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.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Jan. 6 rioters convicted for role in Capitol attack speak out against Trump’s pardons
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump followed through on his pledge to pardon those convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, granting a sweeping unconditional pardon to more than 1,500 rioters and commutations for more than a dozen others.
Following the executive action, two people who pleaded guilty for their actions at the Capitol that day have spoken out against their pardons.
“This is a sad day,” Idaho resident Pamela Hemphill told Boise ABC affiliate KIVI. “The ramifications of this is going to be horrifying.”
Hemphill pleaded guilty to violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days of incarceration. She told KIVI she doesn’t want to be pardoned.
“I broke the law. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” she told KIVI. “And we know all of them are guilty.”
New Hampshire resident Jason Riddle, who admitted to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, drinking from an open bottle of wine and stealing a book from the Senate Parliamentarian office, pleaded guilty to theft of government property and illegally protesting inside the Capitol. He was sentenced in April 2022 to 90 days in prison.
Riddle was struggling with alcohol at the time, and part of his probation included mandatory alcoholic treatment. The Navy veteran said he is grateful for his arrest.
“I am guilty of the crimes I have committed and accept the consequences,” he told ABC News. “It is thanks to those consequences I now have a happy and fruitful existence.”
At the time of his arrest, Riddle said he was an “obsessor” of Trump’s.
“I don’t need to obsess over a narcissistic bully to feel better about myself,” Riddle said. “Trump can shove his pardon up his a–.” As of early January, more than 1,580 individuals had been charged criminally in federal court in connection with Jan. 6, with over 1,000 pleading guilty, according to the Department of Justice.
Of course, not all of those convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack questioned Trump’s executive action. Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, is among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted by Trump. He was serving an 18-year sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for leading members of the Oath Keepers in an attempt to use the violent Capitol attack to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“That was a bunch of nonsense,” Rhodes told ABC News while standing at a protest outside the DC Central Detention Facility after being released on Tuesday.
Rhodes, who was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he isn’t disappointed that he didn’t receive a full pardon, and believes Trump will ultimately issue him one.
Asked whether the Jan. 6 defendants who were charged with assaulting police officers deserved a pardon, he said yes.
“Like I said before, it’s about defense of innocence. Because they were not given a fair trial,” Rhodes said.
Riddle, though, worried about the message the executive action sends to those convicted of assaulting police officers.
“If I was one of the people who crossed the line into assaulting police officers that day, I’d probably believe I can get away with anything I want now,” he said.
Asked during a press briefing Tuesday about pardoning violent Jan. 6 convicts, including one who admitted to attacking an officer, Trump said he would look into it and repeated his claim that the rioters were unjustly prosecuted.
“The cases that we looked at, these were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren is urging Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reinstate former Department of Education employees who were critical to the nation’s federal student aid process or else borrowers will suffer “dire consequences,” according to a letter Warren sent to McMahon on Wednesday.
“The Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of parents, students, and borrowers who rely on a functioning federal student aid system to lower education costs,” Warren and a group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter to McMahon.
“ED should immediately restore all fired [Federal Student Aid] employees responsible for reviewing student aid complaints and refrain from taking any measures to deter the submission of complaints,” the senators added.
The Education Department intended to remove the “Submit a Complaint” button from FSA’s website, according to the letter. It found a senior employee at the department called the move an “overall win” as the change would decrease the volume and number of complaints. But more than 90% of the office’s complaints were submitted online last year.
“ED’s actions will hurt parents trying to understand how to submit the FAFSA correctly so that they can afford to send their child to college, veterans whose loan repayment status has been processed incorrectly due to their deployment, and students whose aid is being improperly withheld by predatory for-profit schools,” the letter said.
The letter alleges the FSA website changes — like moving the submit a complaint function — weakens FSA’s capacity to resolve complaints and puts borrowers at risk of loan scams. Warren, D-Mass., and the senators demand answers about the agency’s complaint backlog, why the department fired the civil servants, and how much influence Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency had on the firings.
“Donald Trump is telling students that if you’re scammed by your student loan servicer or have a problem getting the aid you need to go to college, he doesn’t care,” Warren said in a statement to ABC News. “Secretary McMahon is helping Trump rip opportunities away from kids who just want a good education, and as a result, real people will get hurt. Democrats in the Senate are not going to roll over and give up on our kids — we’re fighting back,” Warren added.
This comes as President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to gut the U.S. Department of Education at the White House on Wednesday, multiple sources familiar told ABC News. The president’s order will direct McMahon to take all necessary steps permitted by law to dissolve department, according to the sources familiar. It would take 60 votes in the Senate to dismantle the agency that Congress created.
The education department took its first steps to eliminate nearly half the agency’s workforce last week through a massive reduction in force, deferred resignations and retirement buyouts, according to the agency. After a federal judge ordered that former probationary employees be reinstated, dozens were rehired. A source familiar told ABC News that most of the reduction in force impacted the offices for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. FSA civil servants are tasked with helping the nation’s students achieve higher education, including overseeing a $1.6 trillion portfolio of student loans.
FSA received nearly 300,000 complaints in Fiscal Year 2024, according to the letter. The office had about 1,400 employees before the layoffs and hundreds will be lost after last week’s cuts.=
Still, the department will continue to administer its statutory functions that students from disadvantaged backgrounds rely on, including grants, formula funding and loans, McMahon stressed recently.
“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that is going to fall through the cracks,” she said on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.
FSA’s operations have already been impacted, according to a source familiar. The federal student loan website was down briefly last week. Less than 24 hours after being fired, IT employees were called frantically to join an hours-long troubleshooting call, according to the source.
Throughout President Joe Biden’s tenure there were widespread issues with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, form. During a House Committee on Appropriations hearing last spring former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the department was working on fixing the botched rollout of the form “around the clock.” McMahon’s department touted a 50% increase on the number of FAFSA applications submitted compared to this time last year.
Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, were among the 11 lawmakers who signed the letter. The deadline for the administration to respond is March 25.
A former FSA attorney, who did oversight and enforcement in the borrower defense unit, said they were heartbroken when they were let go from their dream job on Valentine’s Day.
Since the checks stopped coming in last month, the former employee said it’s been difficult living on unemployment benefits. The former employee described making about a fifth of what they brought in before being fired.
However, they said the letter to McMahon gives them renewed hope.
“If I could get my job back I would take it in a heartbeat,” the former FSA attorney told ABC News, adding, “I loved the work that we did.”
(WASHINGTON) — After the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) fired its probationary workers as part of the Trump administration’s government-wide layoffs Thursday, the agency moved on to fire short-term employees Thursday night with most of the remaining staff expected to be fired Friday, according to a lawsuit.
A group of federal unions that is suing the Trump administration over its dismantling of the agency alleged in a court filing Thursday that the newly installed acting director, Russell Vought, plans to fire over 95% of the agency’s workforce as soon as Friday.
The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit are asking a federal judge to impose a temporary order to block the dismantling the CFPB, which they argue could have sweeping consequences for American consumers.
The firings, part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to slash the federal government, would gut the 1,700-employee consumer watchdog agency, according to three CFPB employees who spoke to ABC News on the condition that they not to be identified out of fear of retribution.
“All term employees were fired tonight, and it looks like the rest of us will be fired tomorrow but for cause rather than via a [reduction in force] which means no severance I think,” one agency lawyer wrote in a message to ABC News.
“3 of my 4 teammates were canned,” another employee wrote. “Just me and my supervisor left, the only permanent employees.”
Employees were told not to work or go into the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters this week, and several employees said their credentials did not allow access into satellite offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Atlanta on Thursday, two of the employees said.
The employees said the firings will leave all Americans more vulnerable to fraud.
“I’m worried about everybody. What about the people who use our complaints to get their loans straightened out or their bank accounts unfrozen? They’ve already tried calling the company and gotten nowhere,” an employee wrote. “Who will help them now? Will the companies get bold and screw over their customers without our robust oversight?”
“It’s going to be a nightmare,” the employee said.
“I’m concerned for every consumer out there,” another employee told ABC News. “There’s a lot of fintech companies and I don’t know what’s going to happen if we don’t have purview over that.”
The employee said she was also concerned about X CEO Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, having access to the CFPB’s massive database, which contains information about companies that Musk’s planned “X Money” online payment service would compete with. The agency would also be responsible for regulating the X Money platform.
The employee also said she was alarmed at the way CFPB employees were being characterized by the Trump administration.
“A lot of people are actively giving back and serving” the community, she said of her fellow CFPB employees. “Some donate from our paychecks — donations for nonprofits, volunteering, donating, giving back to our community, fostering dogs, they’re involved in a lot of causes. I work with remarkable people who never stop serving.”
“Me personally, this was my dream job in college and I can’t even believe i got in, it was so competitive,” wrote the employee, who said she is in her fourth year at the agency after having worked in the private sector, so her pension will not vest. “It’s the dream job, what’s next? I’m too young to retire, I believe in the work we did, everyone I work with felt the same.”
