The White House issued a memorandum today asking Congress to "claw back" funds that have already been appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 and 2027. If approved by Congress, this rescission would remove $770 million intended for the direct support of local, independent noncommercial public media stations across all 50 states and territories, and directly cause the loss of nation-wide, universal service public broadcasting.
Contrary to reports, there is no federal funding earmark for NPR or PBS programming. The CPB receives around $106 million — $9.58 million for radio and $96.78 million for TV — in annual funding that is set aside for public media program producers. If either PBS or NPR want to access this funding, they must apply to CPB in a competitive grant application process.
The Public Broadcasting Act does guarantee that every eligible local, noncommercial public media station can receive support from CPB. Therefore, this clawback would directly and immediately impact local public radio stations. This includes NPR Member organizations, responsible for more than 1,000 station signals in our network, as well as hundreds of other public media organizations.
Enacting this rescission will remove crucial funding for station activities causing immediate budget shortfalls. This would result in cancellation of beloved local and national programming, a reduction in local news coverage and newsroom jobs, a severe curtailing (if not elimination) of public radio music stations who depend on CPB to negotiate music licenses, reduction in service areas for rural and remote communities, as well as forcing dozens of local stations to shutter operations. Rescission would irreparably harm communities across America who count on public media for 24/7 news, music, cultural and educational programming, and emergency alerting services.
Public safety in every community across the nation could also be affected. NPR, as the entity chosen by public radio stations to operate the nationwide Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), receives Presidential-level emergency alerts and distributes them across the country within minutes. In the event of a national attack or emergency, communities no longer served by a station would not receive this lifesaving, early warning and civil defense alert.
States and cities could experience downstream effects from the loss of nationwide emergency alert infrastructure. Public radio stations are included in at least 35 state emergency plans, with NPR/PRSS specifically named as a resource in at least 20 states' emergency plans. As proven repeatedly during both historic and recent disasters, radio is the most reliable form of communication in an emergency, and public radio provides an essential backstop for all other emergency alerting services and activities.
On-air noncommercial music, such as classical, jazz, Americana and folk music — often not broadcast anywhere else — could also vanish. Today, 96 percent of all classical music broadcast in the country appears on public radio. The clawback could force those stations to go silent. Currently, CPB negotiates discounted licenses that allow stations to offer a wide array of music and arts programming as well as broadcast the performances of local artists, symphonies, and orchestras at low or no cost, providing efficient music rights management solutions for every public media station. If this goes away, the vast majority of stations could not afford to purchase licenses, and it would be nearly impossible for individual stations to negotiate the same licenses and fees on their own.
The local news economy in many parts of the country would collapse if Congress rescinds funding for public broadcasting. The U.S. has lost one-third of its local newspapers over the last two decades, leaving 1 in 5 of Americans without local news. Public media has stepped into this gap, increasing its number of local journalists over the last 10 years, expanding statehouse coverage, and — in some cases — even saving local newspapers through nonprofit partnerships.
Public radio includes more than 200 local newsrooms across the country, with more than 3,000 local journalists who live in and know their communities. NPR supports this work through collaborative newsrooms that strengthen statewide and regional coverage in Texas, the Gulf States, Mid-South-Appalachia, Midwest, New England, and California. Local news is trusted, and integral to the function of civic life in our communities. With rescission, Congress would eliminate local news jobs, further weakening lawmakers' ability to connect directly with constituents on free local public media, and shutter outlets that their communities rely on.
For 50 years, public media has received bipartisan support from Congress because lawmakers understand the vital service it provides to the communities they represent. In 1975, Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Financing Act of 1975, establishing a two-year advance for public media funding in order to ensure the continuous service and editorial independence of the public media system. In doing so, they recognized that taxpayer support for public media was a public good.
This rescission would have a negligible impact on reducing the deficit and provide little-to-no savings for taxpayers, yet it would harm all Americans, shutting off access to local news, national reporting, music and regional culture, and emergency alerting. Private media corporations have already demonstrated they are not willing to step into the gap to ensure universal access, deterred by expensive infrastructure and low-margin profit models. Public media serves every American in every part of this country, for less than 0.01 percent of total federal spending.
This rescission proposal is the most serious threat ever faced by public broadcasting. The proposal, which is explicitly viewpoint-based and aimed at controlling and punishing content, violates the Public Broadcasting Act, the First Amendment, and the Due Process Clause. If approved, Congress will be taking an unprecedented step of ending nearly half a century of bipartisan support for nonprofit, local broadcast media serving communities across the nation. Nothing will take its place. We urge Congress to act in the interest of their constituents and save public broadcasting.
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