Politics

(JUPITER, FL) — As markets braced for another meltdown triggered by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Democrats hammered the president for spending the weekend golfing rather than responding to Americans’ fears that their retirement accounts are plummeting with the markets.

Trump left Washington, D.C., for Florida on Thursday to attend a LiV Golf Tournament dinner ahead of a tournament at his Doral club in Florida. On Saturday and Sunday, he played in a club championship at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter.

On Thursday, the first trading day after Trump announced the tariffs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 4%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq declined almost 6%. On Friday, the downward spiral continued with the Dow falling by 2,230 points, or 5.5%, while the S&P 500 plunged by 6%.

Dow futures opened Sunday evening down 1,500 points, or 4% percent., while the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 futures were also down 4%.

Democrats criticized Trump’s apparent lack of concern at Americans’ anxiety surrounding the tanking markets.

“I think people have seen their retirement savings on fire. And there he is out on the golf course,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That may end up being the most enduring image of the Trump presidency, that is, the president out on a golf cart while people’s retirement is in flames.”

On Saturday, Trump encouraged Americans to “HANG TOUGH” in a post on his Truth Social platform. “THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN,” he said.

The same day, the White House told reporters covering the president that Trump had won his second-round matchup for the senior championship at his Jupiter club and was to play in the championship round on Sunday. Trump posted a video of him teeing off on Truth Social on Sunday, though it was not clear when the video was shot.

During Saturday’s “Hands Off” protests, Democratic lawmakers railed against Trump’s policies and his time on the golf course.

“Get your ass off the golf course and face the people!” California Rep. Eric Swalwell told Trump in front of a crowd protesting at the National Mall in Washington.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas posted on Bluesky: “Trump’s out here swinging golf clubs while folks are in the streets fighting back.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Republicans to help Democrats reverse Trump’s tariffs and stop what she called “the dumbest trade war in history.”

“While Donald Trump is relaxing on the golf course, working people are worried about rising prices and an economic crash,” she posted on X.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also took issue with Trump’s weekend.

“You know, Donald Trump, the biggest lie that this guy ever told was that he cared about you, the American people. He does not. He cares about himself and his billionaire donors like Elon Musk,” Jeffries said Saturday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend.” “And as if we didn’t need any additional proof, but at the same time that the retirement savings is crashing, the stock market is crashing, the economy is crashing, Donald Trump is on the golf course? This is what he chooses to do?”

Trump boarded Air Force One in Palm Beach, Florida, en route back to Washington on Sunday without speaking to reporters.

ABC News’ Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Mike Johnson and Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna say they have cut a deal to end the fight over proxy voting for new parents, which will re-open the House floor after nearly a week of legislative paralysis.

House Republican leaders will formalize “vote pairing,” a procedure that allows a member who is absent during a vote to coordinate with a present member on the other side of the matter to offset the absence, multiple sources familiar with the deal told ABC News.

For example, the procedure in this case would allow a new mother, who is absent for a House vote, to team up with a present lawmaker voting opposite from their stance to form a “pair.”

Some logistics of this deal remain unclear including how this will be enforced.

Vote pairing — which is a rare practice in Congress — is certainly not an equivalent to remote voting but allows for an absence to be offset. But the absent member’s vote is not recorded into the tally of a recorded vote.

The vote pairing process was used in 2018 when the Senate voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. At the time, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who said she would vote against Kavanaugh, paired her vote with Sen. Steve Daines’ of Montana so their votes would cancel out.

Johnson laid out the specifics of the agreement on a GOP member conference call Sunday afternoon, sources said.

In light of the deal, sources said Rep. Luna will not trigger her bipartisan discharge petition — which has 218 signatures — to allow mothers and fathers to vote remotely for up to 12 weeks after childbirth.

“Speaker Johnson and I have reached an agreement and are formalizing a procedure called ‘live/dead pairing’—dating back to the 1800s—for the entire conference to use when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies,” Rep. Luna posted in a statement on X.

Luna thanked President Donald Trump for his “support” of new mothers. “If we truly want a pro-family Congress, these are the changes that need to happen,” she added.

It is possible for other members — including any Democrat who signed the petition — to call up and force action on Rep. Luna’s measure. But it would likely fail if Republicans stick to the vote pairing agreement.

Johnson is still looking at ways to increase accessibility for new mothers in Congress like adding a room off the House floor for nursing mothers, sources said.

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(WASHINGTON) — White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett defended President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Sunday, refuting the idea they will cost American consumers more.

“So, the fact is, the countries are angry and retaliating and, by the way, coming to the table. I got a report from the [U.S. Trade Representative] last night that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation. But they’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff. And so, I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S. because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent, long-run trade deficit these people have very inelastic supply. They’ve been dumping goods into the country in order to create jobs, say, in China,” Hassett told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Trump announced tariffs on nearly all of the U.S.’s trading partners on Wednesday. Trump’s policy includes a 10% tariff on all imports, as well larger tariffs on some individual countries. The announcement was met with an immediate and ongoing plunge in global markets as well as various countries levying retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. Democratic lawmakers and critics of Trump’s economic policy raised alarms about a potential recession and adverse effects on the U.S.’s relationship with allies.

The universal 10% tariffs went into effect on Saturday, while tariffs on individual countries are set to go into effect on Wednesday.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers disagreed with Hassett’s contention that tariffs will cause a drop in prices for American consumers.

“This is the biggest self-inflicted wound we’ve put on our economy in history. We are increasing inflation because the prices are higher because of the tariffs. That gives people less spending power. That means fewer jobs,” Summers said after Hassett’s interview. “Markets are looking at all of that. And they think companies are going to be worth $5 trillion less than they thought before these tariffs started. And that’s just the loss to companies. If you add in the loss to consumers, a reasonable estimate would probably be something like $30 trillion.”

Here are other highlights from Hassett and Summers’ interviews:

Hassett on Trump using the market crash to influence the Fed
Stephanopoulos: Right, but you also — he also said prices were going to come down and he just conceded the prices are going to go up. Also on Truth Social, the president retweeted a post that said the market drop was part of a deliberate strategy to force the Fed to lower interest rates. Is that the president’s strategy? If not, why did he post it?

Hassett: Yeah, that, you know, the bottom line is the president has been talking about tariffs for 40 years and this is like been absolutely the policy that he’s focused on in the campaign and throughout his political career. And you know, the cyclical cycle of the Fed, it comes and goes. That’s a different matter. But this is President Trump’s desired policy. He’s been arguing for it ever since. I think he was on “The View” 30, 40 years ago, and it’s exactly — the baseline tariff is exactly what he — he put into the convention.

Stephanopoulos: But is it his strategy —

Hassett: So, this is not a surprise for anyone.

Stephanopoulos: Is it his strategy to force the Fed to lower interest rates, and that the market crash was part of that strategy?

Hassett: We understand the Fed is an independent agency. We respect the independence of the Fed. But the president’s allowed to have an opinion. The — absolutely, the president’s allowed to have an opinion but there’s not going to be any political coercion over the Fed, for sure.

Stephanopoulos: So — so that is his strategy? Tank the market so the Fed will lower interest rates?

Hassett: No, no, no.

Hassett on the lack of tariffs against Russia
Stephanopoulos: Why did the president not include Russia on the list of countries who are facing tariffs?

Hassett: There’s obviously an ongoing negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, and I think the president made the decision not to conflate the two issues. It doesn’t mean that Russia, the fullest of time, is going to be treated wildly different than every other country, but Russia is one of the only countries, one of the few countries, that is not subject to these new tariffs, aren’t they? They’re in the middle of a negotiation, George, aren’t they?

Stephanopoulos: Well, I’m asking a different question: Why? And I just want to know why—

Hassett: Would you literally advise that you go in and put a whole bunch of new things on the table in the middle of a negotiation that affects so many American and Ukrainian and Russian lives.

Stephanopoulos: Negotiators do that. Negotiators do that all the time.

Hassett: No, no, that’s not appropriate to throw a new thing into these negotiations right in the middle of it. It’s just not.

Stephanopoulos: So you are conceding that Russia is not paying any new tariffs, unlike many of our allies, including Europe, Canada, Mexico.

Hassett: Russia is in the midst of negotiations over peace that affects, really, thousands and thousands of lives of people, and that’s what President Trump is focused on right now.

Summers on the stock market
Stephanopoulos: If you’re advising American consumers, also American corporate leaders on where this is headed, how would you counsel them to prepare for all of this?

Summers: Look, I think there’s a very good chance there’s going to be more turbulence in markets. The two-day move we saw on Thursday and Friday was the fourth largest two-day move since the Second World War. The other three were the 1987 crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and the pandemic. So a drop of this magnitude signals that there’s likely to be trouble ahead. And people ought to just be very cautious.

But the risk is, of course, when all of us decide to be cautious, that can become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless and until the president recognizes that this is a very serious error that is likely to have very adverse consequences, I think it’s likely to make things very difficult. I think people are right to hold off on making big new purchases, businesses are right to be cautious. People are right to want to hold cash. What we need is a reversal of these policies, and until we have a reversal, I think we’re going to have a real problem. This is a moment of testing for the president’s advisers. The intellectually honest ones know that this reflects presidential 40-year fixation, not any kind of proven economic theory.

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(WASHINGTON) — The biggest mistake Democrats have made is “not centering people enough” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Sunday.

“A lot of people voted for Donald Trump because they trusted him and didn’t trust that Democrats could deliver for them,” Booker told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “We are in a state where, again, the Democratic Party should own up. We partly laid this pathway for this demagogue to come into office, and so the way we deal with that, the way we correct from those mistakes, is to do more of the centering of American voices, American people in our conversation and in our focus, not focus on politics, focus on people.”

Booker’s marathon 25 hour and 4 minute speech that concluded Tuesday evening broke the record for the longest speech on the Senate floor. Booker protested the national “crisis” he said President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk created. It surpassed the record set by Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957.

During the speech, Booker said that Democrats must do better.

“I confess that I have been imperfect. I confess that I’ve been inadequate to the moment,” Booker said on Tuesday. “I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say ‘we will do better.'”

Booker told Stephanopoulos the action he tried to inspire with his speech should not be confused with partisan politics.

“This is not about the Democratic Party, I’m sorry,” Booker said. “The Democratic Party is at its weakest when it’s concerned about the party. It’s at its strongest when it’s concerned about the people, when it’s bigger and broader than any narrow, political analysis. This is the time for Americans to step up.”

Tens of thousands of “Hands Off” protesters rallied in more than 1,200 cities across the country on Saturday to speak out against the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce and other policies, according to organizers.

“I’m just grateful, especially yesterday, to stand in solidarity with millions of Americans who are just really determined, even though they themselves are tired, to keep fighting,” Booker said.

Here are more highlights from Booker’s interview:

Booker on the tariffs Trump announced this week
Stephanopoulos: Let’s talk about some of the issues that Americans were responding to, including, of course, the tariffs. You heard Kevin Hassett earlier in the program. He said there may be some increase in prices, but it’s going to be worth it. Your response?

Booker: God bless Kevin, but I’ve never seen an administration in my lifetime do something so monumentally wrong and that so staggeringly hurts American people. I’ve been hearing all day yesterday, from frightened Americans who’ve saved for their entire lives, for retirement in the coming months, but now know they can’t because in one fell swoop, Donald Trump has devastated their retirement accounts, their 401(k)s… This president is pushing, yet again, a plan to gut basic services to give bigger and bigger tax cuts to the wealthy. So the chaos he has unleashed on America, the financial insecurity that he has brought to people’s lives, this is not what he promised people, and I think he will already go down for a president having the worst first 100 days in the last century of any president that’s ever taken that office.

Booker on law firms and universities targeted by the administration
Stephanopoulos: “You also saw Jon Karl’s piece about the president’s retribution campaign, he promised to be the retribution during the campaign. We’re seeing these moves against universities. We’re seeing these moves against law firms. You took the Senate floor to protest. What should these law firms and universities do?

Booker: “Well, first and foremost, you’re calling retribution, but it’s something far worse than that. If you look around the world, from Viktor Orban to Vladimir Putin, this is not what democratic leaders do. This is really a violation of our constitutional principles, that he’s using that power of that office, not to advance noble causes that could help the American people, whether I disagree with them or not, that’s what a president is called to do, do what they think is in the best interests of the public at large. What this president is instead doing is violating our constitutional principles, violating the fundamental rights of people in order to punish them, to carry out his own retribution plan. You know, John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Donald Trump is now saying, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Donald Trump to make amends. He is trying to hurt people, to make them cower to him and offer him tribute in order to not violate the Constitution and hurt them economically. This is something that should not just be about a bunch of law firms. This is something that should ultimately be about Americans.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has placed on indefinite paid leave the attorney who argued on behalf of the government on Friday in a lawsuit brought by a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in error, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Sources said Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, was told by officials at the DOJ that he was being placed on leave over a “failure to zealously advocate” for the government’s interests.

“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Saturday. “Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”

The government is seeking to appeal an order from the judge who presided over Friday’s hearing and ordered the department to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia by Monday.

In Friday’s hearing, Reuveni repeatedly struggled when pressed by Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for details surrounding Abrego Garcia’s deportation — and why the administration claimed it could not facilitate his return to the United States.

At one point in the hearing, Reuveni was asked by Xinis under what authority law enforcement officers seized Abrego Garcia.

Reuveni said he was frustrated that he did not have those answers.

“Your honor, my answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating, and I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you on a lot of these questions,” Reuveni said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Tens of thousands of protesters mustered in cities and towns across the country on Saturday to sound off against the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government and its polices.

Carrying homemade posters and chanting “Hands Off,” the protesters came out to the more than 1,200 rallies nationwide despite rain in many cities, according to organizers.

Several Democratic heavyweights, including some members of Congress, joined the protests and urged the public not to stand for what they called the administration’s mismanagement and breaking with constitutional norms.

“Our founders wrote a Constitution that did not begin with ‘We the dictators,'” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the crowd gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

He slammed the administration for several of its policies, including President Donald Trump’s implementing of tariffs on nearly every country.

“Their tariffs are not only imbecilic — they’re illegal, they’re unconstitutional, and we’re going to turn this around,” he said.

Paul Osadebe, a lawyer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, spoke during the rally in Washington and said he’s been asked by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to take a buyout offer.

Osadebe, a union steward with AFGE Local 476, told the crowd the oligarchs do not “value you or your life or your community.”

“We’re seeing that they don’t care who they have to destroy or who they have to hurt to get what they want,” he said.

Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., echoed his statement with a warning that it will get worse.

“They would have us believe if we gave them all of control, everything would be OK,” he said. “But breaking news, they have the control, and look at where we are now: massive inequality across the country.”

Similar energy and rhetoric were present at other “Hands Off” protests.

“The federal administration thinks this country belongs to them — and that they’re above the law,” organizers of the Boston rally said. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on — our rights, our health care, our data, our jobs, our services — and daring the world to stop them.”

There were no reports of any major disturbances or arrests at any of the rallies.

The White House did not have any immediate comment about the events.

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(WASHINGTON) — The IRS started a new round of layoffs on Friday beginning with the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, according to an email obtained by ABC News.

Overall, the agency is planning to cut nearly a quarter of its workforce with the cuts beginning Friday, sources familiar with the plans said.

“This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities,” according to the email, which added that the layoffs will “result in staffing cuts across multiple offices and job categories.”

The civil rights office will be effectively shuttered by the move, with the remaining staffers moved into the Office of Chief Counsel, according to the email.

The agency had previously drawn up plans to cut roughly 18% to 20% of the 100,000-person workforce by the middle of May.

The email sent to IRS employees Friday said the reduction in force will “be implemented in phases” and noted that employees will be offered early retirement incentives starting next week.

The agency also recently put approximately 50 IT security staffers on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the move, as the agency faces pressure to make workforce cuts and demands for data-sharing across the federal government during tax season. The Trump administration has said workforce changes will not affect staff directly working to process tax returns.

However, there are concerns that the layoffs may still cause delays.

“The bottom line: Forever, it has been an absolute rule of thumb that you keep things stable during filing season. Because it’s delicate,” one former IRS commissioner told ABC News. “And the idea that nearly 10% of the entire IRS workforce is being laid off right in the middle of filing season is extremely risky.”

Earlier this year, more than 4,000 IRS employees accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer. The agency also fired more than 6,600 probationary employees but has been forced to reinstate them under court orders.

It’s not clear if members of those two groups of employees will be targeted in the new reductions in force.

Several senior agency leaders, including the chief human resources officer, acting commissioner and acting general counsel, have resigned or been demoted since January.

The IRS and the White House did not respond to a requests for comment from ABC News.

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(WASHINGTON) — After about six hours of amendment votes, the Senate approved a budget blueprint Saturday morning by a vote of 51-48.

Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins cast votes against the resolution. Every other Republican in the chamber voted for it, and every Democrat voted against it.

The resolution only needed a simple majority of votes to pass, so it now heads to the House for further consideration.

If the House also approves the proposal, it will unlock the next step in the reconciliation process and will allow committees in both the House and the Senate to begin drafting legislation aimed at accomplishing Republican wish-list items such as raising the debt ceiling, increasing border security and extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

The final package, if Republicans can agree on it, will be able to be passed with a simple majority of votes in both chambers.

Democrats were powerless to stop the resolution from moving forward Saturday morning, but they put up a fight by forcing votes on a number of amendments, including amendments on protecting access to Medicare and Medicaid, modifying or eliminating some of Trump’s tariffs and protecting funding for caregivers for children and the elderly.

The Senate completed its vote-a-rama just after 2:30 a.m.

Though Republicans defeated the most eye-popping of the Democratic amendments, some that were offered got a sprinkling of across-the-aisle support from a handful of GOP defectors, signaling the challenges ahead in drafting legislation that’s palatable to enough Republicans to pass muster when it comes up for a final vote.

Though an amendment that would have struck the instructions governing massive spending cuts to the House Energy and Commerce Committee failed, it got the support of three GOP senators: Collins, Josh Hawley and Lisa Murkowski.

This is the budget instruction that many Democrats say presents a risk to Medicare and Medicaid funding, signaling a possible hazard on the path ahead for any package that is cobbled together. Collins has signaled that concerns about cuts in this area of the package is why she voted against the entire resolution.

Collins, Murkowski and Hawley also supported the amendment to protect funding for caregivers.

With Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, Senate Republicans will only be able to lose three members of its caucus when a final package is put together.

The Senate will return to Washington on Monday for one more week of work before a two-week recess.

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(WASHINGTON) — After months of negotiations, a deal to turn over TikTok’s United States operations to a new company with a majority American ownership was finalized on Wednesday, according to senior administration officials.

The investors — which included Oracle, Blackstone, Andreeson Horowitz and several others — ByteDance and the Trump administration negotiated and agreed to the terms.

The plan was for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to approve the deal this week, triggering a 120-day closing period to finalize the paperwork and financing.

ByteDance would have maintained a minority ownership in the new company, under the 20% threshold required by Congress.

All that remained was for the Chinese government to approve the deal — something all sides of the negotiations expected would happen.

However, on Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced his tariffs.

Thursday morning, representatives for ByteDance called the White House to say the Chinese government would not approve the deal until negotiations could be held on Trump’s tariffs.

The deal remains in limbo, hostage to the emerging trade war between the U.S. and China.

On Friday, Trump said he is extending the deadline for TikTok to be banned or sold off by its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance.

The previous April 5 deadline will be pushed 75 days, Trump said in a post to his social media platform. It’s the second time he has pushed the deadline since taking office.

The TikTok negotiations were led by Vice President JD Vance, sources told ABC News. The deal is currently not being renegotiated with investors and the White House both standing by.

The revival appears to depend on what happens with U.S. and China negotiations on trade.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris, in separate remarks on Thursday, criticized President Donald Trump and the White House for moves that they called unconstitutional or contributing to an erosion of the country’s values.

Neither Obama or Harris have spoken much publicly since Election Day in 2024.

Obama, in a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday, criticized the second Trump administration for levying new tariffs, for threats against universities and law firms, and for what he framed as upending the international order, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by a spokesperson and shared on Obama’s Medium profile.

“Look, I don’t think what we just witnessed in terms of economic policy and tariffs is going to be good for America, but that’s a specific policy. I’m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,” Obama said during a discussion on how he feels the values of the United States have “eroded.”

Obama added, “I am more troubled by the idea that a White House can say to law firms, ‘If you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively.’ That kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.”

The White House has defended actions toward universities as holding them accountable for their responses to antisemitism or other issues, and has said executive actions against law firms are meant to bolster national security or to stop work detrimental to the country.

Obama added that if he had threatened law firms or made moves similar to the second Trump administration, he would not have been tolerated, and said that he wasn’t discussing this from a “partisan basis.”

“This has to do with something more precious, which is who are we as a country and what values do we stand for … I think people tend to think, ‘oh, democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press,'” he said. “That’s all abstract stuff because it’s not affecting the price of eggs. Well, you know what? It’s about to affect the price of eggs.”

He also criticized the Trump administration on foreign policy, and for striking against what Obama called the “rules-based system” of alliances and trade abroad, calling out the White House’s stated aim of getting control of Greenland for the sake of national security.

“And this is an important moment, because in the last two months, we have seen a U.S. government actively try to destroy that order and discredit it,” Obama said, according to the transcript. “And the thinking, I gather, is that somehow, since we are the strongest, we’re going to be better off if we can just bully people into doing whatever we want, and dictate the terms of trade all the time, and if we see a piece of land, be like, ‘who’s going to stop us? Greenland looks good.'”

Harris, speaking on Thursday at the Leading Women Defined Summit in California, framed actions by the White House as unconstitutional and said they are contributing to a “sense of fear,” according to video of her remarks provided by the Leading Women Defined Foundation to ABC News.

Harris said “we are in the midst of seeing progress being rolled back.”

“What has changed is that there is a sense of fear that has been taking hold in our country, and I understand it,” Harris said. “But we’re seeing people stay quiet. We are seeing organizations stay quiet. We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats, and these are the things that we are witnessing each day in these last few months in our country.”

“And it understandably creates a great sense of fear. Because, you know, there were many things that we knew would happen, many things — I’m not here to say ‘I told you so,'” Harris said to laughter and cheers.

She added after, “I swore I wasn’t gonna say that.”

But Harris separately also framed showing courage as being able to galvanize others.

“Fear has a way of being contagious … Courage is also contagious. When one person, when a few, stand with the courage that is the courage exhibited by the leaders in this room every day, to stand, to have the courage to say, ‘I feel fear,’ the courage to say, ‘what is happening is wrong,’ the courage to say that there is a way that we must chart to get through this — understanding our power in the democracy we still have if we hold on to it,” Harris said. “Courage is contagious.”

Harris, who is considering a California gubernatorial bid, according to sources, did not say anything about her future plans.

In response to a request for comment from ABC News on Obama’s and Harris’s remarks, White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote, “During her time in office, Kamala Harris presided over the weaponization of our justice system against political opponents, the coercion of social media companies to censor free speech, and the wholesale destruction of our country’s economy and borders.

“Neither she nor Barack Obama, who wrote off worker layoffs by saying ‘some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back’, are in any position to weigh in on the merits or constitutionality of the Trump administration’s historic action to put Americans and America First,” he added.

ABC News’ Averi Harper and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

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