"A dark day for America": Trump pushes through cuts in state funding for media

The US Congress approves President Trump's demand to cut foreign aid and public broadcasting. Small broadcasters in rural areas are particularly affected by the billion-dollar cuts. Democrats are criticizing the move.

President Donald Trump has won another victory in the U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives passed a bill that cuts billions of dollars in previously approved foreign aid and federal funding for public broadcasters. Trump had proposed the cuts.

The Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted 216 in favor and 213 against. The bill had already passed the Senate in the early hours of Thursday morning (local time). Trump now has to sign it for it to take effect.

The law provides for spending cuts of approximately nine billion US dollars, approximately 7.7 billion euros, including already pledged funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of 1.1 billion US dollars.

The agency is responsible for distributing state media funds to the public broadcasters National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and their member institutions. According to its own information, CPB supports the operation of more than 1,500 locally owned and operated public television and radio stations in the United States.

Trump spokeswoman argues with "fiscal common sense"

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt argued that the goal was to restore "fiscal sanity" to the country. She claimed that NPR and PBS had used federal funds for years to advance "a partisan left-wing agenda." Democrats, however, warned that cutting funding could hit local stations in rural areas particularly hard and potentially destroy them.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the bill even before it was finally passed by the House of Representatives: "This is a dark day for America, a dark day for rural America, a dark day for every American who relies on public broadcasting during floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other disasters."

While NPR says it typically receives about one percent of its funding directly from the government and a slightly higher amount indirectly, NPR's 246 member institutions receive an average of eight to ten percent of their funding from the CPB. They operate more than 1,000 radio stations across the country.

Senator Cruz hopes for further cuts

For PBS and its television stations, the proportion of funding from federal CPB funds is higher: approximately 15 percent. Local stations, especially TV stations, are therefore more dependent on federal funding. Public broadcasters also rely on donations and funding from the state and local levels, among other sources.

Trump himself put pressure on his Republican colleagues to pass the bill last week in a post on his online platform Truth Social. He explicitly justified this with the need to defund public broadcasters: "Any Republican who votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or endorsement."

Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas wrote on Platform X that he hoped this was "just the first round of Doge cuts." Trump hopes to use the so-called Doge Commission to implement cuts. At the same time, however, he also pushed the "One Big Beautiful Bill," which calls for increased government spending in some areas. According to one estimate, this bill will increase the US budget deficit by around $3.3 trillion over the next ten years.