RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump to step down amid speculation about Florida senate seat
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(WASHINGTON) — Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump whom he tapped to co-chair the Republican National Committee for the 2024 election cycle, said she intends to step down from her position.
The move comes amid mounting speculation that she could be tapped to fill an upcoming Senate vacancy in Florida, whose Sen. Marco Rubio has been nominated for secretary of state.
“The job I came to do is now complete and I intend to formally step down from the RNC at our next meeting,” Lara Trump said in a post on X.
Should Rubio be confirmed as secretary of state in Trump’s incoming administration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would need to choose a successor to serve out the rest of Rubio’s term, which expires in 2026.
“It is something I would seriously consider,” Lara Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press.
She added, “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his bid to serve as attorney general in the next Trump administration, but the question remains: can he go back to his old job as a member of Congress?
Gaetz, for his part, has only expressed an intent not to take the oath of office for the 119th Congress — which begins on Jan. 3, 2024 and for which Gaetz won reelection. He cannot preemptively resign from a session of Congress that has not yet convened or that he has not taken an oath to serve — that means he is still eligible to serve in the 119th although he cannot under any circumstances withdraw his resignation from the 118th to return to the lame duck session, according to House rules.
The House clerk read a resignation letter from Gaetz on Nov. 14 — after President-elect Donald Trump named his as his attorney general pick — which read: “I hereby resign as a United States representative for Florida’s first congressional district, effective immediately. And I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump administration.”
The rules of the House of Representatives mandates that at the beginning of the first session of Congress, members must make their presence known to occupy their seat. The rule reads: “House Rules 2. (a): At the commencement of the first session of each Congress, the Clerk shall call the Members, Delegates and Resident Commissioner to order and proceed to record their presence by States in alphabetical order, either by call of the roll or by use of the electronic voting system.”
If Gaetz or another member does not report to the Capitol to record their presence, that district’s seat will be designated vacant.
The House rules have very few further specifics. ABC News has an inquiry out to the Office of the Clerk for additional guidance.
And Florida’s own election laws seem vague on the issue.
Florida elections official Paul Lux, the Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections, which is within Gaetz’s district, told ABC News that he anticipates that the primary for the special election to fill Gaetz’s seat once he announced his plans to resign would likely be sometime in February, and the general election would likely be in April — though he stressed nothing is final until the official dates come out of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.
DeSantis, for his part, has yet to formally set a date for that special election.
ABC News has reached out to the Division of Elections in the Florida Department of State to inquire whether the language in Gaetz’s letter triggers any sort of automatic vacancy or if there is anything within Florida law that bars him from returning to the 119th Congress. Some Republicans in the district have already declared their intent to run, though one candidate, Joel Rudman, said he would support Gaetz if he wanted to return to Congress.
(WASHINGTON) — According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “a perfect place” where the Trump administration could hold up to 30,000 migrants while they await being deported from the United States to their home countries.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare the base to hold what he had earlier said might be 30,000 migrants described as “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
Hegseth, who at one time served as a junior Army officer at the detention facility at Guantanamo that housed enemy combatants from the war on terror, explained that deported migrants would not be housed at that location.
“That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay. The other part of Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlement,” Hegseth said in a live interview on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show”
Over the last week, U.S. military aircraft have been been used to carry out deportation flights, taking deported migrants back to their home countries. The military flights are in addition to the chartered flights that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has undertaken for years. However, the pace of those flights can be slow as the U.S. has to secure commitments from countries that they will agree to take back their citizens.
“We want somewhere else to hold them safely in the interim,” Hegseth said. “Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a perfect place.”
Hegseth described how the base could be used to house deportees on their way to their home countries or a third country “and it’s taking a little time to move with that process and with the paperwork.”
He said that as that process drags on, it is “better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay, which is meant and built for migrants. Meant and built to sustain that away from the American people as they are processed properly, to where they came from.”
“This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus up thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in proper process,” he added.
Hegseth described the grounds of the Navy base’s golf course as a place that could possibly house as many as 6,000 migrants.
“So this is a plan in movement, but not in movement because we’re behind, but because we’re ramping up for the possibility to expand mass deportations, because President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” Hegseth said. “And the DOD is not only willing to, he’s proud to partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”
(WASHINGTON) — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during her first press briefing on Tuesday, faced a barrage of questions on the administration’s freeze on federal financial assistance programs that congressional Democrats called flatly illegal.
Agencies face a 5 p.m. ET deadline to comply with a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget to cease spending on any grant or loan programs if they suspect it might conflict with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders on DEI, foreign aid, climate spending more.
The memo prompted widespread confusion among advocacy organizations and state officials, some of whom reported error messages when trying to access portals to draw down funds for Medicaid, community health centers and more.
A legal challenge has been filed by nonprofits and health groups who argue the Office of Management and Budget is exceeding its authority.
“There’s no uncertainty in this building,” Leavitt said when asked to clarify about exactly what programs will be impacted.
“Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause,” she said.
Leavitt later added, “However, it is the responsibility of this president and this administration to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. That is something that President Trump campaigned on.”
Leavitt said the freeze was temporary, but did not expand on a specific timeline on when it would end.
When asked if Medicaid was impacted by the pause, Leavitt couldn’t immediately say. She also did not directly respond to a question on the impact on organizations like Meals on Wheels, which provides meals to 2.2 million seniors, or Head Start, a program for preschool education, that receive federal funding.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden posted on social media about reports about Medicaid portals being down in states as he criticized the freeze.
Leavitt, after the briefing, wrote on X: “The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage. We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”
An OMB memo obtained by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott also sought to shed light on the freeze’s implications.
According to the memo, “in addition to Social Security and Medicare, already explicitly excluded in the guidance, mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause.”
“Funds for small businesses, farmers, Pell grants, Head Start, rental assistance, and other similar programs will not be paused,” the document read. “If agencies are concerned that these programs may implicate the President’s Executive Orders, they should consult OMB to begin to unwind these objectionable policies without a pause in the payments.”
Still, the pause could have sweeping implication as the federal government funds thousands of programs, including housing subsidies and educational grants.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which gives grants for an array of national, state and tribal programs — including some to assist with air and water quality — said on Tuesday it was temporarily pausing disbursement.