Category: Politics

Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate and ally of Donald Trump, said the president-elect would bring the country together while also defending Trump’s immigration plan for mass deportations.

Speaking to “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Ramaswamy urged Democrats to give Trump a chance in office and called on them to resist efforts to cast him as a threat to democracy.

“What you’re hearing from Donald Trump is he is going to be a president for all Americans. He is a guy who, in that first term, he had crowds chanting ‘lock her up’ for Hillary Clinton. He didn’t prosecute her. I think Donald Trump is focused on what makes people’s lives better. And actually, my message to Democrats out there, even those who didn’t vote for Donald Trump, is to give him a chance to actually make your life better,” Ramaswamy said.

“I think it’s time to turn the page on a lot of these histrionics, or Hitler comparisons,” he added, before later saying that “success is unifying. Nothing’s going to unite this country more than economic growth.”

Ramaswamy ran against the former and now president-elect in the 2024 GOP primary as a culture warrior in Trump’s image, though he ended his campaign the night of the Iowa caucuses and endorsed the former president.

On Sunday, he also defended Trump’s vow for a mass deportation force, predicting that the tougher enforcement measures will also lead to undocumented immigrants leaving the country on their own.

“Donald Trump’s campaign promise was the largest mass deportation in American history, and he’s going to keep that promise,” Ramaswamy said. “Not an iota, not a cent of government spending should go to subsidize this, not to sanctuary cities, not to federal aid to people who are in this country illegally, and we’re going to see a large number, by the millions, of self-deportations as well.”

Pressed by Karl on the fate of the so-called “Dreamers” — people who were brought to the United States as children without valid documentation — Ramaswamy declined to explicitly say how the incoming administration would approach this group of undocumented immigrants, which includes many adults who have spent most of their life in the U.S. During his first term, the Trump administration attempted to rescind the Obama-era program that allowed such migrants to stay and work in the country.

“I say this as the kid of legal immigrants to this country, as the proud child of legal immigrants to the United States of America. If your first act of entering this country broke the law, that doesn’t allow you to remain in this country,” Ramaswamy said. “One is, no migration without consent. Think about your nation like a body. Number two is that consent should only be granted, and should be granted to migrants who benefit the United States of America. But those who enter without consent must be removed.”

As a vocal Trump ally, Ramaswamy is thought of as a potential future member of the Trump administration, though he did not specify what role would interest him.

“There’s a couple great options on the table. I want to have the biggest possible impact on this country. We’re not going to sort that out in the press… we’re having some high-impact discussions.”

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Despite celebrating the passing of abortion-related ballot initiatives in seven states, abortion rights advocates warn that a second Donald Trump presidency puts nationwide access to abortion care in danger.

“An already harmful abortion access crisis will likely get worse,” Kelly Baden, the vice president of policy at the Guttmacher Institute, told ABC News.

“The 13 states that currently ban abortion — there are real consequences to that including death. Women are dying from these abortion bans,” Baden said.

Trump may have persuaded voters that there won’t be a federal abortion ban, but experts warn nationwide access could be at risk.

“I don’t think that people know that a federal abortion ban would preempt state constitutional protection. There could also be this sense that, ‘I’m voting yes on this amendment, and that means my state is fine,'” Elisabeth Smith, the director of state policy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News.

“A federal abortion ban — if the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect — would preempt the policy of a state where abortion is legal and accessible,” Smith said. “We don’t yet know which party controls the House [of Representatives], but that is a possibility.”

The regulation of federal agencies could also impact access to abortion care. Medication abortion could come under fire if the Food and Drug Administration — under a Trump presidency — limits access to mifepristone, one of the pills used in the regimen to terminate pregnancy, or rolls back its approval, as anti-abortion groups have tried to do.

The Trump administration could also attempt to misuse the Comstock Act to try to prevent access to medication abortion, Smith warned.

The 150-year-old law is an anti-obscenity law “makes it a crime to mail anything that’s ‘indecent, filthy, or vile’ or ‘intended for producing abortion,'” according to the ACLU.

Ballot initiatives

Missouri became the first state with a near-total abortion ban in effect to approve a pro-abortion rights initiative since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion rights.

If the ban is repealed as expected, Missouri could facilitate closer access to abortion care for women in the South. The state borders four states that have ceased nearly all abortion services — Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

But, there is not currently a single brick-and-mortar abortion clinic in Missouri which means that even when the law is repealed, it would still take time for access to care to resume, according to Baden.

“So, we’ll continue to see people having to leave the state for clinician-provided abortion care or to find another way to get care in the meantime,” Baden said.

The legal proceeding to overturn the state’s ban under the new constitutional amendment could also take months to years, according to Baden.

The battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada were also among 10 states with abortion on the ballot Tuesday. Some strategists hypothesized that this would boost turnout among the majority of voters who support legal abortion, aiding Democratic candidates in the process.

But, exit polling showed that some supporters of abortion still elected Trump in battleground states.

Advocates warn that while ballot initiatives have proved effective, they are not a universal solution.

“They are just one tool in the toolbox. They are clearly not our silver bullet, both, because structurally they can’t be. Not every state even allows for ballot measures like that, they’re expensive and they also are not an immediate solution … a series of litigation has to happen,”

Advocates for abortion-care-related protections said they will continue to work to restore and protect access to abortion care under the incoming administration.

“It is our task to hold this incoming administration to its word that it will not work to further restrict or ban abortion and we will hold them to their insistence that they will invest in caregiving,” Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, told reporters during a press conference Wednesday.

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(WASHINGTON) — Despite Kamala Harris’ loss, pro-abortion rights activists are celebrating the results of the 2024 election, arguing that abortion rights won.

“When we look at the election results from this week, we saw voters in states that are really different from each other, in large majorities support abortion rights,” Elisabeth Smith, the director of state policy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News in an interview.

Abortion was a central issue in Harris’s campaign as she sought to draw a stark difference between her vision for the country and President-elect Donald Trump’s. But, exit polling shows some supporters of abortion rights still voted for Trump, despite Roe v. Wade being overturned as a result of his U.S. Supreme Court appointments.

The battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada were among 10 states with abortion on the ballot Tuesday. Some strategists hypothesized that this would boost turnout among the majority of voters who support legal abortion, aiding Democratic candidates in the process.

Trump’s approach, focusing on states’ rights, appeared to resonate with voters who didn’t view abortion access as incompatible with a Trump presidency. In Arizona, 23% who voted “yes” on the state’s initiative enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution also voted for Trump. In Nevada, where another abortion rights measure was approved, 27% of “yes” voters elected Trump.

This followed at the national level. Among the two-thirds of voters who said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 28% voted for Trump; that included 30% in Arizona, 33% in Nevada and 36% in Florida.

Supporters of legal abortion still broke strongly for Harris, but partisan elasticity on the issue did not cut both ways. As Harris made abortion access a central focus of her campaign, she won only 9% of voters who said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. In Arizona, anti-abortion voters made up 31% of the electorate and backed Trump by 95%.

“In thinking about what seems like a contradiction, research has shown that Americans — when there is an abortion ballot or abortion-protecting constitutional amendment or initiative on the ballot — they don’t see abortion as a partisan issue,” Smith said. “Americans see abortion as an issue of liberty and of freedom.”

“In 2022, 10% of voters in the state of Kentucky voted against the restrictive constitutional amendment that was on their ballot and for Rand Paul — a senator who has made his opposition to abortion rights known,” Smith said.

Trump has also told voters that there won’t be a federal abortion ban and it could be that voters were persuaded by him, Smith said.

“I don’t think that people know that a federal abortion ban would preempt state constitutional protection. So I think there could also be this sense ‘I’m voting yes on this amendment, and that means my state is fine,'” Smith said.

At least 14 states have ceased nearly all abortion services since Roe v. Wade was overturned. In total, 21 states have restrictions on abortion in effect.

Seven of the 10 states with abortion on the ballot are projected to vote in favor of abortion rights while three states are projected to uphold abortion restrictions — marking a first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Six states previously voted in favor of abortion rights in the 2022 midterm elections.

In Florida, 57% of voters voted in favor of enshrining protections for abortion rights in the state’s constitution, but the measure failed to reach the 60% threshold it needed to pass. Still, abortion rights groups dubbed this measure a success, saying a majority of voters sided with abortion.

“Abortion won big,” said Gretchen Borchelt, the vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, at a press conference Wednesday. “If not for the rigged rules and for the very intentional and purposeful efforts to confuse and mislead voters and change the goal post and change the rules, abortion access would have won, certainly in Florida but in Nebraska and South Dakota too.”

In Nebraska, two contradicting abortion-related amendments on the ballot confused voters, likely contributing to the failure of the initiative, Smith argued.

“There is research, outside of the abortion context, but about ballot initiatives that show that when voters are confronted with two choices on the same question, that creates a lot of confusion about what people are voting for. And in Nebraska, when signatures were being collected, there were voters who alleged that they were told they were signing the abortion rights petition and later found out they had signed the petition against abortion rights,” Smith said.

Despite the success of ballot initiatives, advocates need to make it more understandable to people that their elected officials greatly determine their ability to access reproductive healthcare like abortion, Kelly Baden, the Guttmacher Institute’s vice president of policy told ABC News in an interview.

“Women are dying from these abortion bans. And so unfortunately, to to see that that reality wasn’t sufficient for people to fully prioritize abortion rates up and down the ballot in every way possible is it’s a tough pill to swallow,” Baden said.

“Seven states did soundly declare their support for abortion, active rights via ballot measures and I think there’s a bigger conversation of how and why people are able to make that make sense in their own voting patterns. That is a problem that predates Trump,” Baden said.

ABC News’ Gary Langer contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in portions of a New York Times podcast interview published Friday, blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ election loss on President Joe Biden’s late exit from the presidential race and the lack of Democratic primary.

Pelosi told Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” that “had the president [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” the paper said in a story about the Thursday interview. The exchange won’t be posted in full until Saturday.

“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi said.

“And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,” she added.

As ABC News has reported, Pelosi worked behind the scenes to urge Biden to drop out of the presidential race following his performance at CNN’s debate.

The Times reported Pelosi also took issue with Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders saying, after Harris’ loss, that “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

“Bernie Sanders has not won,” she said. “With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.”

The paper reported she suggested that cultural issues were more to blame for Democrats’ losses among working-class voters.

“Guns, God and gays — that’s the way they say it,” she reportedly said. “Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Three people have been charged in an alleged Iran-linked plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, an Iranian-American activist and two Jewish Americans living in New York, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in New York.

Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt are charged with murder-for-hire, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Rivera and Loadholt have been arrested, while Shakeri, who the FBI described as an “asset” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is believed to be in Tehran.

The IRGC tasked Shakeri with surveilling and killing Trump to avenge the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020, according to the complaint.

“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran. The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald J. Trump,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the charges.

Shakeri emigrated to the United States but was deported in 2008 after serving prison time for robbery, according to the Justice Department. While in prison, he met Rivera and Loadholt and hired them to target an Iranian American activist living in Brooklyn, according to the complaint.

The IRGC also tasked Shakeri with carrying out other assassinations against U.S. and Israeli citizens located in the United States, including Trump, the complaint alleges.

Shakeri informed law enforcement officials that he was tasked a month before the election with providing a plan to kill Trump, according to prosecutors. During the interview, Shakeri allegedly claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC.

He also stated he was tasked with surveilling two Jewish-American citizens residing in New York City and was offered $500,000 by an IRGC official for the murder of either victim, according to the complaint. He was also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka, the complaint said.

“Actors directed by the Government of Iran continue to target our citizens, including President-elect Trump, on U.S. soil and abroad. This has to stop,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Today’s charges are another message to those who continue in their efforts — we will remain unrelenting in our pursuit of bad actors, no matter where they reside, and will stop at nothing to bring to justice those who harm our safety and security.”

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

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(WASHINGTON) — Billionaire Elon Musk joined President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the call told ABC News.

Musk was at Mar-a-Lago with Trump on election night as well as the day after, as previously reported by ABC News. Musk’s involvement in the call further highlights his influence in the upcoming administration.

Musk, the world’s richest person, had a profound impact on Trump’s campaign including a multi-billion dollar door-knocking operation, a social media megaphone and a $1 million sweepstakes for battleground voters.

Zelenskyy wrote on social media that he had an “excellent” call with Trump, but made no mention of Musk.

“I had an excellent call with President Trump and congratulated him on his historic landslide victory — his tremendous campaign made this result possible,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

The call happened as Zelenskyy seeks to shore up long-term American military and financial support in its war with Russia.

On the campaign trail, Trump has often boasted that he would be able to stop the war in Ukraine, though he has yet to provide specifics as to how, often showing a willingness to work with both sides.

As of now, Musk is expected to return to Mar-a-Lago next week, but plans remain in flux, per sources familiar with the plans.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — During an all-staff call earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign leadership urged staffers not to speak with reporters and addressed concerns about the future after her loss to Donald Trump in the election, two people on the call told ABC News.

Campaign Chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks implored staffers not to speak with reporters, with Fulks saying they still needed staffers “staying in this fight.”

One source noted that the call gave the same “gaslighty” feeling they received after President Joe Biden left the race in July. In an all-staff call following Biden’s departure from the race, staffers were caught off guard and were only given a one-minute heads up that he was exiting the race before he made it public.

ABC News has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the matter.

The call, which was shared more widely on Thursday, was a recording from an initial call that the campaign held on Wednesday following Harris’ concession speech at Howard University.

During the call, O’Malley Dillon told staffers that they ran a “very close” race. She said that state teams knocked on more than 50 million doors in the final days before Election Day and their field operation helped the Senate races in those states. O’Malley Dillon teared up toward the end of the call, a source confirmed.

Harris spoke on that call, noting that this moment “sucks,” a source told ABC News.

“We all just speak truth, why don’t we, right? There’s also so much good that has come of this campaign,” Harris said, according to the source.

Harris had a hopeful tone in her message to supporters at Howard on Wednesday, too, saying “sometimes the fight takes a while. … The important thing is don’t ever give up.”

During the call, leadership spoke about the next general steps for staffers and connecting with people for their next jobs.

Both sources noted how shocked they still felt about the loss, particularly with how wide the margins were in the battleground states.

Both sources said the moment on “The View” when the vice president wasn’t able to differentiate herself from Biden as a moment the entire campaign felt was a big mistake.

Last month on the show, when asked what she would have done differently than Biden over the last four years, Harris said, “there is not a thing that comes to mind,” before citing, much later in the interview, her pledge to put a Republican in her Cabinet.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has struck down the Biden administration’s program known as “Keeping Families Together,” dealing a major blow to the estimated half a million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens that DHS estimates would have benefited.

The administration announced the program in June, but a coalition of 16 Republican-led states — led by Texas and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal — quickly filed a lawsuit after applications were made available in August.

A federal judge put the program on hold just days after hopeful applicants filed their paperwork.

The program would have provided temporary relief from deportation for undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens through a process known as “parole in place.” It would have allowed them to apply for legal status without having to leave the country.

On Thursday, Judge J. Campbell Barker ruled in favor of the Republican-led effort to dismantle the program, agreeing with Republican states that the administration had exceeded its statutory authority because the Immigration and Nationality Act allows for paroling people “into the United States,” not to those already in the country.

Noncitizen spouses are already eligible for legal status under current laws but often have to apply from their home countries and face up to a 10-year ban from returning to the U.S.

In August, ABC News spoke with a 24-year-old woman who was one of the first people to be approved under the program. She is married to a U.S. citizen and they have a 3-year-old child.

It’s unclear at the moment what will happen to people who have already submitted their paperwork, like Cecilia, and if they’ll be able to get their application fees refunded.

ABC News has reached out to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the White House for a comment.

“District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker did not just dismantle the Keeping Families Together program, he shattered the hopes of hundreds of thousands of American families. The Biden-Harris program would have allowed noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens to stay in the country after they’ve contributed to our communities, helped grow our economy, and built lives with their loved ones” Ashley DeAzevedo, president of American Families United, said in a statement to ABC News.

“We urge the Biden-Harris administration to immediately appeal Judge Barker’s ruling, preventing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 15 other Republican Attorneys General cruel lawsuit from devastating over 550,000 individuals in mixed-status families. Families like ours deserve better than this blatant attempt to stop a legal program, and we will not stop until the courts rectify this injustice,” DeAzevedo said.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said “you can’t love your country only when you win” in his first speech since Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to former President Donald Trump in the presidential race.

“You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree,” Biden said in an address to the nation from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday.

Biden said he’s directed his administration to work with Trump’s team for a peaceful transition of power.

“Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature,” Biden said.

He also stressed the integrity of the election, calling it honest, fair and transparent.

“The will of the people always prevails,” he said.

Biden praised his vice president for running “an inspiring campaign.”

“She has great character, true character. She gave her whole heart and effort, and she and her entire team should be proud of the campaign they ran,” he said.

Biden also defended some of his actions in office, saying, “We’re going to see over a trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure work done, changing people’s lives in rural communities and communities that are in real difficulty, because it takes time to get it done.”

“We’re leaving behind the strongest economy in the world,” Biden added.

“I know people are still hurting,” he said, but added, “Together, we’ve changed America for the better.”

“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” Biden said in his closing message to Americans.

“We’re going to be OK, but we need to stay engaged. We need to keep going,” he added. “And above all, we need to keep the faith.”

Biden said in a statement on Wednesday that adding Harris to his 2020 Democratic ticket was the first and “best decision” he made in that campaign.

“Her story represents the best of America’s story,” Biden said, adding, “I have no doubt she’ll continue writing that story.”

His statement made no mention of Trump, the former Republican president and now president-elect, who will bookend Biden’s sole term in office.

Biden and Harris have both spoken to Trump to offer congratulations to him for winning a second term.

Harris in a speech on Wednesday conceded the race to Trump.

Harris stressed, “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”

“This is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together,” she said.

Trump won the swing states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. ABC News has not projected winners for the final two swing states, Nevada and Arizona.

Republicans also took control of the Senate. Results for the House of Representatives are not yet clear.

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will step into the White House Rose Garden on Thursday to speak to the nation for the first time since his party’s bruising defeat at the polls on Tuesday.

The White House announced that he would give an address at 11 a.m. ET.

His address is scheduled to begin a little more than 24 hours after his twice-former opponent, Donald Trump, was projected to have won the presidency. Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden endorsed in July, as he stepped aside as the party’s presumptive nominee.

Biden in a statement on Wednesday said that adding Harris to his 2020 Democratic ticket was the first and “best decision” he made in that campaign. He praised Harris, saying she had “stepped up and led a historic campaign” under extraordinary circumstances.

That statement made no mention of Trump, the former Republican president and now president-elect, who will bookend Biden’s sole term in office.

Biden and Harris have both spoken to Trump to offer congratulations to him for winning a second term. And Biden on Wednesday also spoke with Harris on the phone, the White House said.

Harris in a speech on Wednesday conceded the race to Trump.

“Sometimes the fight takes a while … The important thing is don’t ever give up,” she said, speaking at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

Biden in his Wednesday statement praised Harris, saying, “Her story represents the best of America’s story.”

“And as she made clear today, I have no doubt she’ll continue writing that story,” he said, according to the White House.

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.

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