The White House is planning to ask Congress to claw back more than $1 billion slated for public broadcasting in the United States, according to two people briefed on the plan, a move that could ultimately eliminate almost all federal support for NPR and PBS.
The plan is to request that Congress rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-backed company that funds public media organizations across the United States, one of the people said. If Congress agrees, that will amount to about two years of the organization’s funding, nearly all of which goes to public broadcasters including NPR, PBS and their local member stations. The Trump administration isn’t planning to ask Congress to claw back about $100 million allocated for emergency communications.
Government money accounts for a small part of the budgets at NPR and PBS, which also generate revenue through sponsorships and donations. Most of the government funding goes to local stations, which rely on it to finance their newsrooms and pay for programming.
The proposal would be part of a broader rescission package, a formal request to Congress to rescind previously approved funds, that would also eliminate billions allocated to foreign aid, the two people said. The process is established under law, which gives the House and Senate 45 days to vote to approve the request after it is submitted. The White House plans to submit this rescission request in the coming weeks, the people said. If Congress does not approve the rescission request, the money must be spent as originally intended.
The Trump administration’s proposal to defund public broadcasting comes amid sustained pressure on NPR and PBS from Republicans in Congress, who have intensified long-running attacks on the broadcasters. The chief executives of both organizations testified before Congress last month in a fiery hearing that played out along mostly partisan lines: Republicans assailed the executives for what they saw as liberal bias, and Democrats argued that the proceeding was a waste of time.
The ask would also be the latest move by the Trump administration to exert pressure on media organizations. The administration is waging a legal battle with The Associated Press over its decision to exclude the wire service from the presidential press pool, breaking decades of precedent. Mr. Trump is also personally suing CBS News and The Des Moines Register, and the Federal Communications Commission has launched investigations into Comcast, PBS and NPR.
Spokespeople for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR declined to comment.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is “forward-funded” two years to insulate it from political maneuvering, and a sizable chunk of the money for 2025 has already been paid out to public broadcasters in the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Public media executives have been planning for the possibility of having public funding clawed back for months. According to a document prepared by station directors this past fall, the immediate elimination of funding, while unlikely, would be “akin to an asteroid striking without warning.”
“It is the highest risk scenario especially in a time in which the media ecosystem is rapidly changing,” the document said.
Public media defenders say rural audiences would be hit the hardest if funding was cut from NPR and PBS stations. In very remote areas without broadband access, public radio and TV are among the few sources of news and entertainment.
But those in favor of defunding say advances in technology have made those services obsolete. In an interview last month, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said residents in rural parts of her district had enough access to cellphone and internet services to keep them informed.
“The bottom line here: NPR and PBS only have themselves to blame,” said Mike Gonzalez, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has argued publicly for defunding public media. “For the last 50 years, every Republican president has tried to defund them or reform them.”
In 2011, NPR executives produced a secret report that explored what would happen if government funding was eliminated. According to the report, up to 18 percent of roughly 1,000 member stations across the United States would close, and $240 million would vanish from public radio. Stations in the Midwest, the South and the West would be most affected, and roughly 30 percent of listeners would lose access to NPR programming.
One potential upside, according to the document: Cutting off federal funding would galvanize public radio supporters, leading to a sudden surge in donations to stations across the United States.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
