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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(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) — The Senate, in an extremely narrow vote, confirmed Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump’s embattled pick to serve as secretary of defense.
The vote was initially 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance then casting the tie-breaking vote.
Former GOP leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, voted no. He joined Sens. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, along with all Democrats in voting against Hegseth’s nomination.
Hegseth, a former “Fox and Friends” television anchor, was nominated by Trump in November to lead the Defense Department. In the time since his nomination was announced, Hegseth has been scrutinized for a number of accusations made against him, including those of sexual assault and financial mismanagement of two different veterans organizations.
Hegseth has fiercely denied the allegations. He appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a public hearing earlier this month, where he asserted to the panel that he was a “changed man.”
“I am not a perfect person, but redemption is real,” he told the panel.
Speaking to reporters while on a visit to Los Angeles, President Donald Trump said he was “very happy” with the vote, and said he was not aware of McConnell’s vote.
In a statement released while the vote was still going on, McConnell said that Hegseth’s desire to be a “change agent” was not enough to qualify him for the role of secretary of defense.
“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests,” McConnell said in the statement. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”
Hegseth was confirmed by one of the narrowest Senate margins of any defense secretary in modern history. Most defense secretaries have been confirmed with broad bipartisan votes.
Lloyd Austin, former President Joe Biden’s pick for defense secretary, was confirmed in a 93-2 vote and Trump’s first pick for defense secretary in his first term, James Mattis, was confirmed in a 98-1 vote.
Before the vote, Hegseth arrived at the Capitol with his wife and children to watch the proceedings in person, a rare move for a Cabinet nominee.
With the Senate’s vote Friday, Hegseth becomes the third member of Trump’s team to be confirmed by the Senate, following Marco Rubio as secretary of state and John Ratcliffe, as CIA director.
During the same hearing, he affirmed his promise to restore the “warfighting ethos” of the DOD, touting his experience in the National Guard.
It was enough to win over the support of most Republicans in the Senate, including several of those who were initially skeptical.
“He articulated a clear vision of the Pentagon, and it was clear to anyone who listened that he is going to bring energy and fresh ideas to shake up the department’s stagnant bureaucracy,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a floor speech endorsing Hegseth on Thursday. “He will restore a warfighting ethos and relentlessly focused on the military’s core mission: to deter conflict and, if necessary, to win a war.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced his nomination on a party-line vote on Monday. Then, in a closely watched moment on Thursday, Hegseth’s nomination passed a key test vote that set the table for Friday’s vote of final passage.
The nomination only required a simple majority in the Senate to advance, and it cleared the threshold narrowly, with only GOP backing.
Collins and Murkowski also voted no on that occasion.
In a statement, Murkowski explained that she could not support Hegseth due to concerns about this character and lack of experience.
“I believe that character is the defining trait required of the Secretary of Defense and must be prioritized without compromise,” Murkowski said in the post. “The leader of the Department of Defense must demonstrate and model the standards of behavior and character we expect of all servicemembers, and Mr. Hegseth’s nomination to the role poses significant concerns that I cannot overlook.”
Collins took issue with comments Hegseth made in the past about his belief that women should not serve in combat roles in the military. Though Hegseth has since changed his tune on that, Collins said she was unconvinced.
“I am also concerned about multiple statements, including some in the months just before he was nominated, that Mr. Hegseth has made about women serving in the military,” Collins said. “He and I had a candid conversation in December about his past statements and apparently evolving views. I am not convinced that his position on women serving in combat roles has changed.”
Trump expressed confidence in Hegseth ahead of the vote on Friday, though he added, “You’ll never know what’s going to happen.”
McConnell, the former GOP leader, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, ultimately cast votes in favor of advancing Hegseth’s nomination in the earlier test vote, although the president questioned whether McConnell will vote no on Hegseth Friday morning.
Tillis said he was still considering the most recent slate of allegations against Hegseth, leveled in an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law Danielle Hegseth. In that affidavit, which ABC News obtained, Danielle Hegseth attested that Pete Hegseth’s ex-wife Samantha told her she “once hid in her closet from Hegseth because she feared for her personal safety” in the home they shared during their marriage. It also detailed episodes of binge drinking by Pete Hegseth.
An attorney for Pete Hegseth denied these allegations, and allegations of abuse were also rejected by his ex-wife.
Tillis said he so far has not found credible evidence to back many of the allegations that have be levied against Pete Hegseth but that he’s still doing his vetting on these most recent developments.
“I am in the process of completing due diligence on what appears to be the last allegation. All the other ones I couldn’t conclude had validity,” Tillis said Thursday. “So I’m talking to people that can give me data inputs. It all goes back to the same thing — first-hand, eye-witness, corroborated account.”
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(WASHINGTON) — As Elon Musk continues to dismantle government agencies, threaten workers with layoffs and gain access to government data, congressional Republicans on Wednesday blocked Democratic efforts to compel him to answer for his actions under oath.
Musk, who has not made any public appearances since the inauguration, has publicly called for cutting down the federal government and through his non-government organization Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has frozen funding for several agencies including USAID the international aid agency.
Designated a special government employee by the White House, Musk claims he has been in talks with President Donald Trump about his tactics.
“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said Monday on his effort to curtail USAID.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, tore into Musk during a committee hearing on Wednesday as he moved to subpoena the controversial billionaire.
“It’s a puzzling role for many people, certainly on this side of the aisle, and I think for some on yours, who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence,” he said.
Republicans on the committee pushed back and engaged in a shouting match with Democrats over Musk. When GOP chairman Rep. James Comer put the motion to a vote, it failed along party lines.
Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who has shown support for DOGE in the past, abstained from voting.
Comer and other Republicans came to Musk and DOGE’s defense contending, without evidence, that the federal government was wasting taxpayer dollars and those agencies needed to be reviewed and scaled back.
“Elon Musk trimmed the fat on X and we have the chance to do the same here,” Comer said about Musk deep cuts at the social media giant.
Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022 has been seen by some business analysts as an unsuccessful investment as the company’s value has gone down sharply over the years with users and advertisers dropping the platform.
The mutual fund Fidelity marked down its estimate of X’s value by 78.7% as of the end of August, according to a financial disclosure.
Republicans have maintained that Musk is not in charge and answers to Trump.
When asked about Democrats’ concerns and anger over DOGE, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump campaigned to make the government more efficient and defended Musk’s involvement in it.
While Musk won’t be taking questions from leaders anytime soon, he has spent a lot of time on his social media platform making his case for the cuts.
On Thursday he reposted a X post that had screenshot from a news article talking about DOGE aides looking at the Medicare payment system.
“Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening,” Musk wrote in his post without any further details or evidence to back his claim.
The Medicare system wasn’t the only government agency that was put on notice this week.
The Treasury Department said that officials connected to DOGE have been granted “read-only” access to the sensitive Treasury system that manages trillions of dollars in government payments.
Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that DOGE is not allowed to write new code.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for forecasting the weather, researching and analyzing climate and weather data and monitoring and tracking extreme weather events like hurricanes, is now being scrutinized by Musk’s team, several sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
DOGE is looking for anything tied to DEI and that they removed anything DEI-related from bulletin boards, including posters and signs, the sources said. They also checked bathroom signs to ensure they complied with Trump’s executive orders.
A former NOAA employee told ABC News that he is concerned that representatives from DOGE will employ what he called the Musk’s strategy of breaking things now and fixing them later. He said he’s worried that NOAA’s irreplaceable climate and weather data could be damaged or lost and that DOGE may be following the Project 2025 playbook.
Trump has distanced himself from the plan. However, his nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was one of the authors.
Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA and privatizing forecast operations. In the document, the authors wrote that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.
As these moves take place, questions have been raised by leaders, critics and others about by how much and how exactly its operating.
Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing but told people he thought it was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News. Instead, he took an office inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the sources said.
Musk moved beds into both the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the United States Office of Personnel Management, according to sources. The move is intended to allow both Musk and his staff to sleep there if working late, the sources said.
It follows a familiar trend for tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Musk’s team is staffed largely by engineers and young people with little experience in government policy. At least one as young as 19 years old, according to sources.
Trump was asked Tuesday about Musk’s team including the younger members and their access to government data and facilities and said he thought it was a good move.
Democratic leadership on the Hill has repeatedly downplayed the power Musk claims for DOGE.
“It has no authority to make spending decisions, to shut down programs or ignore federal law. This is not debatable. This is an indisputable fact. No authority for spending decisions to shut down programs or ignore federal law,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Matthew Glasser, Will Steakin, Katherine Faulders and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
