Musk, Ramaswamy eyeing federal remote work policies to help slash $2T from budget
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(WASHINGTON) — Work-from-home policies came under fire from X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, as he and Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy took their plans to reduce government waste to the floors of Congress Thursday.
The businessmen, who President-elect Donald Trump selected to lead an outside advisory board called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), attended several closed-door meetings with GOP senators and House members to sell their plans to cut as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget of what they called waste.
“I think we should make sure we spend the public’s money well,” Musk told reporters between the meetings.
Musk posted on his social media platform X from inside the Capitol about what he and Ramaswamy say is a key issue for DOGE: The number of federal employees working from home.
The Federal Office of Management and Budget released a report in August that found “as of May 2024, approximately 50% of federal workers worked every day in roles that are not eligible for telework, including those who work onsite providing healthcare to our veterans, inspecting our food supply, and managing Federal natural resources.”
Musk shared a new report from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the chair of the Senate DOGE caucus, which claimed only 6% of federal workers show up in person to work on a full-time basis. Many others work from home part-time, and roughly one-third work from home full-time, according to the report.
“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%! Almost no one,” Musk posted in response to the report.
Ernst’s report includes several anecdotes and alleged social media posts about federal employees who worked from home, including a Department of Veterans Affairs manager who posted a photo of himself working from a bathtub. Ernst’s team included the photo in their report.
The OMB report found that “telework-eligible personnel spent approximately 60% of regular, working hours inperson, at agency-assigned job sites.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he agreed with Musk’s stance on work-from-home policies for federal workers and floated a claim, without any citation, that only 1% of federal workers were in their office.
“You will see a demand…that federal workers return to their desks. That’s just common sense,” he said at a news conference in between the meetings.
Musk, who brought his son X to the proceedings, and Ramaswamy walked past reporters before the news conference began with Musk carrying his son on his shoulders.
Musk has been a staunch opponent of work-from-home policies and removed such policies from his businesses, including X. He threatened layoffs for X employees who did not comply with his policy, which instructed any special requests for remote work needed to be reviewed by him before approval.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi vowed she would remove politics from the Department of Justice during the first day of her confirmation hearing, though her refusal to answer key questions about Trump’s 2020 election loss and his outspoken desire for retribution raised concerns about how she would execute her promise.
With a second day of her hearing set to resume on Thursday, Bondi is expected to glide through confirmation and take on the role of the country’s top law enforcement officer, tasked with implementing Trump’s longstanding desire to reshape the Department of Justice that brought two criminal cases against him before his election.
“The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all,” Bondi said, vowing that, “There will never be an enemy’s list within the Department of Justice.”
While Bondi sought to reassure the Senate Judiciary Committee about her independence from Trump and desire to usher in a “new golden age” of the DOJ, her refusal to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, defense of her past statement that “prosecutors will be prosecuted,” and openness to investigate Special Counsel Jack Smith prompted skepticism from Democratic members of the committee.
If confirmed, Bondi would lead the DOJ with recently expanded power after the Supreme Court last year ruled that interactions between a president and attorney general are immune from prosecution.
“The fear and the concern we have is that the incoming president will use that loaded weapon, that immunity to commit crimes through the Department of Justice,” said Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.
Here are five key takeaways from the first day of Bondi’s confirmation hearing:
Bondi vowed to keep politics out of prosecutions, but keeps the door open to investigating Jack Smith
Accusing President Joe Biden of coordinating political prosecutions, Bondi said that she would only bring cases based on “facts and law” and said she has not discussed starting investigations of Trump’s enemies with the president-elect.
“No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent. That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration. People will be prosecuted, based on the facts and the law,” Bondi said.
However, when pressed about Trump’s claim that special counsel Jack Smith should go to jail, Bondi declined to answer whether she would open an investigation into Smith before suggesting his conduct is “horrible.”
“Senator, what I’m hearing on the news is horrible. Do I know if he committed a crime? I have not looked at it,” said Bondi, who added that “it would be irresponsible … to make a commitment regarding anything.”
In his final report issued earlier this week, Smith denied Trump’s accusation that his work was in any way political — describing the accusation as “laughable” — and assuring Attorney General Merrick Garland that his work followed the “rule of law” and DOJ guidelines regarding political interference.
Bondi declined to answer key questions about Trump’s election denialism, vow to pardon Jan. 6 defendants
Bondi — who helped Trump spread distrust in the outcome of the 2020 election — notably declined to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, raising concerns from Democratic senators in light of Trump’s alleged use of the Department of Justice to illegally retain power after his defeat.
“Are you prepared to say today, under oath, without reservation, that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin asked.
“Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States. There was a peaceful transition of power. President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024,” Bondi said, repeatedly refusing to offer a yes or no answer to the question.
Bondi also refused to condemn Trump’s baseless claim that “massive fraud” corrupted the 2020 election. When asked about Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked him to “find” 11,780 votes, Bondi said she has not listened to the entirety of it, but suggested Trump’s comments were taken out of context.
Bondi also declined to comment about Trump’s vow to pardon the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, during his first day in office, telling the committee she would defer to Trump and declining to weigh in on the proposed pardons because she has not read every defendants’ case file.
“Senator, I have not seen any of those files. Of course, if confirmed and if asked to advise the president, I will look at each and every file. But let me be very clear in speaking to you, I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country,” Bondi answered.
Bondi avoided answering if she would disobey an unlawful order from Trump
When pressed by Democratic Sen. Chris Coons about dropping a criminal case if someone in the White House directed her to, Bondi declined to entertain the hypothetical.
“What I can tell you is my duty, if confirmed as the attorney general, will be to the Constitution and the United States of America, and the most important oath, part of that oath that I will take are the last four words, ‘So help me God.’”
Bondi at one point answered “of course” when asked if she would be willing to resign if asked to do something improper.
“Senator, I wouldn’t work at a law firm, I wouldn’t be a prosecutor, I wouldn’t be attorney general if anyone asked me to do something improper and I felt I had to carry that out,” Bondi said.
Schiff, who had multiple heated exchanges with Bondi, expressed skepticism that she could avoid confrontation with Trump, considering his past attorneys general.
“You may say that you believe that conflict will never come, but every day, week, month and year of the first Trump administration demonstrated that conflict will come. Jeff Sessions may not have believed it would come to him. It came to him. Bill Barr may not have believed it would come to him. It came to him. It came to everyone,” Schiff said. “It will come to you and what you do in that moment will define your attorney generalship.”
Bondi vowed to reform the DOJ but provided few specifics of her plans
Bondi told senators that she aspired to “restore confidence and integrity” in the DOJ after what she called a weaponization of the justice system to target Trump. She vowed that if confirmed, she would answer to the people of the U.S., not the president.
“My oath would be to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The people of America would be my client,” Bondi said.
While her vow to remove politics from the DOJ were cheered on by Senate Republicans, Bondi offered few details about how she would implement her plan across the department’s 115,000 employees. Bondi attempted to defend her 2023 statement that “prosecutors will be prosecuted,” telling the Committee that she would only bring cases against “bad” prosecutors.
Bondi appears poised to be confirmed by the Senate, as attention turns to Kash Patel
While Senate Democrats raised concerns about Bondi’s refusal to acknowledge Trump’s 2020 loss and lack of commitments, her confirmation appears all but assured.
“I know how to count and I know how to read tea leaves. It seems to me you’re very, very, very, very likely to be confirmed, and certainly look forward to working with you and your office,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla towards the end of the hearing.
After the hearing on Wednesday, a few Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee avoided saying exactly how they’d vote on Bondi’s confirmation, though Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the “odds are in her favor.:
“I would say the odds are in her favor with the majority of the Senate floor. I don’t know if a single Republican is going against her. We’re still going to ask the tough questions today and tomorrow,” Durbin said.
With Bondi unlikely to face a serious challenge to her confirmation, Senate Democrats instead turned their attention to Trump’s pick to run the FBI, Kash Patel. Bondi said she looks forward to working with Patel — calling him the “right person” for the job and defending his qualifications — and denying the idea that either she or Patel would maintain a list of enemies or break the law.
“What I can sit here and tell you is Mister Patel, if he works with running the FBI — if he is confirmed, and if I am confirmed, he will follow the law if I am the attorney general of the United States of America, and I don’t believe he would do anything otherwise,” Bondi said.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s invitation to visit him at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, the senator said in a statement provided to ABC News.
“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in the statement. “I’ve been clear that no one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with an have conversations with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation.”
Fetterman, once branded as a progressive, has increasingly signaled he’s willing to act more independently.
He was one of the first Democrats in the Senate to meet with Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, and he’s expressed willingness to back some of Trump’s other Cabinet nominees.
He also broke away from the progressive wing of his party last year by becoming an outspoken advocate for Israel, at one point traveling there to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune has made clear he won’t back changes to the Senate rules requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation, Trump will need Democratic allies in the Senate.
This could mark an early effort by Trump to court Fetterman.
In an interview last month with ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Fetterman said he hopes Trump is successful in his second term and that he’s not “rooting against him.”
“If you’re rooting against the president, you are rooting against the nation,” Fetterman said. “So country first. I know that’s become maybe like a cliche, but it happens to be true.”
Fetterman told Karl his Democratic colleagues need to “chill out” over everything Trump does.
“I’ve been warning people, like, ‘You got to chill out,’ you know? Like the constant, you know, freakout, it’s not helpful,” Fetterman said. “Pack a lunch, pace yourself, because he hasn’t even taken office yet.”
Fetterman was elected to the Senate in 2022, beating Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz, who Trump has picked to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
He suffered a stroke during the campaign and was treated for depression the following year.
(WASHINGTON) — With a committee vote scheduled Tuesday for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Senate Democrats are demanding more details on the nominee’s connections to vaccine lawsuits and are saying Kennedy should promise to recuse himself from any vaccine-related decisions if confirmed health secretary.
The demands came in letter released Monday by Sens. Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren, after Kennedy told the lawmakers that he planned to divest his financial stake in one ongoing vaccine lawsuit to his adult son who practices law in California.
The description matches that of his son, Connor Kennedy, who is an attorney at Wisner Baum, a California-based law firm that is representing plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit against Gardasil, a vaccine intended to protect against HPV and deemed safe by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Warren and Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called the arrangement of allowing his son to collect future referral fees in the lawsuit “troubling” and “plainly inadequate.”
“The arrangement outlined in your Ethics Agreement Amendment is plainly inadequate, as it would appear to allow an immediate family member to benefit financially from your position as Secretary,” wrote Wyden, D-Ore., and Warren, D-Mass.
It’s not clear whether the letter released Monday by the Democrats would impact Kennedy’s confirmation as health secretary, which could still be pushed through by the Republican majority. It is possible, however, that Republican senators with concerns about Kennedy’s nomination — including Sen. Bill Cassidy — could use the Democrats’ request to slow the confirmation process.
“Your past of undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me,” Cassidy, R.-La., a medical doctor, said in his opening remarks during a hearing last week on Kennedy’s nomination.
He added, “Can I trust that that is now in the past? Can data and information change your opinion? Or will you only look for data supporting a predetermined conclusion? This is imperative.”
The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Cassidy, is scheduled to vote Tuesday on Kennedy’s nomination.
Warren and Wyden said they couldn’t trust Kennedy’s financial disclosures were “accurate and complete” because they don’t lay out how many cases Kennedy referred to Wisner Baum and whether vaccines were involved.
Wisner Baum has said it has not paid the nominee for any vaccine-related cases, as the current Gardasil case is ongoing.
Wyden and Warren said any involvement is a direct conflict of interest if he were to become health secretary because of his oversight of vaccines.
“By using your authority and bully pulpit as Secretary to sway the outcome of the litigation and secure a big judgment or settlement, you would increase the chances of a large payout for yourself,” they wrote.
