By: Barry Walsh

The US House of Representatives has approved a rescission package that includes removing two years of previously committed funding for public broadcast media—which will impact PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). It’s now up to the Senate whether or not the cuts are made.

The rescission request, sent on June 3, seeks to act on recommendations from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that called for cuts in funding to public media, foreign aid and the state department, with the total of all cuts coming in at around US$9.4 billion.

The House narrowly voted in favor of canceling billions of dollars in funding for public radio and TV stations in addition to global health, sending the bill that would codify these DOGE cuts to the Republican-controlled Senate. 

If the bill passes, $1.1 billion will be cut from the CPB—which allocates almost all of the funding that local stations receive—for the next two fiscal years. The rest of the cuts ($8.3 billion) will apply to foreign aid programs for issues like global public health, international disaster assistance and hunger relief. 

Last month, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger released a statement criticizing US President Donald Trump for what she called a “blatantly unlawful” executive order to slash funding. At that time, Seeta Pai, VP of children’s media and education at GBH, noted the implications of these cuts on children’s content: “The new executive order would directly affect funding that our kids programming relies on.”  

Congress now has 45 days to act on the request to cancel the previously approved funding. Now that the House has approved the request, it falls on the Senate to vote on it by mid-July. If the Senate denies the request, the government will be required to release the money. 

(With files from Justin Anderson and Ryan Tuchow)

Pictured is PBS KIDS/Fred Rogers Productions’ Alma’s Way.

A version of this story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s sister publication Realscreen.