Trump moves to officially strip $1BN from NPR and PBS
President Donald Trump 's demand to strip $1.1 billion in federal funding from National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service came one step closer to reality. Tuesday night House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he had officially received the rescissions request from the White House to extinguish a total of $9.4 billion in funding from NPR, PBS, the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, the latter of which the administration has disassembled.
The $1.1 billion was Congressional funding for the public broadcasters for the next two years. Only about 1 percent of NPR's budget comes from the federal government, but the heads of NPR and PBS have both warned that local TV and radio stations could be impacted by this move. Johnson said he would put the rescission bill on the floor next week.
'Now that this wasteful spending by the federal government has been identified by DOGE, quantified by the Administration, and sent to Congress , House Republicans will fulfill our mandate and continue codifying into law a more efficient federal government,' Johnson said. 'This is exactly what the American people deserve.' For months Trump has demanded that NPR and PBS lose their federal dollars.
'REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT "MONSTERS" THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!' the president wrote in an April Fool's Day Truth Social post. But he wasn't joking. On May 1, Trump signed an executive order to strip the two taxpayer subsidized entities of their federal dollars.
PBS should be defunded, the White House argued, because it produced a documentary that argued the case for reparations - payments made to descendents of enslaved Americans. The White House also expressed dissatisfaction that PBS had aired a documentary of a transgender teenage boy and that Sesame Street had partnered with CNN and held a town hall amid the 'Black Lives Matter' protests in June 2020 to address racism.
The administration complained that the program showcased a 'one-sided narrative.' The White House also blasted NPR and PBS for liberal bias and for having 'zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints.' In late May, NPR and three Colorado NPR stations sued the administration over Trump's executive order claiming that it 'violates the expressed will of Congress.' That could change, however, if the rescission request goes through.
It only needs a simple majority in the House and Senate to pass - and Republicans have a narrow majority in both chambers. There has been some GOP resistance on this vote because the broader package also includes funding for PEPFAR, the successful HIV/AIDs prevention started under the White House of Republican President George W. Bush.
'I will not support a cut in PEPFAR, which is a program that has saved literally millions of lives and has been extremely effective and well run,' Republican Sen. Susan Collins told reporters, according to NPR . Collins then sidestepped a question about cutting NPR and PBS' funding. Spokespeople for NPR and PBS did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail's requests for comment.
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