When Donald Trump directed Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), he and his allies pushed a long time, right-wing narrative about targeting liberal “bias” at NPR and PBS.
Instead, the Republican rollback of $1.1 billion in CPB funding that had previously been approved by Congress is hurting vulnerable, rural-America communities in red states.
On Monday, CPB officially announced it could no longer manage the Next Generation Warning System (NGWS), a federal grant program that helps public broadcasting stations provide alerts about severe weather. CPB administered the NGWS in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, another agency whose funding Trump has sought to slash by the billions. FEMA on its own website touts the crucial role of broadcasting networks for emergency preparedness. “[R]adio and TV stations continue to operate when other means of alerting the public are unavailable,” the site says.
NPR’s larger stations in cities like New York and D.C. will be less impacted than rural communities which rely on public broadcasting for everything from keeping abreast on local government meetings to public safety alerts. Much like the effects of Trump’s deep cuts to Medicaid funding on rural hospitals, defunding CPB is expected to disproportionately impact the very people the president purports to represent.
“This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve — in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities,” said Patricia Harrison, CPB President and CEO, in the press release about ending the warning system.
If FEMA doesn’t assume responsibility, already-approved funds from fiscal years 2022, 2023 and 2024 “will go undistributed,” the release continues. “As a result, critical emergency alerting equipment will not be purchased, leaving communities, especially those in rural and disaster-prone areas, without the upgrades Congress intended.”
Democrats are highlighting this dangerous situation in a new radio campaign rolling out in North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s ad warns listeners that their station might soon cease to exist.
“Last month in DC, Republican Senators cut radio funding, voting to end weather alerts, community news, and our way to stay connected,” the ad says. “Rural America relies on radio. But Republican politicians left us behind.”
Dispatches from rural radio directors and managers across the country are issuing similar warnings.
KSDP, a tiny public radio station in a remote region of Alaska relies on CPB funding for 70% of its budget. “The loss of federal funding is truly seismic for us,” Austin Roof, KSDP general manager and a reporter, told The Guardian. KUCB, another Alaska station whose on-air reporters recently worked to warn listeners in the Aleutian Islands about a potential tsunami, gets 40% of its budget from CPB. “This is not just an assault on the free press; it’s an assault on public safety, especially in rural areas like Unalaska,” a KUCB post about the federal cuts said.
According to an analysis by Alex Curly, a former product manager for NPR’s Public Radio Satellite System, in his blog Semipublic, seven of the top 10 most at-risk stations are in red states based on the stations’ fiscal 2023 budgets. Four of those stations are in Alaska.
To put it another way, CPB funds just over 1,200 total radio stations. Of that number, 251 stations are located in parts of America that are considered rural. Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, has estimated that up to 80 stations could close within the next year. That’s 6.6% of all of the radio stations that CPB funds.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) publicly opposed the CPB funding cut and were the only two Republican senators who did not vote for the recissions package, which also rescinded funding for foreign aid.
And NPR stations aren’t the only ones being hit. Allegheny Mountain Radio in West Virginia serves a mountainous region where radio, phone and internet signal is hard to come by. It’s not an NPR station, but receives most of its funding from CPB. Danny Cardwell, a station coordinator and reporter there, told NPR Trump’s defunding of public media is an extension of the president’s war on data.
“These stations and all the institutions that produce data and information, those are the institutions that are under attack,” Cardwell said.
Ultimately, a series of cuts either proposed or enacted by Trump — to CPB, FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association — are creating the perfect storm for less efficient public safety weather alerts amid a more dangerous storm season, officials told the New York Times in May.
In June, the Heritage Foundation published a blog post supporting Trump’s cuts to public broadcasting and proposed a fix to the problem. The conservative think tank acknowledged NPR’s fundamental role in helping the federal government disseminate information about emergencies but said those responsibilities should instead be assigned to NOAA. Trump, according to his 2026 budget proposal, wants to reduce NOAA’s budget by more than $1.5 billion.
