Doing Trump's Bidding, Senate GOP Votes to Gut Public Media, Foreign Aid in Dead of Night

In the early hours of Thursday morning, Senate Republicans passed legislation that would claw back $9 billion in previously approved congressional funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid programs targeted by President Donald Trump's White House.

The final vote count was 51 to 48, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joining Democrats in opposing the package, which now heads back to the GOP-controlled House for final passage. The legislation would cement some of the Trump administration's lawless, unilateral attacks on programs approved by Congress with bipartisan support.

"At 2 am, Republicans just passed a bill to defund public broadcasting and lifesaving aid because Trump told them to—they wouldn't even protect rural radio or emergency alerts," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, warning that the GOP's partisan clawback of funding imperils all future spending negotiations.

"Congress should decide what we spend and what we cut—not Trump and not Russ Vought," Murray added, referring to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In a floor speech ahead of the Thursday morning vote, Murray said Vought refused to be specific about which programs would be cut if the rescissions bill passes.

"It's one of the great outrages of this package," said Murray. "At our hearing with him, he refused to go into detail. He stonewalled us. We asked and we asked. The chair, the Republican chair, even asked him about this. But OMB would not tell us. The question is: What will you cut? The answer has been: Pass it, we'll see."

"The thing that's particularly dangerous about it is that this is probably a test case. If they pull it off with these topics, they'll move on to more and more and more topics."

The White House rescissions request was broadly outlined in a May memo authored by Vought, an architect of the far-right Project 2025 agenda.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund PBS and NPR, is expected to face over $1 billion in cuts, while the rest of the rescissions package targets foreign assistance.

"With this vote, Senate Republicans are telling us everything we need to know about their priorities," said Alex Jacquez, the Groundwork Collaborative's chief of policy and advocacy. "After passing a tax law that gives a massive giveaway to billionaires and raises costs on working families, Senate Republicans are now codifying DOGE's deeply unpopular and reckless cuts to vital programs. Once again, Republicans are failing to deliver on the one thing they promised: lower prices. Instead, they're waging a campaign that will make life more expensive and difficult for working families while lining the pockets of the wealthy."

During the marathon amendment process, Republicans rejected Democratic proposals to shield public safety alerts and prevent cuts to international disaster relief programs.

Vought has signaled that the White House will likely submit more rescissions requests if the $9 billion in cuts make it through Congress.

Kate Riley, the president and CEO of America's Public Television Stations, said in a statement following the Senate vote that the rescissions bill would "eliminate federal funding to the local public television stations throughout this country that provide essential lifesaving public safety services, proven educational services, and community connections to their communities every day for free."

"This elimination of federal funding will decimate public media and put local stations at risk of going dark, cutting off service to communities that rely on them—many of which have no other access to locally controlled media," Riley warned.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) accused Republicans of weaponizing the rescissions process to attack "some of their favorite enemies, like National Public Radio, Elmo, or food for starving people overseas."

"The thing that's particularly dangerous about it is that this is probably a test case," Whitehouse added. "If they pull it off with these topics, they'll move on to more and more and more topics, bringing their Musk-type chainsaw to projects which Congress has approved on a bipartisan basis, put into law, and funded."