Evening Edition: First 100 Days – Fighting Anti-Semitism On College Campuses
FOX's Ryan Schmelz speaks with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, about the legislation the HELP Committee is proposing and he shares with us his feelings on what has been accomplished by the administration in their first three months.
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Associated Press
5 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Not just Big Bird: Things to know about the Center for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and television stations as well as programs like 'Sesame Street' and 'Finding Your Roots,' said Friday that it would close after the U.S. government withdrew funding. The organization told employees that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. A small transition team will stay until January to finish any remaining work. The private, nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 shortly after Congress authorized its formation. It now ends nearly six decades of fueling the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and emergency alerts about natural disasters. Here's what to know: Losing funding President Donald Trump signed a bill on July 24 canceling about $1.1 billion that had been approved for public broadcasting. The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense, and conservatives have particularly directed their ire at NPR and PBS. Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced concern about what the cuts could mean for some local public stations in their state. They warned some stations will have to close. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday reinforced the policy change by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill. How it beganCongress passed legislation creating the body in 1967, several years after then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow described commercial television a 'vast wasteland' and called for programming in the public interest. The corporation doesn't produce programming and it doesn't own, operate or control any public broadcasting stations. The corporation, PBS, NPR are independent of each other as are local public television and radio stations. Rural stations hit hard Roughly 70% of the corporation's money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country. The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it's likely some won't survive. NPR's president estimated as many as 80 NPR stations may close in the next year. Mississippi Public Broadcasting has already decided to eliminate a streaming channel that airs children's programming like 'Caillou' and 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' 24 hours a day. Maine's public media system is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12% of its budget, for the next fiscal year. The state's rural residents rely heavily on public media for weather updates and disaster alerts. In Kodiak, Alaska, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22% from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions. From Big Bird to war documentaries The first episode of 'Sesame Street' aired in 1969. Child viewers, adults and guest stars alike were instantly hooked. Over the decades, characters from Big Bird to Cookie Monster and Elmo have become household favorites Entertainer Carol Burnett appeared on that inaugural episode. She told The Associated Press she was a big fan. 'I would have done anything they wanted me to do,' she said. 'I loved being exposed to all that goodness and humor.' Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. started 'Finding Your Roots' in 2006 under the title 'African American Lives.' He invited prominent Black celebrities and traced their family trees into slavery. When the paper trail ran out, they would use DNA to see which ethnic group they were from in Africa. Challenged by a viewer to open the show to non-Black celebrities, Gates agreed and the series was renamed 'Faces of America,' which had to be changed again after the name was taken. The show is PBS's most-watched program on linear TV and the most-streamed non-drama program. Season 10 reached nearly 18 million people across linear and digital platforms and also received its first Emmy nomination. Grant money from the nonprofit has also funded lesser-known food, history, music and other shows created by stations across the country. Documentarian Ken Burns, celebrated for creating the documentaries 'The Civil War,' 'Baseball' and 'The Vietnam War', told PBS NewsHour said the corporation accounted for about 20% of his films' budgets. He said he would make it up but projects receiving 50% to 75% of their funding from the organization won't. Influence of shows Children's programing in the 1960s was made up of shows like 'Captain Kangaroo,' ''Romper Room' and the violent skirmishes between 'Tom & Jerry.' 'Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood' mostly taught social skills. 'Sesame Street' was designed by education professionals and child psychologists to help low-income and minority students aged 2-5 overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted white and higher income kids were often better prepared. One of the most widely cited studies about the impact of 'Sesame Street' compared households that got the show with those who didn't. It found that the children exposed to 'Sesame Street' were 14% more likely to be enrolled in the correct grade level for their age at middle and high school. Over the years, 'Finding Your Roots' showed Natalie Morales discovering she's related to one of the legendary pirates of the Caribbean and former 'Saturday Night Live' star Andy Samberg finding his biological grandmother and grandfather. It revealed that drag queen RuPaul and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker are cousins, as are actors Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria. 'The two subliminal messages of 'Finding Your Roots,' which are needed more urgently today than ever, is that what has made America great is that we're a nation of immigrants,' Gates told the AP. 'And secondly, at the level of the genome, despite our apparent physical differences, we're 99.99% the same.'
Wall Street Journal
5 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Senate Passes Key Funding Bills, Reasserting Power Over Spending
WASHINGTON—The Senate late Friday passed more than $180 billion in funding for veterans programs, new military facilities, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration, as lawmakers moved to reassert their control over federal spending amid challenges from the Trump administration. The Senate approved the bulk of the spending in a 87-9 vote. It separately cleared a measure funding Congress's own operations as well as related entities that audit federal spending and evaluate the budgetary implications of federal laws. The legislation must go back to the House, which is on recess and will return for legislative business in September.
Miami Herald
15 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were 'Rigged,' Fires Labor Official
EDITORS NOTE: EDS: SUBS for full writethru to update, revise and expand; TWEAKS headline to reflect firing; ADDS Ember as contributor.) ; (ART ADV: With photo.); (With: ECON-JOBS, FED-BOARD-EXIT); Sydney Ember contributed reporting. President Donald Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market on Friday, saying without evidence that the data were "rigged" and that he was firing the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official responsible for pulling together the numbers each month. In a long post on social media, Trump said he had directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024. Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau, confirmed late Friday that McEntarfer had been fired and that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as acting commissioner. The president fired McEntarfer after the bureau released monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring in July and large downward revisions to job growth in the previous two months. Economists widely interpreted the report as evidence that Trump's policies were beginning to take a toll on the economy, though the president insisted in a subsequent post that the country was "doing GREAT!" Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, echoed Trump's concerns about McEntarfer in a post on social media. "So you know what I did?" Trump later told reporters, as he claimed the numbers were "phony." "I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing." McEntarfer was appointed to her post by President Joe Biden in 2023 after a long career at the Census Bureau and other agencies, where she served under presidents of both parties, including Trump. Among the Republicans who voted to confirm her as commissioner was Vice President JD Vance, who was then an Ohio senator. The firing prompted swift criticism from economists, former government officials and others, who said the removal would further erode trust in government statistics and make it more difficult for policymakers, investors and businesses, who rely on having dependable data about the economy to make decisions. In addition to the monthly jobs numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for producing data on inflation, wages and other aspects of the economy. William W. Beach, who led the bureau during Trump's first term, criticized the move to fire McEntarfer on Friday. "It's unfortunate," he said. "This could set a precedent where bad news on many different fronts is a reason for dismissing a person." Beach, who was appointed by Trump in 2019 and remained in the role for the first two years of the Biden administration, said he had never felt pressure to manipulate the data under either president. Even if there were such pressure, he said, there is "no way" the commissioner could interfere in the revisions process, which is conducted by career employees. Erica Groshen, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, called the decision "a terrible precedent." "I hope will be reversed because it undermines the integrity of our statistical system and really all of government data and science," she added, calling it "a very sad day." McEntarfer's tenure got off to a rough start last year when the agency made a series of missteps in which Wall Street firms had access to data before the general public. But none of those incidents involved issues with the statistics themselves. Trump and his top aides have made a habit of attacking government agencies, researchers and watchdogs when they have produced findings that the president does not like. That has led to concerns that Trump could seek to interfere with the operations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other statistical agencies, particularly if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse. Until now, however, most experts on the statistical system said they remained confident in the data produced by the agencies and had seen no evidence of political interference in their operations. Current and former agency staff members consistently echoed that message -- in part, they said, because they trusted McEntarfer and her counterparts at the other major statistical agencies to protect their independence. "If that pressure got too great, you would see people resigning rather than shape the numbers," Beach said. Economists across the ideological spectrum said Trump's move to oust McEntarfer was likely to erode public confidence in the data published by the administration. "If you want people to stop trusting the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, firing the person who is confirmed by the Senate to make sure those numbers are trustworthy is a real good way to do it," said Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, who served in the White House under Biden. McEntarfer could not immediately be reached for comment. On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that employers added only 73,000 new jobs in July. It also notably revised data for the previous two months, reducing the number of jobs created by 258,000. While revisions to previous months are common, it was an unusually high number that came as a surprise. It suggested the labor market was not as resilient as it had seemed earlier this summer. Shortly after the numbers were released, Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered an explanation for the jobs revision that was much different from Trump's. On CNBC, he said much of the change was the result of "quirks in the seasonal adjustment process" and even the president's own policies, particularly on immigration, potentially affecting hiring numbers for May and June. He made no mention of any concerns about manipulated data as he sought to recast the slowdown in July as a "pretty decent" jobs report. By evening, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, sought to frame the firing as an attempt to restore "trust" at the statistics agency. Unlike Trump, who described the revisions as politically motivated, Hassett said its jobs figures had been "awful" for some time. "I think it is a good time for a fresh set of eyes to look at what the heck is going on," he told Fox Business. In his social media posts Friday, Trump provided no evidence that McEntarfer had injected political bias into her agency's data. And his criticisms contained contradictions and inaccuracies. Trump complained about not just the latest jobs numbers but also a set of revisions from last year. The bureau, like other statistical agencies, routinely updates its figures to incorporate data that wasn't initially available or to reflect information from more authoritative sources. Last August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had added roughly 818,000 fewer jobs over a 12-month period than previously believed. That announcement was part of a normal annual revision process, although the change was unusually large. (It was also preliminary -- the final figures were revised down by just under 600,000 jobs.) In a social media post Friday, Trump said the revision was made "right after the election." In fact, the announcement was made roughly 2 1/2 months before Election Day. Indeed, Trump posted about the revisions at the time, calling them a "MASSIVE SCANDAL." To the agency's defenders, however, the twin revisions show that it operates without political bias and was willing to announce politically inconvenient news under presidents of both parties. "President Trump is completely wrong in asserting there's been any sort of anti-Trump bias in the labor market data," said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "I think that assertion is wholly unsupported." Strain said that government data is revised frequently, and that doing so reflected a "standard" practice to ensure its quality. In this case, he acknowledged that the change was "historically large" but "doesn't smell fishy." Federal statistical agencies have faced mounting challenges in recent years as Americans have become more reluctant to respond to the surveys that are the basis for much of the nation's economic data. Shrinking budgets have made it harder to make up for falling response rates, and to develop new approaches to replace surveys altogether. Those concerns predate the current administration, but have grown worse since Trump returned to office. The statistical agencies have struggled with staff attrition as a result of the president's freeze on federal hiring, combined with the buyouts he offered early in his term. The president's budget also proposed further staff and funding cuts. In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said it was reducing its collection of data on consumer prices in response to resource constraints. Economists warned that, over time, such cuts could erode the reliability of the inflation data that Federal Reserve policymakers rely on when setting interest rates, and that determine cost-of-living increases in union contracts and Social Security benefits, among other uses. Asked about those cuts Wednesday, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said policymakers were "getting the data that we need to do our jobs." But he stressed the importance of the federal statistical agencies. "The government data is really the gold standard in data," he said. "We need it to be good and to be able to rely on it." This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
