Trump's war on public broadcasting moves ahead

NPR - The House narrowly voted yesterday to claw back two years of funding worth $1.1 billion for public media outlets. The measure passed largely along party lines, 214 to 212. Two Republicans switched their "no" votes to "yes." Trump requested the legislation, accusing NPR and PBS of bias against conservative viewpoints. The bill includes a list of cuts totaling $9.4 billion, the bulk of which goes to foreign aid programs addressing global public health, international disaster assistance and hunger relief. The Senate still has to approve the measure.

NPR's David Folkenflik tells Up First that, while it seems like a modest amount of money for NPR, the loss of funding "could be huge" for public radio and television stations. NPR CEO Katherine Maher warned of stations "going dark," leaving Americans without access to noncommercial media and putting them at risk of living in a news desert. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, one of the rare Republicans who voted against the measure, said he agreed that the government must make meaningful cuts to shrink the federal deficit, but he would be "doing a disservice to the thousands of rural constituents" in his district if he didn't "fight to keep their access to the rest of the world and news on the air."