How Trump's cuts to public media threaten the first Native American station

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

On October 1, 2025, public radio stations lost all of their federal funding -- and for Black and Native American community stations, the cuts hit hard. Case in point, KYUK in Bethel, Alaska, which was the first Indigenous-led public radio station. They lost 70% their budget after federal public media cuts, and will be shrinking from 10 full-time staffers, to 4 people. We speak to Esther Green, a Yupik elder, and her co-host Diane McEarchren of KYUK's spiritual wellness show, Ikayutet, and station general manager Kristin Hall, about what the future looks like for the station.

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0:00.0	There's a battle playing out over who should control American universities.
0:05.0	We're going to bankrupt these universities.
0:07.3	In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
0:10.1	Now we know.
0:11.2	We want $500 million from Harvard.
0:13.9	It's season two of The Harvard Plan.
0:16.0	This time, it really is personal.
0:18.3	Listen to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.
0:21.9	Hey, everyone.
0:23.1	You're listening to Code Switch.
0:24.9	I'm B.A. Parker.
0:26.7	So, if you've been listening to anything from NPR as of late, you'll know that President
0:31.5	Trump and Congress cut federal support to public radio stations nationwide.
0:36.5	And that's not just NPR. Both in and out of our
0:39.2	network, local stations are losing critical funding. That's especially true for black and
0:44.7	indigenous-led community stations. And there was a list I saw on adoptastation.org of all the
0:52.4	public radio stations and the percentage of funding they would
0:55.7	lose when their federal dollars were cut. And one of them was KYUK in a town called Bethel, Alaska.
1:03.1	Bethel is 500 air miles southwest of Anchorage. We are off the road system so you can only fly in and out of our
1:14.4	community from Anchorage. That's Kristen Hall. She's the general manager of KYUK. They lost about 70%
1:22.3	of their budget. There are no other outlets that are serving the region. There is no other local news outlet.
1:30.5	A commercial outlet isn't going to be able to set up shop
	...

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