The US House of Representatives has given the final approval to President Donald Trump’s US$1.1-billion request to cut public media funding that had been going to PBS and NPR.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 216-213 today, and now it’s going to Trump for his signature. The US government cut it close, since it had until today to get the package of cuts onto his desk. If the cuts hadn’t been approved by the deadline, the White House would have been forced to disburse the money. 

This funding, which was the total amount of federal money allotted to public broadcasting for the next two years, had previously been earmarked for supporting 1,500 local PBS stations, and programming on PBS and NPR. Federal funding accounts for roughly 15% of PBS’s annual budget. 

The cut will “significantly impact” all PBS stations, said PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger in a statement yesterday. And it’s expected to be especially hard on smaller stations and those serving large rural areas, since they tend to struggle in getting funding from alternative sources, she added. 

The Trump administration has been pushing hard for this cut to combat what it sees as a left-leaning bias in PBS and NPR coverage, citing instances like Sesame Street addressing racism amid the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. But it’s part of a larger US$9.4-billion clawback that also includes US$8.3 billion allocated to foreign aid. 

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