Trump wants Lindsey Graham’s sister to finish his Senate term
Lindsey Graham rides on the back of a golf cart with his sister Darline Graham Nordone (C) during the Iowa State Fair on August 17, 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Monday he wants Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to be his temporary replacement in the Senate.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced around the same time as Trump’s post that he will be making an announcement about who is appointing to the Senate seat at 4 p.m. on Monday
ABC News has reached out to McMaster’s office about Trump’s push for Nordone to be Graham’s replacement. ABC News has already reached out to Nordone for comment.
Trump wrote in a social media post that he made his recommendation to McMaster, and said it would a “fabulous tribute” to Graham.
Separate from the temporary replacement to complete Graham’s term, South Carolina will hold a special election on Aug. 11 to replace Graham as the Republican nominee on the general election ballot this November.
Graham and his sister shared an incredibly close relationship. After their parents died when Graham was only 22 years old, he took on a caretaker role for his younger sister, becoming her legal guardian.
Nordone, in a recent video for Graham’s reelection campaign, said of her brother, “He’s always been there for me, no matter what.”
It is not immediately clear if Nordone has any political experience or aspirations. According to The New York Times, Nordone is a mother of two and has worked to help people with disabilities find jobs.
Graham’s office announced over the weekend that the longtime Republican lawmaker had died suddenly at the age of 71. Preliminary findings from the Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia said the senator died from an “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”
Trump, in an interview with “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning, called Graham a “friend” and praised his work on shepherding through the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his first term.
“He had fun with politics, but he was really good at it,” Trump said of Graham. “And then when he got angry, like he did in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, it was so impactful.”
Jay Clayton, US attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), during the Bloomberg Global Credit Forum in New York, US, on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton to be the next director of national intelligence has been postponed, according to Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton, after President Donald Trump pushed for it to be canceled.
“It’s regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today,” Cotton wrote on X. “Mr. Clayton is a patriot and a highly qualified nominee, as the president has said repeatedly. While today’s hearing is now unfortunately postponed, I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future.”
Trump, in an early morning social media post, said the confirmation process for Clayton would not continue until his pick to replace Clayton as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jamie McDonald, is confirmed.
“Regarding the approval of our Great Patriot, Jay Clayton, we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today, and will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney,” Trump wrote. “In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as the Acting Director of National Intelligence.”
Cotton, a Republican, at first rebuked Trump’s push for a delay, saying the Senate panel would proceed unless Trump specifically directed Clayton not to show or withdrew his nomination altogether.
Trump announced last week he was nominating Clayton to permanently lead ODNI amid backlash from Democrats and Republicans to his appointment of Bill Pulte to be acting director.
Pulte is best known in the Trump administration for launching probes into several of the president’s perceived political enemies over allegations of mortgage fraud and possible misuse of authority. Targets of the investigations include Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. They’ve all denied wrongdoing.
Pulte’s appointment stalled efforts to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which allows the federal government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant. The program’s legal authorization lapsed over the weekend.
Trump on Wednesday said that he wanted both his SAVE America Act bill and an extension to FISA to now pass together.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, slammed Trump’s latest moves.
“Trump is twisting himself up in knots and jumping through hoops to make it impossible to reauthorize FISA right now, and he is embarrassing his Republican colleagues in the process,” Schumer said. “Trump can blame Democrats all he wants, but no one is going to believe him.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, when asked Wednesday about the Senate’s path forward on FISA and Clayton’s nomination, said they’re taking a day-by-day approach.
“All I know is that Chairman Cotton is planning to proceed — because you all know with the hearing — and then from there on, we’ll have to take it a day at a time until we get more clarity on kind of what the White House position is on this,” Thune said.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office after signing an Executive Order April 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday is considering whether the Trump administration unlawfully ordered hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. from Haiti and Syria to return home, abruptly cancelling their legal status out of alleged racial animus and without proper consideration of risks to their safety and the nation’s economy.
The outcome in the pair of cases being argued before the court will directly affect the futures of roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,000 Syrians.
The Trump administration contends in court documents that the immigrants were never intended to be permanent residents and that cancellation of their temporary status is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States.”
Those immigrants were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) under separate government declarations first issued more than a decade ago and later renewed multiple times, most recently by the Biden administration.
TPS status, established by the Immigration and Nationality Act, provides work authorization and protection from deportation – as long as the Homeland Security Secretary certifies that a foreign country is unsafe because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”
Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010 and has since been hit by subsequent natural disasters, political unrest following a presidential assassination, and waves of rampant gang violence.
Syria devolved into civil war around 2011 and has been considered by the U.S. government a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades. A major earthquake in 2023 plunged the country into a deeper economic and humanitarian crisis.
“There is no functioning healthcare system for the disabled and elderly to return to, no reliable housing infrastructure, no legal framework that can guarantee anyone’s safety,” said Syrian TPS-holder and health care worker Adam, a pseudonym used to protect his identity.
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in separate acts last year, moved to terminate TPS status for Haiti and Syria by certifying that, in her estimation, conditions on the ground in those countries were sufficiently safe for immigrants to return.
Those decisions were blocked by lower courts, which concluded that Noem did not follow proper procedures for cancelling TPS and may have also unlawfully discriminated against the immigrants on the basis of race.
The Supreme Court is now reviewing those findings.
“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “The statute requires, in our view, that there be consultation with the State Department.”
Immigrant advocates and some American business groups, particularly in the healthcare and senior caregiving sectors, say TPS holders play an indispensable role in the nation’s labor force and contribute billions of dollars in tax revenue to state and federal governments.
Immigrants make up 28% of the U.S. long-term care workforce – nearly double their share of the entire labor force, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
More than 113,000 Haitian TPS holders work in Florida alone, which is home to a high proportion of America’s seniors, according to the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
“The effects of [DHS’s] hasty TPS terminations are too serious to ignore,” a senior living community and ageing services provider jointly wrote the Court in an amicus brief. “The government has largely failed to address the impact that stripping thousands of caregivers of work authorization will have on elderly and medically vulnerable adults in U.S. communities.”
The Trump administration contends that courts have no authority to second-guess the DHS determinations on whether countries should qualify for TPS or not. They note that Congress, in creating the special status, put a time limit on it of 18-months, subject to extension.
“Congress, in short, prescribed substantive and procedural guardrails to keep TPS designations temporary,” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote the Court in a brief, “but left further accountability to the political process, not federal courts.”
Sauer also disputed claims that the TPS cancellations rested on racial animus, calling it a “legal and factual nonstarter.”
The cases are the latest high court test of President Trump’s bold assertion of executive authority in his second term. The justices are already preparing to rule on his authority to redefine birthright citizenship, fire members of independent agencies, and remove a member of the Federal Reserve.
The Supreme Court last year handed the Trump administration a temporary win when it allowed them to terminate TPS for 350,000 Venezuelan nationals as litigation continues.
TPS status for Haitians and Syrians remains in place for now, but many immigrant advocates worry that if the Court allows the Trump administration to cancel the status, protections for immigrants of other countries may also end. The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to end protections for at least 11 countries since President Trump took office.
The Court is expected to hand down a decision by the end of June.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, during a hearing in Washington, D.C., March 26, 2026. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is petitioning the Department of Education to stop its transfer of federal student aid services to the Department of Treasury in her latest effort to halt the dismantling of the agency.
Thursday marks the one year anniversary of Warren’s “Save Our Schools” campaign — her wide-scale investigation against President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s attempts to shutter the Education Department.
“Since Day One, the Trump administration has raised costs for borrowers and tried to undermine our public schools,” Warren said in a statement first obtained by ABC News. “I’ve fought back every step of the way, and I’ll keep fighting to protect our students, teachers, and families,” she said.
Warren told ABC News last year that her campaign would use a combination of federal investigations and oversight to do everything she can to fight back and defend public education.
Warren’s campaign has since triggered the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to probe the department dismantling, an agency watchdog investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency’s alleged “infiltration” of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s sensitive data systems, and other legal actions opposing the Trump administration’s overhaul of the agency.
Warren and top Democratic senators on education-related committees sent a letter to McMahon and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, urging the officials to immediately “rescind” the interagency partnership reached in March.
“The Trump Administration continues to move forward with illegal Interagency Agreements (IAAs) dismantling the Education Department (ED),” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, arguing “This latest illegal scheme from the Trump Administration threatens to trap student loan borrowers, students, and families in chaos and bureaucracy, all while American taxpayers are left to foot the bill for Treasury to administer programs that ED can and should administer itself, likely costing more money and burying borrowers and families in unnecessary red tape.”
The most recent agreement includes sending the nearly $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio to Treasury through a multi-phase process to procure the financial aid programs.
“With the student loan portfolio approaching $1.7 trillion and defaults nearing 25 percent, now is the time for a hard reset in how the federal government provides and services student loans,” Department of Education Press Secretary for Higher Education Ellen Keast wrote in a statement to ABC News. “We are confident that our partnership with the Treasury, an experienced and proven fiduciary, will strengthen program administration and better serve American students, borrowers, and taxpayers,” Keast wrote.
The Democratic lawmakers accuse the agencies of breaking the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, which funds the administration of federal student aid and student loan servicing through the Department of Education. They argue that the myriad changes to federal agencies — including the massive reductions in workforce at Education and Treasury — will also result in harming millions of Americans who rely on the expertise of federal student aid civil servants. In 2025, the Trump administration cut over 40% of Education Department employees and nearly a quarter of Treasury staffers, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
Their letter said moving statutory student aid programs, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Pell Grants, is not only illegal but likely to throw the financial aid system into disarray.
McMahon has previously stressed that she is not defunding federal programs and will continue to perform all of the agency’s “statutory duties.” A senior Department of Education official said the agency has broad authority to move the services. Interagency agreements are a frequently used tool that Education has engaged in with other partner agencies more than 200 times over the years, the senior department official said on a call with reporters.
Meanwhile, the Education Department has phased out Biden-era student loan repayment plans, saying it is to streamline the process impacting more than 40 million borrowers. Under the Working Families Tax Cuts Act signed into law by Trump last summer, a new income-driven repayment plan will be made available for borrowers on July 1. The Democratic lawmakers fear that student loan borrowers are now left with limited options and guidance while increasing the number of borrowers in default and “economic distress,” according to the letter.
However, Andrew Gillen of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom noted the move should be welcome news for Americans.
“This will benefit students by streamlining the aid application and student loan repayment processes and save taxpayers money by reducing losses on student loans,” Gillen wrote in a statement to ABC News.
Student loan advocates, like Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at Protect Borrowers, decried the interagency agreement. Bañez called the announcement irresponsible and reckless, demanding Congress guarantee that the Treasury Department is equipped with the appropriate staff to support borrowers.
“For too long, borrowers have been failed at every turn — they don’t deserve to be failed again by an agency that isn’t ready to protect them,” she wrote in a statement to ABC News.
