NPR and PBS may have to start charging for their tote bags and umbrellas.
The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted to cut more than $9 billion in spending in an early morning vote that required the help of Vice President J.D. Vance.
The final vote tally was 51-48, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining every Democrat in opposition.
President Trump’s $9 billion rescissions bill includes defunding the far-left propagandists at NPR and PBS. Republicans have pitched the bill as building on their quest to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
The president’s rescissions package proposed cutting nearly $8 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed agency that provided taxpayer cash to NPR and PBS.
“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said. “And now it’s time for the Senate to do its part to cut some of that waste out of the budget. It’s a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”
The package will now be sent to the House, which has until Friday to pass it. Should they fail to do so, the funding cuts will not be invoked. And that could be a problem.
The Senate saved nearly $400 million in programs from being cut. Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans warned the Senate not to water down the president’s rescissions package.
This is a victory for fiscal conservatives, but it’s not a great victory – not yet. Remember, that the DOGE team originally promised $2 trillion in cuts. What Congress is doing with the rescissions package is only a drop in the bucket.
Regardless, it’s time to celebrate this victory! The American taxpayers will not be forced to spend millions of dollars to fund an Iraqi version of Sesame Street. “Farewell, Tickle Me, Ahmed.”
Over the years, NPR reported that country music and birds are racist, and told American people to stop eating juicy cheeseburgers.
“No person with a brain above a single-celled organism would call these articles fair and balanced,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) wrote on X.
NPR also reported that there is no evidence that biological men have an unfair advantage over biological women in sports. I’m sure Riley Gaines and the entire University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team would love to dispute that bit of fake news. NPR also called America’s interstate highways racist.
The leaders of both agencies pushed back and said there was absolutely no bias at either PBS or NPR, but the facts proved otherwise.
Last year, NPR senior business editor Uri Berliner revealed that there were 87 registered Democrats in NPR editorial positions in Washington, D.C. and “zero Republicans.”
The 25-year veteran said there was an “absence of viewpoint diversity.”
NPR, a nonprofit radio network, has an “absence of viewpoint diversity,” he wrote in the essay, which was published April 9. It “has always had a liberal bent,” but now an “open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR,” he wrote.
Shortly after publishing the whistleblower report, Berliner resigned from NPR. Whatever viewpoint diversity he brought to the table has left the building.
The U.S. Constitution does not require the taxpayers to fund a state-run media or tedious British period dramas. And if NPR and PBS are so strapped for cash, they should consider selling those tote bags and umbrellas instead of giving them away.
Todd Starnes is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and host of The Todd Starnes Radio Show.
