Trump to hold private dinner with Republican senators at Mar-A-Lago on Friday
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is continuing his outreach to Senate Republicans — critical to advancing his Cabinet nominees and aggressive agenda.
ABC News has exclusively obtained an invitation sent to GOP senators and their spouses to have dinner with Trump at Mar-A-Lago on Friday while they are in town for the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Annual Winter Meeting.
The NRSC, chaired by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, is set to host its annual winter meeting at The Breakers, a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, on Feb. 7-9. The event is expected to have a record attendance of both Republican senators and donors.
Although the dinner will be with Trump, the Republican National Committee is paying for the event.
The dinner comes following the NRSC announcing in a memo to Republican Senate chiefs of staff Monday morning that it broke a fundraising record in January with $8.5 million raised — more than any other January off-year in committee history.
The memo also noted that the committee is entering the cycle with nearly $24 million in debt and unpaid bills from last cycle and limited cash on hand.
The 2024 election cycle was a good year for Republicans, securing the Senate’s majority by flipping seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Montana.
The memo also expressed the committee’s gratitude to White House political staff for briefing the group and shared their hopes of a partnership with them through the cycle.
“We appreciate James [Blair] and Matt [Brasseaux] for making the time to speak with us and we look forward to continuing to partner with them throughout the cycle.”
Blair is currently Trump’s deputy chief of staff at the White House and Brasseaux serves as the Trump administration’s director of the Office of Political Affairs. Blair served as the Trump’s campaign political director and Brasseaux was the deputy political director.
Trump’s invitation to GOP senators is one of many recent efforts to show a strong working relationship. Trump recently hosted breakfast with Republican senators the morning before the inauguration at Blair House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House just after the inauguration.
With the 2026 midterms a little more than a year and half away, Republicans look to expand their 53-seat majority in the Senate while also defending their seats in the critical states of Maine and North Carolina, represented by GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Thom Tillis.
But the 2026 midterms could prove to be a successful year for the GOP, with chances to flip the Senate seats in Michigan, where Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced he would not seek reelection and in Georgia, where the race would be made much tighter if GOP Gov. Brian Kemp were to jump in the race against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote on former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence in a closed-door session Tuesday afternoon. The vote follows Gabbard’s at-times contentious confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill on Thursday, where she was grilled over her views on government secrets leaker Edward Snowden and her refusal to label him a traitor.
Gabbard, a former Democratic Hawaii Congresswoman turned Republican, picked up two key Republican votes on Monday from Sens. Susan Collins and James Lankford. Both had previously been critical of her past statements on Snowden and her opposition to government surveillance programs. Gabbard can only afford to lose one Republican vote on the committee.
During Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers from both parties repeatedly pressed Gabbard to disavow her past support of Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records. Gabbard previously described Snowden as a “brave” whistleblower who exposed civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. While in Congress, she introduced legislation stating that “Snowden’s disclosure of this program to journalists was in the public interest, and the Federal Government should drop all charges.”
While Gabbard repeatedly stated that Snowden “broke the law,” she did not back away from her previous statements and refused to call him a “traitor” despite being asked several times by senators from both parties.
In an op-ed in Newsweek over the weekend, Gabbard wrote that she explained in the closed session in her confirmation hearing why she refused to call him that.
“Treason is a capital offense, punishable by death, yet politicians like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US Senator Mitt Romney have slandered me, Donald Trump Jr. and others with baseless accusations of treason. It is essential to focus on the facts, not the label. Snowden should have raised his concerns about illegal surveillance through authorized channels, such as the Inspector General or the Intelligence Committee, instead of leaking to the media.”
Gabbard also presented a four-point plan to prevent future Snowden-like leaks, which includes oversight to ensure there are no illegal intelligence collection programs, minimizing access to sensitive intelligence, informing government workers about legal options for whistleblowers, and creating a hotline for whistleblowers to contact Gabbard directly.
Several senators questioned Gabbard’s past opposition to government surveillance programs under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans outside the country without a warrant. Gabbard, who voted against the provision as a member of Congress, said changes made to the program since she left office were enough to earn her support.
Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee. Her nomination is expected to be voted on during a closed-door confirmation session on Tuesday.
A source with knowledge of the proceedings told ABC News that newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe, former NSA adviser Robert O’Brien and former Sen. Richard Burr, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, have been making calls to senators on Gabbard’s behalf. Gabbard has also talked to senators since her hearing, a source said.
Over the weekend, GOP Sen. Todd Young faced pressure from Gabbard and Trump allies. Young is believed to be the final key vote needed for Gabbard’s nomination to move from the committee to the Senate floor.
In a now-deleted tweet on X, Elon Musk tweeted that Young was a “deep state puppet.” However, hours later, Musk deleted the post and tweeted “Just had an excellent conversation with @SenToddYoung. I stand corrected. Senator Young will be a great ally in restoring power to the people from the vast, unelected bureaucracy.”
Meghan McCain, a close ally of Gabbard, also voiced her support over the weekend, tweeting, “Any Senator who votes against @TulsiGabbard for DNI isn’t just going to have a problem with MAGA and Trump – I will make it my personal mission to help campaign and fundraise against you in your next election. And my people are probably a lot like their people,” she added.
Young, who did not endorse Trump in his presidential campaign, had a heated exchange with Gabbard during her hearing.
“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” Gabbard responded, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
Young declined to tell reporters how he’ll vote for Gabbard on Monday.
ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman and Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(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) — Amid a flurry of executive actions President Trump is taking to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the federal government, the Trump administration is also turning its attention to private companies and institutions.
President Trump signed an executive order the day after he was sworn in to his second term that not only rescinded DEI policies in the federal government, but also “[encourages] the private sector to end” what the order calls “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences,” claiming in part that DEI policies “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws.”
“Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex,” the order said.
Several legal experts who advise companies and institutions regarding their DEI policies told ABC News that while the Trump administration doesn’t have the legal authority to mandate that private businesses abandon their DEI policies, the executive order’s language uses the threat of potential legal action against certain companies with DEI policies to ostensibly force them to do so.
‘It’s a powerful threat’
Part of Trump’s Jan. 21 executive order directs the attorney general, “within 120 days of this order, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies and in coordination with the Director of [the Office of Management and Budget],” the latter of which oversees the performance of all federal agencies, to “submit a report … containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
The order instructs the federal agencies to “identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars,” as well as “litigation that would be potentially appropriate for Federal lawsuits, intervention, or statements of interest.”
Those agencies are further directed to identify “key sectors of concern” and “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners” within each agency’s jurisdiction, and to develop “a plan of specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles.”
The possibility of a legal battle with the federal government over DEI is already causing concern for many private businesses, experts told ABC News.
“It’s a powerful threat that companies are responding to it by taking another very close look at their programs to make sure that they are comfortable with them,” said labor attorney Jason Schwartz, a partner and co-chair of the Labor and Employment Practice at Gibson Dunn in Washington, D.C., and who leads the firm’s DEI task force.
“Nobody wants to be on that Donald Trump DEI blacklist,” Kenji Yoshino, a professor of constitutional law at NYU and the director of NYU’s Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, and who also advises Fortune 500 companies on DEI matters, told ABC News. “I worry that there’s a very smart move and savvy move on the part of the executive branch to cast a fear through this kind of gesture of ‘we are going to single you out,’ or targeting so that a lot of companies are going to withdraw or pull back more than they needed to pull back, strictly legally.”
“[Companies] just don’t want to be one of those nine,” Yoshino added, referring to the number of the executive order’s “potential civil compliance investigations.”
“Until those nine are announced, it’s going to cause others to be risk-averse,” said Yoshino. “So there’s a kind of, you know, preemptive compliance, you know, or obedience going on.”
How companies are responding
Schwartz told ABC News that since Trump signed his executive order, companies have been scrambling to seek legal counsel regarding their DEI policies and whether they need to be revised.
“The phone is literally ringing off the hook,” he said, referring to the calls his firm is receiving. “Companies are very concerned. They want to make sure, obviously, that they stay on the right side of the law.”
Yoshino said that the phones at NYU’s Center for DEI likewise have been “ringing off the hook” with calls from companies seeking advice on how to proceed with their DEI initiatives. For now, he advises that concerned parties take a measured approach.
“The reflexive response is often to be like, ‘Oh, if we shut it down, we will minimize risk,’ and we regard that to be short sighted, both because there are smart ways to tweak these programs to lower the risk, or even lower to zero, eliminate the risk while still getting the same results,” Yoshino told ABC News.
“And alternatively, if you eliminate all your DEI policies, you’re then going to get sued from the other side,” he cautioned, noting that marginalized groups could argue that rolling back DEI “leads to a less inclusive, more discriminatory environment.”
Several large corporations – including Amazon, Meta, McDonalds, Walmart and Ford – announced before Trump was sworn in for his second term that they were ending, scaling back or otherwise reevaluating some of their DEI-related programs or initiatives.
However, according to Yoshino, whose office has been tracking the impact of Trump’s actions on DEI, even some companies who are stepping away from some DEI initiatives are retaining some policies or programs committed to inclusion, and that the majority of companies on the Fortune 500 list “still have pro-DEI statements on their websites.”
Some companies also are publicly standing by their DEI commitments, with leaders at Goldman Sachs, Costco and JPMorgan Chase & Co recently speaking out in support of their diversity programs amid pressure from anti-DEI activist shareholders to roll back their policies.
“I do think that it’s really important not to overreact,” Yoshino told ABC News.
What comes next?
While it’s unclear what might be “litigation that would be potentially appropriate for Federal lawsuits, intervention, or statements of interest” against private companies, as the executive order states, as well as what might be the outcome of any such actions, Yoshino and Schwartz both noted that anti-DEI litigation efforts in the U.S. have been escalating since the Supreme Court’s June 2023 landmark ruling that effectively ended affirmative action in higher education.
Since the Supreme Court decision, conservative legal advocacy groups have been ramping up litigation against private companies over their DEI initiatives, Schwartz said, noting that with Trump’s executive order, those groups have now “moved their operation into the White House.”
“They now have the full force and power of the United States government where they can bring these cases,” Schwartz added.
Yoshino agreed, telling ABC News that the president is now putting the “muscle of the executive branch behind the impact of that decision.”
Yoshino said that while the Supreme Court case addressed the higher education admissions process and was not about diversity and inclusion efforts in the private sector, “it gave us such a clear window into how [the Supreme Court] was thinking about the issue of race discrimination.”
The Supreme Court ruled that “in the same way that you can’t discriminate against a person of color, you also can’t discriminate against a white individual,” according to Yoshino. “That contrasts that with the previous jurisprudence that said you’re allowed to use a [race] classification in narrow circumstances so long as your intent is to lift up a historically subordinated group.”
According to Schwartz, while the Trump administration is “not creating new laws” regarding the legality of DEI through his executive order, the Department of Justice is gearing up to bring cases against private companies by arguing that existing laws “already prohibit many of the DEI programs that exist.”
Schwartz also pointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as a federal agency that is likely to help advance the White House’s anti-DEI efforts. The federal agency, which has the authority to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged employment discrimination, is now led by Trump appointee Andrea Lucas, who said in a statement upon being named EEOC acting chair Jan. 21 that her priorities are “consistent with the President’s Executive Orders,” and include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination.”
“Our employment civil rights laws are a matter of individual rights. We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups,” Lucas’ statement continued. “I am committed to ensuring equal justice under the law and to focusing on equal opportunity, merit, and colorblind equality.”
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca and Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.