Imagine, you’re sitting in a small radio station in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert in Far West Texas. The air is dry and still. You’ve spent the day reporting on a long county commissioner’s meeting. Maybe you’ve edited a story about the local herbarium and its keepers. Maybe you sat in the host chair for Morning Edition and All Things Considered, reporting the weather. Perhaps, on this day, you trundled your truck up a mountain to the Marfa Public Radio tower. It’s quiet up there.

Looking out from the top of this mountain, you can see everything. You stand for a moment, let it all sink in, visualize that signal sailing through the clear blue sky. Airwaves, airborne.

And then it hits you. That signal is at risk. It could be snatched right out of the sky. Congress has just passed the Rescissions Act of 2025, H.R.4, eliminating all federal funding for public media. At Marfa Public Radio, this means one third of our budget is disappearing. For now, everything's still humming, machinery whirring, tower broadcasting.

But it occurs to you: if people don’t step up their financial support of this listener-funded station in this crucial moment for the future of public media — the gentle humming and whirring of the broadcast equipment could cease. It also occurs to you that people can quite easily donate at marfapublicradio.org/donate or by calling the station at 1-800-893-5787.

As you await the listeners’ calls - you begin to wonder, what is the Rescissions Act of 2025, really?

In this episode, Senior Producer Zoe Kurland reads the Rescissions Act of 2025 and the senate and house votes that passed it.

This episode of Marfa Public Radio Puts You To Sleep was written, produced, and hosted by Zoe Kurland.