Free Republic

To hear National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Katherine Maher tell it, the loss of federal funding for the public network is as close to nuclear armageddon we can get without, you know, actually experiencing a nuclear attack. No matter. It's really, really, really bad, says Maher. "There's a real understanding of the need there, as well as for emergency alerting, in which public media plays an extraordinarily important role," she said. We absolutely have to have this 19th-century technology to warn rural Americans of an "emergency"? ... As Robby Soave points out, cutting off NPR and PBS from federal dollars...

The House gave final approval to President Donald Trump’s request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid early Friday as Republicans intensified their efforts to target institutions and programs they view as bloated or out of step with their agenda. The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway, wary of crossing Trump or upsetting his agenda. The House passed the bill by...

It’s finally passed and heading for President Trump's desk for signature. The recissions package has made it over the finish line in a 216-213 vote in the House. It had to be bounced back from the Senate, which passed it on a 51-48 vote, as the upper chamber had made slight adjustments to it during the vote-a-rama process. The GOP has slim majorities in Congress, but they’re getting the Trump agenda through. 216-213:House approved the Trump WH's 1st round of DOGE spending cuts, $9B in foreign aid & public broadcasting from previously approved funding by Congress. Republicans Fitzpatrick (PA) &...

NPR CEO Katherine Maher challenged critics to show her a story that would prove the radio network is biased on Wednesday. Maher defended her organization on CNN's "The Situation Room" as it faces efforts by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to remove its federal funding. Though Trump and other conservative critics have accused NPR of being politically biased towards Democrats, Maher insisted that they "serve all Americans" and seemed to deny any bias. "It doesn‘t help anyone to take this funding away," Maher said. "As far as the accusations that we‘re biased, I would stand up and say, ‘Please...

Early Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the $9 billion rescission bill, bringing the country one step closer to ending the most egregious and indefensible federal spending in the modern era. Public broadcasting. The $500 million a year that taxpayers are forced to fork over for government radio and TV is such a small slice of the $7 trillion spending total, it’s more like a spending “scrape” than a cut. But what these federal funds lack in volume, they make up in stupidity. Whatever the merits of a government-funded radio and TV network in the era of...

Senate Republicans blasted through Democratic and internal opposition to pass President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar clawback package early Thursday morning. The final vote tally was 51-48, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining every Democrat in voting against it. The package will now be sent to the House, which has until Friday to pass it. The $9 billion rescissions bill tees up cuts to "woke" spending on foreign aid programs and NPR and PBS that Congress previously approved. Republicans have pitched the bill as building on their quest to root out waste, fraud and abuse...

It takes the undeveloped ego of a toddler to pout this long. But if Elmo on Sesame Street can learn how to share, surely these three can too. For all its concern about a peaceful transfer of power, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) are probably not planning a story about the three board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) who have refused to leave the board after Trump removed them in April.Not so long ago — in 2020 and 2021 — PBS and NPR were spreading propaganda that President Donald Trump was going...

The New York Times leadership actually attempted to sell readers on the dimwitted notion that stripping tax dollars from leftist public media is just as nutty as defunding police departments. This is the same newspaper that largely rationalized nixing police funding across a number of stories over the past few years. The Times editorial board went to bat for lefty outlets NPR and PBS, which are on the verge of possibly getting $1.1 billion cut from their mothership Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The newspaper had the utter audacity to argue in a June 16 editorial that continuing literal government-funded...

PBS and NPR stations are on the verge of losing the federal funding that has helped keep them on the air for decades. The Senate is preparing to vote on a rare measure called a “rescission,” which would claw back money that was already budgeted by Congress, including nearly $1.1 billion in funding for public media. Here’s what will happen if lawmakers zero out the funding for PBS and NPR. What will viewers and listeners notice? Over time, some local stations may be forced off the air, while other stations may have fewer shows to broadcast. Stations may have fewer...

The clock is ticking on our tax dollars going to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). They aren’t risking closing, unfortunately, but they are on the verge of facing the exact same pressures as every other television network out there: the ability to pay their own bills by attracting an audience and advertiser or donor dollars. The President’s rescissions package is awaiting passage by Congress to cut a modest $9.4 billion from the federal budget, with most of the funds coming from USAID and the remainder from PBS and NPR. The catch is, it has to...

The X account of Elmo, a Sesame Street hero, posted antisemitic content on Sunday night, calling to "kill the Jews." The content was quickly deleted. In its tweets, Elmo posted, "Kill all Jews." "Elmo says ALL JEWS SHOULD DIE. F-K JEWS. DONALD TRUMP IS NETANYAHU’S PUPPET BECAUSE HE IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES. JEWS CONTROL THE WORLD AND NEED TO BE EXTERMINATED. “RELEASE THE FILES @realDonaldTrump CHILD F-KER.” Reports said that ten minutes prior to the antisemitic incitement, the hacker posted a photo of Elmo on the moon, wishing readers, "Happy crypto all-time high day, everybody! From Elmo and @onchainstudios....

Nothing will ever be easy with congressional Republicans. The reconciliation package aged all of us 35 years, as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to whip votes, hold the line, and make some phone calls. President Trump was also working the phones heavily when final passage was at stake in the House. Republican leadership held the line, but with Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) retiring after the reconciliation vote, delivering what’s left of the Trump agenda before the 2026 midterms is about to get even tougher. The House did its job and passed the rescission package, but...

The spigot has been turned off.A Reagan administration joke depicted a Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator sobbing at his desk. “What’s wrong?” The bureaucrat responded, “My Indian died.” Like the best political humor, it uses a ridiculous scene to illustrate a truth. Bureaucracies eventually exist for the bureaucrats. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) demonstrated this truth for more than six decades without, unfortunately, providing a laugh. On Tuesday, it ceased to exist. (RELATED: The Trump Administration Sets Its Sights on the Parallel Government)Do you also turn its funeral into a party this weekend? The complete cessation of...

Both Jennifer and Greg are security specialists. But while Jennifer works for Fox, Greg calls NPR his professional "home." Prior to working at NPR, he spent 20 years as a correspondent for both The New York Times and The Associated Press (via NPR).

The mainstream media tried to destroy Trump—but in the end, they destroyed themselves. This is the story of anchors who lost their minds, reporters who lost their careers, and a media machine that couldn’t handle President Trump.

House Republicans narrowly passed a bill Thursday to cut $9.4 billion worth of federal spending, effectively codifying several actions by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The so-called rescissions package axes approximately $8.3 billion previously allocated to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and $1.1 billion to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which partially finances National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The 214-212 vote sends the measure to the Senate, where it will only need a simple majority to advance to President Trump’s desk. Four Republicans — Mark Amodei of Nevada, Brian Fitzpatrick of...

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) claimed Wednesday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Donald Trump caused the Los Angeles immigration unrest. Waters said, “The backup plan is the President of the United States should do what he didn’t do when we were invaded in the Capitol. When they had the insurrection that he led, he should get on the phone and talk to the local police, he should talk to the people that he’s had deployed there. And he has a responsibility in all of this. He started this. There should be no violence. He should not continue to support violence.”...

PBS stands accused of “grooming” children after Sesame Street, one of the nonprofit TV network’s premier programs, shared a social media post hailing LGBTQ Pride Month that drew an immediate response from a group of Congressional Republicans. The veteran children’s education and entertainment program went on social media to welcome the annual event built around an image of puppets holding hands, as Breitbart News reported. On both X and Instagram, the Sesame Street pages shared a graphic of multi-colored puppets reaching out so that they resembled the colors of an LGBTQ Pride flag. “On our street, everyone is welcome. Together,...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Kermit the Frog knows it's not easy being green — or graduating from college and entering the real world, especially during a time of economic uncertainty and political turmoil. Members of the University of Maryland's class of 2025 received their diplomas Thursday evening with sage advice from the amphibious Muppet ringing in their ears.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” CNN Contributor and Democratic strategist Paul Begala said that the revelations about then-President Joe Biden’s mental fitness don’t impact the credibility of the Democratic Party at all and “I don’t think any Democrat who’s going to be facing voters in the midterms was at all complicit.” And there were “a whole bunch of politicians who understandably were rooting for him and hoping that he was doing fine, but they didn’t know.”Co-host Mary Louise Kelly asked, “What does this mean to your party’s ability to hold President Trump, his administration, and Republicans accountable...