Public Broadcasting Defunded

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“The Senate has passed about $9 billion in federal spending cuts requested by President Donald Trump, including deep reductions to public broadcasting and foreign aid… The legislation would claw back nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s due to receive during the next two budget years… 

“The corporation distributes more than 70% of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.” AP News

Additional resources:

Read: Public Broadcasting: Background Information
Read: H.R.4 – Rescissions Act of 2025

The left opposes defunding NPR and PBS, and argues that this will especially harm rural areas:

• “Every month, PBS Kids sees 345 million streams across all its digital platforms, outlets that provide carefully developed, well-researched, accessible and inclusive shows”
• “As newspapers and television stations across the country fold, public radio and TV stations can be among the few sources of local news in rural areas”
• “Most of the federal government’s dollars to CPB (just over 65 percent) go toward one thing: keeping rural PBS and NPR stations alive”

The right supports defunding NPR and PBS, arguing that they are very biased:

• “The government shouldn’t extend its favor to a few select outlets. Especially not when these outlets are so blatantly and pervasively biased”
• “NPR botched major stories—and damaged its bond with the American people. To name a couple of prominent examples: It repeatedly insisted that the lab leak theory of Covid had been debunked and it refused to cover Hunter Biden’s laptop”
• “After 2012, NPR became 100 percent National Progressive Radio. People like me didn’t exist, except as the Enemy”

Libertarians argue, “NPR should be free to make its own editorial choices—even ones that are pathologically unfriendly to Trump—and Americans should be free to choose whether they want to pay for it.”