Something created in 1967 that millions of people enjoy is under attack again. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) created on November 7, 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. As in past, led mostly by Republican Administration’s and stretching back to Richard Nixon, efforts are afoot once again to defund CBP. In the mid 1990’s Newt Gingrich took a swing at defunding with the attempted shut down of the federal government.

Fast forward to 2025 and as usual another Republican-led administration has CPB in it’s cross-hairs. Remember what is under attack. The organization that brought us “Downton Abbey,” “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

“CPB is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation created to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation’s mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, highly-quality content & telecommunications services. It does so by distributing more than 70% of its funding to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio & television stations across the country,” according to Wikipedia.

The bottom line: Federally funded public media cost each American $1.47 annually with private donations from “viewers like you”accounting for the biggest share of stations revenue.

“The CPB’s annual budget is composed almost entirely of an annual appropriation from Congress plus interest on those funds. The CPB has claimed that 95% of it appropriation goes directly to current development, community services, and other local station and system needs. For fiscal year 2025, its appropriation was $535 million including $10 million in interest earned,” Wikipedia says. Of that amount $26.75 million was for administration or 5%.

President Donald Trump recently called NPR on Truth Social, “a Total Scam”.

Please contact your Congressional representative, and request that they push back on this latest effort to defund CPB by the Republican administration.

— Malcolm C. Turzak, Bend

My name is Lauren Paz. I’ve been a critical care nurse for over 12 years and served in Bend the last 6 years at St. Charles. Last November I founded “A Soulful Sorrow,” a holistic healing program and community for women navigating pregnancy loss. Although miscarriage and pregnancy loss happens to 1 in 4 pregnancies, it is severely under resourced and a huge gap in not only our societal support but also our medical system.

Being a miscarriage survivor myself and as a nurse, I’ve experienced the staggering lack of resources for our community families who lose babies at any gestation. They are left with no mental health resources, support or medical supplies to aid in this experience.

That is why I founded A Soulful Sorrow, to finally shed light on an all too common experience that has been stigmatized and in the shadows for too long. We are in the process of becoming a nonprofit. We currently offer: free resources and guides to women and their families, free monthly support groups, an online healing program and community of women local and around the world. We have helped almost 1,000 women now.

We are now making our presence known locally and beginning to collaborate with local OBGYN offices and St. Charles to bring these much needed resources to loss families.

On April 27th I am actually going to be the keynote speaker of an event we are putting on with Deep Roots Birth Collective (a soon to be nonprofit who brings birth services to families at no cost in Central Oregon). The event is called Loss Literacy. It is a call to all community leaders and providers to finally learn the compassionate grief-informed care needed that society and school never taught us. This expert-led training provides compassionate communication skills, somatic exercises, and hands on tools to ensure we provide families with dignity, care and compassionate care they deserve. Because how we show up matters.

— Lauren Paz, Bend

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