The red state broadcaster bracing for funding cuts

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2 days ago

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President DONALD TRUMP on Thursday signed legislation making sharp cuts to public broadcasting. Now, small, rural radio and TV stations across the country are bracing for the worst.
One of those outlets is KEDT-TV/FM, a public radio and TV station in Corpus Christi, Texas. It's the only radio station in the region that has a news department, said station president and general manager DON DUNLAP, and covers a rural service area with a primarily Republican, low-income and Spanish-speaking audience.
'There are 10 public TV stations in Texas, and we're thinking probably six of them will close down within a year,' Dunlap predicted in an interview with West Wing Playbook.
The White House maintains that the cuts — included in a rescissions package clawing back about $9 billion in previously approved federal funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid — would limit the taxpayer dollars going to NPR and PBS, the independent but publicly funded news outlets Republicans have long accused of peddling a leftwing bias.
'Democratic paper-pushers masquerading as reporters don't deserve taxpayer subsidies, and NPR and PBS will have to learn to survive on their own,' said White House principal deputy press secretary HARRISON FIELDS. 'Unfortunately for them, their only lifeline was taxpayer dollars, and that ended when President Trump was sworn in.'
But critics, including four Congressional Republicans, have maintained that the rescissions would imperil dozens of local newsrooms with little connection to the national organizations — many in rural, deep-red areas.
'I think [lawmakers'] decisions were not informed,' Dunlap said. 'We're there to help people.'
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How will the passage of the rescissions package affect your stations?
We would have to make a decision whether we're going to shut down the television service or we have to shut down the radio service. Both of them provide unique services in these communities that are not going to be picked up by commercial media, because the content is not commercially viable.
There are other secondary impacts that we don't have any data on right now. What is it going to do to our programming costs? We buy about $600,000 worth of programming from NPR and PBS, and obviously their programming model is going to have to change if there are fewer stations involved. All these different unknowns make this scenario planning very, very difficult.
Republicans say they're defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because NPR and PBS propagate left-wing positions. You're in a red district in a red state — how do you respond to that?
That's said by a lot of people who don't listen or watch what we're doing here. On the TV side, there's just no way that we could even have two sides to something. What's the political side of bald eagles or nature programs about hurricanes or volcanoes, or classical music programming to play on the radio? There's no political side to that.
We have a program on the radio called 'All Things Considered.' I think the nature of that program is what these people don't like. Some people don't like things to be talked about or covered. They want their information limited. So then they have to come up with a name for it, call it 'woke' or something.
Both of Texas's senators supported the rescissions, as did your congressman, Rep. MICHAEL CLOUD (R-Texas). Have you spoken to any of them?
Michael has been over here to the station, actually. We do an academic quiz show for high school kids that just finished season 20 … and we had him ask some questions about government. What I have found — watching the Congressional testimony and during our visits to the Hill — is that these members and senators have so much information coming to them. The only ones that really know anything in depth about it are their staff, and they're just boiled down to a couple of talking points.
A spokesperson for Cloud did not respond to a request for comment.
It's likely that many of your listeners are Republicans, too. What do they think about the cuts?
We've had a ton of phone calls about all this. I haven't heard from anybody who supports cuts to public broadcasting. We have a big service with the schools down here. We work with over 100 school districts in South Texas, which we provide with PBS LearningMedia — over 120,000 educational videos. It's highly used in the schools, but nobody mentions that as one of the services that we do.
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POTUS PUZZLER
Under which president was the Fine Arts Committee for the White House created?
(Answer at bottom.)
WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT
TWO CAREER NOAA OFFICIALS OUT: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration placed two veteran officials on administrative leave today, NOAA's communications director confirmed to Ben and POLITICO's E&E News' DANIEL CUSICK.
JEFF DILLEN, who was serving as NOAA deputy general counsel, and STEPHEN VOLZ, assistant administrator for NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, were both placed on leave for separate issues, according to Kim Doster, the agency's communications director.
'Mr. Dillen was placed on administrative leave by the department's senior career attorney pending a review of performance issues over the past several weeks,' NOAA communications director KIM DOSTER said in a statement, adding that Volz was placed on leave 'on an unrelated matter.'
It comes less than a week before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee takes up the confirmation of NEIL JACOBS, Trump's nominee to lead NOAA. Jacobs served as NOAA's acting administrator during Trump's first term, where he found himself embroiled in the 2019 'Sharpiegate' scandal, where he and another NOAA official, JULIE ROBERTS, were accused of pressuring scientists to alter the forecast of Hurricane Dorian, which killed dozens of people.
Jacobs and Roberts were attempting to align the forecast with statements made by Trump, who said in the Oval Office that the hurricane would hit Alabama. In 2020, Volz led the investigation into Jacobs and Roberts, and found that the two officials violated the agency's 'scientific integrity policy.'
The Oval
'THEY WANT TO DIE': Trump today said Hamas 'didn't want to make a deal' and that 'they want to die,' claiming the U.S.-designated terrorist group wants to retain the hostages to keep its negotiating power, Irie reports. It comes a day after the U.S. pulled out of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas amid pressure on Israel from American allies to halt its military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, which has led to widespread death and starvation.
French President EMMANUEL MACRON said Thursday that his country would become the first of the G7 to recognize a Palestinian state. And Australian Prime Minister ANTHONY ALBANESE said that 'The situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world's worst fears.'
Agenda Setting
RELEASE THE FUNDS: KATIE BRITT (R-Ala.), along with 13 of her GOP colleagues, sounded the alarm about 'the slow disbursement rate' of National Institutes of Health funding included in the March spending bill signed by Trump, our KATHERINE TULLY-McMANUS reports.
Britt, who serves as chair of the Senate Appropriations homeland subcommittee, wrote a letter today to White House Budget Chief RUSS VOUGHT, urging the Office of Management and Budget to 'fully implement' the stopgap government funding package enacted earlier this year.
Suspension of the appropriated funds, whether delayed or formally withheld, 'could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science,' the senators warned in the latest example of Republican pushback to the administration's pattern of withholding money from programs that lawmakers have explicitly set aside funds for.
FUNDS, RELEASED: The Trump administration will release billions of dollars in education funding that have been on hold for review for weeks, our MACKENZIE WILKES reports. Approximately $1.3 billion for after-school programs was released by the administration last week, with today's move marking the release of the remaining portion of the nearly $7 billion in withheld funding.
The remaining dollars include money to support teacher preparation and students learning English, among other initiatives.
'UNAVOIDABLE' LAYOFFS: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is planning for mass layoffs in October due to the Trump administration's budget cuts, POLITICO's E&E News' CHRISTA MARSHALL reports. In a video distributed to staff this month, Lab Director MICHAEL WITHERELL said 'as we look ahead to the federal budget for fiscal year 2026, it has become clear that staffing reductions at the lab are unavoidable.'
It comes as the nation's 17 national labs that support research on technologies ranging from EVs to coal are facing significant changes due to the cuts. Energy Secretary CHRIS WRIGHT has been a major proponent of the labs, calling them important for implementing the administration's energy priorities.
Even as the administration builds additional data centers throughout the country, the president's proposed budget for fiscal 2026 would slash funding for many lab programs, including Lawrence Berkeley.
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POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER
During the JOHN F. KENNEDY administration, first lady JACQUELINE KENNEDY created the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, made up of specialists in the field, and hired LORRAINE WAXMAN PEARCE as the first curator of the White House, according to the White House Historical Association. To learn more about the presidents and first ladies and how to draw them, check out How to Draw the Presidents and First Ladies.