Talk of the Town
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is granting a pardon to Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife, who were indicted on charges including bribery in 2024.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Monday fast-tracked his administration’s efforts to secure peace in Gaza, rolling out a detailed vision for a U.S.-backed ceasefire that the White House says will bring the war to an immediate end.
He said Israel has accepted the proposal but the success of the plan still hinges on the cooperation of Hamas.
“We’re at a minimum, very, very close,” Trump said during a news conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Speaking alongside the president, Netanyahu appeared to sign off on the proposal.
“I believe that today we’re taking a critical step towards both ending the war in Gaza and setting the stage for dramatically advancing peace in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.
Hamas did not immediately respond to comments from the president or the prime minister, but an official familiar with the negotiations said mediators had not yet fully briefed the group on the latest peace plan.
Shortly before Trump and Netanyahu addressed reporters, the White House released a 20-point plan, which calls for the release of all Israeli hostages held in Gaza within 72 hours of Israel accepting the agreement.
In exchange, more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released, all military operations will be suspended, and “battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal,” according to the plan.
The release from the White House also promises that, if the deal is enacted, members of Hamas “who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty.”
“Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries,” the proposal reads.
But Trump made it clear that if Hamas doesn’t accept the terms, Israel would have his “full backing” to “finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.”
“Bibi, you’d have our full backing to do what you would have to do,” the president said, referring to the prime minister by his nickname.
Netanyahu also said Israel would not hesitate to restart its military campaign against Hamas if the militant group refused the deal or reneged on the terms of the agreement.
“This can be done the easy way, or the hard way,” Netanyahu said. “But it will be done.”
Although the White House called it a news conference, the two men left without taking questions from reporters.
“I think while we wait for these documents to be signed and get everybody in line, I think it maybe is not really appropriate to take questions,” Trump said.
After Trump asked the prime minister if he wanted to take a question or two from a “friendly Israeli reporter,” Netanyahu also declined, saying, “I would go by your instinct — we’ll have enough time for questions. Let’s settle the issue first.”
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(WASHINGTON) — Since taking office ten months ago, Donald Trump has been sued in court hundreds of times by progressive organizations seeking to challenge his agenda.
The lawsuit over his sweeping global tariffs now before the U.S. Supreme Court is not one of them.
The group behind the lawsuit is a nonprofit organization that, for the last decade, has consistently fought in court for private property rights, free speech, and other individual rights, including a landmark decision when the Supreme Court determined that millions of public sector workers no longer needed to pay dues to unions that took positions they disagreed with.
According to Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and interim director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, bringing a case to challenge the tariffs aligns with the organization’s nonpartisan goal of enforcing constitutional and statutory limits on government overreach.
“We have three branches of government. They’re supposed to be coequal. I think we’ve been trending in the expansion of the executive branch’s power for the last several decades, and at some point, it’s going to be a problem,” Schwab told ABC News.
Filing nearly 140 lawsuits since its founding in 2011, The Liberty Justice Center has cemented a reputation as a legal force for many right-leaning causes, but the tariffs case has put it squarely against the president on his signature issue.
Schwab said the idea to sue was hatched after he read a blog post by Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, in which Somin expressed his belief that the tariffs were both unconstitutional and illegal, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s recent approaches to major questions and nondelegation doctrine.
“After reading that blog, I thought that would be an interesting case to bring with those claims, and we reached out to Professor Soman, and we had a discussion,” Schwab said.
And when Trump announced his sweeping tariffs on “Liberation Day” in April, the idea of a lawsuit began to gain momentum with Soman and Schwab beginning to seek out small businesses that might be interested in suing. With Soman making a blog post titled “Looking for Plaintiffs to Challenge Trump’s IEEPA Tariffs in Court” to solicit plaintiffs for the Liberty Justice Center, Schwab said his inbox quickly filled with interested small business owners, who happily shared how they were harmed by the sweeping and at times arbitrary tariffs.
“We got an overwhelming response of small business owners,” said Schwab, who recounted interviewing about 50 different small business owners. They ultimately landed on five business, including a wine and spirits importer, fishing outfitter, plastics producer, cycling apparel maker, and producer of children’s learning kits.
“They are five different diverse companies. They’re of different sizes, different industries, different geographic locations, and we think, represent the small business community in the United States very well,” he said.
Shortly after Liberation Day, Liberty Justice Center filed their lawsuit in New York’s Court of International Trade, arguing that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give Trump the power to impose sweeping tariffs unilaterally. A panel of judges ultimately agreed with their case, issuing a unanimous decision in May that the tariffs were illegal. The Trump administration appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld their decision, though Trump was allowed to keep the tariffs in place while the issue made its way through the court. Come Wednesday, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal is set to argue on behalf of the businesses at the Supreme Court.
According to Oliver Dunford, senior attorney at the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation, the tariffs case could have the potential to be one of the most critical separation of powers cases in recent history, with Trump assuming the authority to impose tariffs on any item imported from any country.
“The previous Presidents have pushed the envelope, both Republicans and Democrats, and this kind of arbitrary rulemaking is not new,” said Dunford. “This is on a scale that’s certainly different. This is just about every product, just from just about every country, and who knows when it’s going to end.”
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(WASHINGTON) — A critical food assistance program will soon halt for millions of Americans in need and air traffic controllers will miss a paycheck this week as the government shutdown enters its fourth week — with all eyes on congressional lawmakers to see if the added pressure will be enough to push them to strike a deal.
The Department of Agriculture posted a notice on its website that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will not be issued on Nov. 1 amid the ongoing government shutdown, saying “Bottom line, the well has run dry.”
SNAP, often referred to as “food stamps,” serves roughly 42 million low-income Americans.
SNAP has traditionally been entirely federally funded, but is administered by states. That means the shutdown’s impact on SNAP and when benefits will start to dry up will vary by state.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration said it won’t be giving a lifeline to SNAP funding, and blamed the Democrats for the ongoing shutdown.
The Trump administration’s position that it cannot extend SNAP benefits during the shutdown is a reversal from the USDA’s stated shutdown contingency plan from late September, which said that “Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds that can be used for State Administrative Expenses to ensure that the State can also continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown.”
But in a new memo issued late last week and obtained by ABC News, USDA said contingency funds are “only available” when SNAP funds have been approved by Congress.
Earlier in the shutdown, the Trump administration redirected others funds to pay service members — even as it says it can’t do the same with SNAP funding.
On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson argued the contingency funds for SNAP are “not legally available right now” to cover the benefits and pleaded with Democrats to support the clean continuing resolution to reopen the government.
“The reason is because it’s a finite source of funds. It was appropriated by Congress, and if they transfer funds from these other sources, it pulls it away immediately from school meals… So … it’s a trade off,” he said. “There has to be a pre-existing appropriation for the contingency fund to be used.”
Airline travelers are feeling effects of the shutdown as well.
Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration was forced to slow air traffic around Chicago, Dallas, Southern California, Newark and other cities because of staffing issues. Some air traffic controllers called out as many are forced to work without pay during the shutdown.
Air traffic controllers will miss their first paycheck on Tuesday.
Another critical deadline approaches around health care premiums. Democrats are continuing their fight over health care subsidies as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches.
As the shutdown continues to impact Americans and key deadlines loom, all eyes are on Capitol Hill where lawmakers are still in a stalemate.
On Monday, Johnson slammed Democrats and said the administration has worked “creatively” to limit the “pain on the Americans.”
“We need five more Democrats in the Senate to do the right thing — wake up and say, ‘I’m going to say no to the Marxist far-left pressure, and I’m going to do what’s right by the people of 42 million Americans in this country who rely upon this essential nutrition assistance. Or am I going to starve my constituents? Or am I going to appease the Marxist?’” Johnson said.
It doesn’t appear President Donald Trump will be negotiating with Democrats either.
ABC News “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday if Trump should meet with Democrats again. Bessent seemed to rebuff the idea of him doing that.
“Well, what good does it do, Martha They dug in. The American people are hostage to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries’ poll numbers because what’s changed between now and the last time there was a clean, continuing resolution is Chuck Schumer has tanked in the polls. They both of the two guys from Brooklyn, like I call them, are worried about being primaried from the left,” Bessent said.
Meanwhile, the president of the country’s largest union representing federal workers is calling on lawmakers to pass a short-term spending bill to end the shutdown.
“It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship. Put every single federal worker back on the job with full back pay — today,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
The AFGE represents more than 800,000 federal and D.C. government workers.
“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” she added.
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