The House narrowly voted Thursday to cut $9.4 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding after a minor revolt from a handful of moderate Republicans.
The vote was the first move to codify Department of Government Efficiency savings, nearly three months after Congress passed a stopgap bill to continue federal spending that the Trump administration’s cost-cutting task force was trying to pare back.
The White House-initiated measure cuts $8.3 billion from various foreign aid accounts and $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit that helps fund public media such as NPR and PBS and their local affiliates.
The amount is a small fraction of the $1.6 trillion in annual discretionary spending lawmakers previously approved, but it represents the first codified victory for President Trump’s and DOGE’s efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government.
Mr. Trump posted a last-minute plea on social media for Republicans to back the rescissions package. He called it a “no-brainer.”
“It will OFFICALLY ‘claw back’ $9.4 BILLION DOLLARS in funding for wasteful Foreign Aid, used for Radical ‘DEI’ and the Green New SCAM, and the ‘Corporation for Public Broadcasting,’ which funds the highly biased NPR and PBS. For decades, Republicans have promised to cut NPR, but have never done it, until now.”
The president’s message did not prevent some last-minute drama on the House floor. The initial tally of votes showed the measure on track to fail.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and other members of the Republican leadership team persuaded two of the six Republican holdouts to support the bill.
The final vote was 214-212. Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Nicole Malliotakis of New York and Michael R. Turner of Ohio joined all Democrats in opposition.
With full attendance, those votes would have been enough to defeat the measure, but four Democrats and two Republicans missed the vote, lowering the threshold for a majority.
After the vote, Mr. Johnson commended DOGE for its “heroic and patriotic efforts” that led to the rescissions package and promised further cuts.
“Today’s passage of this initial rescissions package marks a critical step toward a more responsible and transparent government,” the speaker said.
Reps. Nick LaLota of New York and Don Bacon of Nebraska were the two Republicans who changed their votes to save the rescissions package from defeat.
“Anytime we’re dealing with the taxpayers’ money, especially $9 billion, we need to do so deliberately, thoughtfully,” Mr. LaLota said. “So having some conversations with my leadership about that helped get me to yes.”
He declined to elaborate on those conversations or his initial hesitation about the rescissions package.
Republicans who opposed the package had cited concerns about the public broadcasting cuts, particularly on local affiliates of PBS and NPR.
Asked whether he shared those concerns, Mr. LaLota said, “PBS and NPR will live on. I expect my constituents will be quite pleased when they get $40,000 worth of SALT.”
He was referring to a provision in separate legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, carrying Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda, which would quadruple the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, to $40,000.
The provision is a priority for Republicans from the high-tax, Democratic-majority states of New York, New Jersey and California. The Senate wants to lower the cap, which the pro-SALT House Republicans said would lose their support and kill the bill.
Mr. LaLota would not say whether House Republican leaders gave him assurances on SALT in exchange for his vote.
“I’m going to keep the details of the conversation private,” he said.
Mr. Bacon had concerns about the broadcast funding cuts, which he said would have reduced PBS’s budget by 15%, and funding for an AIDS prevention program by 10%.
Mr. Johnson and other Republican leaders assured him that the rescissions package wouldn’t be a death knell for either priority and showed him figures from the House’s fiscal 2026 appropriations bills, which include funding for PBS and the anti-AIDS program.
“A lot of things in the current appropriations bill that we’re working on fund some of the things I was worried about,” Mr. Bacon told The Washington Times. “So they were able to show me, ‘Hey, we’re funding it.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’ll back off.’”
Mr. Amodei said he voted against the package because the broadcasting cuts would decimate local media outlets, particularly those in rural areas where public TV or radio stations are often the only news outlets.
“I’m looking for something that acknowledges that local stations are important,” he said Tuesday.
After the vote, Mr. Amodei said the White House never reached out to him to address his concerns.
The White House has said the broadcasting cuts would eliminate most federal funding for public media, except for a fund that sends out Amber Alerts, tornado warnings and other emergency notifications.
The $1.1 billion cut in the rescissions package would claw back advanced CPB funding for fiscal 2026 and 2027. Mr. Amodei said 70% of that funding would go to local affiliates that can’t raise enough money to make up the gap as easily as their national counterparts.
The rescissions package now heads to the Senate, where the broadcasting cuts are vexing a few Republican senators.
“It’s a bifurcated concern,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, Alaska Republican, told The Times. “In states like mine, our rural radio stations play a really important role. So, how do you address that, while I am very unsympathetic to the program that comes out of National Public Radio? I’ve been telling those guys for years, it’s very left-wing, it’s very biased, and the government shouldn’t be subsidizing and funding left-wing media.”
Mr. Sullivan said he and other senators with similar concerns are exploring ways to ensure local public media affiliates in rural areas — “which play a role in terms of safety and a whole host of things, especially a state like mine that has 250 communities that don’t even have roads that connect them” — are protected from funding cuts that could impact their operations.
Republicans have been far more supportive of the $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid accounts, although some have questioned the need for a $400 million clawback from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
PEPFAR was created during the George W. Bush administration to combat HIV/AIDS around the world.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican, has said PEPFAR has been “extremely successful” in preventing the spread of AIDS and that she wants to remove any cuts to the program from the rescissions package.
The White House calmed concerns of several House Republicans over PEPFAR by noting that the $400 million cut is a small portion of the program’s $6 billion fiscal 2025 budget and that the reductions would not impact medical treatments and preventions.
The Trump administration argues that PEPFAR has wasteful spending, citing $5.1 million to strengthen the “resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer global movements,” $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia, and $833,000 for services for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, is leading the rescissions package in the Senate. He introduced the companion bill to the House measure Thursday.
“I think generally people are very supportive,” he told The Times.
Mr. Schmitt acknowledged that some senators had concerns about the broadcast cuts impacting local outlets in rural areas. He said he would “work member-to-member” to address those and any other issues to ensure the measure passes.
The Senate Appropriations Committee must act on the rescissions package within 25 days before it can be discharged to the floor.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said the rescissions package wouldn’t get a vote until July, after the chamber passes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act carrying most of the president’s legislative agenda.
• Kerry Picket contributed to this report.
