Supporters and Critics See Long Odds for New Federal Public Broadcasting Money Post-Rescission

Senate Appropriations LHHS Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who received an award last year from America’s Public Television Stations as a “champion of public broadcasting,” told us after voting to cut CPB funding that she doesn't think “our federal dollars should be supporting news outlets that have a political bent.” Capito as subcommittee ranking member during the last Congress supported giving CPB $535 million for FY26 during the FY 2024 appropriations cycle (see 2403250015).

NPR and PBS “didn’t make adjustments” to what Republicans now view as an increasingly pro-Democratic bias in their news coverage and other content, Capito said. She is up for reelection next year and Trump threatened to withhold support for Republicans who voted against rescinding CPB’s funding (see 2507110048).

“I think my constituents are concerned about local [public broadcasters and] I still am,” Capito said. “I can still work on that.” She didn’t rule out restoring funding at some point, “but I’m not there yet.” Capito cautioned she hasn’t thought about how Congress could directly fund local broadcasters, but she said increased state funding and viewer donations could offset the loss of federal money. The Senate Appropriations Committee hasn’t released or voted on its LHHS FY26 bill.

House Appropriations LHHS Chairman Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., told us there's “still a lot of appetite to try and find a way to help these local television stations in some way” via federal funding. “We’re working on some more creative ways” to direct money to them for FY26, but it won’t be via CPB. “All the details haven’t been worked out,” but new federal funding may involve a rider that recipients won’t use it on NPR or PBS programming. “It would defeat the purpose [of rescission] if you send [local stations] that money, and then they give it to NPR and PBS,” Aderholt said.

‘Opinion Has Changed’

House LHHS ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and other pro-CPB lawmakers told us they will push to restore public broadcasters’ funding, but some expressed pessimism about short-term prospects. House LHHS hasn’t released its FY26 bill, but when Appropriations takes it up “we’re going to fight on” CPB, DeLauro said. The Trump administration pursued defunding CPB via the Rescissions Act because it “wanted to avoid” having to get buy-in from at least some Democrats needed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote legislative cloture threshold.

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., predicted CPB funding is “a fight that’s not going to go away.” Senate Appropriations member Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of two upper-chamber Republicans who voted against passing the Rescissions Act, told us she's “not backing down” on CPB given the role public broadcasters play in rural states. “These are small stations [serving] Americans who are living” in areas commercial broadcasters don’t cover, she said. “They deserve to have some level of communication, and public broadcasting is it.”

APTS CEO Kate Riley told us public broadcasting “supporters on both sides of the aisle are looking for ways to restore [CPB] funding … but I think it’s unlikely that will happen” before federal money runs out when FY25 appropriations lapse Oct. 1. NPR’s board last week cut its budget by $8 million to redirect that money as “fee relief to the most affected stations.” Public broadcasters “are going to face a funding cliff that is going to force many of them to go off the air,” Riley said. “That service will be lost [even if lawmakers later restart federal funding] and this is going to over-impact rural and smaller communities.”

Riley sidestepped criticizing Capito or other Republicans who previously backed federal CPB funding but noted the Trump administration’s “messaging [in favor of clawing the money back] very much focused on national programming.” There's “no requirement that any funding from CPB go to NPR or PBS,” she said. APTS has long emphasized that public broadcasting stations “are locally controlled [and that cutting funding would] impact local stations more than anything else. They're responsive and accountable to their local communities to provide content and services that their local communities want and value.”

Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, who wrote a chapter of the group’s Project 2025 plan that called for ending CPB funding (see 2407110034), told us it’s unlikely that even “the weakest [Republicans on Capitol Hill] will want to revisit” the issue now that Congress has revoked the money. “I think that they've understood the level of anger that their voters have regarding NPR and PBS,” Gonzalez said. “The climate of opinion has changed.” If NPR and PBS “don't want rural stations to close, all they have to do is cut down or eliminate their license fees,” he said: “But they won't do that, and they will not reform. So my sympathy for them is limited.”

National Religious Broadcasters CEO Troy Miller, who backed the CPB rescission last week (see 2507210037), also doesn't expect Republicans will pivot. “There are a few lawmakers and a few states that would like to see that happen, but I think the overall [Republican] majority is behind this defunding” now, he said. “I don't think there's a chance that this is going to get refunded again in appropriations.”