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In voting for President Trump's cancellation of $9 billion in spending they had already approved, Republicans in Congress showed they were willing to cede their power of the purse.
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We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about his bipartisan bill calling for the full release of federal documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein's criminal charges for sexual trafficking and abuse, which is also currently backed by nine Republicans and every House Democrat. Khanna explains why he's calling for transparency and accountability regarding the Epstein case, and how Trump is working to prevent the same.
Ro Khanna also discusses the massive loss to public media and local news as the Trump administration has successfully stripped $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds over 1,500 NPR and PBS stations across the country. The major cut to funding is possible thanks to the rare process of rescission, which allows the president to request Congress to rescind already-allocated federal funding. Trump's OMB Director Russell Vought has indicated that the administration intends to expand its use of rescission in future legislative sessions. "It's a devastating blow to the education of our children in America and to our democracy," says Khanna, who notes that the cut to public media comes just one week after Republicans voted to pass Trump's deficit-enlarging budget bill. "It's just not true that this has anything to do with fiscal responsibility," Khanna adds.
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Congress just voted to claw back $500 million in funding for public broadcasting. Benjamin Mullin, a media reporter for The New York Times, explains what will happen now to NPR, PBS and the many local stations that rely on the funding.
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On Thursday night, Republicans on the House Rules Committee sought to defuse political pressure around the explosive Epstein issue by adopting a non-binding resolution to possibly consider releasing the Epstein files in the future. It won't have the force of law and may never come up for a vote.
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The 51-to-48 vote came over the objections of two Republicans. The House is expected to give final approval to the package later this week, sending it to Mr. Trump for his signature.
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The Senate voted 51 to 48 to reclaim spending previously approved by Congress.
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An even more intense battle is expected on the Senate floor over the nomination of a Trump immigration policy enforcer to a lifetime judicial post.
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We speak to Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, about changing popular opinion in the U.S. toward Israel and Palestine. "I'm not sure there's any political issue in the United States, perhaps other than gay marriage, over the last couple of decades where public opinion has shifted as fast," he says, citing the surprise victory of pro-Palestinian mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York City's Democratic primary as evidence of a shifting political landscape. We also discuss a recent article in The New York Times that criticizes Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Indian Muslim who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, for self-identifying as both Asian and Black/African American on a college application. Beinart, whose own parents are of European Jewish background and were raised in multiracial South Africa, explains how the limitations of formal racial categories often elide the true complexity of racial, ethnic and national identity. "It's not the case that Zohran Mamdani was trying to pull some sleight of hand to try to take advantage of affirmative action. This was a very deep statement about what he believed it was to have grown up in Uganda," he says.
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