party, and it has been increasingly resonant in recent years.
The Republican majority prevailed on Thursday with a paper-thin margin, however, relying on the flipped votes of Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Nick LaLota of New York.
LaLota and Rep. Mike Lawler, both of whom represent the suburbs of New York City, have bucked party leadership over the separate issue of whether a new budget would return property tax deductions for pricey mortgages. LaLota could be seen on the floor conferring with House leaders just moments before reversing from "no" to "yes." Lawler's vote was among the last cast.
Heated partisan debate before the vote
When House Majority Leader Steve Scalise formally introduced the legislation last week, he said 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."
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.
After the vote, Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican who is co-chair of a bipartisan caucus supporting public broadcasting, condemned the outcome.
"Before we trigger major consequences for our local public broadcasting stations throughout the West and other rural areas, we need more discussion—rather than railroading folks over the East Coast's editorials and indiscretions," Amodei said in a statement. "I agree we must make meaningful cuts to shrink our federal deficit; however, I would be doing a disservice to the thousands of rural constituents in my district if I did not fight to keep their access to the rest of the world and news on the air."
While a handful of Congressional Republicans have joined Amodei in supporting 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 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."
"The American people support the free press, but will not be forced to fund a biased political outlet with taxpayer funds," Johnson said.
Conservative views on public media have changed
Two former Republican lawmakers say that the GOP sentiment toward public broadcasting has shifted over time — from frequent support to skepticism to open hostility.
"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."
A bumpy 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, a Rhode Island Democrat 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
Earlier in the week, Amodei and Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York released a joint statement urging the Trump administration to "reconsider" clawing back money for CPB.
The two pro-public broadcasting lawmakers touted public media's news coverage and its role in communicating during emergencies, 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," Goldman said.
He argued that Trump objects because "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 GOP Rep. Robert Aderholt, pressed by Colorado Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse 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.
Even so, most of the cuts will fall on the local stations, which receive by far the lion's share of the funds. Some of that money makes it back to PBS and NPR in the form of fees to run the networks' programs on the air.
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 — where Republicans also have a slim majority — 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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