OMB Director: Trump Seeks to Claw Back $1.1B in Advance CPB Funding
President Donald Trump intends to request that Congress claw back about $1.1 billion in advance CPB funding as part of a broader $9.3 billion funding rescission package, White House OMB Director Russell Vought confirmed Tuesday. Set for later this month, the proposal reportedly targets $535 million in advance annual funding for CPB in fiscal years 2026 and 2027, which Congress allocated as part of an FY 2024 appropriations package (see 2403210067) and March continuing resolution that extended the allocation through Sept. 30. Congressional Republicans have shown growing interest since January in ending federal funding for public broadcasters amid rancor over what they perceive as pro-Democratic bias in news coverage (see 2502030064).
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Reports of the funding rollback began circulating Monday night, prompting swift criticism from public broadcasting supporters. After a dramatic late-March public broadcasting hearing, some members of House Oversight's Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee saw a coming budget reconciliation package as a vehicle for ending CPB funding (see 2503260063). Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory group has eyed CPB as a potential target (see 2411220042). FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in January initiated a probe by the Enforcement and Media bureaus into public broadcasters’ underwriting activities (see 2501300065).
Vought said Congress needs to claw back advance CPB funding, targeted at grantees NPR and PBS, because those broadcasters have “been at the forefront of the efforts to do on a cultural basis the type of dividing on the basis of wokeism that we’ve seen and had such a great deal of issue with” during the Biden administration. “This is not just left-wing indoctrination,” he said during an appearance on former Trump administration strategist Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “This is worse than that.” The proposed rescission of advance CPB funding is an initial step, and “more is coming,” Vought said.
The White House issued a news release Monday night detailing “some examples of the trash that passes for ‘news’ at NPR and PBS” to justify Trump’s claim that “taxpayer funding of NPR’s and PBS’s biased content is a waste.” CPB, NPR and PBS didn’t immediately comment.
America’s Public Television Stations is “deeply disappointed that a proposal to eliminate funding for public broadcasting is being considered for a rescission package,” President Kate Riley said Tuesday. “We urge Congress to reject the destructive rescissions,” which defy “the will of the American people and would devastate the public safety, educational and local service missions of public media stations -- services that the American public values, trusts and relies on every day.” A funding clawback would threaten “the very existence” of more than “160 locally operated and controlled public television stations.”
Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez said Monday night that the Trump administration “may not like public media -- and that’s no surprise given the president’s frequent attacks on any journalism that holds his administration and its cabal of billionaires accountable. But Trump's views are out of step with those of the majority of Americans, who overwhelmingly support federal funding for public media.” When “lawmakers have tried to do this in the past, millions of people protested,” Gonzalez said. “We will ensure that members of Congress will hear a similar outcry in the coming days and weeks.”
Meanwhile, Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday to lift its freeze on Next Generation Warning System grants to “reimburse stations for upgrading their emergency alert systems. For nearly two months, however, FEMA has refused to process such reimbursements, depriving local stations of promised payments and delaying critical modernization work.” Public broadcasters “may face financial challenges without promised reimbursements,” the senators wrote in a letter to acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton. “They may have to delay or cancel projects intended to make their stations more resilient, potentially preventing them from communicating emergency alerts to the public when the next hurricane, wildfire, or winter storm strikes.”