CBP asks judge for more time to work on tariff refunds
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection logo is displayed on the side of a patrol boat on September 26, 2025, in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A Customs and Border Protection official on Friday told a federal judge that the agency does not have the technology or manpower to immediately process $166 billion in tariff refunds, arguing the process would distract from its role addressing “imminent threats to national security.”
In a sworn filing, the official said that CBP needs an additional 45 days to create a system to process refunds for the more than 53 million entries related to the unlawful tariffs.
“CBP has never been ordered to, nor has it attempted to, process a volume of refunds anywhere near the volume of total entries and Entry Summary lines on which IEEPA duties have been deposited,” wrote Brandon Lord, the executive director of CBP’s Trade Programs Directorate.
The disclosure comes two days after a judge from the Court of International Trade initially ordered the Trump administration to remove the tariffs from its backlog of import paperwork. Even though the liquidation process — when the agency finalizes a tariff payment after goods enter the country — is largely automated and the Supreme Court overturned the tariffs two weeks ago, Lord said that Customs and Border Protection “is not able to comply” with the court’s order.
“CBP is now facing an unprecedented volume of refunds. Its existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to a task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency’s trade enforcement mission,” Lord said.
According to Lord, the current system used to process tariffs cannot handle the volume of refund requests, and that doing so manually would take resources away from “responsibilities that serve to mitigate imminent threats to national security and economic security.”
Following a hearing on Friday related to the refund process, which was closed to the public, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade suspended his earlier order to immediately begin recalculating tariffs dues.
By lifting his initial order, the judge appears to be making room for the refund process to play out, though the exact timeline of refunds remains unclear.
During previous hearings, the judge had expressed skepticism that the refund process would be a “mess” or that the government lacked the resources to issue refunds.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, during a hearing in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2026. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is petitioning the Department of Education to stop its transfer of federal student aid services to the Department of Treasury in her latest effort to halt the dismantling of the agency.
Thursday marks the one year anniversary of Warren’s “Save Our Schools” campaign — her wide-scale investigation against President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s attempts to shutter the Education Department.
“Since Day One, the Trump administration has raised costs for borrowers and tried to undermine our public schools,” Warren said in a statement first obtained by ABC News. “I’ve fought back every step of the way, and I’ll keep fighting to protect our students, teachers, and families,” she said.
Warren told ABC News last year that her campaign would use a combination of federal investigations and oversight to do everything she can to fight back and defend public education.
Warren’s campaign has since triggered the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to probe the department dismantling, an agency watchdog investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency’s alleged “infiltration” of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s sensitive data systems, and other legal actions opposing the Trump administration’s overhaul of the agency.
Warren and top Democratic senators on education-related committees sent a letter to McMahon and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, urging the officials to immediately “rescind” the interagency partnership reached in March.
“The Trump Administration continues to move forward with illegal Interagency Agreements (IAAs) dismantling the Education Department (ED),” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, arguing “This latest illegal scheme from the Trump Administration threatens to trap student loan borrowers, students, and families in chaos and bureaucracy, all while American taxpayers are left to foot the bill for Treasury to administer programs that ED can and should administer itself, likely costing more money and burying borrowers and families in unnecessary red tape.”
The most recent agreement includes sending the nearly $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio to Treasury through a multi-phase process to procure the financial aid programs.
“With the student loan portfolio approaching $1.7 trillion and defaults nearing 25 percent, now is the time for a hard reset in how the federal government provides and services student loans,” Department of Education Press Secretary for Higher Education Ellen Keast wrote in a statement to ABC News. “We are confident that our partnership with the Treasury, an experienced and proven fiduciary, will strengthen program administration and better serve American students, borrowers, and taxpayers,” Keast wrote.
The Democratic lawmakers accuse the agencies of breaking the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, which funds the administration of federal student aid and student loan servicing through the Department of Education. They argue that the myriad changes to federal agencies — including the massive reductions in workforce at Education and Treasury — will also result in harming millions of Americans who rely on the expertise of federal student aid civil servants. In 2025, the Trump administration cut over 40% of Education Department employees and nearly a quarter of Treasury staffers, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Their letter said moving statutory student aid programs, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Pell Grants, is not only illegal but likely to throw the financial aid system into disarray.
McMahon has previously stressed that she is not defunding federal programs and will continue to perform all of the agency’s “statutory duties.” A senior Department of Education official said the agency has broad authority to move the services. Interagency agreements are a frequently used tool that Education has engaged in with other partner agencies more than 200 times over the years, the senior department official said on a call with reporters.
Meanwhile, the Education Department has phased out Biden-era student loan repayment plans, saying it is to streamline the process impacting more than 40 million borrowers. Under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act signed into law by Trump last summer, a new income-driven repayment plan will be made available for borrowers on July 1. The Democratic lawmakers fear that student loan borrowers are now left with limited options and guidance while increasing the number of borrowers in default and “economic distress,” according to the letter.
However, Andrew Gillen of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom noted the move should be welcome news for Americans.
“This will benefit students by streamlining the aid application and student loan repayment processes and save taxpayers money by reducing losses on student loans,” Gillen wrote in a statement to ABC News.
Student loan advocates, like Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at Protect Borrowers, decried the interagency agreement. Bañez called the announcement irresponsible and reckless, demanding Congress guarantee that the Treasury Department is equipped with the appropriate staff to support borrowers.
“For too long, borrowers have been failed at every turn — they don’t deserve to be failed again by an agency that isn’t ready to protect them,” she wrote in a statement to ABC News.
In this Feb. 10, 2026, file photo, Sen. Chris Murphy speaks to reporters as he returns to his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, FILE)
(WASHINGTON) — Despite President Donald Trump saying that the United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, congressional Democrats are pushing forward to hold the president accountable.
“The president has promised to commit war crimes. He’s promised to eradicate an entire civilization we have never ever seen that in the history of this country. That’s why I and many other people have been talking for the last 24 hours about the 25th amendment,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on CNN Tuesday of the potential vehicle for removing the president from office.
Murphy said Trump has “lost touch with reality” — mentioning the president’s Tuesday morning social media post in which he threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
However, hours before an 8 p.m. ET self-imposed deadline for Iran to make a deal to fully reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz or face broad strikes on its critical infrastructure, Trump said he had agreed to suspend planned bombing for two weeks if Iran agreed to reopen the strait.
“We just can’t accept a president who is literally promising to destroy an entire civilization, to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. That alone should be grounds for the removal of this President,” said Murphy, who was one of several lawmakers who mentioned the 25th Amendment after Trump’s latest threats.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Senate Democrats will once again force a vote on an Iran war powers resolution when they return from recess next week. The resolution would call on the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities against Iran or any part of the Iranian government or military unless a declaration of war or authorization to use military force is enacted.
“Republicans will once again have the opportunity to join Democrats and end this reckless war of choice. The public must demand that Republicans join with us to approve a war powers act,” Schumer said at a New York press conference.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House’s top Democrat, said that “as soon as it becomes available to us to do so,” Democrats will present a war powers resolution on the House floor.
“A two-week ceasefire is insufficient. We need a permanent end to Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice, which is why House Democrats have demanded that Speaker Mike Johnson immediately reconvene the House back into session so we can move a War Powers Resolution that will end this conflict permanently,” Jeffries said on CNN Tuesday night.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have not yet commented on the matter.
In a statement on Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said he would support the House’s war powers resolution when it comes up for a vote – a change after Cueller was one of four Democrats who voted against it last month.
Cueller, in a post on X, said the war powers resolution is “a reaffirmation of Congress’ constitutional role and our shared responsibility to the American people.”
The Senate and the House have both failed several times to advance war powers resolutions.
Republican Sen. John Curtis said last week that he won’t support military operations in Iran beyond the 60-day window without congressional approval. He had previously voted with Republicans, aside from Sen. Rand Paul, to block the Iran war powers resolution from advancing, arguing Trump was within his legal authority to act.
In an April 1 op-ed for Deseret News, Curtis wrote that 60 days is a “sufficient window” for Trump to take emergency measures to combat the threat Iran poses, but that a declaration of war should be authorized by Congress for operations to continue.
There are no indications that other Republicans would change their votes on the war power resolution.
Democratic Rep. John Larson on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment to remove Trump from office – however, without Republican support, his effort is not likely to move forward and serves more as a signal of Democratic aspirations if they win back the majority in the midterm elections this fall.
A number of Senate Democrats have continued their calls for Congress to return early from their recess to “vote to end this war.”
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim posted a video on Tuesday night from inside a train he was taking back to Washington — imploring his fellow members of Congress to return as well.
“We need to have answers immediately for the American people. What Trump said earlier is unacceptable, it’s dangerous, it is absolutely unhinged and we should all be concerned about him helming this war, this illegal unconstitutional war. We need Congress back in session immediately,” Kim said in the video. “I call on all my colleagues to get back so we can have a vote to end this war and stop this insanity before it goes any further.”
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell echoed calls for congressional action.
“A return to diplomatic regional discussions will save lives and dollars and protect America’s long-term interests, while President Trump’s irresponsible words and actions undermine them Congress must impose constraints on this President’s wrongheaded use of force,” Cantwell said in a post on X.
For some Republicans, Trump’s announcement on the ceasefire seemed to be met with cautious optimism.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, said he is hopeful the “reign of terror” can be ended through diplomacy but that he is “extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs fiction.”
“As I stated before, I prefer diplomacy if it leads to the right outcome regarding the Iranian terrorist regime. I appreciate the hard work of all involved in trying to find a diplomatic solution,” Graham posted on X. “At this early stage, I am extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs. fiction or misrepresentation. That’s why a congressional review process like the one the Senate followed to test the Obama Iranian deal is a sound way forward. Fair and challenging questions with a full opportunity to explain, and a healthy dose of sunlight is generally the right formula to understand any matter. Simply put, kick the tires.”
ABC News’ John Parkinson and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on March 23, 2026 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Public records show that President Donald Trump voted by mail in the special election occurring Tuesday for the statehouse district that includes his Mar-a-Lago estate in spite of his longstanding rhetoric against voting by mail and his efforts to push through the SAVE America Act, which includes restrictions on mail-in voting.
According to public records available on the Palm Beach County elections website, Trump voted by mail ballot in the special election for Florida’s 87th House district.
Trump has spoken critically about voting by mail for years. As recently as Monday, during remarks in Memphis, Tennessee, the president said that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating — I call it mail-in cheating — and we got to do something about it all.”
A White House spokesperson, in response to a request for comment, said that Trump has supported “commonsense exceptions” to allow Americans to use mail-in ballots, including for “illness, disability, military, or travel,” but that he opposes universal voting by mail due to it being “highly susceptible to fraud.”
An analysis from the Brookings Institution from November 2025 found that voter fraud is rare in voting by mail.
“As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,” spokesperson Olivia Wales wrote in a statement.
Trump frequently visits his Mar-a-Lago estate and was there as recently as Monday morning.
The SAVE America Act, promoted by Trump, would place some new requirements and restrictions on voting by mail.
Florida’s 87th House district special election was scheduled after Mike Caruso, who previously represented the district, was appointed to a county role. Democrats have been eyeing the district as one they could potentially flip, with an eye toward the irony of flipping the president’s home district. Trump and Republicans, meanwhile, have been promoting Republican candidate Jon Maples in an effort to keep the seat in GOP hands.
This is not the first time Trump has voted by mail while president. He voted by mail in the 2020 Florida presidential primary — after he switched his formal place of residence from New York to Florida in September 2019.
Other presidents have voted in elections in their home states while in office. Then-President Joe Biden, for instance, flew to Delaware to vote in the 2022 primaries.
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
