Adversaries attempting to recruit laid-off government workers as spies: Intelligence
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(WASHINGTON) — Foreign adversaries including Russia and China are targeting government workers who have been laid off amid the Trump administration’s attempt to downsize to recruit as spies, according to new intelligence.
“New intelligence indicates agents from China, Russia, and other countries have set their sights on recently fired probationary workers, or those with security clearances, hoping to obtain valuable information about U.S. critical infrastructure or national security interests,” according to intelligence distributed by the U.S. Coast Guard to its workforce.
“These foreign intelligence officers actively search LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, and Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu — known as RedNote — for potential sources,” it added. “In at least one instance, a foreign agent was instructed to create a company profile on LinkedIn, post a job listing, and actively track federal employees who indicated they were ‘open for work.'”
The Coast Guard did not develop the intelligence but rather distributed it as a warning to Coast Guard officials around the world.
“Posting about your frustration, status as a recently fired employee, or any other OPSEC sensitive information could make you a target,” the notice said. “Our adversaries have successfully preyed on upset and disgruntled government workers during past furloughs.”
Military members can be attractive targets, according to the intelligence, because of the information they may have access to.
The Coast Guard said a telltale sign of foreign agents attempting to recruit former government officials is something that is too good to be true, noting that it probably is.
“Your contact might overly praise or focus on your skills/experience, especially if your government affiliation is known,” it said in the notice, adding that a sense for urgency might be an indicator as well.
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(WASHINGTON) — In dramatic fashion, House Republicans passed a bill to fund the government through the end of September 2025 — a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who has previously relied on Democrats for bipartisan support to avert a shutdown.
The House voted 217-213 to pass the spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, days before some funding runs out.
Following the House vote — which saw just a single Republican defection — Johnson thanked President Donald Trump, who helped convince GOP holdouts to support the bill.
“We are united in our mission to deliver the America first agenda,” Johnson said in a post on X.
The spending bill now heads to the Senate — where it requires 60 votes to pass, and its fate is uncertain.
The House’s approval has left Senate Democrats divided on the “stark” decision ahead.
What will Senate Democrats do?
“There are really only two options: One is vote for a pretty bad CR. Or the other is to vote for a potentially even worse shutdown,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, following the House vote. “So it’s a very tough choice,”
Democrats met for two hours Tuesday with no consensus on how they planned to handle the vote on the bill — and the fissure is palpable.
Some Democrats are clearly leaning toward casting a painful vote to oppose the House package and effectively shut down the government.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., branded the House-passed CR a “shutdown bill” that Republicans will bear responsibility for in a floor speech Tuesday night.
“A budget is a reflection of our values,” Warren said on the floor. “This proposal makes crystal clear where Republicans’ values lie. After months of bipartisan talks, they’re walking away from the negotiating table and offering a non-starter House bill that forces us to the brink of a full government shutdown. The Republican shutdown playbook is dangerous, and it will hurt working families.”
Though she did not expressly state how she plans to vote on the package, she said House Democrats were right to oppose the measure, and said the Senate should follow suit.
“Democrats in the House have showed us they are united,” Warren said, when asked if Senate Democrats should be united in their opposition to the House package. “Why should it be different in the Senate?”
Separately, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested Tuesday that Senate Democrats should oppose the measure.
“The strong House Democratic vote in opposition to this reckless Republican spending bill speaks for itself,” Jeffries said.
Senate Dem: Vote ‘like a bad dream’
Pointing to the “stark” choice Senate Democrats face, King said he has concerns that the “uncharted” territory of a shutdown under the new Trump administration that has already laid off federal employees.
“A shutdown is uncharted territory when you’ve got an administration that at least in some ways probably would welcome a shutdown because that would give the president almost unlimited power: deciding who is essential who is not unessential, folding up agencies,” King said. “So that is the dilemma that is being discussed.”
The House has left town for the week after passing their bill. If Democrats in the Senate want to avoid a shut down on Friday night, they’ll have to furnish at least eight votes to do it, with Republican Sen. Rand Paul already stating he’ll oppose the package.
It’s unclear what route they’ll ultimately choose but some members are clearly plagued by the choice.
“They made a bunch of changes, I want to see what they’re changing,” Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo. said.
“I’m not happy … It’s one of those things once we go through it, it’s going to feel like a bad dream. I’ve got to go through it.”
House vote: 1 Republican ‘No,’ 1 Democratic ‘Yes’
In the House vote, Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie voted no — despite pressure from the president in the form of a primary threat. In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump suggested that the defection warranted mounting a primary campaign against Massie.
To pass the measure Tuesday afternoon, Johnson relied on some GOP support from Republicans who had never voted in favor of a continuing resolution.
Rep. Jared Golden was the only Democrat who voted with Republicans. All other Democrats voted against the measure — potentially previewing the posture of Senate Democrats.
“This CR is not perfect, but a shutdown would be worse. Even a brief shutdown would introduce even more chaos and uncertainty at a time when our country can ill-afford it,” Golden posted on X.
He also slammed Democrats for using what he called “messaging gimmicks” about the bill.
The bill funds the government at current levels through Sept. 30, 2025.
What’s in the bill?
The 99-page bill decreases spending overall from last year’s funding levels, but increases spending for the military by about $6 billion.
While there is an additional $6 billion for veterans’ health care, non-defense spending is about $13 billion lower than fiscal year 2024 levels.
The legislation leaves out emergency funding for disasters, but provides a boost in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation operations.
It also increases funding for W.I.C. by about $500 million, a program that provides free groceries to low-income women and children.
Now that the House has dispatched its bill to the Senate, it’s not yet clear how it will fare as it will require significant bipartisan support to pass the upper chamber.
Vote was major test of Johnson’s leadership
The spending bill was a major test for Johnson. In the absence of Democratic support, Johnson could only afford to lose one Republican vote before a second defection killed the bill.
In a statement following the vote, Johnson said Republicans “stood for the American people” and blasted Democrats who he said “decided to double down on partisan politics.”
Johnson had crucial allies in Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who lobbied House Republicans to shore up support ahead of the vote.
In the final hours before the Tuesday vote, Trump worked the phones, reaching out to the House Republicans who remained undecided.
On Tuesday morning, Vance attended a closed-door House conference meeting where he urged House Republicans to get on board with the vote and emphasized the importance of not shutting the government down, members said to ABC News.
Government funding is set to lapse at the end of the day on Friday, March 14.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is launching a “Save Our Schools” campaign on Wednesday against President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s attempt to dismantle the Department of Education.
“The federal government has invested in our public schools,” Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News. “Taking that away from our kids so that a handful of billionaires can be even richer is just plain ugly, and I will fight it with everything I’ve got.”
Warren suggested she is working with students, teachers, parents and unions to “sound the alarm” nationwide.
“My starting point with this campaign is that I know the power of telling stories and the power it brings to organize people into the fight. We need numbers to win, and this is how we start,” Warren said.
In a short video obtained by ABC News that Warren is posting to her roughly 20 million social media followers Wednesday morning, Warren says she is launching an investigation into reported plans to replace Department of Education call centers with chatbots. ABC News has not independently confirmed these reports.
Warren said that through a combination of federal investigations, oversight, storytelling and even lawsuits, she will work with the community, including lawmakers in Congress, to do everything she can to defend public education. Warren did not provide further details on how she plans to challenge the administration through federal oversight and lawsuits.
A former special education teacher, Warren said she opposes the Trump administration’s agency overhaul because she said it may result in fired teachers and increased class sizes, adding that programs for students with special needs will “disappear.” However, the Trump administration has vowed to keep statutory funding, such as the programs for students with special needs.
Trump said those services for students with disabilities, such as those protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, will be rehomed in other departments, including the Department of Health and Human Services, which is undergoing massive layoffs itself.
“They think that the American people are stupid [and] will be fooled by slapping a different title on the door and that somehow our kids will get the help that they’re entitled to,” Warren told ABC News.
“No one is fooled and certainly not the kids who need that help,” she added.
The Trump administration has said it is returning education to the states in dismantling the federal department and that students will be better served by their state departments.
The campaign is also personal for Warren. In the video obtained by ABC News, Warren said she has seen with her own eyes what the Department of Education does for special needs families and that she is doing everything she can to “fight back.”
Warren said she was inspired by her second grade teacher to join the education ranks.
“Whenever someone asked about my future, I would stand a little taller and say: ‘I’m going to be a teacher,'” Warren recalled. “It guided my entire life.”
Last month, Trump signed an executive order that aims to gut the Department of Education. It directs McMahon to close the department using all necessary steps permitted under the law. Still, eliminating the department would require an act from Congress because it was created by Congress.
The campaign comes in the wake of the department cutting nearly half its workforce last month. Hundreds of employees in the Federal Student Aid Office were let go, which Warren said could have “dire consequences” on the tens of millions of student loan borrowers who rely on the department’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to achieve higher education. Trump has said student loans will now be handled by the Small Business Administration.
“The Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of parents, students, and borrowers who rely on a functioning federal student aid system to lower education costs,” Warren and a group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter urging McMahon to reinstate the fired federal employees.
The FSA’s operations have already been affected, according to a source familiar. The federal student loan website was down briefly less than 24 hours after the agency cuts. Fired IT employees were called frantically to join an hourslong troubleshooting call to restore the website for millions of borrowers, according to the source.
As part of Warren’s campaign launch, the senator said she will also highlight the real-world impact on educators, students and families through a series of story collections. She said she is encouraging community members to share submissions on how public education has influenced their lives and what it means to them. Warren told ABC News she did a similar campaign with federal employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this year.
However, Warren’s investigations and federal oversight could be hampered by Democrats’ position in Washington.
“Democrats are in the minority in the House and the Senate, and obviously we don’t have the White House, but not having as much power as we want does not mean having no power,” Warren told ABC News. “We’ve still got a lot we can do, and this combination of investigations, oversight, storytelling and lawsuits is that we can combine more power and push back hard, and it’s already yielded some results.”
Meanwhile, the administration’s quest to abolish the department has already triggered a legal battle by a coalition of states and education and civil rights groups, including a group of teachers unions and public school districts in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.
The senator said she is hopeful every person who cares about education joins her campaign.
“We’ve got to fight for an America where it’s not just the kids of billionaires who get a good education but it’s every kid in every community who gets a great education,” she said. “This fight is our fight.”
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(WASHINGTON) — As markets nosedived and foreign allies recoiled after the unveiling of sweeping tariffs to be imposed by the U.S., President Donald Trump said he was looking toward the future impact of his levies.
In the case of manufacturing growth, a key administration interest in imposing a 10% levy on all trade partners and significantly higher tariffs on certain nations such as China, Trump said it could take years.
“Let’s say it’s a two-year process,” Trump said when asked by a reporter on Thursday how long it will take to get the industry where he wants to see it.
“You know, they start a plant, and they’re big plants We’re giving them approval to also, in many cases, to build the electric facility with it,” he continued. “So, you have electric generation and the plant, and they’re big plants. Now, the good news is a lot of money for them, and they can build them fast, but they’re still very big plants. I’d always say it would take a year-and-a-half to two years.”
Meanwhile, Trump brushed off concerns about the short-term pain economists expect to be passed on to American consumers.
“It’s to be expected where this is a patient that was very sick,” Trump said, comparing his economic policies to surgery.
“It’s going to be a booming country, a very booming country,” the president said.
Trump’s tariff plan, announced in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, includes a baseline 10% tariff against all U.S. trade partners and steeper, more targeted levies against nations that place duties on U.S. imports.
Jay Timmons, the chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, released a statement on Wednesday night criticizing the rollout.
“Needless to say, today’s announcement was complicated, and manufacturers are scrambling to determine the exact implications for their operations,” Timmons said.
Timmons, who oversees the country’s largest manufacturing trade association, said the administration should instead make inputs that manufacturers use to produce products in the U.S. tariff-free and try to negotiate “zero-for-zero” tariffs for American-made goods in foreign markets.
“The stakes for manufacturers could not be higher,” he said. “Many manufacturers in the United States already operate with thin margins,” he added, and “the high costs of new tariffs threaten investment, jobs, supply chains and, in turn, America’s ability to outcompete other nations and lead as the preeminent manufacturing superpower.”
Fallout continued on Friday to Trump’s tariff plan. China hit back with retaliatory tariffs of their own: a 34% levy on all U.S. goods. Markets slipped further in early trading, after recording their worst day since June 2020 on Thursday.
Trump on Thursday signaled an openness to negotiation, despite White House officials throughout the day denying any chance of bargaining on the tariffs.
Then on Friday morning, Trump appeared to only double down, writing on his social media site: “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”
