Senate confirms Gabbard as director of national intelligence
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(WASHINGTON) — The Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence by a vote of 52-48 on Wednesday.
Former Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was the only Republican to break ranks and vote against Gabbard’s nomination. All other Republicans voted for Gabbard and all Democrats voted against her.
Prior to the vote, Majority Leader John Thune laid into Democrats for their unified efforts to block and oppose both her and Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s nominations, arguing that their lack of willingness to support Trump’s picks demonstrates how “out of step” with America the party has become.
Gabbard cleared a key Senate test vote Monday night and was expected to be confirmed.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday after the volatile White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday, saying she “just couldn’t believe” how Friday’s meeting unfolded..
The Minnesota Democrat told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos she was “appalled by what happened in the Oval Office,” and thinks the fallout of the exchange “is not in President Trump’s best interest.”
“We stand with our friends, not our enemies,” Klobuchar said. “The great country of America goes into negotiations with strength, not surrender.”
Klobuchar said she — along with other senators from both sides of the aisle — had been with Zelenskyy before he left for the White House, and said he had been in “great spirits.”
Watching video of the explosive meeting, Klobuchar said she “just couldn’t believe it.”
“It was Vice President Vance, particularly, who was on the offense, who was berating President Zelenskyy, who simply was trying to explain that … we needed a strong security commitment from all of our allies to be able to have a lasting peace, which is something that President Trump says that he wants to see.”
Klobuchar speculated on how the meeting so quickly became caustic when asked by Stephanopoulos if it had been an ambush.
“Either it was an ambush setup, or they just got so hotheaded, the president and the vice president, that what happened happened,” she said. “It’s the chaos of this presidency.”
Meanwhile, British ambassador to the U.S. Lord Peter Mandelson said the U.S.-Ukraine relationship needs a “reset” after the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting.
“I think that Ukraine should be the first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow,” Mandelson told Stephanopoulos. “And then, as part of the unfolding plan for this negotiation, the Europeans and perhaps some other countries too, have got to consider how they are going to put forces on the ground to play their part in providing enduring security and deterrence for Ukraine.”
European leaders were meeting in London on Sunday to discuss a UK-French peace plan they’re working on with Zelenskyy that they plan to present to the U.S.
Mandelson said it will be important to “create the circumstances in which enough pressure is brought on” to “force [Russia] to the negotiating table.”
“And then we will see the true color of their intentions and what they’re prepared to agree and to stand by,” he said. “But if it goes wrong, we must be there on Ukraine’s side, continuing to arm them to make sure that they have the capacity to withstand any further Russian attack with ourselves lining up behind them in that eventuality.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats want to force President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire veterans who were laid off as part of large-scale efforts by Trump and Elon Musk to reshape the federal government and its workforce, according to information exclusive to ABC News.
Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey plan to introduce the Protect Veteran Jobs Act in the Senate on Monday. The bill would compel the Trump administration to reinstate veterans impacted by recent mass layoffs, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by ABC News.
It would also require the Trump administration to provide a quarterly report to Congress on the number of veterans removed from the federal workforce — and the justification for their firing.
“Veterans who choose to continue their service to our country in the federal workforce deserve our utmost gratitude, but instead this Administration has kicked thousands of our heroes to the curb and left them without a paycheck,” Duckworth said in a statement. “The message of our bill is simple: Give our heroes their jobs back. If Republicans really care about our Veterans, they should stop enabling Trump and Musk’s chaos and support our legislation.”
In the coming weeks of floor activity and ahead of government funding votes, Democrats hope to get Republicans on the record over layoffs impacting a reliably Republican — and Trump-supporting — group of voters.
The party also attempted to draw attention to the firings by inviting veterans who lost their government jobs to Trump’s joint address to Congress on March 3.
Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce of more than 2 million civilian government employees, according to September data from the Office of Personnel Management.
Roughly 75,000 federal workers have accepted offers for deferred buyouts, and another roughly 20,000 government employees have been fired in the first months of Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration has not said how many veterans have been impacted by the cuts, though Democrats have estimated that several thousand veterans have been fired across the administration.
OPM has since directed some agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to rehire veteran workers and to exempt veterans and military spouses from other workforce policy changes.
But many veterans have still lost their jobs in recent weeks.
“You spend 10 years trying to defend your country in terms of honesty, integrity and justice, and then you come back and get copy-and-pasted the same email as 10,000 other people about your performance,” Andrew Lennox, a fired Department of Veterans Affairs worker who served as a Marine in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, told ABC News.
Lennox was one of the veterans who attended Trump’s joint address to Congress last week. He was a guest of Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal to the speech.
The Department of Veterans Affairs also plans to cut up to 80,000 workers from the agency, which has drawn some criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Democratic Rep. Derek Tran of California has introduced similar legislation in the House.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is reigniting a legal fight over whether it can unilaterally freeze billions of dollars in funding in loans, grants and financial assistance.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice asked the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay a decision by a federal judge in Rhode Island who determined that the Trump administration likely violated the Constitution when it tried to block trillions in federal funding through a now-rescinded directive of the Office of Management and Budget.
That Rhode Island judge on Monday issued an order finding that the Trump administration, in its effort to “root out fraud,” was still cutting off funding in defiance of the court order. DOJ lawyers are now arguing that the district court is overstepping its ability to rein in the power of the president.
“This appeal arises from an extraordinary and unprecedented assertion of power by a single district court judge to superintend and control the Executive Branch’s spending of federal funds, in clear violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers,” they wrote in an emergency application to the 1st Circuit.
DOJ attorneys argued the court’s decision effectively requires the federal government to get “preclearance” from the district court for any decision relating to funding.
“It is self-evidently unworkable for the defendant agencies to be required to seek targeted relief from the district court every time they wish to withhold funds based on their own authorities,” they said in the filing.
Lawyers representing the 23 state attorneys general are aggressively pushing back on the appeal, arguing that allowing the funding freeze will irreparably harm millions of people who rely on federal money.
“This case challenges defendants’ implementation of a policy imposing across-the-board blanket freezes on payments to all recipients of federal funding associated with nearly all federal programs across the Nation, ranging from (for example) healthcare funding to education funding to critical energy and infrastructure grants — a policy that had severe and destabilizing consequences for Plaintiff States and their residents,” they said in the lawsuit.
The attorneys general also argued it is procedurally improper for the Trump administration to appeal a temporary restraining order, which generally can’t be stayed.
“If the Court were to issue an administrative stay, defendants would immediately be free to resume this sweeping and illegal policy, harming Plaintiff States and the many recipients of federal funding that reside within their jurisdictions,” they said.
The Trump administration is asking for an immediate administrative pause as well as a stay pending appeal by Friday.
