Sen. Thom Tillis gave a warning to the Trump administration from the Senate floor, Wednesday afternoon, ahead of an expected marathon voting session over funding to NPR, PBS and foreign aid.

Senators plan to vote overnight, Wednesday, to withdraw $9 billion in earmarked federal funding. But Tillis said he knows what about $2 billion is for: NPR and PBS. The rest of the money involves cuts to foreign aid, but exactly what will be affected is unknown.

From the Senate floor, Tillis said, he has assurances from the White House that certain programs will be protected if he votes yes on the bill.

“If my confidence is betrayed here, then I won’t vote for another rescissions bill unless we have... line item programming,” Tillis said.

He went a step forward reminding White House officials that government funding expires in September and Republicans need seven Democrats to vote with them to prevent a government shutdown. Tillis said if Trump’s aides fail to keep their promises on this bill, Democrats won’t trust them on larger ones like that.

“I’m trying to protect this administration from itself, in terms of future decisions that will make our job more difficult to govern here,” Tillis said. “I want the president to be successful with these rescission packages. I want the people advising him to know how they execute this will determine whether or not President (Donald) Trump is ultimately successful.”

Congress has until Friday to decide on the bill or the money will be distributed against Trump’s wishes.

Even a procedural measure to move the bill to the floor, which requires a vote, came with consternation and Vice President JD Vance had to break a tie between those who approved the measure and those who opposed it.

Tillis said Wednesday afternoon if the bill stays as it was Tuesday night, he will vote yes on the bill. But he acknowledges that amendments could be offered before the vote that could worsen the bill.

Cuts to NPR, PBS

The House introduced the bill, in June, at Trump’s request.

Threatening the likes of Big Bird has garnered the most attention.

“People ask me why I wouldn’t vote on an amendment to cut (PBS and NPR) out,” Tillis said. “I believe those organizations have drifted over time. We probably should, at some point, provide funding to them, but I’m not going to fight that part of rescission. At least we know exactly what it is.”

Paul Hunton, president of WUNC, and David Crabtree, CEO and general manager of PBS North Carolina, both told McClatchy in May that these cuts could have major ramifications on North Carolina stations.

North Carolina is home to 12 PBS television stations and nine NPR stations, that McClatchy reporters appear on regularly.

Voting blindly

Tillis said members need to figure out if they’re OK with the cuts in this bill. And, he said, he suspects that members might regret their votes in a few weeks when they learn about trickle-down effects, like they did with, “the so-called Big Beautiful Bill,” he said.

Tillis voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, saying that it would affect more than 600,000 Medicaid recipients in North Carolina, but there were enough Republican votes to pass the measure without him. The bill, however, caused Tillis and Trump to butt heads and Tillis to end his reelection campaign.

Rep. Majorie Taylor Green, a Republican from Georgia, made headlines after admitting she didn’t know about aspects of the bill she voted to support.

On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, introduced a bill to reverse parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that made cuts to Medicaid. That move drew criticism from some of his colleagues who noted he voted to make these cuts only two weeks ago.

Wednesday night’s session marks senators’ second vote-a-rama in 16 days. This is an official name for a marathon voting session where a series of amendments are introduced to a bill in the Senate and voted on back-to-back, often leading to long, overnight sessions.

Tillis reminded senators in his speech that there’s only been one successful rescission package in modern history, in 1992. Tillis said that bill included a very detailed list of specific funding that was to be cut. He said that allowed senators to voice their concerns and vote against specific line items before voting for the final package.

“In an ideal world, that success in 1992, would have instructed the rescission package that we have before us today,” Tillis said. “The reality is that we don’t have those details.”

And he said, they have “no earthly idea what specific cuts will occur.”

But he said he will put his trust behind Trump and the Office of Management and Budget that they will act responsibly.

Foreign aid concerns

On the Senate floor, Tillis mentioned two programs he wants protected.

He said he’s particularly focused on the Ukraine Support Program. He said he believes if the $200 million in funding there is cut, it would harm non-military aid the U.S. is providing to Ukraine.

“Now I’ve been told as late as yesterday that that will not be one of the cuts,” Tillis said. “I’m willing to move forward and vote on this bill with the assumption that that comes to pass. However, if we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds; that advisers to the president decide they’re going to cut them anyway, there will be a reckoning to that.”

He’s also concerned for cuts that would impact lives.

He also mentioned a trip he took to a Sudanese refugee camp in Kenya in the past few months. He said what stood out to him in that visit was the American signs marking a maternal ward where children had distended stomachs and flies crawling all over them and mothers were sick.

But he said they were thankful to have that support.

“They were thankful for those conditions that we would find abominable in this country,” Tillis said. “They were willing to give the United States credit to give them those conditions. Those are the kinds of programs that I am imploring the Trump administration to not touch while given the broad authority that they’ll get with this bill.”

Building trust

Talking to reporters after his floor speech, Tillis acknowledged that $9 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money the Senate is typically dealing with.

On the floor, he reminded his colleagues, and Trump why it’s “so important to get this rescission bill right.”

“If confidences are betrayed with a $9 billion bill, do you think you’ll have support for wide-open trust us for future, larger rescission,” Tillis asked. “I’m willing to go through this exercise and hopefully we can trust the administration to not go down the path that we’ve been assured they won’t when they’ve been given this broad ability to make about $7 billion in cuts. “

And he reminded them of the upcoming vote in September.

“If I’m a Democrat and you’re trying to get me to vote and get to a 60-vote threshold to fund the government and you’ve just betrayed a prior agreement in a prior appropriation, what is the likelihood they will do that,” Tillis asked. “If I see any rescission that are betraying a confidence that we as U.S. senators made to get the federal government funded, that will be a problem in the next rescission bill.”

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