Senate approves DOGE cuts to public media, foreign aid
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Disclosure: Rocky Mountain PBS receives funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This article was not reviewed by anyone at Rocky Mountain PBS outside of the journalism team prior to publishing.
DENVER — The Republican-led Senate voted early Thursday morning to officially revoke approximately $9 billion in previously approved funding for public media and foreign aid.
The clawback, called a rescission, formalizes cuts recommended by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It now goes to the GOP-led House, where it is expected to pass a final vote.
The bill rescinds two years of funding — more than $1 billion — that was dedicated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent agency that manages and distributes government funding to local NPR and PBS stations, including Rocky Mountain PBS. The rescission also revokes billions of dollars dedicated to foreign aid.
Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, both Democrats, voted against the cuts.
The vote took place after 2 a.m. local time following a lengthy amendment process. Every Democrat and Independent senator present voted against the bill. Only two Republicans — Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted against the rescissions, but their votes weren’t enough to sink the bill, which passed 51-48 (Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, missed the vote because she was in the hospital).
The rescission bill is a continuation of President Donald Trump’s attack on public media. He has routinely claimed PBS and NPR hold a left-wing bias. In May, the president attempted to fire three members of CPB’s board (the agency then sued the president, who on Tuesday sued the board members).
“Rocky Mountain Public Media will continue to be a service to all Coloradans regardless of political beliefs and ability to pay,” said Amanda Mountain, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain Public Media, in a statement. “This devastating blow to our collective work here and across the country will hurt those who need us most and where there is no commercial incentive to step up and fill any gaps. We must now work together to protect what could be permanently lost in terms of public safety infrastructure, educational services to kids and families, and reliable news and information.”
The House narrowly passed the rescission’s first iteration last month. The GOP controls both the House and Senate, and did not need any votes from Democrats to pass the bill, which required only a simple majority to pass in both chambers.
“This is in our view the misuse of taxpayer dollars,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said of CPB funding before the Senate’s vote. “They're [PBS and NPR] biased reporting, they're not objective. They pretend to be so. And the people don't need to fund that."
Despite accusations of bias, PBS in particular enjoys strong bipartisan support from the American public. The broadcaster was named the most trusted media organization in a 2022 nationwide survey.
“This isn't about saving money,” said Anna M. Gomez, the only Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission. “It's about silencing those who report the news accurately, without fear or favor.”
Federal funding makes up a critical portion of annual budgets for public media stations, particularly those in rural areas represented by Republicans in Congress. The rescission is expected to have an outsized impact on smaller stations in more remote parts of the country.
Almost half of the stations that receive grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which manages and distributes government funding to public media stations — are considered rural. Many of those stations are in Republican-led districts and rely on government funding for 25 percent or more of their revenue, according to CPB.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota announced he had made a deal with the White House that secured funding for 28 public radio stations serving Native American communities in nine states.
“We wanted to make sure tribal broadcast services in South Dakota continued to operate which provide potentially lifesaving emergency alerts,” Rounds said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
But public media leaders are skeptical of the plan. In a letter, Native Public Media president and CEO Loris Taylor told Rounds that the compromise, which diverts funds from a Department of Interior program, is “structurally impractical.”
"There is no clear path for redirecting these funds to Tribal broadcasters without significant legislative and administrative changes,” Taylor wrote, adding that DOI money reserved for climate and economic reform could not easily replace a dedicated funding source for broadcasting.
Tami Graham, the executive director of KSUT Tribal Radio in Durango, Colorado, told Rocky Mountain PBS her station received “no indication” it would be included in Rounds’ plan.
KFSK, an NPR station in Petersburg, Alaska, was the subject of a recent episode of “The Daily” podcast from The New York Times. KFSK’s general manager Tom Abbott told The New York Times’ Jessica Cheung that 30% of his station’s budget comes from CPB. With the rescission’s passage, Abbott expects KFSK to eliminate all but two staff positions. He also worried about public media in Alaska as a whole.
“Right now, we have 27 individual public radio stations in the state of Alaska. I think that’s going to go down to two, maybe three if this rescission goes through,” Abbott said last week. “It’s not going to happen immediately, but it’s going to go that route. And that’s what’s under threat here.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, opposed the proposed cuts to public media, emphasizing the emergency alerts that NPR and PBS stations are able to provide
to remote regions in her state.
Murkowski said Wednesday, “there has been probably no issue, no single issue that has drawn out more interest across the state of Alaska than support for public broadcasting.” She also noted that public radio stations played a key role in issuing a tsunami warning after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook the Alaskan coast Wednesday.
Murkowski introduced and voted in favor of several amendments to the rescission bill that would keep funding in place for public media stations, but those amendments did not pass.
Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said the passage of the rescission bill would jeopardize future government spending bills, which require 60 votes — i.e., at least some bipartisan support — to pass.
In a “Dear Colleague” letter, Schumer said it would be “absurd” for Republicans in Congress to claw back previously approved funds and then “expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government, while they [Republicans] concurrently plot to pass a purely partisan rescissions bill to defund those same programs negotiated on a bipartisan basis behind the scenes.”
In response to the letter, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said he was “disappointed” to hear Schumer “implicitly threaten to shut down the government.”
“I was disappointed to see the Democrat leader in his recent Dear Colleague letter implicitly threaten to shut down the government,” Thune said.
Rocky Mountain Public Media, which includes Rocky Mountain PBS, KUVO JAZZ and THE DROP, receives about 10% of its funding from CPB.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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