Democrats hammer Trump for his weekend of golf as stocks tumble
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(JUPITER, FL) — As markets braced for another meltdown triggered by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Democrats hammered the president for spending the weekend golfing rather than responding to Americans’ fears that their retirement accounts are plummeting with the markets.
Trump left Washington, D.C., for Florida on Thursday to attend a LiV Golf Tournament dinner ahead of a tournament at his Doral club in Florida. On Saturday and Sunday, he played in a club championship at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter.
On Thursday, the first trading day after Trump announced the tariffs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 4%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined almost 6%. On Friday, the downward spiral continued with the Dow falling by 2,230 points, or 5.5%, while the S&P 500 plunged by 6%.
Dow futures opened Sunday evening down 1,500 points, or 4% percent., while the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 futures were also down 4%.
Democrats criticized Trump’s apparent lack of concern at Americans’ anxiety surrounding the tanking markets.
“I think people have seen their retirement savings on fire. And there he is out on the golf course,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That may end up being the most enduring image of the Trump presidency, that is, the president out on a golf cart while people’s retirement is in flames.”
On Saturday, Trump encouraged Americans to “HANG TOUGH” in a post on his Truth Social platform. “THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN,” he said.
The same day, the White House told reporters covering the president that Trump had won his second-round matchup for the senior championship at his Jupiter club and was to play in the championship round on Sunday. Trump posted a video of him teeing off on Truth Social on Sunday, though it was not clear when the video was shot.
During Saturday’s “Hands Off” protests, Democratic lawmakers railed against Trump’s policies and his time on the golf course.
“Get your ass off the golf course and face the people!” California Rep. Eric Swalwell told Trump in front of a crowd protesting at the National Mall in Washington.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas posted on Bluesky: “Trump’s out here swinging golf clubs while folks are in the streets fighting back.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Republicans to help Democrats reverse Trump’s tariffs and stop what she called “the dumbest trade war in history.”
“While Donald Trump is relaxing on the golf course, working people are worried about rising prices and an economic crash,” she posted on X.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also took issue with Trump’s weekend.
“You know, Donald Trump, the biggest lie that this guy ever told was that he cared about you, the American people. He does not. He cares about himself and his billionaire donors like Elon Musk,” Jeffries said Saturday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.” “And as if we didn’t need any additional proof, but at the same time that the retirement savings is crashing, the stock market is crashing, the economy is crashing, Donald Trump is on the golf course? This is what he chooses to do?”
Trump boarded Air Force One in Palm Beach, Florida, en route back to Washington on Sunday without speaking to reporters.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — After a month of fits and starts, a final hammer came down on the U.S. Agency for International Development on Wednesday night when the State Department, which had previously said it was going to review all foreign aid, announced that review was over and it had decided to terminate nearly 10,000 government contracts worth about $60 billion in humanitarian work abroad.
The cancellations left aid organizations reeling Thursday.
Many, for weeks, had been advocating behind closed doors for their projects to continue and applying for waivers in order to deliver immediate, lifesaving aid while the review process was underway. Several organizations on Thursday decided to start to speak out as they face a future with almost all U.S. foreign aid cut off.
“Any type of communicable disease, I think we will see rage rampant. I think we will see increased conflict in the world. I think we will see increased terrorism in the world. And so, I think, the implications are going to be really dire in terms of the instability that this creates in already very unstable regions of the world,” said Jocelyn Wyatt, CEO of Alight, an international organization that provides food, medicine and services for refugees in 20 countries around the world.
Like all international aid organizations, four days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Alight was told to suspend all programming funded through U.S. grants and contracts.
Wyatt described scrambling to keep her organization’s health care clinics afloat. They had to shutter programs in Uganda and Myanmar but were able to secure waivers from the State Department for lifesaving humanitarian aid to keep their operations going in Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.
But as of Thursday, all of Alight’s U.S. contracts have been canceled going forward, even contracts related to those programs that had received waivers to continue in the last few weeks.
Now, Wyatt said Alight is closing 33 health care clinics in Sudan, many in areas where they were the only health care provider, as well as water and sanitization services in three refugees camps in the country and another 13 clinics in Somalia.
According to Wyatt, their clinics see 1,200 people a day in Somalia alone, including about 700 malnourished children a day at designated feeding centers where the children get weighed and provided with supplemental food.
“We are unable to provide any services to those severely malnourished children, and so it’s really a matter of days or weeks before many of them will die,” she told ABC News during an interview Thursday. “The toll, the human lives that will be lost, is unfathomable.”
Thursday appeared to be a watershed moment for humanitarian leaders who, so far, had been reticent to speak put publicly out of concern that their organizations could face backlash or see grants and contracts suffer.
David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, called the termination of contracts “a devastating blow.”
“These are people who depend on the U.S.-funded services for the basics of survival. These programs are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent real lives and real futures,” he wrote in a statement, calling on the U.S. government to reconsider. “The countries affected by these cuts — including Sudan, Yemen, Syria — are home to millions of innocent civilians who are victims of war and disaster. We now face the starkest of stark choices about which services can be protected, and are calling on the American public, corporations and philanthropists to show that America’s generosity of spirit and commitment to the most vulnerable has not been lost.”
“We are no longer the shining city on a hill,” one humanitarian leader, who requested to speak anonymously out of fear of retribution for his organization, said to ABC News in an interview Thursday.
“It seems cruelty is the point. This is not about putting America first. This will kill people around the world,” the leader added.
While aid organizations expected a review of their work with the new administration, the scope and scale of the cuts have been shocking and will mean many aid organizations will be forced to dramatically cut their work or shutdown all together.
The termination notices were included in a court filing late Wednesday as leading aid organizations sued the federal government over nearly $2 billion in past payments they say they are owed for work already completed during the first part of this year.
The filing stated that almost 5,800 USAID awards for future work, and approximately 4,100 distributed through the State Department, will be terminated, while around 500 USAID awards and roughly 2,700 State Department awards will be retained.
Alight typically relies on U.S. foreign aid dollars for about 30% of their revenue and they have already had to lay off hundreds of staff members as they also wait for payments due from the U.S. federal government for work previously done.
Still, Wyatt said her organization will survive and worries about others that will not as well as the impact it will have on the people they serve.
Despite the turmoil of the last few weeks, she was reticent to speak publicly out of a concern that her organization and the clients they serve, could be impacted and retaliated against.
She said she understands the new administration’s push to evaluate taxpayer spending and foreign aid and that she was prepared to undergo an evaluation of their organization and make sure it aligned with Trump’s American First foreign policy.
But now that all of her contracts have been cancelled, Wyatt hopes to raise awareness and apply public pressure.
International Medical Corps, one of the largest first responder and disaster relief organizations in the world, wrote in a statement that they received cancellation notices for “the majority of our U.S. government-funded programs” late Wednesday night.
“As a result, we are in the process of closing affected programs. Though we receive funding from a variety of sources, this loss of funding will significantly impact our lifesaving global operations. To navigate this challenge, we will need to implement substantial changes across the organization in the coming days and weeks,” the statement read.
The IMC, which works in over 30 countries and last year alone said they provided direct health care services to over 16.5 million people, had received about half of its funding from the U.S. It is also currently runs two of the only field hospitals still operational in Gaza.
Global Refuge, formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, wrote in a statement Thursday that the contract terminations did not amount to a “simple review of federal resources,” but instead, “seeks to end America’s longstanding religious tradition of helping the least among us.”
(WASHINGTON) — A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on advancing Kash Patel’s nomination to be FBI director was delayed Thursday after Democrats raised objections.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is continuing his outreach to Senate Republicans — critical to advancing his Cabinet nominees and aggressive agenda.
ABC News has exclusively obtained an invitation sent to GOP senators and their spouses to have dinner with Trump at Mar-A-Lago on Friday while they are in town for the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Annual Winter Meeting.
The NRSC, chaired by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, is set to host its annual winter meeting at The Breakers, a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, on Feb. 7-9. The event is expected to have a record attendance of both Republican senators and donors.
Although the dinner will be with Trump, the Republican National Committee is paying for the event.
The dinner comes following the NRSC announcing in a memo to Republican Senate chiefs of staff Monday morning that it broke a fundraising record in January with $8.5 million raised — more than any other January off-year in committee history.
The memo also noted that the committee is entering the cycle with nearly $24 million in debt and unpaid bills from last cycle and limited cash on hand.
The 2024 election cycle was a good year for Republicans, securing the Senate’s majority by flipping seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Montana.
The memo also expressed the committee’s gratitude to White House political staff for briefing the group and shared their hopes of a partnership with them through the cycle.
“We appreciate James [Blair] and Matt [Brasseaux] for making the time to speak with us and we look forward to continuing to partner with them throughout the cycle.”
Blair is currently Trump’s deputy chief of staff at the White House and Brasseaux serves as the Trump administration’s director of the Office of Political Affairs. Blair served as the Trump’s campaign political director and Brasseaux was the deputy political director.
Trump’s invitation to GOP senators is one of many recent efforts to show a strong working relationship. Trump recently hosted breakfast with Republican senators the morning before the inauguration at Blair House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House just after the inauguration.
With the 2026 midterms a little more than a year and half away, Republicans look to expand their 53-seat majority in the Senate while also defending their seats in the critical states of Maine and North Carolina, represented by GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Thom Tillis.
But the 2026 midterms could prove to be a successful year for the GOP, with chances to flip the Senate seats in Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced he would not seek reelection and in Georgia, where the race would be made much tighter if GOP Gov. Brian Kemp were to jump in the race against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
