Federal Cuts to Public Media — We Need Your Support Today

Dear Radio Bilingüe Familia,

As many of you may have heard, Congress has passed a bill to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that was slated to support public media institutions like Radio Bilingüe. This is a serious setback—not just for us, but for the communities we serve. 

The impact will likely hit rural and low-income communities first—places where public media is often the only reliable source of local news, emergency alerts, educational programming, and civic information. These are the very communities that Radio Bilingüe serves every single day. We know our audience well, and we know firsthand that they cannot afford to lose the vital lifeline that public media provides. 

Here at Radio Bilingüe, this funding rescission means an immediate direct loss of $300,000 per year from CPB—dollars that keep our reporters in the field, our youth and Indigenous content creators on the air, and allow us to produce and air our daily Spanish-language news and information programs to stations nationwide. It comes the same week that a promised grant to Radio Bilingüe of $1.1 million from FEMA has been withdrawn, in spite of CPB court challenges to protect this system-wide program to upgrade to the nation’s disaster alert readiness. 

The rescission also threatens other crucial contributions – incalculable at this time – to Radio Bilingüe from CPB, from paying the royalties for our beloved music programs to financing the national satellite infrastructure that so many of our affiliate stations rely on to bring Radio Bilingüe programming to their communities.

We want you to know: we will not let this stop us.

“Our team is doing everything possible to continue operations, deliver life-saving information, and keep the music playing that heals us.”
— Hugo Morales, Co-Executive Director

Thanks to years of prudent financial management and the support of so many visionary funders, non-profit partners and listeners, we remain hopeful but with our eyes open. We will weather this storm, but we can’t do it without you.

As we enter the final days of our Annual Pledge Drive, we’re calling on everyone who values independent, multilingual, community-powered media to act.

Make a generous contribution to Radio Bilingüe today. We need you now.

Don’t stop there. Support other local public and community radio stations as well—many carry Radio Bilingüe programming and rely on the same now-threatened infrastructure.

Without committed contributors like you, this work cannot continue.

With gratitude and urgency,
The Radio Bilingüe Team