LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration has formally asked Congress to take back money for foreign aid and public media.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The president would like Congress to vote down money that it previously voted up. Eight billion dollars are for the U.S. Agency for International Development. One point one billion dollars are set aside to support the next two years of public broadcasting, mainly local stations, such as the one you're hearing now. The process of taking back the money is called rescission. Congress has 45 days to approve these requests or let them die. NPR covers itself like anybody else, so we will give you the facts. And no NPR newsroom or corporate executives had any input into this story.
FADEL: Joining us now is NPR correspondent Fatma Tanis. Good morning, Fatma.
FATMA TANIS, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: OK, so let's start with this request to defund public broadcasting. What can you tell us?
TANIS: So this is part of the president's broader clash with major cultural institutions, as my colleague David Folkenflik has been reporting over the last few months. Now, the president and his Republican allies have accused NPR and PBS of partisan bias. President Trump issued an executive order last month that would defund both organizations. NPR's CEO, Katherine Maher, has said that the administration is punishing public media for coverage that the president dislikes, and both NPR and PBS are challenging that order in court.
Now, the White House is asking Congress to officially cancel all the funding it has set aside for the public broadcasters over the next two fiscal years. That's the $1.1 billion. It's a fraction of the overall federal budget. In statements yesterday, the heads of NPR and PBS outlined the serious impact that losing that funding would have on their stations that reach Americans all over the country.
FADEL: And what do they say those implications would be?
TANIS: Well, they said that it would be, quote, "devastating," and especially to local public media stations in rural communities that would be disproportionately harmed.
FADEL: And what about that $8 billion in foreign aid that the White House wants to send back to the Treasury? What are those funds for?
TANIS: So they fund global health programs aimed at controlling the spread of diseases like HIV/AIDS. The White House is cutting 400 million for that - millions of dollars also in contributions to the World Health Organization, various United Nations agencies. Now, in the memo that the White House sent to Congress, it says some of the funds have been used for, quote, "radical projects" and that the cuts are part of an effort to, quote, "eliminate wasteful foreign assistance programs."
FADEL: I mean, Fatma, you've been on this program a lot talking about the way the administration effectively dismantled USAID. So why is the White House sending these requests to Congress now?
TANIS: Yes. You may remember that the agency was the first to see mass staffing cuts, termination to its programs. Effectively, it's been shut down. All of that was done without congressional approval, and there have been several lawsuits where the president's power to withhold funds without congressional approval has been challenged. There's no ruling on this yet. I spoke with Jonathan Katz. He's the senior director of anti-corruption, democracy and security at the Brookings Institution. He sees this request as a sign that the administration is hitting walls in its efforts to dismantle federal agencies.
JONATHAN KATZ: I think part of the losses that the administration is seeing in the courts may be impacting how they think they need to approach issues, including congressional funding or reorganizing government. They need to go to Congress to do these things.
TANIS: So this is the legal avenue for the administration to codify the cuts it has already made. And there will likely be more rescission requests for all the other budget cuts the president wants to see happen across the federal government.
FADEL: That's NPR's Fatma Tanis. Thank you, Fatma.
TANIS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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