FEMA officials fired after Musk claims they paid to house migrants in ‘luxury’ NYC hotels
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(NEW YORK) — After Elon Musk complained about federal spending for housing migrants in what he called “luxury hotels” housing in New York City, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday four FEMA officials who it said made the payments had been fired.
The firings include the agency’s chief financial officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist, DHS said in a statement that labeled them “deep state activists.”
The money came from the FEMA grant program.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people,” the DHS statement said.
Further details about the firings were not immediately released.
Musk claimed on X that his Department of Government Efficiency “discovered” that FEMA over $50 million to ‘luxury” hotels for “migrant housing,” and doing so violated the president’s executive order calling for an immigration crackdown.
A short time later, Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton posted on X that payments to those luxury hotels had been suspended as of Saturday and “personnel will be held accountable.”
Trump echoed Musk’s criticism of FEMA and continued to bash it in a social media post on Truth Social Tuesday.
He said that the agency is being investigated due to allegedly mismanaging money and not helping North Carolina; and that the agency should be “TERMINATED.”
ABC News’ Justin Gomez, Oren Oppenheim and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is going to order that the flags at the Capitol, which are at half-staff due to the death of former President Jimmy Carter, be raised for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration — defying a White House proclamation.
Leaving a GOP press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson nodded his head when asked if he would be raising the flags next week. He later confirmed his decision in a post on X.
“On January 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump. The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter,” Johnson posted.
“We are less than a week away now from President Donald J. Trump taking the oath of office, and everyone is excited about that inauguration ceremony and all the events that go along with it,” Johnson said during his weekly presser. “There’s a lot going on, and we are continuing to work. Already, as you’ve heard, Congress has gotten a head start on implementing the ‘America First’ agenda.”
The U.S. Code, written by Congress, says that the American flag “shall be flown” at half-staff for 30 days upon the death of a president or former president.
Trump has publicly fumed about the flags possibly not being raised.
“Because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half-mast. Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social earlier this month.
However, this would not be the first time the flags have flown at half-staff during a presidential inauguration. Former President Richard Nixon’s 1973 inauguration occurred within the 30-day mourning period that followed the death of President Harry Truman, leading the flags to be flown at half-staff.
Earlier this month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the White House would not be reevaluating the decision to keep the flags at half-staff during the inauguration. ABC News reached out to the White House for comment following Johnson’s statement.
Republican governors, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, have already announced that the flags in their states will be raised on Inauguration Day.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle gave director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard more than a half-dozen chances to withdraw her past support of Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of government secrets, in her confirmation hearing Thursday, but she didn’t take them.
Gabbard has in the past called the former NSA contractor a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.
On Thursday, she has repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”
“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.
Instead, Gabbard repeated a canned response that his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.
“Edward Snowden broke the law. I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it,” she said.
But she added he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”
Bennet concluded with an impassioned call to vote her down.
“Can’t we do better than …. someone who can’t answer whether Snowden is a traitor five times?” … “I’m questioning her judgment.”
Republican Sen. James Lankford presented her with another opportunity to clarify her position: “Was Edward Snowden a traitor?”
Again, Gabbard equivocated.
She did back off her support of a pardon. In an exchange with GOP Sen. Susan Collins, a key vote on the panel, she said the role of DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.
“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”
And moments later, Republican Sen. Todd Young, a potential swing vote in the committee, asked Gabbard, “did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?”
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans defended the Trump administration’s sweeping revamp of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) led by Elon Musk. But some lawmakers downplayed the billionaire’s power over the president.
“In terms of any decisions made, those are made by the president or the secretary,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told ABC News on Tuesday. “If Musk wants to make recommendations, wants to go and say, you know, ‘We ought to cancel this, we ought to cancel that,’ that’s fine.”
Hawley dismissed Musk’s framing that he has more authority, calling it “a form of self-promotion” and saying the efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, are more of an audit.
Other lawmakers defended the administration’s decision to gut a congressionally appropriated agency. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said it was a long time coming.
“This idea that people are concerned in these agencies, there’s a lot of great people that work there, but we’ve gone astray, I think a lot of this spending across the world, the American people are tired of it,” he said.
Elon Musk called the USAID “hopeless,” and said he was “in the process” of “shutting [it] down” — which he said President Donald Trump supports.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk wrote on X.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told ABC News’ Rachel Scott on Tuesday, “My message to my Democratic friends and to the tofu-eating ‘wokerati’ at USAID is, ‘I hear your question, but you need to call somebody who cares.”
A week ago, there were lingering questions on Capitol Hill about whether a handful of Republicans would tank the president’s most controversial nominees or if any Republicans would raise concerns about the sweeping changes across federal agencies, but these questions have since quieted.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he doesn’t have any concerns about Musk’s role in the federal government, saying that Musk reminds him of a “strategist.”
“He is throwing out big ideas. And if anybody thinks that all of these big ideas are going to be implemented to conclusion, they don’t understand the process of disruption,” Tillis said. “Everybody is acting like Congress doesn’t exist anymore. Many of the things he’s thinking about will require Congressional approval to actually structurally change them.”
But when asked why the changes wouldn’t then go through Congress, Tillis called that the “old way of doing things.”
“We’ve got oversight. If it goes too far, I’ll be the first person to step up — he went too far.”
Democrats pounced, continuing to sound the alarm and arguing that it’s only a matter of time until congressional Republicans and Musk are at loggerheads.
“There’s going to be a contest here of who’s really in charge,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said. “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, the idea that you can go back to last year’s appropriations and just shut it down cold, without any recourse, is wrong.”
“Elon Musk’s role is not only unprecedented, it is unconscionable for him to be exercising the kind of influence and power that he is with his conflicts of interest and his financial benefits flowing to him from the kind of destructive impact,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “It’s not disruptive, it is destructive.”
In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor Monday evening, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called DOGE’s actions “flatly illegal” and raised questions about whether the U.S. truly believes in the rule of law.
“I’ve got agencies I don’t like … agencies that I think are spending too much money or too little money. Do you know what I do about that? I introduce a bill to change that because I believe in the American system of government,” Schatz said.
While speaking on the floor, Schatz got passionate, raising his voice and pounding his fist on the lectern as he expressed frustration about the situation unfolding. He also suggested that the move to unilaterally act without notifying Congress, in violation of congressional appropriation, was unAmerican.
Schatz questioned why assessments of efficacy could not be made while aid work continues.
“People are dying now,” he emphasized, arguing that changes could be made “while you keep the agency open.”
“What they did is they stormed into the offices of a federal building, sent everybody home, broke into the secure conference facilities, broke into the SCIFs, locked people out of their emails. Does that sound like the United States of America” Schatz added, painting a picture of what occurred at the USAID offices over the weekend. “It really honestly does not sound like the United States of America to me. These people were not elected.”
Schatz’s speech came after the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, blocked an effort by Coons that asserted the belief that USAID is “essential for advancing the national security interests of the United States.”
“I’m supportive of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves United States national security interests,” Risch said.
In a fiery press conference Monday, Senate Democrats said they were “pulling the fire alarm” to warn about the dangers posed by DOGE and Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payments system.
“Before our very eyes, an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,” Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said.
