WMNF 88.5-FM in Tampa, Florida. Credit: Ray Roa

As you read this, senators in Washington D.C. are deciding on whether or not they’ll strip $500 million a year from public media—savings that represent less than 0.0001% of the federal budget. Their House colleagues have already approved the measure, and Donald Trump says he’ll retaliate against any Republican who doesn’t approve the cuts. If Senators cave to a president who sees liberal bias in any coverage critical of him, stations across the U.S. will lose out on funds they use to keep the public informed.

Trump’s proposal to cut spending previously-approved by Congress is known as a “rescission request,” and a vote is due by the end of the week.

WMNF Tampa 88.5-FM, will lose $130,000 if the vote goes the president’s way—but it won’t be the first punch the Bay area’s 46-year-old community radio station has taken on the chin this summer.

Late last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $1.3 million in the budget meant for public radio stations, stripping WMNF, like every other public radio station in the state, of $100,000.

This weekend, WMNF—which airs a mix of news and music programming—will hold an emergency fund drive that hopes to cover the $100,000 DeSantis veto. Shari Akram, the station’s marketing and development director, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that it will adjust messaging should the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding get cut, too.

On Saturday, anyone who tunes via 88.5-FM or the online stream will hear the station’s regular programming, with a mix of special messaging from others highlighting the importance of community radio. (Full disclosure: this reporter, who co-hosts a Friday public affairs show on WMNF, will be among the voices you hear on the air.)

“Knowledge is power… They don’t want people to have power.”

Listeners, Akram said, already give to the station an average of five times a year, and the last thing WMNF wants to do is ask them to give more. But this push feels different, she added, because listeners know that the goal with funding cuts at the state and federal level is to silence independent media.

That’s a sentiment shared by Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost. Last May, the 28-year-old lawmaker from Orlando appeared on a WMNF public affairs program co-hosted by this reporter to address proposed cuts to public broadcasting.

“Knowledge is power,” Frost said. “They don’t want people to have power.”

WMNF General Manager Randi Zimmerman told CL that community radio stations that get CPB funding are the stations with independent voices.

Samantha Hval, WMNF’s program director who oversees the music side of the station, told CL that she, too, is concerned about what happens to a station famous for being the first place that most artists, local and national, hear their music played. “We are supporting, directly, our community and our arts community, in a way that no one else is doing,” Hval added.

Vagabond Tweed plays the ‘Live Music Showcase,’ which airs Fridays on WMNF Tampa 88.5-FM Credit: Photo by Jack Cymbryla c/o WMNF

“We’re the voice of the people. We are a variety of different voices, and they want to silence us. They think that defunding us is going to do that,” Zimmerman said. “And frankly, for smaller stations in more rural areas, that’s exactly what will happen, those stations will be silenced.”

But Akram—who came to WMNF in 2022 after five years serving a similar role at the Florida chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR)—knows WMNF listeners aren’t the quiet type.

“WMNF isn’t simply asking listeners to donate, we are asking them to fight back,” she said.

Punching back—and being the station’s backbone—is something listeners have been doing since the signal was born in 1979.

There have never been more than a handful of staffers on payroll at WMNF, and its 168 hours of weekly air time are still programmed by volunteers. Since its inception, WMNF has also been majority listener-funded. For example, in FY 2024, according to an independent audit, membership contributions totaled $1.25 million—64% of the total revenue—while the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other grants accounted for $215,727 or just over 11%.

Still, Zimmerman told CL, the loss of $100,000-$230,000 will lead to hard decisions like holding off on hiring an assistant news director, cutting back on marketing, and delaying efforts to advance the station’s growth in the video. “There’s things that we need to do to stay relevant and current technologically that we’re going to have to put off,” she added.

WMNF News Director Sean Kinane during the station’s Tropical Heatwave festival at Cuban Club in Ybor City, Florida on May 5, 2024. Credit: Photo by Kimberly DeFalco

Sean Kinane, who came to WMNF as a reporter in 2007 and is now Director of News & Public Affairs, does not look at the loss of state, and potentially federal, funding as a trivial matter. But he pointed to the station’s values and its mission to provide “a platform for diverse voices committed to a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world” in his hope that budget cuts would not affect the newsroom.

“I think the news is so important to our mission that it’s something that you don’t shrink. That’s what Ron DeSantis wants. That’s what Donald Trump wants,” he told CL. “I think WMNF should be fighting back against making changes there and look for cuts other places, or look for more revenue sources.”

If local history repeats itself, Kinane might not have to worry.

In 1997, in the wake of heavy airplay for Iris DeMent’s “Wasteland of the Free,” Florida Sen. John Grant helped pass a vote to eliminate $104,000 in state funds earmarked for the station. WMNF had an emergency drive, and in a day-and-a-half more than 1,500 donors answered the call, raising more than $120,000.

Zimmerman acknowledged that the political climate isn’t what it was 28 years ago and that it’s been rattling to see CBS, law firms and entities way bigger than WMNF cave in to Trump.

And while DeMent’s working-class anthem may be from another era, so many of its lyrics—about corporate cash funding elections and inflated CEO pay—still sadly ring true. In her wasteland, society’s troubles are blamed on the most vulnerable among us.

“The poor have now become the enemy,” she sings. “Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy—living in the wasteland of the free.”

Zimmerman first landed at WMNF shortly after the station’s DeMent debacle, working as a reporter and producer before moving onto Free Speech Radio News and the New York City Department of Education. Now at the helm, she still believes big time in WMNF’s audience.

“We get emails, letters, and phone calls from people who tell us that we have literally changed the course of their lives. We make their lives better,” she told CL. “I think our community is going to continue to speak truth to power, but I think some of that is going to be a little bit harder than it used to be.”