Speaker Mike Johnson suggests ‘conditions’ needed on disaster aid for LA wildfires
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(WASHINGTON) — Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that “there should probably be conditions” on aid to help California deal with devastating wildfires when asked if he’s open to sending funding, signaling a possible political battle over helping the traditionally Democratic state.
“I think there should probably be conditions on that aid. That’s my personal view. We’ll see what the consensus is. I haven’t had a chance to socialize that with any of the members over the weekend because we’ve all been very busy, but it’ll be part of the discussion,” Johnson said.
He did not offer specifics and ABC News has asked his office to clarify.
Johnson said the House Republican Conference will have a “serious discussion” about aid and blamed leadership in California who he said, “were derelict in their duty,” echoing claims made by President-elect Donald Trump about the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles.
“Obviously, there has been water resource management, forest management, mistakes, all sorts of problems, and it does come down to leadership, and it appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty, and in many respects. So, that’s something that has to be factored in,” he said.
Johnson said, “there’s some discussion” within GOP conference to tie the debt limit increase to aid to California but cautioned “we will see how it goes.”
After natural disasters, additional funding to help rebuild is usually approved with few if any conditions and typically receives bipartisan support.
Johnson’s initial stance could mean a partisan fight in Congress over disaster relief for California in the coming days and weeks.
Given the slim margin Republicans hold in the House, the speaker will likely need Democrats to ultimately back any final proposal.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives on Capitol Hill on Monday to kickstart several days of private meetings with more than two dozen senators and their staff in a bid to become the nation’s next health secretary.
Among the senators on Kennedy’s list is Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the GOP’s pick to become the next Senate majority leader.
Kennedy’s chances of getting confirmed by the Senate aren’t clear. His past comments questioning vaccine science and the food industry could lose — and gain — votes on either side of the aisle depending on how he talks about his plans for the incoming administration.
Here are three questions surrounding his nomination:
Would he try to limit access to certain vaccines like the polio shot or encourage schools to drop vaccine mandates?
Kennedy has said he’s not opposed to all vaccines. He says he’s fully vaccinated, with the exception of the COVID-19 shot, and that he has vaccinated his children.
Kennedy also has falsely claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, even though the study claiming that link has been retracted and numerous other high-quality studies have found no evidence that vaccines are tied to autism.
Kennedy also has questioned the safety of the polio vaccine and enlisted the help of a longtime adviser and anti-vaccine advocate, Aaron Siri, to vet potential job candidates for the incoming administration.
Siri petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine on behalf of an anti-vaccination advocacy group.
Dr. Richard Besser, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an ABC News contributor, said senators should ask Kennedy if he would consider using his new post to discourage local school districts from requiring vaccinations.
While state — not federal — laws establish vaccination requirements for local schools, they rely heavily on the recommendations by the CDC and FDA, which Kennedy would oversee as health secretary, if confirmed. Currently, all 50 states and Washington, D.C. have laws requiring vaccines to attend schools, although some offer exemptions.
“What will you do to make sure that parents can feel comfortable sending their children to school protected from measles, whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases if vaccines are no longer required?” Besser said senators should be asking Kennedy.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history and a polio survivor, said last week that anyone seeking Senate confirmation would “do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
Will Kennedy use ‘confirmation bias’ to review government data
Confirmation bias is the idea that people often seek out information that supports their own deeply held beliefs, rather than be open to accepting new information that might challenge their ideas.
When it comes to the polio vaccination, Kennedy has said he’s willing to say that he’s wrong but that he has yet to see information that would convince him.
“If you show me a scientific study that shows that I’m wrong… I’m going to put that on my Twitter and I’m going to say I was wrong,” he said in a podcast last year with Lex Fridman.
It’s likely several senators will ask Kennedy whether he’d be willing to change his mind on vaccines based on data, or if he’s already convinced that the data is wrong or manipulated.
Critics say Kennedy is willfully ignoring the information that’s out there already. In a letter obtained by The New York Times, more than 75 Nobel Prize winners urged U.S. senators to block his nomination, citing the his “lack of credentials or relative experience” in matters of medicine, science and public health.
“In view of his record, placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of [the Department of Health and Human Services] would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors,” the laureates wrote.
How would he try to change what Americans eat?
Kennedy finds the most political consensus when he talks about America’s obesity crisis and blames the high levels of sugar, sodium and fat in ultra-processed foods. A longtime environmental advocate, he’s also taken aim at the use of additives pushed by food companies — earning him kudos from some Democrats.
“We’re prioritizing corporations feeding us unhealthy products instead of family farmers growing fresh, healthy foods – and we let too many dangerous chemicals flood our food system,” said Sen. Cory Booker last month after Kennedy’s nomination was announced.
“We all must come together to build a system that works for all,” he added.
But one big question many senators will likely ask is how Kennedy plans to turn around America’s eating habits in a way that doesn’t hurt U.S. farmers or heavily regulate agricultural businesses that are key political supporters of President-elect Donald Trump. During Trump’s first administration, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue rolled back Obama-era rules that sought to limit sodium and sugar in children’s school lunches that accept federal subsidies.
FDA Administrator Robert Califf, who will step down when Trump takes office in January, testified recently before a Senate committee that there’s a lot we still don’t know about food science and safety. When the FDA does move ahead with regulation, he said the rule is often challenged in court.
“What sounds simple, given the current state of judicial affairs, First Amendment rights, [is] the fact that corporations have the same rights as individuals — every little thing we do, unless specifically in detail instructed by Congress — it’s not just that we lose in court, but we lose years,” he said.
Republican Rep. Mike Turner on Sunday refuted claims that the massive overhaul of the federal government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) constitutes a federal crisis.
“Elon Musk goes about his job, which is a very important job, I mean the fact that we have Elon Musk looking from the private sector into the public sector, advising the president in ways that we can find ways to to reduce overall spending, to get this curve down is incredibly important and an unbelievable opportunity for for our government,” Turner said in an exclusive interview with co-anchor Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”
President Donald Trump tasked Musk with cutting federal spending through DOGE. Since Trump took office, Musk’s controversial task force has encouraged federal workers to leave their jobs and slashed many programs and agencies.
“In this instance, we have Elon Musk and the president of the United States going over to the bureaucracy and saying, ‘We’re going to tame you. We’re going to pull you back under the executive branch. We’re going to look at ways in which we can find savings, and we’re going to bring this spending curve down,'” Turner said.
Turner said that DOGE’s drastic cuts to the federal government will assist in meeting spending goals. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution that was negotiated in December. The resolution is set to expire in March and without a new deal, the government will shut down.
Turner said: “This administration is taking an immediate assessment of where are we spending our funds and where do we need to spend them? And in order to do so, they need to take a stop, they need to take a critical view and let the American public know that their monies are being spent around the world, and they need to determine how they need to be spent in the way that advances U.S. interests and do so in a way that we can balance the budget.”
DOGE’s purge of the federal government resulted in the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Trump administration placed all USAID direct-hire employees on administrative leave effective Friday, but a federal judge late Friday blocked the move and reinstated some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
Turner said federal agencies needed fiscal and policy reviews.
“We’ve had USAID that has been separate from, really, the ambassador structure and our embassy structure. Commerce has been separate. DOD has been separate. You know, taking a view where we, how do we merge these back so we have one voice in foreign policy.”
But while Musk has made baseless claims of fraud within USAID, Turner emphasized the importance of the agency’s work.
“USAID is not a criminal enterprise, and people who work for the government have an important job to do, and they need to be honored,” he said.
Current and former officials warn that dismantling USAID could create a global vacuum that could be filled by U.S. adversaries like China. However, Turner, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he does not believe China will act.
“They’re not going to come in and start providing aid of this nature. They don’t have the heart for it,” he said. “They don’t have the goals and objectives for it. This is not what they do.”
Additionally, on Tuesday Trump announced in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Trump outlined a scenario in which Palestinians would be relocated and the U.S. would own and rebuild Gaza. Experts warn that rhetoric like this could rattle the fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Turner said Trump’s language does not worry him, but it might be distracting.
“I think it does pose the challenge of focusing on the fact that Hamas and the Palestinians and the terrorist structure that’s there needs to be dismantled, that Israel does deserve and need a peaceful structure.” Turner said.
(WASHINGTON) — After the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) fired its probationary workers as part of the Trump administration’s government-wide layoffs Thursday, the agency moved on to fire short-term employees Thursday night with most of the remaining staff expected to be fired Friday, according to a lawsuit.
A group of federal unions that is suing the Trump administration over its dismantling of the agency alleged in a court filing Thursday that the newly installed acting director, Russell Vought, plans to fire over 95% of the agency’s workforce as soon as Friday.
The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit are asking a federal judge to impose a temporary order to block the dismantling the CFPB, which they argue could have sweeping consequences for American consumers.
The firings, part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to slash the federal government, would gut the 1,700-employee consumer watchdog agency, according to three CFPB employees who spoke to ABC News on the condition that they not to be identified out of fear of retribution.
“All term employees were fired tonight, and it looks like the rest of us will be fired tomorrow but for cause rather than via a [reduction in force] which means no severance I think,” one agency lawyer wrote in a message to ABC News.
“3 of my 4 teammates were canned,” another employee wrote. “Just me and my supervisor left, the only permanent employees.”
Employees were told not to work or go into the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters this week, and several employees said their credentials did not allow access into satellite offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Atlanta on Thursday, two of the employees said.
The employees said the firings will leave all Americans more vulnerable to fraud.
“I’m worried about everybody. What about the people who use our complaints to get their loans straightened out or their bank accounts unfrozen? They’ve already tried calling the company and gotten nowhere,” an employee wrote. “Who will help them now? Will the companies get bold and screw over their customers without our robust oversight?”
“It’s going to be a nightmare,” the employee said.
“I’m concerned for every consumer out there,” another employee told ABC News. “There’s a lot of fintech companies and I don’t know what’s going to happen if we don’t have purview over that.”
The employee said she was also concerned about X CEO Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, having access to the CFPB’s massive database, which contains information about companies that Musk’s planned “X Money” online payment service would compete with. The agency would also be responsible for regulating the X Money platform.
The employee also said she was alarmed at the way CFPB employees were being characterized by the Trump administration.
“A lot of people are actively giving back and serving” the community, she said of her fellow CFPB employees. “Some donate from our paychecks — donations for nonprofits, volunteering, donating, giving back to our community, fostering dogs, they’re involved in a lot of causes. I work with remarkable people who never stop serving.”
“Me personally, this was my dream job in college and I can’t even believe i got in, it was so competitive,” wrote the employee, who said she is in her fourth year at the agency after having worked in the private sector, so her pension will not vest. “It’s the dream job, what’s next? I’m too young to retire, I believe in the work we did, everyone I work with felt the same.”
