Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee peppered director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard with questions about her controversial rhetoric on Russian aggression, Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and government surveillance programs at her high-stakes confirmation hearing on Thursday.

But it was her statements about Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of national secrets, that generated the most colorful moments of her three hours of public testimony.

Senators from both sides offered Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, countless opportunities to withdraw her past support of Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records.

And while she acknowledged on multiple occasions that Snowden broke the law, she stood firm in ways that seemed at times to frustrate even some Republicans on the panel.

Gabbard has in the past called Snowden a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.

On Thursday, she repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”

“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”

“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.

She declined to say. Instead, Gabbard repeated that she felt his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.

“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. “I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.”

But, she added, he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”

Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee, and at least two members of the panel, Susan Collins and Todd Young, declined to offer their support after the open portion of the hearing concluded.

While she stood firm on Snowden, Gabbard backtracked on other matters, including her suggestion in 2022 that U.S. and NATO forces had provoked Russia into its war with Ukraine. Asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who bore responsibility for Moscow’s aggression, Gabbard was unequivocal: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war in Ukraine.”

She also said that she “shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime,” referring to Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator who fled Damascus late last year. Gabbard was chastised in 2017 for meeting with Assad in person and later casting doubt on intelligence tying his regime to the use of chemical weapons.

Several senators also raised Gabbard’s past criticism of government surveillance programs, including the FISA 702 authority, which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant.

Gabbard expressed support for FISA 702 and explained her vote as a congresswoman against its reauthorization as a reflection of her stance on defending civil liberties.

“I will just note that my actions in legislation in Congress were done to draw attention to the egregious civil liberties violations that were occurring at that time,” Gabbard said.

But on Snowden, Gabbard refused to back down. Republican Sens. James Lankford and Todd Young presented her with several opportunities to clarify her views on the government leaker. Each time, she equivocated.

“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.

“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”

Gabbard did at one point back off her support of a presidential pardon for Snowden, who now resides in Moscow, where he is not subject to extradition treaties. In an exchange with Collins, she said the DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.

“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”

Collins said after the hearing that she has not made up her mind on whether she will support Gabbard’s nomination and was still reviewing portions of her testimony that she missed while attending a concurrent hearing.

But when asked if the jury was still out on her support, she said, “that’s correct, I want to make a careful decision.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, the committee chairman, said he would move to a vote on Gabbard’s nomination soon. The closed-door portion of the hearing continued on Thursday afternoon.

-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Executive orders signed recently by President Donald Trump state that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs prioritize diversity over merit in hiring, claiming DEI efforts are an “immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”

Some experts in the DEI field disagree, and several tell ABC News that diversity, equity and inclusion programs are aimed at creating a true merit-based system, where hiring, salaries, retention and promotions are decided without bias or discrimination toward employees.

Before the anti-discrimination legislative movement of the 1960s — including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 — discrimination against certain groups was widespread, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“If you were from a dominant group — generally white people, generally men, straight, cisgender, fully-abled — you had a huge leg up in terms of getting employment recommendations, higher pay promotions,” Erica Foldy, a professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, told ABC News.

She continued, “So, Trump and his allies are harking back to this time that they say was more merit-based, but that’s not at all how these organizations operated.”

DEI initiatives — like implementing accessibility measures for people with disabilities, addressing gender pay inequity, diversifying recruitment outreach, or holding anti-discrimination trainings — are intended to correct discriminatory organizational practices, experts say.

DEI experts argue that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are “on the path of creating more merit-based companies, more merit-based firms,” Foldy said, aiming to ensure that qualified people of all backgrounds have an “equal chance of being hired; you’re going to be paid the same as employees at comparable levels.”

“Business as usual, without attention to discrimination, is deeply, deeply inequitable,” Foldy said.

Amri Johnson, a DEI expert and author, told ABC News that the ideal of meritocracy operates under the assumption “that opportunities are fair.” Today, studies across industries continue to show that discrimination against a person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, military background, or other factors continues to permeate the job market.

“If organizations truly want the best talent, companies need to be intentional about how they source and engage with talent,” said Johnson.

Each year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plays a role in hundreds of legal cases concerning ongoing discrimination against protected classes in the workplace.

The EEOC’s 2023 performance report offers a long list of lawsuits it settled or won that year. One lawsuit noted blatant racist graffiti or comments made by fellow employees, paired with the discriminatory designation of hard physical labor solely for Black employees; others noted the failures of several employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant or disabled workers that led to the employee’s termination or job offers rescinded.

One study found that racial and ethnic discrimination in hiring continues to be a problem globally.

“Relative to white applicants, applicants of color from all backgrounds in the study had to submit about 50% more applications per callback on average,” according to research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed 90 studies involving 174,000 total fake job applications tweaked to include racial indicators but with otherwise similar professional credentials.

“Diversity doesn’t go away because DEI goes away. It is an inevitable part of any human community (business or otherwise),” said Johnson. “Not learning how to deal with its tensions and complexity is leaving value on the table.”

Some DEI experts point to research from management consulting firm McKinsey & Company that found that companies with more diversity financially and socially outperform those that are less diverse.

“The most successful companies understand that DEI isn’t just a ‘”nice-to-have,'” said Christie Smith, the former vice president for inclusion and diversity at Apple, in a written statement. “It’s a driver of innovation, talent attraction, and competitive advantage. The question is whether leaders will have the courage to stay the course and hold firm against political headwinds.”

On Thursday, Trump claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.

The accusation comes after Trump signed sweeping orders aiming to terminate “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility” programs in or sponsored by the federal government and its contractors.

The White House argues that DEI programs “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

“Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great,” reads Trump’s executive order.

The order revokes several decades-old or years-old executive actions, including the 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity order prohibiting hiring discrimination by federal contractors and its amendments expanding professional development, data collection and retention opportunities.

The order also explicitly revokes a 1994 order to develop environmental justice strategies that address disproportionately high health and environmental impacts faced by low-income or minority communities.

Among the list of orders that are now revoked is a 2011 order requiring federal agencies to develop strategies “to identify and remove barriers to equal employment opportunity.”

Those in favor of axing DEI programs argue that these initiatives could lead to lawsuits claiming discrimination following the Supreme Court’s ruling on SFFA v. Harvard that disallows race to be taken into consideration in college applications.

The National Center for Public Policy Research has been a strong advocate against DEI, submitting shareholder proposals to reverse the DEI policies at major companies like Costco, John Deere, and others. Ethan Peck, deputy director for the NCPPR’s Free Enterprise Project, told ABC News that such companies should be “colorblind.”

“We’re saying that companies have an obligation, a legal obligation, and an obligation to their shareholders, and an obligation to their employees to treat everybody the same, regardless of their race and sex, and we’d submit any proposal to keep that that way,” Peck said.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.

The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training flight.

“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.

“I had to say that it’s terrible,” he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.”

But when a reporter pressed him, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA’s website under Trump’s entire first term, Trump shot back, “I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.”

When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, “we don’t know” what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We’ve had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”

Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA’s diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he then said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault — and claimed he wasn’t blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.

When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”

Trump called Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, “bulls—,” and said he had “run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity.”

“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. “We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle gave director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard more than a half-dozen chances to withdraw her past support of Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of government secrets, in her confirmation hearing Thursday, but she didn’t take them.

Gabbard has in the past called the former NSA contractor a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.

On Thursday, she has repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”

“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”

“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.

Instead, Gabbard repeated a canned response that his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.

“Edward Snowden broke the law. I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it,” she said.

But she added he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”

Bennet concluded with an impassioned call to vote her down.

“Can’t we do better than …. someone who can’t answer whether Snowden is a traitor five times?” … “I’m questioning her judgment.”

Republican Sen. James Lankford presented her with another opportunity to clarify her position: “Was Edward Snowden a traitor?”

Again, Gabbard equivocated.

She did back off her support of a pardon. In an exchange with GOP Sen. Susan Collins, a key vote on the panel, she said the role of DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.

“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”

And moments later, Republican Sen. Todd Young, a potential swing vote in the committee, asked Gabbard, “did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?”

“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”

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(WASHINGTON) — If she is confirmed as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard would be the youngest-ever in that role, the first millennial, the first Asian American, and only the second woman to hold the position.

But she is expected to face questions in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee about statements she has made that appear to support U.S. enemies and dictators as well as having no significant experience in intelligence. Gabbard can afford to lose the votes of only three Republicans and sources tell ABC News the vote on her nomination is expected to be a close one.

Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., began his opening statement by expressing “dismay” at what he characterized as unfair attacks on Gabbard’s patriotism, citing Hillary Clinton’s accusation that she was “an asset of a foreign nation,” referring, of course, to Russia.

Cotton said he personally “spent two hours” reviewing Gabbard’s past background checks and found them “clean as a whistle.”

“No doubt she has some unconventional views,” Cotton acknowledged, but suggested any criticism from Democrats reflects their frustration that she “saw the light” and left their party.

In his opening statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s top Democrat, ticked through a litany of Gabbard’s more controversial public statements to demonstrate what he called his “significant concerns about your judgment and your qualifications.”

“Now I don’t know if your intent in making those statements was to defend those dictators, or if you were simply unaware of the intelligence and how your statements would be perceived,” Warner said. “In either case, it raises serious questions about your judgment.”

In excerpts from her opening statement, Gabbard confronts her critics.

“The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet. You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November,” she says in the excerpt.

For most of her career, Gabbard has broken barriers. She was the youngest woman ever elected to a state house of representatives and the first to graduate from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy as a distinguished honor graduate. In Congress, she was the first Samoan American, the youngest woman elected at the time, and the first combat veteran to serve — a distinction she shares with Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Gabbard has prepared extensively over the past two months for her hearings, meeting with former DNI leaders, including John Negroponte, the first DNI, and Michael Allen, who led Negroponte’s confirmation hearing preparations. She also has consulted with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, along with Trump allies Morgan Ortagus, deputy special presidential envoy for Middle East peace, and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.

She has sought input from a broad range of intelligence experts, former government officials and lawmakers across the aisle. She has participated in policy roundtables with lawyers, ex-intelligence officials, and national security negotiators, including figures involved in the Abraham Accords.

She also held a full-scale mock confirmation hearing ahead of Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. Former Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chaired the committee from 2015 to 2020, will introduce her.

Sources on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill tell ABC News Gabbard will likely face scrutiny over her past stances on Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, as well as her defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who reached a plea deal with the Justice Department over disseminating classified documents he had obtained illegally. Gabbard said last year on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that “the charges against him are one of the biggest attacks on freedom of the press that we’ve seen and freedom of speech.”

As a member of Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill in 2020 calling for the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked information in 2013 about how the U.S. government surveils the American public.

She’s also expected to face question on her reversal on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a key surveillance tool she voted against reauthorizing in 2020, her last year in Congress.

Gabbard argued that Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between security and liberty, saying that the Patriot Act and FISA have “been allowing for the abuses of our civil liberties and overreach by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies through doing things like warrantless sweeping collection of our data, violating our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”

Gabbard is also expected to face questions past statements about former President Donald Trump including her decision to vote present on Donald Trump’s.

Over the last two months, Gabbard has met with more than 50 senators, primarily Republicans. The meetings have largely served as an introduction — an opportunity to explain her past positions and assuage concerns about her political evolution. A source close to her told ABC News, “They know they can’t put her in a box. She’s not a Democrat. She’s a new Republican. She has very similar, if not 100% aligned, views with President Trump on ‘America First’ foreign policy. That makes people uneasy because they can’t quite figure her out.”

Gabbard, like Trump, is a former Democrat whose policy views have shifted significantly. Her evolution has been shaped by her 22 years in the Army, including deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Djibouti. If confirmed, she will be the first female DNI to have served in the military. She plans to continue serving in the Army Reserve, which is permitted under ODNI regulations.

Behind the scenes, Gabbard has earned bipartisan support within the intelligence community for her willingness to engage with a range of stakeholders. Earlier this month, the families of two former ISIS and al-Qaeda hostages publicly endorsed her nomination in a letter shared with ABC News. The parents of Kayla Mueller, who was killed by ISIS, and Theo Padnos, a former al-Qaeda hostage, argued that the radicalization of individuals — such as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his truck into a crowd of New Orleans New Year’s revelers — underscores the need for Gabbard’s swift confirmation.

The letter of support came under scrutiny by some lawmakers after rebels toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard met with Assad in Syria in 2017, which remains a point of controversy. She has previously defended the trip as a “fact-finding mission” and has maintained that U.S. intervention in Syria empowered extremist groups.

Gabbard warned in the same year that she was concerned that toppling Assad’s regime could lead to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and “completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria.”

“I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it,” Gabbard said in a 2017 statement. “We should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war.”

Padnos, who was kidnapped by the al-Nusra Front in 2012 and held for nearly two years, said Gabbard’s willingness to engage with hostage families compelled him to speak out.

“This is a woman with deep compassion for the victims of terrorism and the courage to get things done,” he told ABC News. “Nobody else has offered their help — except Tulsi.”

Gabbard told ABC News that she was “honored and humbled by that statement of support.”

She has also received backing from law enforcement. The National Sheriffs’ Association endorsed her nomination, citing her commitment to bridging intelligence gaps between federal agencies and local authorities. In a statement, the group praised Gabbard’s pledge to give sheriffs “a seat at the table” in national security discussions.

Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, wrote “Gabbard has demonstrated a commitment to addressing the critical disconnect between our intelligence agencies and local law enforcement in preparing for sophisticated and pervasive threats.”

A source close to Gabbard told ABC News that her focus as director of national intelligence will be on restoring trust in the intelligence community and reforming what is and isn’t classified. Specifically, she aims to ensure that the intelligence provided to the Senate and White House is not information already available to lawmakers through media outlets. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have expressed concern about the overclassification of information.

The source added that Gabbard intends to provide more accurate, raw intelligence to help lawmakers make informed decisions, rather than relying on overclassified data. She also plans to streamline the process for security clearances and return ODNI to its original mission — leading the intelligence community by fostering integration, collaboration and innovation.

Her allies argue that her outsider perspective will help modernize the intelligence community — though critics remain skeptical of her lack of traditional experience.

Thursday’s hearing will test whether Gabbard can win over skeptics — or if her controversial past will derail her bid to become the nation’s top intelligence officer.
 

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(WASHINGTON) — Transgender service members represented by LGBTQ advocacy groups on Tuesday filed suit against the White House executive order that bans transgender people from serving in the military.

The order signed late Monday rescinded Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly according to their gender identity. The order said the “assertion” that one might identify as transgender would be a “falsehood … not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

Space Force Col. Bree Fram, a transgender woman who came out and transitioned while serving, told ABC News that banning transgender individuals from serving would bring a “collective harm to our national securit

Transgender troops “are meeting or exceeding the high standards the military has set for performance, and they’re doing so here at home, around the world, and in every service, every specialty that the military has to offer,” Fram said, who was speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the Pentagon.

According to the suit filed Tuesday by plaintiffs represented by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the order directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to reverse the current accession and retention standards for military service and to adopt instead a policy that transgender status is incompatible with ‘high standards'” that the executive order lays out.

Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal who represented plaintiffs who sued and temporarily blocked a similar order in 2017 in the first Trump administration, called the new order “cruel” and said it “compromises the safety of our country.”

She told ABC News the order “will force transgender service members to look over their shoulder” and “stamp them with [a] badge of inferiority.”

Buchert said her firm and the Human Rights Campaign also intend to file suit.

“We have been here before…as we promised then, so do we now: we will sue,” Buchert said.

Buchert said transgender troops will now “worry about…whether they’re going to have to end their illustrious military careers by being drummed out of the military.”

“Trans military folks have been serving now for 10 years, openly and proudly and deploying to austere environments and meeting every service-based standard that their peers can meet,” said Buchert, who is a veteran.

The executive order, paired with another that demands the dissolution of diversity, equity, and inclusion “bureaucracy” in the Defense Department, came on Hegseth’s first day of work at the Pentagon.

The Pentagon said in a statement to ABC News that it “will fully execute and implement all directives outlined” in all executive orders from the president.

The executive order does not make reference to transgender individuals. It directs the Pentagon to update guidelines around medical standards for individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a precursor to transition care that affirms one’s gender.

According to a Defense official, 4,240 military personnel who are currently serving are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Over a 10-year period since 2014, only a slightly higher total number of service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria — 5,773.

Over that period, roughly 3,200 received gender-affirming hormone therapy, the official said, and about 1,000 received gender-affirming surgery.

The cost for both — as well as psychotherapy and other treatments over the last decade — was $52 million, or over $5 million per year.

Trump as a candidate said he would take aim at “transgender insanity” as president. The order says the military must root out “ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.”

The logic around cohesion is familiar, Buchert said.

“We’ve seen this as a country on many occasions. We’re still correcting improper discharges for people that were, you know, drummed out of the military based on discriminatory motives in the past,” she said.

Cassie Byard, a Navy veteran who served with a service member who was transgender, said she “never saw any adverse effect on readiness or cohesion.”

Fram believes openness about her identity has made her unit more cohesive.

“My being authentic is actually reflected back to me and builds the strong bonds of teamwork that we need at the military to succeed, because we need everyone to be able to bring their best self to work,” she said.

While the order brings a “period of uncertainty” as the Pentagon weighs updates to medical guidelines over a two-month window to implement it, Fram said “my job right now, and the job of every transgender service member, is simply to do our duty. It’s to lace up our boots and get to work and accomplish the mission that we’ve been given.”

“We swore an oath to uphold the duties that we’ve been given, [to] support the Constitution,” she added. “And we’re going to continue to do so, unless told otherwise.”

-ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — In response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the Pentagon’s intelligence agency has paused special event programs and related events, including for Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and Pride Month, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.

Despite being on the list of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s paused events and activities, the memo clarified that Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth will remain federal holidays.

“The Defense Intelligence Agency is working with the Department of Defense to fully implement all Executive Orders and Administration guidance in a timely manner,” Lt. Cmdr. Seth Clarke, DIA spokesman, told ABC News in a statement when asked about the memo. “As we receive additional guidance, we will continue to update our internal guidance.”

A copy of the memo began circulating on social media Wednesday morning.

The affected events, per the memo, which is dated Jan. 28, 2025, include: Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Holocaust Day and Days of Remembrance, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride, Juneteenth, Women’s Equality Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month and National American Indian Heritage Month.

The pause comes as Black History Month is set to begin on Saturday, Feb. 1.

Trump has targeted DEI initiatives in a series of executive orders in his first week in office, with the White House saying that “DEI creates and then amplifies prejudicial hostility and exacerbates interpersonal conflict.”

The memo also noted that the DIA would “pause Agency Resource Groups, Affinity Groups, and Employee Networking Groups, effective immediately and until further notice.”

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(BALTIMORE) — Deep inside headquarters of the Baltimore Police Department, a vault holds thousands of artifacts from a generation of gun crime and clues to a tide that may be turning.

Most of the firearms lining the vault’s walls have serial numbers indicating origin and ownership, but many of the most recent additions to the collection are homemade and unmarked.

“You can buy the pieces online, put them together and you can have a fully assembled firearm that is untraceable,” said BPD Commissioner Richard Worley, who gave ABC News a rare inside look at the cache.

The number of privately made firearms, or ghost guns, recovered from crime and accident scenes nationwide has exploded into an epidemic in recent years, up nearly 17-fold between 2017 and 2023, according to the Justice Department.

Baltimore has been a microcosm of the problem. Just a dozen of the untraceable weapons were picked up by police in 2018. By 2022, there were more than 500 recovered from homicide scenes, mass shootings, drug busts and traffic stops.

But now, the city is cautiously celebrating a dramatic downward trend of ghost guns and what could be a harbinger of progress in the fight against gun violence across the country.

In 2024, 309 ghost guns without serial numbers were recovered across Baltimore. Eight have been collected so far this year, according to police.

Officials credit a series of federal, state and local restrictions imposed on gun kits in 2022 and 2023 with slowing online sales by requiring background and age checks of buyers and banning some kit sales in Maryland altogether.

“I think it’s made a huge difference for not just Baltimore city but the entire state,” said Worley, who added that the latest data prove that commonsense regulations can have a significant impact.

Daniel Webster, a leading expert on firearm policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said the turnabout has been stunning.

“I want to underscore just how sharp that increase was prior to these policies going into place,” he said. “Now you see an abrupt change in a slope going exactly the other direction.”

Whatever progress is attributable to the regulations may now be at risk, according to some experts.

The gun industry has lobbied the Trump administration to roll back restrictions on gun kit sales and filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging treatment of gun parts the same as fully assembled firearms.

“We don’t sell firearms. So my company will never have a federal firearms license and therefore will never perform the NICS background checks,” said Cody Wilson, owner and founder of Defense Distributed, one of the largest do-it-yourself gun kit and 3D gun blueprint manufacturers.

Wilson is a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case this spring that will decide whether federal restrictions on gun kits, such as requiring background checks and serialization, should be struck down. The justices are expected to rule by the end of June.

“We’ve been developing technology in this direction, digital and physical or mechanical technologies, to help you make firearms, design your own firearms, reproduce your own firearms,” he said, adamant that gun kit manufacturers will continue to push boundaries of the law.

Ghost guns assembled from parts kits purchased online or manufactured by at-home 3D printing have increasingly turned up in high-profile attacks and mass shootings.

Last month, a convicted felon armed with a ghost gun allegedly shot and critically wounded two kindergarten children on a school playground in California. That same day in New York City, a man equipped with a homemade gun allegedly assassinated the UnitedHealthcare CEO on a sidewalk.

“Anyone, a felon, a teenager, anybody could order a kit online and within an hour and some handy instructions from YouTube put together their own working firearm,” Webster said. “It goes around every law, federal and state, that has been designed to keep guns out of people that it’s broadly agreed are too dangerous to have them.”

And it’s not just bad guys.

Until recently, do-it-yourself gun kits have been especially popular among teenagers who are not old enough to buy firearms in stores legally and instead obtain a gun kit online with only a credit card.

“This industry is really undermining parents’ ability to keep their kids safe and arming teenagers in a way that the laws are really set up to prevent,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, a gun safety advocacy group.

Ghost gun violence has devastated families in nearly every state: a 15-year-old killed at a corner store near Philadelphia by another teenager, two teenagers murdered in Virginia after a fight on social media, a 10th grader nearly killed in a student bathroom at a Maryland high school.

Outside Detroit in May 2021, Guy Boyd was accidentally shot in the face by his then-best friend. He nearly died and lost his eye.

“Ghost guns. It’s in the name. It’s a gun,” Boyd said. “It’s a firearm. It’s projectile. It’s something that can take somebody’s life or almost take somebody’s life, in my scenario.”

Worley, of the BPD, said Baltimore is hopeful that the reduction in ghost gun violence since the recently implemented layers of restrictions won’t be fleeting.

“There were so many on the street that it’s going to take us years to get rid of them,” he said of the untraceable guns. “But our men and women work every single day tirelessly to take them off the street.”

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(WASHINGTON) — If she is confirmed as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard would be the youngest-ever in that role, the first millennial, the first Asian American, and only the second woman to hold the position.

But she is expected to face questions in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee about statements she has made that appear to support U.S. enemies and dictators as well as having no significant experience in intelligence. Gabbard can only afford to lose the votes of three Republicans and sources tell ABC News the vote on her nomination is expected to be a close one.

In excerpts from her opening statement, Gabbard confronts her critics.

“The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet. You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November,” she says in the excerpt.

For most of her career, Gabbard has broken barriers. She was the youngest woman ever elected to a state house of representatives and the first to graduate from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy as a distinguished honor graduate. In Congress, she was the first Samoan American, the youngest woman elected at the time, and the first combat veteran to serve — a distinction she shares with Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Gabbard has prepared extensively over the past two months for her hearings, meeting with former DNI leaders, including John Negroponte, the first DNI, and Michael Allen, who led Negroponte’s confirmation hearing preparations. She also has consulted with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, along with Trump allies Morgan Ortagus, deputy special presidential envoy for Middle East peace, and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.

She has sought input from a broad range of intelligence experts, former government officials and lawmakers across the aisle. She has participated in policy roundtables with lawyers, ex-intelligence officials, and national security negotiators, including figures involved in the Abraham Accords.

She also held a full-scale mock confirmation hearing ahead of Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. Former Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chaired the committee from 2015 to 2020, will introduce her.

Sources on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill tell ABC News Gabbard will likely face scrutiny over her past stances on Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, as well as her defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who reached a plea deal with the Justice Department over disseminating classified documents he had obtained illegally. Gabbard said last year on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that “the charges against him are one of the biggest attacks on freedom of the press that we’ve seen and freedom of speech.”

As a member of Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill in 2020 calling for the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked information in 2013 about how the U.S. government surveils the American public.

She’s also expected to face question on her reversal on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a key surveillance tool she voted against reauthorizing in 2020, her last year in Congress.

Gabbard argued that Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between security and liberty, saying that the Patriot Act and FISA have “been allowing for the abuses of our civil liberties and overreach by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies through doing things like warrantless sweeping collection of our data, violating our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”

Gabbard is also expected to face questions past statements about former President Donald Trump including her decision to vote present on Donald Trump’s.

Over the last two months, Gabbard has met with more than 50 senators, primarily Republicans. The meetings have largely served as an introduction — an opportunity to explain her past positions and assuage concerns about her political evolution. A source close to her told ABC News, “They know they can’t put her in a box. She’s not a Democrat. She’s a new Republican. She has very similar, if not 100% aligned, views with President Trump on ‘America First’ foreign policy. That makes people uneasy because they can’t quite figure her out.”

Gabbard, like Trump, is a former Democrat whose policy views have shifted significantly. Her evolution has been shaped by her 22 years in the Army, including deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Djibouti. If confirmed, she will be the first female DNI to have served in the military. She plans to continue serving in the Army Reserve, which is permitted under ODNI regulations.

Behind the scenes, Gabbard has earned bipartisan support within the intelligence community for her willingness to engage with a range of stakeholders. Earlier this month, the families of two former ISIS and al-Qaeda hostages publicly endorsed her nomination in a letter shared with ABC News. The parents of Kayla Mueller, who was killed by ISIS, and Theo Padnos, a former al-Qaeda hostage, argued that the radicalization of individuals — such as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his truck into a crowd of New Orleans New Year’s revelers — underscores the need for Gabbard’s swift confirmation.

The letter of support came under scrutiny by some lawmakers after rebels toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard met with Assad in Syria in 2017, which remains a point of controversy. She has previously defended the trip as a “fact-finding mission” and has maintained that U.S. intervention in Syria empowered extremist groups.

Gabbard warned in the same year that she was concerned that toppling Assad’s regime could lead to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and “completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria.”

“I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it,” Gabbard said in a 2017 statement. “We should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war.”

Padnos, who was kidnapped by the al-Nusra Front in 2012 and held for nearly two years, said Gabbard’s willingness to engage with hostage families compelled him to speak out.

“This is a woman with deep compassion for the victims of terrorism and the courage to get things done,” he told ABC News. “Nobody else has offered their help — except Tulsi.”

Gabbard told ABC News that she was “honored and humbled by that statement of support.”

She has also received backing from law enforcement. The National Sheriffs’ Association endorsed her nomination, citing her commitment to bridging intelligence gaps between federal agencies and local authorities. In a statement, the group praised Gabbard’s pledge to give sheriffs “a seat at the table” in national security discussions.

Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, wrote “Gabbard has demonstrated a commitment to addressing the critical disconnect between our intelligence agencies and local law enforcement in preparing for sophisticated and pervasive threats.”

A source close to Gabbard told ABC News that her focus as director of national intelligence will be on restoring trust in the intelligence community and reforming what is and isn’t classified. Specifically, she aims to ensure that the intelligence provided to the Senate and White House is not information already available to lawmakers through media outlets. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have expressed concern about the overclassification of information.

The source added that Gabbard intends to provide more accurate, raw intelligence to help lawmakers make informed decisions, rather than relying on overclassified data. She also plans to streamline the process for security clearances and return ODNI to its original mission — leading the intelligence community by fostering integration, collaboration and innovation.

Her allies argue that her outsider perspective will help modernize the intelligence community — though critics remain skeptical of her lack of traditional experience.

Thursday’s hearing will test whether Gabbard can win over skeptics — or if her controversial past will derail her bid to become the nation’s top intelligence officer.

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(WASHINGTON) — According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “a perfect place” where the Trump administration could hold up to 30,000 migrants while they await being deported from the United States to their home countries.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare the base to hold what he had earlier said might be 30,000 migrants described as “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

Hegseth, who at one time served as a junior Army officer at the detention facility at Guantanamo that housed enemy combatants from the war on terror, explained that deported migrants would not be housed at that location.

“That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay. The other part of Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlement,” Hegseth said in a live interview on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show”

Over the last week, U.S. military aircraft have been been used to carry out deportation flights, taking deported migrants back to their home countries. The military flights are in addition to the chartered flights that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has undertaken for years. However, the pace of those flights can be slow as the U.S. has to secure commitments from countries that they will agree to take back their citizens.

“We want somewhere else to hold them safely in the interim,” Hegseth said. “Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a perfect place.”

Hegseth described how the base could be used to house deportees on their way to their home countries or a third country “and it’s taking a little time to move with that process and with the paperwork.”

He said that as that process drags on, it is “better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay, which is meant and built for migrants. Meant and built to sustain that away from the American people as they are processed properly, to where they came from.”

“This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus up thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in proper process,” he added.

Hegseth described the grounds of the Navy base’s golf course as a place that could possibly house as many as 6,000 migrants.

“So this is a plan in movement, but not in movement because we’re behind, but because we’re ramping up for the possibility to expand mass deportations, because President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” Hegseth said. “And the DOD is not only willing to, he’s proud to partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”

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