The Trump administration has drafted a memo to Congress outlining its intent to eliminate nearly all federal funding for public media – which includes NPR and PBS – according to a White House official who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity. In the memo, the administration accused both networks of spreading "radical, woke propaganda, disguised as 'news.'"
The administration plans to send the memo to Congress when it reconvenes from recess on April 28, which will open a 45-day window in which the House and Senate can either approve the rescission or allow the money to be restored.
This comes in the wake of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing in late March, which called PBS CEO Paula Kerger and NPR CEO Katherine Maher to testify on what Republican lawmakers say is biased and woke programming. Both public broadcasting heads emphasized their mission to provide free, nonpartisan news and programming across America.
NPR has not been formally notified by the White House about the rescission, which would include all the funds for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, totaling $1.1 billion. According to Maher, that includes public media as a whole, including public television; public radio would receive $250 million.
Maher spoke with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly to talk about the memo. NPR's policy is to cover itself as we would any other organization. NPR newsroom or corporate executives, including CEO Katherine Maher, had no input on the questions for this interview.
NPR has asked the White House to comment on their goal with pulling back funding. The White House has not responded.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Mary Louise Kelly: To the central question: what would be the effect on NPR of losing government funding?
Katherine Maher: The biggest effect would be on the NPR network, which are the 246 stations around the country that [our audience is] probably listening to us on, right now. Those are our member stations, and they receive about 100 million of the 121,122 million that goes to public radio every single year. So the big impact would be on rural stations, stations in geographies that are quite large or complex in order to be able to receive broadcast or infrastructure, costs are very high. You could see some of those stations really having to cut back services or potentially going away altogether.
Kelly: So we're throwing around a lot of big numbers here. But basically, just to stick with this point, because I think a lot of people may not understand: NPR – the network you and I work for – gets around one percent of our annual budget directly from the federal government. You're making the point that a lot of our member stations would be hit considerably harder.
Maher: That's correct. So we receive about one percent of our budget. It goes to support things like body armor for journalists covering conflict overseas, extra support for our presidential national elections, all the sorts of things that we want to invest in to ensure that we're able to report on issues that matter to the public. But generally speaking, most of our operating budget comes from our membership fees, and that's what allow our members to be able to receive programming. It comes from underwriting support. It comes from private donations, individual audience member donations. And that same thing is true for member stations, except federal funding makes a much bigger percentage of their total budget.
Kelly: If all government funding goes away. Would we survive?
Maher: I think the question is "Would we be able to thrive as a national network?" That is what I am focused on is we get so much value as public media by being part of a 50-state network that covers 99.7 percent of the American population. If federal funding goes away, that network is absolutely at risk, the quality of service, the ability to cover everyone, people who live in what would otherwise be news deserts. And as a result, there's no question that NPR would not be able to pull from that richness of our national coverage if those local newsrooms –
Kelly: So it would be local newsrooms that would be going away. And often in places where local newspapers have already been decimated.
Maher: That's exactly right.
Kelly: Make the case. Why should any tax dollars support public broadcasting when there are plenty of other news organizations around, when anyone, frankly, these days can produce programming on their iPhone?
Maher: Oh, absolutely. And I think that it's important for public media to be able to continue to be relevant in a time where there is a lot of coverage of different issues and areas of interest. And at the same time, I think it's very easy to say that there's universal coverage because there's so much content being produced. But the reality is there are many places in this country that do not have that kind of access to either cell phone service or high speed broadband, where radio may be the only way to reach communities with regular access to news. Public media also supports local news coverage in places we've already mentioned. About 20 percent of Americans live in an area without any other local news coverage other than their local public radio station. This is tremendously important as a public service and just because not every single person uses it every day – you know, I don't drive on our interstates every day, and yet when I need it, it's there. The same is true of public media.
Kelly: Just to put the question to you quite bluntly, to quote the words of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman who was running the subcommittee hearing where I know you were just summoned to testify last month, she said, "look, you can hate us on your own dime." To which you say, what.
Maher: We don't hate anyone in public media. We report on the news, and we encourage that we are reaching out to people from all different backgrounds, political persuasions, belief sets. And we want to be able to hear the voices of the American public reflected on public media in the same way.
Kelly: Just to put one more challenge question to you, because this is a question I get and I want to let you respond to it. Does public funding hold NPR back? And to explain that question, I mean, we are editorially independent. We're speaking, you and I, right now in the newsroom. I know that. But if one of the goals is to avoid even the appearance of government influence, why not walk away from this money?
Maher: I actually think public funding ensures that we hold tight to a mission that means reflecting all Americans. Most commercial outlets are able to target certain audiences that they want to reach, we have an actual obligation in our mission and in our funding model to try to serve everyone across the country. Now, we won't always be able to serve everyone, every belief set, every need, every interest, but we need to serve as broad an audience as possible. That's the point of public broadcasting, is to be able to put the public in conversation with one another and to operate off a shared set of conversations about what's going on in the world.
Disclosure: This story was adapted for the web by Mallory Yu. It was edited by Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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