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(WASHNGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he plans to sign an order to pay “all” employees at the Department of Homeland Security amid the record-long agency shutdown.

“Help is on the way for our Brave and Patriotic Public Servants who have continued to work hard, and do their part to protect and defend our Country,” Trump wrote in a post to his social media platform.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — A group of Senate Democrats are demanding more information about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s finances and investments following a report — which the Pentagon demanded be retracted — that he may have tried to invest in defense stocks before the war in Iran began roughly five weeks ago.

“If this report is accurate, it would appear to represent an appalling effort to profit off of your knowledge of the President’s plans for war,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Tammy Duckworth, Jeff Merkley and Gary Peters wrote in a letter to Hegseth — and provided exclusively to ABC News — on Wednesday night. “This would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement — and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way.”

The Financial Times reported earlier this week that a broker for Hegseth at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock — an equity fund — and tried to make a multimillion-dollar investment into a fund with defense stocks weeks before the Iran war.

The investment did not go ahead because it was not yet available for Morgan Stanley clients, the Financial Times reported — adding that it’s not clear whether Hegseth’s broker found another defense fund to invest in.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the Financial Times’ report.

When reached by ABC News, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock declined to comment on the Financial Times report

In a post on X on Monday, Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell dismissed the report calling it “entirely false and fabricated” and demanded a retraction from the Financial Times.

Still, the Democratic senators, led by Armed Services Committee member Warren, said in their letter that if the report turns out to be accurate, it would be a “serious breach of the public’s trust” and in violation of the ethics agreement he signed ahead of his confirmation as secretary of defense.

“The American people deserve leaders they can trust to put national security ahead of their own financial self-interest,” the senators wrote to Hegseth.

Hegseth is prohibited, under the Department of Defense’s standards of conduct, from owning stock in 10 major industry-specific corporations including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Boeing, RTX Corporation and L3Harris, which are part of the fund that the Financial Times article claims Hegseth’s broker attempted to purchase.

Hegseth does not have any major holdings in defense companies, according to his most recent financial disclosure reviewed by ABC News.

“Since this was a multi-million dollar investment in a sector-specific fund, your agreement appears to indicate that your broker would have needed your approval or that you did not intend to meet the commitments you made in your ethics agreement,” the senators wrote. 

The senators have asked Hegseth to respond to a number of questions about the Financial Times report.

They ask Hegseth to say whether he shared any information with his broker about pending military action or whether he directed his broker to invest in any defense related funds, including BlackRock as the Financial Times report suggests, ahead of the Iran war. They also ask what instructions Hegseth has given his broker to try to avoid conflict of interests and they ask for an accounting of defense stocks owned and sold by Hegseth and his wife.

In his statement, Parnell said that Hegseth and the Department of Defense “remain unwavering in their commitment to the highest standards of ethics and strict adherence to all applicable laws and regulations.”

The senators say that getting answers to their questions will help them to “understand where there may be gaps in current department practices and policies to prevent conflicts of interest.”

House Democrats are also looking into the allegations made about Hegseth in the Financial Times report. 

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced Tuesday that he’d launch an investigation into the matter.

Republicans have not been publicly commenting on Financial Times report. ABC News has reached out to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker for comment about Democrats’ calls for an investigation, but did not receive a response.

ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Sen. Jeff Merkley is one of the co-signers of the letter.

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(WASHINGTON) —  Millions of dollars tied to artificial intelligence are pouring into the 2026 midterms.

Interest groups funded in part by AI industry leaders are split on how the government should oversee AI — and that’s already having an impact on political ads, some experts told ABC News.

“It’s sort of an open question as to what regulation is going to look like,” University of Rochester professor David Primo told ABC News. “The stakes are really high because once a regulatory system gets entrenched, it’s really hard to change it.”

An AI-related political group, Innovation Council Action, tied to two of President Donald Trump’s advisors, announced on Sunday that it would spend at least $100 million, The New York Times reported.

The donations associated with the AI sector go beyond party lines. Federal Election Commission filings show that key industry players are pouring money into committees supporting both Democrats and Republicans, with certain groups criticizing candidates who have expressed support for new AI-related laws and others doing the opposite.

“Companies have always tried to shape regulations, and they’ve always tried to shape them in their favor. What we’re seeing now, though, is that the big companies are not united,” Primo said.

With AI’s presence being increasingly felt, some politicians are calling on their colleagues not to accept money from the burgeoning industry.

“Their money will end up being toxic anyway,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted on social media. “People are catching on.”

1 industry, different political priorities

In February, Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, announced it would give $20 million to an organization called Public First Action, explaining that it agreed with most Americans that not enough was being done to regulate AI and that the technology comes with “considerable risks.”

Public First Action spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez said that they have already run advertisements thanking Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Josh Gottheimer D-N.J., for their AI records.

Gottheimer introduced a bill in February that would provide tax credits for companies training workers on AI development.

It is not yet clear who else has contributed to Public First Action, which describes itself as a “pro-regulation” group.

“Public First Action doesn’t disclose its donors,” Rivera-Rodriguez told ABC News. “To date, the project has raised around $50 million. The aligned super PACs will publicly disclose their contributors in their upcoming FEC reports.”

One of Anthropic’s main competitors, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, has voiced support for nationwide “common-sense rules of the road,” but has cautioned that the U.S. should not fall behind other countries.

In an economic blueprint released last year, OpenAI compared AI’s ascent to the rise of the car, pointing out that while the motor vehicle “industry’s growth was stunted by regulation” in the United Kingdom, the U.S. “took a very different approach,” causing the American automobile sector to grow.

FEC disclosures show that OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife each contributed $12.5 million to a group called Leading the Future, which describes itself as supporting candidates who “champion policies that harness the economic benefits of AI and reject attempts to hinder American innovation.”

Committees with links to Leading the Future have already made millions worth of contributions, filings indicate.

One group spent more than $500,000 each in support of North Carolina Republican House candidate Laurie Buckhout and Texas Republican House candidate Jessica Steinmann. The same committee spent more than $700,000 supporting Texas Republican House candidate Chris Gober.

Buckhout, Steinmann and Gober each won their March primaries. All three candidates include similar statements on their websites, mentioning that China cannot overcome the U.S. in the AI race.

Millions spent in Manhattan alone

Nowhere is the role of AI more front and center than in New York’s 12th Congressional District.

Numerous Democrats are running in this Manhattan race, but Assemblyman and former ​​Palantir employee Alex Bores, who co-sponsored New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, is the candidate who has largely had AI’s focus.

Bores’ website says that he hopes to hold large AI companies accountable and would work to create national safety and privacy requirements.

A PAC associated with Anthropic-supported Public First Action is supporting Bores, Rivera-Rodriguez confirmed. Leading the Future is not.

“Alex Bores is a hypocrite pushing policies that would undermine America’s ability to lead the world in AI innovation and job creation,” Leading the Future spokesperson Jessie Hunt told ABC News.

As of March 16, a super PAC tied to Leading the Future had already spent more than $2.2 million opposing Bores, FEC filings show.

“There’s a few Trump megadonors that made billions of dollars from AI that don’t think there should be any regulation of AI whatsoever,” Bores told ABC News following a recent forum.

With so much AI-related money flowing into races like NY-12 around the country, Primo said these funds are not being spent secretly or for bribery. Instead, the cash is being used to convince voters of who they should elect.

“This might actually be democracy functioning really well,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is petitioning the Department of Education to stop its transfer of federal student aid services to the Department of Treasury in her latest effort to halt the dismantling of the agency.

Thursday marks the one year anniversary of Warren’s “Save Our Schools” campaign — her wide-scale investigation against President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s attempts to shutter the Education Department.

“Since Day One, the Trump administration has raised costs for borrowers and tried to undermine our public schools,” Warren said in a statement first obtained by ABC News. “I’ve fought back every step of the way, and I’ll keep fighting to protect our students, teachers, and families,” she said.

Warren told ABC News last year that her campaign would use a combination of federal investigations and oversight to do everything she can to fight back and defend public education.

Warren’s campaign has since triggered the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to probe the department dismantling, an agency watchdog investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency’s alleged “infiltration” of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s sensitive data systems, and other legal actions opposing the Trump administration’s overhaul of the agency.

Warren and top Democratic senators on education-related committees sent a letter to McMahon and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, urging the officials to immediately “rescind” the interagency partnership reached in March.

“The Trump Administration continues to move forward with illegal Interagency Agreements (IAAs) dismantling the Education Department (ED),” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, arguing “This latest illegal scheme from the Trump Administration threatens to trap student loan borrowers, students, and families in chaos and bureaucracy, all while American taxpayers are left to foot the bill for Treasury to administer programs that ED can and should administer itself, likely costing more money and burying borrowers and families in unnecessary red tape.”

The most recent agreement includes sending the nearly $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio to Treasury through a multi-phase process to procure the financial aid programs.

“With the student loan portfolio approaching $1.7 trillion and defaults nearing 25 percent, now is the time for a hard reset in how the federal government provides and services student loans,” Department of Education Press Secretary for Higher Education Ellen Keast wrote in a statement to ABC News. “We are confident that our partnership with the Treasury, an experienced and proven fiduciary, will strengthen program administration and better serve American students, borrowers, and taxpayers,” Keast wrote.

The Democratic lawmakers accuse the agencies of breaking the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, which funds the administration of federal student aid and student loan servicing through the Department of Education. They argue that the myriad changes to federal agencies — including the massive reductions in workforce at Education and Treasury — will also result in harming millions of Americans who rely on the expertise of federal student aid civil servants. In 2025, the Trump administration cut over 40% of Education Department employees and nearly a quarter of Treasury staffers, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Their letter said moving statutory student aid programs, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Pell Grants, is not only illegal but likely to throw the financial aid system into disarray.

McMahon has previously stressed that she is not defunding federal programs and will continue to perform all of the agency’s “statutory duties.” A senior Department of Education official said the agency has broad authority to move the services. Interagency agreements are a frequently used tool that Education has engaged in with other partner agencies more than 200 times over the years, the senior department official said on a call with reporters.

Meanwhile, the Education Department has phased out Biden-era student loan repayment plans, saying it is to streamline the process impacting more than 40 million borrowers. Under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act signed into law by Trump last summer, a new income-driven repayment plan will be made available for borrowers on July 1. The Democratic lawmakers fear that student loan borrowers are now left with limited options and guidance while increasing the number of borrowers in default and “economic distress,” according to the letter.

However, Andrew Gillen of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom noted the move should be welcome news for Americans.

“This will benefit students by streamlining the aid application and student loan repayment processes and save taxpayers money by reducing losses on student loans,” Gillen wrote in a statement to ABC News.

Student loan advocates, like Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at Protect Borrowers, decried the interagency agreement. Bañez called the announcement irresponsible and reckless, demanding Congress guarantee that the Treasury Department is equipped with the appropriate staff to support borrowers.

“For too long, borrowers have been failed at every turn — they don’t deserve to be failed again by an agency that isn’t ready to protect them,” she wrote in a statement to ABC News.

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