Trump picks Kevin Warsh for Fed chair, but key Republican vows to block him over Powell investigation

(NEW YORK) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill Wednesday for what is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request.

But the appearance — the first before Congress for Hegseth since the war in Iran began in February — lands just two days before a 60-day deadline to wind down hostilities.

It also comes amid intensifying questions on the Hill about how quickly the Pentagon is depleting weapons stockpiles, and as lawmakers continue to scrutinize Hegseth’s unusual spate of firings of senior defense officials without a public explanation.

Questions over civilian casualties in the Iran war, as well as whether the U.S. was properly prepared for retaliatory strikes, and broader questions over the strategic rationale for the conflict, are likely to be a key part of committee members on both sides of the aisle questioning of Hegseth, multiple congressional aides explained.

This week marks Hegseth’s first return to Capitol Hill in nearly a year — with testimony Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee and Thursday on the Senate side — and his first exposure to sustained scrutiny since the war with Iran began. He is joined by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at both hearings.

While Hegseth has appeared before the press since the conflict began in late February, he has largely limited engagement to reporters viewed as sympathetic to the administration.

At the center of this week’s hearings is the administration’s request for $1.5 trillion in defense spending, the largest amount in the Pentagon’s history and a jump of 50% over current levels, which would mark the largest single-year increase in a generation.

The proposal would triple spending on drones and related technologies to more than $74 billion, while directing over $30 billion toward munitions procurement. But that budget request was developed months ago: not account for spending in the war with Iran.

“The overlap, you’ll see, is the request for munitions, which is something we always need,” Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of defense and the Pentagon’s comptroller, told reporters last week. “We always need to increase our magazine depth. But outside of that, there aren’t any operational costs in here from Iran.” Hurst is set to join Hegseth and Caine at the Senate hearing on Thursday.

That means the Pentagon may require additional funding to cover the cost of the vast quantities of munitions being expended as U.S. forces have struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran since February, along with other significant war-related expenses.

Defense experts have long raised concerns about stockpile constraints even before the war with Iran, with some estimates of a potential conflict with China suggesting the United States could exhaust long-range missile inventories within the first few weeks of fighting.

In less than two months of exchanging fire with Iran, the U.S. has used roughly half of certain missiles and other munitions, according to an analysis published last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Retired Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at CSIS and an author of the report, said Operation Epic Fury “does create a window of vulnerability” for a period of as many as four years – the time it would take to replenish stocks.

“The United States has enough munitions to fight this war if it stubs up again,” Cancian said. “But the risk is in a future war with China, where inventory levels are far below where war planners would like them to be.”

Pentagon officials have maintained the U.S. has enough ammo to fight Iran. Though rearming the force with new munitions can take years, with some missiles requiring one to two years to build, reflecting an inherent limit on how many complex munitions the defense industry can produce each year, spurring much of the interest in huge investments in relatively cheap, easier-to-produce drones, which the Pentagon continues to surge into the Middle East.

Hegseth is also likely to face questions on his unprecedented firing or sidelining of two dozen senior military officials, particularly during a time of war, where he recently fired Gen. Randy George, who was the Army’s top officer and John Phelan, the Navy secretary.

Hegseth has also fired numerous lower-profile generals, without explanation, including Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., who was the chief of the Army Chaplain Corps, a collection of clergy from different faiths within the service. He has also blocked the promotion of four colonels to brigadier general, two of whom are women and two are Black, according to two U.S. officials, who both described a secretary of defense intervening in promotions as unprecedented.

Meanwhile, Democrats have failed in their multiple attempts to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war in Iran without Capitol Hill’s approval.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution gives the president latitude to conduct military strikes for a 60-day window, which closes Friday. The law allows for a one-time 30-day extension for the president to act without the consent of lawmakers, though it is unclear whether Trump intends to do so or whether Republicans will take into account the ceasefire in a way that relieves any deadline pressure.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump made a stunning reversal Friday by again backing a Colorado House Republican for reelection a month after he publicly scorned him and endorsed his opponent.

In a lengthy social media post, Trump said he would no longer back Hope Scheppelman’s bid in the Republican primary for Rep. Jeff Hurd’s seat in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, after she accepted an offer to join his administration. 

“Together with them, we decided that Congressman Jeff Hurd, of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, should in no way, shape, or form, be impeded from winning the District in that the Democrat alternative is a DISASTER for our Country,” he said in his social media post. 

In February, Trump withdrew his endorsement of Hurd, lashing out against him in a social media post after he voted to rebuke the president’s tariffs on Canada.

“Hurd is one of a small number of Legislators who have let me and our Country down,” Trump said in the February social media post.

In Friday’s announcement, the president changed his mind.

“Every true MAGA supporter and Republican, if they truly care about saving our Country, will do everything in their power to unify together, and defeat the Crazed Radical Left Democrats this November,” he said.

The district has been red since 2011, and has traditionally been seen as a strong Republican area.

Trump said he spoke with Scheppelman, a Navy veteran and nurse, and her husband, about his decision and offered both of them positions in his administration in a “capacity to be determined.”

“Hope and Steven are wonderful and patriotic Veterans of our U.S. Navy, and loyal supporters of our Historic MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN Movement,” Trump said in the post. 

Hurd thanked Trump for the endorsement in an X post Friday.

“The President and I share the same goals: securing the border, American energy dominance, and helping working families,” he said.

Scheppelman, whose social media pages feature a picture of her and Trump posing with thumbs-up signs, said in a statement on X that she would suspend her campaign given Trump’s request.

She said Hurd “now has the opportunity to correct his naive voting record and support President Trump, and our slim Republican majority in the U.S. House, in our shared battle to save the country we love.”

“If he does not, I will run again in 2028 and defeat [Hurd] in order to give the citizens of Colorado’s 3rd district, and all of America, the representation we deserve,” Scheppelman added.

Trump’s involvement a welcome development for House Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson protecting a historically small majority this fall.

By backing Hurd, the GOP avoids another contentious primary in a long red district, as the incumbent is running unopposed.

Alex Kelloff, a Democratic candidate running for the House seat, responded to the president’s announcement Friday on X.  

“Trump is worried we’re going to win this seat, a testament to all the work our campaign has been doing the last 11 months,” he said. 

The Colorado primary is set for June 30.

-ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is urging states to stop removing children from their homes over gender-identity disputes at the behest of child welfare agencies without their parents’ approval.

In a letter first obtained by ABC News, the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) reminds state child welfare agencies that under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), they are barred from removing children from their home because a parent doesn’t agree with the child’s gender identity.

“When states overstep their bounds, ACF will take action to deter inappropriate policies that drive unnecessary interactions with child welfare systems. This is one such example,” ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams wrote in a statement Tuesday.

The Trump administration cited multiple examples — from Illinois to California — where children who may reject the sex they were assigned at birth and perceive themselves as a different gender were removed from their homes without parental consent and placed in the child welfare system.

However, Shannon Minter, vice president of legal at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), told ABC News that he is not aware of any state removing children from parents based on their response to a transgender child.

Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign. 

Minter called the effort a broader push by the Trump administration to “eliminate” all protections for transgender young people.

“No one is advocating for removing children because a parent is struggling to understand,” he said, adding, “But child welfare professionals need the discretion to assess when rejection crosses the line into real harm — the same way they would for any other child.”

Morissa Ladinsky, a clinical professor in pediatrics at Stanford University in California, argued that children aren’t typically removed from their home without parental consent in this fashion.

“My experience tells me that there is likely more to the story,” Ladinsky told ABC News, adding that she has not seen removal over gender disputes fall under the domain of Child Protective Services.

As the division of HHS that promotes welfare assistance and supports the economic and social well-being of children and families, the agency has said ACF’s duty is to protect families and keep them together. ACF’s letter also stressed that parents hold the right to refuse removal according to their religious beliefs and moral convictions around gender identity.

The letter said breaking the law could violate the First Amendment and states could risk losing federal grant funding under CAPTA. 

“What we’re doing with this letter is we’re putting states on notice,” Adams told ABC News.

“When policies are either increasing the number of kids committed to the system inappropriately or they’re deterring foster families from stepping up, I do think there was a role for ACF to weigh in,” he said, adding, “It does merit federal action.”

The letter to states bolsters an initiative to protect children from the foster-care system amid a shortage of facilities nationwide with only 57 foster homes for every 100 vulnerable kids coming into the system, according to Adams.

The letter comes at the directive of President Donald Trump’s Fostering the Future for American Children and Families executive order and follows the president’s call during his State of the Union address last week for a federal ban on gender transitions for minors.

“Surely, we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said during his address. “We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”

Gender identity is described as how a child perceives and calls themself, which can be the same or different from the sex that was assigned to them at birth, according to the Human Rights Campaign. 

However, if a child sees themself as different than the sex assigned at birth, parents have the right to reject this self-identification, the ACF letter says. Under federal law, CAPTA states that a child may not be removed from the home without proof of “abuse” or “imminent risk of harm.” 

The Trump administration has stated that restoring power to parents is one of its top health, education and humanities priorities. But the letter warns that states are usurping parental rights and potentially misinterpreting the CAPTA law if they remove children from their homes without evidence of “abuse or neglect.”

Under ACF, the health department’s human services division administers the largest federal child care program and other federal services that helps millions of households nationwide.

Prior to ACF’s letter to states, lawmakers have taken several child care-related actions against the nation’s health agency under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a previous letter to Kennedy first reported by ABC News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other congressional Democrats said the agency’s alleged “disregard” for child welfare undermines the government’s core child-protection obligations amid federal immigration crackdowns.

Adams stressed Tuesday’s letter is supported by the whole organization, including Kennedy, and the secretary has demonstrated his commitment to improving child welfare outcomes across several different domains. 

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