Trump officials’ Signal chat ‘could have ended with lost American lives’: Sen. Warner
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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said on Sunday that if information had been leaked from top Trump national security officials’ Signal chat discussing plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen, American lives could have been lost.
“I was, yesterday, down in Hampton Roads. I did two big town halls, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. There are people in the town hall who are either friends or relatives of folks who are on the [aircraft carrier USS Harry S.] Truman. Those folks were saying if their friends or loved ones were flying those jets and that information had been released and the Houthis were able to change their defensive posture, we could have lost American lives,” Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with co-anchor Martha Raddatz on ABC News’ “This Week.”
On Monday, a journalist revealed that national security adviser Mike Waltz had inadvertently included him in the chat with top Trump officials discussing plans for the Yemen attack. The Trump administration has pushed back against claims that the information included in the chat was classified information.
Warner said, “There is no question, regardless of agency, that this was classified … and those folks who are obfuscating and giving them the benefit of the doubt, I think they’re lying about they should know this is classified.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman tangled with a fiery town hall audience in her home state on Thursday night as she went back and forth with constituents over Elon Musk’s DOGE and cuts to federal spending.
At one point, Hageman sparred with a woman who said she was a retired military officer and Republican, who grilled the congresswoman over the evidence of alleged fraud that Musk and Republicans contend they have uncovered.
“Just to give you a little reference, I’m a retired military officer,” an unidentified woman said at one point in the town hall. “At 18, I rose my hand to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. … “And my question, having looked at Musk’s DOGE, you are a lawyer. Where is this fraud? Who? What company? What organization? What personnel are we going after right now?”
DOGE’s actions have come under fire, not only for recommending thousands of federal workers be fired, including many veterans but allegations, backed by President Donald Trump and the White House pertaining to what they say is massive fraud in government spending. The claims of fraud, which Trump outlined in his recent address to Congress, are not yet verifiable.
Hageman, fired back at the constituent, saying, “Oh my gosh, I’ll just start reading some of it. I’ll just start reading it right now, if you like me to. I’ll just focus on USAID spending right here.”
“I didn’t say spending, I said actual fraud,” the woman shouted back at Hageman.
“This is what it is,” Hageman retorted. “This is the spending associated with the fraud. This is the fraud. Spending is the fraud.”
“No, no, no,” the woman shouted back. “Go after specific companies or specific personnel that are committing fraud.”
“This is fraud. This is fraudulent spending,” said Hageman.
“No, it may be abusive spending, but it’s not fraud,” the woman replied.
“What I said was waste, fraud and abuse. Waste, fraud and abuse,” Hageman said back, before trying to give figures on USAID spending.
The same constituent then pressed Hageman over firings and whether or not they were actually making government more efficient: “Just because you’re firing somebody doesn’t mean that’s efficient because the job is still there. It still needs to be done,” she said.
“We will eliminate some of those jobs as well,” Hageman said. “Those jobs will be being eliminated. They don’t need to be done.”
At another point during the town hall, another woman pressed Hageman over what qualifies Musk to be making cuts to federal spending.
“You just described the cuts to the government right now as some kind of careful audit, but the cuts that DOGE has been making have been willy-nilly by someone who has never served in the government, has never run a nonprofit, who has 19-year-olds infiltrating computers and agencies and making decisions. So who is Musk accountable to? What qualifies him to be making these cuts? It’s not an audit,” she asked.
DOGE claims to have saved $115 billion but that full amount is unverifiable because there are only receipts for a portion of the claimed savings.
“As I said a moment ago, this is, it is an audit. It is the closest thing that we are ever going to get to zero-based budgeting in the federal government,” Hageman said.
“What I cannot understand, whether he is a billionaire, a millionaire, or someone who is, just as he says, tech support, all he is doing is going in and looking at every single agency and how the money is being spent. Do you think that you are entitled to know how your money is being spent?” she added.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is gearing up for major changes to the Department of Education, which, among its other functions, oversees a $1.6 trillion portfolio of student loans — the third largest source of household debt in the U.S.
Those loans belong to over 44 million Americans, many of whom are wondering what it would mean to abolish the department that manages their debt.
It depends on which policies the Trump administration actually implements — and which survive legal challenges. But some of the policy plans that have been floated include moving the government’s student loan portfolio over to the Treasury Department, changing the repayment plans that are available to borrowers and, in the most extreme possible change, privatizing the entire student loan system.
Above all, borrowers should expect a halt to student debt relief programs implemented and expanded under former President Joe Biden. The former president’s efforts resulted in $188.8 billion in student loan forgiveness for 5.3 million borrowers during his presidency. Republicans have derided the efforts as an abuse of executive authority, and some have even argued for clawbacks of some of that relief — though that’s considered unlikely.
The relief was concentrated in expansions or fixes to forgiveness programs that already existed, like Public Service Loan Forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans, after efforts at wide scale debt relief were halted by Republican-led lawsuits.
Moving the student loan system to a new home Conservatives who advocate for the Department of Education to be dismantled often suggest moving the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) to the Treasury Department, where it would continue to carry out the regular duties of doling out federal loans and recouping them.
FSA, which is an office within the Department of Education, is where people apply for federal student loans, grants and work-study funds, using the Free Application for Student Aid, or FAFSA, and it’s also the office that manages the repayment process.
Some legal experts have posited that moving FSA into a different government agency would require congressional approval. But Trump could continue pushing the limits of executive authority, as he has with other agencies, to test that hypothesis, ultimately leaving it up to the courts to decide.
Rick Hess, a senior fellow and director focused on education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, says FSA would be a better fit for the Treasury Department because it’s “essentially a mega-bank.”
“It’d make more sense to have it overseen by officials at Treasury who work closely with financial institutions and oversee federal revenue collection,” Hess wrote in a recent post.
Hess, in an interview with ABC News, said that he doesn’t predict any impact on student loan borrowers if FSA moved homes — the process would carry on, he said.
“I would be surprised if it’s noticeable in any way compared to anything the borrowers have experienced in the last 4 years,” Hess said, referring to the tumultuousness of the moratorium on payments during the pandemic, the restart, and then the stop-and-start that resulted from lawsuits over Biden’s forgiveness efforts.
That optimistic view would be a deviation from the learned experience of most borrowers, Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel of the Student Borrower Protection Center, which advocates for debt relief, said.
“No transitions in the student loan system have ever gone well, historically, and we have never tried to move the entire portfolio,” Yu said.
The student loan system is “messy” in its current state, Yu said. Millions of borrowers still haven’t started repaying their loans since the Covid-era pause ended, and a lawsuit holding up a Biden-era student loan repayment plan, called SAVE, has put nearly 8 million borrowers in forbearance while they await further guidance.
“Having a huge shift is certainly not going to make things better,” she said.
Yu also raised concerns that the Department of Education oversees the loan system with an emphasis on borrower rights, adhering to the Higher Education Act of 1965, while the Treasury Department would do so as a debt collector, which she said could create a “philosophical” difference in how borrowers will be treated.
“I am not here to defend [the Department of Education’s] track record because we’ve obviously had a lot of critiques of their performance in the past,” Yu said. “But this is a move that will in fact hand the portfolio to people even less qualified to run it.”
Changing the ways borrowers repay their loans There is also a subset of the Republican Party that wants much more significant changes to the student loan system beyond just rehoming offices to make the overall department smaller.
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint of policy ideas written for the Trump administration, calls for privatizing the student loan system entirely and moving all of the government-owned loans to private loan servicers.
Doing so would be a significant change in the way higher education is funded — more than 92% of people relied on federal loans in 2024, rather than private loans, according to the Education Data Initiative, and offloading the $1.6 trillion in federal student loans the government already has — or ceasing to offer loans going forward — would require congressional approval. (Project 2025 acknowledges that privatizing the system may not be “feasible.”)
It also calls for all federal loan repayment plans, of which there are many options, to be consolidated into just one option, and for an end to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or PSLF, which grants relief to people who work in public service, like nurses and firefighters, after they’ve paid their loans for 10 years.
But the program, first introduced by Republican President George W. Bush in 2007, was authorized by Congress, and would have to be eliminated by Congress, too, which remains unlikely.
Trump could significantly reduce access to the program, though, returning it to its less-effective form during his first term.
The forgiveness plan was massively expanded under Biden, but at one point in Trump’s first term, the Education Department rejected 99% of PSLF applications, a report from the Government Accountability Office found.
When Biden was in office, the number of people who had qualified for PSLF throughout the program’s history rose from 7,000 to over 1 million.
(WASHINGTON) — Leading candidates for the Democratic National Committee chairperson election said Tuesday’s claim by front-runner Ken Martin that he has the support of 200 members is inflated and fails to paint an accurate picture of the dynamics of the race.
Chair candidates need a simple majority of DNC members, or 225 votes, to win. If it holds, Martin’s latest endorsement count would bring him close to victory on the first ballot.
The role of the chair, who guides fundraising, recruiting and organizing efforts for Democrats nationally, holds particular importance in years when the party is outside of the White House and lacks a de facto leader.
Whoever wins the election will have the responsibility of balancing messaging against the Trump presidency while looking to define and rebuild a party now marked by decisive losses in the executive branch and across both chambers of Congress.
Typically, presidents appoint their own chairs to lead the parties they represent.
Martin, the Minnesota Democratic Party chairman, announced his 200-member number in a statement Tuesday morning.
“I’m honored to have gained the support of leaders from across the country,” Martin said. “Our campaign is gaining momentum and we’re going to continue to work hard for people’s votes.”
The teams of Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler claimed the dynamics of the race are far from locked.
In a statement to ABC News, Wikler’s spokesperson claimed Martin is inflating his whip count in an attempt to create “false momentum” and “lacks a clear path to victory.”
“Ken Martin is releasing inflated whip counts because his momentum in this race has stalled and he is seeking to create a false sense of momentum,” the spokesperson said. “Our internal count has Ben within 30 votes of Ken, with a surge in support since last week’s union endorsements. Ken has fewer votes than the combined support for Ben and Martin O’Malley and lacks a clear path to the majority.”
O’Malley’s team swiped at Martin, claiming that the 200 figure is inflated and unsubstantiated. Pushing further than Wikler’s team, O’Malley spokesman Chris Taylor told ABC News that “not a single soul” believes Martin, who he asserted is acting “beneath the seriousness of this moment.”
“This race isn’t about inflated and unsubstantiated numbers or tricks and gimmicks,” Taylor said in a statement. “It’s about making the changes we need to win and rebuilding the Democratic Party for the future of our Republic. There is not a single soul running for any DNC office who believes Ken Martin’s count. It’s disrespectful to the 448 voting members of the DNC — many of whom are still making up their minds — and beneath the seriousness of this moment.”
In their statements, O’Malley’s and Wikler’s teams both pointed to their internal numbers, which they said show a much closer race. None of the leading candidates have provided a full list of names of their supporters. O’Malley’s team said it has commitments from 100 members. Wikler’s team declined to offer its internal count.
Even still, public endorsements for Martin seem to outnumber all others.
Over the past few weeks, Martin’s campaign has been rolling out daily endorsements on social media. His bid boasts the support of at least 50 current state party chairs and vice chairs, including party leaders from swing-states Arizona, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, and several members of Congress, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, as well as leaders of the Young Democrats of America.
Wikler has the support from one of the highest-ranking Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and rubber stamps from both centrist and progressive organizations within the party. Last week, Wikler won the support of four powerful public sector unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
O’Malley has also been rolling out endorsements from individual members, including current and former members of the Congressional Black Caucus, alongside former mayors.
The DNC has been hosting forums that function as debates between candidates for all officer positions. There are two left, one this week and one next week, a few days before the officer elections on Feb. 1.
