LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump lost in court in his latest attack on the media but continued his retaliation against CNN anyway.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Just to review here, a federal judge said last week that the president likely violated the Constitution when he banned three news outlets from the White House. Trump explicitly said he was banning them over coverage he did not like. This limited coverage last week of a speech at the United Nations and the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The news organizations returned to the White House after the court ruling, but Trump then blocked close-up camera coverage over the weekend as he traveled to a football game in Tennessee and a golf tournament in Illinois.
FADEL: NPR's senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson is here to talk it through. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So President Trump chose to attack news outlets at a time when it would seem he would want all eyes on him. Was this a political miscalculation by the president?
LIASSON: Well, it could be a miscalculation because he missed out on some coverage he would have liked to have had. On the White House press passes, it looks like the White House exploited a loophole in the judge's order because while White House press passes were restored at the judge's order, CNN was prevented from boarding Air Force One to cover the president's trip to see a college football game in Tennessee. So far, the other networks, including NPR, are standing in solidarity with CNN, but they're going to be making decisions about the press pool on a case-by-case basis.
FADEL: Politically speaking, does a fight with the major broadcast networks benefit Trump in some way?
LIASSON: Well, that's the big question. Picking fights with the media might be popular with his base, but it's similar to another big question that hangs over Trump, which is why is he taking stands that are opposed to majority public opinion on issue after issue? The public wants AI regulated - Donald Trump says he doesn't want regulations. The public is skeptical about data centers - he said the only people who oppose them are people who want to be, quote, "poor and backwards." He's, of course, for tariffs and the war in Iran - two very, very unpopular policies. And all of this does not seem to be adding up to a coherent strategy to help his party win the midterms.
FADEL: So this fight is also distracting from other things Trump is doing, things that could directly impact people's lives far more than a fight with the media. Over the weekend, the administration canceled $810 million in spending Congress already approved. What happened there?
LIASSON: On Friday, the White House announced what's known as a pocket recission. That is a spending cut that the president makes without Congress' approval. The canceled funds, according to the White House, include over $550 million from programs that, quote, "provide services to refugees" and "other noncitizens." Later this week, the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits - that's food assistance - that were in Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill will kick in.
The pocket recission has been called illegal by the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, and also by Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins. She's in a tight reelection race in Maine. In a post on X, she said the cuts were intended to, quote, "undermine Congress' constitutional power of the purse."
Now, regardless of how that separation-of-powers dispute is resolved, these cuts, added to higher prices at the pump and the grocery stores, give voters more reason to feel economically stressed and angry, and that's not good for the incumbent party just before an election.
FADEL: NPR's Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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