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The House of Representatives passed the Trump administration’s rescission bill on July 17, clawing back $1.1 billion that had been allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
That’s in addition to $7 billion in foreign aid. Some, especially Congressional Democrats, see the move as Congress’ capitulation to the Trump administration’s wishes, giving up its independent power of the purse.
Others, namely Congressional conservatives, see it differently. All Wyoming Congress members voted for the rescission package. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican, posted to X after voting on July 17. “This bill saves over $9 billion and puts America’s priorities FIRST,” he wrote.
Cuts were aimed at what some lawmakers alleged was news biased from recipients like National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, funded in small part by CPB. Community radio stations have been raising alarms that cuts will disproportionately hit rural areas that provide local news and serve a largely conservative base.
Stations like KDNK in Carbondale, Colorado say cuts are a public safety threat, potentially crippling capacity for emergency alerts in areas without reliable cell service.
On July 17, a wildfire broke out near Rifle, Colorado, in the listening area for KNDK where Chris Hassing is the membership coordinator.
“We had our news director coming in to give updates every 15 minutes,” he said. “That emergency service is one of the things that we pride ourselves on.”
Cuts leave a hole of approximately $200,000 for KDNK, 27% of their budget, he said. Since the final vote the station has switched from advocating for people to call Congress to fundraising to try to make up that gap.
Besides emergency alerts, Hassing said that local news and music programming, which he called the “intangible spirit” of the station, is also at risk.
Where he sees online media becoming a place of data mining and extraction-based consumption, he also sees community radio as an antidote.
KDNK’s situation is not unique within Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a coalition of public radio stations across the region, including KHOL.
Ashley Krest is the network’s vice president and station manager at KVNF, a community radio station based in Paonia on Colorado’s Western Slope.
“There are many stations within that network that get benefits from the negotiations on music rights or the access to affordable national news programming,” she said.
At KHOL, about $177,000 in CPB funding made up 25% of the station’s 2024-2025 budget, though the station is not an NPR affiliate. In keeping with standards on self-reporting, KHOL’s director did not review this story prior to publication.
Hassing said his team is now asking listeners to fill in the funding gap.
“We’re ready to put in the work,” he said. “But we can’t deny that it’s going to be an extraordinary challenge. And it’s definitely going to tax our staff.”
