Thirty Bob Ross paintings to be sold at auction to help fund public TV stations

Money will aid with licensing fees and ensure artist’s ‘legacy continues to support’ medium that made him popular

Thirty paintings created by the bushy-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross will soon be up for auction to defray the costs of programming for small and rural public television stations suffering under cuts in federal funding.

Ross, a public television stalwart in the 1980s and 90s, “dedicated his life to making art accessible to everyone”, said Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc. “This auction ensures his legacy continues to support the very medium that brought his joy and creativity into American homes for decades.”

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Republicans start vote-a-rama on bill for $9bn public broadcasting and aid cuts

GOP aiming to meet Friday deadline mandated by law for bill, known as a rescissions package, to pass Congress

Senate Republicans on Wednesday moved to pass legislation slashing up to $9bn in funds Congress had earlier approved for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting, as part of Donald Trump’s campaign of dramatic government spending cuts.

The GOP is racing to meet a Friday deadline mandated by law for the bill, known as a rescissions package, to pass Congress, otherwise the Trump administration will be forced to spend the money. The Senate advanced the measure on Tuesday evening, with JD Vance breaking a tie on a procedural vote, after three Republican senators joined with all Democrats in opposition.

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NPR and PBS push back against Trump’s order to cut funding: ‘This could be devastating’

PBS’s Paula Kerger and NPR’s Katherine Maher say they’re looking at legal options to defend against White House

The heads of embattled US public broadcasters, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), defended themselves against efforts by the Trump administration to cut off taxpayer funding, with both telling a Sunday political talk show they were looking at legal options.

PBS’s chief executive, Paula Kerger, told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are “different this time”.

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Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

President says neither NPR nor PBS ‘presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events’


Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for NPR and PBS, accusing the news outlets of being biased.

NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.

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PBS quits Twitter after being labeled ‘government-funded media’

Broadcaster leaves platform a day after NPR’s exit over concerns labels undermine credibility as independent news outlets

The US’s Public Broadcasting Service, better known as PBS, has quit its use of Twitter after the platform labeled the organization as “government-funded media”.

PBS’s announced its Twitter exit on Thursday, one day after National Public Radio also left the platform amid comments by the Twitter owner, Elon Musk, that NPR was “state-affiliated media” which should be defunded. Twitter has since relabeled NPR as “government-funded media”, but that did not stop the radio broadcaster saying that the labels for it and the television broadcaster PBS were aimed at undermining their credibility as independent news outlets.

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‘You care for birds, and they heal you’: film profiles world of a Black falconer

A new documentary, The Falconer, follows Rodney Stotts, who found fulfillment in working with raptors and inner-city kids

Falconry is a profession with roots in the ancient Middle East and medieval Europe but one of its practitioners is making some history of his own.

Related: I'm a falconer - and there's nothing like watching a bird you trained in action

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