Every Republican congressman from Arizona voted to cut $9B from public media, foreign aid

Every member of Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation voted to approve President Donald Trump’s request to strip billions of dollars in foreign aid and funding for public media.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill, known as a rescission package, on a 216-213 vote, with just two Republicans joining all Democrats in opposing the legislation, which rescinds $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress. That includes around $8 billion in foreign aid and $1.1 billion allocated over the next two years to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that distributes federal funds to NPR, PBS and hundreds of local affiliate stations across the country.

The cuts in foreign aid spending includes billions of dollars to promote democracy and build economies in developing countries. It also removes hundreds of millions of dollars to provide shelter and family reunification services for refugees, and other funding to provide food, water and aid to countries recovering from natural disasters.

Republicans celebrated the passage of the package, which is a major victory for the Trump administration as it seeks to fulfill the president’s campaign promise to make broad cuts in federal spending.

“With his vote for this first rescission package, Congressman Hamadeh once again made good on his promise to his constituents to eliminate wasteful spending and put America First,” according to a post by Congressman Abe Hamadeh’s official account on X.

But Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton said there is nothing wasteful about the foreign aid cut by Republicans, saying it provides critical support to people in need and maintains the United States’ “soft power” around the globe.

“We need to be building good, strong relationships around the globe, particularly at a time when we are having this economic competition with China, and they're trying to change the minds of other people in the world that their system of government is better than ours,” he said.

And Stanton chastised Republicans for ceding its authority to control the federal purse strings to Trump.

“So the investments that we have made in PBS, NPR and in public radio and television were were supported in a bipartisan way,” Stanton said. “Same thing with our support for things like managing disasters in other countries or helping refugees through the foreign aid process. Those were all voted on in a bipartisan way.”

All of Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation was unavailable for comment on Friday.

But Republican Congressman Paul Gosar told constituents in an email the cuts are an example of wasteful spending targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, once led by Elon Musk, according to information shared by his office.

“President Trump and House Republicans ran on the promise to combat bloated government spending by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” Gosar wrote in a newsletter to constituents.

Gosar and other Republicans said they targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — and NPR and PBS specifically — due to an alleged left-wing bias that GOP lawmakers argue has become endemic within the organizations.

“The $9 billion rescissions package is headed to President Trump’s desk. In this package, House Republicans blocked taxpayer funding for the Left’s mouthpieces NPR and PBS and woke USAID projects. $9 billion is only a drop in the bucket — the work is far from over,” Rep. Andy Biggs said on social media.

However, critics of the package said it is local public media stations, not NPR and PBS, that will suffer most from the cuts.

Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego said in a call with reporters on Thursday that rural communities, in particular, will be negatively impacted.

“You're going to have some national public radio stations, they're going to do well because they're in big, dense areas and they have a huge following like in Phoenix, for example. And you have corporations that maybe step up,” Gallego said. “But what happens in, you know, these rural travel areas that don't have big corporations, don't have big donors, don't have any type of funding — they're going to essentially shut down.”

NPR receives about 1% of its budget directly from the federal government. For PBS, that number is 15%.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, federal funding accounts for at least 30% of the overall budgets at 37 TV stations and 78 public radio stations across the country. An end to that funding could cause those stations to shut down.

According to the Times’ analysis, three public radio stations serving rural and tribal communities in eastern Arizona could shut down due to the cuts.

KJZZ is an NPR member station that receives funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly put forward an amendment authored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) — one of two Republican senators who voted against the package — that would have preserved some public media funding and foreign aid for Ukraine and NATO.

“This whole thing is a bad deal for the American people. It's a gut punch to rural communities and makes us weaker and less safe on the world stage,” Kelly said when the Senate voted on the plan earlier this week. “This amendment, though, dials back the worst of some of these cuts, especially for public broadcasting that is so important to so many Americans.”

Gallego and Kelly said residents in rural areas, especially communities with spotty internet coverage, also rely on local public media for news and educational programming provided by public media, like Sesame Street for their children.

“Do we want an educated population? If we do, then this is a small investment,” Kelly said.

Gallego also reiterated a point made by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who emphasized that isolated rural communities rely on public media stations for critical information during natural disasters.

“The Republican Party basically screwed rural and tribal Arizona again for no reason, but just for pure, pure politics,” he said.

EDITOR'S NOTE: KJZZ receives community grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.