(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.
(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.”
(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.
(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.”
(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.”
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — Nearly 2,000 scientists, engineers and researchers penned an open letter this week to President Donald Trump’s administration, calling for a stop to its “assault” on science.
The letter was signed by elected members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a congressional chartered organization that provides independent analysis and helps inform public policy decisions.
The group made clear the signatories are expressing their own views and not those of the National Academies or their home institutions.
“We are speaking out as individuals. We see real danger in this moment,” the letter said, in part. “We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”
“We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call,” the letter continued.
The group called out the Trump administration for actions including the ending funding for research, firing scientists and removing public access to data.
Recently, several active research grants related to studies involving LGBTQ+ issues, as well as gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion, were canceled at the National Institutes of Health. According to termination letters sent to researchers at various universities that were reviewed by ABC News, the projects were canceled because they did not serve the “priorities” of the current administration.
Additionally, earlier this year staff were laid off across the Department of Health and Human Services as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to shrink the size of the federal government.
Earlier this month, HHS also appeared to have taken down a webpage from the Office of the Surgeon General that included an advisory on gun violence. In a statement to ABC News, the HHS said that the department “and the Office of the Surgeon General are complying with President Trump’s Executive Order on Protecting Second Amendment Rights.”
The White House did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the letter.
“If our country’s research enterprise is dismantled, we will lose our scientific edge,” the letter goes on. “Other countries will lead the development of novel disease treatments, clean energy sources, and the new technologies of the future. Their populations will be healthier, and their economies will surpass us in business, defense, intelligence gathering, and monitoring our planet’s health. The damage to our nation’s scientific enterprise could take decades to reverse.”
The letter comes as layoffs begin at HHS, including at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Up to 10,000 people are expected to lose their jobs in this round of layoffs, an amount that could significantly alter the department’s roles and abilities. That’s in addition to the nearly 10,000 who have already left the agency in the last few months through buyout offers or early retirements.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie, Cheyenne Haslett and Etic Strauss contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — After creating history by smashing the record for the longest Senate speech in history, Sen. Cory Booker told reporters as he walked off the floor that he was achy and tired, but grateful for his time.
“I didn’t know how long I could go. I’m so grateful I lasted for 25 hours,” Booker said.
Without taking a seat for the entirety of his speech, dehydration, the New Jersey senator said, had its pros and cons.
Booker sidestepped a question of whether he had any sort of device or diaper on to help him with bathroom demands.
However, he did say he didn’t need to use the restroom for the entirety of the 25 hours because of an incredibly rigorous fasting routine.
“My strategy was to stop eating. I think I stopped eating on Friday, and then to stop drinking the night before I started on Monday. And that had its benefits and it had its really downsides,” he said.
“The biggest thing I was fighting was that different muscles were starting to really cramp up, and every once a while, spasm or something.”
Booker’s speech, which began Monday evening, continued for a total of 25 hours and 4 minutes, surpassing the previous record set by Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
Booker was “very aware” of Thurmond’s record going into the speech.
“I was very aware of Strom Thurmond’s records since I got to the Senate. I always felt that it was a strange shadow to hang over this institution,” Booker told reporters.
“The mission was really to elevate voices of Americans to tell some of their really meaningful stories, very emotional stories, and to let go and let god.” To prepare, Booker said he tried to make himself as light as possible, and took everything out of his pockets except for a notecard with a handwritten Bible verse on it: Isaiah 40:31. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint,” Booker read.
He relied on his faith, he said, at one point praying with Reverend Sen. Raphael Warnock ahead of the speech.
For the entirety of his marathon talk-a-thon, Booker occupied the small square of space surrounding his desk.
(WASHINGTON) — Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging President Donald Trump’s effort to overhaul the election system.
The executive order, which Trump signed on March 25, requires stricter voting regulations in federal elections, including showing proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is among the groups representing the plaintiffs in the complaint.
“We know that providing documentation in general tends to fall more heavily on people who are already having so many obstacles thrown in their lives at them,” ACLU attorney Sophia Lin Lakin told ABC News. “These are real barriers for populations that unfortunately intersect very much with voters of color.”
Lakin highlighted logistical obstacles such as transportation, childcare responsibilities and financial barriers that could prevent people from obtaining and paying out of pocket for documents like passports and naturalization certificates.
The order directs the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent agency of the U.S. government that supports election officials, to require people to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote to prevent noncitizens from voting.
This comes after the president and his Republican allies characterized noncitizen voting during the 2024 presidential campaign as widespread — a false claim that was debunked by experts and by a spate of GOP-led inquiries in the weeks leading up to the election, which found that noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare.
“Using this very racialized, this very xenophobic fear mongering — it’s really just a vehicle for voter suppression to justify imposing requirements that are going to silence a certain segment of the population,” Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, told ABC News.
Plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, include organizations that advocate for voting right across the country: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, the Hispanic Federation, National League of Women Voters, League of Women Voters of Arizona, League of Women Voters Education Fund and Asian Pacific American Advocates (OCA).
The complaint names Trump and EAC officials as defendants. ABC News has reached out to the White House and EAC but requests for comment on the lawsuit were not immediately returned.
The lawsuit, which is known as “League of Women Voters v. Trump,” argues that the president “has no authority to make or change the rules for conducting federal elections,” — a claim that was also made in a similar federal lawsuit challenging this executive order that was filed in D.C. court on Monday by The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) – the largest civil rights organization in the U.S.
“In the [Executive Order] the President attempts to usurp the power to regulate federal elections from Congress, the States, and an independent agency to which Congress delegated certain limited responsibilities,” plaintiffs argue in the “League of Women Voters v. Trump,” claiming that the president is violating the “constitutional separation of powers.”
Existing federal law, as outlined in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, already requires anyone who registers to vote to swear to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, but it does not require individuals to present documents to demonstrate proof of citizenship when they register.
The executive order directs the EAC to revise its national mail voter registration form within 30 days of the order’s issuance to require voters to show proof of citizenship through a U.S. passport, a state-issued driver’s license or identification card, an official military identification card or a valid federal or state government-issued photo identification. The order mandates that all documents provided should show proof of citizenship, but many state or government-issued ID’s, including drivers licenses, don’t show an individual’s citizenship.
The lawsuit argues that requiring documentation to prove citizenship “would impose a severe burden on, if not wholly disenfranchise, millions of voters” who face various barriers, including financial and logistical, that prevent them from obtaining the required documentation.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, on Jan. 3, Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy introduced H.R. 22 — legislation known as the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” or the SAVE Act — a bill that would require people to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
“Like the SAVE Act, this executive order is part of a broader voter suppression strategy designed to silence eligible voters rather than protect election integrity,” Lakin said.
As the U.S. House considers the SAVE Act this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson House and GOP leaders urged bipartisan support for the legislation in a statement on Monday.
“American citizens — and only American citizens — should decide American elections,” the statement says. “This legislation cements into law President Trump’s executive action to secure our voter registration process and protect the voices of American voters. We urge all our colleagues in the House to join us in doing what the overwhelming majority of people in this country rightfully demand and deserve.”
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous and Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services began to receive notices of mass layoffs on Tuesday, days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 people would lose their jobs, including employees working on tobacco use, mental health and workplace safety.
The layoffs are expected to impact 3,500 employees at the Food and Drug Administration and 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — nearly one-fifth of the workforce at both public health divisions, which fall under HHS.
In total, and including roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS will fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a fourth of its workforce.
The sweeping changes drew criticism from Robert Califf, who served two stints as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed,” Califf wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday.
“I believe that history will see this as a huge mistake,” he added. “I will be glad if I’m proven wrong, but even then there is no good reason to treat people this way.”
The layoffs also prompted a bipartisan request from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for Kennedy to testify about the changes at a hearing next week, titled “An Update on the Restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the committee chairman, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a ranking member, penned a letter to Kennedy on Tuesday as thousands of HHS workers were learning they had lost their jobs.
“We are following up on the commitment you made during the confirmation process that as Secretary you would come before the HELP Committee on a quarterly basis, upon request of the Chair,” Cassidy and Sanders wrote.
Cassidy, a physician who voiced grave concerns with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric during his confirmation hearings, was a key vote in advancing Kennedy’s nomination to the Senate floor earlier this year — but did so on the condition that Kennedy would not make major changes to certain policies and would consult Cassidy regularly on his decisions.
As news of the cuts spread, employees stood in long lines outside of their offices in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Georgia, some waiting for hours as security determined whether they could be let in the building or not. In some cases, employees were turned around after being informed that they no longer had a job.
Kevin Caron, a health scientist within the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC, said the majority of the office was laid off on Tuesday, including his own role in the branch that focused on epidemiology.
The timing is particularly stressful, he said, because his wife is 38 weeks pregnant with the couple’s first child — a girl — and he’ll no longer be able to take the 12 weeks of paternity leave he was approved to take beginning in April.
“It’s absolutely a loss in security, financial security, the ability to be around and be a parent, because I need to look for another job,” Caron said.
The Office on Smoking and Health is described on CDC’s website as “the lead federal agency for comprehensive tobacco prevention and control.” The office distributes money to every U.S. state to prevent and reduce smoking, vaping and using nicotine products, especially among young people.
The office sits within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDC, which has been hard hit by layoffs at other divisions, too, multiple officials tell ABC News — a surprise to many, given Kennedy’s commitment to ending chronic disease.
“Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. It’s a serious producer of chronic disease. And so I’m kind of shocked that even though that’s a stated priority, that they would get rid of that kind of work,” Caron said.
At the FDA, tobacco work was also heavily impacted — including the firing of top tobacco regulator Brian King, who had worked to decrease the rates of e-cigarette use by teens.
The impact on tobacco across HHS comes after President Donald Trump as a candidate pledged to “save vaping” and reverse efforts to ban it.
Mitch Zeller, King’s predecessor at the Center for Tobacco Products, told ABC News he learned of King’s exit via conversations with people within the FDA. Zeller said that King was given the option to relocate to a remote western office of the Indian Health Service.
Zeller said that two key offices in the center were “completely rift.”
“If you kneecap the operational function of the center as well as the ability of the center to do forward-looking policy, you’ve really just eviscerated the center and its ability to fulfill its public health mission,” he said.
King did not respond to a request for comment.
Jeff Nesbit, a former FDA official who was instrumental in the FDA’s efforts to begin regulating tobacco, said the cuts will “substantially help the tobacco companies maintain the status quo.”
“These staff cuts to FDA’s tobacco center will allow the industry to continue to sell deadly burned cigarettes for many more years than they would have otherwise; while continuing to talk in vague, general terms about whether vaping and e-cigarettes might some day replace burned cigarettes,” said Nesbit, who was also a senior HHS official under former President Joe Biden.
At the agency that focuses on drug use and mental health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an entire team overseeing a nationwide survey that has been in use since 1971 was cut, Jennifer Hoenig, director of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, wrote on LinkedIn.
“We are the only national survey focusing specifically on drug use and mental health,” Hoenig wrote.
The office was also working on research about illegally made fentanyl and mental health treatment access, she said.
“I don’t know who will continue on with this work, or if it will,” she said, because so many staff across SAMHSA had been let go.
At a federal office that researches workplace safety, including for firefighters, mine workers, retail workers, truck drivers and factory workers, roughly 90% of the workforce was expected to be laid off, the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said on a call with leadership on Monday, a source familiar with the situation said.
NIOSH’s research investigates and researches workplace issues that inform the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, an agency under the Department of Labor that enforces workplace safety and health.
“It does look like the majority or much of the agency is going to be wiped out,” said David Michaels, who led OSHA from 2009 to 2017 and is a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Michaels said he’d been speaking with many employees at both NIOSH and OSHA.
“It makes OSHA’s job tremendously more difficult if the research of NIOSH disappears,” Michaels said. “There’ll be fewer and less protective standards coming out of OSHA.”
