Donald Trump gave an ultimatum this week to Republican senators who are currently on the fence when it comes to supporting a rescissions bill that includes drastic cuts to public broadcasting: Vote to defund NPR and PBS, or he will withhold his support for their reelection.
With the Senate preparing to vote on the president’s Department of Government Efficiency-proposed $9.4 billion clawback package that slashes foreign aid funding and pulls back $1.1 billion in spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees NPR and PBS, some Republicans have expressed reservations about the cuts to media outlets.
“I don’t support the rescissions package as it’s currently drafted,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said on Wednesday, citing the provisions aimed at PBS and NPR.
Other conservative lawmakers, meanwhile, have said they are worried about the impact the rescission bill would have on rural areas and Native American communities that heavily rely on the public broadcasting channels. Some have proposed adding amendments that would preserve some or all of the funding for NPR and PBS.
“It’s not our goal to come back in and totally eliminate a number of the rescissions, but specifically to take care of those that were in some of these rural areas,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) noted, saying he would negotiate with the White House on the cuts. “This is their way of getting emergency messages out to people. That’s the way in which they communicate in a very rural area.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, has also made it clear that she does not support the bill in its current form and will also be proposing amendments. “I am continuing to discuss possible changes to the rescissions package with members of the Appropriations Committee,” she said Wednesday.
Trump, who has been actively looking to rescind all government funding of public broadcasting because he views them as anti-MAGA, took to Truth Social Thursday evening to warn Republicans that he would potentially back a primary challenge to them if they failed to back the legislation.
“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together,” he blared, invoking his favorite insult for MSNBC.
“Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement,” Trump added. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Prior to proposing the rescission package, the president had signed an executive order in May calling for the cancellation of all federal funds to public media organizations while accusing them of anti-conservative “bias.” The order came after the president had made it clear for months that he intended to defund NPR and PBS. Government funds account for 1 percent and 15 percent, respectively, of the organizations’ total budgets.
“Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” the White House stated in the executive order, adding: “At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.”
Both NPR and PBS have filed lawsuits seeking to block the president’s executive order, calling it unconstitutional and “blatant viewpoint discrimination.” In its complaint filed in late May, PBS said Trump claimed the president violated the outlet’s First Amendment rights and broke the laws that “forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS’s programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.”
In its lawsuit, NPR alleged that the president “has no authority under the Constitution to take such actions” because the “power of the purse is reserved to Congress.” It also stated that it is “not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment,” but in this instance, “this wolf comes as a wolf.”
Days after both organizations filed their complaints in federal court, the White House asked Congress to claw back the public broadcasters’ government funds.
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