(TNND) — Congress is poised to claw back over $1 billion for public broadcasting.

A rescissions package, which also pulls back money for foreign aid, passed the Senate early Thursday.

The House, which already approved a version of the bill, is expected to pass the amended package to cut previously allocated funding.

If passed, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will lose its federal funding for the next two fiscal years.

Trump has said he would “love” to defund public broadcasters, including PBS and NPR.

“I think it's very unfair. It's been very biased, the whole group, I mean, a whole group of them,” Trump previously said.

The president said public broadcasting is the product of a different age. It no longer serves the same need in the modern, media-saturated world, he said.

“And frankly, there's plenty, look at all the media you have right now, there's plenty of coverage,” Trump told reporters in March.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has also accused NPR and PBS of a left-leaning tendency.

“The American people support the free press, but will not be forced to fund a biased political outlet with taxpayer funds,” Johnson previously said on social media.

But the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, established by Congress as a private, nonprofit entity in the late 1960s, says more than 70% of its annual appropriation goes directly to more than 1,500 public television and public radio stations. Those are the local PBS and NPR stations.

And it’s those local stations that will suffer if the federal money is pulled, said Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

“Losing public broadcasting funding would devastate local stations and local communities,” Loge said Thursday. “When Donald Trump talks about public broadcasting, he's talking about national shows like 'Morning Edition' that he doesn't like. And a lot of people think about Big Bird and “Sesame Street,” both of which ... are part of public broadcasting. But a lot of public broadcasting money goes to local stations and local communities to cover local news.”

Local commercial TV stations, local network affiliates, do a good job, Loge said.

But there aren’t enough of them, he said.

And a lot of places don’t have a local ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox affiliate.

A lot of communities have also lost their newspapers.

And he said public broadcasters fill a critical need in those communities.

“The unheralded great journalism in this country isn't happening in Washington or New York or Los Angeles. ... It's happening in Yakima, Washington. It's happening in parts of Montana people don’t know. ...It's not Boise, Idaho. Boise matters, and public television matters in Boise. (But) It's Coeur d'Alene, right? It's Moscow, Idaho. These are communities with very specific needs, very specific interests. They have local elected officials who need to be held to account. They've got local issues. They've got local challenges. And the local journalists do the important work of telling those stories, holding officials to account, letting people know what's going on,” Loge said. “You lose public broadcasting, you lose a lot of that.”

Pew Research Center data shows the emergence of digital news. TV news still has an audience, but fewer people are turning to radio and print news.

Over 80% of people get their news at least sometimes from a smartphone, computer or tablet.

About two-thirds tune into TV news at least sometimes.

Less than half of Americans get their news from the radio at least sometimes.

And just a quarter of people get their news at least sometimes from print publications.

The Pew Research Center also says NPR gets about 23 million weekly over-the-air radio listeners.

But NPR says it reaches 43 million listeners across all of its platforms, including digital and podcasts, each week.

PBS says it reaches more than 36 million adults on linear primetime television.

And PBS says it reaches more children and more children from low-income homes than any of the children’s TV networks in a year.

“Some people are going to be affected more than other people, and some stations are going to be affected more than other stations. But it is going to be an effect that happens fairly quickly,” Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said of public broadcasting funding cuts.

The rescissions package pulls Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding for fiscal year 2026, which begins this October.

Thompson said the PBS and NPR stations in big markets might survive with the help of viewer donations, corporate sponsorships, and contributions from universities.

But there are “many, many fewer wells” from which smaller stations can draw funds, he said.

That will mean fewer resources for local programming, station layoffs and even station closures, he said.

Thompson said Republicans have targeted PBS and NPR for cuts because they don’t think the federal government should be in the business of making television and radio shows, they view public broadcasters as too liberal, and they view public broadcasting as obsolete in the age of streaming.

“I don't happen to be one who believes that public broadcasting is obsolete,” Thompson said. “I think in many ways, public broadcasting does some things that are even more necessary than they were 30 years ago before there was any streaming.”

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Thompson said public broadcasting was envisioned as a way to support cultural and educational programming that might struggle in the marketplace of commercial broadcasters.

“If you are lucky enough to be able to afford a bunch of subscriptions to a bunch of streaming services, yes, you're able to find all kinds of different programming. Even if you're able to afford a decent cable package, you can find children's shows on Disney and Nickelodeon. But there is a fair population who is not able to afford a cable package or a bunch of streaming subscriptions,” Thompson said.

PBS says it is viewed in 87% of non-Internet homes and 56% of low-income homes.

And PBS has pushed back on the assertion that it caters to the left, saying that nearly two-thirds of its audience identifies as Republican or independent.

Thompson said public broadcasting programming is free, and that can’t be replaced by streaming.

He also said public broadcasting programming has been “really, really valuable to American civilization,” creating media with a “degree of sophistication” and cultural importance.

Loge said national public broadcasting programs might be fine, even if Congress cuts funding.

But PBS says 60% of its audience lives in rural communities.

And those are the folks who will suffer, Loge said.

“I live in Washington, D.C. I'm going to be fine,” he said. “I've got a robust news diet. I follow politics. The Washington Post is my local newspaper. (But) I've got friends who live in rural America for whom they've got nothing except the local public broadcasting station, maybe a local weekly newspaper.”