Klobuchar says she was ‘appalled’ by Trump and Zelenskyy shouting match
ABC News
Sen. Amy Klobuchar backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday after the volatile White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday, saying she “just couldn’t believe” how Friday’s meeting unfolded..
The Minnesota Democrat told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos she was “appalled by what happened in the Oval Office,” and thinks the fallout of the exchange “is not in President Trump’s best interest.”
“We stand with our friends, not our enemies,” Klobuchar said. “The great country of America goes into negotiations with strength, not surrender.”
Klobuchar said she — along with other senators from both sides of the aisle — had been with Zelenskyy before he left for the White House, and said he had been in “great spirits.”
Watching video of the explosive meeting, Klobuchar said she “just couldn’t believe it.”
“It was Vice President Vance, particularly, who was on the offense, who was berating President Zelenskyy, who simply was trying to explain that … we needed a strong security commitment from all of our allies to be able to have a lasting peace, which is something that President Trump says that he wants to see.”
Klobuchar speculated on how the meeting so quickly became caustic when asked by Stephanopoulos if it had been an ambush.
“Either it was an ambush setup, or they just got so hotheaded, the president and the vice president, that what happened happened,” she said. “It’s the chaos of this presidency.”
Meanwhile, British ambassador to the U.S. Lord Peter Mandelson said the U.S.-Ukraine relationship needs a “reset” after the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting.
“I think that Ukraine should be the first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow,” Mandelson told Stephanopoulos. “And then, as part of the unfolding plan for this negotiation, the Europeans and perhaps some other countries too, have got to consider how they are going to put forces on the ground to play their part in providing enduring security and deterrence for Ukraine.”
European leaders were meeting in London on Sunday to discuss a UK-French peace plan they’re working on with Zelenskyy that they plan to present to the U.S.
Mandelson said it will be important to “create the circumstances in which enough pressure is brought on” to “force [Russia] to the negotiating table.”
“And then we will see the true color of their intentions and what they’re prepared to agree and to stand by,” he said. “But if it goes wrong, we must be there on Ukraine’s side, continuing to arm them to make sure that they have the capacity to withstand any further Russian attack with ourselves lining up behind them in that eventuality.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday released an assistance guide for those affected by the wildfires in the Los Angeles area.
FEMA said its disaster assistance can “jumpstart” the recovery process.
“FEMA disaster assistance is intended to meet the basic needs of your household for uninsured or underinsured necessary expenses and serious needs to jumpstart your recovery. If you have insurance and are applying for FEMA disaster assistance, you must file a claim with your insurance company first,” a release from the agency says. “By law, FEMA cannot duplicate benefits for losses covered by insurance. If insurance does not cover all your damage, you may be eligible for federal assistance.”
FEMA assistance can come in the form of many options, such as money for essential items like food, water, baby formula, breast feeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. Those affected by the fires also can apply for further relief funds, which could cover a stay in hotels if a home was impacted and residents are unable to return, according to the agency.
The White House said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell is in Los Angeles and, according to a FEMA official, has been in regular contact with state and local leaders and is surveying the damage.
President Joe Biden is set to meet with senior White House and administration officials Thursday at 4:30 p.m. regarding the wildfires and the federal response. On Wednesday, the president declared a “Major Disaster Declaration” to aid in the recovery.
“Yesterday, President Biden approved a Major Disaster declaration for California, allowing impacted communities and survivors to immediately access funds and resources to get through the coming days and begin to recover from the devastation,” the White House said in a fact sheet earlier Thursday. “The Administration is in regular contact with state and local officials, including Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, their teams, and other state and local officials throughout the impacted areas.”
To learn more about the types of assistance available, the agency says, the public can visit: fema.gov/assistance/individual/program.
(WASHINGTON) — Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, two leading LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Trump administration over the president’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
The lawsuit, which was obtained by ABC News, was filed in the U.S. District Court-Western District of Washington on behalf of six active duty transgender service members, a transgender person seeking to enlist in the military, as well as Seattle human rights organization Gender Justice League.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
U.S. Navy Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, who according to the lawsuit has been serving in the military for 19 years, criticized the ban in a statement, saying that the measure is “not about readiness or cohesion, and it is certainly not about merit.”
“It is about exclusion and betrayal, purposely targeting those of us who volunteered to serve, simply for having the courage and integrity to live our truth,” Shilling said.
The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28, rescinding Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly in the military based on their gender identity.
The order directed the Department of Defense to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender service members and stated that “expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order continued.
“The assertion that transgender service members like myself are inherently untrustworthy or lack honor is an insult to all who have dedicated their lives to defending this country,” Shilling said in the statement.
Trump issued a similar order during his first term in office that was challenged in the courts and now HRC and Lambda Legal have joined other leading advocacy groups in challenging the order in the courts.
GLAD Law and The National Center for Lesbian Rights also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of six transgender service members on Jan. 28.
ABC News has reached out to the Trump administration but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — On his first day back in office on Monday, President Trump issued an executive order declaring that the U.S. government would only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth, limit the definition of a “male” or “female” to their reproductive cells and potentially withhold federal funding from programs that acknowledge transgender people or “gender ideology.”
Medical and legal experts say the executive order rejects the reality of sexual and gender diversity, and are concerned about the implications it will have for intersex, nonbinary and transgender Americans.
Trump’s executive order declares sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female” and states that “gender identity” cannot be included in the definition of “sex,” and that “sex” and “gender” cannot be used interchangeably.
The executive order declares there are only “two sexes, male and female” and defines a “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” The order defines “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
“This one is shockingly out of step with what we know from science,” Kellan E. Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at health services network Whitman-Walker, told ABC News in an interview.
Baker noted that we’re accustomed to thinking of sex “as a fairly simple, binary, immutable thing,” but said science tells us it’s not that simple.
“Sex is not a singular, binary, immutable trait,” he said. “It is, in fact, a complex cluster of multiple traits, some of which align with each other and sometimes some of which do not align with each other.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”
Intersex populations are not noted in the executive order. Intersex people are those with variations in their sex traits such as genitals, chromosomes, hormones or reproductive organs, and differ from expectations of male and female anatomy.
The term intersex may also be categorized as “differences of sex development.” Not all conditions are noticeable at birth, according to MedlinePlus, a resource from the National Library of Medicine and therefore, may not be known until later in life.
“There are multiple different sex traits that make up this concept that we think of as sex,” Baker said. “They include, for example, chromosomes. They also include external genitalia, gonads, hormones.”
Baker also notes that sexual differentiation via reproductive cells doesn’t take place until about six weeks after conception, contrary to the definition stated by the executive order.
The order states that the definitions of sex are a response to “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex.”
“Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept,” the order reads.
Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer at LGBTQ civil rights group Lambda Legal, told ABC News her organization is preparing for legal action against the executive order. She argues the order could force agencies to no longer recognize transgender or intersex people by restricting funding that promote “gender ideology.”
The order states that gender ideology “is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
It goes further to state, “Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity.”
“The current structure of our society is that there is federal funding throughout many of our essential systems, and so we don’t know, but it is certainly possible that the Trump administration is going to attempt to exclude or mistreat members of our community in many, many of these settings,” Pizer said.
The executive order also revokes a 2022 Biden administration rule in which the U.S. Department of State made it possible for people applying for American passports to select “X” to mark their gender.
The rule announced by then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the Transgender Day of Visibility and was designed to accommodate nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming individuals.
Lambda Legal was behind the effort to implement an “X” gender marker for passports. Their client at the time, Dana Zzyym, had been denied a passport because they were intersex and could not accurately pick between male or female on the application form, according to the organization.
“We’ll continue to stand with Dana and all intersex, nonbinary, and transgender people to defend their right to identity documents that accurately identify who they are, and their equal protection rights against targeting and exclusion by their own government,” it said in a statement posted to its website on Monday.
