'Ill-advised and short-sighted': GOP senator slams Trump's proposal to gut NPR and PBS

25 June

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference at a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman

White House Budget Director Russ Vought faced intense resistance on Wednesday as he urged senators to pass President Donald Trump’s plan to eliminate $9.4 billion in federal spending — a move Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Susan Collins (R‑Maine) called “extraordinarily ill‑advised.”

Politico reported Wednesday that during a tense hearing before the chamber’s appropriators, Vought defended the administration’s proposal to strip out $8.3 billion from foreign assistance and $1.1 billion from public media, including PBS and NPR.

He argued that Americans would be outraged to learn their tax dollars had been funneled into “far‑left activism, population control and sex workers,” and branded PBS and NPR as “radical far‑left networks.”

Protesters disrupted the proceedings, chanting “Vought’s Cuts Kill” and “Vought Lies, People Die!” Signs, shouting, and physical disturbance led to forced removals by Capitol Police, per the report.

The report notes that if Republicans fail to rally enough Senate support, the White House could face another rebuke similar to the 2018 defeat of a $15 billion rescission package.

Collins reiterated her strong opposition to the impact on PEPFAR, the global AIDS relief initiative, and emphasized the critical services PBS provides — from rural emergency coverage to children’s programming, warning that cutting disease‑prevention funding “would be extraordinarily ill‑advised and short‑sighted.”

Meanwhile, in another hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday, Democrats took aim at Kari Lake, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, accusing her of using the agency as a mouthpiece for the Trump administration's messaging.

In a video posted to X by anti-MAGA conservative news outlet The Bulwark, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D‑Pa.) stunned the room when she told Lake bluntly, “You are a propaganda machine for the Trump administration,” challenging her credibility and motives.

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