Congress

Frustration and fear ripple through NPR and PBS affiliates after Congress approves clawbacks

Published

11 months ago

July 21, 2025

Staffers at local NPR and PBS stations around the country were devastated by the news that Congress approved $1.1 billion in federal funding cuts to public media last week, a move that could jeopardize the futures of dozens of stations.

Small, as well as rural, public media stations that heavily rely on federal funding to operate are now bracing for possible staff cuts after Congress approved a package on Thursday that will claw back Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding.

Some stations say they’re being punished over a fight between President Donald Trump and the national public broadcasting organizations that have little relationship to the service smaller outlets offer their communities.

“I think [lawmakers’] decisions were not informed,” said Don Dunlap, president and general manager of KEDT-TV/FM, a public radio and TV station in Corpus Christi, Texas. “We’re there to help people. There are 10 public TV stations in Texas, and we’re thinking probably six of them will close down within a year.”

In April, Trump asked Congress to roll back funding for NPR and PBS, which he has long accused of bias against him and other Republicans — a claim both outlets have denied. The public media cuts are one aspect of the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign against media outlets it deems as partisan. Trump has taken legal action against several news organizations, including CBS, ABC, The Wall Street Journal and other outlets over unfavorable coverage.

Several station heads told Blue Light News they’ve been preparing for potential cuts since the Trump administration first floated the idea earlier this year. But in the wake of the bill’s passage, they’ve had to put those plans into action.

“We’re disappointed, but not surprised, and we’ve been planning for this scenario for a while,” said Judy Diaz, head of Delmarva Public Media, a group of three NPR stations that serve Maryland’s Delmarva Peninsula. “But yeah, it’s a hit.”

For hundreds of stations, federal money makes up a significant portion of their total funding. According to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, about 45 percent of all public media stations that received their grants are in rural areas, and nearly half of those rely on CPB for 25 percent or more of their annual budget.

Without federal funding, those stations may be forced into layoffs and programming cuts, if they’re able to survive at all.

According to data obtained by POLITICO, 34 public radio and TV stations receive at least 50 percent of their funding from federal grants. Twelve of those stations are in Alaska.

“We can’t fundraise our way out of this. We have to make other decisions,” said Mollie Kabler, executive director of CoastAlaska, which oversees six public radio stations in southern Alaska. “We have to consider ‘what services are we going to give up? What people are we going to let go of? And how can we find a way to collaborate and retain service for Alaskans?’”

KRZA-FM, a public radio station based in Alamosa, Colorado, that broadcasts across southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, relies on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for 50 percent of its yearly budget. Besides general manager Gerald Rodriguez, the station has one other full-time employee, two part-time workers and a handful of volunteers.

“It’s gonna be a huge cut for us,” Rodriguez said. “It’s gonna affect us quite a bit, to the point where it could be, like a one-man show at some point where I’m doing everything by myself.”

Public media stations have received CPB grants through the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in September. Many stations are calculating how long they’ll be able to survive once their federal grant funds dry up. For some, it may only be a matter of months.

“The station has built up a war chest that should get us through the next few months,” said Mark Johnson, general manager of KSRQ-FM in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. “Right now, we are making a push on-air and through social media for listener contributions to help us cover the cost of powering our transmitter through December.”

Public media staffers from local affiliates to the national networks have been lobbying Republicans in Congress for weeks in hopes of staving off the cuts. In the end, only four Republicans in both chambers voted against the final version of the package, which also included cuts to foreign aid: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Reps. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).

Representatives for Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson refuted claims that local NPR and PBS affiliates had remained nonpartisan, saying in a statement they had “politicized their own coverage by relying on syndicated programming from their national org.”

“Democratic paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don’t deserve taxpayer subsidies, and NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive on their own,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields. “Unfortunately for them, their only lifeline was taxpayer dollars, and that ended when President Trump was sworn in.”

Scott Smith, general manager of Alleghany Public Radio which broadcasts to three counties on either side of the border of Virginia and West Virginia, said he reached out to Republican lawmakers from both states to try to preserve the 60 percent of his funding that comes from federal grants. Now, he blames Congress for targeting local stations to spite the national NPR and PBS networks.

“They do know that what they were doing was going to hurt us more than it’s going to hurt NPR and PBS as a whole. Yet it was still done,” Smith said. “So what conclusion does that bring you to, without any other data to the contrary, that this is political and personal in nature.”

Kabler, who oversees the stations in Alaska, said she meets with Murkowski “a couple times per year.” The senator attempted to introduce an amendment to the Senate bill that would protect funding for local public broadcasting while stripping it from NPR’s and PBS’ national operations, citing employees at KUCB — one of Kabler’s stations — who she said earlier that afternoon had coordinated with local public officials to warn the community of an impending tsunami.

The amendment failed.

The public broadcasting audience in Alaska is “mostly Republicans,” Kabler said. “But our services are not about partisan politics, and the discussion of what people believe about PBS and NPR on the national level, that’s not what we do. We’re about local news and information.”

Some public media staffers are hoping to take advantage of the grassroots networks used to rally support against the federal cuts to organize political opposition to Republicans who backed the bill. Kurt Mische, president of the PBS station based in Reno, Nevada, said he hopes the impact of gutting local NPR and PBS stations will be a motivating issue for voters in the 2026 midterms.

“I hope that everyone who believes in and supports the mission and vision and values of public broadcasting will keep this in mind when the next congressional election comes up,” Mische said. “And we will help them connect the dots.”

Congress

Mamdani-backed socialist ousts Espaillat in NY-13

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — Darializa Avila Chevalier has ousted five-term House member Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a massive victory for the Democratic Socialists of America.

Her win marks another rebuke of the Democratic establishment in New York following Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election last year, cementing the DSA as one of the city’s most potent political forces. The upset reflects a political climate in which voters have become increasingly willing to cast aside longtime incumbents in favor of outsiders promising change.

Avila Chevalier focused much of her campaign on attacking Espaillat for accepting donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and real estate interests during his career.

“I really feel that this is a fight to make sure that we are representing working-class New Yorkers who have been left behind by a politics that only serves the interests of corporations, of corporate landlords, of special interest groups that are making life in New York deeply unaffordable for so many,” Avila Chevalier said last month, during an appearance with Mamdani on MS NOW where the mayor endorsed her campaign.

Espaillat, who is the first formerly undocumented person to serve in Congress, came up short despite having the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

Avila Chevalier, 32, was a leading organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in 2024 and is a sociology Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has served as an investigator for a public defender’s office and is originally from South Florida.

For most of the race, Espaillat was widely viewed as the favorite, but Mamdani’s late May endorsement of Avila Chevalier jolted a contest that began to show signs it was tightening. An April poll from Avila Chevalier’s campaign showed her down 14 points.

Her victory came despite intense outside spending in support of Espaillat, including from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm.

Avila Chevalier’s election to New York’s 13th district also shows a changing of the guard in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Espaillat has served at the helm of a political alliance, known as the “Squadriano,” that has ruled over those areas of the city, home to large Dominican American and African American populations.

At times during the race, Espaillat and his supporters sought to frame the primary battle as a contest between gentrifiers and long-term residents.

“Those that choose or want to parachute in, after the men and women of this city, the working men and women of the city, have built our neighborhood, we’re gonna send them back home packing wherever they came from,” the 71-year-old member of Congress said last month.

The story of his political ascendance and reign in Upper Manhattan has also been characterized by an intense rivalry with Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, an ally of the late Rep. Charles Rangel, whom Espaillat challenged for Congress in 2012 and 2014.

But this year’s primary seems to have calmed the bitter rivalry between Espaillat and Wright amid the encroachment of the Democratic Socialists of America on disputed turf. Earlier this month, Espaillat endorsed Wright’s son , state Assemblymember Jordan Wright, who was also facing a DSA-backed challenger.

The peace pact wasn’t enough to fend off the challenge from Avila Chevalier, who seized on a progressive swing in the district ever since Mamdani handily beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary there.

“We have come a long way from where we used to be as a party,” Mamdani said in the interview where he announced his endorsement of Avila Chevalier. “It’s time we have a new generation that not only takes us back to that ambition, but takes us forward to the tomorrow that so many New Yorkers are waiting for.”

Congress

Former Utah Rep. Ben McAdams is on track to return to Congress

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Rep. Ben McAdams won his primary Tuesday, paving the way for his return to Congress.

McAdams, a moderate, staved off a roster of progressive challengers in Utah’s newly redrawn 1st District, a rare deep-blue Salt Lake City district in a deep-red state that came as a result of a messy, decadelong redistricting saga.

McAdams will enter November as the heavy favorite in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris won by nearly 24 points in 2024.

McAdams won a GOP-leaning seat in the 2018 Democratic wave and governed as a centrist, Blue Dog Democrat who pushed for a balanced budget amendment — but he lost his reelection bid in 2020. He was one of the first Democrats to signal interest in running in the new 1st District and quickly garnered support from Utah elected officials and national centrist Democrats.

His progressive opponents attempted to paint him as too conservative, pointing to his previous mixed record on abortion. One opponent, state Sen. Nate Blouin, called on the other candidates to consolidate their support behind one person to avoid splitting the progressive vote. None agreed, and McAdams — who raised more money than the three other Democrats combined — prevailed.

Congress

Trump’s preferred candidate wins primary to succeed Elise Stefanik

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

ALBANY, New York — President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik cruised to victory in his Republican primary Tuesday evening.

Anthony Constantino, the CEO of custom sticker company Sticker Mule, defeated Assemblymember Robert Smullen, a retired Marine colonel, for the nomination in a deep red upstate New York House district.

Trump, along with MAGA figures Roger Stone and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, backed Constantino’s bid, casting aside Smullen’s endorsement from the New York Republican Committee.

Constantino’s victory underscores the power of Trump’s endorsement in a district he has won during each of his three presidential campaigns. His win also highlights how a candidate who’s fashioned himself in a MAGA mold can continue to resonate in a largely rural and predominantly white district that has struggled economically for decades.

A former boxer, Constantino has dabbled in music, producing songs that praise Trump. He initially drew Stone’s attention after erecting a large “Vote for Trump” sign on a building in Amsterdam, N.Y., a city less than an hour west of Albany. Constantino also gifted Trump a bronze statue in the president’s likeness.

The circus-like primary became a bruising battle between a first-time candidate who channeled Trump-style promotion and attacks against an establishment favorite with a long, accomplished resume.

Constantino referred to Smullen as “Slime Bob” and called him “evil” in a text message to his rival. Smullen, in turn, called Constantino “unfit” and knocked his prior enrollment as a Democrat.

The race became so bitter that Smullen refused to shake Constantino’s hand at the conclusion of their only televised debate.

Constantino poured $10 million of his own money into the race and spent more than $3.8 million on TV ads, saturating upstate media market airwaves. Smullen’s campaign spent a fraction of that amount, more than $500,000 in ad spending, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.

The sticker impresario also displayed a marketing flare, printing t-shirts that touted his Trump endorsement.

Smullen leaned heavily on his biography and background as a combat Marine. But he often found himself responding — sometimes angrily — to Constantino’s barrage of attacks.

Constantino will now have to make peace with some New York power brokers as he pivots to the general election. Smullen is set to remain on the November ballot with the backing of the state Conservative Party’s ballot line. Constantino is being sued for defamation by that party’s leader, Jerry Kassar.

The House seat opened after Stefanik, who has represented the area for more than a decade, announced she would leave Congress after scuttling her gubernatorial campaign. Stefanik was previously Trump’s nominee for United Nations ambassador, but that was yanked amid concerns her vacancy would complicate the House Republicans’ narrow majority.

Stefanik did not endorse in the race to replace her.