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(WASHINGTON) — Republicans on Capitol Hill appeared frustrated with the weeklong controversy sparked by Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who made unsubstantiated claims in a recent interview that some of his colleagues invited him to sex parties and used cocaine.

“It’s pretty clear to me that Madison must have a far more active social life than any other member of Congress that I’m aware of,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said Friday on Capitol Hill. “What he’s saying can’t possibly be true.”

The 26-year-old freshman Republican lawmaker from North Carolina earlier this month claimed that he had been invited to sex parties by colleagues and had witnessed representatives using cocaine in front of him.

“I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve always looked up to through my life, always paid attention to politics, guys that, you know — then all of the sudden you get invited to, like, ‘Oh hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes. You should come,’ he said. “And I’m like, ‘What? What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy,” Cawthorn said during a podcast interview with the “Warrior Poet Society.”

He had been asked by the podcast host if his experience in Washington as a freshman lawmaker comported with the dark drama depicted in Netflix’s “House of Cards,” the story of an ambitious lawmaker’s murderous and cutthroat climb to the presidency.

Cawthorn continued on the podcast: “Or the fact that, you know, there’s some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it’s like, this is wild.”

Cawthorn’s remarks sparked fury among his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill this week, who angrily confronted the issue during a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday. At this meeting, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy pledged to speak to Cawthorn about the racy remarks.

On Wednesday, Cawthorn was hauled into McCarthy’s office to explain himself.

The meeting, which lasted 30 minutes, was attended by Cawthorn, McCarthy, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and GOP Rep. Mike Johnson, who had been assigned to mentor the freshman lawmaker last year.

McCarthy told reporters following the meeting that Cawthorn “did not tell the truth” and that he had admitted to exaggerating his claims. McCarthy said he told Cawthorn to change his behavior, otherwise there would be consequences.

“This is unacceptable. There’s no evidence to this,” McCarthy said. “That’s not becoming of a congressman. He did not tell the truth.”

“In the interview, he claims he watched people do cocaine. Then when he comes in, he tells me, he says he thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage from 100 yards away and tells me that he doesn’t know what cocaine is basically,” McCarthy said.

“The Constitution gives you the age when you could serve in Congress. But when you’re in Congress, you should respect the institution and you should focus on the work that you should do,” McCarthy said.

He said he told Cawthorn that he had to “earn his trust” back, or else he could lose his committee assignments or face other punishment.

“He’s got a lot of members very upset,” McCarthy said, adding, “You can’t make statements like that, as a member of Congress; it affects everybody else and the country as a whole.”

A source familiar with details of the meeting with Republican leadership said Cawthorn clarified that multiple individuals were not involved with the sex parties, but that he was invited to a sex party by one colleague. When he was pressed to provide a name, Cawthorn refused and “backpedaled” his claims.

Politico first reported details of the meeting.

During his remarks to reporters, McCarthy pointed to other transgressions the young lawmaker had committed in recent months, including driving with a suspended license, inviting a congressional candidate on the House floor without permission and then lying about it and referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “thug.”

Cawthorn’s office did not return multiple requests for comment to ABC News, nor has Cawthorn provided proof to back up his claims.

Sources familiar with the meeting told ABC News that the Republican leaders asked Cawthorn to issue a public apology and clarify his remarks.

Cawthorn has not done so, but he did send a letter to constituents and even issued a new campaign ad, in which he defiantly said, “I will never bow to the mob.”

“There are many who despise the great work we’re doing to represent western North Carolina, but I promise, I will stay focused on the work that still needs to be done in Washington for my beautiful district,” Cawthorn said.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who appeared visibly frustrated with Cawthorn during an interview with ABC News on Friday, called the allegations “irresponsible.”

“If you say something like that, you corroborate that with other people,” Nehls said. “Listen, we all make mistakes in our lives.”

Rep. Don Bacon, a veteran GOP lawmaker from Nebraska, told ABC News that Cawthorn’s recent comments have reflected poorly on Congress as an institution.

“Allegations like that, if they’re not true, hurt the whole institution,” Bacon said. “I think the view of the conference is, if they’re true, name names.”

“Congress has got a low favorable rating, we’ve got to do better than this,” he said.

Both of North Carolina’s Republican senators — Richard Burr and Thom Tillis — said they won’t back Cawthorn in his upcoming primary race.

“On any given day, he’s an embarrassment,” Burr told reporters.

Democrats also pounced on the controversy.

“Not sure why Republicans are acting so shocked by Cawthorn’s alleged revelations about their party,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted. “One of their members is being investigated for sex trafficking a minor and they’ve been pretty OK w/ that. They issued more consequences to members who voted to impeach Trump.”

It’s been a dizzying week for Cawthorn, who is thought to have ambitions for higher office after unexpectedly winning a seat in Congress vacated by former GOP Rep. Mark Meadows, who left to serve as former president Donald Trump’s chief of staff at the White House.

Cawthorn has embraced Trump since taking office — saying he has called him up for advice in the last year.

The former president is clearly still on his side.

On Friday, Trump announced Cawthorn would be a guest at his rally in North Carolina next weekend.

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(WASHINGTON) — New cars in the U.S. will need to meet stricter fuel economy standards, the Biden administration announced Friday.

The rule will require passenger cars, trucks and vans produced for the model year 2026 to average 49 miles per gallon, the Department of Transportation said. It will also increase fuel efficiency 8% annually for model years 2024-2025 and 10% annually for the model year 2026.

“Starting in model two-year 2024, when these standards take effect, Americans buying a new vehicle will spend less on gas than they would have if we hadn’t taken this step,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference at the agency’s headquarters Friday.

The administration says the new requirements will reduce fuel use by more than 200 billion gallons through 2050, and estimates it will prevent 5.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere between now and 2050.

“These vehicles will be better for the environment, safer than ever, and cost less to fuel over their lifetimes,” added Dr. Steven Cliff, the deputy administrator for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The move comes amid high gas prices across the country. President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he was ordering the release of roughly 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve over the next six months to reduce energy and gas prices.

Ford Motor Company applauded the announcement in a statement saying it’s “an important step toward achieving our shared national goals.”

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(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A California task force’s decision to limit reparations for slavery to people who can trace their lineage to free and enslaved Black people living in the U.S. during the 19th century has drawn criticism from task force members and experts who say the decision makes eligibility difficult to prove and narrows slavery’s impact on African Americans today.

The committee, convened in 2020 through legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, delayed deciding who would be eligible for reparations in February. Some members wanted reparations to go solely towards descendants of Black people during the 19th century while others argued financial reparations should go to all Black people in the state regardless of lineage, including Caribbean and African people.

The task force voted 5-4 in favor of limiting compensation to direct descendants.

Civil rights attorney Lisa Holder, a member of the task force, argued in favor of expanding the pool of those receiving reparations.

“Anyone who has some proximity to those harms and is a person with black skin needs to be included in the broader class, then we can decide, to then differentiate in terms of who gets more reparations, but we can’t just exclude people who were harmed, right off the bat,” Holder said before the vote Tuesday.

Jovan Lewis, a University of California, Berkeley, professor and task force member, voiced support for limiting reparations.

“And so we’re talking about…reparations being the opportunity for African Americans who are foundational, to this country, being able to identify themselves and be identified as a distinct group,” Lewis said at the hearing.

Tony Burroughs, the founder and CEO of the Center for Black Genealogy, told ABC News there are several issues with using family lineage to determine reparations. One is faulty oral history – family stories changing as they are passed down from generation to generation. Another is that many records of those enslaved are not readily available, as there is limited written history of enslaved people.

Names also pose a problem for those seeking compensation, Burroughs said. Family names may have changed since the 19th century. Names were also spelled differently back then, he said.

The task force also faces questions about what constitutes reparations.

“Direct cash payments, is only one form but then there’s also restitution… And then satisfaction in the more symbolic forms of reparations, like a formal apology commemoration,” Kamilah Moore, an attorney and chair of the task force, told ABC News.

And while the task force can create recommendations, their findings will not automatically become law. It will then have to be taken up by the California legislature before it can reach the governor’s desk to become law.

“That’s our biggest hurdle of finding 41 votes on the assembly side once we’re finished with this project, and 21 on my side of the house, to get this to the governor’s desk, and hopefully he’ll add his signature to whatever we come up with that we feel will not make people whole, but at least try to recognize and address it makes a level of atonement,” California state Sen. Steve Bradford, a task force member, told ABC News.

Reparations have been paid out to other groups in the past. The federal Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granted reparations to Japanese Americans who were interned by the U.S. government in camps during World War II. The act gave each surviving victim an official apology and $20,000.

“There were a lot of folks who weren’t born during World War II, when the Japanese were interned, but the state in this country found a way to pay reparations to Japanese Americans…we have been at the table making sure that they were made whole,” Bradford told ABC News.

The task force says it plans on publishing its first report findings in June, focusing on the history of enslavement, and its effects on African Americans including mass incarceration, poverty and Jim Crow-era segregation.

The task force’s recommendations, regardless of the outcome, could set a precedent for the rest of the nation on reparations for slavery.

“It is often said, so goes California so goes the nation, this is where this nation should be,” Bradford said. “They should be following the lead of California on reparations… there’s still a lot of healing that needs to be done not just in California but in this country, and we’re willing to step out and lead by example. So I hope they follow the work that we’re doing here in California.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it is officially ending Title 42, the controversial policy implemented by the Trump administration restricting migrants from coming into the country under the auspices of a public health emergency.

The policy was first enacted at the beginning of the pandemic and has remained in place since then, despite advocates criticizing the administration for keeping the policy in place.

The lifting of Title 42 will occur on May 23 to give the Department of Homeland Security adequate time to prepare, including getting more COVID-19 vaccine doses and other measures to deal with the expected influx of migrants, the CDC termination notice written by Director Rochelle Walensky says. Earlier this week, the department gave reporters an estimate that up to 18,000 migrants could be apprehended at the border each day if Title 42 were to be lifted.

“DHS has represented that over the next several weeks it is taking important steps to implement processes in preparation for the full resumption of border operations,” the order says.

The termination notice says that Title 42 was implemented to prevent diseases from coming into the United States for only a period of time and DHS was consulted in the termination of this rule.

“Following an assessment of the current epidemiologic status of the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. government’s ongoing response efforts, I find there is no longer a public health justification for the August order and previous orders issued under these authorities,” Walensky writes.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that Title 42 is “not an immigration authority, but rather a public health authority used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against the spread of communicable disease.”

“Once the Title 42 Order is no longer in place, DHS will process individuals encountered at the border pursuant to Title 8, which is the standard procedure we use to place individuals in removal proceedings,” Mayorkas said. “Nonetheless, we know that smugglers will spread misinformation to take advantage of vulnerable migrants. Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”

Homeland Security and State Department officials on a call with reporters Friday sought to reassure the American public that there is a plan in place to deal with the increase in migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border that lifting Title 42 will trigger.

One of the driving reasons behind the delayed implementation of the Title 42 repeal is to allow authorities at the border time to ramp up the vaccination program announced last month, administration officials said Friday.

“That is going to take some time to ramp up,” a senior DHS official said. “The time period is meant to ensure that we can do processing safely and humanely and consistent with best public health practices.”

This week, CBP is distributing about 2,000 vaccines a day at 11 locations and plans to scale up the process in coming weeks to distribute 6,000 vaccines a day at more than two dozen locations along the border, one official said. Migrants will be given Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and those who refuse will either be detained or released with more stringent monitoring requirements, the official said.

Officials said they are beefing up CBP and ICE officials at the border to deal with the expected influx of migrants. Border Patrol sources tell ABC News they are hiring as many agents as they can to help with potential processing increases.

DHS officials told reporters the decision to terminate Title 42 was part of a “fact finding” mission about a “range of items” and trends on the southwest border.

While the May 23 decision runs contrary to demands from advocates to immediately repeal the policy, agents at the border remain concerned that they will not have enough time to ramp up processing capacity in the event of the anticipated migration surge.

FEMA is continuing to work with local nonprofits and municipal governments to fold them into the planning process for handling migrants as they’re released.

Officials told reporters they’ve been working with immigration groups to identify the particularly vulnerable individuals who are in Mexico and are looking for ways to “streamline the process.”

ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden touted the nation’s economic recovery on Friday while also acknowledging the financial hardships currently intensified by the war in Ukraine.

“Americans are back to work,” Biden said from the White House. “Record job creation. Record unemployment decline. Record wage gains.”

U.S. employers added 431,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

“Even though we created a record number of jobs we know — I know that this job is not finished. We need to do more to get prices under control. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world,” Biden continued, noting his unprecedented order Thursday to release up to 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Biden did not take reporters’ shouted questions on inflation following his prepared remarks.

Though the March report came in slightly below economists’ expectations, the numbers for January and February were revised higher to show 95,000 more jobs added in those months.

The report also showed that notable job gains continued in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, retail trade and manufacturing.

The labor force participation rate, or the number of people in the economy looking for work, is inching almost back to where it was before the pandemic. As employees head back to the office, teleworking fell to 10% from 13% the previous month.

March marks the 11th consecutive month of job growth above 400,000. According to The Wall Street Journal, this is the strongest job growth in the U.S. since 1939.

More than 19.9 million of the 22 million jobs lost at the peak of the pandemic have now been recovered, with economists expecting a full recovery by the summer.

“The March jobs report was right down the fairway – lots of jobs, lower unemployment, and higher labor force participation. The job market is rip-roaring. While not quite back to full-employment, the economy is close, and at the current pace of job growth will be there by summer,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote on Twitter. “But it is somewhat disquieting in that the job market must cool off quickly, or inflation, our number one economic problem, will soon be a much bigger one.”

The report, while strong, comes amid soaring gasoline prices and 40-year high inflation, which has cost Biden in the polls ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Seventy percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of inflation, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve just two weeks ago raised short-term interest rates for the first time since 2018 and said it will raise them six more times this year in an attempt to offset inflation.

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