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The Trump administration will seek to cut funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributes money to NPR and PBS, according to White House officials.
The rescissions, requests to cancel funding already appropriated by Congress, are expected to be sent to Capitol Hill once lawmakers return from recess later this month. The CPB cuts are part of a larger $9.3 billion package that includes further proposed cuts to the State Department and the U.S. Institute for Peace.
Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo to influential lawmakers requesting that Congress rescind portions of approved funds, including $1.1 billion - about two years of funding - for the CPB, the paper reported. In the same memo, he also requested an $8.3 billion cut to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Vought confirmed the plans for a rescissions package during an interview Tuesday on the "War Room," the show hosted by former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon.
"This is not just left-wing indoctrination, but this is worse than that," Vought said, referring to the media outlets. "They've been at the forefront of the efforts to do on a cultural basis the type of dividing on the basis of wokeism that we've seen and had such a great deal of issue with over the last four years."
Vought described the rescissions package as an initial effort and promised "more is coming."
PBS and NPR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last month, the heads of each network were grilled over alleged liberal bias at a congressional hearing led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). In January, the Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation into whether the networks had improperly aired commercial advertisements, an allegation each of them denies.
The White House statement included a list of examples of what it called biased content, such as an NPR article with facts about "queer animals" and a PBS documentary about a transgender teenager. It also claimed the networks have "zero tolerance for non-leftist viewpoints," pointing to minimal coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story by NPR, which chief executive Katherine Maher has since called a mistake.
Public media is funded through a patchwork of sources, including private donations and the CPB, which is federally funded with about $535 million per fiscal year. Most of the CPB's budget is spent on grants to more than 1,500 local radio and television stations around the country, which can license programming, including from NPR and PBS, or create their own programs. About one-eighth of local public station funding comes from the CPB, according to the corporation.
New England Public Media, for example, which is based in western Massachusetts and airs NPR and PBS as well as locally made content, says it gets about 10 percent of its budget from the CPB. The rest mostly comes from donors and sponsors, it says.
CPB contributes about 1 percent of NPR's budget and provides about 10 percent of the money used by hundreds of local radio stations that license NPR programs, according to the broadcaster. PBS is owned by its local member stations, which are usually partially funded by CPB grants. About 16 percent of its funding comes from the government, the service told The Washington Post in January.
The CPB also provides grants for national programs. "PBS News Hour," a nightly show that launched in 1975, says it is about 35 percent funded by the CPB and dues from local stations. PBS has also been home to the children's show "Sesame Street" for more than half a century.
Separately, the Trump administration has sought to halt funding for Voice of America, a news service that aims to reach millions in countries that lack a free press. Its firing of about 1,200 VOA workers prompted a court challenge.
The government cuts are part of a larger feud between Trump and the media. The Trump administration is also fighting a court battle against the Associated Press over White House access, and Trump called for the Federal Communications Commission to punish CBS over its editorial coverage.
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