Trump makes 13-year-old DJ Daniel’s dream come true in address to Congress
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump turned the nation’s attention to Devarjaye “DJ” Daniel, a 13-year-old who aspired to become a police officer but was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, and made him an honorary member of the U.S. Secret Service.
“Joining us in the gallery tonight is a young man who truly loves our police,” Trump said after praising America’s law enforcement officers.
“The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago,” the president continued. “Since that time, DJ and his dad have been on a quest to make his dream come true.”
“And tonight, DJ, we’re going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new Secret Service director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States.”
DJ has been sworn in as an honorary law enforcement officer at police agencies around the country.
DJ reacted with a face of pure shock before his father hoisted him for the crowd to see. DJ proudly raised his new certificate and was met with claps, chants, and cheers.
In a rare moment that a Democrat expressed support for the president’s remarks, Rep. Laura Gillen, D-N.Y., rose from her seat and applauded for DJ.
Following this heartwarming moment, Trump proceeded to discuss childhood cancer rates, calling upon newly minted Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply and keep our children healthy and strong.”
(WASHINGTON) — Seven people have filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that the U.S. government would only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth on government-issued documents.
The complaint, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, accuses the State Department of rejecting some applications from transgender citizens or issuing documents with their sex assigned at birth. The lawsuit also accused the department of holding some passports and other documents submitted by transgender and nonbinary people.
“I’ve lived virtually my entire adult life as a man. Everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man,” said Massachusetts resident and plaintiff Reid Solomon-Lane in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit.
“I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” Solomon-Lane added. “Now, as a married father of three, Trump’s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease. If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety.”
The lawsuit lists seven plaintiffs. In a news release, the ACLU said more than 1,500 transgender people or their family members have contacted the organization concerned about not being able to get passports that reflect their identity
ABC News has reached out to the State Department for comment on the lawsuit.
Trump’s executive order, signed his first day in office, legally declared that there are only “two sexes, male and female” and defined a “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” The order defined “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
The executive order stated: “Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.”
The move was criticized by some medical and legal advocates, who argued the executive order rejected the reality of sexual and gender diversity.
In 2021, the State Department relaxed its rules, allowing applicants to self-identify as either “M” or “F” without needing medical certification or additional documentation to do so. Shortly after, the agency began issuing “X” gender markers for intersex or nonbinary residents.
In states across the country, some residents are allowed to self-select or change the gender or sex on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
Tom Brenner for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — In a dramatic scene only a few minutes into President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday, a longtime Democratic congressman interrupted the speech in an outburst that eventually caused him to be ejected from the House chamber.
Trump had just referenced the Nov. 5 election, calling his victory a “mandate,” when Rep. Al Green, an 11-term Democrat representing the Houston area, stood up, pointing his cane at the dais and shouted, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid.”
Trump sought to continue with his speech, referencing his popular vote victory and then a poll he said shows Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, but Green continued to interrupt, drawing boos and then chants of “USA! USA!” from the Republican side of the chamber.
Finally, House Speaker Mike Johnson jumped in, banging his gavel: “Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House, and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning.”
When Green’s protest continued, Johnson called the sergeant at arms to escort Green from the House chamber.
Green later told ABC News he’d welcome any consequences from his disruption, saying he was “following the wishes of conscience.”
“There are times when it it better to stand alone than not stand at all,” he added.
Following the speech, Johnson said Green should be censured for his disruption.
“It’s a spectacle that was not necessary. He’s made history in a terrible way. And I hope he enjoys it,” the House speaker told reporters after the address. “If they want to make a 77-year-old heckling congressman the face their resistance, the Democrat party. So be it. We will not tolerate it on the House floor.”
A censure is a formal reprimand by the House for violations of the House code of conduct and serves as a public condemnation of their behavior.
Johnson said he’s “quite certain” there will be several Republicans who will bring forward a censure resolution against Green and he would put the resolution up for a vote on the House floor.
Other Democrats in the audience sought to display their displeasure with Trump in slightly less disruptive ways. Several of them held up black signs reading “False,” “Save Medicaid,” “Protect Veterans,” and “Musk Steals.” Other staged walkouts throughout the speech.
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon is attempting to reduce the size of its civilian workforce by between 50,000 to 60,000 employees through voluntary workforce reductions, though it remains unclear if it will be able to meet that goal without possibly having to carry out forced reductions in the civilian workforce.
The Defense Department is currently carrying out a voluntary process to reach its goal of a 5% to 8% reduction of its 878,000 civilian employees — a number that equates to 50,000 to 60,000 employees, a senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday.
“The number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage, a 5% to 8% reduction is not a drastic one,” said the official, who added that the percentage is one that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “is confident can be done without negatively impacting readiness in order to make sure that our resources are allocated in the right direction.”
The voluntary process includes employees who have chosen to resign through what is known as the “Fork in the Road,” a freeze on hiring new employees to replace those who are departing and the dismissal of 5,400 probationary employees who have less than one or two years’ experience in their current jobs.
About 21,000 civilian employees have had their voluntary resignation requests approved under what the Pentagon calls the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), which allows employees to resign but continue to be paid through the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The senior defense official declined to disclose how many civilian employees in total had sought to opt into the Deferred Resignation Program.
ABC News has previously reported that 31,000 civilian employees had offered to resign under the Trump administration initiative with some of the requests being denied.
The hiring freeze means that the average 6,000 employees who join the Pentagon every month are also not coming into the workforce as other employees leave.
The Defense Department had also begun the termination of 5,400 probationary civilian employees — which has now been paused by a temporary restraining order imposed by a federal judge.
The official stressed that the 5,400 probationary employees had not been selected for termination “blindly based on the time they had been hired.” The Department has 54,000 total probationary employees, a term that refers to employees who have less than one or two years’ experience in their current jobs.
Instead, the official said the 5,400 were employees who “were documented as significantly underperforming in their job functions and or had misconduct on the record.” It is unclear if all of the 5,400 probationary employees targeted for termination fell into those categories.
“The fact that someone was a probationary employee did not directly mean that they were going to be subject to removal,” said the official.
The official declined to offer what “reduction in force” steps the Pentagon might undertake should the voluntary efforts not reach the goal of reducing the workforce by 50,000 to 60,000 employees.
“I won’t get ahead of the Secretary,” the official said. “It’ll be the Secretary’s prerogative to designate how and when he might use any of the other tools that would be available to him to achieve the stated reduction targets.”
There has been speculation that military service members may be asked to fill in for some of the civilian jobs that are being vacated or will not be filled by the hiring freeze, but the official said the goal is not to affect military readiness.
“We are confident we could absorb those removals without detriment to our ability to continue the mission, and so that’s how we can be confident that we don’t need to worry about any resulting impact on the uniformed force,” the official said.
The official acknowledged that some military veterans would be among the civilians who would be leaving the department, but did not provide an estimate of how many.
“Some of those people will be veterans that served in uniform previously, we’re certainly again looking at case by case as we plan workforce reduction,” said the official. “There are so many critical skills and experience that veterans have to offer, and that’s part of the analysis when we consider who is contributing to the core mission functions and who should be retained.”
