President Donald Trump plans to ask Congress to rescind the funds it appropriated for public broadcasting, which is a good start in defunding NPR and PBS. The legislative branch must do that and then move to dissolve the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Rescission deals with the immediate. It applies instant pain to the public broadcasters because Congress would claw back money that it has already decided to appropriate. In this particular case, the administration is preparing to ask Congress to rescind $1.1 billion, according to published reports.
That would be around two years’ worth of appropriations, affecting fiscal years 2026 and 2027, as Congress “forward-funds” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting two years in advance. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting automatically got $535 million—the same as it got last year—in the last continuing…
