Wisconsin Supreme Court election that broke spending records could serve as litmus test for Trump, Musk

(WASHINGTON) — Jan. 6 rioters convicted for role in Capitol attack speak out against Trump’s pardons

On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump followed through on his pledge to pardon those convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, granting a sweeping unconditional pardon to more than 1,500 rioters and commutations for more than a dozen others.

Following the executive action, two people who pleaded guilty for their actions at the Capitol that day have spoken out against their pardons.

“This is a sad day,” Idaho resident Pamela Hemphill told Boise ABC affiliate KIVI. “The ramifications of this is going to be horrifying.”

Hemphill pleaded guilty to violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days of incarceration. She told KIVI she doesn’t want to be pardoned.

“I broke the law. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” she told KIVI. “And we know all of them are guilty.”

New Hampshire resident Jason Riddle, who admitted to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, drinking from an open bottle of wine and stealing a book from the Senate Parliamentarian office, pleaded guilty to theft of government property and illegally protesting inside the Capitol. He was sentenced in April 2022 to 90 days in prison.

Riddle was struggling with alcohol at the time, and part of his probation included mandatory alcoholic treatment. The Navy veteran said he is grateful for his arrest.

“I am guilty of the crimes I have committed and accept the consequences,” he told ABC News. “It is thanks to those consequences I now have a happy and fruitful existence.”

At the time of his arrest, Riddle said he was an “obsessor” of Trump’s.

“I don’t need to obsess over a narcissistic bully to feel better about myself,” Riddle said. “Trump can shove his pardon up his a–.”
As of early January, more than 1,580 individuals had been charged criminally in federal court in connection with Jan. 6, with over 1,000 pleading guilty, according to the Department of Justice.

Of course, not all of those convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack questioned Trump’s executive action. Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, is among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted by Trump. He was serving an 18-year sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for leading members of the Oath Keepers in an attempt to use the violent Capitol attack to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

“That was a bunch of nonsense,” Rhodes told ABC News while standing at a protest outside the DC Central Detention Facility after being released on Tuesday.

Rhodes, who was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he isn’t disappointed that he didn’t receive a full pardon, and believes Trump will ultimately issue him one.

Asked whether the Jan. 6 defendants who were charged with assaulting police officers deserved a pardon, he said yes.

“Like I said before, it’s about defense of innocence. Because they were not given a fair trial,” Rhodes said.

Riddle, though, worried about the message the executive action sends to those convicted of assaulting police officers.

“If I was one of the people who crossed the line into assaulting police officers that day, I’d probably believe I can get away with anything I want now,” he said.

Asked during a press briefing Tuesday about pardoning violent Jan. 6 convicts, including one who admitted to attacking an officer, Trump said he would look into it and repeated his claim that the rioters were unjustly prosecuted.

“The cases that we looked at, these were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate,” he said.

ABC News’ Jay O’Brien contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Congressional Democrats are renewing their push to expand in vitro fertilization access for military service members by introducing legislation that would require the Department of Defense’s health care program to fund access to IVF for military service members.

The legislative effort, being led in the Senate by Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth and in the House by Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, would bring IVF access afforded to military service members in parity with the services available to members of Congress. It would also modify current requirements that service members prove that their infertility challenges are directly connected to service, a barrier that the lawmakers say is often cumbersome or impossible to overcome.

The legislation, Jacobs said in an exclusive interview with ABC News, could be “life-changing” for military service members who are often forced to choose between continuing their military service and starting a family.

“I think it will be huge. We know so many military families are struggling to make ends meet as it is, and are facing really significant fertility challenges. It would be life-changing,” Jacobs told ABC News. “We shouldn’t make them choose between serving our country and building their families.”

Duckworth and Jacobs say that some members of the military have been forced to abandon their military careers because of the lack of infertility treatment coverage by their health care program, called TRICARE. It could present a risk to military readiness, they told ABC News.

“For too many service members, the lack of TRICARE coverage of IVF has left them with only a few choices: beat the odds and prove that their infertility is directly related to their service, pay tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for a chance at a family, forgo having children, or leave the military. This is wrong,” Duckworth said.

It’s also about parity, they said: Starting this year, members of Congress are afforded access to plans that offer coverage for infertility treatments. Jacobs and Duckworth say the same should be true for military service members.

“It makes no sense that members of Congress and the rest of the federal workforce will get this, but military families still won’t,” Jacobs said.

This is not the first time that Jacobs and Duckworth have attempted to expand IVF access for military service members. They tried to get this same provision included in the massive military spending package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, last year as both parties tried to reassure voters of their support for IVF and other infertility treatments.

Though the proposal made it through the House Armed Services Committee, it never made it into the final version of the bill that President Joe Biden signed into law during the waning days of his presidency.

Similar legislation was separately blocked in the Senate by Republican Sen. James Lankford last year. At the time, Lankford said that while he supports IVF, he was concerned about the indefinite cost of the legislation and the possibility it opened for “future definitions for gene editing or for cloning.”

Duckworth and Jacobs’ newest effort, however, is a stand-alone bill that could be voted on not as an amendment, but as it’s own legislation.

Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, has been vocal about her own experiences using IVF to conceive her two children. She was involved in multiple efforts to expand IVF access last Congress that were ultimately blocked by Republicans.

She said this new proposal would give Republicans the opportunity to make good on President Donald Trump’s pro-IVF rhetoric that he’s used on the campaign trail and at the White House.

“President Trump pledged to voters on the campaign trail that he would go even further by making IVF free if elected and has repeated the bold-faced lie that he is governing on the principle of ‘promises made, promises kept,'” Duckworth said in a statement. “Republicans can now help him partially fulfill his broken IVF promise by joining our commonsense legislation that would make sure those who answer the call to serve have access to the care they need to build their family.”

No Republican has yet signed on as a cosponsor, but Duckworth and Jacobs are pointing to Trump’s comments as recently as last week touting his support for IVF as a possible boon to their efforts.

On the campaign trail, as an Alabama State Supreme Court ruling temporarily threw IVF access into question, Trump was vocal about his hope to make IVF continually accessible. He referred to himself as the “father of IVF” and issued a statement that said “I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby.”

Trump has continued to make his support for IVF known. As recently as Wednesday when, during a Women’s History Month event, he referred to himself as the “fertilization president.”

“Fertilization. I’m still very proud of it, I don’t care. I’ll be known as the fertilization president, and that’s OK,” Trump said. “That’s not bad. I’ve been called much worse. Actually, I like it, right?”

It’s at this point unclear if the bill, which if pushed by Democrats to the Senate floor as a stand-alone bill would require the unanimous support of the Republican conference, would have the support it needs to pass. It’s also unclear if efforts to include it in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act or other major legislative pushes could lead to passage.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Congressional Budget Office warned on Wednesday that the government could run out of money to pay its bills as early as August or September if lawmakers fail to address the debt limit.

“The government’s ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will probably be exhausted in August or September 2025,” the nonpartisan CBO report predicted.

The CBO added that a precise projected X date is unclear because “the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from the CBO’s projections.” The estimated projection provides Congress with a rough timeline to deal with the debt limit to avoid a default.

“If the government’s borrowing needs are significantly greater than CBO projects, the Treasury’s resources could be exhausted in late May or sometime in June, before tax payments due in mid-June are received or before additional extraordinary measures become available on June 30,” it said in the report.

If lawmakers do not raise or suspend the debt limit before all extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government could default on its debt — something that’s only happened a handful of times in U.S. history, though never in regard to the statutory debt limit.

“The Treasury has already reached the current debt limit of $36.1 trillion, so it has no room to borrow under its standard operating procedures,” according to the CBO report.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told congressional leaders that his department would provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will last during the first half of May — following tax season.

“I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Bessent wrote in a March 14 letter to Congress.

The issue has been on Congress’ to-do list since last winter, when then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the debt limit would be met around President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which was on Jan. 20.

While Trump has called on House and Senate Republicans to abolish the debt limit, members of Congress are expected to include a provision in their budget reconciliation package to suspend the debt limit through the end of the Trump administration, though a plan is not finalized, including whether to offset any increase with spending cuts and reform.

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