Stelter: Trump Promises Punishment for Senators Who Will Not Vote for Rescissions Package

Dean: “I also want to ask you about a deadline coming up this week for Congress to approve a rescissions package, which targets funding for NPR, PBS. What would that mean for public broadcasting?”
STELTER: “Right. Five days on the clock. The Senate has to either pass this DOGE cuts package by Friday, or the cuts will not happen. And in this case, that means PBS and NPR will be spared. But President Trump is pressuring the Senate, including moderate Senate Republicans, to get this done. This is a package of about $10 billion in cuts that he wants to be achieved. About $1 billion of that goes to PBS and NPR stations, mostly, actually, to local stations, relating back to local news. Most of this money goes to local TV and radio stations across the country. The argument from Republicans is that they don‘t actually need the money that most of these stations would be okay without it. The argument from Senate Democrats is that this network also provides emergency broadcasting, provides children‘s programming, and lots of other essential content. So, five days on the clock, and I think people are going to hear a lot more about this so-called rescissions package in the next few days because the pressure is on the Senate to either approve it and claw back those funds that have already been allocated for PBS and NPR and other projects, or to leave it alone, leave the money alone, in which case Donald Trump has promised he will punish those senators who don‘t get it done. So the deadline is Friday, and we‘ll see what happens.”