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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

A recent law President Donald Trump signed July 24 cuts funding for public broadcast stations, including those that provide local emergency alerts.

The law rescinded $9 billion in previously approved funding – $8 billion for foreign aid and $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit – for fiscal 2026 and 2027.

CPB, which announced it would shut down because of the rescissions, has funneled federal dollars to radio and TV networks such as NPR and PBS.

NPR, PBS and their member stations are mostly funded by private donations, but smaller stations, especially in rural areas, relied more on CPB funding. And people in those areas rely on local stations for emergency weather and other alerts.

Wisconsin stations received $8.5 million in CPB funding in fiscal 2024.

The rescissions don’t affect the Emergency Alert System, for national emergency announcements, or the Wireless Emergency Alerts.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.