(SILVER SPRING, Md.) — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing to lay off more than 1,000 workers as part of the Trump administration’s mandate for agencies to prepare “reductions in force,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The cuts are fueling concerns that NOAA’s ability to deliver lifesaving services, such as weather forecasting, storm warnings, climate monitoring and fishery oversight, will be hampered. The concerns are especially acute as hurricane and disaster season looms.
NOAA was “already significantly understaffed, so this is devastating. This is beyond a s—show,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Ca., the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in an interview with ABC News. “It means we’re going to be less safe. It means there will be all sorts of collateral damage.”
A person familiar with staffing levels at NOAA told ABC News that the agency is already down about 2,000 people since January as a result of the first round of the Trump administration’s cuts, the “Fork in the Road” offer and regular retirements. In January, this source said, staffing was at about 12,000 employees, which is described as average. With an additional 1,000 cuts looming, the agency would be down 25% since the start of the year.
“There is no way to absorb cuts of this magnitude without cutting into these core missions,” Huffman said. “This is not about efficiency and it’s certainly not about waste, fraud and abuse. This is taking programs that people depend on to save lives and emasculating them.”
NOAA’s reduction in force plan is currently in the Department of Commerce and is due to be delivered to the Office of Management and Budget this week, sources familiar said. It’s unclear when exactly the resulting cuts will be announced, but sources said it could be as early as Friday.
“NOAA was required to submit their cut plan today, and they were asked to eliminate entire functions, not just individual personnel. The number of terminations is more than 1,000, and that is on top of the probationary folks who’ve already been let go,” Huffman said. “Our ability to forecast flood conditions and tornadoes is reduced, and in a matter of days, it’s going to be significantly reduced, as we head into fire season, which is almost all year round now in the West.
“Our ability to forecast red flag weather conditions for wildfires is significantly reduced,” he added. “Literally, the people that run these systems are being terminated. The people that run these offices where these programs do this critical work are being terminated.”
Between the already announced and looming cuts, plus the funding battle that could reduce the agency’s budget, a source familiar said NOAA “could be at a breaking point,” adding that amid all the talks of reducing costs, taxpayers only pay 6 cents per day for all of the services provided by the agency.
“More importantly, the services provided by NOAA wouldn’t be as robust or functional — or maybe even exist at all,” the source said.
(WASHINGTON) — Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to pass the House-approved deal to fund the government, heightening the alert for a potential government shutdown at the end of the week.
If a deal isn’t struck to bring over some Democratic support, the government will shut down at the end of the day Friday.
Two days is a long time on Capitol Hill, so there is still plenty of time for a deal to emerge, but Schumer’s statement certainly heats up shutdown fears.
Schumer pointed the finger at Republicans for leaving Democrats out of the funding negotiations.
“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path drafting their continuing resolution without any input any input from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the floor Wednesday.
Unlike in the House, where Republicans can act unilaterally to pass legislation, the Senate needs Democrats to pass a funding bill.
At least 60 votes are needed for a funding bill to clear key procedural votes, called cloture votes, which means at least seven Democrats would be needed to pass any funding bill through the Senate.
Schumer made clear on Wednesday that right now, Democrats won’t provide those votes.
“Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR,” Schumer said.
For several days, Democrats have been grappling behind the scenes about whether to furnish the requisite votes to pass the funding bill approved by House Republicans Tuesday. On the one hand, many Democrats say this bill gives President Donald Trump and Elon Musk unilateral power to continue slashing the federal government. On the other, some Democrats understand that a decision to vote against the bill could likely force an undesirable government shut down.
After days of closed-door meetings and tight-lipped interaction with the press, Schumer said Democrats will instead advocate for a 30-day clean stopgap bill meant to buy more time for appropriators to complete full-year funding bills.
“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer said.
Just because that’s what Democrats want, doesn’t mean it’s a vote Democrats will get.
They are the minority in the Senate, and they do not have control over what bills are brought to the Senate floor for a vote. There’s nothing that Democrats can do to force a vote in the Senate on a 30-day clean stopgap measure, but they may be able to wheel and deal with Republicans to get a vote on it.
With Schumer saying that Democrats are not ready to proceed, the Democrats hold the cards. If they do not furnish the votes to clear this procedural hurdle and get on to the bill, things could be at a stand still, and a shut down could be on the horizon.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are urging their Senate colleagues to vote no on the funding bill they almost unanimously opposed when it passed through the House on Tuesday evening.
“House Democrats are very clear. We’re asking Senate Democrats to vote ‘no’ on this continuing resolution, which is not clean, and it makes cuts across the board,” said Vice Chair Ted Lieu, flanked by five other members of House leadership at a press conference at the Issues Conference at the Lansdowne Resort. Lieu’s comments came before Schumer pushed for a 30-day clean stopgap bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that conversations are “continuing” with Schumer all the way down to rank-and-file Democratic members about keeping the Democratic caucus united against the bill.
“The House Democratic position is crystal clear as evidenced by the strong vote of opposition that we took yesterday on the House floor opposing the Trump-Musk-Johnson reckless Republican spending bill,” Jeffries said.
Late Wednesday, Democratic House leaders called on House Republicans to return from recess to Washington to “immediately” take up a short-term measure that would fund the government through April 11.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A USAID directive to destroy classified documents had been “seriously misapprehended,” Trump administration attorneys wrote in a court filing Wednesday in which they insisted that all records were appropriately handled and “did not violate” federal laws dictating the preservation of government documents.
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union that is suing the Trump administration over its cuts to the federal workforce, asked a federal judge late Tuesday to intervene and prevent the agency from “destroying documents with potential pertinence to this litigation” after a senior USAID official issued guidance to USAID staff ordering the destruction of classified records at its Washington, D.C., headquarters as USAID clears out of its office space.
The guidance urged officials to “shred as many documents first” and to “reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” according to a copy of the message obtained by ABC News.
Justice Department attorneys wrote Wednesday that “trained USAID staff sorted and removed classified documents in order to clear the space formerly occupied by USAID for its new tenant.”
“They were copies of documents from other agencies or derivatively classified documents, where the originally classified document is retained by another government agency and for which there is no need for USAID to retain a copy,” DOJ attorneys wrote.
Trump administration attorneys asserted that “the removed classified documents had nothing to do with” the American Federation of Government Employees’ litigation.
The Trump administration attorneys explained that office space formerly belonging to USAID “is in the process of being decommissioned and prepared for the new tenant,” as ABC News reported Tuesday, and the records needed to be removed from their safes to make room for its new tenants, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Erica Carr, the USAID official who sent the memo ordering the destruction of the documents, wrote in a sworn declaration that “34 employees of USAID, all holding Secret-level or higher clearance, removed outdated and no longer needed derivatively classified documents in classified safes and sensitive compartmentalized information facilities.”
Carr added that most of the records earmarked for destruction remain in burn bags at the agency’s headquarters “where they remain untouched.” She said the documents would not be destroyed until the judge weighs in.
(WASHINGTON) — Environmental Protection Agency staff members across the country have been told by supervisors they are prohibited from communicating with grantee partners they are supposed to supervise and monitor, according to multiple sources inside the EPA and others working directly with the agency.
And without notice, many nonprofit organizations and other EPA grant recipients have found themselves frozen out of accessing their federal funds without notice or explanation.
“I have never experienced anything like this,” said Melissa Bosworth, who runs a small nonprofit organization based out of Denver that had been administering an EPA award approved by Congress last May for tribal, school and local municipalities in the mountain west.
Nonprofit leaders from across the country with EPA grants and contracts describe weeks of a communication blackout. Bosworth said her local contacts at the EPA’s Region 8 office stopped responding within days of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. She and her partnering organization, Montana State University, noted they reached out repeatedly to their local point of contact but got no response.
ABC News reached out to the EPA’s Region 8 office for comment.
Then, at the end of February, she received formal notice that her grant had been terminated. The purpose of the grant was to help cities, tribes and schools in rural Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas gain access to federal funding for projects focused on clean drinking water, disaster preparedness, emissions reduction and food security.
The termination notice, reviewed by ABC News, suggested her contract might have been canceled because of the president’s executive order to shutdown diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“It was about helping fight disparities on behalf of small cities and rural schools,” she said. “So often it is the big universities and big institutions that have the expertise to get funds. I worry the disparity for rural America, tribes and the smallest communities will get worse.”
Bosworth has a son with autism, and her business partner gave birth last month to a baby with severe medical challenges. They both have now been laid off.
“We thought there was a good chance they would try to terminate our contracts, but without any actual communication, we did not have anything formal to fight against,” Bosworth told ABC News. “We did not know what was real, if we could spend money or how to ask questions. I wonder if the ambiguity was part of the strategy.”
While the communication blackout appeared to be sweeping in multiple regional offices and consequential for grant recipients, it did not seem to apply to all EPA staff nationwide.
Even before receiving the termination notice, Bosworth said she struggled to access her EPA grant. She and dozens of other nonprofit leaders from California to Tennessee said they have been frozen out of the government payment system off and on, without explanation or notice.
In an EPA regional office in Philadelphia, staff members described being told in meetings with EPA political appointees based in Washington, D.C., that they are still not permitted to process new awards or even communicate with grant award recipients as late as last week. The edict came despite recent court rulings blocking the administration’s proposed federal funding freeze.
And when local EPA staffers pressed their regional bosses about the communications blackout, those bosses told them to comply because they did not want to risk doing anything to jeopardize their jobs, according to multiple sources.
As part of his work advising agencies to reduce spending and cut staff, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have promised transparency and increased oversight over how taxpayer dollars are going out the door. Experts who work in grant management as well as former EPA officials argue the lack of communication will result in the opposite — less transparency and no oversight.
“The preponderance of evidence is that many program officers are under some kind of gag order, making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs,” one former EPA official under the Biden administration told ABC News. “If you care about abuse in federal spending, this makes no sense and is absurdly hypocritical.”
Typically, EPA staff works closely with nonprofit organizations and local government partners who have been awarded grants, conducting oversight and answering and asking questions about how the government money is being spent.
Rebecca Kaduru, president at Institute for Sustainable Communities, based in Nashville, said she has lost access to the payment system at least once a week for the last month. Her organization had two EPA grants until last month, when one was terminated.
The effective gag order has left nonprofit leaders, local governments and tribes stunned and unsure about how to move forward in spending the EPA grants they were awarded.
Kaduru explained the strain of chaos of the last few months.
“Do I fire staff because I can’t pay payroll? But if I do, I am not compliant with the grant that says I have to have staff and keep our website,” she said on the phone. “It is very high risk for nonprofits.”
On Monday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency had decided to terminate over 400 contracts with nonprofit organizations around the country.
“Working hand-in-hand with DOGE to rein in wasteful federal spending, EPA has saved more than $2 billion in taxpayer money,” Zeldin wrote in a statement. “It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars.”
The EPA did not respond to questions about which contracts exactly were canceled or why, but it appeared environmental justice and community change grants were hit particularly hard in this week’s cuts.
Over 100 organizations received community change grants last year, totaling more than $1.6 billion, as part of environmental justice work funded through the bipartisan Infrastructure Reduction Act in 2022. The grants focus on helping low-income, disadvantaged and often rural communities fight air and water pollution, create green spaces and invest in renewable energy and disaster preparation.
On Tuesday, Zeldin also sent an internal memo to all regional administrators saying that the agency planned to eliminate all environmental justice positions and offices immediately.
“With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit all Americans,” the memo, which ABC News reviewed, said.
Many nonprofit leaders who received termination notices in the last few weeks expressed frustration that they were not given the chance to explain their work and said the savings, in their view, were overblown. The news comes as agency leaders were also told to draft plans with a deadline of this week for further staffing reductions.
In terms of savings, in a recent post, Zeldin claimed he saved taxpayers over $12 million by canceling the contract with Kaduru’s organization, for example. However, in actuality, it was an $8 million grant, with over half of it already spent.
Speaking to a joint session of Congress last week, Trump said his administration wants to focus on pollutants, saying, “Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.”
Both current career EPA staff as well as nonprofit partners said the cuts and the closure of environmental justice offices will make this work harder.
“I think it is a shame they are not looking into what we do — asking what we actually do,” Kaduru said. “It is a shame because those environmental justice programs in particular are really are good programs, and I think there is an unfortunate misunderstanding about what environmental justice [is].”
(WASHINGTON) — The deadline has quietly passed on Attorney General Pam Bondi delivering a report to President Donald Trump on whether any leftover Biden administration policies infringe on Americans’ right to bear arms. It came just days after Democratic leaders sent her a letter suggesting there is “plainly no need for any new plan of action.”
Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 7 after making campaign promises to gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”
The president instructed Bondi to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies” and determine if any of them violate the Second Amendment.
“The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty. It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation,” Trump’s executive order reads. “Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”
The 30-day mark for Bondi to report back to Trump through his domestic policy director would have been this past Sunday.
Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law, told ABC News the broadly written executive order “signals to me that this isn’t a top priority” for the Trump administration.
“Obviously, if there were things that were on the administration’s radar as possibly violating the Second Amendment or violating the rights of gun owners in some way, they could have started to roll those back right away and wouldn’t have needed to take this intermediate step of issuing a directive to the Attorney General to figure out what those were,” Willinger said. “That suggests that there’s nothing out there that the administration viewed as so pressing that they have to get rid of it right away.”
‘Perfectly consistent with the 2nd Amendment’
After Trump signed the executive order, NRA Executive Vice President Doug Hamlin released a statement praising the president’s move.
“Promises made to law-abiding gun owners are being kept by President Donald J. Trump,” Hamlin said. “NRA members were instrumental, turning out in record numbers to secure his victory, and he is proving worthy of their votes, faith and confidence in his first days in office.”
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, also released a statement, saying, “After a long four years, law-abiding gun owners no longer have to worry about being the target of an anti-gun radical administration. NRA looks forward to the advances and restoration of our rights that will come from President Trump’s respect for the Constitution.”
It is unclear whether or not Bondi met the deadline on delivering the report — nothing had been publicly released as of Wednesday. When ABC News asked this week about the Bondi’s pending plan of action, Department of Justice officials said they would check but had no immediate information on the report’s status. The White House also did not respond to ABC News’ inquiry about Bondi’s pending report.
Earlier this month, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Georgia, ranking member of the House subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, sent Bondi a letter.
“We are determined to protect our communities against lethal gun crime in a manner consistent with the Second Amendment,” they wrote.
The letter said that if Bondi carried out her examination “objectively and in good faith” she’ll find that actions taken by the previous administration to fight gun violence are “perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.”
“There is plainly no need for any new plan of action to, in the words of the executive order, ‘protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,'” the letter said.
In his executive order, Trump instructed Bondi that in addition to reviewing all presidential actions taken on gun control from January 2021 to January 2025, he wanted her to review rules about firearms and federal firearm licensing implemented by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Trump specifically asked Bondi to review the ATF’s “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” — also called the “zero tolerance policy” — implemented in 2021 under Biden and former Attorney General Merrick Garland to identify federal firearms dealers who violate the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Under the policy, firearms dealers had their licenses revoked for willfully transferring firearms to prohibited people, failing to conduct the required background checks, falsifying records and failing to respond to a gun trace request. The policy prompted several lawsuits from gun dealers who argued their licenses were revoked over minor clerical errors.
Raskin and McBath claimed that in the three years since the policy was implemented, about 0.3% of the nation’s roughly 130,000 federal gun dealers had their licenses revoked.
“Through this policy, ATF has enforced the Gun Control Act as passed by Congress and had revoked the licenses of a tiny fraction of gun dealers who willfully violated the law,” Raskin and McBath said in their letter to Bondi. “The ATF’s enhanced regulatory policy has not prevented a single American who may lawfully possess a firearm from exercising his or her Second Amendment rights.”
The ATF reported that in fiscal year 2023, the agency found 1,531 violations after conducting 8,689 firearm compliance inspections. The inspections, according to the ATF, prompted 667 warning letters and 170 revocations.
“Law-abiding gun dealers remain in business throughout the country. In fact, there remain more gun dealers than there are locations of Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Subway, and Chick-fil-A combined,” Raskin and McBath said in their letter.
The Democratic lawmakers asked Bondi to respond to their letter by the end of the business day on Monday, explaining what standards she will use to determine if policies taken by the Biden administration violate the Second Amendment and how she will ensure her plan of action “does not increase the risk of violent crime, including gun deaths.”
Majority of Americans favor stronger gun laws
A Pew Research Center poll released in July 2024 found that 61% of respondents agreed that it is too easy to legally obtain a gun and 58% favored stricter gun laws.
“We know that the vast majority of Americans — including gun owners and Trump voters — support basic safety laws that crack down on crime and keep all communities safe. These policies are in no way inconsistent with the Second Amendment,” Kris Brown, president of the gun-safety advocacy group Brady United, said in a statement after Trump signed the executive order.
Brown noted that policies under Biden included expanding background checks for gun buyers and “cracking down on rogue gun traffickers.”
“They must be continued if this President actually wants to achieve any of his campaign promises around reducing crime, cracking down on drug traffickers, and reducing the flow of trafficked weapons across the southern border,” Brown said.
In the aftermath of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major piece of federal gun reform to clear both chambers in 30 years.
The law enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 by giving authorities up to 10 business days to review the juvenile and mental health records of young gun purchasers, and made it unlawful for someone to purchase a gun for someone who would fail a background check. This legislation closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” preventing individuals convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing a gun.
The law included $750 million to help states implement “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, as well as other violence prevention programs. It also provided funding for a variety of programs aimed at shoring up the nation’s mental health apparatus and securing schools.
Willinger told ABC News that “short of asking Congress to appeal it,” there is little the Trump administration can do about the law.
“It’s possible that the administration could do stuff to hold up that money,” Willinger said. “I don’t know what wiggle room they have to do that.”
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Wednesday entered an emergency order barring the Trump administration from implementing major parts of its executive order that sought to target the law firm Perkins Coie over its representation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
District Judge Beryl Howell, ruling from the bench, found that attorneys for Perkins Coie had met the bar for her to enter a temporary restraining order — determining they would suffer immediate and irreparable harm if provisions of the order targeting the law firm’s work with government contractors as well as restrictions on their attorney’s access to government buildings were implemented.
In an extraordinary hearing in which the Justice Department put forward Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, to present its arguments, Howell repeatedly questioned the logic and legality surrounding the order — which she said had extraordinary breadth and whose language was unlike any other order she’d ever read.
“Regardless of whether the President dislikes the firm’s clients … issuing an executive order targeting the firm based on the President’s dislike of the political positions of the firm’s clients, or the firm’s litigation positions is retaliatory and runs head on into the wall of First Amendment protection,” Howell said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Education’s mass layoffs on Tuesday affected some 1,315 employees — including civil servants around the country who are now left wondering who will advocate for those they served.
The cuts — which account for a nearly 50% reduction at the department — impacted every part of the Department of Education, according to senior education department officials.
But a source familiar tells ABC News that most of the reduction in force affected the Offices for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. The civil servants who worked for OCR and FSA are tasked with investigating discrimination within America’s schools and helping the nation’s students achieve higher education.
OCR and FSA staff in almost all regional offices were eliminated, according to the source, who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity. Therefore, the cuts to nearly half the federal agency will “absolutely affect” the department’s operations, according to the source familiar with the reductions who works at the department.
“I don’t know how [disabled students] will be serviced,” said another Department of Education employee who didn’t want their name used for this story.
The employee’s office is a law enforcement agency charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws for students based on race, gender and disability, among other characteristics.
By law, the office reviews complaints regarding the nation’s most vulnerable students, including Section 504, which helps ensure that students with disabilities have equal access to educational opportunities. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has ensured that programs that are critical to students with disabilities will not be cut.
Shuttering this employee’s office — and other regional offices — shrinks the number of civil servants around the country who ensure disability services are provided to these students.
The regional Department of Education employee, who received the reduction in force email on Tuesday, told ABC News their civil rights office was abolished.
“All those disabled kids, which is the bulk of our docket, will not be helped,” the employee said.
However, McMahon said the agency will still administer those statutory programs that students from disadvantaged backgrounds rely on. In an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on Tuesday night, McMahon suggested the “good” employees who administer the statutorily mandated functions will not be harmed in the process.
“What we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat,” McMahon said.
“It’s a humanitarian thing to a lot of the folks that are there, they’re out of a job, but we wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that is going to fall through the cracks,” she said.
Impacted staff will be placed on administrative leave starting March 21, a statement from the Education Department on Tuesday said. They will receive full pay and benefits through June 9, senior officials added.
The statement also said that the DOE will “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”
But the news of the cuts on Tuesday was demoralizing to the Department of Education employee who is out of a job after more than two decades at the agency.
“It’s upsetting,” said the employee. “It doesn’t make sense — it’s upside-down world.”
On Wednesday, Trump said he felt “very badly” about the massive cuts at the DOE, but quickly claimed, without evidence, that many of its employees weren’t going to work or doing a good job.
“Now, Department of Education, maybe more so than any other place, has a lot of people that can be cut,” he said.
He praised McMahon, saying that she is doing a “very good job.”
“We have a dream, the dream is we’re going to move the Department of Education, we’re going to move education into the states,” he said.
The Trump administration has urged McMahon to return power to the states, but education is already a local-level issue. The Education Department’s responsibility is to administer money, conduct critical research projects and oversee discrimination complaints.
“We all know that local education agencies and state education agencies — they control about 95% of what happens in public education,” the Department of Education employee said. “The federal government doesn’t control curriculum, doesn’t control hiring, firing of teachers, doesn’t control standardized testing, etc. We don’t control anything other than trying to help people, give folks loans so they can maybe help their family and educate themselves and go to college and then make sure that kids that are disabled get the services that the laws say that they’re supposed to.”
The civil servant said that they — along with the rest of their office — are now shell shocked.
“There’s no rules in a hostile takeover,” the employee said. “They’re treating the government like it’s a business, and it’s not and that’s what’s unfortunate.”
Photo by Kremlin Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump‘s “trust” in Russia’s Vladimir Putin now faces a major test as the world waits for Moscow to respond to a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the U.S. and accepted by Ukraine.
Trump said after Tuesday’s breakthrough in Saudi Arabia that he would speak with Putin soon, though declined to comment on Wednesday when asked if anything had been scheduled.
“I’ve gotten some positive messages, but a positive message means nothing,” he said from the Oval Office, where he was peppered with question on what comes next. “This is a very serious situation.”
The Kremlin has cautiously said it is reviewing the proposal and it will not be pushed into anything.
The Trump administration placed significant pressure on Ukraine in recent weeks in stopping military aid and pausing some intelligence sharing — both resumed only after Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire on Tuesday.
U.S. officials, including Trump himself, have also set limited expectations amid broader negotiations on Ukraine’s borders and expressly ruled out NATO membership for the Eastern European ally.
Meanwhile, they’ve not publicly demanded any concessions from Putin — and it’s not clear how far Trump is willing to go in pressuring Russia to accept the 30-day ceasefire.
“We can, but I hope it’s not going to be necessary,” Trump said on Wednesday when asked about that very issue.
“There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he added without divulging any specifics. “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
Trump last Friday threatened sanctions on Russia until it reached an agreement with Ukraine. The Biden administration imposed hundreds of sanctions on Moscow over the course of the conflict.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier on Wednesday noted that Russia is already “pretty sanctioned up” as he was asked what pressure the administration would be ready to apply.
“As far as I am aware, the United States has not provided armaments to Russia,” Rubio said as he largely sidestepped the inquiry. “The United States is not providing assistance to Russia. Every single sanction that has been imposed on Russia remains in place … So my point being is that there’s been no steps taken to relieve any of these things, these things continue to be in place.”
“We don’t think it’s constructive for me to stand here today and begin to issue threats about what we’re going to do if Russia says no, let’s hope they say yes,” Rubio said.
Trump has also often praised his relationship with Putin, saying he knows him “very well” and declining to call him a dictator despite using the term to describe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn’t,” Trump said of the Russian leader in mid-February. “I trust him on this subject. I think he’d like to see something happen.”
Just last week, in an interview with Fox News, Trump claimed Putin was “more generous” and easier to work with than Ukraine.
Now, the administration is saying the ball is in Russia’s court after Ukraine agreed to an immediate, monthlong stoppage in hostilities should Moscow do the same.
“We’ll see what their response is,” Rubio said. “If their response is yes, then we know we’ve made real progress and there’s a real chance of peace. If their response is no, it will be highly unfortunate and then it’ll make their intentions clear.”
ABC News’ Patrick Reevell and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
A federal judge spent Wednesday morning grilling a Department of Justice lawyer about the legality of the Pentagon’s transgender service member ban, repeatedly suggesting the policy relies on a flawed understanding of gender dysphoria.
The Pentagon’s new policy to separate transgender U.S. service members from the military is facing its first legal test as U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes considers issuing an order blocking the policy from taking effect.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Reyes said that the government “egregiously misquoted” and “cherry picked” scientific studies to incorrectly assert that transgender soldiers decrease the readiness and lethality of the military.
While Judge Reyes has not yet issued a formal ruling, she repeatedly suggested that the policy unfairly targets a class of people that the Trump administration dislikes.
“The question in this case is whether the military under the equal protection rights afforded to every American under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, if the military … can do that and targeting a specific medical issue that impacts a specific group that the administration disfavors,” she said.
Judge Reyes also pressed DOJ attorney Jason Manion to identify any other similar medical issues that has prompted a similar response from the Department of Defense.
“Identify for me a single other time in recent history where the military has excluded a group of people for having a disqualifying issue, because I can’t think of one,” Judge Reyes asked.
Manion answered that the military applied a similar policy for soldiers who declined to take the COVID-19 vaccine, prompting an incredulous Judge Reyes to ask anyone in the gallery to raise their hand if they had gotten COVID.
“Lots of people raise their hands, right?” Judge Reyes said. “All different kinds of people … so it wasn’t just aimed at getting rid of one group of people.”
The plaintiffs have argued that the DOD’s policy — which was finalized in late February and bans most transgender service members from serving with some exceptions — violates the Fifth Amendment’s right to equal protection and causes irreparable harm by denigrating transgender soldiers, disrupting unit cohesion and weakening the military.
“This case is a test of the core democratic principle that makes our country worth defending — that every person is of equal dignity and worth and is entitled to equal protection of the laws,” the plaintiffs argued.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have defended the policy by arguing the court should not intervene in military decision-making, describing gender dysphoria as a condition that causes “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of human functioning.”
“DoD has been particularly cautious about service by individuals with mental health conditions, given the unique mental and emotional stresses of military service,” government lawyers argued.
During a hearing last month, Judge Reyes — a Biden appointee who was the first LGBT judge on the D.C. District Court — signaled deep skepticism with the government’s claim that transgender service members lessen the military’s lethality or readiness, though she declined to intervene until the DOD finalized their policy.
When the policy was formalized last month, she quickly ordered the government to clarify key tenets of their policy, including identifying what “mental health constraint” other than gender dysphoria that conflicts with the military’s standards of “honesty, humility, and integrity.”
She also raised doubts about the government’s claims about the exceptions to the policy, flagging on the court’s docket a recent DOD social media post that “transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”
The hearing comes amid an increasingly hostile relationship between Judge Reyes and the Department of Justice.
After Judge Reyes excoriated a DOJ lawyer last month during a hearing in the case, the Department of Justice filed a complaint with an appeals judge about what they alleged was Reyes’ “hostile and egregious misconduct.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle alleged that Reyes demonstrated a political bias, compromised the dignity of the proceedings and inappropriately questioned a DOJ attorney about his religious beliefs.
“At minimum, this matter warrants further investigation to determine whether these incidents represent a pattern of misconduct that requires more significant remedial measures,” Mizelle wrote.
The actress, known for playing Max on Stranger Things, is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the fourth Tom HollandSpider-Man film, Deadline reports. ABC Audio reached out to Sony, but they had no comment.
While it has not been announced who Sink will portray, the outlet suggests she will play a significant role in the film. It is hinted she could be introduced as the X-Men character Jean Grey, though the outlet does not rule out other options from the Spider-Man universe. Jean Grey has previously been brought to the screen by actresses Famke Janssen and Sophie Turner.
Destin Daniel Cretton will direct the fourth Spider-Man film, taking over for Jon Watts, who helmed the first three. Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige will serve as producers on the project. The sequel comes from both Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios.
Plot details for the fourth MCU Spider-Man film are being kept under wraps.
In the third film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker opened the multiverse and allowed other versions of the Spider-Man character, played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, to appear alongside him. This also caused his identity to be erased from his own universe, making every person who knew and loved him forget he exists.
Holland is currently filming Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey. Production on Spider-Man 4 is expected to begin after he finishes wrapping Nolan’s epic.
Spider-Man 4 will swing into movie theaters on July 31, 2026.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
