‘What connects us is our airwaves’: How Trump’s public media cuts might leave these communities in the dark

In Alaska’s North Slope region — the northernmost county in the US, roughly the same size as the United Kingdom — one small public radio station keeps eight villages connected and serves about 10,000 people. Now, it may not survive.

In Alaska’s North Slope region — the northernmost county in the US, roughly the same size as the United Kingdom — one small public radio station, KBRW, keeps eight Iñupiat villages connected and serves about 10,000 people. Now, it may not survive. Last Thursday, President Trump signed into law $9 billion in DOGE cuts, including $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a key funder of NPR and PBS stations nationwide. The president and his allies have long aimed to defund public media, alleging widespread “bias” in its broadcasts. KBRW is one of 36 tribally licensed public radio stations and four TV stations across the US that rely on CPB funding to stay on the air. Without that money, they could go dark, cutting off Indigenous communities from local news, safety alerts and cultural programming, Loris Taylor, president and CEO of Native Public Media, told CNN. “In the long term, we risk erasing decades of investment in native media infrastructure,” Taylor said. “Once these stations go dark, they may never return. That would be a catastrophic loss to tribal sovereignty, self-representation and democracy.” Alaska has 15 tribally licensed stations, far more than South Dakota and New Mexico, the next closest states with four each. The rest are scattered across the West and Midwest, serving rural tribal communities where broadband and phone access remain limited or nonexistent, according to the American Indian Policy Institute at Arizona State University. KBRW, based in Utqiaġvik, gets about 40% of its funding from CPB. The station’s manager, Jeff Seifert, told CNN that they have just one part-time and four full-time employees. Now, they imminently face layoffs, cuts to local programs and dropping NPR — their most costly content — meaning no national news.