Ron DeSantis, Joni Ernst potential Trump defense secretary nominees if Hegseth drops out: Sources
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(WASHINGTON) — A growing number of senators have privately signaled that they are not inclined to vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as President-elect Donald Trump’s next defense secretary, leading Trump’s advisers to begin discussing who may be a viable replacement, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that at least six senators have privately indicated that they don’t intend to vote for Hegseth amid the growing allegations about his mistreatment of women.
While Trump and his advisers have privately said the president-elect backs Hegseth and wants him to “keep fighting,” sources familiar with private discussions tell ABC News that a growing list of replacements is emerging to replace him. Those include Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty and Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, whom Trump has already tapped to be national security adviser.
Sources close to DeSantis say he has expressed interest in the role. He was seen today with Trump attending a memorial service for three Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies in West Palm Beach, who were killed in a crash last month.
Reached by ABC News, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team declined to comment.
Hegseth was back on Capitol Hill Tuesday looking to shore up support as he fends off the allegations of misconduct and sexual impropriety.
The visit came after a report in The New Yorker that Hegseth was forced to step down from two veteran nonprofit groups — Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America — amid accusations of financial mismanagement, sexist behavior and other disqualifying behavior.
ABC News has not independently confirmed the magazine’s account. Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, told The New Yorker the claims were “outlandish.”
(TALLAHASSEE, FL) — Desmond Meade was recalling to a church congregation in Apopka, Florida, earlier this month a dark time in his life. “Not too long ago, I was standing in front of the railroad tracks, waiting for a train to come so I could jump in front of it,” he said.
That was in 2005, and Meade was addicted to crack-cocaine, homeless, jobless and recently released from prison after he was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon. Or, as he refers to his status during that time: a “returning citizen.”
The train Meade was going to jump in front of to take his own life never came. He saw it as a sign, crossed the railroad tracks and entered into rehab, later moving into a homeless shelter, earning associate degrees, a bachelor’s, and eventually a law degree from Florida International University.
Now he is the founder of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), an organization that fights for the voting rights of people released from prison and has successfully restored voting rights for more than 1.4 million Floridians through Amendment 4, a 2018 ballot initiative that gives people voting rights if they complete their sentences from felony convictions.
“We don’t use that ‘F’ word because there is a person’s mother, father, sister, brother that lives behind that scarlet letter of shame,” Meade told ABC News during a recent interview at the FRRC offices in Orlando, Florida.
“When you talk about a person who has been impacted by the criminal justice system, they’re not throwaways,” Meade said. “Rather than, when you look at me, see what’s wrong with this country, man, no, you can look at me and see what’s possible with this country. Man, that we are a nation of second chances; that we are a nation of overcoming against all odds.”
Meade travels around the state to different communities in an FRRC bus, implementing programs for people who finished their sentences to expunge their records, register them to vote, find legal services and pay for court fees. His work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2023, a place on Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019 and a fellowship for the MacArthur Foundation’s class of 2021.
“The quicker we help a person reintegrate, the least likely they are to re-offend, and everybody benefits from that,” Meade said.
A year after Florida ratified Amendment 4, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 7066, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, requiring that even after serving their time, those leaving the system need to pay all of the related costs ordered by the court before being eligible to vote. People convicted of murder or felony sexual assault are an exception and are not allowed to vote.
Over the last eight years, Florida has had the largest number of people, out of any state in the country, who have come out of prison and are unable to vote — often because they cannot afford to pay the court-ordered monetary sanctions, according to The Sentencing Project.
In 2022, DeSantis established a new election crime and security unit and announced the arrest of 20 individuals who allegedly had voted after being convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.
“The state of Florida has charged and is in the process of arresting 20 individuals across the state for voter fraud,” DeSantis announced at a press conference in August 2022.
Neither Gov. DeSantis nor Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd immediately responded to ABC News’ request for a statement.
“At the end of the day, my sons do not stop being my sons,” Meade said about his children when they disappoint him. “And I don’t think that any person should stop being an American citizen just because of a mistake they made, especially when that mistake is like 10, 15, 20 years ago. That doesn’t make sense.”
FRRC’s work is a family affair for Meade, his wife Sheena Meade and their five children, who canvass communities, door-knock and man a phone bank to spread voter education and register people to vote.
The FRRC has raised about $30 million to pay court fees for approximately 44,000 people in Florida who finished their prison sentences. But Meade said it’s not about who people vote for. Rather, he just wants them to get involved in the political process.
“If you’re fighting only for voting rights of people who you think might vote like you, you’re not engaging in democracy work, you’re engaging in partisan work,” Meade said. “Our democracy needs less partisanship and more collective participation.”
Neil Volz, deputy director for the FRRC, was convicted of felony corruption and fraud conspiracy while he was working in Washington, D.C., with now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to the Department of Justice. Volz first met Meade at an FRRC event in Florida.
“I’ll never forget the words he said. He said nobody’s got a monopoly on the pain caused by felony disenfranchisement,” Volz told ABC News during an interview in Apopka, Florida. “The vision that he was casting was much bigger than race, was much bigger than politics, was much bigger than economics.”
Meade said that restrictive voting laws for people who have come out of prison in Florida stem from archaic Jim Crow-era legislation passed when voter suppression of African Americans surged during Segregation. Back then, voting obstacles included poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation tactics – sometimes from law enforcement. But the FRRC founder said that he owes it to those who came before him to uphold the rights for which they fought.
“They did that not for them. They did it for me. And if I don’t vote, then what I’ve said is that they died in vain,” Meade said. “That I was not worth the sacrifice that they made. And I know I am.”
Henry Walker, who was released from prison after serving three years for illegal possession of a firearm, will be voting for the first time ever in the 2024 election because of help from the FRRC.
“FRRC helped to give the opportunities. That’s all it takes is the opportunity to tell my story so that someone like me, a returning citizen, can see it,” Walker told ABC News during an interview in Orlando, Florida. “And tell themselves: ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’”
Barbara Haynes, a woman who finished her prison sentence and fought for 20 years to get her voting rights, was finally able to register to vote with the help of Amendment 4 and the FRRC, according to Meade. At that point, she had less than 6 months to live because of a terminal illness.
“Her dying wish was so basic; she just wanted to feel what it felt like to be a part of something bigger,” Meade said. “To be a part of this democracy.”
Haynes died weeks after registering to vote and before she could cast her ballot, according to the FRRC founder.
“And that just ripped my heart in pieces,” Meade said. “She didn’t get that opportunity. How many people didn’t get that opportunity?”
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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(WASHINGTON) — As controversy continues to cloud some of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, his team has an ominous warning for Republicans who don’t fall in line behind his nominees.
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports that one senior Trump adviser said the message to lawmakers is, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary.”
“That is all,” the adviser told Karl. “And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”
“The president gets to decide his Cabinet. No one else,” the adviser added.
The threat came as Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth (tapped for attorney general and defense secretary, respectively) made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week to shore up support. They were escorted by Vice President-elect JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio.
Gaetz announced Thursday afternoon he was withdrawing his name from consideration, stating his confirmation bid was “unfairly becoming a distraction.”
Gaetz faces allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, which he’s long denied, that was the subject of a federal investigation and a House Ethics Committee probe. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assaulting a woman in 2017, an encounter Hegseth told police was consensual.
Trump stood firm with the selections, which also raised eyebrows for their relative lack of experience to lead the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. Trump said it was ultimately Gaetz’s choice to withdraw.
Some of the president-elect’s other picks have similarly faced scrutiny over their qualifications, including Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services.
Trump previously made a demand for Republican leadership to back so-called “recess appointments” to skirt the traditional confirmation process. That route would require lawmakers to adjourn and for senators to give up the “advice and consent” role they play in nominations, as laid out in the Constitution.
But his demand is being met with some resistance from some Senate Republicans.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a senior Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said recess appointments for Cabinet posts should be “absolutely off the table.”
“And quite honestly, any serious candidate for Cabinet-level position, I would really have to wonder if they would want it or be willing to accept it under a recess,” Tillis said. “These positions are too important. They carry too much weight internationally to take a short cut.”
Several senators have said they want the full “process” and vetting of candidates to play out.
Sen. Josh Hawley said on Wednesday his intention to vote for all nominees.
“The Constitution gives us a role in personnel called advice and consent. My view is that’s exactly what will unfold here when these nominees are actually sent forward, and we’ll treat them like we’ve treated all others with the proper vetting,” said longtime Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who recently stepped down from the role.
Election eve has arrived with the race for the White House still very tight — with the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday showing Kamala Harris slightly ahead nationally but Donald Trump ahead in some key swing states — and the two candidates deadlocked in Pennsylvania.
Harris is spending her last full day campaigning in battleground Pennsylvania while Trump is hitting the trail in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before ending the day in Michigan.
Early vote tops 78 million
As of 5:30 a.m. ET on Monday, more than 78 million Americans have voted early (a combination of absentee and early, in-person totals), according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
The total breaks down into 42,654,364 in-person early votes and 35,348,858 mail ballots returned.
The number of in-person early votes has surpassed 2020’s total number of in-person early votes. However, the overall number of early votes so far (including mail-in and absentee ballots) is still lower than 2020’s overall number.
-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Jeffries says Republicans ‘will take a blow torch’ to social security
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Good Morning America on Monday that Democrats are “on the right side” of the presidential election’s most pressing issues.
“The extreme MAGA Republicans have clearly and unequivocally articulated what they will do to America moving forward,” Jeffries said.
“They will take a blow torch to social security, they will take a blow torch to Medicare, they will take a blow torch to the Affordable Care Act,” Jeffries said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Jeffries said, is “closing with a positive vision” while former President Donald Trump and his Republican party are “trying to tear us apart.”
Jeffries will become House speaker if Democrats win back control of the chamber this week.
“The majority of current House Republicans voted not to certify the election in 2020,” Jeffries said. “My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t seem to be capable of unequivocally saying that they will certify the election and the verdict that is rendered by the American people.”
“As House Democrats, that’s what we will do,” Jeffries added.
“We believe in democracy even when we disagree with the outcome. That’s been part of what’s made America the greatest democracy in the history of the world.”
Candidates vie for every vote in key swing states
Highlighting how important Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes are to her campaign, Kamala Harris is spending her last full day on the trail with multiple events in the state.
Her search for voters includes a rally in Allentown and then she ends with an event in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump is trying to shore up support in battleground North Carolina – where Harris has made inroads – for a rally in Raleigh, before he, too, heads to Pennsylvania for events in Reading and Pittsburgh before ending his final day campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
