CPB’s Merritt: ‘Let’s stay in this fight together, and let’s prevail’
Tyler Falk
CPB COO Kathy Merritt speaks Thursday at the Public Media Business Association Conference in Tuscon, Ariz.
TUCSON, Ariz. — CPB COO Kathy Merritt encouraged attendees at the Public Media Business Association Conference Thursday to remain focused on community service amid the intensifying threats to federal funding.
“We certainly face danger with the potential loss of funding, and we recognize that this moment is a turning point,” Merritt said during a session at the conference. “Let’s use it to shake loose from old ways of doing things. Let’s lean into listening even harder to our communities to learn what they want and they need. Let’s use our resourcefulness and creativity to imagine how we might better serve our communities and our country in the days ahead. And let’s do it together.”
Merritt called the last month “one of the most eventful in CPB history.” She went down the abundant list of threats CPB is facing, including the executive order signed by President Trump earlier this month attempting to end direct and indirect funding to NPR and PBS.
“We are not complying with that executive order,” Merritt said to applause from attendees. NPR and three Colorado stations filed suit over the executive order Tuesday.
CPB is also appealing the decision to terminate the Ready To Learn program to the Department of Education, Merritt said. Additionally, she said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has cut off funding for Next Generation Warning System grants for the second time. “We may be heading back to court on that front,” she said.
During a CPB town hall session later in the day, Clayton Barsoum, VP of government and external affairs at CPB, said the issue arose in mid-May. “CPB was again locked from drawing down funds due to a zero balance showing” in FEMA’s payment system, he said.
“FEMA unfortunately has not explained the problem, and it remains unsolved,” Barsoum said. “Therefore, we are encouraging stations to document and share any impacts that help demonstrate the urgency of resolving this issue.”
“Public media is too important to too many people in this country for us not to fight for the funding that Congress has appropriated in a bipartisan way for CPB for more than 50 years,” Merritt said.
“Let’s stay in this fight together, and let’s prevail,” she added.
Bipartisan support for Ready To Learn
In the town hall session, Merritt also discussed CPB’s lawsuit against Trump over his attempted firing of board members.
“You don’t decide to sue the government without giving that a lot of careful thought and consideration,” she said.
“It’s not like we want to sue anybody, but we also feel like there are lines that are clear to us about how CPB was set up, what’s in the Public Broadcasting Act,” she added. “I can’t predict what may or may not happen, but I think we are prepared to continue to defend the way Congress defined CPB. And hopefully there’s not more litigation in our future.”
One conference attendee asked what would happen to the music rights agreements CPB has made on behalf of the public media system if it were defunded.
“I’ve talked to our general counsel, and it could be that we could transfer those agreements, possibly, to a different organization,” Merritt said. “… That’s something we’re continuing to look at. We realize how critically important the music rights are to stations.”
But for many questions, “we don’t have answers,” she said. That included what would happen to CPB as an organization if it were defunded, Merritt said.
“You’re asking some of the same questions we are,” she said in response to that question. “CPB is a private, nonprofit organization that exists in the District of Columbia, so could we continue to exist and have other funding rather than just federal funding? … I don’t know, and we’re sort of not there yet.”
Barsoum laid out the legislative threats to CPB funding. CPB was not included in the reconciliation bill that passed the House earlier this month because it dealt with mandatory spending, not discretionary funding like CPB’s, he said.
But the reconciliation bill has “consumed most of the congressional bandwidth, delaying actions on other legislative items,” including Trump’s rumored rescission bill that is expected to include funding already appropriated to CPB.
The FY26 appropriations bill that would include CPB funding “has not yet been released and is not scheduled to be marked up until the last week of July before August recess,” he said. Trump has proposed zeroing out CPB funding in that bill.
“CPB and our national partners are urging Congress to maintain CPB’s two-year advance appropriation and reject any recissions proposals,” Barsoum added.
In response to Ready To Learn cuts, Barsoum said, CPB is “coordinating with our congressional allies to uplift this harm, and bipartisan support is emerging to protect Ready To Learn in the FY26 appropriations process. We are also in contact with the Department of Education and plan to document our long history of support and effectiveness through the Ready To Learn grant.”
Barsoum added that the threats are “an opportunity to show how we serve our local communities, share your stories of impact, help ensure Congress understands what’s at stake for their own constituents.”
Bravo Kathy! We are grateful for your standing up to these withering and illegal attacks.