Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin explains why she voted against Hegseth’s confirmation
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(WASHINGTON) — Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin explained why she voted against confirming Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, was sworn into the role Saturday following a hair-thin vote in the Senate.
Slotkin told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz she had not been confident Hegseth would be more loyal to the Constitution than he would be to President Donald Trump.
“He couldn’t unambiguously say that he will push back if the president asked him to do something that wasn’t constitutional, and that, to me, is why I couldn’t confirm him,” Slotkin said. “There’s a lot of other things in his background I don’t like, but I look at what is the strategic and irreversible threats to our democracy, and that’s using the uniform military in ways that violate the Constitution.”
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled a long-promised, sweeping set of baseline tariffs on all countries and what he described as “kind reciprocal” tariffs on nations he claimed were the worst offenders in trade relations with the U.S.
“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden, claiming the action will free the U.S. from dependence on foreign goods.
“April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” he said.
The new measures — which Trump described as “historic” — include a minimum baseline tariff of 10% and further, more targeted levies on certain countries like China, the European Union and Taiwan.
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are and have been charging us,” he said, adding, “because we are being very kind.”
“This is not full reciprocal. This is kind reciprocal,” he said.
Trump held up a chart with a list of nations and what the new U.S. tariffs against them will be. At the top was China, which Trump said was set to be hit with a 34% tariff rate as he claimed it charged the United States 67%.
The 10% baseline tariff rate goes into effect on April 5, according to senior White House officials. The “kind reciprocal” tariffs go into effect April 9 at 12:01 a.m., officials said, and will impact roughly 60 countries.
Trump described trade deficits as a “national emergency” and that his actions will usher in what he called “the golden age of America.”
“In short, chronic trade deficits are no longer merely an economic problem. They’re a national emergency that threatens our security and our very way of life. It’s a very great threat to our country,” he said.
Wednesday’s tariff announcement is a moment months in the making for the president, but one that comes with significant political and economic risk.
Some experts warn his moves could cause the economy to slide into a recession and markets seesawed ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, after weeks of turmoil as Trump’s tariff policy shifted and took shape.
The White House had been mum on details ahead of Wednesday’s event. One senior administration official said the situation was “still very fluid” after meetings on Wednesday morning and that Trump and his top advisers were trying to find some common ground where they agreed.
Some options debated in recent weeks, ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang reported, were a 20% flat tariff rate on all imports; different tariff levels for each country based on their levies on U.S. products; or tariffs on about 15% of countries with the largest trade imbalances with the U.S.
Wednesday’s tariffs build onto levies already imposed by the administration, including on steel and aluminum as well as certain goods from China, Canada and Mexico.
The actions have strained relations with Canada and Mexico, two key allies and neighbors. Prime Minister Mark Carney said last week the U.S. and Canada’s deep relationship on economic, security and military issues was effectively over.
Canada has vowed retaliatory tariffs and Mexico said it will give its response later this week. The European Union, too, said it has a “strong plan to retaliate.”
But Trump and administration officials are plowing full steam ahead, arguing America’s been unfairly “ripped off” by other nations for years and it’s time for reciprocity.
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said on Wednesday.
The economy was the top issue for voters in the 2024 presidential election, with Americans casting blame on President Joe Biden for high prices and Trump promising to bring families financial relief.
The administration has painted tariffs as a panacea for the economy writ large, arguing any pain experienced in the short term will be offset by what they predict will be major boosts in manufacturing, job growth and government revenue.
“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base,” Trump said. “We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers. And ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”
But economists say it will be American consumers who bear the brunt of higher costs to start.
It’s unclear how much leeway the public is willing to give Trump to get past what he in the past called “a little disturbance.”
Already, little more than two months into his second term, polls show his handling of the economy is being met with pushback.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey published on Monday found a majority of Americans (58%) disapprove of how Trump has been handling the economy.
On his protectionist trade negotiations with other nations, specifically, 60% of Americans said they disapproved of his approach so far. It was his weakest issue in the poll among Republicans.
Trump’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill have said they’re placing trust in the president, but acknowledged there will be some uncertainty to start.
“It may be rocky in the beginning but I think this will make sense for Americans and it will help all Americans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday alongside other members of Republican leadership.
Democrats, meanwhile, pledged to fight the tariffs “tooth and nail” and were trying to force a vote aimed at curtailing his authorities to impose levies on Canada.
“Trump’s done a lot of bad things. This is way up there,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier on Wednesday.
ABC News’ Mary Bruce, Katherine Faulders and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Crowds of current and recently fired federal workers gathered at a job fair in Maryland on Saturday to search for new career opportunities as the Trump administration continues its purge of federal workers.
Many were filled with despair and frustration over the cuts, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Daniel Leckie was a historic preservation specialist for the General Services Administration who got fired in February. He attended the job fair with his wife and 6-month-old baby.
“We’re now just incredibly terrified and scrambling to find new jobs to keep the roof over our head and feed our little one,” he told ABC News.
Leckie said he was fired for being a probationary employee and was just one day away from fully satisfying his probationary period.
Leckie and his wife, Jennifer Hopkins, just bought a new home in Maryland, making their first mortgage payment just a few weeks ago. He was also working toward completing the public service loan forgiveness program.
“I had about maybe two or three months left before I would have satisfied the terms of my student loans. It’s an $80,000 proposition for our family. It’s between this job, the student loan forgiveness that we were counting on and the job that we took included a promotion potential as long as I was performing fully, successfully in my duties, which I was,” he said.
“That’s what we based a lot of our financial future on, including deciding to start a family and taking out a mortgage and becoming homeowners here in the D.C. area,” Leckie added.
William Dixon, a 30-year veteran who has worked in the federal government for 23 years, told ABC News the layoffs are a “stab” against veterans.
“Because after we’ve sat up here and put the sacrifice out, like we don’t even matter, we don’t count,” he said.
Dixon works in logistics for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but he and his wife, who also works for the Pentagon, are bracing for their jobs to be cut any day now as the Defense Department prepares to make sweeping layoffs.
Dixon said both he and his wife received the email from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to list what they accomplished last week, but they’ve refrained from responding based on guidance from their supervisors.
He did, however, have a message for Musk and Trump.
“Stop. You’re hurting families. You’re hurting people,” he said. “Everybody depends on having a paycheck to take care of their family as well as to build for their retirement as well as take care of young ones. You’re doing nothing but hurting, hurting the whole nation and their families. That’s all you’re doing.”
(WASHINGTON) — Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy and lead negotiator tasked with ending the war in Ukraine, has attracted criticism in Europe and Ukraine after an interview where he appeared to back a number of well-known Kremlin talking points on the conflict.
The comments, in which Witkoff seemed to accept the results of sham referenda Russia has previously held in Ukraine to justify its seizure of land there — including Crimea, will likely feed fears among European allies that the Trump administration is leaning too far toward the Kremlin’s vision.
In the interview for “The Tucker Carlson Show,” posted online on Friday, Witkoff talked about his efforts to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin, speaking warmly of the Russian leader. Witkoff said he believed the heart of the conflict was Russia’s desire to control four regions of Ukraine it partially occupied and has claimed annexed since 2022: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Talking about Putin’s claims to the regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Witkoff suggested Russia had a right to them because they were majority Russian-speaking and repeated a false Kremlin claim that fair referenda there showed residents wanted to be absorbed by Russia.
“They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff told Carlson.
However, Witkoff did not acknowledge that the supposed referenda held in those territories — whether in 2014 in the case of Crimea or 2022 in the other regions — were widely dismissed by Western powers, human rights organizations and international bodies as fraudulent and illegitimate.
Russia conducted referenda in the areas it occupied in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the fall of 2022, several months after seizing them with its full-scale invasion launched in February that year. Putin used the referenda to justify Russia’s subsequent annexation of the regions. Russia also held a similar referendum in Crimea in 2014 following its occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula.
The referenda were staged after Russia’s invasion had already forced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to flee, and while Russian security forces were abducting and torturing anyone expressing opposition to its takeover. In some areas, Russian soldiers were filmed accompanying vote collectors as they went from house to house.
No legitimate independent international observers monitored the referenda and they were widely dismissed as shams, including by the United States. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the referenda as illegal and violating the U.N. Charter.
In September 2022, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it’s seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.”
Witkoff made the remarks on the Russian referenda a day before a new round of talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia aimed at trying to make progress toward ending the war. His portrayal of the referenda as legitimate triggered some fierce criticism in Europe.
“Witkoff’s repeating of Kremlin lies about ‘russian-speakers’ [sic] wanting to ‘join Russia’ is truly chilling,” Lithuania’s former foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, wrote on X. “Hearing Americans talk like this should be an electric shock for Europe, not a wakeup call.”
Some Ukrainian members of parliament also condemned Witkoff’s comments.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the statements were “shocking.”
“I don’t understand what this is about — ignorance, naivety, unprofessionalism?” said Merezhko, who suggested Witkoff should be removed from his negotiating role. “Because we are talking about a representative of the president, who should professionally understand this issue and know some basic things. And he doesn’t know this. He is relaying Russian propaganda.”
In the interview with Carlson, Witkoff appeared to struggle to remember the names of the Ukrainian regions. “Donbas, Crimea. You know the names,” he told the conservative media personality, who prompted him to say “Lugansk” — the Russian transliteration for Luhansk. “Lugansk, and there’s two others,” Witkoff replied.
Although Putin declared he had annexed the four regions, his troops still do not fully control most of the area. Much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, including their regional capitals, remain unoccupied.
A wealthy real estate developer, Witkoff has emerged as the lead negotiator for Trump’s effort to end the war, twice now traveling to Moscow, where he has said he spent several hours talking with Putin.
In his interview on Carlson, Witkoff was effusive in his praise for Putin, calling him a “very smart guy” and noting Putin told him he had prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt against him during last year’s presidential campaign. Witkoff added that Putin had given him a portrait of Trump which he says the Russian leader had commissioned from a famous Russian artist.
“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to reestablish through a simple word called communication, which many people would say I shouldn’t have had because Putin is a bad guy. I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff also told Carlson he believed Russia “does not need to absorb Ukraine,” saying, “They’ve gotten what they want. So why do they need more?” He also said he “100%” believes Russia does not want to invade Europe, saying he took Putin “at his word” on that.
Witkoff also repeated an unsupported claim made by Putin that Russian forces have surrounded a significant number of Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region. Although Ukraine was forced to retreat from Kursk earlier this month, no evidence has emerged to suggest many Ukrainian soldiers are encircled, and both independent researchers and Ukrainian officials have said it is false.
“Witkoff uncritically amplified a number of Russian demands, claims and justifications,” the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote.
Witkoff’s comments could feed deep unease in Europe that the Trump administration, which is moving fast to restore relations with Russia, is more aligned with the Kremlin than NATO allies over the war in Ukraine. European officials and observers have also warned the administration, in its hurry to reach a deal, is vulnerable to manipulation by Putin.
The White House has argued its reengagement with Russia brings peace closer, but critics point out that the Kremlin has, so far, yet to make any significant concessions. Trump has claimed he isn’t “aligned” with Putin. “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world,” Trump said last month.
Vice President JD Vance on Monday defended Witkoff, writing on X he was doing an “incredible job.”
