Trump is ending Secret Service protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is ending U.S. Secret Service protection for former President Joe Biden’s adult children.
Trump made the announcement on his conservative social media platform on Monday evening.
Earlier Monday, as he toured the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Trump was asked by a reporter about the security detail assigned to Hunter Biden as he vacationed in South Africa.
“That will be something I’ll look at this afternoon. OK. I just heard about it for the first time,” Trump responded. His Truth Social post came hours after the exchange.
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump revoked Secret Service protection for John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Mark Milley, despite threats against their lives from Iran because of their work in the first Trump administration. He also removed the security detail assigned to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who faced threats over the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Trump told reporters at the time.
Presidents, vice presidents and their families are given Secret Service protection throughout their time in office.
Former presidents and their spouses can keep their details for the rest of their lives after leaving office, unless they choose to decline it. Federal law also provides security for children of former presidents until age 16, though outgoing presidents can extend it. Hunter Biden is 55 and Ashley Biden is 43.
When Trump left office after the 2020 election, his four adult children and their two spouses received Secret Service protection for an additional six months.
Before leaving office, Joe Biden issued a controversial pardon for his son over tax evasion and federal gun charges. ABC News recently reported that Hunter Biden now finds himself in debt and without a permanent home, according to court documents.
Plus, Hunter Biden continues to be a target of Republican attacks, including criticism from Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Friday that President Donald Trump “intends” to sign an executive order to dissolve the Department of Education — but it’s still unclear when.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to get ahead of the president,” she said on “Fox & Friends” Friday, adding “I think you’d have to check with the White House.”
Without giving any details, McMahon said she had spoken to Trump about the executive order and that he is “crystal clear” on the move. As ABC News reported earlier this week, a draft of the order calls on McMahon to facilitate a department closure by taking all necessary steps “permitted by law,” sources said.
In the interview, McMahon underscored that abolishing the agency is rooted in allowing families the right to a “quality education” through school choice.
She mentioned that kids should not be “stuck in failing schools,” and that their parents deserve the right to send them to better schools through various programs and voucher systems.
“He certainly intends to sign the order,” McMahon said. “His intent is to provide quality education through school choice to all students, and he wants to make sure that education is back at the state level where it belongs, that our local school boards, that governors and teachers and parents are really the ones that are involved mostly in their children’s education.”
Education is already a local-level issue. The department conducts federal investigations and research projects; it also oversees programs intended to protect students’ civil rights and those with disabilities.
McMahon stressed that the department does not create school curriculum and said the agency she has been tapped to lead is not needed.
“[The president] couldn’t be any more clear when he said he wants me to put myself out of a job,” she said. “I think there is definitely a role for education to make sure that as we move education back to the states, that we are providing the tools for the governors, for the teachers, that we can provide them with research to show best practices.”
However, such moves would require congressional approval; any proposed legislation would likely fail without 60 Senate votes.
Congress rarely came up in the interview with “Fox & Friends” anchor Ainsley Earhardt, who mentioned a department closure would take 60 Senate yes votes to shutter the agency Congress started in 1980. During McMahon’s confirmation hearing last month, she said she would need Congress to carry out the president’s campaign promise and vision.
“We’d like to do this right,” she said, adding that the department’s closure “certainly does require congressional action.”
McMahon allies such as Glenn Jacobs — the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, who is best known as the World Wrestling Entertainment superstar Kane — told ABC News that choosing McMahon is helping to bring “transformational change” to the federal government.
“If you put a Washington insider in there, you’re getting the same thing,” Jacobs said. “We’re in the situation where we have $36 trillion in debt and the government doesn’t work because we’ve just been going with the status quo for so long, there has to be some radical transformation.”
But McMahon’s critics are vowing to press forward to preserve the department. In a virtual address with education leaders on Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that dismantling the agency will harm millions of students in New York and across the country.
“What [the Trump administration is] doing is saying our kids don’t matter,” Hochul said. “What’s more important is that we slash, for the sake of slashing, and also be able to fund tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. So instead of supporting a math class, they’re supporting tax breaks for the buddies at Mar-a-Lago.”
With scores of education department employees already on edge — some on paid leave, taking retirement severance packages or scrambling to do their jobs as a department closure looms — McMahon said she’d like to help any fired federal workers find new employment.
“Any time there’s talk about shutting a department down, the employees that are there are concerned about their jobs, but there are good off ramps for them,” McMahon said. “In a country where we right now have over 8 million openings and jobs, I think there’ll be a lot of places for them to go. We’d like to help them get there.”
Meanwhile, the business executive and former WWE president said she welcomed input from the Department of Government Efficiency tasked with scrubbing the federal government for fraud, waste and abuse. She said she frequently meets with DOGE as they conduct an “audit” of the agency.
“When I was in the private sector, I think a lot of stuff is always turned up when you do a good, solid audit,” McMahon said. “I welcome the DOGE folks that are in — we meet with them almost daily. I’ve been very appreciative of the things that they have shown us, some of the waste, and we’re right where we’re reacting to that.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is making a sweeping move to ban all future offshore oil and natural gas drilling on America’s East and West coasts, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s North Bering Sea.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement announcing the decision.
According to the White House fact sheet, this move blocks drilling in more than 625 million acres of U.S. oceans.
The fact sheet adds that Biden took those actions under “Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act” and adds that his actions “have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing” in the designated areas.
“We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low. Those are false choices,” Biden added.
The fact sheet says that after this sweeping move, “Biden will have conserved more lands and waters than any other U.S. president in history.”
The action comes as President-elect Donald Trump continually made his “drill, baby, drill” promise on the campaign trail, vowing to unlock America’s drilling capabilities in an effort to lower energy costs for Americans.
But the law Biden used, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, was written so a presidential action under its authority is permanent, differing from other executive actions. If the Trump administration were to attempt to reverse Biden’s actions, Congress would likely have to change the law.
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge is weighing whether to compel the Trump administration to unfreeze millions of dollars in previously allocated FEMA funds.
A coalition of 22 Democratic attorneys general says the administration is illegally withholding the funds despite a court order requiring their payment.
The attorneys general have asked the judge to compel the Trump administration to unfreeze the payments, alleging that at least 16 states have been unable to access money from 140 FEMA grants.
According to their motion filed in federal court on Friday, programs whose funds have been frozen include wildfire prevention, emergency management, terrorism prevention, cybersecurity, and flood mitigation.
“The safety of our residents is not a game and should not be subject to partisan politics and retribution from the President and his appointees,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, one of the 22 attorneys general who filed the motion.
In January, a federal judge in Rhode Island prohibited the Trump administration from unilaterally freezing federal funding. While the Trump administration unfroze some of the funds, the attorneys general allege that the federal government continues to withhold millions in FEMA funding.
Their court filing included multiple examples of FEMA’s payment system showing the grants continuing to be frozen.
The dispute about the FEMA funds comes as the Trump administration is considering reshaping or abolishing FEMA. In January, Trump signed an executive order to begin the process to reform or consider “getting rid of” the agency tasked with disaster relief.
