Trump Desperately Threatens GOP to Back Yet Another Disastrous Bill

Opposing Donald Trump’s cuts to PBS and NPR could cost Republicans a critical midterm endorsement.

The White House has asked Congress to cut $9.4 billion in spending before July 18, including $8.3 billion in rescissions to international assistance programs and ending $1.1 billion in funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees PBS and NPR.

The president issued a clear threat to conservatives considering rejecting his latest legislative effort, posting to Truth Social Thursday evening that the two publicly funded media organizations had to go.

“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,” Trump wrote, referring to the cable news network MSNBC. “Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement.”

But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from speaking out.

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said that he’s apprehensive to end media access in rural areas, noting that the goal amongst the opposition isn’t to elimination provisions in the package but “specifically to take care of those that were in some of these rural areas,” such as parts of South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Alaska, according to CBS News.

“There’s a specific group of Native American tribes that have a public radio system set up, and really the vast majority of the funding for it comes from one source, and that’s within the rescission package,” Rounds told reporters. “What we’re trying to do is to work with [the Office of Management and Budget] to find a path forward where the funding for those radio stations would be left alone.”

Montana Senator Steve Daines, West Virginia Senator Shelly Moore Capito, and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski were similarly concerned with the package’s cuts to the public broadcasting organizations. Concerns about ceding funds from the Center for Public Broadcasting, which maintains the Emergency Broadcasting System, have been particularly sharp in the wake of severe flooding in Texas, which killed at least 120 people after authorities failed to notify residents of the rising water levels.

“I hope you feel the urgency that I’m trying to express on behalf of the people in rural Alaska and I think in many parts of rural America where this is their lifeline,” Murkowski told Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought at a Senate Appropriations hearing last month. “This is where they get the updates on [landslides], this is where they get the updates on the wildfires that are coming their way.”

Rounds, Daines, Capito, and Susan Collins are up for reelection in 2026, while Murkowski has already forgone Trump’s support: the Alaska lawmaker won without his endorsement in 2022.

Whether Murkowski will follow through on her defense of the media organizations is unclear, however, after she suddenly caved on Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” earlier this month. Her vote helped to pass a piece of legislation that will make the rich richer while stripping 17 million Americans of their health care.