RIP, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (1967-2026); There’s a Total Solar Eclipse Tonight! Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 2, 2026

Indy Digest: March 2, 2026

While there was a lot bigger news over the weekend—foremost that the United States is at (undeclared) war in the Middle East again—I’d like to shine a light on a bit of news that you likely missed.

On Saturday evening, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting posted a statement on Facebook. It begins:

Today, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting formally dissolved as a corporate entity.

For nearly 60 years, CPB stewarded the federal appropriation for public media in ways that enhanced the lives of all Americans, ensuring everyone, regardless of where they live or how much they earn, has access to public media and the essential services it provides, free of charge. As a whole, public media provided such value, at so little cost to the taxpayer, that it received bipartisan support for decades and few thought it would be defunded.

However, throughout 2025, CPB and public media became the target of heightened, relentless partisan attacks with the goal of defunding CPB. Millions of Americans who value their public media station and recognize that public media’s trusted, educational and informational content is vital to our democracy, expressed support for public media and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB.

Against the wishes of the majority of Americans, in July 2025, Congress defunded CPB by passing the Rescission Act of 2025 — a maneuver that enabled Congress to “claw back” already appropriated funds by just a single-vote margin.

Since then, CPB has survived mainly on private donations because Congress failed to provide basic closing costs. The CPB team has worked with unwavering professionalism to honor existing commitments and distribute remaining grants to local stations, producers, PBS, and NPR, even when only a handful of us remained. We mark their dedicated service with respect and gratitude.

Some have asked if CPB could survive on private donations alone until a more favorable political climate emerges that would favor restoring funding to CPB. The CPB Board of Directors gave very careful consideration to many options and concluded that dissolution was the only responsible path.

The longer CPB tried to exist without funding, the greater the probability that our remaining funds would never reach the public media system. Moreover, we grew increasingly concerned that funding directed to public media could become subject to new content restrictions, and that compliance would further harm stations and erode the trust we worked decades to build.

These risks were real and dangerous, and we would not allow them to take shape.

This statement was not a surprise—it’s been known for months that the CPB was dissolving—it was nonetheless incredibly sad.

While President Trump and other politicians often claim that NPR and PBS have a liberal bias, that simply is not true. As a media expert pointed out in The Conversation last July, “Accusing the media of liberal bias has been a consistent conservative complaint since the civil rights era, when white Southerners insisted news outlets were slanting their stories against segregation. During his presidential campaign in 1964, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona complained that the media was against him, an accusation that has been repeated by every Republican presidential candidate since. But those charges of bias rarely survive empirical scrutiny.”

Nonetheless, these critics got their way last year, when the CPB was fully defunded. The result is not the end of “biased reporting”—but severe cuts in reliable necessary news, especially in rural and underserved areas.

The Hill reported last October:

Public media stations of all sizes are scrambling after President Trump in July moved to slash over $1 billion in federal funding and dissolve the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

But broadcasters that serve rural communities with already strapped resources will feel these cuts most deeply—and the financial pain is already hitting home. Stations have resorted to scaling back staff or switching to automated programming to stretch their shrinking budget.

“Before CPB was defunded, these stations were under a lot of stress,” said Scott Finn, the former president and CEO of Vermont Public, noting stressors facing the local news industry such as declining revenue and evolving audience consumption habits.

“Now on top of it, stations are losing a percent of their funding, and for some stations, it’s up to 50 percent or more,” he continued. “For the average station, it’s a lot less than that, but the stations that tend to be losing the most money are the stations that need that money the most.”

KRBD, an NPR station with five staff members, serves several small communities in Southeast Alaska reaching roughly 20,000 people. When CPB officially dissolved last month, the station lost nearly 40 percent of its funding. It organized an emergency fundraiser to close the gap, but only raised roughly half of what was lost.

Stations serving remote areas in Alaska are critical for informing communities on natural disasters and other breaking news, Mike Gates, general manager of KRBD, said. 

Trump and co. have long shown that they dislike any news or other media that don’t reflect their views. With the demise of the CPB, a lot of Americans in rural America are going to be harmed as a result.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Robert Victor, the Independent’s resident astronomer, would like to remind you that there will be a total lunar eclipse tonight, in the early morning hours of Tuesday. He says: “Partial eclipse begins at 1:50 a.m. PST. Eclipse is total from 3:04 a.m. until 4:03 a.m. End of closing partial phase occurs at 5:17 a.m. The Rancho Mirage Public Library Observatory is holding a public viewing session during tonight’s eclipse. No reservation is necessary, but due to the capacity limits of the observatory, there may be a short wait for viewing through the telescope. If you can devote just 20 minutes, the most interesting times to watch will be 2:54-3:14 a.m., or 3:53-4:13 a.m. Those would be the times the eclipse would be most colorful, centered on the times the Moon goes into and comes out of total eclipse.” Set your alarm, and enjoy!

• Make no mistake: The president is going to do everything he can to “control” this year’s midterm elections. ProPublica reports: “Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms. According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting. Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country. The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were ‘all part of the same effort.’”

• A Wired headline: “Hacked Prayer App Sends ‘Surrender’ Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli and US Strikes.” The lede: “Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones. They came not from the government advising caution, but from an apparently hacked prayer-timing app called BadeSaba Calendar that has been downloaded more than 5 million times from the Google Play Store. The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help has arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time, shortly after the first set of explosions. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks. Screenshots shared with WIRED Middle East show messages urging Iranian military personnel to surrender their weapons with the promise of amnesty. They also urged army personnel to join ‘the forces of liberation’ and to ‘defend your brothers.’ ‘The time for revenge has come,’ one notification received at 10:02 am read (translated from Farsi). ‘The regime’s repressive forces will pay for their cruel and merciless actions against the innocent people of Iran. Anyone who joins in defending and protecting the Iranian nation will be granted amnesty and forgiveness.’ … Cybersecurity analysts confirmed that BadeSabah users had received notifications around the time of the strikes, but have not been able to identify the source of the hack.”

• A new study shows that HIV/AIDS cases will skyrocket if a vital federal program gets cut. MedPage Today says: “Ending funding for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program would result in an estimated 73% increase in HIV infections in 30 states over 5 years, according to a simulation study. An analysis of aggregated data from 30 states that included over 99% of people diagnosed with HIV projected an additional 117,431 infections over 5 years if the Ryan White program ends, and an additional 68,264 infections if the program is interrupted for 2.5 years, reported Melissa Schnure, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program was enacted by Congress in 1990 with the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act to provide primary care, medications, and support services to low-income people with HIV. The safety net program is ‘often considered a payer of last resort as it fills gaps in coverage for those who otherwise would not have access to services,’ Schnure said. As of 2023, the program covered 576,000 people diagnosed with HIV, with a suppression rate of 90.6%.”

• Our partners at Calmatters offer an update on the measles situation in California: “California has a high enough vaccination rate—about 95% of kindergarteners—to provide herd immunity against measles, but throughout the state pockets of unvaccinated communities drive outbreaks, experts say. Shasta and Riverside counties are working to contain localized outbreaks. These are the first measles outbreaks in the state since 2020 and are happening at a time when health departments have less money and fewer staff than in recent years. In total, seven counties have reported a total of 21 measles cases this year, according to the California Department of Public Health. Throughout the country, 26 states have reported measles cases since the start of the year, including a massive outbreak in South Carolina where officials identified nearly 1,000 cases, mostly among unvaccinated children. It is the largest outbreak since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles eradicated more than 25 years ago.” (BTW, that RivCo outbreak was in “Western Riverside County,” which means “not the Coachella Valley, but somewhere west of here.”

• And finally … today’s recall news—one of the more interesting and unusual recalls as of late—involves … a “chocolate male enhancement supplement”! CBS News has the details: “Brooklyn-based USALESS.COM is recalling its Rhino Choco VIP 10X product due to the undeclared presence of Tadalafil, which is the active ingredient in Cialis, the company said in an announcement shared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug, which is not declared on the ingredients label, is not allowed in over-the-counter products. The recall applies to the company’s 10-gram, 12-piece chocolate supplement packaged in a black cardboard box with an expiration date of October 2027. The product is sold both online and in retail stores. Tadalafil may interact with nitrates in some prescription drugs and has the potential to ‘lower blood pressure to dangerous levels,’ the company warned.”

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