Trump threatens Russia with sanctions, tariffs until ceasefire, peace deal with Ukraine

(WASHINGTON) — After the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) fired its probationary workers as part of the Trump administration’s government-wide layoffs Thursday, the agency moved on to fire short-term employees Thursday night with most of the remaining staff expected to be fired Friday, according to a lawsuit.

A group of federal unions that is suing the Trump administration over its dismantling of the agency alleged in a court filing Thursday that the newly installed acting director, Russell Vought, plans to fire over 95% of the agency’s workforce as soon as Friday.

The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit are asking a federal judge to impose a temporary order to block the dismantling the CFPB, which they argue could have sweeping consequences for American consumers.

The firings, part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to slash the federal government, would gut the 1,700-employee consumer watchdog agency, according to three CFPB employees who spoke to ABC News on the condition that they not to be identified out of fear of retribution.

“All term employees were fired tonight, and it looks like the rest of us will be fired tomorrow but for cause rather than via a [reduction in force] which means no severance I think,” one agency lawyer wrote in a message to ABC News.

“3 of my 4 teammates were canned,” another employee wrote. “Just me and my supervisor left, the only permanent employees.”

Employees were told not to work or go into the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters this week, and several employees said their credentials did not allow access into satellite offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Atlanta on Thursday, two of the employees said.

The employees said the firings will leave all Americans more vulnerable to fraud.

“I’m worried about everybody. What about the people who use our complaints to get their loans straightened out or their bank accounts unfrozen? They’ve already tried calling the company and gotten nowhere,” an employee wrote. “Who will help them now? Will the companies get bold and screw over their customers without our robust oversight?”

“It’s going to be a nightmare,” the employee said.

“I’m concerned for every consumer out there,” another employee told ABC News. “There’s a lot of fintech companies and I don’t know what’s going to happen if we don’t have purview over that.”

The employee said she was also concerned about X CEO Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, having access to the CFPB’s massive database, which contains information about companies that Musk’s planned “X Money” online payment service would compete with. The agency would also be responsible for regulating the X Money platform.

The employee also said she was alarmed at the way CFPB employees were being characterized by the Trump administration.

“A lot of people are actively giving back and serving” the community, she said of her fellow CFPB employees. “Some donate from our paychecks — donations for nonprofits, volunteering, donating, giving back to our community, fostering dogs, they’re involved in a lot of causes. I work with remarkable people who never stop serving.”

“Me personally, this was my dream job in college and I can’t even believe i got in, it was so competitive,” wrote the employee, who said she is in her fourth year at the agency after having worked in the private sector, so her pension will not vest. “It’s the dream job, what’s next? I’m too young to retire, I believe in the work we did, everyone I work with felt the same.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(BOISE, Idaho) — The Idaho House has passed a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider its 2015 decision on same-sex marriage equality.

The court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision established the right to same-sex marriage under the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The resolution comes after Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’s expressed interest in revisiting the Obergefell decision in his concurring opinion on the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned the federal right to abortion.

Thomas, who issued a dissenting opinion in 2015 against same-sex marriage, wrote in 2022, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

Lawrence v. Texas overturned a law criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct and Griswold v. Connecticut overturned state restrictions on the use of contraceptives.

The Fourteenth Amendment states: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Respect for Marriage Law signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022 guarantees the federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages and acts as a limited remedy if the Supreme Court were to overrule the Obergefell precedent. The law does not enshrine a right to same-sex or interracial marriage nationwide, but instead requires all states to recognize these marriages if legally certified in the past or in places where they were legally performed.

Same-sex couples across the country have long had concerns about the fate of legalized gay and lesbian marriages.

In Rochester, New York, the city’s First Universalist Church asked themselves what they could do to affirm LGBTQ identities as a religious organization amid a rise in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. So, they organized a “Big Gay Wedding” to officiate the marriage ceremonies of queer couples en masse with the support of volunteer photographers, florists and others from the community.

“We wanted to be able to provide the service for our community, to be able to celebrate queer love and celebrate queer joy, to have some time for folks to get married who might not be able to otherwise afford a marriage in a congregation, and we want it to be like this big and joyous and beautiful celebration that really brings our community together,” the church’s Reverend Lane-Mairead Campbell previously told ABC News.

Events like Campbell’s “Big Gay Wedding” have begun to pop up around the country, helping residents to make precautionary changes.

“We still have the ability to do this regardless of what happens legally in the months and years ahead,” said Campbell. “We understand that queer and trans people have been here and have existed in times when oppression has been great and where we have had to hide, but we have never ceased to exist … In my denomination, we’ve been doing queer weddings since well before it was legal, and we will continue to do them well after.”

The Idaho House argues that “marriage as an institution has been recognized as the union of one man and one woman for more than two thousand years, and within common law, the basis of the United States’ Anglo-American legal tradition, for more than 800 years.”

The resolution states that the Supreme Court decision is “in complete contravention of their own state constitutions and the will of their voters, thus undermining the civil liberties of those states’ residents and voters.”

A 2024 Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans continue to believe that marriage between same-sex couples should be legal, and 64% say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable.

Sarah Warbelow, the vice president for legal affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, criticized the Idaho effort.

“This cruel action by Idaho Republicans amounts to nothing more than shouting at the wind,” said Warbelow. “A majority of Americans of all political affiliations support marriage equality. Resolutions are not laws, and state legislatures lack the power to dismantle marriage equality. They cannot touch the guaranteed federal protections for same-sex couples under the Respect for Marriage Act.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration doesn’t plan to take action that forces TikTok to immediately go dark for U.S. users on Sunday, an administration official told ABC News.

TikTok could still proactively choose to shut itself down that day — a move intended to send a clear message to the 170 million people it says use the app each month about the wide-ranging impact of the ban.

But the Biden administration is now signaling it won’t enforce the law that goes into effect one day before the president leaves office.

“Our position on this has been clear: TikTok should continue to operate under American ownership. Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement,” a White House official told ABC News in a statement.

The way the law works, TikTok isn’t required to go dark on Jan. 19. It’s the app stores and internet hosting services that could be on the hook if they keep providing their services to TikTok. The law gives the Justice Department the power to pursue fines of up to $5,000 per user, an enormous potential liability given the app’s popularity.

So even if President Joe Biden — or President-elect Donald Trump — say they won’t enforce the ban, tech companies will still be liable as long as TikTok is owned by ByteDance. Apple, Google and Oracle have so far not responded to or declined to comment to ABC News about what they will do on Sunday.

And the reality is that both presidents have limited options to put the ban on hold.

The law states the president can grant a one-time extension delaying the ban for up to 90 days under three very specific conditions: TikTok must show it’s on a “path to executing” a divesture from its Chinese owner; there must be “evidence of significant progress” toward a sale; and that progress must be sealed with “relevant binding legal agreements.”

At this point, there is no sign that any of those conditions have been met.

A group of Democrats in the House and Senate introduced a bill on Tuesday that would have given TikTok’s parent company ByteDance an additional 270 days to sell or divest but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited national security concerns in objecting to a request by sponsor Sen. Ed Markey for the Senate to unanimously approve the extension on Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday that it was “stunning” that Cotton blocked Markey’s effort.

“It’s clear that more time is needed,” Schumer said. “We will continue to work to find a responsible solution to keeping TikTok going, protect American livelihoods, and protect against Communist Chinese Communist Party surveillance, we must and can do all three.”

Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was part of a massive, $95 billion foreign aid package passed by Congress in April of last year.

Biden and some congressional leaders argued that the ultimatum against TikTok was necessary because of security concerns about ByteDance and its connections to the Chinese government.

Trump originally tried to ban TikTok in his first term, but has since reversed course, vowing during the 2024 presidential campaign to “save” the app. In a news conference in December, the president-elect said he had a “warm spot in my heart” for the app and gave it credit for helping him win over young voters.

Later in December, he asked the Supreme Court to delay the deadline so that he could work out a “negotiated resolution” that would save the app.

Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last month and he plans to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday, sources told ABC News.

On Wednesday, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, told Fox News that Trump was looking for options to “preserve” TikTok.

Waltz was asked about a Washington Post report that Trump was considering an executive order to suspend enforcement of the law. Sources familiar with the discussions confirmed to ABC News that Trump’s team has been talking about a plan, including a possible executive order, to keep TikTok available.

“If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear: Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use and has been great for his campaign and getting his message out. But number two, he’s going to protect their data,” Waltz said.

“He’s a deal maker,” Waltz added. “I don’t want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we’re going to create this space to put that deal in place.”

A majority of justices on the Supreme Court last week appeared inclined to uphold the law. During oral arguments, concerns about intelligence threats posed by China and potential future weaponization of the app seemed to override concerns about potential infringement on free speech rights.

“Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent of TikTok is doing intelligence work?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked the company’s attorney.

-ABC News’ Rachel Scott and Mariam Khan contributed to this report

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.