Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed by Senate as Trump’s health secretary
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(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services was narrowly confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.
The final vote was 52 to 48.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, who overcame polio at a young age, was the sole Republican to oppose Kennedy and vote no. Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to Kennedy.
In a statement outlining his decision, McConnell cited his childhood experience with the disease and said he will “not condone the re-litigation of proven cures.”
“Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best possible person to lead America’s largest health agency,” McConnell said. “As he takes office, I sincerely hope Mr. Kennedy will choose not to sow further doubt and division but to restore trust in our public health institutions.”
Kennedy’s confirmation comes after months of controversy and debate, largely focused on his past comments casting doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
An environmental lawyer with no experience working in health administration or medicine, Kennedy will now oversee a sprawling network of agencies that provide health coverage to millions of Americans, regulate the food industry and respond to global health threats.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during an appearance on Fox News, said Kennedy is expected to be sworn in later Thursday at the White House. Leavitt also said Trump is expected to sign an executive order establishing a “Make America Healthy Again” commission.
President Donald Trump embraced Kennedy on the campaign trail after the scion of America’s most famous Democratic dynasty dropped his own independent bid for president and endorsed Trump.
Shortly after the election, Trump tapped Kennedy to lead HHS and promised to let him “go wild” on health.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy was grilled on his past claims about vaccinations, including his unfounded claims linking them to autism.
In a shift from previous statements, Kennedy voiced support for polio and measles immunizations. He told lawmakers he was not “anti-vaccine” but rather “pro-safety.” Though, he still refused to say that vaccines were not linked to autism or that COVID-19 vaccines saved lives.
But the comments appeared enough for some skeptical Republican senators to come to his side. Trump and Vice President JD Vance also called senators to rally support for Kennedy.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a longtime physician and vaccine advocate who openly struggled with Kennedy’s nomination, voted to report his nomination out of committee and to the Senate floor.
Cassidy said he received several commitments from Kennedy, including meetings several times a month and advance notice to Congress if HHS plans to seek any changes to vaccine programs.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, considered another swing vote, earlier this week announced she’d vote for Kennedy after raising concerns about the Trump administration’s directive for the National Institutes of Health to cut support for health research at universities. (The policy has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge).
“He said he would re-examine them and seemed to understand,” Collins said of Kennedy.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had made a final plea to his colleagues shortly before the vote to oppose Kennedy.
“A vote to confirm Mr. Kennedy is a vote to make America sicker,” Schumer said.
(WASHINGTON) — As Democrats continue to express frustrations over Elon Musk’s outsized role in reshaping the federal bureaucracy, a new effort on Capitol Hill takes aim at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) while proposing guardrails to reassert congressional oversight authority over the executive branch.
California Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove is proposing the Defending American Diplomacy Act, which would prohibit the executive branch from reorganizing the State Department without Congressional consultation and approval.
“They are gutting foreign assistance, and I’m not going to be complicit in that,” Kamlager-Dove, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News in an exclusive interview ahead of the bill’s release Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that they are crushing USAID — What that means is American farmers are not going to have contracts that they would normally have to produce crops to sell them to other countries. By crushing foreign assistance, it also means that people in other spaces are going to get sick.”
The measure, which has more than 20 Democratic original cosponsors, requires any major reorganization of the State Department to be passed into law by an act of Congress and calls for the secretary of state to submit a detailed plan to Congress about the administration’s intended reorganization and an assessment of any impacts to the U.S. diplomatic toolbox.
“We have three pillars: defense, development and diplomacy,” Kamlager-Dove said. “All of those things are very important when you are trying to stop us from going into war. And if we are going to get rid of those tools in our toolbox because of some dodgy thing called DOGE that is using taxpayer dollars to actually hurt taxpayers, I feel like I have a responsibility to step up and say no.”
The bill has consequences for noncompliance built into the legislative text, directing Congress to cut funding for DOGE and even prohibit travel for President Donald Trump’s political appointees, including every member of his cabinet, if the administration initiates a reorganization that circumvents Congress.
“DOGE has been operating in the shadows,” Kamlager-Dove said. “So part of the noncompliance elements of the bill is about bringing in a little sunlight so that we have a sense about what is actually going on.”
While the administration has signaled that some eliminated jobs could be potentially absorbed by other federal agencies, the bill also prohibits that from happening without Congressional say-so.
Kamlager-Dove explained that her gripe with DOGE “is not about efficiencies.”
“It is about unlawfully accessing our systems and our codes and stealing taxpayer dollars and doing things in the shadows,” the representative said.
“The American people deserve to know what is happening, and if what DOGE is doing is so great, then I would think they would be more than willing to come to Congress and share with us and the American people all that they are doing,” she added. “But the reality is they are not willing to share that information.”
With narrow Republican majorities in both chambers and a Trump White House — there is virtually no chance the bill becomes law in this session of Congress. But at a minimum, it gives Democrats who are powerless on the legislative front another messaging tool to campaign alongside their hopes to seize congressional majorities.
Still, Kamlager-Dove argues the measure is more than a messaging bill.
“There is a lot of dysfunction with this Republican Congress right now, and the reason why we probably won’t have this come up for a vote is because Republicans are too afraid of the bill. If it does come up for a vote, then they would have to put their cards on the table,” Kamlager-Dove said. “They would have to say, I recognize that Congress is being complicit in self-neutering itself and yielding all of its power to Donald Trump.”
Despite the long odds, Kamlager-Dove maintains optimism that her bill won’t be lost among thousands of other bills as Democrats toil in the minority.
“My hope is that having this bill, having other bills like this, talking about these issues in committee, will rattle their brains and clear out the hypnotic fog that they’re in,” she said. “If you continue to beat the drum, you do make headway, and that’s what this bill is about: Beating the drum.”
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — Internal communications reviewed by ABC News show that the Trump administration plans to strictly implement an executive order from the president mandating a 90-day freeze on almost all U.S. foreign aid amid a review, a measure that already has sparked widespread concern among humanitarian organizations.
“We get tired of giving massive amounts of money to countries that hate us, don’t we?” President Donald Trump said in a speech during the House Republicans’ annual retreat in Florida on Monday, touting a blizzard of executive actions he had taken since returning to the White House.
In a memo sent to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staff over the weekend, a high-level official within the agency stressed their “responsibility” to carry out Trump’s directive and signaled that it would be difficult to secure waivers to continue funding for programs during the pause, which he called “a complete halt.”
“It is important to emphasize that it is no longer business as usual. Every program will be thoroughly scrutinized,” Ken Jackson, USAID’s assistant to the administrator for management and resources, wrote.
Jackson said that the agency’s only exceptions currently in place covered spending on emergency humanitarian food aid and travel for government officials who were returning to their duty stations, adding that employees should be ready “to provide detailed information and justification” for these expenses.
Any waivers for other spending would need to clear multiple hurdles for approval, including proving that the program receiving funding was lifesaving or necessary for U.S. national security.
Failure to comply with the pause or other new policies “will result in disciplinary action,” Jackson warned USAID staff.
A separate memo sent to State Department employees last week which was also reviewed by ABC News instructed officials overseeing projects funded by grants and awards that have already been distributed to issue immediate “stop-work orders,” making exceptions for some travel and administrative expenses, emergency food aid, and foreign military financing to both Egypt and Israel.
An administration official said on Monday that a template for submitting waiver requests had been made available and that the State Department was reviewing numerous applications that had already been submitted, but could not give a timeline for when any decisions would be made.
The State Department officially announced the implementation of the freeze on Sunday.
“Secretary Rubio has paused all U.S. foreign assistance funded by or through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for review,” the department’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, said in statement. “He is initiating a review of all foreign assistance programs to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
By then, panic had already set in among international aid groups that rely on U.S. funding. Sources within the international community said the freeze was so expansive that they could hardly believe it was real.
“The recent stop-work cable from the State Department suspends programs that support America’s global leadership and creates dangerous vacuums that China and our adversaries will quickly fill,” InterAction, the largest alliance of international aid organizations, said in a statement.
“This halt interrupts critical life-saving work including clean water to infants, basic education for kids, ending the trafficking of girls, and providing medications to children and others suffering from disease. It stops assistance in countries critical to U.S. interests, including Taiwan, Syria, and Pakistan. And, it halts decades of life-saving work through PEPFAR that helps babies to be born HIV-free,” the statement continued.
Beyond concern for their work, some organizations and officials have also expressed confusion. Many were caught off guard by the State Department’s implementation of Trump’s order, which they initially believed wouldn’t impact programs funded through congressional appropriations.
“The aid community is grappling with just how existential this aid suspension is – we know this will have life or death consequences for millions around the globe, as programs that depend on this funding grind to a halt without a plan or safety net,” Abby Maxman, the president and CEO of Oxfam, said in a statement to ABC News.
“This decision must be reversed, and funding and programming must be allowed to move forward. But at the very least, the administration must communicate clearly so the aid community can plan for the future and determine how to carry on our lifesaving work,” Maxman added.
Critics of the freeze believe dissent from international aid organizations and U.S. officials has been muted due to fear of retribution from the administration.
In his memo to USAID employees, Jackson stipulated that one of the new policies they must comply with if they wished to avoid disciplinary action was a requirement that all external communication, including with the State Department, first be approved by the agency.
