By a 216 - 213 vote, the U.S. House on Thursday approved a Trump administration plan to rescind all taxpayer funding of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
The measure, which also cuts $7 billion for USAID, will now go to President Trump’s desk for his signature on Friday.
Wyoming’s sole congressional member, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, who has called the programming of NPR and PBS “leftist propaganda” voted in favor of the act.
“The House just sent $9 billion in rescissions to President Trump’s desk, cutting woke and wasteful spending. Another promise delivered, and I look forward to continuing to fight to right size our federal government,” Hageman said in a late night statement.
In the past, Hageman said the public’s trust in both NPR and PBS “has been lost” and the support of a “singular partisan narrative is an affront to the diverse beliefs of the American people.”
Momentous Activity
While Republicans, for decades, have criticized the federal subsidy for public broadcasting, the thought of it actually being eliminated has been somewhat of a pipe dream.
National conservative commentator, Clay Travis, grasped the significance of the action in a late night post on X.
“Republicans have been talking about doing this for two generations. Trump just got it done,” Travis said.
David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, which has fought against federal subsidies for public broadcasting for decades, called the action a “historical rollback.”
“PBS and NPR were chartered to provide objective journalism,” Bozell wrote. “Instead, we got drag shows for kids, gushing coverage of Democrats, and silence or smears for conservatives.”
Irreversible Loss
Meanwhile, National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher, who has been lambasted by Republicans for liberal bias on NPR, lamented the vote calling it an “irreversible loss” to the public radio system.
“Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities — all will bear the harm of this vote," Maher said.
Neither of Wyoming’s U.S. senators, who both voted for the cuts earlier in the week, bought into Maher’s argument that taxpayer support of public media was necessary.
“The American people expect publicly funded television and radio programming to present straightforward, factual news and content that is free of political bias,” Barrasso said, earlier in the week. “National PBS and NPR stations have failed to meet this standard. Taxpayers are right to want real value for their hard-earned money.”
Wyoming PBS
Joanna Kail, the CEO of Wyoming PBS, said in a column published on Cowboy State Daily that defunding could have been avoided had the Corporation for Public Broadcasting paid attention.
“PBS’s unwillingness to confront growing concerns about ideological bias created a perception that it no longer served the public equally. Viewers walked away, unsure if PBS was still for them,” Kail wrote.
“When PBS stopped listening, viewers stopped watching. And when it acted as though it knew better than the people it was meant to serve, those people pushed back - not out of disinterest, but out of frustration. They didn’t walk away because they stopped caring. They did so because they no longer felt heard,” she said.
Kail said she “deeply respects” Wyoming’s congressional delegation and appeared to understand why they voted the way they did.
“They voted for the bill after years of seeking accountability that never came. They didn’t abandon public broadcasting. They acted with integrity on behalf of constituents who no longer felt heard by PBS,” Kail wrote.
The Future
According to Ruby Calvert, the chair of the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and former general manager of Wyoming PBS, said Wyoming receives nearly $2 million each year to public media.
She said, in a column published on Cowboy State Daily, without the federal support smaller or rural stations — like Wyoming — could “face drastic service reductions or go dark altogether.”
Kail said she wasn’t certain how the loss of taxpayer funds will affect Wyoming PBS but its mission will remain the same.
“Wyoming PBS will continue producing award winning local stories, sharing trusted educational content, delivering lifesaving emergency alerts, and providing essential public service across the state. The future may be uncertain, but one thing is not: Wyoming PBS will always stand with and for Wyoming,” she wrote.
Jimmy Orr can be reached at jimmy@cowboystatedaily.com.
