(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin telling him to make a deal now to end the war in Ukraine, threatening economic consequences if he doesn’t.
“It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.’ NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!” Trump wrote in a new social media post.
Trump indicated that if a deal isn’t made quickly, he would place high levels of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Russia.
“Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump said.
Trump then threatened that it can be done “the easy way, or the hard way.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night, Trump indicated he’d be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person.
“I’ll be meeting with President Putin,” Trump said, but didn’t say when that might happen.
Trump also indicated that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy was willing to come to the negotiating table, but is unsure if Putin would, too.
“He told me he wants to make a deal. He wants to make — Zelenskyy wants to make a deal. I don’t know if Putin does,” Trump said.
During the ABC News debate in September, Trump claimed he would settle the war between Russia and Ukraine before he got into office.
At one point, he had also signaled that the war would be over within 24 hours of becoming president.
(WASHINGTON) — One day after the Department of Veterans Affairs celebrated an estimated $2 billion in savings on canceled contracts, the agency began reversing some of the cancellations that may have affected veterans’ medical care and other benefits, according to multiple sources familiar with the contracts and agency records reviewed by ABC News.
“We were taking in millions of dollars in contracts to create things like PowerPoint slides and meeting minutes,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said on Tuesday. “Millions of dollars in contracts for ‘coaching and training.'”
“Don’t feed the line of what D.C. is wanting to sell you,” he added. “We are putting money back to veterans’ health, back to veterans’ benefits. And don’t let nameless sources, even senators and House members, who want to scare you, and the media, who want to perpetuate the line. We’re taking care of veterans.”
But the hundreds of contracts set for cancellation included some for legally required technical inspections of medical equipment that produce radiation at VA facilities, including CT scanners, MRI machines and dental X-ray units.
Without annual inspections, some of which are conducted by contractors in part to save the agency money, VA staffers are not permitted to use the equipment.
“We’re a really good deal for them,” said one contractor with multiple agency contracts, including several that were initially canceled — and then reversed by Wednesday afternoon. “They can’t afford to have that done in-house.”
Canceling the contracts “100% will impact care,” a VA official told ABC News. “If [the machines] get serviced or a part is replaced, they need to be inspected as well.”
Asked for comment Tuesday, a VA spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re reviewing VA’s various contracts, and we will be canceling many focusing on non-mission critical things like PowerPoint slides, executive support and coaching. Our review is ongoing and not final.”
“We will not be eliminating any benefits or services to veterans or VA beneficiaries, and there will be no negative impact to VA healthcare, benefits or beneficiaries,” the spokesperson added. “We are always going to take care of veterans at VA. Period.”
Some of the contracts marked for termination on Monday included contracts to provide employee and workplace benefits services to tens of thousands of VA employees and their families. Others included work overseeing hazardous waste disposal, conducting safety inspections at VA medical facilities, supporting cancer programs and burial services, according to agency records review by ABC News.
Some of the contracts marked for termination on Monday included contracts to provide employee and workplace benefits services to tens of thousands of VA employees and their families. Others included work overseeing hazardous waste disposal and conducting safety inspections at VA medical facilities.
Many of these contracts are labeled as some variations of consulting, a sweeping category of federal contracts that the Department of Government Efficiency’s team has aggressively gone after as part of its efforts to cut wasteful government spending.
“Everyone can agree that there is waste, likely fat, and there may very well be some fraud,” Arthur Mabbett, a disabled veteran and CEO of Mabbett & Associates, a government contractor with dozens of contracts with the VA and other agencies, told ABC News.
“Doing it in a businesslike fashion, rather than pure chaos, which is what they’re doing right now, would be a better approach,” said Mabbett, whose company has not had its stop-work orders rescinded as of Wednesday evening.
Some of that work includes working with VA facilities to make sure expansion and renovation projects comply with federal environmental law.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Tuesday slammed Collins’ previous move to cancel the contracts, saying many of those contracts provide “critical and direct services” to veterans.
“To say abruptly cancelling these services won’t impact veterans’ care and benefits is another unrealistic promise from Collins,” Blumenthal wrote in a statement. “Make no mistake — this is just another reckless cost-cutting decision that will harm veterans and taxpayers for years to come.”
Agency leaders directed employees to begin terminating hundreds of contracts on Monday, with some stop-work orders issued that evening.
Already, some of those stop-work orders have been rescinded — one of several DOGE-led efforts across the federal government that have been slowed or partially reversed by various agency leaders.
“I like what they’re doing, I just think they made a mistake, and they need to fix it,” one contractor told ABC News about the overall DOGE efforts. “If it goes quickly, I’ll be happy. And if it takes three to four months, I won’t be.”
The VA has already gone through two rounds of layoffs: The first affected 1,000 workers, and the second, announced this week, affected 1,400 “non-mission critical positions,” according to the agency’s statement.
Some of those terminated employees were asked to return to work days later, workers told ABC News.
Other layoffs may be on the horizon. On Wednesday, the Trump administration directed agencies to begin preparing for “large-scale” layoffs and reorganizations and to present plans for doing so to the Office of Management and Budget by March 13, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.
-ABC News’ Soorin Kim and Nathan Luna contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Environmental Protection Agency staff members across the country have been told by supervisors they are prohibited from communicating with grantee partners they are supposed to supervise and monitor, according to multiple sources inside the EPA and others working directly with the agency.
And without notice, many nonprofit organizations and other EPA grant recipients have found themselves frozen out of accessing their federal funds without notice or explanation.
“I have never experienced anything like this,” said Melissa Bosworth, who runs a small nonprofit organization based out of Denver that had been administering an EPA award approved by Congress last May for tribal, school and local municipalities in the mountain west.
Nonprofit leaders from across the country with EPA grants and contracts describe weeks of a communication blackout. Bosworth said her local contacts at the EPA’s Region 8 office stopped responding within days of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. She and her partnering organization, Montana State University, noted they reached out repeatedly to their local point of contact but got no response.
ABC News reached out to the EPA’s Region 8 office for comment.
Then, at the end of February, she received formal notice that her grant had been terminated. The purpose of the grant was to help cities, tribes and schools in rural Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas gain access to federal funding for projects focused on clean drinking water, disaster preparedness, emissions reduction and food security.
The termination notice, reviewed by ABC News, suggested her contract might have been canceled because of the president’s executive order to shutdown diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“It was about helping fight disparities on behalf of small cities and rural schools,” she said. “So often it is the big universities and big institutions that have the expertise to get funds. I worry the disparity for rural America, tribes and the smallest communities will get worse.”
Bosworth has a son with autism, and her business partner gave birth last month to a baby with severe medical challenges. They both have now been laid off.
“We thought there was a good chance they would try to terminate our contracts, but without any actual communication, we did not have anything formal to fight against,” Bosworth told ABC News. “We did not know what was real, if we could spend money or how to ask questions. I wonder if the ambiguity was part of the strategy.”
While the communication blackout appeared to be sweeping in multiple regional offices and consequential for grant recipients, it did not seem to apply to all EPA staff nationwide.
Even before receiving the termination notice, Bosworth said she struggled to access her EPA grant. She and dozens of other nonprofit leaders from California to Tennessee said they have been frozen out of the government payment system off and on, without explanation or notice.
In an EPA regional office in Philadelphia, staff members described being told in meetings with EPA political appointees based in Washington, D.C., that they are still not permitted to process new awards or even communicate with grant award recipients as late as last week. The edict came despite recent court rulings blocking the administration’s proposed federal funding freeze.
And when local EPA staffers pressed their regional bosses about the communications blackout, those bosses told them to comply because they did not want to risk doing anything to jeopardize their jobs, according to multiple sources.
As part of his work advising agencies to reduce spending and cut staff, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have promised transparency and increased oversight over how taxpayer dollars are going out the door. Experts who work in grant management as well as former EPA officials argue the lack of communication will result in the opposite — less transparency and no oversight.
“The preponderance of evidence is that many program officers are under some kind of gag order, making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs,” one former EPA official under the Biden administration told ABC News. “If you care about abuse in federal spending, this makes no sense and is absurdly hypocritical.”
Typically, EPA staff works closely with nonprofit organizations and local government partners who have been awarded grants, conducting oversight and answering and asking questions about how the government money is being spent.
Rebecca Kaduru, president at Institute for Sustainable Communities, based in Nashville, said she has lost access to the payment system at least once a week for the last month. Her organization had two EPA grants until last month, when one was terminated.
The effective gag order has left nonprofit leaders, local governments and tribes stunned and unsure about how to move forward in spending the EPA grants they were awarded.
Kaduru explained the strain of chaos of the last few months.
“Do I fire staff because I can’t pay payroll? But if I do, I am not compliant with the grant that says I have to have staff and keep our website,” she said on the phone. “It is very high risk for nonprofits.”
On Monday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency had decided to terminate over 400 contracts with nonprofit organizations around the country.
“Working hand-in-hand with DOGE to rein in wasteful federal spending, EPA has saved more than $2 billion in taxpayer money,” Zeldin wrote in a statement. “It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars.”
The EPA did not respond to questions about which contracts exactly were canceled or why, but it appeared environmental justice and community change grants were hit particularly hard in this week’s cuts.
Over 100 organizations received community change grants last year, totaling more than $1.6 billion, as part of environmental justice work funded through the bipartisan Infrastructure Reduction Act in 2022. The grants focus on helping low-income, disadvantaged and often rural communities fight air and water pollution, create green spaces and invest in renewable energy and disaster preparation.
On Tuesday, Zeldin also sent an internal memo to all regional administrators saying that the agency planned to eliminate all environmental justice positions and offices immediately.
“With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit all Americans,” the memo, which ABC News reviewed, said.
Many nonprofit leaders who received termination notices in the last few weeks expressed frustration that they were not given the chance to explain their work and said the savings, in their view, were overblown. The news comes as agency leaders were also told to draft plans with a deadline of this week for further staffing reductions.
In terms of savings, in a recent post, Zeldin claimed he saved taxpayers over $12 million by canceling the contract with Kaduru’s organization, for example. However, in actuality, it was an $8 million grant, with over half of it already spent.
Speaking to a joint session of Congress last week, Trump said his administration wants to focus on pollutants, saying, “Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.”
Both current career EPA staff as well as nonprofit partners said the cuts and the closure of environmental justice offices will make this work harder.
“I think it is a shame they are not looking into what we do — asking what we actually do,” Kaduru said. “It is a shame because those environmental justice programs in particular are really are good programs, and I think there is an unfortunate misunderstanding about what environmental justice [is].”
(WASHINGTON) — As nearly a dozen House Republicans remain undecided, Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday urged House Republicans to get on board and support the GOP-led government funding bill, according to several members leaving the 40-minute-long closed-door meeting.
The spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, is slated for a vote in the House Tuesday afternoon, and Vance told Republicans that the bill forces Democrats to take a tough vote, members told ABC News.
Vance also emphasized the importance of not shutting the government down, members said to ABC News.
In the absence of Democratic support, the vote represents a major test for Speaker Mike Johnson — as it remains unclear if the Trump-backed legislation can even pass in the GOP-controlled House.
Johnson needs near-unanimous GOP support and can only afford to lose one Republican before a second defection would defeat the bill if all members are voting and present. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said he will vote against the measure and Georgia Rep. Rich McCormick told reporters he’s also leaning against voting for the bill. Several others are undecided, including Reps. Tony Gonzales, Andy Ogles, Tim Burchett, Cory Mills, Eli Crane and Brian Fitzpatrick.
Despite the uphill climb, GOP leaders expressed confidence that they’ll get the bill across the finish line — even as Democrats remain united in opposition.
“No, we will have the votes. We’re going to pass the CR,” Johnson said at the GOP leadership news conference. “We could do it on our own.”
Majority Leader Scalise told ABC News’ Jay O’Brien that he’s confident the bill will pass, arguing Vance’s message will “pull people even further.”
“Well, on a big vote like this, you always have members that wait until the very end and then they’re going to vote yes, and I’m feeling very confident we’re going to get this bill passed,” Scalise said.
Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison raised concerns with the language in the bill, but added he will ultimately support the measure because he trusts President Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump, I mean, he is the difference maker. I would never support this language but, I do trust Donald Trump,” Burlison said.
Trump has played an outsize role this time around — the first shutdown threat of his second term — practically begging Republicans to support the measure. The president even placed phone calls on Monday to some lawmakers who are on the fence in an attempt to shore up the votes, according to a White House official.
“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (“CR”)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week. Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s “financial house” in order,” Trump said on Saturday in a post on Truth Social.
Trump added, “Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government.”
On Monday evening, Trump threatened to lead the charge against Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in the primaries, after the congressman said he would vote no on the continuing resolution Tuesday.
“Congressman Thomas Massie, of beautiful Kentucky, is an automatic ‘NO’ vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for Continuing Resolutions in the past,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight.”
Asked if he agreed with the president’s promise to primary Massie, Johnson said he will “vehemently disagree” with Trump.
“Look, I am in the incumbent protection program here, that’s what I do as speaker of the House,” he joked before adding, “Thomas and I have had disagreements, but I consider Thomas Massie a friend. He’s a thoughtful guy. I guess he’ll tell you he’s doing what he thinks is right on this, I just vehemently disagree with his position. I’ll leave it at that.”
Across the aisle, House Democrats appear poised to stick together in opposition of the GOP-led government funding bill.
“We cannot support this bill,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said walking into a conference meeting Tuesday morning.
“House Republicans put a partisan measure on the floor this week. It will gut veterans’ health care. It will enable Donald Trump and Elon Musk to continue to cut the federal government. House Democrats are voting no,” Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar later added.
While Johnson has at times benefited from Democrats crossing party lines to push bills through, as of now, it doesn’t look like he’ll get a life raft from them.
Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Marcy Kaptur, who represent Trump-backed districts, said they aren’t going to be voting for the funding bill, arguing there weren’t many incentives in the bill to garner their support.
“I haven’t met one yet,” Rep. Kaptur said when asked if she knew of any Democrats that would support the bill. “But perhaps there’s someone out there, but I’m unaware of it.”
The 99-page bill would decrease spending overall from last year’s funding levels but increase spending for the military by about $6 billion.
While there is an additional $6 billion for veterans’ health care, non-defense spending is about $13 billion lower than fiscal year 2024 levels.
The legislation leaves out emergency funding for disasters but provides a boost in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation operations.
It also increases funding for W.I.C. by about $500 million, a program that provides free groceries to low-income women and children.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report
