The Latest: House approves Trump’s $9 billion cut to public broadcasting and foreign aid

The House gave final approval to President Donald Trump’ s request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid early Friday as Republicans intensified their targeting of institutions and programs they view as bloated or out of step with their agenda.

The White House suggested it will make more such demands to claw back congressionally appropriated funding. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the encroachment on their constitutional spending authority, but approved the cuts anyway rather than cross Trump’s team.

Trump meanwhile is threatening to sue the Wall Street Journal for reporting on his alleged involvement with a sexually suggestive birthday gift to Jeffrey Epstein, and fans of Steven Colbert are dismayed that CBS is cancelling ‘The Late Show.’ Colbert announced the cancellation only days after he described the CBS parent company’s $16 million settlement offer to Trump as a “big fat bribe.”

Here’s the latest:

“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said as demands to release sex-trafficking case files threatened to derail the recission vote.

Democrats vehemently decried the GOP resolution’s lack of force and pushed their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern called the Republican resolution “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”

Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.

The president applauded CBS’ decision to end “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May.

“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” the longtime target of Colbert’s comedy and criticism posted on Truth Social.

Colbert has led the late-night network competition for years. CBS has said “Late Show” was canceled for financial reasons, not for its content. But the timing – three days after Colbert criticized a legal settlement between Trump and Paramount Global as the CBS parent company seeks approval for a merger – led two U.S. senators to publicly question the motives of the cancellation.

Trump’s post also took shots at late-night hosts on ABC and NBC, and declared that Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld “is better than all of them combined.”

Annie Tomasini, a former Biden White House deputy chief of staff, cited her Fifth Amendment rights in declining to answer questions from the House Oversight committee.

Tomasini was subpoenaed by House Republicans to testify about Biden’s age, alleged cognitive decline and the use of the autopen for executive orders, pardons and the signing of laws in the previous administration.

Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., vowed to press on. The committee has scheduled interviews with nine more former Biden administration officials in the coming weeks, and hasn’t ruled out requesting that members of Biden’s family or Vice President Kamala Harris appear to answer questions.

Trump has looked to the marble finishes in a $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters to claim grounds to fire Chair Jerome Powell, with whom he has tussled for years over interest rates. But all that marble followed pressure from Trump appointees.

As the Fed moved forward with plans to renovate its Great Depression-era headquarters in Washington during Trump’s first term, its architects said the central bank had wanted glass walls to reflect the Fed as a transparent institution. Three Trump appointees called for more “white Georgia marble” instead.

Russ Vought, Trump’s top budget adviser, cited “premium marble” in a letter to Powell last week as an example of the “ostentatious overhaul.” Powell responded late Thursday that “new domestic marble” would be used to address concerns.

Republican elected officials are promoting their recently passed tax and spending bill as a win for working Americans, but a new survey shows that Americans broadly see it as a win for the wealthy.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect it will help the rich, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 6 in 10 think it will do more to hurt than help low-income people, and about half say it will do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.

Republicans advertisements frame the legislation as a tax cut for all Americans. Democrats make the case that the wealthiest will benefit as Medicaid and food assistance programs are cut.

Trump’s approval rating on government spending has fallen, suggesting disapproval of how the law adds billions to the deficit.

Trump threatened on social media to sue the Wall Street Journal and its owners, News Corp, after the paper reported on his alleged involvement with a 50th birthday gift to Jeffrey Epstein.

The newspaper said it had reviewed a typewritten letter bearing Trump’s signature, framed by the seemingly hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, that Ghislaine Maxwell included in a 2003 birthday album. Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

Trump specifically went after its billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox Corporation that controls Fox News.

“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Trump said on Truth Social. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is seeking an investigation into the hiring practices of Department of Defense contractors to see if they have hired Chinese citizens to perform sensitive tech work.

The Arkansas Republican wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday requesting information about any contractors that employee people in China to perform services for U.S. defense systems. Hiring employees living in China could unwittingly put sensitive systems and information at risk of Chinese espionage, Cotton wrote.

“The U.S. government recognizes that China’s cyber capabilities pose one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by infiltration of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and supply chains,” Cotton wrote.

Cotton’s request comes after national security officials have linked China’s government to hacking campaigns targeting prominent Americans and critical U.S. systems.

If one theme has emerged in Trump’s second term, it’s how he’s leveraged presidential power for personal gain unlike anyone before in history.

From crypto coins to bibles, overseas development deals to an upcoming line of cellphones, Trump family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since his election, an unprecedented flood of often shadowy money from billionaires, foreign governments and cryptocurrency tycoons with interests before the federal government.

The dealmaking is a rejection of Trump’s first-term pledge to “drain the swamp.”

“It’s the Mount Everest of corruption” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat.

The final House vote early Friday approving Trump’s request to claw back billions in congressionally approved spending came after hours of debate over a response to the administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. The GOP ultimately settled on putting forth a resolution for a vote that could come next week. It nods to the backlash from the Republican base but carries no legal weight.

With Trump now dismissing the entire Epstein story as a “hoax” spread in part by “stupid Republicans,” the House resolution demonstrates that practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release the case files.

Republicans who approved Trump’s request to claw back about $9 billion in congressionally approved spending praised the early Friday vote as a strong move to eliminate government bloat.

“We need to get back to fiscal sanity and this is an important step,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Opponents voiced concerns about Congress ceding its spending powers to the executive branch. These cuts are just a sliver of federal spending and come after Republicans also muscled through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase the U.S. debt by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

“No one is buying the the notion that Republicans are actually trying to improve wasteful spending,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The president promised a lawsuit after The Wall Street Journal described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.

Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory.” The newspaper report comes amid an uproar among Trump supporters over the administration’s about-face on releasing criminal case files from the Epstein investigations. Trump has labeled “weaklings” his supporters who insist on exposing the records.

Swollen legs led to the President being diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. It’s a fairly common condition among older adults but requires a thorough checkup to rule out more serious causes of the swelling.

CBS is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”. The talk show host told his audience that their last show will be next May, shuttering a decades-old TV institution and removing from air one of Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics.

Thursday’s announcement followed Colbert’s criticism of a settlement between Trump and Paramount Global, parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story.

In his monologue Monday, Colbert said he was “offended” and joked that the technical name in legal circles for the deal was “big fat bribe.”

Paramount and CBS executives said in a statement that the cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Among the foreign aid cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and family reunification for refugees and $496 million to provide food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There also is a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost economies and democratic institutions in developing nations.

Democrats argued that the Republican administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.

The White House argued that many of the cuts would incentivize other nations to step up and do more to respond to humanitarian crises and that the rescissions best served the American taxpayer.

The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.

The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The CPB distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.

The package cancels about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway, wary of crossing Trump or upsetting his agenda.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 216-213. It now goes to Trump for his signature.