The Senate voted on Tuesday evening to advance a package that would roll back $1.1 billion in funding to PBS, NPR and public media that had already been allocated over the next two years.
Vice President JD Vance had to break a tie, 51-50, to move the rescissions package to the floor. Three Republicans — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) joined with all Democrats and independents against it.
A final vote is expected in the next couple of days.
The cuts would zero out federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that Congress set up almost 60 years ago to distribute grants to public media outlets.
Trump’s White House sought out the package of rescissions, which also rolls back billions of dollars of funding for foreign aid and health programs. The bill package calls for clawing back more than $9 billion in total funding.
Republicans have long sought to eliminate public media funding, but Trump and his allies have targeted programming for an alleged liberal bias.
On the Senate floor, Murkowski said that if Republicans don’t like a left wing bias at NPR, “we can address that. That doesn’t mean we need to gut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
But another lawmaker who was on the fence, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), said that he supported the package after the Trump administration said that it would find money to “continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption.”
Congress has until Friday to approve the package, or the funds will stay in the budget as is. The House approved the package in a 214-212 vote last month.
“This is in our view a misuse of taxpayer dollars,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters earlier on Tuesday. “They’re biased reporting, they’re not objective. They pretend to be so, they have for a long time. And the people don’t need to fund that.” He also cited the change in the media landscape, “with so many different areas for information.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a floor speech, “Tens of millions of Americans rely on public broadcast for weather alerts, local news, keeping track of City Hall, educational programming, and so much more. This affects most badly rural America, including native communities. And these cuts couldn’t come at a worse time: the floods in Texas remind us that speedy alerts and up-to-the-minute forecasts can mean the difference between life and death. And for millions, public radio and local TV are sometimes the only way to stay up to date.”
Schumer said that cuts were being made “in the false guise of eliminating waste. But anyone can see that’s not true, it’s just to pay for their cut taxes for billionaires.”
