House Democrats take aim at $TRUMP crypto meme coin
LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — While President Donald Trump’s proudest supporters on Capitol Hill shower him with legislation proposing putting his portrait on a $250 bill, declaring his birthday a national holiday or adding his likeness to Mount Rushmore — a new effort across the aisle isn’t as flattering — as House Democrats take aim at the president’s $TRUMP meme coin.
Since launching a little over a month ago, the $TRUMP coin has tanked in value after early investors dumped the cryptocurrency. Members of Congress have noticed as hundreds of thousands of investors have taken hard hits and billions in value have quickly vanished.
California freshman Democrat Rep. Sam Liccardo told ABC News on Thursday he will introduce legislation to prohibit the country’s top officials and their families — from Congress to the White House — from capitalizing on personal meme coins.
The Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement (MEME) Act would prohibit the president, vice president, members of Congress, senior executive branch officials and their spouses and dependent children from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing a security, future, commodity or digital asset.
Liccardo said he believes that the president and first lady Melania Trump cashed in on their meme coins and enriched investors around the world who initially supported the cryptocurrency.
Trump launched the coin in January, days before he took office. A similar Melania coin had been issued a week earlier. Trump in July said he wanted to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
While Liccardo’s legislation is not expected to become law over the next two years under Republican majorities in the House and Senate, the freshman Democrat said that the president and first lady made a windfall on their respective meme coins and is working to build support that culminates behind a Democrat majority.
“Let’s make corruption criminal again,” Liccardo, a former federal and local criminal prosecutor, said. “Our public offices belong to the public, not the officeholders, nor should they leverage their political authority for financial gain. The Trumps’ issuance of meme coins financially exploits the public for personal gain, and raises the specter of insider trading and foreign influence over the Executive Branch.”
The proposal would forbid federal officials from promoting a range of financial assets or from participating in any conduct likely to financially benefit themselves, according to Liccardo. The legislation would impose criminal and civil penalties and includes a prohibition that applies to any financial asset, such as the stock of Truth Social.
Liccardo wants to subject violators to criminal and civil penalties while stopping them from profiting from an asset issued before the bill’s enactment — giving it retroactive element intended to address the launch of $TRUMP.
Liccardo said he has a dozen Democratic cosponsors as he prepares to introduce the legislation on Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday morning was still speaking on the Senate floor, staging a filibuster he started at 7 p.m. Monday night, in what he called a protest against the national “crisis” he said President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had created.
On Monday night, he said he was set to last “as long as [he is] physically able.”
“I’m heading to the Senate floor because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have shown a complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people. You can tune in on CSPAN, YouTube, X, and Facebook,” the senator posted on X as he took to the floor.
Booker, who said he would keep the Senate floor open through the duration of his remarks, said at the top of his speech that he “rise[s] with the intention of disrupting the normal business” of the chamber because he believes the country is in “crisis” due to the actions of the White House since Trump started his second term.
“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis, and I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended–so many of them identify themselves as Republicans,” Booker said.
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people For from our highest offices, a sense of common decency. These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such,” he said.
So long as Booker is holding the floor, the Senate won’t be able to conduct other business unless he temporarily yields.
(WASHINGTON) — Dozens of Department of Education employees received letters as business hours closed Friday placing them on administrative leave, according to a copy of one letter obtained by ABC News.
While no specific reason was given, some employees told ABC News they believe the only common thread among them is that they attended a voluntary training called the “Diversity Change-Agent Training Program.”
The letter states that the administrative leave notice is not for disciplinary purposes. Rather, it’s being issued under President Donald Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “further guidance” from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, according to the letter.
Per the letter, employees will receive full pay and benefits through the end of the administrative leave. They are not required to do work-related tasks during this time, nor are they required to come into the office. Employees who were placed on leave also had their government email access suspended as they received the letters. There’s no set time for the leave period, according to the letter.
The letters have caused a frenzy throughout the department, as some employees had been locked out of their accounts and had to check their private email addresses for the notice, according to Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 252.
Smith told ABC News more than 50 employees in “extremely diverse roles” within the department received the email notices to their government email addresses or their private email accounts after regular business hours over the weekend.
ABC News spoke with three Department of Education employees who received the letters and described their leave as “paid administrative hell” since Friday evening.
“It’s very, very, unsettling,” one department employee of over 20 years, who works in Washington, D.C., told ABC News. “I don’t get it. What’s my crime? What have I done?”
Smith said the positions of Department of Education employees placed on leave run the gamut, from senior civil rights attorneys to attorneys for borrower defense to press specialists. She said she feared more letters would be sent in the coming days.
An attorney who works for the department in Washington, D.C., said they were put on leave from their “dream job.” The employee has two children and received the notice after putting them to bed on Friday night, they said. The person said Friday was tough and the news was shocking to receive, but now they’re feeling “different levels” of sadness.
“My mood felt a little bit different just waking up knowing that I wasn’t going to be working,” the employee told ABC News.
“But I just feel like there’s a lot of information that I’m trying to process and, with small kids, it’s like you’re trying to balance a lot,” the employee added.
The letters came as the Trump administration worked to scrub the federal government’s DEI policies and programs. The president issued an executive order during his first week in office calling on agencies to “combat” private-sector DEI programs.
Trump’s rhetoric — including threatening for months to shutter the Department of Education — has created fear throughout the department, according to Smith.
“People took these jobs because they care about the mission,” Smith told ABC News. “And so it absolutely impacts us. You know, the very thing that brought us to these jobs we’re unable to do.”
The department employee with two small children has worked for the department for just over four years and comes from a family of educators. The employee said education is the “great equalizer,” and the Department of Education benefits everyone.
“I believe in the department,” the department attorney said, adding: “I always wanted to work here.”
In a statement to ABC News, Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madi Biedermann said the president was elected to enact “unprecedented reform” that is merit-based and efficient at serving the interests of the American people.
“We are evaluating staffing in line with the commitment to prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in schools and putting student outcomes above special interests,” Biedermann wrote.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.
Meanwhile, the three department employees who spoke to ABC News said they’re completely stumped on why they were issued administrative leave notices. The department employee with decades of experience in Washington also said it’s puzzling, in part, because during Trump’s first term, managers were evaluated on upholding DEI standards via a department performance rating system.
“We were expected to do DEI,” the employee said. “That’s what Trump and [then-Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos wanted us to do. They wanted to do that. They put it in our [performance] plans. We did not put that in our plans. And not only that, it is in every manager’s plan in the department, not just people that are on administrative leave.”
“Every single person in the Department of Education that’s a supervisor or a manager right now has [DEI] in their performance plan — that is programmed in by the department,” the employee added.
The administrative leave notices may have been tied to a two-day “Diversity Change-Agent Training Program,” a facilitator-led training, according to training document slides obtained by ABC News. The training took place over two days dating as far back as March 2019, under DeVos and during Trump’s first term, according to a February 2019 email obtained by ABC News with the subject “Diversity Change Agent Course.”
The training program aimed to create specific action plans to “drive diversity and inclusion” and increase creativity and innovation. The program also challenged employees to achieve greater results by championing the diversity of its workforce while creating and sustaining an inclusive environment, according to the training document slides.
Another department employee, who took the 2019 training and works remotely out of the New York offices, called the notice “bizarre,” especially since the 2019 training occurred during the president’s first term.
“The whole thing is bizarre,” the department employee told ABC News. “Betsy DeVos — and [Trump’s] prior administration — was a decent champion of these programs, and they didn’t come with any warning to me to say, ‘Hey, taking this training might lead to an adverse personnel action one day,’ right? So it’s just strange how they can retroactively apply something.”
The department employees on leave who spoke to ABC News said they have no official DEI responsibilities in their roles. All three department employees who spoke with ABC News also confirmed the only DEI-like program that would potentially be barred under Trump’s executive order would be the change-agent training sessions.
However, to their knowledge, the three employees on leave said there’s no official list or way of matching the employees on administrative leave with the training programs. Even though they’re convinced these trainings link them to the Trump administration’s definition of DEI, the employees haven’t confirmed why they’re on leave, according to the ones who spoke to ABC News.
The employee who works out of New York has more than a dozen years of experience in administering federal programs. Multiple other employees on administrative leave that this employee spoke to over the weekend said they also took the 2019 training, according to the employee.
“That’s the only thing we can think of that any of us did,” the employee said.
After reaching out to other colleagues with the same titles, the employee in New York said, they “pieced it together.” This employee said they took at least three training programs like the diversity change-agent training program since the initial training.
Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on Sunday that he took issue with the Democratic response in the chamber to President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging address to Congress last week.
“I think the lack of a coordinated response in the State of the Union was a mistake, and frankly, it took the focus off of where it should have been, which is on the fact that the president spoke for an hour and 40 minutes and had nothing to say about what he would do to bring down costs for American families that were watching that lengthy address sitting at the kitchen table, hoping that he would offer something to help them afford a new home or pay the rent to afford health care or child care,” Schiff said on “This Week.”
Democratic lawmakers participated in various protests during Trump’s speech. Some female members of Congress wore hot pink to show resistance. Other Democratic members held signs that called out Elon Musk. Some decided to boycott the speech or leave early.
Schiff refuted Democratic strategist James Carville’s recent proposal in a New York Times op-ed that Democrats should “roll over and play dead” and wait for Republicans “to crumble beneath their own weight,” with the California senator instead saying that the right approach is focusing on “the economic well-being of Americans.”
“We need to have our own broad, bold agenda … to answer really the central question which is, if you’re working hard in America, can you still earn a good living?” said Schiff. “We need to be advancing policies and making the arguments about what we have to offer, not simply standing back and letting them collapse of our own corrupt weight. We need to effectively use litigation as we are. We need to effectively use communication to talk to new people in new ways as we are.”
Schiff also expressed frustration and disapproval of Trump’s whiplash tariff agenda.
Trump on Tuesday imposed a 25% tariff on goods coming from Canada or Mexico. The following day, he issued a one-month delay for auto parts. By Friday, Trump signed an executive order that extended the delay to all products under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA, which is a free trade agreement signed during Trump’s first term. Roughly half of Mexican imports fall under USMCA and about 38% of imports from Canada fall under the agreement.
Schiff said that Democrats have to start responding to Trump’s tariffs and economic policies more effectively.
“This is deeply destructive, what they’re doing,” he said. “We need to make that case to the American people, because they’re going to feel it. But, you know, taking our eye off the ball, I think, is very dangerous, and so let’s be focused on what matters most to Americans. Let’s point out all the destructive harms they’re doing with you know, the cutting of services, the slashing of Medicaid, and what that’s going to mean for increased health costs and less access for people.”
