Some Republicans want to reverse GOP cuts to rural and tribal radio stations

This article was originally published by NOTUS. It has been edited for style, to clarify that local stations were the primary beneficiaries of CPB funding and to note Rep. Mark Amodei’s role as co-chair of the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus.

The public radio station in Kotzebue, Alaska, serves an area larger than the state of Indiana, where communities aren’t connected by roads, but rather by airplanes — and, during part of the year, trails across frozen rivers. Federal funding cuts could soon shutter the vital news link the station provides residents.

Desiree Hagen, KOTZ’s news director — who says she’s the only reporter above the Arctic Circle in the United States — says the tribal station is “super crucial,” giving information to locals that could mean life or death, like search-and-rescue alerts, warnings on where ice is thin and critical weather updates — as well as community information, like which high school student may have made the winning shot at a local basketball game.

Without federal funding, Hagen expects the station would be “just like an automated transmission with nobody working here.”

“Probably no news, no local content,” she said. “We would have to hustle a lot. We would have to spend the hours that we’re struggling to keep ourselves on air already devoted to trying to find these extra funding mechanisms.”

Some congressional Republicans say they’re requesting government funding to save rural and Native American public radio stations nearly a year after the GOP-led Congress voted to claw back public broadcasting funds.

Most tribal radio stations will gradually close across the country if Congress doesn’t grant them more funding, according to a survey shared with NOTUS of tribal stations affected by last year’s gutting of CPB.

A Republican-backed law last summer rescinded all federal funding to CPB, which dissolved itself in January. CPB funded national public media organizations like NPR and PBS, but most of its annual appropriations were distributed to stations. The cuts clawed back $1.1 billion already approved for CPB, and were expected to have an outsized impact on rural and tribal outlets, which are sometimes the only sources of news in remote areas of the country.

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said he wouldn’t vote for the funding cuts until the Office of Management and Budget agreed to provide about $10 million to tribal and rural radio stations across the country. But that hand-shake deal was only one-time funding, and it won’t be there to support the stations in fiscal year 2027 unless lawmakers act. The funds secured by Sen. Rounds was disbursed through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and nearly matched of what CPB would have given out, according sources at several tribal stations.

Rounds, who sits on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior and the Committee on Indian Affairs, says he’s pushing to keep tribal-radio-station money flowing.

“I continue to work with my colleagues on both committees to secure continued funding for tribal radio stations in FY 27,” he said in a statement. “These radio stations are critical for communications in some of the most rural parts of South Dakota and we must make certain they have the funding needed to continue operating.”

Loris Taylor, CEO of Native Public Media, says she reached out to the lawmakers who sponsored that fund last year, as about 36 stations in Native Public Media’s network have been “heavily impacted” by funding cuts. Native Public Media has been working with stations to secure other funding in case they lose their federal subsidy.

The majority of these stations have said they will close within six months to a year without continued federal funding, according to a survey conducted by Native Public Media. Some stations said they would shutter immediately. About a third of the stations relied on CPB funding for 80% to 100% of their operations, and the vast majority of the stations said they were considering layoffs, the survey said.

“We will begin to see a cascade of closures as the years go by, starting out with immediate closures, followed by the next wave,” Taylor said. “It’s going to be a ripple effect happening across Indian Country.”

Some Republicans who represent areas affected by the cuts say they’re pushing to keep the stations on air.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan — who voted to slash public broadcasting funds but also supported the separate cash flow for tribal public radio — is working to keep money for the tribal radio program in the forthcoming Interior Department budget, according to his spokesperson, Amanda Coyne.

Rep. Mark Amodei, a retiring Republican from Nevada and co-chair of the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus who voted for the CPB rescission, says he’s working “to restore funding to public broadcasting, particularly the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. This program specifically supports tribal and local public stations, according to his office.” Amodei is working alongside Rep. Don Bacon, another retiring Republican, and the House Appropriations Committee, Amodei’s office said.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department said it and the Bureau of Indian Affairs “stand ready to support these stations with additional resources should future funding become available through the appropriations process.”

John Miller, the station manager for KOYA in rural South Dakota, said he’s been preparing should federal help dry up.

“I’m not really looking forward to it, to be honest with you, but just, you know, knowing that it’s coming, and that we’ve got to be really proactive in our efforts to try to keep afloat,” Miller says. “It’s going to be hard.”

“If those folks in Washington can come up with a plan that would better help us, you know, I’m for it,” he says. “I just hope that when everything is said and done that we’re not left to just go away.”

In late January, Taylor, the head of Native Public Media, sent letters to every U.S. House member and senator with a tribal radio station in their district.

In the letters, Taylor outlined how these stations often supply news deserts with information on elections, emergency alerts, school closings, health advisories and more, and how federal support keeps them operating. Each letter includes is a chart that listing the tribal radio stations in each lawmaker’s district.

Several tribal radio stations operate in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, a large, rural area home to 14 of the state’s two-dozen Native American tribes. Rep. Eli Crane, a Republican who voted for the public broadcasting clawback, represents the district. Jonathan Nez, a Democrat and former president of the Navajo Nation, is running against Crane, advocating for tribal radio.

“I grew up on the Navajo Nation without running water or electricity, and some parts of the district still do not have broadband or cell service,” Nez told NOTUS. “So, we tribal members heavily rely on the radio to get information.”

The radio, Nez said, distributes information on local, tribal and national governments, elections, “encouraging people to register to vote,” emergencies, health alerts and more. The stations also serve as “a source of language revitalization for the younger generation” because they broadcast in many tribes’ native languages.

“I have real concerns about if they will be able to survive these cuts that were supported by my opponent, Eli Crane,” Nez said.

Crane’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

NOTUS is a newsroom of veteran reporters and editors working with early career journalists who report from Washington as fellows of the Allbritton Journalism Institute.