Earlier versions of a spending cuts package passed through Congress targeted PEPFAR. But the White House, concerned about defections, agreed to spare the foreign aid program.

The US Senate votes to keep money for the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief from a package of more than $9 billion in cuts going through Congress

President Donald Trump is expected to sign a bill Friday that cancels billions of dollars in spending, including funds for public media and humanitarian relief.

Shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday morning, the Senate passed legislation that would rescind $9 billion in government funding that Congress previously approved. The Rescission Act of 2

The Trump administration agreed to exempt a global AIDS-relief program from spending cuts in the rescissions package.

Senate Republicans reached an agreement with the White House on Tuesday to preserve funding for a flagship global HIV and AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR, backing off a proposed $400 million cut that had drawn sharp opposition from within their own ranks and threatened to derail President Donald Trump’s sweeping package of spending rescissions.

The program known as PEPFAR is one of the most effective and popular U.S. foreign aid projects in history, and the government says it has saved the lives of over 25 million people around the world with HIV.

The Senate voted early Thursday to claw back $9 billion in federal funding for global aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, sending the package requested by President

In his rescissions request to Congress last month, President Donald Trump asked that the hundreds of millions dollars budgeted for the President's Emergency Plans for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, be cancelled.