Sen. Ruben Gallego under investigation for suspected campaign finance violations

(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday he does not trust Pakistan and questioned the country’s role as a mediator in negotiations between the U.S. and Iran after a recent report suggested the Pakistanis are working closely with Iran. 

“I don’t trust Pakistan as far as I can throw them,” Graham said during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine.

On Monday, CBS News reported U.S. officials told the outlet that Pakistan had allowed Iranian military aircraft to be parked at its airfields, “potentially shielding them from American airstrikes.”

CBS reported the U.S. officials, who spoke only under condition of anonymity to discuss national security issues, said that days after President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire with Iran in early April, Tehran sent multiple aircraft to Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan.

Leaving the White House on Tuesday for his trip to China, Trump told reporters the Pakistanis have been “great.”

“The Pakistanis have been great, the field marshal and the prime minister of Pakistan have been great,” he said.

Graham first asked Caine if the report was accurate, but Caine would not comment, citing the classified nature of the intelligence. Graham then asked Caine if such a move would be inconsistent with Pakistan’s role as a mediator. 

“I wouldn’t want to comment on that based on the ongoing negotiations impact and Pakistan’s role,” Caine responded.

Graham asked Hegseth the same question.

“Again, I wouldn’t want to get in the middle of these negotiations,” Hegseth responded.

“I want to get in the middle of these negotiations,” Graham replied. “I don’t trust Pakistan as far as I can throw them. If they actually do have Iranian aircraft parked in Pakistan bases to protect Iranian military assets, that tells me we should be looking maybe for somebody else to mediate.”

“No wonder this damn thing is going nowhere,” he added. 

In a statement provided to ABC News, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs “categorically rejected” the CBS News report, suggesting it was misleading and sensationalized. The statement confirmed that Iranian aircraft are in Pakistan but said American aircraft are also allowed to use its airfields.

“Following the ceasefire and during the initial round of the Islamabad Talks, a number of aircraft from Iran and the United States arrived in Pakistan to facilitate the movement of diplomatic personnel, security teams, and administrative staff associated with the talks process,” the statement said. 

“Some aircraft and support personnel remained temporarily in Pakistan in anticipation of subsequent rounds of engagement,” the statement said. 

The ministry added that the aircraft within its borders “arrived during the ceasefire period and bear no linkage whatsoever to any military contingency or preservation arrangement.”

The ministry defended Pakistan’s stance as an “impartial, constructive, and responsible facilitator in support of dialogue and de-escalation.”

“Assertions suggesting otherwise are speculative, misleading, and entirely detached from the factual context,” the statement said.

ABC News’ Habi Khan contributed to this report. 

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(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is considering whether the Trump administration unlawfully ordered hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. from Haiti and Syria to return home, abruptly cancelling their legal status out of alleged racial animus and without proper consideration of risks to their safety and the nation’s economy.

The outcome in the pair of cases being argued before the court will directly affect the futures of roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,000 Syrians.

The Trump administration contends in court documents that the immigrants were never intended to be permanent residents and that cancellation of their temporary status is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.”

Those immigrants were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under separate government declarations first issued more than a decade ago and later renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration.

TPS status, established by the Immigration and Nationality Act, provides work authorization and protection from deportation – as long as the Homeland Security Secretary certifies that a foreign country is unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010 and has since been hit by subsequent natural disasters, political unrest following a presidential assassination, and waves of rampant gang violence.

Syria devolved into civil war around 2011 and has been considered by the U.S. government a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades. A major earthquake in 2023 plunged the country into a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis.

“There is no functioning healthcare system for the disabled and elderly to return to, no reliable housing infrastructure, no legal framework that can guarantee anyone’s safety,” said Syrian TPS-holder and health care worker Adam, a pseudonym used to protect his identity.

Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in separate acts last year, moved to terminate TPS status for Haiti and Syria by certifying that, in her estimation, conditions on the ground in those countries were sufficiently safe for immigrants to return.

Those decisions were blocked by lower courts, which concluded that Noem did not follow proper procedures for cancelling TPS and may have also unlawfully discriminated against the immigrants on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court is now reviewing those findings.

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “The statute requires, in our view, that there be consultation with the State Department.”

Immigrant advocates and some American business groups, particularly in the healthcare and senior caregiving sectors, say TPS holders play an indispensable role in the nation’s labor force and contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to state and federal governments.

Immigrants make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce – nearly double their share of the entire labor force, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

More than 113,000 Haitian TPS holders work in Florida alone, which is home to a high proportion of America’s seniors, according to the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“The effects of [DHS’s] hasty TPS terminations are too serious to ignore,” a senior living community and ageing services provider jointly wrote the Court in an amicus brief. “The government has largely failed to address the impact that stripping thousands of caregivers of work authorization will have on elderly and medically vulnerable adults in U.S. communities.”

The Trump administration contends that courts have no authority to second-guess the DHS determinations on whether countries should qualify for TPS or not. They note that Congress, in creating the special status, put a time limit on it of 18-months, subject to extension.

“Congress, in short, prescribed substantive and procedural guardrails to keep TPS designations temporary,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote the Court in a brief, “but left further accountability to the political process, not federal courts.”

Sauer also disputed claims that the TPS cancellations rested on racial animus, calling it a “legal and factual nonstarter.”

The cases are the latest high court test of President Trump’s bold assertion of executive authority in his second term. The justices are already preparing to rule on his authority to redefine birthright citizenship, fire members of independent agencies, and remove a member of the Federal Reserve.

The Supreme Court last year handed the Trump administration a temporary win when it allowed them to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals as litigation continues.

TPS status for Haitians and Syrians remains in place for now, but many immigrant advocates worry that if the Court allows the Trump administration to cancel the status, protections for immigrants of other countries may also end. The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end protections for at least 11 countries since President Trump took office.

The Court is expected to hand down a decision by the end of June.

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(WASHINGTON) — Nayleen Escalante-Villatoro, a sixth grader at Brookland Middle School in Washington, D.C., has struggled significantly with attending school.

She said whenever there are family problems that force her mother to take off work, she has to step in.

“Me and my older sibling stay home to watch the little ones,” Nayleen told ABC News, adding, “It makes me feel stressed because I’m missing school and I’m not learning.”

This not only frustrates Nayleen, but it also impacts her studies: “I have to do a lot of makeup work after all the missing assignments that I haven’t done,” she added.

Kids like Nayleen face a multitude of challenges at school — when they’re there.

From the rigors of learning how to read and write to addressing mental health concerns and outside distractions, students juggle more than just their classroom workloads. A combination of these issues and other societal factors has fueled an attendance crisis that’s led to a spike in student chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of the school year — in recent years, according to experts who spoke to ABC News.

While one in three students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 academic year, the rate is declining, from up to 30% to roughly 24% by the start of the past school year, according to estimates from the Return 2 Learn tracker reviewed by ABC News.

Government officials are also collecting data on K-12 chronic absenteeism but the Department of Education recently told ABC News it couldn’t yet provide it. Its National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) told ABC News in 2023 that chronic absenteeism increased from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, there’s been no silver bullet to the problem. Different states have taken their own approach, from going door-to-door to check on students to providing high-impact tutoring at school. Education and health experts also emphasize family engagement, community relationships, extracurricular activities and outdoor recreation are potential solutions for chronically absent students.

Hedy Chang, CEO of Attendance Works, a nonprofit focused on addressing absenteeism, said that when kids aren’t showing up to school, it’s an indication that engagement isn’t happening.

“When you treat it as a matter of engagement, that’s when we build the relationships with families, which make them trust schools and it builds a relationship so that we can actually find out what are the underlying causes of why kids aren’t showing up,” Chang told ABC News.

United Family Advocates Executive Director Joanna Lack is calling for more attention to those underlying causes. Lack worked on the issue for many years as the chief performance officer in Camden, New Jersey, and has since transitioned to the non-profit organization dedicated to keeping families safe and together.

“We’ve been looking at the wrong problem instead of opening up the hood and saying ‘What’s actually going on here?'” she said.

Home life among ‘constellation’ of issues

Student absenteeism is often correlated with household or child welfare problems that impact the student’s school life, according to UFA’s Lack.

“Chronic absenteeism is like the symptom that you experience, but it’s not the disease, and we’ve been treating it like it’s the disease,” Lack said.

The Department of Health and Human Services does not have a specific initiative targeting chronic absenteeism. However, Head Start and the Family Opportunity, Resilience, Grit, Engagement-Fatherhood (FORGE) program under the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) both aim to improve outcomes in child welfare and enhance early childhood education, according to HHS officials.

Chang said there isn’t an urgent need for new federally funded programs or aid, just better use of ones that are available.

“I need existing programs to think about how they use chronic absence data to collaborate and work together to support kids and families and make sure the kids who need their resources, or the schools that need their resources, are getting it,” she said.

There’s a “constellation” of issues that contribute to increased absences, from child welfare involvement to unstable housing, but Lack noted that families are complex and kids don’t come in silos.

Activity makes a ‘huge difference’

Nayleen is one of the thousands of students across the country who participate in extracurricular activities through the SCORES program, which creates safe environments where young people can build connections with their communities, according to its website. She said DC SCORES — which provides soccer, poetry, and service-learning programs — has helped her return to class more regularly.

She explained that playing soccer with DC SCORES has empowered her and she looks forward to talking to her coach after attending school.

“It helps me because whenever I’m going through stuff he will understand me,” she said. “Sometimes he will help me. He will sit down and have a talk with me,” she said, adding, “Whenever I’m down, he will ask me if I’m OK.”

At the last month’s inaugural National Executive Forum on Health and Outdoor Recreation, which combined outdoor recreation industry and health leaders to promote using recreation as a pillar of public health, experts told ABC News that recess makes a “huge difference” for holistic growth in adolescents.

Outdoor Recreation Roundtable President Jessica Turner emphasized that being outside is fundamental to student health.

“We’ve stepped back so far from incorporating the outdoors into our lives and to step back into it doesn’t take very much,” Turner told ABC News. “It’s not a heavy lift.”

Schools supporting parents and kids

Chang, of Attendance Works, said chronic absenteeism isn’t inevitable.

She stressed that schools are starting to adopt more effective family engagement strategies for those dealing with attendance issues.

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which operates the largest public charter school network in the nation, has utilized some simple yet effective solutions to correct absenteeism.

Jeffries told ABC News that when a student doesn’t show up, they call the family “immediately.”

“‘Johnny, Mary, didn’t come to school today. We really need them because they are going to miss an opportunity to learn,'” he said, adding “Then, frankly, sometimes we also say: You got to figure it out.”

“Get your baby to school because they can’t learn to fulfill that potential if you’re not able to do that,” Jeffries added.

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