This story was reported and written by VPM News.
A bill granting a White House request to claw back $9 billion in federal spending on public broadcasting and foreign aid will likely shutter at least 80 NPR and PBS member stations nationwide, according to NPR CEO Katherine Maher.
The rescission package, which Congress and the Senate passed this week, withdraws all funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in fiscal years 2026 and 2027, leaving even stations that remain operational scrambling to restore their budgets. (The federal fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30; Virginia’s runs from July 1 to June 30.)
Bert Schmidt, president and CEO of WHRO, says the Norfolk-based station will lose $2 million in federal funding. He told VPM News on Thursday, following the US Senate vote, that the station has been planning for the cuts.
WHRO intends to launch a fundraising campaign and will possibly dip into endowments to pay bills — the station’s annual million-dollar licensing fee to air PBS content is due in a couple of months — and some staff who are retiring will not be replaced.
“At the end of the day, we’ll certainly have to make cuts,” Schmidt said. “We have to. And all stations will have to figure out how to be a quality public media station without federal funding.”
Federal funding accounts for 9% of the Hampton Roads station’s $21 million budget, Schmidt said. But he noted much of the budget is restricted revenue that’s locked in for specific projects; that leaves about $5 million dollars for local programming.
“Initially people say, ‘Oh, 9% isn’t a big deal,’” Schmidt said. “But it's big when you realize what you can and can’t touch.”
The bottom line, Schmidt added, is that it’s much cheaper for a station to buy another hour of NPR content than to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on locally-produced programs.
“The local programming is what’s expensive,” Schmidt said. “When you start looking at where there are places to cut, local programming is certainly on that list … I can’t imagine any station not coming to that conclusion.”
Members account for the largest single source of WHRO’s revenue, at 35%. WHRO is also owned by a consortium of 21 school divisions in the Hampton Roads region, which provides some funding.
VPM President and CEO Jayme Swain responded to the news during a phone interview Thursday.
“VPM is lucky that we have a strong financial footing, but we will feel the impact like everybody else,” she said.
For its part, VPM — a dual licensee with PBS and NPR affiliate signals across the commonwealth — would have to close a $1.3 million funding gap as a result of rescission. The nonprofit organization receives 6–7% of its budget from the federal government.
“Ultimately we are still a station that licenses content from NPR, and we’ll still have to pay those dues. So the question will be: How do we close the gap? We will have to look at all of our different options,” Swain said. “That includes cutting local programming.”
Swain said VPM’s upcoming headquarters, which is under construction on East Broad Street in downtown Richmond, will move forward without interruption. The new building, which is set to cost $44.7 million and open in spring 2026, will replace the 1960s-era station at 23 Sesame Street in Chesterfield County.
According to Swain, the new VPM HQ “was a long-planned project financed largely by our foundation” and community support.
Roger Duvall, general manager of Roanoke-based Radio IQ and WVTF, said those stations receive about $300,000 from CPB. (Both stations are licensed by the Virginia Tech Foundation, the public university’s fundraising arm.)
“It will be significant, but we have been discussing and strategizing since the November election how we might make up that amount of money. Our listeners have been generous over these last weeks,” Duvall told VPM News in a text message.
In addition to the $1.1 billion in CPB funding, the Senate’s bill excises $7.9 billion in foreign aid.
Sen. Tim Kaine, one of Virginia’s two Democratic senators, slammed the rescission during a press call after Thursday’s vote, characterizing it as a broken promise.
“This is a very, very bad deal as a budget policy. If you make a deal, you keep that deal,” he told reporters.
Kaine added that the move will disproportionately affect people in rural areas, many of which are primarily or only served by public media outlets.
“I think the only justification [the Republican senators who approved rescission have] is they don’t want to say no to President Trump,” Kaine said. ”They know their constituents will be hurt by this.”
Disclosure: VPM Media Corp. is the FCC license holder of VPM News, which operates as 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck (Heathsville) and 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia (Chase City).
As a newsroom, VPM News maintains editorial independence — this article went through our usual fact-checking and editing process. All interviewed station leadership did not know interview questions ahead of time, and they did not view this article prior to publication.
WHRO News follows its Statement on Editorial Integrity and Independence to cover news about itself. It reads in part, " WHRO journalists seek to cover WHRO as they would any other entity." Read more about WHRO News' standards of journalism here.
