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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Wednesday dismissed corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, but not in the way the Trump administration wanted.

Judge Dale Ho dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be revived.

The Justice Department sought to have the case dismissed to free up Adams to cooperate with the mayor’s immigration agenda, however, the department wanted the case dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again.

Adams was indicted last year in the Southern District of New York on five counts in an alleged long-standing conspiracy connected to improper benefits, illegal campaign contributions and an attempted cover-up. He had pleaded not guilty.

Ho declined to endorse the DOJ’s desired outcome.

“In light of DOJ’s rationales, dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents. That appearance is inevitable, and it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice,” Ho decided.

Ho’s 78-page opinion dismantled the Justice Department’s stated rationale for dismissal: so Adams could focus on the Trump administration’s immigration priorities.

The judge said he could find no other example of the government dismissing charges against an elected official to enable the official to facilitate federal policy goals.

“DOJ’s immigration enforcement rationale is both unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep,” Ho said. “And DOJ’s assertion that it has ‘virtually unreviewable’ license to dismiss charges on this basis is disturbing in its breadth, implying that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities. That suggestion is fundamentally incompatible with the basic premise of equal justice under the law.”

Ho also made clear he was not weighing the facts of the case and said his decision “is not about whether Mayor Adams is innocent or guilty.”

Still, Adams’ lawyer celebrated the decision to drop the charges without the fear of them being revived after the mayoral election in November — as the Justice Department had threatened.

“The case against Eric Adams should have never been brought in the first place — and finally today that case is gone forever,” Alex Spiro, Adams’ lawyer, said in a statement. “From Day 1, the mayor has maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorkers has prevailed.”

The decision to dismiss the charges came just days after Adams’ lawyer had pushed for them to be dismissed ahead of the April 3 deadline for petitions to be submitted for mayoral candidates to get on the June primary ballot. Adams has said he will run as a Democrat in the primary despite criticism from opponents he has cozied up to the Trump administration in recent months, meeting with the president and attending his Inauguration instead of scheduled Martin Luther King Day events in the city.

The decision by Ho followed the recommendation from Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general under the Bush administration and was appointed by Ho to make an independent assessment of the case.

“A dismissal without prejudice creates a palpable sense that the prosecution outlined in the indictment and approved by a grand jury could be renewed, a prospect that hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the accused,” Clement said.

The eventual dismissal came after a scathing letter from acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, suggesting acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and other members of DOJ leadership were explicitly aware of a quid pro quo suggested by Adams’ attorneys, saying Adams’ vocal support of Trump’s immigration policies would be boosted by dismissing the indictment against him.

Sassoon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, resigned in protest along with several other career DOJ officials.

Spiro, Adams’ lawyer, balked at the notion of a quid pro quo following Sassoon’s resignation: “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s social media company on Monday filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange commission that could allow the president’s trust to sell more than $2 billion of shares.

Trump Media and Technology Group filed a registration with the SEC that would open the door for the president’s trust to sell up to nearly 115 million shares, which are worth more than $2.3 billion.

The filing does not guarantee the sale of the shares nor provide any information about a future sale. Since Trump took office, he transferred his stake of the company into the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which is controlled by his son, Donald Trump Jr.

A sell-off from Trump, the company’s largest individual shareholder, could panic investors and damage the company’s stock price.

Trump Media could not be immediately reached for comment.

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(WASHINGTON) — As Democrats continue to express frustrations over Elon Musk’s outsized role in reshaping the federal bureaucracy, a new effort on Capitol Hill takes aim at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) while proposing guardrails to reassert congressional oversight authority over the executive branch.

California Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove is proposing the Defending American Diplomacy Act, which would prohibit the executive branch from reorganizing the State Department without Congressional consultation and approval.

“They are gutting foreign assistance, and I’m not going to be complicit in that,” Kamlager-Dove, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News in an exclusive interview ahead of the bill’s release Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that they are crushing USAID — What that means is American farmers are not going to have contracts that they would normally have to produce crops to sell them to other countries. By crushing foreign assistance, it also means that people in other spaces are going to get sick.”

The measure, which has more than 20 Democratic original cosponsors, requires any major reorganization of the State Department to be passed into law by an act of Congress and calls for the secretary of state to submit a detailed plan to Congress about the administration’s intended reorganization and an assessment of any impacts to the U.S. diplomatic toolbox.

“We have three pillars: defense, development and diplomacy,” Kamlager-Dove said. “All of those things are very important when you are trying to stop us from going into war. And if we are going to get rid of those tools in our toolbox because of some dodgy thing called DOGE that is using taxpayer dollars to actually hurt taxpayers, I feel like I have a responsibility to step up and say no.”

The bill has consequences for noncompliance built into the legislative text, directing Congress to cut funding for DOGE and even prohibit travel for President Donald Trump’s political appointees, including every member of his cabinet, if the administration initiates a reorganization that circumvents Congress.

“DOGE has been operating in the shadows,” Kamlager-Dove said. “So part of the noncompliance elements of the bill is about bringing in a little sunlight so that we have a sense about what is actually going on.”

While the administration has signaled that some eliminated jobs could be potentially absorbed by other federal agencies, the bill also prohibits that from happening without Congressional say-so.

Kamlager-Dove explained that her gripe with DOGE “is not about efficiencies.”

“It is about unlawfully accessing our systems and our codes and stealing taxpayer dollars and doing things in the shadows,” the representative said.

“The American people deserve to know what is happening, and if what DOGE is doing is so great, then I would think they would be more than willing to come to Congress and share with us and the American people all that they are doing,” she added. “But the reality is they are not willing to share that information.”

With narrow Republican majorities in both chambers and a Trump White House — there is virtually no chance the bill becomes law in this session of Congress. But at a minimum, it gives Democrats who are powerless on the legislative front another messaging tool to campaign alongside their hopes to seize congressional majorities.

Still, Kamlager-Dove argues the measure is more than a messaging bill.

“There is a lot of dysfunction with this Republican Congress right now, and the reason why we probably won’t have this come up for a vote is because Republicans are too afraid of the bill. If it does come up for a vote, then they would have to put their cards on the table,” Kamlager-Dove said. “They would have to say, I recognize that Congress is being complicit in self-neutering itself and yielding all of its power to Donald Trump.”

Despite the long odds, Kamlager-Dove maintains optimism that her bill won’t be lost among thousands of other bills as Democrats toil in the minority.

“My hope is that having this bill, having other bills like this, talking about these issues in committee, will rattle their brains and clear out the hypnotic fog that they’re in,” she said. “If you continue to beat the drum, you do make headway, and that’s what this bill is about: Beating the drum.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is launching a “Save Our Schools” campaign on Wednesday against President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s attempt to dismantle the Department of Education.

“The federal government has invested in our public schools,” Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News. “Taking that away from our kids so that a handful of billionaires can be even richer is just plain ugly, and I will fight it with everything I’ve got.”

Warren suggested she is working with students, teachers, parents and unions to “sound the alarm” nationwide.

“My starting point with this campaign is that I know the power of telling stories and the power it brings to organize people into the fight. We need numbers to win, and this is how we start,” Warren said.

In a short video obtained by ABC News that Warren is posting to her roughly 20 million social media followers Wednesday morning, Warren says she is launching an investigation into reported plans to replace Department of Education call centers with chatbots. ABC News has not independently confirmed these reports.

Warren said that through a combination of federal investigations, oversight, storytelling and even lawsuits, she will work with the community, including lawmakers in Congress, to do everything she can to defend public education. Warren did not provide further details on how she plans to challenge the administration through federal oversight and lawsuits.

A former special education teacher, Warren said she opposes the Trump administration’s agency overhaul because she said it may result in fired teachers and increased class sizes, adding that programs for students with special needs will “disappear.” However, the Trump administration has vowed to keep statutory funding, such as the programs for students with special needs.

Trump said those services for students with disabilities, such as those protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, will be rehomed in other departments, including the Department of Health and Human Services, which is undergoing massive layoffs itself.

“They think that the American people are stupid [and] will be fooled by slapping a different title on the door and that somehow our kids will get the help that they’re entitled to,” Warren told ABC News.

“No one is fooled and certainly not the kids who need that help,” she added.

The Trump administration has said it is returning education to the states in dismantling the federal department and that students will be better served by their state departments.

The campaign is also personal for Warren. In the video obtained by ABC News, Warren said she has seen with her own eyes what the Department of Education does for special needs families and that she is doing everything she can to “fight back.”

Warren said she was inspired by her second grade teacher to join the education ranks.

“Whenever someone asked about my future, I would stand a little taller and say: ‘I’m going to be a teacher,'” Warren recalled. “It guided my entire life.”

Last month, Trump signed an executive order that aims to gut the Department of Education. It directs McMahon to close the department using all necessary steps permitted under the law. Still, eliminating the department would require an act from Congress because it was created by Congress.

The campaign comes in the wake of the department cutting nearly half its workforce last month. Hundreds of employees in the Federal Student Aid Office were let go, which Warren said could have “dire consequences” on the tens of millions of student loan borrowers who rely on the department’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to achieve higher education. Trump has said student loans will now be handled by the Small Business Administration.

“The Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of parents, students, and borrowers who rely on a functioning federal student aid system to lower education costs,” Warren and a group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter urging McMahon to reinstate the fired federal employees.

The FSA’s operations have already been affected, according to a source familiar. The federal student loan website was down briefly less than 24 hours after the agency cuts. Fired IT employees were called frantically to join an hourslong troubleshooting call to restore the website for millions of borrowers, according to the source.

As part of Warren’s campaign launch, the senator said she will also highlight the real-world impact on educators, students and families through a series of story collections. She said she is encouraging community members to share submissions on how public education has influenced their lives and what it means to them. Warren told ABC News she did a similar campaign with federal employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this year.

However, Warren’s investigations and federal oversight could be hampered by Democrats’ position in Washington.

“Democrats are in the minority in the House and the Senate, and obviously we don’t have the White House, but not having as much power as we want does not mean having no power,” Warren told ABC News. “We’ve still got a lot we can do, and this combination of investigations, oversight, storytelling and lawsuits is that we can combine more power and push back hard, and it’s already yielded some results.”

Meanwhile, the administration’s quest to abolish the department has already triggered a legal battle by a coalition of states and education and civil rights groups, including ​​a group of teachers unions and public school districts in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.

The senator said she is hopeful every person who cares about education joins her campaign.

“We’ve got to fight for an America where it’s not just the kids of billionaires who get a good education but it’s every kid in every community who gets a great education,” she said. “This fight is our fight.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday will unveil in the White House Rose Garden what are expected to be broad-based “reciprocal tariffs” on imports as part of his “America First” agenda.

It’s a moment months in the making for the president who has repeatedly billed it as “Liberation Day,” claiming it will free the U.S. from dependence on foreign goods and saying “we’re going to be getting back a lot of the wealth that we so foolishly gave up to other countries.”

“April 2, 2025, will go down as one of the most important days in modern American history,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday.

But it’s a serious political gamble for Trump, who made his way back to the White House in no small part because of his promise to better the economy.

Some economists, though, have raised concerns his moves could cause the economy to slide into a recession and markets seesawed ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, slated for 4 p.m. ET, after the markets end trading.

The White House has been mum on details ahead of Wednesday’s announcement, only confirming that the tariffs will go into effect immediately upon being announced.

Some options debated in recent weeks, ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang reported, were a 20% flat tariff rate on all imports; different tariff levels for each country based on their levies on U.S. products; or tariffs on about 15% of countries with the largest trade imbalances with the U.S.

Trump was still meeting with his tariff team on Tuesday to finalize the details, Leavitt said, “perfecting” the policy “to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker.”

Since his inauguration, Trump has implemented levies on specific products, including steel and aluminum. He’s also put into place some tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico.

The actions have strained relations with Canada and Mexico, two key allies and neighbors. Prime Minister Mark Carney said last week the U.S. and Canada’s deep relationship on economic, security and military issues was effectively over.

Canada has vowed retaliatory tariffs and Mexico said it will give its response later this week. The European Union, too, said it has a “strong plan to retaliate.”

But Trump and administration officials are plowing full steam ahead, arguing America’s been unfairly “ripped off” by other nations for years and it’s time for reciprocity.

“It’s simple: if you make your product in America, you will pay no tariffs,” Leavitt said on Tuesday.

The economy was the top issue for voters in the 2024 presidential election, with Americans casting blame on President Joe Biden for high prices and Trump promising to bring families financial relief.

The administration has painted tariffs as a panacea for the economy writ large, arguing any pain experienced in the short term will be offset by what they predict will be major boosts in manufacturing, job growth and government revenue.

But it’s unclear how much leeway the public is willing to give Trump to get past what he has called “a little disturbance.”

Already, little more than two months into Trump’s second term, polls show his handling of the economy is being met with pushback.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey published on Monday found a majority of Americans (58%) disapprove of how Trump has been handling the economy.

On his protectionist trade negotiations with other nations, specifically, 60% of Americans said they disapproved of his approach so far. It was his weakest issue in the poll among Republicans.

Trump’s GOP allies on Capitol Hill have say they’re placing trust in the president, but acknowledged some uncertainty to start.

“It may be rocky in the beginning but I think this will make sense for Americans and it will help all Americans,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at his weekly press conference with other members of Republican leadership.

“You’re going to see prices shift,” Rep. Rich McCormick, a Georgia Republican, told ABC News Correspondent Jay O’Brien. “We’re accountable to the American people. We represent them, if they’re speaking loud enough … I think the president has been very good at reacting to the public.”

Senate Democrats were planning to try to force a vote aimed at curtailing Trump’s authorities to impose levies on Canada.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a press conference alongside other Democrats on Tuesday, slammed Trump’s recent comments that he “couldn’t care less” if foreign automakers raise prices due to tariffs — levies that are also going into effect on Wednesday.

“America you hear that? Donald Trump says he couldn’t care less if you pay more,” Schumer said.

“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat.

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