Senate Republicans pass budget blueprint after all-night session
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(WASHINGTON) — After about six hours of amendment votes, the Senate approved a budget blueprint Saturday morning by a vote of 51-48.
Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins cast votes against the resolution. Every other Republican in the chamber voted for it, and every Democrat voted against it.
The resolution only needed a simple majority of votes to pass, so it now heads to the House for further consideration.
If the House also approves the proposal, it will unlock the next step in the reconciliation process and will allow committees in both the House and the Senate to begin drafting legislation aimed at accomplishing Republican wish-list items such as raising the debt ceiling, increasing border security and extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
The final package, if Republicans can agree on it, will be able to be passed with a simple majority of votes in both chambers.
Democrats were powerless to stop the resolution from moving forward Saturday morning, but they put up a fight by forcing votes on a number of amendments, including amendments on protecting access to Medicare and Medicaid, modifying or eliminating some of Trump’s tariffs and protecting funding for caregivers for children and the elderly.
The Senate completed its vote-a-rama just after 2:30 a.m.
Though Republicans defeated the most eye-popping of the Democratic amendments, some that were offered got a sprinkling of across-the-aisle support from a handful of GOP defectors, signaling the challenges ahead in drafting legislation that’s palatable to enough Republicans to pass muster when it comes up for a final vote.
Though an amendment that would have struck the instructions governing massive spending cuts to the House Energy and Commerce Committee failed, it got the support of three GOP senators: Collins, Josh Hawley and Lisa Murkowski.
This is the budget instruction that many Democrats say presents a risk to Medicare and Medicaid funding, signaling a possible hazard on the path ahead for any package that is cobbled together. Collins has signaled that concerns about cuts in this area of the package is why she voted against the entire resolution.
Collins, Murkowski and Hawley also supported the amendment to protect funding for caregivers.
With Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, Senate Republicans will only be able to lose three members of its caucus when a final package is put together.
The Senate will return to Washington on Monday for one more week of work before a two-week recess.
(WASHINGTON) — The website of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency provided its third weekly update of federal government cost-cutting Sunday night, claiming total government savings of $105 billion, up from the $65 billion it claimed in last week’s update — but the figure remains unverifiable as the site still says it’s posted only a fraction of the receipts supporting this total.
In its latest update to its “Savings” page, DOGE continued to update — and in some cases delete — contracts that it had previously listed as having saved up to billions of dollars in federal funds, after media outlets, experts and others publicly questioned details of the contracts.
In all, DOGE listed a total of 2,334 canceled contracts on its latest “Wall of Receipts,” with the savings from those contracts amounting to $8.8 billion.
The amount is actually lower than the $9.6 billion in claimed savings from 2,299 contracts posted on its “Wall of Receipts” last week, reflecting the difficulty in pinpointing exactly what DOGE is cutting and by how much.
Similar to last week, DOGE claims in this week’s update that the $105 billion figure is based on a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
The site, however, only provides receipts for a fraction of that number. In addition to the $8.8 billion alleged savings in canceled contracts, the new data on the site lists $660 million worth of real estate leases under the GSA that were canceled, and, for the first time, it lists federal government grants that have been terminated, totaling $10.3 billion.
Among the contracts that have been deleted from DOGE’s latest “Wall of Receipts” is the biggest contract it had listed as having canceled last week: a seven-year blanket purchase agreement from the IRS with $1.9 billion cap for “IT strategy and modernization.”
The website removed this contract from its “Wall of Receipts” after the vendor, financial management and IT company Centennial Technologies, told the New York Times last month that the contract was actually canceled last fall, under the Biden administration.
The previous week, DOGE had to revise down its largest claimed savings contract from $8 billion to $8 million after the contract’s vendor explained that the $8 billion listed on it procurement record was likely a clerical error.
Another contract that was removed from DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” in the latest updated was a five-year $150 million USAID contract under the Asia Futures Activity initiative, aimed at serving the USAID’s Asia Bureau to solve “interconnected challenges of economic growth, democratic governance, and resilience in the face of increasing health, climate, and food security threats.”
Representatives for the Cadmus Group, which had received that contract, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
DOGE also deleted from its latest “Wall of Receipts” what appeared to be a $149 million National Institute of Health contract awarded to software company Advanced Automation Technologies.
Last week, the DOGE website listing that contract linked to a different NIH contract for leasing and maintaining refrigerated gas tanks. An NIH contract with Advanced Automation Technologies that shares the same contract ID is capped at just $1.4 million — not the $149 million figure that had been listed by DOGE.
Other terminated contracts listed in this week’s data include a USAID contract for the Ukraine Confidence Building Initiative with a $256 million ceiling, from which DOGE claims to have saved $170 million that has yet to be obligated to the contractor.
Another newly listed canceled contract is the USAID’s Global Health Training, Advisory, and Support Contract program, a multi-year program that started in 2021 and was capped at $682 million through 2029. DOGE claims to have saved $284 million by terminating this program.
The single biggest contract listed this week is a seven-year IT services contract from the USAID to the vendor Salient CRGT Inc., with a $597 million ceiling.
Similar to last week’s data, DOGE now lists more than 940 contracts where contract obligations have already been fully delivered — meaning that 40% of the contracts they claim to have terminated will not actually result in saving any money.
Asked about contracts that list $0 in savings last week, a White House official told ABC News that they’re using a conservative methodology of calculating savings because they subtract the contracts’ obligated dollars from the ceiling amounts. However, for many contracts the ceiling dollars are much higher than what is actually expected to be spent.
For the $10.3 billion in federal grants the sites says it’s terminated, DOGE lists each of the 3,389 grants with the name of the awarding agency and the amount of each grant, but does not lists the grant’s name or purpose.
So far, much of the claimed savings from these grants have come from the USAID — totaling $8.7 billion — followed by $1.1 billion from the State Department, $472 million from the Education Department and $61 million from the EPA.
DOGE has also updated its list of real estate leases that have been terminated, totaling $660 million. But much of the data is now missing information regarding which agency the leases were under, whereas the site previously listed leases from across more than 40 agencies.
The current data shows $143 million worth of real estate leases under the GSA that were terminated, and the rest of the terminated leases– totaling $516 million — do not list their agencies.
DOGE said last week that it would begin updating its website twice a week, but the current update, like the first two, came after a week.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., set out to El Salvador this week to find Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of an erroneous deportation, and get answers about his condition.
While he was relieved to get a chance to meet the Abrego Garcia face to face on Thursday, the senator slammed El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump for what he said was a setup to defame him and the deportee.
Van Hollen said Friday that what he called “margarita-gate” was manufactured by Bukele and his officials after they posted a photo of his meeting with Abrego Garcia at a table with what appeared to be filled margarita glasses.
The senator said those glasses were put on the table partway during the meeting by El Salvador officials and that neither he nor the deportee touched the drinks.
“Everything happens because Bukele says it could happen. And if you look at the video you sent out right afterwards with the fake margaritas, you can see that all of that was a setup,” Van Hollen told reporters.
The senator poked holes in the story that was being spread by Bukele’s and Trump’s allies and said the entire meeting was suspect from the beginning.
After being denied access to CECOT, the super prison that the government originally said was holding Abrego Garcia, Van Hollen said he was ready to fly back to the U.S. Thursday but got a message that the deportee was available to meet.
The El Salvador government tried to have the meeting poolside, but the senator said he had them take it indoors in a dining area. During the meeting, Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia had glasses of water and a coffee cup on their tables, which appeared in a photo posted by the senator.
The senator said that at one point during the hourlong meeting, officials put glasses on the table that appeared to have liquid inside with salt or sugar rims on top. Van Hollen said he had no idea what the liquid was.
The glass in front of Abrego Garcia had less liquid than the other glass, according to Van Hollen.
“They tried to make it look like, I assume, that he drank out of it,” the senator said.
Van Hollen said the insinuations about the margarita glasses don’t hold up under scrutiny.
“They made a mistake,” he said of the government officials. “If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear. You would see a gap. There’s no gap. No one drank anything.”
El Salvador’s government has not commented on the senator’s claim.
Trump was asked about the photo of the meetings with the glasses earlier Friday and criticized Van Hollen as “fake” and repeated disputed claims that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member.
“They’re all fake, and they have no interest in that prisoner. That prisoner’s record is unbelievably bad,” Trump said before listing crimes of which other MS-13 members have been convicted.
None of the allegations made about Abrego Garcia’s being part of MS-13 have been made in court documents. Abrego Garcia’s family and attorneys have denied the gang allegations.
Van Hollen stressed that Trump is trying to divert attention from the fact that the U.S. government is not complying with the Supreme Court’s unanimous order that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. by bringing up gang violence.
“I mean, this is a guy who’s been in CECOT. This guy has been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big fat lie,” he said.
The senator added that the case goes beyond Abrego Garcia.
“This case is not about just one man. It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everyone who resides in the United States of America,” he said.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Monday filed a highly unusual motion stating its intent to review a state-level conviction of a Trump ally who was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a security breach of her county’s elections computer system following the 2020 presidential election.
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was sentenced last October for giving an individual affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of President Donald Trump who amplified false election claims, access to election software she used for her county. Screenshots of the software later appeared on right-wing websites that in turn used it to further promote baseless claims of voter fraud.
Early last month, Peters filed a motion with the federal district court in Colorado seeking to challenge her guilty verdict.
On Monday, the senior acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Yaakov Roth, filed a statement of interest with the court, urging a judge to give “prompt and careful consideration” to concerns Peters’ counsel has raised about her case.
“Reasonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’ case,” Roth said in the filing. “Accordingly, the United States respectfully submits that the concerns raised in the Application warrant – at the very least – prompt and careful consideration by this Court (and, at the appropriate time, the Colorado appellate courts).”
The Justice Department does not have the legal authority to unilaterally overturn state-level convictions. However, some critics have expressed concerns that such intervention highlights a troubling willingness by Trump-appointed officials at the Department of Justice to aid allies of the president, while also raising the prospect of retribution against his political opponents.
Roth’s filing further states that Peters’ case fits into a broader review underway at the Justice Department of “cases across the nation” that the filing argues may be “abuses of the criminal justice process.”
“This review will include an evaluation of the State of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms. Peters and, in particular, whether the case was ‘oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives,’” the filing stated.
An ABC News request for comment about the filing submitted to the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately receive a response.
