News

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to move forward with an executive order mandating a restructure of federal agencies and mass layoffs of federal workers.

In a two paragraph unsigned order, the court explained that it was lifting a preliminary injunction issued by a district court in California because “the government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and [OMB] memorandum are lawful.”

The court noted, however, that the justices “express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF [reduction in force] and Reorganization Plan produces or approved” by the administration under Trump’s direction. “Those plans are not before this Court,” it said.

The decision, another victory for Trump at the Supreme Court, allows the government to begin taking steps to dramatically overhaul 21 agencies and departments, including the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Energy, Treasury and State.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a brief statement concurring with the court’s decision, emphasized that the legality of the administration’s plans themselves has not yet been answered.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissent in the matter. In a 15-page opinion, the junior justice called the decision “not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested a federal takeover of New York City and Washington.

The comments came when Trump, during a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House, was asked about New York City’s upcoming mayoral election.

Trump attacked Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, and ticked through the other contenders, including Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, though he declined to endorse anyone.

“We’re not going to have — if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,” Trump said.

Trump didn’t elaborate on what authority that would be as he then turned his focus to the nation’s capital.

“We could run D.C. We’re looking at D.C. We don’t want crime in D.C. We want the city to run well,” he said. He said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was working with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Trump has long called for the federal government to takeover Washington, complaining that local leaders weren’t effective and arguing the city has become riddled with crime.

According to preliminary data from the Metropolitan Police Department, violent crime is down 25% from this time last year and all crime is down 8%.

“We would run it so good, it would be run so proper, we’d get the best person to run it,” Trump said about Washington on Tuesday. “And we know the crime would be down to a minimum, would be much less. And, you know, we’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you.”

“We want a capital that’s run flawlessly, and it wouldn’t be hard for us to do it. And we’ve had a good relationship with the mayor and we’re testing it to see if it works,” he said.

The district has some autonomy under the 1973 Home Rule Act, which grants residents the ability to manage affairs by electing a mayor and city council members. But final oversight of the district’s laws and budget are left to Congress. In 2023, for example, the U.S. House of Representatives blocked two local bills from going into effect, including one that would have updated the district’s criminal code.

Trump circled back to talking about New York City, railing against the city’s ranked-choice voting and describing his relationship with Mayor Adams as a “test.”

“New York City will run properly,” he said. “We’re going to bring New York back.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s MAGA base has erupted in outrage over the Justice Department and FBI’s memo stating they found no evidence that notorious deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein kept a “client list,” with many of the president’s most loyal allies blasting the administration’s leadership.

Some of Trump’s most die-hard supporters have spent the past day blasting FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, both one-time MAGA-world darlings themselves, over the Epstein memo. However, the harshest backlash seems to be focused on Attorney General Pam Bondi, with many pro-Trump voices criticizing her over her mixed messaging regarding the Epstein files and multiple supporters calling for her to resign.

Bondi had previously promised the public release of scores of records associated with federal probes into Epstein, though in recent interviews she has claimed the delay was attributed to “tens of thousands” of videos within FBI’s possession showing potential pornography of minors.

During a Fox News interview in February, Bondi suggested an alleged Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk — though no “client list” has been disclosed, and multiple sources have told ABC News that no such list has ever surfaced.

Asked about Bondi’s comments about the list, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Bondi wasn’t referring to any “client list.”

“She was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. That’s what the attorney general was referring to,” Leavitt said during the White House press briefing Monday.

On Tuesday, Bondi said she was referring to a file on Epstein.

“In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it’s been getting a lot of attention because I said I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, it’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That’s what I meant by that,” Bondi said during a Cabinet meeting.

In late February, Bondi handed out binders with Epstein case files to pro-Trump social media influencers at the White House — files that ultimately contained little new information. As ABC News reported at the time, the move caught White House officials off guard and outraged some supporters of the president, who had been promised that more details would be made public.

Now, Trump supporters are voicing their frustrations with Bondi — and others saying the Trump administration is involved in a cover-up.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer has called for Bondi to resign. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon spoke at length about the memo on his popular “War Room” show on Monday, even questioning if the administration is as transparent as it claims it would be. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has accused the Trump administration of being part of a “cover-up” and at one point posted a video from his car where he broke down in tears talking about it.

Loomer isn’t the only MAGA world voice calling for Bondi to resign. Pro-Trump influencers the Hodgetwins also called on Trump to fire Bondi — and so did American conservative political commentator Liz Wheeler. Mike Cernovich, a past Pizzagate conspiracy pusher, posted that “No one is believing the Epstein coverup, @realDonaldTrump. This will be part of your legacy. There’s still time to change it!”

Michael Flynn, who served in Trump’s first administration and was pardoned by the president, called the Trump administration’s memo “another brutal and stark example of the two different standards we appear to adhere to in the United States” in a social media post on Monday — adding, “This has to change and quickly.”

The response from MAGA influencers who feel betrayed by the Justice Department memo marks some of the most vocal backlash Trump’s administration has faced from his own loyal supporters during his second term.

The Epstein files for years have been the subject of widespread speculation and conspiracy theories that the government was covering up information and a supposed “client list” to protect powerful businessmen and politicians.

Now, Trump’s administration — being led by some of the same MAGA voices such as Patel, who once pushed the idea of a cover-up — is trying to explain that no such evidence exists.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Some Trump supporters living in rural areas say they have concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tax and policy megabill, which he signed into law on Friday. The bill’s potential health care impacts, both personally and on their communities, were top of mind for some, while others anticipated a positive impact on business but were wary of the bill’s price tag.

ABC News spoke with these people after the Senate passed the bill on July 1 but before the House did two days later.

Provisions in the bill enacting stricter eligibility requirements for Medicaid could impact finances for rural hospitals, which tend to rely more on Medicaid funding than urban hospitals and often already operate on tight margins.

The American Hospital Association called the potential impact on rural hospitals and patients “devastating.” In the leadup to the bill’s passage, Democratic senators working with researchers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill compiled a list of 338 rural hospitals that could be at risk of “financial distress,” “service reductions” or closure.

Some Republican senators, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had expressed concerns about the bill impacting health care providers in their states.

In response to these worries, Senate Republicans included a measure setting aside $50 billion over five years in the bill to support these rural hospitals, but advocates and experts say it may not be enough to prevent hospital shutdowns and loss of care. The National Rural Health Association said in a statement that the fund would “fall short of” offsetting the impact of other provisions.

James, a 62-year-old man who lives in a semi-rural area in North Carolina, is on Medicaid and gets Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. He said the bill would cut around $300 worth of those benefits for him per month.

“It’s going to be hard to pay the rent and everything else,” he said. He added that he didn’t have family that could help support him, now that his brother has died and his mother was in a nursing home.

Identifying as an independent, James said he did not vote in 2024 but had liked Trump as a candidate more than Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“I thought Trump was the lesser of two evils,” he said. “But I was wrong … If you want to make the poor people poorer, he’s doing real good.”

Insurance agent Bryan Shaver, who lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, voted for Trump in 2024.

Shaver, 62, said he was not worried about the Medicaid provisions in the bill affecting his clients. “Because they’re elderly and they make very little money,” he was confident they would meet the new criteria.

However, Shaver said he was “absolutely worried” that the Medicaid cuts could affect rural hospitals in Mississippi, some of which he had worked with in the past.

“It was extremely difficult for them to take care of who they needed to take care of … it’s very difficult for them to survive in Mississippi,” Shaver said.

He said hospitals’ financial struggles sometimes reduced access to care for the people living around them.

“A lot of the hospitals here can’t afford [to provide care for] maternity,” Shaver said. “For example, a hospital up in Batesville, Mississippi. [Patients] have to drive to Memphis to deliver a baby, and that’s kind of ridiculous.”

Shaver said he would wait to see how the provisions in the bill would affect voters. If there was a negative impact, he said he hoped Republican lawmakers would “correct it” or otherwise “get booted out.”

Stephen Caraway, who also voted for Trump, lives in a rural area around 70 miles east of Cincinnati. He said he anticipated a positive effect for himself and his community from the bill. Caraway was appointed to the state’s Elections Commission by Ohio Governor Mike Dewine in 2023 and will serve until 2027.

“There are service jobs, a lot of restaurant positions in my part of Ohio, and I absolutely think that no tax on tips or overtime would be great for the middle class and for those employees,” Caraway said. He said he would personally benefit from some of the tax cuts the bill extended.

To Caraway, the tightened eligibility requirements for Medicaid seemed reasonable, and he did not buy into worries that the bill would take millions of people off the benefits and potentially hurt rural hospitals like the one he lives near.

Caraway’s one concern is the effect the bill would have on U.S. debt. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

“Regardless of what party was in control, I would tell you that the federal government needs an overhaul, and has needed it for a long time. The only thing that would give me pause is some of those CBO projections,” Caraway said. “But I believe that those projections can just as easily be incorrect as they can be correct. And I’m going to trust my national leaders to do what is right and be fiscally responsible.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW ORLEANS) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her first public appearance since the Supreme Court sharply limited the ability of federal judges to check presidential power, said Saturday she believes recent rulings by the court’s conservative majority pose an “existential threat to the rule of law.”

“Sometimes we have cases that have those kinds of implications, and, you know, are there cases in which there are issues that have that kind of significance? Absolutely,” Jackson told ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis during a wide-ranging conversation at the Global Black Economic Forum.

The court’s newest justice and member of the liberal minority first leveled the charge last month in a remarkable solo dissent in the case Trump v Casa, which partially lifted nationwide injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order to effectively end birthright citizenship.

Jackson also wrote in her dissent that she has “no doubt that executive lawlessness will flourish because of the decision” and that she predicts “executive power will become completely uncontainable.” The unusually blunt and sobering assessment drew sharp criticism, including from her colleagues.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett accused Jackson of a “startling line of attack that is tethered neither to [precedent and the Constitution] nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”

While Jackson did not directly address the case or specific criticism, she defended her right to express her views on the law and suggested that public scrutiny of the debate is welcomed.

“I am actually heartened that people are focused on the court and the work that we’re doing on the state of the government,” she told Davis. “As a democracy, the people are supposed to be the rulers. The people are supposed to be leading in terms of the policies and the way in which our government operates. And so, the more that people are engaged with our institutions the better.”

Jackson’s appearance came at the ESSENCE Festival of Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was part of a promotional tour for her new memoir, “Lovely One,” which chronicles her journey from south Florida to the Ivy League and on to the high court.

President Joe Biden appointed Jackson in 2022 to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. She is the first former public defender, for Florida-raised judge, and first Black woman to serve as a justice.

“I’m aware that people are watching,” Jackson told Davis. “They want to know how I’m going to perform in this job and in this environment, and so I’m doing my best work as well as I can do, because I want people to see and know that I can do anything just like anyone else.”

In her recently-concluded third term on the court, Jackson wrote more than 24 opinions — second only to Justice Clarence Thomas — and was the justice most often in dissent.

“We have very different opinions,” Jackson said, “and it’s a tradition of the Court that justices get to voice their opinions in the context of their opinions and writings.”

During oral arguments, Jackson was also among the most vocal on the bench — by one count uttering 79,000 words, more than any other colleague.

“It’s funny to me how much people focus on how much I talk in oral argument,” Jackson said. “It’s been a bit of an adjustment because as a trial court judge, you have your own courtroom so you can go on as long as you want. So, trying to make sure that my colleagues get to ask some questions has been a challenge for me, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

Jackson said she believes the justices are “good at separating out the work” and maintaining cordial personal relationships with each other despite their disagreements.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.