WASHINGTON, D.C. — The passage of the Rescissions Act of 2025 defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and left the organization without operating funds for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2025. This led to a wind-down of CPB operations. Now, the CPB has revealed that it can no longer absorb costs and manage the Next Generation Warning System (NGWS) grant program for local public media stations.
Congress created the NGWS grant program in 2022 and appropriated $136 million over three years to support that mission. It also directed FEMA to partner with CPB to implement and administer the program.
Then came the Rescissions Act, which saw Congressional Republicans push through legislation that would defund the CPB, on the grounds that it was supporting NPR and PBS and their biased news coverage. With no money from the federal government, CPB had been left with little leeway to continue to function. This led President/CEO Patricia Harrison to begin a phased closure of CPB.
“CPB has been fully invested in the NGWS program and its mission to protect the American public,” said Harrison. “This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve—in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities.”
With CPB’s closure imminent, the organization is calling on FEMA to assume responsibility for disbursing the funds as Congress intended. If not, CPB says most of the FY 2022 funding—and all funds from FY 2023 and FY 2024—will go undistributed.
Under CPB’s administration, NGWS was built from the ground up, prioritizing rural and disaster-prone areas. CPB says it brought “the specialized knowledge of local public media stations combined with decades of federal grant management and compliance experience needed to administer such a complex federal program.”
In one year, CPB hired a dedicated NGWS team, issued requests for applications, and provided technical assistance to stations nationwide.
From the first round of funding received in 2022, CPB awarded 44 grants totaling $21.6 million. “Demand far exceeded available resources, with a second round of applications drawing more than $110 million in requests from 175 stations,” CPB said.
