Miguel Cardona signs off as top education official
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(WASHINGTON) — Education Secretary Miguel Cardona signed off Friday as the nation’s top education official — calling it his “dream job.”
“To the students, families, educators, and education leaders I’ve served these last 4 years, I want to make it clear that while I will no longer be your Secretary of Education, I will still be your partner in all that we hope to achieve for America’s students,” Cardona wrote in a farewell post on X.
Cardona was sworn in on March 2, 2021, a year into the coronavirus pandemic, serving nearly the entire Biden presidency.
During his tenure, the former Connecticut education commissioner touted helping President Joe Biden safely reopen K-12 schools for in-person learning after monthslong closures. He also championed the department’s efforts to fix the so-called broken student loan system and cancel debt for millions of borrowers. The secretary also faced right-wing attacks at every turn, including the classroom culture wars battle. He vowed to continue fighting after leaving his post.
“Our fight for education is happening all around us in classrooms and communities across the country and it continues,” he wrote. “And I’ll be right there with you in the fight.”
However, Cardona’s tenure was mired by higher education woes. For the past 2 1/2 years, the education secretary has been criticized for the botched rollout of a new Free Application for Federal Student Aid application and for how his department’s student debt relief plan was unconstitutional — facing Supreme Court rejections in 2023.
In his capstone event on Tuesday, Cardona laid into the next administration for choosing “a billionaire donor to lead the department of education.”
The Trump administration is expected to hand over the Department of Education to WWE co-founder Linda McMahon if she is confirmed by the Senate.
McMahon, a Trump loyalist and donor, is expected to carry out the president-elect’s policies, which Trump has said include shutting down the very department McMahon has been tapped to lead.
(WASHINGTON) — With the Virginia gubernatorial election a little more than eight months away, Democrats in the state have said they believe the federal job cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration will have a ripple effect that could sway voters to flip the governor seat from a Republican to a Democrat.
The Virginia gubernatorial election, which is held in an off-year cycle, is often seen as an indicator of where the political climate stands in the country. The election comes after federal job cuts carried out by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency with a goal of slimming down a bloated federal government and reducing its jobs — many of which are stationed in Washington, D.C.’s suburbs of Virginia.
The 2021 governor race demonstrated how education, parental rights and the culture war motivated voters and contributed to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin winning the election and flipping the governor seat after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s time in the governors mansion. Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, by just over 63,000 votes.
Youngkin’s success in amplifying important voter issues was then mimicked by other state leaders and candidates running during the 2022 midterm elections.
Virginia has just under 145,000 federal workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management — making it one of the states with the most federal employees. It’s still unclear how many total jobs have been cut at the federal level — though it’s estimated to be in the thousands across the country.
Former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor in Virginia, told ABC News in a phone interview that the job cuts on the federal level are becoming a constant presence on the campaign trail.
“I hear about it from the people who are impacted, from people who are impacted because they’re federal employees and they have a friend who’s already been fired or they’re worried about their job,” Spanberger told ABC News.
Spanberger said that the impact these job cuts have on the commonwealth will be “dire.”
ABC News reached out to Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is running against Spanberger for governor, about the federal job cuts in Virginia and its effect on the race, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
In response to the federal layoffs and the impact on Virginia workers, Youngkin announced a new state website to help people find jobs in the commonwealth, including those impacted by the Trump administration’s federal cuts.
The new website, called virginiahasjobs.com, displays 250,000 jobs available across the state.
Although Youngkin said he has empathy for those who have lost their jobs through the Trump administration’s slashing of federal jobs, the Virginia governor — a Trump ally — said he supports the idea of trying to cut out waste and fraud from government.
“Listen, we have a federal government that is inefficient, and we have an administration that is taking on that challenge of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse and driving efficiency in our federal government. It needs to happen,” Youngkin said.
Earle-Sears, whom Youngkin recently endorsed, amplified the resources announced by the Virginia governor through releases, campaign messaging and social media posts.
But some say it’s too early to tell if these cuts could impact the upcoming elections in Virginia.
Zack Roday, a Virginia-based GOP consultant and a former adviser for Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign, told ABC News that Democrats seizing on the cuts of the federal government means they’re looking for a message to carry them through this cycle.
“Democrats are in search of a message, so they’re going to try this,” Roday told ABC News. “That is logical. I understand it from a tactic. If it’s effective, we won’t know quite yet.”
“They have to pin their campaign on something because they don’t have much, much of a message because Gov. Youngkin’s record, his approval is popular, both with the electorate writ large and certainly the important independents that have a big role in determining who’s the next governor,” Roday continued.
Roday also added that there are people in Virginia who support the Trump administration’s cuts.
“There’s a whole lot of Virginians that live outside of Richmond and Northern Virginia, and have a lot of people that look at what Donald Trump is doing and are saying about time, thank you,” Roday said.
(WASHINGTON) — During her first full day as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard will travel to Germany for the Munich Security Conference, where she will hold 30 bilateral meetings with counterparts, including key U.S. allies Great Britain, France, Australia, and Germany, Alexa Henning, deputy DNI for strategy and communications told ABC News.
Gabbard, who was to be sworn into office Wednesday afternoon shortly after the Senate voted to confirm her, is expected to deliver remarks at a luncheon during the conference. She will be joined by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who are also attending.
During her confirmation hearing in January, Gabbard previewed her priorities as head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), stating that President Donald Trump’s reelection was aimed at breaking the cycle of failure within the intelligence community, ending “the weaponization/politicization of the IC and begin to restore trust in those who have been charged with the critical task of securing our nation.”
To assess the global threat environment, Gabbard will identify “where gaps in our intelligence exist, integrate intelligence elements, increase information-sharing, and ensure unbiased, apolitical, objective collection and analysis to support the president and policymakers’ decision-making,” according to a list of priorities obtained by ABC News.
Her priorities also emphasize the need to end polarization of the intelligence community, stating that her goal is to “ensure clear mission focus to the IC on its core mission of unbiased, apolitical collection and analysis of intelligence to secure our nation.”
The DNI also stresses that rebuilding “trust through transparency and accountability,” is a national security imperative, according to the document.
Like many government agencies in the second Trump administration, Gabbard’s focus is on reforming ODNI, which was created in response to intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. She aims to “assess and address efficiency, redundancy, and effectiveness across ODNI to ensure focus of personnel and resources is focused on our core mission of national security,” according to the document.
During the confirmation process, the former Hawaii congresswoman met with more than half of the Senate over two months. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed frustration with recent intelligence failures, according to sources with knowledge of proceedings. Gabbard continued meeting with senators on Capitol Hill up until the eve of her nomination.
Gabbard was grilled by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle about her reversal on a key surveillance tool, Section 702 of the FISA, and her refusal to label former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden a traitor during contentious confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill last month.
The Senate confirmed her nomination, 52-48, on Wednesday. Gabbard, a former Democrat turned Republican, received no Democratic votes. The only Republican to vote against her was former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said, “The nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the President receives are tainted by a Director of National Intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.”
Another key “no” vote came from independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign Gabbard endorsed in 2016 after stepping down as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
According to the document obtained by ABC News, Gabbard plans to work with lawmakers to ensure responsiveness to their requests for intelligence. Issues of concern include the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in Israel; the 2024 Syrian rebel takeover; failures to identify the source of the COVID-19 outbreak, Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs), also known as “Havana Syndrome,” Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — objects in air, sea or space that defy scientific explanation — drones and more.
Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has served 22 years in the Army National Guard and Reserve, including deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Djibouti. She is the first female DNI to have served in the military and plans to continue to serve in the Reserve, which ODNI regulations permit.
She plans to use her experience in the military and in Congress to bring “fresh eyes” as she assumes the role of America’s top intelligence official, according to the document.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote on former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence in a closed-door session Tuesday afternoon. The vote follows Gabbard’s at-times contentious confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill on Thursday, where she was grilled over her views on government secrets leaker Edward Snowden and her refusal to label him a traitor.
Gabbard, a former Democratic Hawaii Congresswoman turned Republican, picked up two key Republican votes on Monday from Sens. Susan Collins and James Lankford. Both had previously been critical of her past statements on Snowden and her opposition to government surveillance programs. Gabbard can only afford to lose one Republican vote on the committee.
During Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers from both parties repeatedly pressed Gabbard to disavow her past support of Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records. Gabbard previously described Snowden as a “brave” whistleblower who exposed civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. While in Congress, she introduced legislation stating that “Snowden’s disclosure of this program to journalists was in the public interest, and the Federal Government should drop all charges.”
While Gabbard repeatedly stated that Snowden “broke the law,” she did not back away from her previous statements and refused to call him a “traitor” despite being asked several times by senators from both parties.
In an op-ed in Newsweek over the weekend, Gabbard wrote that she explained in the closed session in her confirmation hearing why she refused to call him that.
“Treason is a capital offense, punishable by death, yet politicians like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US Senator Mitt Romney have slandered me, Donald Trump Jr. and others with baseless accusations of treason. It is essential to focus on the facts, not the label. Snowden should have raised his concerns about illegal surveillance through authorized channels, such as the Inspector General or the Intelligence Committee, instead of leaking to the media.”
Gabbard also presented a four-point plan to prevent future Snowden-like leaks, which includes oversight to ensure there are no illegal intelligence collection programs, minimizing access to sensitive intelligence, informing government workers about legal options for whistleblowers, and creating a hotline for whistleblowers to contact Gabbard directly.
Several senators questioned Gabbard’s past opposition to government surveillance programs under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans outside the country without a warrant. Gabbard, who voted against the provision as a member of Congress, said changes made to the program since she left office were enough to earn her support.
Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee. Her nomination is expected to be voted on during a closed-door confirmation session on Tuesday.
A source with knowledge of the proceedings told ABC News that newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe, former NSA adviser Robert O’Brien and former Sen. Richard Burr, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, have been making calls to senators on Gabbard’s behalf. Gabbard has also talked to senators since her hearing, a source said.
Over the weekend, GOP Sen. Todd Young faced pressure from Gabbard and Trump allies. Young is believed to be the final key vote needed for Gabbard’s nomination to move from the committee to the Senate floor.
In a now-deleted tweet on X, Elon Musk tweeted that Young was a “deep state puppet.” However, hours later, Musk deleted the post and tweeted “Just had an excellent conversation with @SenToddYoung. I stand corrected. Senator Young will be a great ally in restoring power to the people from the vast, unelected bureaucracy.”
Meghan McCain, a close ally of Gabbard, also voiced her support over the weekend, tweeting, “Any Senator who votes against @TulsiGabbard for DNI isn’t just going to have a problem with MAGA and Trump – I will make it my personal mission to help campaign and fundraise against you in your next election. And my people are probably a lot like their people,” she added.
Young, who did not endorse Trump in his presidential campaign, had a heated exchange with Gabbard during her hearing.
“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” Gabbard responded, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
Young declined to tell reporters how he’ll vote for Gabbard on Monday.
ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman and Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
