Mike Pence, Joe Rogan, tech CEOs attend Trump’s inauguration
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term, a long list of political leaders, tech CEOs, celebrities and others were in attendance in the U.S. Capitol.
Former Vice President Mike Pence was seen in the Rotunda, as well as former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush were also there.
Former first lady Michelle Obama — who has attended every inauguration since 2009, including Trump’s first swearing-in ceremony in 2017 — was not present.
Former President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, were in attendance.
Several major tech CEOs were also there, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. Joe Rogan, whose podcast Trump appeared on during the campaign, was seen in the Rotunda.
Chinese Vice President Han Zheng was also attending the event.
Many GOP leaders were seen in the Capitol, including former Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, former U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner, Sen. Marco Rubio, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Tom Cotton.
Numerous Democrats were also present, including New York Mayor Eric Adams, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Spotted in the Emancipation Hall overflow room were YouTube celebs Jake and Logan Paul, UFC fighter Conor McGregor and podcaster Theo Von.
Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A document unsealed Tuesday from the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams may raise questions about the testimony of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche during his Senate confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Blanche was asked about the Justice Department’s decision to drop the corruption charges against Adams.
“What I just saw with the dismissal of the Adams charge, that was directed by D.C., correct?” Democratic Sen. Peter Welch asked.
“I have the same information you have,” Blanche responded. “I don’t know beyond what I’ve [seen] publicly reported.”
However, a newly unsealed draft letter from then-interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon suggests Blanche may have known more than he let on.
Sassoon, who was fighting the directive to drop the mayor’s case, wrote that she expressed concern to top DOJ official Emil Bove that such a grave decision about a high-profile case should wait until Blanche was confirmed. In response, Sassoon wrote that “Bove informed me that Todd Blanche was on the ‘same page.'”
Sassoon would later resign rather than obey Bove’s order to drop the mayor’s case.
Her draft letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi was among a tranche of materials ordered unsealed by Judge Dale Ho, who is still considering whether to dismiss the case against Adams.
The Justice Department insisted Blanche played no role in the determination to seek dismissal.
“Todd Blanche was not involved in the Department’s decision-making prior to his confirmation,” a spokesperson said in a statement provided to ABC News.
The mayor’s lawyer said the unsealed letter is further proof that the case should be tossed.
“As I’ve said from the beginning, this bogus case that needed ‘gymnastics’ to find a crime – was based on ‘political motive’ and ‘ambition’, not facts or law. The more we learn about what was really going on behind the scenes, the clearer it is that Mayor Adams should have never been prosecuted in the first place,” the mayor’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon is attempting to reduce the size of its civilian workforce by between 50,000 to 60,000 employees through voluntary workforce reductions, though it remains unclear if it will be able to meet that goal without possibly having to carry out forced reductions in the civilian workforce.
The Defense Department is currently carrying out a voluntary process to reach its goal of a 5% to 8% reduction of its 878,000 civilian employees — a number that equates to 50,000 to 60,000 employees, a senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday.
“The number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage, a 5% to 8% reduction is not a drastic one,” said the official, who added that the percentage is one that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “is confident can be done without negatively impacting readiness in order to make sure that our resources are allocated in the right direction.”
The voluntary process includes employees who have chosen to resign through what is known as the “Fork in the Road,” a freeze on hiring new employees to replace those who are departing and the dismissal of 5,400 probationary employees who have less than one or two years’ experience in their current jobs.
About 21,000 civilian employees have had their voluntary resignation requests approved under what the Pentagon calls the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), which allows employees to resign but continue to be paid through the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The senior defense official declined to disclose how many civilian employees in total had sought to opt into the Deferred Resignation Program.
ABC News has previously reported that 31,000 civilian employees had offered to resign under the Trump administration initiative with some of the requests being denied.
The hiring freeze means that the average 6,000 employees who join the Pentagon every month are also not coming into the workforce as other employees leave.
The Defense Department had also begun the termination of 5,400 probationary civilian employees — which has now been paused by a temporary restraining order imposed by a federal judge.
The official stressed that the 5,400 probationary employees had not been selected for termination “blindly based on the time they had been hired.” The Department has 54,000 total probationary employees, a term that refers to employees who have less than one or two years’ experience in their current jobs.
Instead, the official said the 5,400 were employees who “were documented as significantly underperforming in their job functions and or had misconduct on the record.” It is unclear if all of the 5,400 probationary employees targeted for termination fell into those categories.
“The fact that someone was a probationary employee did not directly mean that they were going to be subject to removal,” said the official.
The official declined to offer what “reduction in force” steps the Pentagon might undertake should the voluntary efforts not reach the goal of reducing the workforce by 50,000 to 60,000 employees.
“I won’t get ahead of the Secretary,” the official said. “It’ll be the Secretary’s prerogative to designate how and when he might use any of the other tools that would be available to him to achieve the stated reduction targets.”
There has been speculation that military service members may be asked to fill in for some of the civilian jobs that are being vacated or will not be filled by the hiring freeze, but the official said the goal is not to affect military readiness.
“We are confident we could absorb those removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission, and so that’s how we can be confident that we don’t need to worry about any resulting impact on the uniformed force,” the official said.
The official acknowledged that some military veterans would be among the civilians who would be leaving the department, but did not provide an estimate of how many.
“Some of those people will be veterans that served in uniform previously, we’re certainly again looking at case by case as we plan workforce reduction,” said the official. “There are so many critical skills and experience that veterans have to offer, and that’s part of the analysis when we consider who is contributing to the core mission functions and who should be retained.”
(WASHINGTON) — Joe Murphy, whose position as a management and data analyst was eliminated when the Department of Education laid off nearly 50% of its workforce Tuesday evening, said on Wednesday that he and his colleagues are filled with a sense of “sadness” and “disbelief.”
“We got the sense that we were disposable in a certain sense, especially those of us in the data space,” he told ABC News.
According to Murphy, everyone he worked with directly had their positions terminated.
The 56-year-old from Dumfries, Virginia, said he has spent almost 20 years in education data, previously working for the National Center for Education Statistics, in addition to serving as a contractor for a formula grant data collection space in the Education Department.
In the Department of Government Efficiency’s latest efforts to cut federal costs, some 1,315 Education Department employees were affected by the “reduction in force” notices, leaving 2,183, according to senior officials at the agency.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the job cuts on Wednesday, referring to them as “a promise made and a promise kept.”
“There is no reason that we should be spending more than most developed countries in the world. And our education system is failing,” she added. “The president wants to return education back to the states, empower those closest to the people to make these very important decisions for our children’s lives. And this is a first step in that process.”
Though Murphy said the terminations were expected, he said the experience has still been disconcerting.
“Nothing surprises me anymore, but it’s still kind of shocking and impactful,” he said.
“I do not know where I go forward from here … I am suddenly belched out into a job market that has been at the very same time, severely constricted and also completely flooded with people who have a similar skill set to mine. I’m 56 years old,” Murphy continued, adding that he has spend “more than a third of [his] entire life” in this line of work.
“Felt really weird to wake up this morning and be like, wow, what am I gonna do?” he said.
Murphy emphasized how the most important and rewarding aspect of his job, which falls under the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, was serving the nation’s children.
“It’s really for the kids, and what we do is for the kids. And so many of us feel that way,” he said, adding that he “wish[es] things went differently.”
“That’s the thing I have the greatest sense of pride in. I would think, you know, doing a good job and getting the data to the programs in the right timely fashion — good, accurate data, so that they can make decisions on behalf of, you know, 100,000 schools in this country and 18,000 districts and 50-something state education agencies,” he explained.
When asked if he believes children will continue to receive needed educational benefits and services, Murphy projected a bleak outlook and expressed his belief that “we’re politicizing the department of education and the education of our students.”
He also expressed concern over whether his work will even be able to continue.
“So, all that work that we did for the programs, I don’t know who’s going to do it now or be able to do it. The folks in the programs were already overwhelmed. They were so grateful to us for the work that we did for them in distilling down this massive amount of data to a few answers with groundwork that they laid together with us,” he said. “So, I don’t know where that’s going to get done.”
Murphy is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which he says he joined only recently due to the change in administrations from Biden to Trump.
“When it seemed to be going south and everybody was taking over after the inauguration, I said, okay, well, I’m gonna go ahead and sign up,” he said, explaining how he was affected by the “last two months of being led by threats and intimidation.”
“I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea that the federal government needed some improvements and some restructuring to some degree,” Murphy acknowledged. “But how you do it really matters, and you can’t just … the federal government is not a private business, and you can’t run it that way.”
