Politics

(MIDDLESEX, Mass.) — To step inside the Older Adult Re-Entry unit, or OAR, at the Middlesex County, Massachusetts, jail is unlike entering any jail in the United States.

The walls are adorned in a soothing paint color, and there is fitness equipment, specially designed beds in cell units, better lighting so older inmates do not fall and a puzzle-making table to “stimulate the mind cognitively,” according to Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian.

OAR is designed for inmates who are over the age of 55 and need to get ready to reenter the public, but Koutoujian said older inmates have different needs than younger ones who get released into the community.

“We designed this unit from the ground up with the unique needs of this population in mind, from treatment programs focused on specific needs of this population, cognitive behavioral treatment, social enrichment, education and occupational therapy,” he said, adding that the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office worked with researchers from Boston University to have the older inmate population’s best interests in mind.

Older inmates make up about 10% of the jail’s population, and entry into the program is voluntary. OAR serves both those who are awaiting trial and those who are set to be released in the next few months or years. There are 20 inmates currently in the unit, which just launched in March.

He said OAR helps stimulate inmates minds with different classes and activities to prepare for their reentry into society.

“This is much more than just: This is how to get a job, this is how to get your driver’s license back, this is how to do these basic things that we deal with everywhere in our facility,” he explained. “This is about how to live your life so that you can live more happily, more safely and longer. [It] is much different than any other unit in the entire country for those very reasons.”

In working with researchers, Koutoujian found that older men need friendships to live healthy lives.

“We’ve seen much more research recently showing especially men, as they age, become more socially isolated. It impacts them mentally and physically and affects their mortality,” he said.

“I’m trying to make sure that they are more aware of so that it’s not just the fact that we’re giving them this lesson, but what are the activities they can engage in?” he added. “They can build new relationships, new friendships, new support systems, healthier social networks. That is a critical part to this population’s reentry.”

The sheriff said he believes the program, with the research and data OAR is collecting, can be replicated throughout the country.

“What do the incarcerated individuals in the unit get out of it? They get a great deal out of it, and let’s just say, what do the officers that are involved in this unit get out of it? They get a feeling of well-being, of partnership, of doing something good,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Education Secretary Linda McMahon interrupted a press conference by House Democrats outside the Department of Education to give an impromptu statement after they met in a closed-door meeting earlier Wednesday.

With about a minute’s notice, the secretary’s team told some attendees that McMahon would be making a statement.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., was speaking at the podium as the secretary appeared at the press conference.

“We are extraordinarily grateful that the secretary gave us the space to have these conversations, but with all due respect, madam, I think my biggest concern is that the states will not be able to protect the programs and services that you would like to devolve with them,” she said before ceding the microphone, noting that the mood during the meeting was “collegial.”

Then, the secretary stepped to the podium in front of the group of Democratic lawmakers, who had met with her in her office for about an hour.

“I just want to express my gratitude to all of these folks who came today so we can have an open discussion about what I believe is one of the most important things that we can have a discussion on or action on in our country, and that is the education of our young people,” McMahon said upon taking the podium.

“This is not a partisan issue. This is about the children of America and its next generation after that, and if we want to have our leaders and if we want to have that next group of engineers and doctors and lawyers and plumbers and electricians and HV/AC operators, then we need to focus on how they can best have their education,” she added.

“And I believe, and I know the president believes as well, the best education is that that is closest to the child where teachers and parents, local superintendents, working together and local school boards to develop the curriculum for those students is the best way that it can happen,” she said.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., who spearheaded the effort to meet with McMahon, and several reporters peppered the secretary with questions.

“When are you going to shut down the department?” Takano asked.

“We had our discussion,” McMahon replied.

She declined to answer any further questions before exiting the presser.

Takano and a coalition of lawmakers had requested the meeting after the secretary was sworn into office last month.

“She came down here to upstage the news press availability, trying to give the impression that she’s trying a different approach — that she’s actually meeting with members of Congress,” Takano told ABC News after the event.

Later Wednesday, McMahon posted on X about the meeting.

“This morning, I hosted a meeting with House Democrats to hear their concerns,” she said. “Our collective goal should be to support students, not the broken bureaucracy.”

The meeting comes after weeks of confusion in Washington as the Department of Education slashed nearly half its workforce and lawmakers have been demanding answers from the Trump administration.

Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., Don Beyer, D-Va., and Greg Casar, D-Texas, also attended the meeting..

Chaos ensued outside the agency the last time Democrats tried to meet with department officials as Takano and around two dozen lawmakers were rejected access inside the building.

This time they met with McMahon amid the administration’s attempt to dismantle and spearhead the historic overhaul of the department as directed by President Donald Trump.

The members said McMahon took the right step in meeting with them and that she assured them she would work with Congress to move statutory functions to other agencies and follow federal law. However, Wilson said McMahon indicated she is following the president’s directive in moving the student loan portfolio for more than 40 million people to the Small Business Administration.

McMahon also told the Democratic lawmakers in the meeting that there will be additional workforce cuts at the department, Takano said.

Meanwhile, the meeting seemed to leave many with unanswered questions, and after McMahon left the podium, Stanbury said the secretary has no plans that she shared with them.

Casar, the Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman, said he grew frustrated and even more alarmed during the meeting because he suggested McMahon’s mission will gut public schools.

“What she tried to say, in the nicest of terms, is that she wants to get rid of the guardrails and protections for all of our kids and instead say, No, we can have it set up so that states can give money to the private schools that we like and take away money from the public schools that we may not like,” Casar said.

Wilson, a senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, passionately defended public education.

“For the Department of Education to be dismantled, it is going to bring a shock to this nation,” said Wilson, a former principal and lifelong educator. “Schools are the bedrock of this nation. When schools are working, our country is, too.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen, who on Tuesday held her newborn son during a speech on the House floor in support of a bipartisan effort to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents, said the decision to bring her 9-week-old was “difficult,” but illustrated the need to pass the petition.

“We have the ability in 2025 to make sure that our voices and our constituents’ voices are represented here, even when we have a medical reason for not being able to be here in person,” Pettersen, holding her son Sam, said in an interview on ABC News Live on Wednesday. “You know, this is the way things were done hundreds of years ago, I think that we can accommodate for the new workplace challenges here in Congress to make sure more women and in young families can be represented here now.”

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers came together over proxy voting for new parents. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to tank a procedural rule that would have blocked a petition to allow new mothers and fathers to vote by proxy.

With her newborn in her arms, the Colorado Democrat on Tuesday spoke in support of a resolution that would allow new parents — both mothers and fathers — the ability to vote by proxy up to 12 weeks after the birth of a child. In her speech — during which Sam cooed, squealed and squeaked — Pettersen pleaded for bipartisan cooperation on a measure that she said addressed life events such as parenthood for lawmakers.

“It was a very difficult decision to fly across the country with Sam, and it’s just a decision that nobody should have to make,” said Pettersen, who added that returning to Washington to work after her son was born prematurely put her in an “impossible” situation where she had to both care for a vulnerable newborn and do her job.

Pettersen is only the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress. Fellow new mom, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna — who had a child in August 2023 — introduced the petition.

The House voted to torpedo the procedural rule that would have blocked Luna’s proxy vote measure — throwing the House into disarray and paralyzing the chamber. The vote also called into question Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to control Republicans’ razor-thin majority.

House Republican leaders, including Johnson, had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition

After the vote, Johnson said because it failed, “we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.”

Johnson has said proxy voting is unconstitutional and is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely.

Asked by ABC New Live Anchor Diane Macedo about her response to Johnson’s argument, Pettersen said “my message to Speaker Johnson is just let us vote.”

“If we have narrow reasons why people can have their votes represented here if they can’t be here in person, that’s something that we should be able to vote on,” she said on ABC News Live.

Pettersen had stronger words for Johnson after the rule vote, telling ABC News’ Jay O’Brien that her message to the speaker was “don’t f— with moms.”

It’s not the first time Pettersen has brought her son along to a House vote. In February, she brought her son to vote in the House budget blueprint.

ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Jay O’Brien, John Parkinson and Arthur Jones II contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — A unanimous Supreme Court on Wednesday backed the Food and Drug Administration’s refusal to authorize the sale of kid-friendly flavored e-cigarettes and vapes, including the flavors “Killer Kustard Blueberry,” “Rainbow Road,” and “Pineapple Express.”

Justice Samuel Alito, in his opinion for the court, rejected the manufacturers’ claims that the agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of federal law by changing the requirements for product approval in the middle of the process.

“In the end, we cannot say that the FDA improperly changed its position with respect to scientific evidence, comparative efficacy, or device type,” Alito wrote. He returned the case to a lower court for further review.

The ruling effectively holds the line on the government’s decision to severely limit the number of flavored tobacco products legally available in the U.S. market out of concerns over the impact on children.

Kid-friendly flavors, such as fruit, candy, mint, menthol and desserts — which are largely not approved by the FDA and are currently sold on store shelves illegally — have been fueling an explosion in retail sales of e-cigarettes.

While vaping among youth is declining, more than 1.6 million children use the products, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 90% of them consume illicit flavored brands.

“Today’s ruling is a major victory for the health of America’s kids and efforts to protect them from the flavored e-cigarettes that have fueled a youth nicotine addiction crisis,” said Yolanda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group. She noted the FDA has denied over 26 million flavored e-cigarette product applications so far.

“While the FDA has authorized the sale of only 34 e-cigarette products, manufacturers continue to flood the market with thousands of illegal, unauthorized products,” Richardson said in a statement. “To end this crisis, the FDA must deny marketing applications for flavored e-cigarettes and step up enforcement efforts to clear the market of illegal products. Today’s ruling should spur the FDA to act quickly to do so.”

The companies — White Lion Investments LLC and Vapetasia LLC — did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Since 2009, federal law requires sellers of new nicotine products to provide regulators with scientific evidence to show that the products would promote public health, but the statute does not spell out specifically what evidence is necessary and sufficient. The FDA’s guidance on how to meet that requirement was at the center of the case.

While the first Trump administration had taken a hard line against the marketing and sale sweet and candy flavored vapes, President Donald Trump said during the campaign that he wants to “save” flavored vapes. It’s not clear how the FDA, newly under his control, may modify regulations around flavored vapes or alter the approval process.

Despite their loss in the case, vape manufacturers are able to reapply for approval with the FDA in a new application and attempt to show how benefits of the product to public health would outweigh the dangers to teens.

“In light of the statutory text and the well-documented and serious risks flavored e-cigarette products pose to youth, it should have come as no surprise that applicants would need to submit rigorous scientific evidence showing that the benefits of their products would outweigh those risks,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor concluded in a short concurring opinion in the case.

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(WASHINGTON) — Shares in Donald Trump’s social media company sank in morning trading on Wednesday, a day after the company 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 on Tuesday 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.

As of midday Wednesday, the company’s stock price was down about 5%.

Trump Media and Technology Group pushed back on the possibility that Trump may attempt to sell any shares in a statement on Wednesday.

“Legacy media outlets are spreading a fake story suggesting that a TMTG filing today is paving the way for the Trump trust to sell its shares in TMTG. To be clear, these shares were already registered last June on an S-1 form, and today TMTG submitted a routine filing that re-registers them on an S-3 form in order to keep the Company’s filings effective. In fact, there currently is no open window for any affiliate to sell shares,” the statement said.

The president also has previously said he plans to hold his stake in the company.

“I don’t want to sell my shares. I don’t need money,” Trump told reporters in September.

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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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