Radio Free Europe still hopes for Congress funds after U.S. financing halt
RFE/RL received funds for May on Thursday after a court order, Capus said, and continues to seek over $50 million appropriated by Congress for its fiscal year ending September while seeking ways to fund operations ahead.
"After September 30th, there is still a possibility of receiving funds from Congress," he told Reuters during the Globsec Forum in Prague on Thursday. "We've got very strong bipartisan support... We have confidence that can happen."
The funding rows have forced the station to furlough about 350 staff, out of around 1,200, Capus said, and it has reduced some programming. It also let go "hundreds and hundreds" of freelancers and contractors, and some senior staff have left. The Czech Republic has searched for solutions with European Union partners and others to help RFE/RL. Last month, the EU said it would donate 5.5 million euros ($6.33 million).
The station has so far not accepted outside funds and wants to see where talks and U.S. court decisions lead.
Capus said some form of funding from U.S. and European sources might be an option, given Europe's rising focus on security, including in the information space.
Nothing was on the table now, he said, but "it's an idea worth exploring."
($1 = 0.8692 euros)
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gulf Today
26 minutes ago
- Gulf Today
Donald Trump voters wanted relief from medical bills
President Donald Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programmes designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills. Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed in July, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident. At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in. Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients' bills, as well. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket. The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees. And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. In July, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports. That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates. 'For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope,' said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. 'The Trump administration is just throwing them off.' White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration's health care policies will affect Americans' medical bills. The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. 'You won't even notice it,' Trump said at the White House after the bill signing July 4. 'Just waste, fraud, and abuse.' But consumer and patient advocates around the country warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans' financial security. 'These changes will hit our communities hard,' said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. Sánchez predicted many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. 'When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home, or even a job,' she said. 'Medical debt wrecks people's lives.' For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network. 'People will not seek out the treatment they need,' she said. Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to 'make America affordable again' and 'expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.' Polls suggest voters were looking for relief. About 6 in 10 adults — Democrats and Republicans — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the US are burdened by some kind of health care debt. Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block. Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers' credit scores in states that implemented the expansion. 'We've seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people's financial well-being,' Caswell said. Trump's tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to US deficits over a decade, the office calculated.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
The word many powerful Americans seem to have forgotten when dealing with Donald Trump
No. It's one of the shortest, simplest and most important words in the English language. But, when it comes to President Donald Trump, many key players in the US power structure appear stricken with lockjaw. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it's axiomatic that strongman powers are more typically given than taken. When dealing with an uncompromising and ruthless chief executive, it's easier to give in and not put up a fight. Financial calculations are most obvious. The government can use regulatory powers or lucrative government contracts to shape the condition and prospects of a given business, no matter how large. When the President makes it implicitly clear that a merger, for example, won't be approved by the relevant regulatory body unless some form of acquiescence is forthcoming, in purely pecuniary terms it's a no-brainer to just give in. Historically, Americans hardly lack courage. They have died to defend their Constitution and democratic traditions. They have gone to prison rather than betray their values and principles We've seen several alarming examples of this since Mr Trump returned to office, and even simply following the election. Mr Trump sued CBS over an interview conducted by its well-known 60 Minutes programme with his then campaign rival, former vice president Kamala Harris. The programme had edited her remarks for broadcast, as is standard practice. Mr Trump's $20 billion lawsuit alleged that this editing amounted to consumer fraud and election interference. CBS released the full transcript, which readily demonstrated that the edits were routine and insubstantial. In July, however, Mr Trump received a $16 million settlement from CBS's parent company, Paramount, which has been in the process of attempting a merger with Skydance Media. That has just been approved by the Federal Communications Commission, a part of Mr Trump's executive apparatus. An earlier collapse came from ABC when Mr Trump sued the network for liable and defamation over remarks made by anchor George Stephanopoulos. In December, even before Mr Trump was back in the White House, ABC settled for $15 million. Again, Mr Trump's case was weak. Mr Stephanopoulos said that Mr Trump had been found civilly liable for rape in the E Jean Carroll case. Technically, under New York law, Mr Trump was only found liable for sexual abuse. However, a federal judge repeatedly ruled that Mr Trump had indeed committed rape under the common understanding of the term. Given the high bar under US law for defamation cases, it is unlikely that Mr Trump would have prevailed. But ABC's parent company, Disney, with its myriad business empire, preferred to simply cave. It was just easier, and, they may well have calculated, in the long run cheaper that way. CBS has also just cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a favourite of Mr Trump's critics because of its relentless and incisive mockery of him. Paramount insists that this was purely a business decision, but given the 60 Minutes settlement, the deeper calculation may have been at least as political. It's hardly just the media that is capitulating, often in advance. Several top US law firms such as Paul Weiss have allegedly agreed not to represent Mr Trump's adversaries or to represent his allies pro bono. In Mr Trump's attack on higher education, Harvard University is distinguishing itself by putting up a brave fight in court. However, many other major private universities, most notably Columbia, have given the federal government unprecedented powers over their decision-making. The administration is using legal and administrative investigations especially into 'anti-Semitism', huge funding cuts and freezes, executive orders and visa restrictions on international students as pressure to force the universities to surrender their autonomy to the White House. And both Columbia and possibly Harvard are allegedly about to give the administration hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed penance for non-existent transgressions. Social media, too, is folding like a dinner napkin. Meta, Facebook's parent company, agreed to a $25 million settlement over the suspension of Mr Trump's account after the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection against Congress. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, also donated $1 million to Mr Trump's inauguration fund. The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, has essentially eliminated what had been among the most dynamically critical opinion section in the country regarding Mr Trump, and greatly scaled back negative coverage of him. Needless to say, Mr Bezos's other companies, most notably Blue Origin, enjoy lucrative dealings with the federal government, including a recently approved $2.3 billion military space contract. The blue-ribbon in this cavalcade of cowardice obviously would go to Republican Party lawmakers in Congress, except that they are far more vulnerable to Mr Trump's wrath and less able to fight back than major law firms, huge media organisations and crucial universities. Harvard has said no. So have several important law firms, including Witmer Hale and Perkins Cole. Even after 10 years of dealing with him, the news media still cannot figure out how to cover Mr Trump without being bamboozled and manipulated, but The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and others show no signs of backing down. Historically, Americans hardly lack courage. They have died to defend their Constitution and democratic traditions. They faced extreme, even deadly, police brutality in the fight for civil rights. Some went to prison or fled to other countries rather than fight in the misguided, pointless Vietnam War. They have gone to prison rather than betray their values and principles. But now, with a president clearly acting as a would-be strongman, the caution shown by so many in the US power structure is proving to be his most valuable asset. It's not asking much for them to recover the ability to utter the short, simple and profound word, 'no'.
Middle East Eye
11 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
US envoy says he is working on plan to end Israel's war on Gaza
President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy told families of captives being held by Hamas on Saturday that he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would effectively end the war in Gaza. Steve Witkoff is visiting Israel as its government faces mounting pressure over the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the enclave. In a recording of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, Witkoff is heard saying: "We have a very, very good plan that we're working on collectively with the Israeli government, with Prime Minister Netanyahu ... for the reconstruction of Gaza. That effectively means the end of the war." Witkoff also said that Hamas was prepared to disarm in order to end the war, though the group has repeatedly said it will not relinquish "armed resistance" unless an "independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital" is established.
