White House official credits Biden’s ‘persistence’ for Mideast ceasefire deal
ABC News
White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer acknowledged “significant support” from President-elect Donald Trump’s team to secure the ceasefire and hostage exchange deal between Israel and Hamas in an interview Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
The bulk of implementing the deal is expected after Trump takes office on Monday, which Finer said President Joe Biden’s administration was conscious of.
“They’re fully up to speed, and we have been as transparent and supportive as we can as we hand this off,” he said.
But while Finer praised the Trump team’s cooperation, he told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl that it was his boss’ “persistence” that saw the deal through.
“But ultimately, at the end of the day, it was our team that was in the driver’s seat for the negotiations directed by President Biden with their support,” he said.
The interview came minutes before the first three Israeli hostages were released from captivity in Gaza, the first step in the implementation of a ceasefire deal that also involves the freeing of Palestinian prisoners.
“The attention of the world, of the press, of maybe even other governments around the world had moved on to other issues, but President Biden literally just about every day would call [national security adviser] Jake Sullivan or me or others on our team and ask for an update on the deal, what he could do to help push things forward, who he could deploy to the region, who he could call on the phone,” Finer said. “And he made, you know, dozens of calls to heads of state involved in negotiating this deal, to ultimately get it done.”
“It never escaped his attention and it really was his persistence that ultimately led to the day that we’re going to have today and the opportunity for a better future in the region that this unlocks,” Finer added.
“The Israeli government made a very difficult decision but I think had reached the same conclusion that we have reached over a long period of time, which is that ultimately, the only way to end this war, bring the hostages home, secure humanitarian relief for Gaza was some sort of exchange along the lines that was negotiated,” Finer told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of Israeli-American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen — who is expected to be one of the 33 hostages released — told Karl he was “thrilled” to hear of the first three hostages being released in the first phase of the ceasefire, and expressed his hope that the remaining hostages, including his son, return home safely.
It’s been over a year since Dekel-Chen received a “positive sign of life” of his son, he said.
His son’s wife was seven months pregnant with their third child on Oct. 7, Dekel-Chen said.
“She only knows her dad as a poster on the wall, and not the man himself,” he said.
Dekel-Chen plans to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday and expressed “immense gratitude” to the president-elect for his work on the deal.
“The Biden team absolutely did extraordinary work in getting the superstructure of this deal together,” he said. “However, it took a tweet, the subsequent statements from President-elect Trump, to get this home.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats want to force President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire veterans who were laid off as part of large-scale efforts by Trump and Elon Musk to reshape the federal government and its workforce, according to information exclusive to ABC News.
Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey plan to introduce the Protect Veteran Jobs Act in the Senate on Monday. The bill would compel the Trump administration to reinstate veterans impacted by recent mass layoffs, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by ABC News.
It would also require the Trump administration to provide a quarterly report to Congress on the number of veterans removed from the federal workforce — and the justification for their firing.
“Veterans who choose to continue their service to our country in the federal workforce deserve our utmost gratitude, but instead this Administration has kicked thousands of our heroes to the curb and left them without a paycheck,” Duckworth said in a statement. “The message of our bill is simple: Give our heroes their jobs back. If Republicans really care about our Veterans, they should stop enabling Trump and Musk’s chaos and support our legislation.”
In the coming weeks of floor activity and ahead of government funding votes, Democrats hope to get Republicans on the record over layoffs impacting a reliably Republican — and Trump-supporting — group of voters.
The party also attempted to draw attention to the firings by inviting veterans who lost their government jobs to Trump’s joint address to Congress on March 3.
Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce of more than 2 million civilian government employees, according to September data from the Office of Personnel Management.
Roughly 75,000 federal workers have accepted offers for deferred buyouts, and another roughly 20,000 government employees have been fired in the first months of Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration has not said how many veterans have been impacted by the cuts, though Democrats have estimated that several thousand veterans have been fired across the administration.
OPM has since directed some agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to rehire veteran workers and to exempt veterans and military spouses from other workforce policy changes.
But many veterans have still lost their jobs in recent weeks.
“You spend 10 years trying to defend your country in terms of honesty, integrity and justice, and then you come back and get copy-and-pasted the same email as 10,000 other people about your performance,” Andrew Lennox, a fired Department of Veterans Affairs worker who served as a Marine in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, told ABC News.
Lennox was one of the veterans who attended Trump’s joint address to Congress last week. He was a guest of Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal to the speech.
The Department of Veterans Affairs also plans to cut up to 80,000 workers from the agency, which has drawn some criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
Democratic Rep. Derek Tran of California has introduced similar legislation in the House.
(WASHINGTON) — With the Virginia gubernatorial election a little more than eight months away, Democrats in the state have said they believe the federal job cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration will have a ripple effect that could sway voters to flip the governor seat from a Republican to a Democrat.
The Virginia gubernatorial election, which is held in an off-year cycle, is often seen as an indicator of where the political climate stands in the country. The election comes after federal job cuts carried out by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency with a goal of slimming down a bloated federal government and reducing its jobs — many of which are stationed in Washington, D.C.’s suburbs of Virginia.
The 2021 governor race demonstrated how education, parental rights and the culture war motivated voters and contributed to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin winning the election and flipping the governor seat after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s time in the governors mansion. Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, by just over 63,000 votes.
Youngkin’s success in amplifying important voter issues was then mimicked by other state leaders and candidates running during the 2022 midterm elections.
Virginia has just under 145,000 federal workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management — making it one of the states with the most federal employees. It’s still unclear how many total jobs have been cut at the federal level — though it’s estimated to be in the thousands across the country.
Former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor in Virginia, told ABC News in a phone interview that the job cuts on the federal level are becoming a constant presence on the campaign trail.
“I hear about it from the people who are impacted, from people who are impacted because they’re federal employees and they have a friend who’s already been fired or they’re worried about their job,” Spanberger told ABC News.
Spanberger said that the impact these job cuts have on the commonwealth will be “dire.”
ABC News reached out to Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is running against Spanberger for governor, about the federal job cuts in Virginia and its effect on the race, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
In response to the federal layoffs and the impact on Virginia workers, Youngkin announced a new state website to help people find jobs in the commonwealth, including those impacted by the Trump administration’s federal cuts.
The new website, called virginiahasjobs.com, displays 250,000 jobs available across the state.
Although Youngkin said he has empathy for those who have lost their jobs through the Trump administration’s slashing of federal jobs, the Virginia governor — a Trump ally — said he supports the idea of trying to cut out waste and fraud from government.
“Listen, we have a federal government that is inefficient, and we have an administration that is taking on that challenge of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse and driving efficiency in our federal government. It needs to happen,” Youngkin said.
Earle-Sears, whom Youngkin recently endorsed, amplified the resources announced by the Virginia governor through releases, campaign messaging and social media posts.
But some say it’s too early to tell if these cuts could impact the upcoming elections in Virginia.
Zack Roday, a Virginia-based GOP consultant and a former adviser for Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign, told ABC News that Democrats seizing on the cuts of the federal government means they’re looking for a message to carry them through this cycle.
“Democrats are in search of a message, so they’re going to try this,” Roday told ABC News. “That is logical. I understand it from a tactic. If it’s effective, we won’t know quite yet.”
“They have to pin their campaign on something because they don’t have much, much of a message because Gov. Youngkin’s record, his approval is popular, both with the electorate writ large and certainly the important independents that have a big role in determining who’s the next governor,” Roday continued.
Roday also added that there are people in Virginia who support the Trump administration’s cuts.
“There’s a whole lot of Virginians that live outside of Richmond and Northern Virginia, and have a lot of people that look at what Donald Trump is doing and are saying about time, thank you,” Roday said.
(WASHINGTON) — The theme of President Donald Trump’s high-profile address to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night is “Renewal of the American Dream,” but he’s also expected to remark on what his second-term agenda may mean for the rest of the world.
According to a White House official, the president will lay out his vision for “peace around the globe.”
“He’s going to dive into foreign policy, talk about his intention to end the war in Ukraine, talk about his plan to bring all of the hostages out of Gaza home,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview on Tuesday.
But the president’s speech comes at a particularly contentious time. The aftermath of his heated Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still hangs over Washington, and there are signs that both Israel and Hamas may be preparing to resume fighting as the future of the Gaza ceasefire deal appears to be in jeopardy.
And as the Trump administration levies new tariffs against adversaries and allies alike after turning U.S. foreign policy on its head during his first six weeks back in office, the international community will be listening closely as fellow work leaders try to divine what the next four years may have in store.
Here are some things to watch for:
Will Trump mend his rocky relationship with Ukraine?
After Trump expelled Zelenskyy from the White House and declared the Ukrainian leader was “not ready for peace,” his administration paused the pipeline of U.S. military assistance to the country — further ramping up pressure on Kyiv.
Zelenskyy initially declined to apologize to Trump, but in an address on Tuesday, he called the meeting “regrettable,” adding, “It is time to make things right.”
As part of that, he proposed a partial ceasefire with Russia that he said Ukraine would be willing to implement immediately.
“Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the U.S. to agree a strong final deal,” he declared.
But whether this is enough to get back in the president’s good graces remains to be seen.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said later on Tuesday there is still “an open door” for Zelenskyy, while applauding Trump.
“This is the end result of what happens when you make it clear to someone that there is one way to move forward,” she said.
A positive sign for Zelenskyy emerged Tuesday afternoon, when two sources briefed on discussions inside the White House told ABC News that the U.S. and Ukraine could sign the mineral deal that was supposed to be inked on Friday as soon as Tuesday.
One source said Trump indicated he would like to sign the deal before the speech but cautioned nothing is final.
But if Zelenskyy’s comments aren’t ultimately enough for the president, it’s possible he could go even further — potentially by attempting to cut off Ukraine from shipments of new weapons from American arm suppliers that were already paid for with money given to Kyiv by the Biden administration or by halting intelligence-sharing with the country.
Others have said they feel like no matter what, the damage has already been done.
“By canceling military aid to Ukraine, Trump doesn’t make peace any closer. It’s not even a blackmailing but rather conscious pressure on Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s demands, after which Trump can “declare peace,” said Mariia Zolkina, the head of regional security and conflict studies at Ukraine’s Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank.
“[Trump] can’t make a good deal now and defines Ukraine as ‘guilty’ for this,” she added.
Can the fragile peace in the Middle East last?
After members of his incoming administration worked with members of the Biden administration to secure a ceasefire deal in Gaza, Trump was able to reenter the White House with a major diplomatic win already under his belt.
Now, 44 days after that agreement went into effect, it seems to be at greater risk of falling apart than ever.
Israel revealed on Sunday that the U.S. had offered up another proposal to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which would significantly speed up the release of hostages.
After Hamas rejected the plan, Israel cut off the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, a move the Trump administration has backed but other key mediators, such as Egypt and Qatar, have decried as a violation of humanitarian law.
The State Department said on Monday that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, is planning to travel to the Middle East this week and that he would seek either to “work out a way to extend phase I or advance to phase II” of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Trump’s address on Tuesday may offer clarity on what the president would actually like to see happen next in the peace process — beyond his outlandish plan to build what has called the “Riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza.
If the Israel-Hamas war doesn’t get airtime during Trump’s speech, that, too, could be telling about the president’s focus. But on Tuesday, Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to “underscore that the United States’ steadfast support for Israel is a top priority for President Trump,” according to the State Department.
How will Trump handle the tariffs trouble?
On the day of Trump’s address, the president’s long-threatened 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico went into effect, prompting both countries to vow to take retaliatory economic measures — and subsequently leading to the president promising to raise tariffs further.
At the same time, the U.S. introduced another 10% tariff on Chinese imports, and Beijing hit back with its own tariffs on U.S. agricultural products and other measures targeting American business interests.
The immediate impact of the multifront trade wars has been a blow to the U.S. stock market, which Trump often uses as a barometer of his own success.
Economists say U.S. consumers may feel the crunch from tariffs more acutely as time goes on, as retailers are expected to offset costs by raising prices.
Beyond inflating prices, Joshua P. Meltzer, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, argued the tariffs will also run counter to the Trump administration’s other economic aims.
“These tariffs will also harm the Trump administration’s goal of developing more secure supply chains and competing with China,” he said. “The tariffs are directly at odds with deeper economic integration across North America. In fact, China will benefit from a trade war across North America as it undercuts efforts to reshore supply chains away from China.”
Meltzer also said the move will hurt American credibility.
“They signal to the world that any international agreement with the U.S. is not worth all that much, raising difficult questions for all U.S. allies and trading partners about the value of trade agreements with the U.S.,” he said.
Trump’s address will provide a high-stakes opportunity for the president either to alleviate or exacerbate those concerns among U.S. trading partners.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Rachel Scott as contributors.
