Is the gravy train over for far-left, highly partisan National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation?
Let's just say the light at the end of the tunnel is rapidly getting bigger.
According to the New York Times:
The Senate on Tuesday voted to take up legislation to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, signaling that the Republican-led Congress is poised to acquiesce to President Trump in a simmering battle with the White House over spending powers.
The 51-to-50 vote came after Republican leaders agreed to a handful of concessions to win the votes of holdouts who were uneasy with the proposed rescissions. ...
Even then, some Republican senators refused to support a move that they said would relinquish their constitutional power over federal spending, forcing their leaders to summon Vice President JD Vance to the Capitol to break a tie and ram the legislation through a pair of procedural votes.
Most of the clawed back cash -- about $8 billion, was various wasteful kinds of foreign aid, of which only about 12% ever makes it to its intended mendicant recipients. The rest goes to bureaucrats -- and NGOs, whose leaders enjoy six-figure salaries.
The rest, according to the Times, about $1.1 billion, is federal gravy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is the parent company for NPR and PBS.
For them, the cash cow is over. And leftists are screaming bloody murder about it, despite past claims from the group that it barely relied on federal funding -- just 1% -- as its stations financed themselves by relying on "viewers just like yourself."
Now they're saying local affiliates relied on CPB a lot -- as in, for more than 50% of their funding, meaning, many will be shut down as funding dries up. They weepily cite rural and tribal areas, as if leftists ever cared about those places earlier, and now claim the networks are vital.
Brian Stelter, writing for CNN, explains the apparent contradiction here:
In the public media system, money flows out from CPB to localities, then returns to the national entities through dues and fees from member stations. That is how NPR funds “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” for example.
“While federal funding makes up only 1% of NPR’s revenue, member station fees make up a 30% share,” the organization recently explained to listeners.
So the national operations are bracing for the domino effect that would ensue if funding dries up in the fall.
NPR has made the case to listeners that “elimination of federal funding would ultimately result in fewer programs, less journalism — especially local journalism — and eventually the loss of public radio stations, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities.”
To be honest, I don't care. We live in the age of the internet, and streaming, rural people we know use those mechanisms just fine.
What's needed is to shut this entire federal funding down.
Federal funding has created a wall between the networks and their viewers, as it doesn't matter to them how many flip the channel if they don't like their product -- the federal cash will always be coming, so they have no need to listen to their viewers.
Consequently, they are the most leftist of all the broadcasters, answerable to no one but themselves and happy to live off the taxpayer dime.
Why should the U.S. -- which consists of left and right-- be funding just one side of the political spectrum with no regard for either viewers or the taxpayers who fund them?
That's an outrageous expropriation and entitlement for one side, spewing their propaganda, while forcing those on the right to pay for it.
NPR has run insanely leftist material, such as praise for looting, claims that interstate highways are racist, claims that biological men have no advantage in women's sports, calls rural Americans "Christian nationalists" and broadcast lots of Russia hoax material against President Trump that has no basis in fact. All of its guests on 'Fresh Air' are leftists, 100%, according to the Media Research Center.
Here's their CEO:
Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR, in her own words. pic.twitter.com/DP7WLhFTyJ
— Simon (@freespeechluv) July 16, 2025
Sen. John Kennedy, a brilliant Louisiana Republican, named these problems:
NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher on CNN this morning: “As far as the accusations that we’re biased, I’d stand up and say, ‘Please show me a story that concerns you.’”
— John Kennedy (@SenJohnKennedy) July 16, 2025
I’ve got a few:
???? (1/5) pic.twitter.com/kC1hHmPfHQ
There are so many more, as he noted as well.
Stelter claims it's all in Republicans' heads that NPR is biased against them:
Opponents also argue that the public broadcasting model is obsolete in the streaming era. But for Trump and some of his strongest supporters, the primary objection to NPR and PBS is perceived bias. The Trump White House has portrayed public broadcasting as “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’” and claimed that the news operations exist to help Democrats and hurt Republicans, which the networks deny.
That's quite an impressive gaslight.
The problem with NPR and PBS is that they don't want to admit they are biased, and the leftist lunacies they broadcast are only possible because of the public funding, which up until now, required no accountability -- leftists would dole it out and Republicans in Congress would go right along with it.
Except for a couple of dishonorable holdouts, such as Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, Republicans didn't go along with it this time and that's thanks to President Trump.
Now NPR and PBS can pay the piper.
If they want money next time, they are going to have to install an affirmative action program for all the conservative voices shut out of their programming -- I would suggest 51% - or else get Ben & Jerry's and the Soros front groups to make up the difference in ads. If they can't do that, it's time to shut the gravy train down.
Nothing has been more corrosive than far-left opinions posing as straight news along with a demand to taxpayers to finance it. It's time to end that model now, and President Trump and his congressional allies have much to be proud of for this measure.
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