Thanks to President Trump and the Republicans’ rescissions bill, funding has been canceled for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.* This is cutting funding to hundreds of radio stations in rural areas that rely on them for critical information. Speaking to The New York Times, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski, who opposed the bill, sounded absolutely shocked that Trump and the GOP would harm their own voters so cavalierly. She said this is driven by a “blind allegiance to the president’s desires,” adding that fear of Trump’s anger overrode GOP lawmakers’ concerns for their own constituents. Yet this has been the story on many other fronts too. Will Democrats ever be able to capitalize? We talked to Lynlee Thorne, a Democratic organizer in rural areas as the political director of RuralGroundGame.org. She explains why rural radio is a lifeline, how Trump’s agenda is shafting those areas particularly hard, what rural voters think about him right now, and how Democrats can repair the party’s deep problems with them. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
* This discussion and a subsequent correction misstated that the cuts to CBP funding were in Trump’s big budget bill. In fact, they were in the recent rescissions package passed by Congress, which Murkowski voted against.