White House Rescissions Package Would Defund PBS Days after ‘Sesame Street’ Celebrates Pride Month

The Trump administration has introduced a multibillion-dollar budget-cutting measure to free taxpayers from subsidizing far-left programs, including a provision to completely defund public broadcasting outlets just days after a PBS children’s show posted a social media message celebrating Pride Month.

The $9.4 billion rescissions package, delivered to Congress by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Tuesday, slashes programs conservatives have long denounced as wasteful, including $1.2 million in foreign aid projects promoting the LGBTQ+ lifestyle in such socially conservative regions as the Caribbean, the western Balkans, and Uganda. The White House says it also eliminates such wasteful or controversial programs as feeding insect powder to children in Africa.

One of every eight dollars cut by the proposal comes from public broadcasting. The rescissions package eliminates more than $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the parent of National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting System (PBS), which conservatives have long opposed due to its lack of constitutional authorization and overwhelmingly left-wing bias. Taxpayers furnished $535 million of the CPB’s $545 million annual revenue in fiscal year 2025. (The other $10 million came from estimated interest). The rescissions package cancels all CPB allocations for two years.

The proposed budget cut came just two days after the most beloved show on PBS, “Sesame Street,” posted a social media message celebrating the LGBTQ agenda on the first day of June, dubbed “Pride Month” by LGBT activists.

PBS Is ‘Grooming Children’ at Taxpayer Expense: Congressman

“On our street, everyone is welcome. Together, let’s build a world where every person and family feels loved and respected for who they are. Happy #PrideMonth!” exclaimed the social media account representing “Sesame Street” on Sunday. The accompanying graphic depicted the show’s Muppet characters linking arms to form a rainbow. The provocative post triggered widespread outrage.

“PBS is grooming children on American taxpayers’ dime. This is unacceptable. Congress must defund them and hold the executives accountable,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) Monday morning. “Nothing to see here: just a publicly funded puppet show promoting weird sex stuff to your three-year-old,” said Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire. Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, called the meme’s creators “[g]roomer freaks.” The Center for American Renewal, founded by OMB Director Russell Vought, cited the post as “further evidence that your tax dollars are funding propaganda for kids.”

While conservatives have documented public broadcasting’s liberal bias nearly since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, they say introducing gender confusion to toddlers is a new low. “They most certainly are trying to ‘normalize’ deviancy,” said radio talk show host Janet Parshall, sharing a video of the children’s characters featuring a flamboyant man on the HBO Max “Sesame Street” spin-off “The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo.” That program, which advertises itself as a “star-studded talk show for the whole family,” won a media award from the LGBTQ+ pressure group GLAAD in 2021.

“Is this the kind of ‘education’ PBS insists taxpayers must continue paying for?” asked the Heritage Foundation. “We must defund PBS and NPR immediately. No excuses GOP,” said Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.

Conservative members of Congress have heeded the call to enact the rescissions package’s cuts to these and other programs. “I’m looking forward to defunding NPR,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Tuesday.

Four out of 10 registered voters support cutting or eliminating taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS. “Pluralities of voters say that PBS (36%) and NPR (35%) are biased against Donald Trump and the Republicans,” reported the Napolitan News survey released last month.

NPR claims it “gets only about 1% of [its] funding from the federal government,” but critics say that accounting trick ignores fees the national headquarters charges local affiliates for carrying its nationally syndicated programming. CPB figures argue at the same time that they receive little taxpayer funding and that they cannot survive without it. “Rescinding these funds would devastate PBS,” said PBS CEO Paula Kerger.

Giving the CPB a zero budget would also be a step toward codifying President Trump’s executive orders. On May 1, he signed an executive order directing the CPB to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.”

While House Republicans have introduced many bills to codify these executive orders permanently, few bills have reached the president’s desk. “We should be codifying EOs and passing rescissions by the hour — no weekends, no breaks, no vacations. We must pass ALL DOGE cuts!” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.). The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced that it has identified $180 billion in savings, or $1,118.01 for every U.S. taxpayer, so far. “We’re totally committed to making the DOGE cuts permanent,” pledged Trump in an Oval Office press conference with departing DOGE leader Elon Musk last Friday.

Conservatives also support the rest of the White House’s budget-cutting measures.

Rescissions Package Cuts USAID, LGBTQ, and Eat-the-Bugs Programs

The rescissions package released Tuesday also curtails controversial programs including international promotion of LGBTQ causes and programs to feed insects to children. OMB detailed numerous programs cut by the package, including:

• $900 million from USAID;
• $33,000 for “Being LGBTI in the Caribbean”;
• $643,000 for LGBTQI+ programs in the Western Balkans;
• $567,000 for LBGTQI+ programs in Uganda;
• $833,000 for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal;
• $5.1 million for “resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans gender, intersex, and queer global movements”;
• $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies, and condoms in Zambia;
• $67,000 for testing insect powder nutrition on children in Madagascar;
• $595,400 for training women in gender equity;
• $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda;
• $6 million for “net zero cities” in Mexico; and
• $135 million for the World Health Organization.

“I think it’s great to eliminate much of the funding of USAID,” Clyde told Perkins. “It’s ludicrous that we as American taxpayers are spending money on things like ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq, or all these LGBTQ+ programs across the world. That is not anything that our taxpayers want their money spent on.”

This rescissions package “will be the first of many” legislative proposals to pare back spending, said Clyde — a promise made by the White House and confirmed by House leadership.

Pass Rescissions ‘Immediately’: House Conservatives

The conservative House Freedom Caucus called on House leadership to “immediately move this to the floor for swift passage,” as a demonstration the Republican Party will prove responsive to its own voters. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda. While the Swamp will inevitably attempt to slow and kill these cuts, there is no excuse for a Republican House not to advance the first DOGE rescissions package the same week it is presented to Congress then quickly send it for passage in the Republican Senate so President Trump can sign it into law.”

As of now, the date the House will vote on the package remains uncertain. “I would love to see it on the floor this week. I have not seen it on the schedule this week. But I heard that there’s a potential that it will be on the schedule for next week, and that would be fine, too,” Clyde told Perkins.

But Clyde explained moving the package through the House expeditiously may hold the key to its passage, final adoption, and the ability of Congress to deliver future rescissions packages. The cuts’ ratification “has to be done and be done quickly in order to maintain its privilege in the Senate, which means that it can bypass the Senate filibuster.” Under federal statute, both the House and Senate pass a rescissions package through an expedited process; in the Senate, debate is limited to 10 hours and both the motion to proceed to a vote and the final vote pass by a simple majority without the possibility of a filibuster.

Avoiding Democratic procedural stalling techniques “is absolutely critical, because I don’t think we’re going to get any rescissions done if we have to pass the Senate filibuster,” said Clyde. “Because it only requires 51 votes in the Senate, then we have to act on this very, very quickly. And I think that this week or next week would be sufficient. But it must be approved by the House and sent to the Senate so that the Senate can use its expedited procedures to approve it and send it back to the president for signature.”

Rescissions created by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. 682-688) allow Congress to cut previous spending before its budgetary authority runs out, making it a powerful tool to cut back the nation’s budget deficit.

OMB Director Russell Vought has also raised the possibility the Trump administration will use impoundment, in which the president does not spend all the funds allotted by Congress, to reduce federal spending. “We may not actually have to get … Congress to pass the rescissions bills,” he said. “We have executive tools; we have impoundment.”

“Despite the modest size of President Trump’s rescission request, rescission packages can be valuable in helping policymakers eliminate unneeded and unused federal funding. Even rescissions for funding that would otherwise never be spent can prevent policymakers from later using the funds for new spending increases or tax cuts. While rescissions themselves can’t solve the nation’s fiscal challenges, they can be a step in the right direction to cut wasteful spending in the federal budget,” wrote Jordan Haring, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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