(NEW YORK) — After Elon Musk complained about federal spending for housing migrants in what he called “luxury hotels” housing in New York City, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday four FEMA officials who it said made the payments had been fired.
The firings include the agency’s chief financial officer, two program analysts and a grant specialist, DHS said in a statement that labeled them “deep state activists.”
The money came from the FEMA grant program.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people,” the DHS statement said.
Further details about the firings were not immediately released.
Musk claimed on X that his Department of Government Efficiency “discovered” that FEMA over $50 million to ‘luxury” hotels for “migrant housing,” and doing so violated the president’s executive order calling for an immigration crackdown.
A short time later, Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton posted on X that payments to those luxury hotels had been suspended as of Saturday and “personnel will be held accountable.”
Trump echoed Musk’s criticism of FEMA and continued to bash it in a social media post on Truth Social Tuesday.
He said that the agency is being investigated due to allegedly mismanaging money and not helping North Carolina; and that the agency should be “TERMINATED.”
ABC News’ Justin Gomez, Oren Oppenheim and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Following Vice President JD Vance’s comments Sunday arguing that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” some Republican lawmakers have pushed back and reiterated the power of the courts.
As President Donald Trump continues to try to remake the federal government through a flood of executive orders, the number of legal challenges to his efforts have piled up, with federal courts across the country siding with plaintiffs to pause his plans as judges sort out the legality of his actions.
On Tuesday, Trump lashed out on his Truth Social platform against “certain activists and highly political judges” who he says want to “slow down” or stop his administration’s efforts to investigate “FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE.”
However, some Republican lawmakers are not completely on board with the administration’s strong stance criticizing the courts.
“We’ve got a system of checks and balances, and that’s what I see working,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said Monday night. “I learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he believes the courts have an “important role to play” in moderating power.
“The courts obviously are the sort of the branch of our government that calls balls and strikes and referees and I think that they’ve got an important role to play,” Thune said. “I mean we have three branches of our government in this country, coequal and independent branches, and the judiciary is the one that resolves some of the differences that often occur between executive and legislative branches.”
Thune said the judiciary has moderated a number executive and congressional decisions in recent years.
“I expect that to continue, and I expect the court to play the important role of ensuring that you know the laws of the country are followed,” he added.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who serves on the Judiciary Committee and is a former state attorney general and Supreme Court clerk, called Vance’s comments an “understandable reaction” to frustration about the court’s rulings. But, he said, the courts are independent, and their rulings need to be followed.
“You may think that’s not the right ruling, but you know, they’re still the law,” Hawley said, adding that he believes the administration should abide by court rulings.
Hawley said executives have a right to challenge and appeal and to follow orders but not apply them broadly.
During an interview on “The Mark Levin Show” Monday evening, Trump said the blocking of some of his executive actions by court order are “bad rulings.”
“Frankly, they want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country,” the president added during the interview, arguing that there are “very important people, smart people doing investigations of fraud,” and criticizing the courts for calling this “unconstitutional.”
“But judges should be ruling. They shouldn’t be dictating what you’re supposed to be doing,” Trump said.
However, some Republican leaders continue to back the administration.
During a press conference Tuesday morning, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson endorsed the vice president’s assertion by saying, “I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President JD Vance because he’s right.”
Though Johnson acknowledged “of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order,” he also said, “I think the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out.”
The speaker added that he does not feel uncomfortable with the president’s power and that the administration is doing “what’s right by the American people.”
Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pardoning Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was sentenced to 14 years in prison before Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.
“It’s my honor to do it,” Trump said during remarks from the Oval Office on Monday. “He was set up.”
Trump called the Democratic former governor a “very fine person” and said he didn’t know him other than that he was on his TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”
When asked if Trump would consider Blagojevich as ambassador to Serbia, Trump said “no, but I would,” adding that “if he got a pardon, he’s cleaner than anybody in the room.”
“Let me tell you — from the bottom of my heart — how deep my appreciation and gratitude is for President Trump,” Blagojevich said in a press conference Monday evening reacting to the news.
The past few months, Blagojevich has been active on X, expressing his support for the president and reposting content from Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk and Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI.
“Trump freed me & Obama sold me out so I’m biased, but I believe Trump has done more as President in his whirlwind first 8 days than Obama did in his entire 8 years. What do you think?” Balgojevich wrote on X last month.
Blagojevich, a Democrat and self-proclaimed “Trump-o-crat,” responded to former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons in January, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored that he believed such actions were the “wrong things to do.”
“I mean, President Biden weaponized the justice department against Donald Trump. So he just assumed that Trump’s going to do the same thing to his people that he did to Trump and to Trump’s people,” he said, adding that “there’s no evidence that President Trump is going to do anything.”
On his first day back in office, Trump announced sweeping pardons and commutations for nearly all of the rioters charged with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“I pardon people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump said on Sunday in regards to his Jan. 6 pardons.
In 2011, Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat that former President Barack Obama vacated after being elected to the White House in 2008.
During his first term, Trump called Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence a “tremendously powerful, ridiculous” sentence, though he had also expressed that he did not know Blagojevich well.
The former governor was expected to be released in 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior. He began serving time in 2012, and Trump commuted his sentence in 2020.
Upon release, Blagojevich expressed his “profound and everlasting gratitude for President Trump,” calling this an “act of kindness” that represented the “beginning of the process to actually turn an injustice into a justice.”
“He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president, I was a Democratic governor,” Blagojevich also said at the time.
In 2009 while appearing on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” Blagojevich can be seen getting “fired” by Trump.
The J. Edgar Hoover building, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters/ Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has ordered that the FBI must release some records related to its investigation of President Donald Trump’s handling of presidential records that have been sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In a memorandum opinion issued Monday, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, “Given the current circumstances and legal landscape—including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and … and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely,” the exemptions the FBI cited to block the release of information no longer apply.
Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 10, 2022, Axios reported that New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman’s then-upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” included a claim that White House staff “periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging” the presidential toilet.
Trump issued a statement calling the story “another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.” (A footnote in Howell’s opinion notes, “In August of 2022, Haberman released photos of notes at the bottom of two toilets, and, according to her sources, one photo was allegedly of a White House toilet while the other toilet was overseas.”)
Eight days later, on Feb. 18, 2022, a letter from the National Archives described how President Trump allegedly brought classified records to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election.
This kicked off a high-stakes legal fight to return the records to government control and would eventually lead to an FBI search of Trump’s residence. What came next were felony charges and a series of stunning legal and political victories that would propel Trump back into office and make the charges he faced effectively disappear.
But as questions swirled around the February 2022 allegations of mishandling of records by Trump, Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for six categories of documents. The first five categories pertained to documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but the sixth category requested information about any records mentioning “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and … allegedly flushed down the toilet.”
The FBI argued they were exempt from responding to the request about the Mar-a-Lago investigation citing possible harm that could come to a prosecution and issued a so-called “Glomar” response to part six of the request, meaning the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of records about alleged toilet documents.
The term Glomar is a reference to a secret CIA operation during the Cold War to raise a lost Soviet submarine from the ocean floor — when details of the operation began to leak the government provided a response that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the operation.
Some of the information from the Mar-a-Lago investigation files was eventually released but the sixth category has remained secret.
The landmark Trump immunity case that held a president is presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for official acts and his election victory which brought a dismissal to the case had the effect of wiping away the constraints that had permitted the FBI to withhold records under FOIA.
Howell writes, “somewhat ironically, the constitutional and procedural safeguards attached to the criminal process include significant confidentiality mechanisms,” but for an immune president, such protections, “may simply be unavailable, as it is here.”
“The FBI’s Glomar response is improper, and the categorical withholding of the responsive records contained within the Mar-a-Lago investigative file is insupportable where, as here, no pending law enforcement proceeding exists, or can be reasonably anticipated, and the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been iced,” Howell writes.
No records were released immediately in the case, but the parties must submit a joint status report in 10 days to propose a schedule to conclude this case. It is unclear if the government will seek an appeal to block any further release.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is gearing up for potentially contentious meetings with Arab power players this week as President Donald Trump continues to press his plan for what he calls U.S. “ownership” of Gaza, going so far as to threaten cutting off U.S. aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t go along.
On Tuesday, Jordan’s King Abdullah is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House, becoming the first Arab leader to do since he returned to power last month.
Jordan has served as a humanitarian lifeline for civilians in Gaza throughout the Israel-Hamas conflict and already hosts millions of registered Palestinian refugees.
But Trump’s plan for rebuilding Gaza calls for the country, as well as Egypt, to take in close to 2 million more Palestinians he says can be removed from Gaza so that the war-torn land can be transformed into what he calls “the Riviera of the Middle East” under his watch.
Trump’s proposal to “clean out” Gaza has ignited a sharp wave of backlash from Middle Eastern leaders, including from Abdullah.
“His Majesty King Abdullah II stresses the need to put a stop to (Israeli) settlement expansion, expressing rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians,” the Jordanian royal court said in a statement posted to X on Wednesday, in the wake of Trump’s stunning announcement last week.
In the days since, Abdullah has also engaged in a flurry of calls and meetings with the U.N. and other countries that have historically supported the creation of a Palestinian homeland — a possible effort to present a united front aimed at pushing back against Trump’s designs for Gaza.
But the opposition appears to have done little to deter Trump. In a clip from his weekend interview with Fox News released on Monday, Trump said that under his scheme, Palestinians removed from Gaza would not have the right to return to the land after reconstruction was completed.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing, much better,” he said. “I’m talking about building a permanent place for them.”
The president has also brushed off opposition from Jordan and Egypt to taking in large numbers of Palestinians, suggesting he would pressure their governments to get on board.
“If they don’t agree, I would conceivably withhold aid,” he told reporters Monday night.
Trump is also dispatching his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to the Middle East at the end of this week.
Rubio is slated to visit Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He also met with the Egypt’s foreign minister at the State Department on Monday. However, it’s unclear whether he is on the same page as the president.
During his tour through Central America last week, Rubio was asked multiple times if Palestinians would be allowed to return to Gaza post-reconstruction under Trump’s plan; on each occasion, the secretary did not fully answer the question, but said Gazans would have to live somewhere else “in the interim.”
Asked how Rubio would resolve similar concerns raised by Arab leader’s during his tour through the Middle East, a senior State Department official replied “I don’t know what his plans are. I’m not a mind-reader.”
In a radio interview broadcast on Monday, the secretary said he would be the one putting questions to Middle Eastern officials –asking them how they aim to resolve the conflict.
“The only one who’s stood up and said I’m willing to help do it is Donald Trump. All these other leaders, they’re going to have to step up. If they’ve got a better idea, then now is the time,” Rubio said.
However, the foreign ministers from the Arab countries Rubio will visit already sent a letter to him earlier this month detailing their willingness to work with the Trump administration on a two-state solution, which the secretary has all but dismissed.
Some analysts have characterized Trump’s proposal for Gaza as a negotiating ploy. If that’s the case, Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, argues it has already done more harm than good.
“If Trump’s eye-popping intervention was a bargaining tactic, as some searching for logic in the proposal claim, it has already failed. Enormous damage has been done to the fragile peace process and US prestige,” Aboudouh said.
Others, like Thomas S. Warrick — a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former Department of Homeland Security official — see some value in Trump’s proposal.
“No one predicted that Trump would push the United States to engage more on what postwar Gaza should look like in one month than the Biden team did in fifteen months,” Warrick said.
However, Warrick said Trump’s strategy “will need to be dialed back to what is workable,” and that he’s likely to come face to face with one tall hurdle when he meets with Abdullah: Jordan’s unwillingness to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
“There is quite literally no tool in the US toolbox that could persuade the leaders of Egypt or Jordan to change their minds on this point,” he said. “Trump’s advisors know this, but they would likely rather have Trump hear this directly from Jordanian King Abdullah.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to safeguard Americans against unfair business practices, is the newest target of Elon Musk and the Trump administration.
The agency is at a virtual standstill after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and Russell Vought, the leader of the White House budget office and now acting director of the CFPB, took control.
They and congressional Republicans have accused the agency of overreach and not being politically accountable.
Internal emails obtained by ABC News show Vought advised the agency’s headquarters in Washington will be closed all week and told employees, “Please do not perform any work tasks.”
In a post on X Saturday night, Vought said the CFPB’s funding, which comes through the Federal Reserve, is “now being turned off.”
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the CFBP, posted a video on Monday “ringing the alarm bell” on what the impact will be if its gutted.
Warren highlighted what she said the agency does for average Americans, including finding fraud in payment apps, stepping in if a bank tries to repossess your car and working to cut credit card fees. She argued that only Congress can dismantle the CFPB, and that Trump and Musk do not have the authority to do so unilaterally.
“So, why are these two guys trying to gut the CFPB? It’s not rocket science: Trump campaigned on helping working people, but now that he’s in charge, this is the payoff to the rich guys who invested in his campaign and who want to cheat families — and not have anybody around to stop them. Yeah, it’s another scam,” she said.
Congressional Democrats and others protested outside the agency on Monday afternoon.
Here is what to know about the agency and its work.
What is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
The CFPB is an independent agency established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It’s a consumer watchdog aimed at protecting American households from unfair and deceptive practices across the financial services industry.
Its oversight applies to everything from mortgages to credit cards to bank fees to student loans. By law, the CFPB has the rare ability to issue new rules — and impose fines against companies who break them.
Since its establishment in 2011, the CFPB says it has clawed back $20.7 billion for American consumers.
Unlike many federal agencies that are beholden to appropriations battles in Congress, the CFPB’s funding comes through the Federal Reserve system. This has made it a frequent target by Republicans and industry groups. Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled the CFPB’s source of funding is constitutional.
Key actions under the Biden administration
Under the Biden administration, the CFPB took aggressive steps to take on big players in the banking and financial services industries — issuing regulations that aimed to put money back in the pockets of tens of millions of Americans.
In December, it finalized a rule that would cap most bank overdraft fees at $5 (right now those fees can be as high as $35 per transaction). The agency said that would save the typical household $225 per year, or about $5 billion in total. That rule was set to take effect October 1, 2025 — but its fate is now in limbo given the work stoppage order from acting director Vought.
The CFPB also finalized a rule in January that would wipe medical debt from Americans’ credit reports. The agency estimated that would affect roughly 15 million Americans with $49 billion in unpaid medical bills on their credit reports. The change, set to take effect in March, is currently on hold as it faces legal challenges. A similar rule capping credit card late fees is also in legal limbo.
Beyond issuing new rules, the CFPB also addresses direct complaints from consumers who might have been scammed on everything from credit cards to cryptocurrency to car loans.
Overseeing mortgages and banks
The 2008 recession exposed how many Americans were left vulnerable in the unregulated subprime mortgage market. One of the key goals of the CFPB was to oversee the “nonbank mortgage market.” In other words, this applies to homebuyers who take out mortgages through independent lenders that aren’t banks.
According to the CFPB, nonbank lenders account for 65% of all mortgages in the U.S. in a market worth $13 trillion.
In practice, what this means is that the CFPB monitors and keeps tabs on nonbank lenders to try to ensure they aren’t deceiving or ripping off customers.
The agency also supervises banks and credit unions holding more than $10 billion in assets, accounting for more than 80% of the banking industry’s total assets. This includes banks like JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America. Other federal agencies like the Fed, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller also regulate banks.
(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an immediate pause on gender-affirming medical care procedures for all active-duty service members in a memo that was addressed to senior Pentagon leadership and military command.
The Feb. 7, 2025, memo, which was obtained today by ABC News, also ordered an immediate pause on all new promotions in the military for individuals “with a history of gender dysphoria.”
“Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,” the memo says.
“Individuals with gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect,” the memo continued, adding that the Department of Defense would provide “additional policy and implementation guidance” to service members “with a current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria.”
The memo came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28 rescinding Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly in the military based on their gender identity. The executive order is being challenged in federal court by prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, including Human Rights Campaign, which filed a pair of lawsuits against the Trump administration on behalf of active-duty transgender service members.
The executive order directed the Department of Defense to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender service members and stated that “expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order continued.
Hegseth echoed this sentiment in the Feb. 7 memo, saying that “efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.”
Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday on behalf of six active-duty transgender service members, challenging the Trump administration over the president’s ban on transgender service members.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
A similar lawsuit against the Trump administration was filed on Jan. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by advocacy groups GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six additional active duty service members.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
A similar lawsuit against the Trump administration was filed on Jan. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by advocacy groups GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six additional active duty service members.
ABC News reached out to the White House regarding the lawsuits but requests for comment were not returned.
The immediate impact of the memo on transgender service members is unclear, but ABC News has reached out to the plaintiffs in each of those lawsuits for comment.
Shannon Minter, lead counsel of NCLR, told ABC News in a statement on Monday that Hegseth’s memo “underscores the urgency of the need for court intervention.”
“The administration is already taking steps to implement the ban even before the stated deadlines in the original executive order,” Minter said. “Transgender applicants are already being turned away and transgender service members are being targeted and denied medically necessary care.”
Court records show that a hearing in this case is scheduled on February 18 in the D.C. district court, where Judge Ana Reyes is presiding over the case.
ABC News’ Briana Stewart contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and key members of his administration are lashing out at judges who have halted some of his second-term agenda, suggesting they don’t have the authority to question his executive power.
So far, the courts have pushed back on Trump’s attempts to end birthright citizenship, freeze federal grants, and the overhaul of federal agencies like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Over the weekend, the administration hit another roadblock when a federal judge temporarily restricted Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department’s vast federal payment system, which contains sensitive information of millions of Americans.
Musk accused the judge of being “corrupt” and called for him to be immediately impeached.
Vice President JD Vance, as he’s done before, questioned judicial oversight of the executive branch. In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos last year, Vance suggested a president can ignore a court’s order — even a Supreme Court order — he considers illegitimate.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance said over the weekend.
Trump was asked on Sunday about Vance’s comments and some of his setbacks in court.
“When a president can’t look for fraud and waste and abuse, we don’t have a country anymore,” Trump told reporters. “So, we’re very disappointed, but with the judges that would make such a ruling. But we have a long way to go.”
“No judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision,” the president added. “It’s a disgrace.”
Their pushback against the judiciary comes as Trump and his allies assert a sweeping theory of presidential power, one they say gives him sole control of the executive branch. Legal experts told ABC News they believe the Trump administration is trying to set up cases to test that theory before the Supreme Court.
Democrats say Trump is trying to subvert checks and balances under the U.S. Constitution, including the role of Congress in setting the scope of federal agencies and conducting oversight.
“I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced certainly since Watergate,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “The president is attempting to seize control of power, and for corrupt purposes.”
California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff responded directly to Vance’s suggestion judges aren’t “allowed to control” Trump’s executive power on X, writing: “JD, we both went to law school. But we don’t have to be lawyers to know that ignoring court decisions we don’t like puts us on a dangerous path to lawlessness.”
Republicans are largely aligned behind the president. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton slammed the judge who blocked DOGE’s access to Treasury data as an “outlaw.” Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, largely defended Musk’s actions as “carrying out the will” of Trump on CNN on Sunday.
Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law expert at the University of North Carolina, told ABC News Trump’s rhetoric is largely “bravado” as “judges are entitled to review the constitutionality of presidential actions.”
“The conflict between the Trump administration and the courts is not just brewing; it is likely to persist throughout his second term,” Gerhardt said, noting Trump has a long history of criticizing judges with whom he disagrees even if they were appointed by Republican presidents.
“I think this battle will define Trump’s presidency,” Gerhardt added.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy warned of an “assault on the Constitution” under President Donald Trump.
“I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate,” Murphy said. “The president is attempting to seize control of power, and for corrupt purposes.”
Pointing to the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the federal government, including by freezing foreign aid programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Murphy said the country is in the midst of a “red-alert moment” and argued that Trump is ushering in “the billionaire takeover of government.”
Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, have called for a shuttering of USAID, with Trump posting on social media, “CLOSE IT DOWN!”
“The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies,” Murphy said. “That is the evisceration of democracy.”
“You stand that next to the wholesale endorsement of political violence with the pardons given to every single Jan. 6 rioter — including the most violent, who beat police officers over the head with baseball bats — and you can see what he’s trying to do here,” Murphy continued. “He is trying to crush his opposition by making them afraid of losing federal funding, by making them afraid of physical violence.”
Murphy accused Musk of being motivated to shutter USAID in order to promote his own business interests.
“It makes America much less safe around the world, but it helps China. USAID is a thorn in the side of the Chinese government,” Murphy said. “Elon Musk has many major business interests at stake inside Beijing, and so making Beijing happy is going to accrue to the financial benefit of Elon Musk and many billionaires who outsource work to China.”
Murphy said it amounted to an “assault on the Constitution in order to serve the billionaire class” that will require “full scale opposition.”
“You can’t just rely on the courts,” he said. “Ultimately, you’ve got to bring the American public into this conversation, because we need our Republican colleagues in the House and in the Senate, ultimately, to put a stop to this. You cannot just rely on the court system when the challenge to the Constitution and the billionaire takeover is so acute and so urgent.”
Murphy also pushed back against Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who said on the Puck podcast “Somebody’s Gotta Win” last week that Democrats need to tone down their rhetoric, saying Americans are “not going to pay attention” if Democrats “keep yelling” and using “the most severe kinds of language.”
“I don’t agree. I’m not going to calm down,” Murphy said. “This is a fundamental corruption, and democracies don’t last forever, and what those who are trying to destroy democracies want is for everyone to stay quiet, for everyone to believe that the moment isn’t urgent.”
Republican Rep. Mike Turner on Sunday refuted claims that the massive overhaul of the federal government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) constitutes a federal crisis.
“Elon Musk goes about his job, which is a very important job, I mean the fact that we have Elon Musk looking from the private sector into the public sector, advising the president in ways that we can find ways to to reduce overall spending, to get this curve down is incredibly important and an unbelievable opportunity for for our government,” Turner said in an exclusive interview with co-anchor Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”
President Donald Trump tasked Musk with cutting federal spending through DOGE. Since Trump took office, Musk’s controversial task force has encouraged federal workers to leave their jobs and slashed many programs and agencies.
“In this instance, we have Elon Musk and the president of the United States going over to the bureaucracy and saying, ‘We’re going to tame you. We’re going to pull you back under the executive branch. We’re going to look at ways in which we can find savings, and we’re going to bring this spending curve down,'” Turner said.
Turner said that DOGE’s drastic cuts to the federal government will assist in meeting spending goals. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution that was negotiated in December. The resolution is set to expire in March and without a new deal, the government will shut down.
Turner said: “This administration is taking an immediate assessment of where are we spending our funds and where do we need to spend them? And in order to do so, they need to take a stop, they need to take a critical view and let the American public know that their monies are being spent around the world, and they need to determine how they need to be spent in the way that advances U.S. interests and do so in a way that we can balance the budget.”
DOGE’s purge of the federal government resulted in the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Trump administration placed all USAID direct-hire employees on administrative leave effective Friday, but a federal judge late Friday blocked the move and reinstated some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
Turner said federal agencies needed fiscal and policy reviews.
“We’ve had USAID that has been separate from, really, the ambassador structure and our embassy structure. Commerce has been separate. DOD has been separate. You know, taking a view where we, how do we merge these back so we have one voice in foreign policy.”
But while Musk has made baseless claims of fraud within USAID, Turner emphasized the importance of the agency’s work.
“USAID is not a criminal enterprise, and people who work for the government have an important job to do, and they need to be honored,” he said.
Current and former officials warn that dismantling USAID could create a global vacuum that could be filled by U.S. adversaries like China. However, Turner, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he does not believe China will act.
“They’re not going to come in and start providing aid of this nature. They don’t have the heart for it,” he said. “They don’t have the goals and objectives for it. This is not what they do.”
Additionally, on Tuesday Trump announced in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Trump outlined a scenario in which Palestinians would be relocated and the U.S. would own and rebuild Gaza. Experts warn that rhetoric like this could rattle the fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Turner said Trump’s language does not worry him, but it might be distracting.
“I think it does pose the challenge of focusing on the fact that Hamas and the Palestinians and the terrorist structure that’s there needs to be dismantled, that Israel does deserve and need a peaceful structure.” Turner said.
