Category: Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services began to receive notices of mass layoffs on Tuesday, days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 people would lose their jobs, including employees working on tobacco use, mental health and workplace safety.

The layoffs are expected to impact 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration and 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — nearly one-fifth of the workforce at both public health divisions, which fall under HHS.

In total, and including roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS will fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a fourth of its workforce.

The sweeping changes drew criticism from Robert Califf, who served two stints as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” Califf wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday.

“I believe that history will see this as a huge mistake,” he added. “I will be glad if I’m proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way.”

The layoffs also prompted a bipartisan request from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for Kennedy to testify about the changes at a hearing next week, titled “An Update on the Restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the committee chairman, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a ranking member, penned a letter to Kennedy on Tuesday as thousands of HHS workers were learning they had lost their jobs.

“We are following up on the commitment you made during the confirmation process that as Secretary you would come before the HELP Committee on a quarterly basis, upon request of the Chair,” Cassidy and Sanders wrote.

Cassidy, a physician who voiced grave concerns with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric during his confirmation hearings, was a key vote in advancing Kennedy’s nomination to the Senate floor earlier this year — but did so on the condition that Kennedy would not make major changes to certain policies and would consult Cassidy regularly on his decisions.

As news of the cuts spread, employees stood in long lines outside of their offices in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Georgia, some waiting for hours as security determined whether they could be let in the building or not. In some cases, employees were turned around after being informed that they no longer had a job.

Kevin Caron, a health scientist within the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC, said the majority of the office was laid off on Tuesday, including his own role in the branch that focused on epidemiology.

The timing is particularly stressful, he said, because his wife is 38 weeks pregnant with the couple’s first child — a girl — and he’ll no longer be able to take the 12 weeks of paternity leave he was approved to take beginning in April.

“It’s absolutely a loss in security, financial security, the ability to be around and be a parent, because I need to look for another job,” Caron said.

The Office on Smoking and Health is described on CDC’s website as “the lead federal agency for comprehensive tobacco prevention and control.” The office distributes money to every U.S. state to prevent and reduce smoking, vaping and using nicotine products, especially among young people.

The office sits within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDC, which has been hard hit by layoffs at other divisions, too, multiple officials tell ABC News — a surprise to many, given Kennedy’s commitment to ending chronic disease.

“Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. It’s a serious producer of chronic disease. And so I’m kind of shocked that even though that’s a stated priority, that they would get rid of that kind of work,” Caron said.

At the FDA, tobacco work was also heavily impacted — including the firing of top tobacco regulator Brian King, who had worked to decrease the rates of e-cigarette use by teens.

The impact on tobacco across HHS comes after President Donald Trump as a candidate pledged to “save vaping” and reverse efforts to ban it.

Mitch Zeller, King’s predecessor at the Center for Tobacco Products, told ABC News he learned of King’s exit via conversations with people within the FDA. Zeller said that King was given the option to relocate to a remote western office of the Indian Health Service.

Zeller said that two key offices in the center were “completely rift.”

“If you kneecap the operational function of the center as well as the ability of the center to do forward-looking policy, you’ve really just eviscerated the center and its ability to fulfill its public health mission,” he said.

King did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Nesbit, a former FDA official who was instrumental in the FDA’s efforts to begin regulating tobacco, said the cuts will “substantially help the tobacco companies maintain the status quo.”

“These staff cuts to FDA’s tobacco center will allow the industry to continue to sell deadly burned cigarettes for many more years than they would have otherwise; while continuing to talk in vague, general terms about whether vaping and e-cigarettes might some day replace burned cigarettes,” said Nesbit, who was also a senior HHS official under former President Joe Biden.

At the agency that focuses on drug use and mental health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an entire team overseeing a nationwide survey that has been in use since 1971 was cut, Jennifer Hoenig, director of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, wrote on LinkedIn.

“We are the only national survey focusing specifically on drug use and mental health,” Hoenig wrote.

The office was also working on research about illegally made fentanyl and mental health treatment access, she said.

“I don’t know who will continue on with this work, or if it will,” she said, because so many staff across SAMHSA had been let go.

At a federal office that researches workplace safety, including for firefighters, mine workers, retail workers, truck drivers and factory workers, roughly 90% of the workforce was expected to be laid off, the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said on a call with leadership on Monday, a source familiar with the situation said.

NIOSH’s research investigates and researches workplace issues that inform the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, an agency under the Department of Labor that enforces workplace safety and health.

“It does look like the majority or much of the agency is going to be wiped out,” said David Michaels, who led OSHA from 2009 to 2017 and is a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Michaels said he’d been speaking with many employees at both NIOSH and OSHA.

“It makes OSHA’s job tremendously more difficult if the research of NIOSH disappears,” Michaels said. “There’ll be fewer and less protective standards coming out of OSHA.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday called on the Senate to keep the United States’ tariffs on Canada in place — hours before Democrats in the upper chamber could potentially force a vote aimed at blocking the president from imposing tariffs on the ally country.

Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner are leading the effort to end the international emergency — which Kaine has called a “made up emergency” — that Trump has declared against Canada, thereby shunting his administration’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs. Trump has derived his authority to impose tariffs by declaring a national emergency caused by the flow of fentanyl and undocumented migration from Canada, Mexico and China. But Democrats are now challenging that emergency status.

“President Trump is saying that there is an emergency with Canada. Canada is a friend not an adversary. Canada is a sovereign nation not a 51st state,” Kaine said on Tuesday.

It comes just one day before Trump’s tariffs on Canada are expected to go into effect as part of “Liberation Day” — the president’s plans to roll out sweeping tariffs that he has said will impact “all countries.”

On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed to respond with retaliatory tariffs if Trump slaps additional levies on Canadian goods as part of Wednesday’s expected tariff announcement.

Trump said in a social media post that the U.S. is “making progress to end this terrible Fentanyl Crisis” that he claims is coming from Canada, and said that “Republicans in the Senate MUST vote to keep the National Emergency in place, so we can finish the job, and end the scourge.”

During a press conference on Tuesday, Democrats argued that Trump is falsely imposing an emergency in order to give cover for the tariffs with hopes of raising revenue to pay for his tax cut plan. That’s why they say this vote is so important.

Trump criticized Kaine for his role in the effort to block tariffs.

“Don’t let the Democrats have a Victory. It would be devastating for the Republican Party and, far more importantly, for the United States,” Trump wrote.

Unlike most legislation in the Senate, this resolution will only need a simple majority of votes to pass, and it very likely may. Only a handful of Republicans would be needed to hit that threshold.

But there is nothing compelling the House, controlled by Republicans, to take up the legislation, and it’s almost certain that House Speaker Mike Johnson would stay far away from the resolution.

The Senate vote could get pushed to Wednesday as Sen. Cory Booker continues a filibuster he started at 7 p.m. Monday night. Booker is protesting against the national “crisis” he said Trump and Elon Musk created.

A number of Republicans have expressed skepticism about Canadian tariffs and now find themselves in a difficult place of having to choose whether to block Trump’s authority or cast a vote to try to forestall the tariffs.

Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that he’s unsure whether they’ll be able to defeat the resolution.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Obviously, as you know, and I’m among these, there is concerns about tariffs on Canada and, you know, what the ultimate objective is. If it’s about fentanyl and stopping the drug trade, drug war, that’s an issue obviously that there is a lot of interest. Obviously we want to give the president as much latitude as possible to deal with specific problems like that, but as you know, I’m in a very different place when it comes to across-the-board tariffs and Canada.”

Thune said on Tuesday that he hopes “we’ll have the votes.”

“The president declared the emergency to deal with the issue of fentanyl — flow of fentanyl into this country, not only from our southern border, but also from our north. That’s what the emergency declaration is about. And what this would do is undo that,” he said. “I think the president needs to have tools at his disposal to deal with what I think are national emergencies. And certainly, you know, the tens of thousands of people that are killed in this country every year, because fentanyl represents that. So I hope we’ll have the votes.”

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(WASHINGTON) — First lady Melania Trump honored women from around the world during an award ceremony at the State Department, calling the eight honorees’ love “a powerful catalyst” for their work to fight injustice and advocate women and girls.

The first lady said she is inspired by “the women who are driven to speak out for justice, even though their voices are trembling,” and “the women who are motivated to rise up for their community when others remain indifferent.”

“Through their efforts, they instigate progress for all of humanity,” Trump said while speaking at the ceremony for the 19th International Women of Courage Awards.

The State Department says the awards are given to women who have “demonstrated exceptional courage, strength, and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, and the empowerment of women and girls, and more, often at great personal risk and sacrifice.”

“Throughout my life, I have harnessed the power of love as a source of strength during challenging times,” Trump said. “Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles.”

Among the recipients was Romanian Georgiana Pascu, who has been an advocate for institutionalized children and adults with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, working toward their deinstitutionalization over the past 25 years, according to the State Department.

“Georgiana is a watchdog who defends the dignity of Romanians whose voices cannot be heard,” Trump said. “She fearlessly enters facilities designated as care centers to rescue people with disabilities who are unwittingly held captive.”

Pascu “usually shows up unannounced and discovers the unimaginable: helpless adults and children bound, sedated, starving and, in extreme cases, dying,” she said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he “affirm[ed] the importance of protecting women and girls and promoting their well-being [as] American goals.”

“They also happen to be a strong goal of our president, President Donald Trump,” Rubio said.

He honored Amit Soussana, an Israeli woman kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

After surviving 55 days of captivity and her release, Rubio noted that Soussana “shared details of the sexual violence she endured as a hostage, which allowed medical professionals to document the atrocities that she suffered.”

Soussana said it is an “an honor I never imagined receiving and one I wish I didn’t have to accept under these circumstances,” calling the moment overdue for the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity.

“In captivity, I had no control over my body, no control over my life,” she said. “I resisted as best as I could, but it was not enough to stop what happened to me. The darkness was suffocating. Yet even in the darkness, there was one thing they could not have taken from me: the strength my mother instilled in me, the belief that we must always stand for what is right, no matter the cost.”

The awards honored eight women from as far as Papua New Guinea and Burkina Faso and included a Filipino woman who helps protect coral reefs from illegal fishing and a Sri Lankan investigative journalist whose work combats corruption, according to the State Department.

While the first lady’s appearance marked a rare public showing, she is no stranger to the International Women of Courage Awards. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted earlier Tuesday that this was the fifth year the first lady would participate in the award ceremony.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer were also in attendance.

Rubio noted that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was not in attendance, joking that she was “probably spying somewhere right now.”

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(WASHINGTON) —  The House voted on Tuesday to reject a rule that would have blocked Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bipartisan discharge petition to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents up to 12 weeks after giving birth.

Nine Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the joint “rule” — a procedural maneuver to advance legislation — which said the discharge petition by Luna, a hard-line Republican, and other similar bills that would address proxy voting are out of order.

House Republican leaders had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition — the latest move in a weekslong internal House GOP clash.

Luna’s legislation seeks to allow new mothers and fathers in the House to vote on legislation remotely. Luna had a child in 2023 as she was serving in Congress.

Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs introduced the effort with Luna and Republican Rep. Michael Lawler in January.

“I am doing this because I believe this governing body needs to change for the better and young American parents need to be heard in the halls of Congress,” Luna said last week.

Pettersen spoke in favor of Luna’s resolution on Tuesday as she held her 9-week-old son, Sam.

As Sam cooed, squealed, squeaked and cried in his mother’s arms, Pettersen — with a burp cloth slung over her shoulder — pleaded for bipartisan cooperation to “modernize Congress” and address life events for lawmakers.

“No mom or dad should be in the position that I was in and so many parents have found themselves in. It is anti-woman, it’s anti-family and we need to come together,” she said on the House floor.

Pettersen is only the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress — and returning to Washington after her son was born prematurely meant she “faced an impossible decision.”

“We have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine,” Pettersen said. “For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life. It’s when they need 24-7 care.”

The extraordinary move from GOP leaders to block the legislation comes after Luna received 218 signatures on her resolution — enough needed to force the House to vote on the measure. Lawmakers use discharge petitions to circumvent leadership, who determine what legislation comes to the floor.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna have been at odds over proxy voting for new parents. The speaker has argued the effort is unconstitutional and made his case during the closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning, sources told ABC News.

Johnson has argued that proxy voting is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely. Proxy voting was used during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many Republicans were against.

“I believe it’s unconstitutional. I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora’s box where, ultimately, maybe no one is here, and we’re all voting remotely by AI or something. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be,” Johnson said at a news conference last week.

Despite some Republican support for the bill, Johnson said “as the leader of this institution and the one who’s supposed to protect it, I don’t feel like I can get on board with that.”

“This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else. Now, there are family circumstances that make it difficult for people to attend votes. I understand that. I’ve had them myself,” he said.

Luna said in a post on X Tuesday that she asked that the legislation just cover new moms to vote by proxy “and they still said no.”

“The argument here is no longer making sense,” Luna wrote. “They say it is unconstitutional yet they voted by proxy.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar declared that it’s time for Republicans to stop with the “pro-family” lecturing.

“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” he said at the party’s weekly press conference on Tuesday.

Aguilar praised Rep. Pettersen for working across the aisle with Luna as Republican leadership has fumed about the bipartisan effort.

“It’s shameful and terrible. Our members will oppose these efforts, our hope is reasonable Republicans who have worked with us on these issues will oppose effort too,” Aguilar said about the discharge petition block. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House. The majority of the members in the House of Representatives would support this legislation.”

The vote comes a day after Luna resigned from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus over her legislation, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.

“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus. I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people,” she wrote in the letter.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services began to receive notices of mass layoffs on Tuesday, days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 people would lose their jobs, including employees working on tobacco use, mental health and infectious disease.

The layoffs are expected to impact 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration and 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — nearly one-fifth of the workforce at both public health divisions, which fall under HHS.

In total, and including roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS will fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a fourth of its workforce.

As news of the cuts spread, employees stood in long lines outside of their offices in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Georgia, some waiting for hours as security determined whether they could be let in the building or not. In some cases, employees were turned around after being informed that they no longer had a job.

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(WASHINGTON) — Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied on Tuesday that he has ever worn a “Make America Great Again” hat or any other type of political merchandise.

In at least one retelling of Caine and Trump’s first meeting in Iraq in 2018, the president has seemed to indicate Caine was wearing a red MAGA hat, something that would not be allowed under military rules.

The question was posed by some senators at Caine’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Let me start off by asking about some hyperbole that may have been out there in the press,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said at the start of Tuesday’s hearing. “Gen. Caine, did you wear a MAGA hat in front of the president?”

“No, sir,” he responded.

He provided the same answer when asked by Wicker, “Did you wear a MAGA hat at any time?”

And when pressed by Wicker, Caine said, “Sir, for 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission, and I have never worn any political merchandise.”

When Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member on the committee, followed up with the same line of questioning, Caine answered, “As I mentioned to the chairman, for 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and in the responsibilities of my commission.

“I think I went back and listened to those tapes, and I think the president was actually talking about somebody else,” Caine said. “And I’ve never worn any political merchandise or said anything to that effect.”

Trump’s story about how he first met Caine has evolved over the years since he first mentioned Caine during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2019, shortly after his trip to Iraq the previous year.

Trump has repeatedly given Caine credit for ending the war against the Islamic State and in his first recounting of their meeting noted how Caine became memorable to him for saying that ISIS could be destroyed in weeks by quickly striking strongly at its last remaining pieces of territory in Syria, something Trump said his advisers in Washington argued could still take years.

In that first retelling, Trump jokingly focused on how he was struck by the general’s call sign “Razin,” asking if it was a reference to the raisin fruit.

Trump continued to tell a version of that story over the years, but at last year’s CPAC, where he again brought up that first encounter with Caine, the president appeared to state that Caine was wearing a red MAGA hat at the time.

However, it was unclear if Trump was referring to Caine or to a sergeant because in the transcript of those remarks, he first mentioned meeting Caine, whom he referred to as general and asked his name.

Then, according to the transcript, Trump appeared to ask a sergeant his name, who in turn told him, according to Trump, “Yes, sir. I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”

Then he puts on a “Make America Great Again” hat, as did hundreds of other service members in Trump’s retelling.

“And they’re not supposed to do this, but they all put on the ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, right? Not supposed to do it. I said, you’re not supposed to do that. You know that. They said, ‘It’s OK, sir. We don’t care,'” Trump said.

The wearing of political merchandise by military service members is not allowed as it is a tenet of an apolitical military.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Republican leaders will take an unprecedented step Tuesday when they are expected to block Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bipartisan discharge petition to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents up to 12 weeks after giving birth — the latest move in a weekslong internal House GOP clash.

Republican leaders inserted specific language into the joint “rule” — a procedural maneuver to advance legislation — which says the discharge petition by Luna, a hard-line Republican, and other similar bills that would address proxy voting are out of order.

Tuesday afternoon’s vote is on the joint rule — which also includes other unrelated legislation. Luna is expected to vote against the rule. If others join her, the House could be paralyzed from moving on legislation.

Luna’s legislation seeks to allow new mothers and fathers in the House to vote on legislation remotely. Luna had a child in 2023 as she was serving in Congress.

Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs introduced the effort with Luna and Republican Rep. Michael Lawler in January.

“I am doing this because I believe this governing body needs to change for the better and young American parents need to be heard in the halls of Congress,” Luna said last week.

This extraordinary move from GOP leaders to block the legislation comes after Luna received 218 signatures on her resolution — enough needed to force the House to vote on the measure. Lawmakers use discharge petitions to circumvent leadership, who determine what legislation comes to the floor.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna have been at odds over proxy voting for new parents. The speaker has argued the effort is unconstitutional and made his case during the closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning, sources told ABC News.

Johnson has argued that proxy voting is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely. Proxy voting was used during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many Republicans were against.

“I believe it’s unconstitutional. I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora’s box where, ultimately, maybe no one is here, and we’re all voting remotely by AI or something. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be,” Johnson said at a news conference last week.

Despite some Republican support for the bill, Johnson said “as the leader of this institution and the one who’s supposed to protect it, I don’t feel like I can get on board with that.”

“This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else. Now, there are family circumstances that make it difficult for people to attend votes. I understand that. I’ve had them myself,” he said.

Luna said in a post on X Tuesday that she asked that the legislation just cover new moms to vote by proxy “and they still said no.”

“The argument here is no longer making sense,” Luna wrote. “They say it is unconstitutional yet they voted by proxy.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar declared that it’s time for Republicans to stop with the “pro-family” lecturing.

“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” he said at the party’s weekly press conference on Tuesday.

Aguilar praised Rep. Pettersen for working across the aisle with Luna as Republican leadership has fumed about the bipartisan effort.

“It’s shameful and terrible. Our members will oppose these efforts, our hope is reasonable Republicans who have worked with us on these issues will oppose effort too,” Aguilar said about the discharge petition block. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House. The majority of the members in the House of Representatives would support this legislation.”

The vote comes a day after Luna resigned from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus over her legislation, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.

“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus. I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people,” she wrote in the letter.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — A Maryland man with protected legal status was sent to the notorious prison in El Salvador following an “administrative error,” a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official admitted in a sworn declaration on Monday.

Kilmer Armado Abrego-Garcia who has a U.S. citizen wife and 5-year-old child is currently at CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador.

The filing is part of a new lawsuit filed by Abrego-Garcia’s attorneys who are requesting that the government of El Salvador return him to the U.S. after being sent there “because of an administrative error.”

Abrego-Garcia’s attorneys said that he “is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang” and said that the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation.”

In response to the error, the government has acknowledged the error but said in a filing that because Abrego-Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody, the court cannot order him to be returned to the U.S. nor can the court order El Salvador to return him.

According to Abrego-Garcia’s attorneys, in 2019, a confidential informant “had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member” of the gang MS-13. He later filed an I-589 application for asylum and although Abrego-Garcia was found removable, an immigration judge “granted him withholding of removal to El Salvador.”

But earlier this month, Abrego-Garcia was stopped by ICE officers who “informed him that his immigration status had changed.” After being detained over gang affiliations, he was transferred to a detention center in Texas. He was then sent to El Salvador on March 15.

“Abrego-Garcia, a native and citizen of El Salvador, was on the third flight and thus had his removal order to El Salvador executed,” said Robert L. Cerna, acting field office director for ICE in a sworn declaration. “This removal was an error.”

In response, the government said Abrego-Garcia had the opportunity to present evidence to show he was not a part of MS-13. “Abrego Garcia had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue,” the government said. “He had the opportunity to give evidence tending to show he was not part of MS-13, which he did not proffer.”

Vice President JD Vance said in a statement on X that Abrego-Garcia was a “convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right” to be in the U.S. Vance added that “it’s gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize.”

In the filing, Yaakov M. Roth Acting Assistant Attorney General Civil Division for the Department of Justice said the court lacks jurisdiction to review the removal of Abrego-Garcia and said that the plaintiffs are seeking his release from Salvadoran custody by “financial pressure and diplomacy.”

Roth also added in the filing that there is no clear showing that “Abrego Garcia himself is likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.”

“While there may be allegations of abuses in other Salvadoran prisons — very few in relation to the large number of detainees — there is no clear showing that Abrego Garcia himself is likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT,” Roth said. “More fundamentally, this Court should defer to the government’s determination that Abrego Garcia will not likely be tortured or killed in El Salvador.”

In the sworn declaration, Cerna said the removal was “carried out in good faith.”

“This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” Cerna said.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday morning was still speaking on the Senate floor, staging a filibuster he started at 7 p.m. Monday night, in what he called a protest against the national “crisis” he said President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had created.

On Monday night, he said he was set to last “as long as [he is] physically able.”

“I’m heading to the Senate floor because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have shown a complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people. You can tune in on CSPAN, YouTube, X, and Facebook,” the senator posted on X as he took to the floor.

Booker, who said he would keep the Senate floor open through the duration of his remarks, said at the top of his speech that he “rise[s] with the intention of disrupting the normal business” of the chamber because he believes the country is in “crisis” due to the actions of the White House since Trump started his second term.

“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis, and I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended–so many of them identify themselves as Republicans,” Booker said.

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people For from our highest offices, a sense of common decency. These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such,” he said.

So long as Booker is holding the floor, the Senate won’t be able to conduct other business unless he temporarily yields.

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(WASHINGTON) — Congressional Democrats are renewing their push to expand in vitro fertilization access for military service members by introducing legislation that would require the Department of Defense’s health care program to fund access to IVF for military service members.

The legislative effort, being led in the Senate by Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth and in the House by Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, would bring IVF access afforded to military service members in parity with the services available to members of Congress. It would also modify current requirements that service members prove that their infertility challenges are directly connected to service, a barrier that the lawmakers say is often cumbersome or impossible to overcome.

The legislation, Jacobs said in an exclusive interview with ABC News, could be “life-changing” for military service members who are often forced to choose between continuing their military service and starting a family.

“I think it will be huge. We know so many military families are struggling to make ends meet as it is, and are facing really significant fertility challenges. It would be life-changing,” Jacobs told ABC News. “We shouldn’t make them choose between serving our country and building their families.”

Duckworth and Jacobs say that some members of the military have been forced to abandon their military careers because of the lack of infertility treatment coverage by their health care program, called TRICARE. It could present a risk to military readiness, they told ABC News.

“For too many service members, the lack of TRICARE coverage of IVF has left them with only a few choices: beat the odds and prove that their infertility is directly related to their service, pay tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for a chance at a family, forgo having children, or leave the military. This is wrong,” Duckworth said.

It’s also about parity, they said: Starting this year, members of Congress are afforded access to plans that offer coverage for infertility treatments. Jacobs and Duckworth say the same should be true for military service members.

“It makes no sense that members of Congress and the rest of the federal workforce will get this, but military families still won’t,” Jacobs said.

This is not the first time that Jacobs and Duckworth have attempted to expand IVF access for military service members. They tried to get this same provision included in the massive military spending package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, last year as both parties tried to reassure voters of their support for IVF and other infertility treatments.

Though the proposal made it through the House Armed Services Committee, it never made it into the final version of the bill that President Joe Biden signed into law during the waning days of his presidency.

Similar legislation was separately blocked in the Senate by Republican Sen. James Lankford last year. At the time, Lankford said that while he supports IVF, he was concerned about the indefinite cost of the legislation and the possibility it opened for “future definitions for gene editing or for cloning.”

Duckworth and Jacobs’ newest effort, however, is a stand-alone bill that could be voted on not as an amendment, but as it’s own legislation.

Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, has been vocal about her own experiences using IVF to conceive her two children. She was involved in multiple efforts to expand IVF access last Congress that were ultimately blocked by Republicans.

She said this new proposal would give Republicans the opportunity to make good on President Donald Trump’s pro-IVF rhetoric that he’s used on the campaign trail and at the White House.

“President Trump pledged to voters on the campaign trail that he would go even further by making IVF free if elected and has repeated the bold-faced lie that he is governing on the principle of ‘promises made, promises kept,'” Duckworth said in a statement. “Republicans can now help him partially fulfill his broken IVF promise by joining our commonsense legislation that would make sure those who answer the call to serve have access to the care they need to build their family.”

No Republican has yet signed on as a cosponsor, but Duckworth and Jacobs are pointing to Trump’s comments as recently as last week touting his support for IVF as a possible boon to their efforts.

On the campaign trail, as an Alabama State Supreme Court ruling temporarily threw IVF access into question, Trump was vocal about his hope to make IVF continually accessible. He referred to himself as the “father of IVF” and issued a statement that said “I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.”

Trump has continued to make his support for IVF known. As recently as Wednesday when, during a Women’s History Month event, he referred to himself as the “fertilization president.”

“Fertilization. I’m still very proud of it, I don’t care. I’ll be known as the fertilization president, and that’s OK,” Trump said. “That’s not bad. I’ve been called much worse. Actually, I like it, right?”

It’s at this point unclear if the bill, which if pushed by Democrats to the Senate floor as a stand-alone bill would require the unanimous support of the Republican conference, would have the support it needs to pass. It’s also unclear if efforts to include it in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act or other major legislative pushes could lead to passage.

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