Wednesday night, the U.S. Senate narrowly passed House Resolution 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025, with a final vote of 51-48.
All Democrats voted against it and Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski also voted no.
The rescissions package goes back to the House of Representatives to make a final decision by midnight Friday morning.
The package includes about $9 billion in cuts to money approved by congress, including about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"This funding was already appropriated by both Republicans and Democrats through the appropriation process that we do in Congress," said Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D - Nevada). "Both sides got together and negotiated to figure out what this funding would be, and the Republicans supported this funding."
The Senator adds that this package would cut about $7.5 million from the state of Nevada.
We caught up with KUNR and PBS Reno about how these cuts will affect them.
"This is a very serious situation. We are beyond disappointed," said Kurt Mische, President, PBS Reno.
Mische says the station will lose about 17 percent of their funding if the federal money is cut, which will account for $1.3 million.
"Now that's not a huge portion of our PBS Reno budget," he said. "We raise 83 percent of our annual operating budget from the community."
The CEO says they will plan to raise more money and feels like they'll be okay. He says they have already heard from supporters who are stepping up and adding more to their donations. However, other organizations will have more leg work to do.
"A number of stations, especially in small communities, rural communities, tribal communities, are really going to be in a hard spot," Mische said.
Mische says he knows some stations where 50 percent of their budget is reliant on federal funds. This especially will be for stations that don't have a commercial news station near them, like ours.
For those who don't know, public broadcasts don't make money from commercials. They either raise their own funds or get money from federal funds and grants.
"We're talking about educational content," Mische said. "We are talking about emergency alerts. We're talking about local news, and those are some of the things that are very vulnerable for those small stations. That's why that federal money, that seed money, that base money, is so important."
KUNR is a member of NPR and is a station based out of the University of Nevada, Reno.
Brian Duggan, the station's CEO, says the federal fund portion is about 15 to 17 percent of their total depending on grants. It comes out to about $350,000 that could be lost.
"We will go into basically red alert, all hands on deck, fundraising for the foreseeable future to make up the difference, but of course we are contingency planning. There could be hard decisions that need to be made in terms of staffing, in terms of programming," Duggan said.
Duggan says their rural outreach could also take a hit.
"That will have a direct impact on our ability to continue serving rural parts of this state," he said. "We have a live host and reporter in Elko, Nevada, and we have services throughout the eastern Sierra from Susanville down to Bishop."
Both stations say they have felt support from both Nevada Senators Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, along with Congressmen Mark Amodei.
If the package does pass out of the House and President Donald Trump signs it, the cuts will go into effect September 30.
