U.S. Representative Dan Goldman Statement on Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board Voting to Dissolve Organization

New York, NY - Today, U.S. Representative Dan Goldman (NY-10), Co-Chair of the Public Broadcasting Caucus, released the following statement after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that its Board of Directors had voted to dissolve the organization after 58 years of service. The vote formalized plans made last year after Congressional Republicans voted to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for the organization. 

 

“It is absolutely shameful that Congressional Republicans voted to strip all funding from independent media last year, once again caving to Donald Trump’s fragile ego and authoritarian attacks on the free press and the First Amendment,” said Rep. Goldman. "For nearly six decades, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has supported essential independent media, children’s educational programs, and emergency alert systems. The loss of this vital organization will make us all less informed and less connected. I will keep fighting to support the public broadcasting and the essential programs and services that so many Americans have come to rely on.” 

 

In 2025, Rep. Goldman led over 100 House Democrats in writing to the House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Aderholt and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro to request the federal government’s budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year fully fund public programming, including $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) two-year advance, level funding of $31 million for the Department of Education’s Ready To Learn grant program, and level funding of $60 million for public broadcasting Interconnection system. 

 

Rep. Goldman also led the House effort to try to halt the proposed cuts to funding CPB, an effort co-sponsored by 34 of his Democratic colleagues. House Republicans rejected his amendment to save funding for the CPB, voting instead to gut critical support for public media that millions of Americans relied on for educational, cultural, and emergency programming. 

 

Before losing funding, CPB-funded public media reached nearly 99.7% percent of the American population, and its funding financed over 1,500 public television and radio stations across the country, supporting approximately 20,000 local jobs. 

 

In addition to emergency response systems and local journalism, federal funding for CPB enabled public broadcasting to support educational content that parents nationwide relied on to help their children learn, averaging 16 million monthly users and more than 350 million monthly streams across digital platforms, allowing people at all income levels and from all parts of the country to access consistent, high-quality, educational content for free.