House passes Trump's cuts to public broadcasting, foreign aid | The Excerpt
On Friday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: A bill with cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid will next land on President Donald Trump's desk for his signature. Trump denies a report he wrote Jeffrey Epstein a lewd 50th birthday letter. Plus, polling shows voters aren't happy with how President Donald Trump's team is dealing with the controversial Jeffrey Epstein case. Paste BN Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire discusses this week's anti-Trump protests. Private equity is coming to your 401(k). Paste BN Congress Reporter Savannah Kuchar breaks down landmark bills dealing with cryptocurrency. CBS cancels "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, July 18th, 2025. This is Paste BN's The Excerpt.
Today, Congress has finalized new cuts, plus we check in on anti-Trump protests, and how House lawmakers this week approved new crypto legislation.
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President Donald Trump's push for $9 billion in spending cuts crossed the congressional finish line just after midnight, and will now head to his desk for a signature. The House approved the measure and response to Trump's official request. The legislation cuts into public broadcasting stations, PBS and NPR, as well as the United States Foreign aid efforts. Office of Management and Budget, Director Russell Vought, said the amounts being slashed represent wasteful and unnecessary spending in the White House's formal request to Congress. Lawmakers barely met a July 18th deadline to get the bill approved, otherwise the current funding would've remained in place. The Senate passed its version of the spending cut bill earlier in the week.
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President Trump is denying a report in the Wall Street Journal that claims he wrote a letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump called the letter a fake in a social media post, and said the story is false, malicious, and defamatory. He's also threatening to sue the newspaper. Shortly afterward, Trump announced in another social media post that he's directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce more Epstein documents amid public clamor for the records. According to the Journal, Trump's letter was part of a leather-bound birthday book with dozens of other letters that was presented to Epstein in 2003. The Trump letter ends with, "Happy birthday. And may every day be another wonderful secret," according to the newspaper. Trump's signature on the letter was written in the form of text inside a hand-drawn outline of a nude woman, the Journal wrote.
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Polling shows voters aren't happy with how the president's team is dealing with the controversial Jeffrey Epstein case. A new Quinnipiac University survey, released earlier this week, shows almost two-thirds of voters disapprove of the administration's handling of the case, a week after the Justice Department and the FBI released no new files and concluded that the convicted sex offender died by suicide in his jail cell. Just 17% of registered voters gave the Trump administration a thumbs up when asked about the Epstein fallout, versus 63% who gave them a thumbs down.
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Hundreds of anti-Trump protests were held in cities and towns around the country yesterday. I spoke with Paste BN's senior national political correspondent, Sarah D. Wire, to get to the heart of why people took to the streets. Thanks for hopping on, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so another week of protests. Tell us about what we saw yesterday. What was the purpose and who organized?
Sarah D. Wire:
So these protests were organized by a lot of the same people who have organized the last few big protests. The Americans we've seen: the Women's March, Indivisible, but this was also by a lot of the civil rights groups that exist in the country.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay. And we saw these really nationwide. I mean which cities in particular?
Sarah D. Wire:
There were 1,600 events planned across the country, in places like Chicago and Atlanta, and Annapolis, Maryland, were some of the bigger ones, but they were in tiny little places. There was one just down the street from my house, in big cities, small cities.
One of the things that's really changed with the protests this year is that they want them to be extremely visible, hard to ignore. And so they're not just having them in big cities, and then people go home. They want them to be happening as you drive through Main Street, there's 10, 20 people protesting on the side of the road. It's hard to pretend that's not happening if it's happening in your own community.
It also means that there's a way for people to engage in their own community, so the activism can continue rather than just stopping at the end of the protest.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned the timing around the anniversary of the passing of the late Congressman John Lewis. Is that the main reason for kind of why now? Why this week?
Sarah D. Wire:
He was known as the moral compass in the House, and he really pushed that it's okay to get in good trouble if the cause is right. And they want to push that conversation forward. They want Americans to take up that mantle of, "You might not be able to do much, but you need to do something to move this cause forward."
Taylor Wilson:
This is far from the first protests we've seen against the Trump administration. How did these compare to what else we've seen?
Sarah D. Wire:
These were smaller. They were definitely smaller. And organizers said they knew that was going to be true going in. It was a protest on a Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening. But they said the big thing is not necessarily the number of people who turned out, but the continued activism. The sign that this is a continued struggle, it's not just one day and you go home.
Taylor Wilson:
Did we see any tensions out there, Sarah, whether it be, I guess, with authorities or any counter protests?
Sarah D. Wire:
So far it was really quiet across the country. We haven't seen any police on horses charging into crowds or anything like that, like we did with the last major protest.
Taylor Wilson:
And has the president himself commented?
Sarah D. Wire:
He has not commented. The White House said he's doing exactly what he campaigned on and what he said he was going to do and that he has a mandate.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, we're in the heart of summer. We know summer can often be a time of protest. What's next? Are there similar protests to come later this summer?
Sarah D. Wire:
Yes. Organizers have told me that they expect to continue having protests, maybe even once a month going forward. You've got big protests like the one that happened back in June, the No Kings protest. And that was already planned, and then the ICE arrests started happening in Los Angeles and they became very big. And so the organizers, they want people to know that not every protest is going to be large, but that they feel the need to have these continuous sustained protests to show that Americans aren't happy, or at least a segment of the population are not happy.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Listeners can find more on usatoday.com. Sarah D. Wire covers National Politics for Paste BN. Thanks, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Private equity is coming to your 401(k). BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, announced last month that it will offer a 401(k) target-date retirement fund that includes private investments, with a launch date in 2026. Another retirement giant, Empower, said in May it will offer private investments in some workplace accounts later this year. Other retirement plan providers have made similar moves. And the Trump administration is expected to sign an executive order in coming days that would call for federal guidance on adding private investments to 401(k) plans, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.
Private equity firms raise money to buy, manage, and sell companies for profit. Investors are typically high wealth individuals or institutions. The private credit marketplace loans money to companies or individuals outside the banking and fixed income industries. Regular retirement savers have not had much access to private investments in the past. You can read more about what this might mean for your finances with a link in today's show notes.
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The Republican-controlled House yesterday passed a trio of bills marking big wins for the cryptocurrency industry. A piece of the landmark legislation package, dubbed the Genius Act, creates a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of crypto, tied to the value of an asset like the US dollar. I spoke with Paste BN Congress reporter, Savannah Kuchar, for more. Savannah, how are you?
Savannah Kuchar:
I'm good. How are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for joining me. So just starting here, I mean, what did the House pass?
Savannah Kuchar:
Yeah, so the House passed a trio of cryptocurrency related bills. The bills, in part, affect cryptocurrency industry regulations. They also in some parts affect what the Federal Reserve can and can't do in relation to cryptocurrency. It's seen as some landmark legislation. Really, kind of an unprecedented step in terms of legislation in the industry.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay. And what led up to this? What were some sticking points previously?
Savannah Kuchar:
So one of the bills already cleared the Senate, and now that it's been approved by the House, it will head to President Trump's desk for signature. But the other two bills were approved by the House and now heads to the Senate. And there was some debate, a little bit, maybe unexpected by some, this week in the House, over these bills. And especially, in one piece of legislation, there was some debate and negotiations over how to get it in the best possible position to potentially pass the Senate where it might face a little bit more of an uphill battle.
Taylor Wilson:
And Savannah, what do advocates say this legislation will do for these types of financial instruments?
Savannah Kuchar:
Yeah. So a lot of cryptocurrency advocates are celebrating this, what the House did, and they say that the bills will help protect consumers. That it'll set industry standards and that that will be a benefit, again, for consumers. Supporters of the bill say that it provides safeguards. And some lawmakers who support the legislation are calling it the, quote, "golden age of digital assets." So there's a lot of celebration in the crypto advocates here.
Taylor Wilson:
Savannah, would you put this in context for us, I guess, in the broader sense of how the Trump administration and Trump era Republicans have approached crypto regulation?
Savannah Kuchar:
So President Trump is seen as pretty crypto-friendly, and he has experience himself benefiting from the industry and platforms in the industry. So for instance, he had a big money-making venture with World Liberty Financial, it's a cryptocurrency platform that launched last year. He also held a dinner in May for some top purchasers of the Trump meme coin, which is owned by an affiliate of the Trump Organization. So he has a lot of connections and associations with the industry.
Trump and Republican allies in Congress are pretty crypto-friendly and that kind of set the stage for the votes that we saw this week and this legislation moving forward.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I know some Senate Democrats are among the main critics here amid this legislation. What are their concerns?
Savannah Kuchar:
The legislation could have an uphill battle in the Senate. For starters, because Senate Democrats are very wary, specifically because of these Trump connections to cryptocurrency. Senators, like Elizabeth Warren, are calling it corruption or saying it would accelerate corruption because of Trump's ties to cryptocurrency. And so it'll be interesting to see whether there can be enough needed bipartisan support to see this across the finish line over in the Senate.
Taylor Wilson:
Savannah Kuchar covers Congress for Paste BN. Thank you, Savannah.
Savannah Kuchar:
Thank you, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
CBS has canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with the final show scheduled for May of next year. Host Stephen Colbert, announced the shocking news to his studio audience yesterday and added that it's not just the end of his team's show, it's the end of The Late Show on CBS altogether. A Paramount statement called the move purely a financial decision.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.