Politics

(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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(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.

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(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.

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(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.

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(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.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday called on the Senate to keep the United States’ tariffs on Canada in place — hours before Democrats in the upper chamber could potentially force a vote aimed at blocking the president from imposing tariffs on the ally country.

Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner are leading the effort to end the international emergency — which Kaine has called a “made up emergency” — that Trump has declared against Canada, thereby shunting his administration’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs. Trump has derived his authority to impose tariffs by declaring a national emergency caused by the flow of fentanyl and undocumented migration from Canada, Mexico and China. But Democrats are now challenging that emergency status.

“President Trump is saying that there is an emergency with Canada. Canada is a friend not an adversary. Canada is a sovereign nation not a 51st state,” Kaine said on Tuesday.

It comes just one day before Trump’s tariffs on Canada are expected to go into effect as part of “Liberation Day” — the president’s plans to roll out sweeping tariffs that he has said will impact “all countries.”

On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed to respond with retaliatory tariffs if Trump slaps additional levies on Canadian goods as part of Wednesday’s expected tariff announcement.

Trump said in a social media post that the U.S. is “making progress to end this terrible Fentanyl Crisis” that he claims is coming from Canada, and said that “Republicans in the Senate MUST vote to keep the National Emergency in place, so we can finish the job, and end the scourge.”

During a press conference on Tuesday, Democrats argued that Trump is falsely imposing an emergency in order to give cover for the tariffs with hopes of raising revenue to pay for his tax cut plan. That’s why they say this vote is so important.

Trump criticized Kaine for his role in the effort to block tariffs.

“Don’t let the Democrats have a Victory. It would be devastating for the Republican Party and, far more importantly, for the United States,” Trump wrote.

Unlike most legislation in the Senate, this resolution will only need a simple majority of votes to pass, and it very likely may. Only a handful of Republicans would be needed to hit that threshold.

But there is nothing compelling the House, controlled by Republicans, to take up the legislation, and it’s almost certain that House Speaker Mike Johnson would stay far away from the resolution.

The Senate vote could get pushed to Wednesday as Sen. Cory Booker continues a filibuster he started at 7 p.m. Monday night. Booker is protesting against the national “crisis” he said Trump and Elon Musk created.

A number of Republicans have expressed skepticism about Canadian tariffs and now find themselves in a difficult place of having to choose whether to block Trump’s authority or cast a vote to try to forestall the tariffs.

Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that he’s unsure whether they’ll be able to defeat the resolution.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Obviously, as you know, and I’m among these, there is concerns about tariffs on Canada and, you know, what the ultimate objective is. If it’s about fentanyl and stopping the drug trade, drug war, that’s an issue obviously that there is a lot of interest. Obviously we want to give the president as much latitude as possible to deal with specific problems like that, but as you know, I’m in a very different place when it comes to across-the-board tariffs and Canada.”

Thune said on Tuesday that he hopes “we’ll have the votes.”

“The president declared the emergency to deal with the issue of fentanyl — flow of fentanyl into this country, not only from our southern border, but also from our north. That’s what the emergency declaration is about. And what this would do is undo that,” he said. “I think the president needs to have tools at his disposal to deal with what I think are national emergencies. And certainly, you know, the tens of thousands of people that are killed in this country every year, because fentanyl represents that. So I hope we’ll have the votes.”

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(WASHINGTON) — First lady Melania Trump honored women from around the world during an award ceremony at the State Department, calling the eight honorees’ love “a powerful catalyst” for their work to fight injustice and advocate women and girls.

The first lady said she is inspired by “the women who are driven to speak out for justice, even though their voices are trembling,” and “the women who are motivated to rise up for their community when others remain indifferent.”

“Through their efforts, they instigate progress for all of humanity,” Trump said while speaking at the ceremony for the 19th International Women of Courage Awards.

The State Department says the awards are given to women who have “demonstrated exceptional courage, strength, and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, and the empowerment of women and girls, and more, often at great personal risk and sacrifice.”

“Throughout my life, I have harnessed the power of love as a source of strength during challenging times,” Trump said. “Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles.”

Among the recipients was Romanian Georgiana Pascu, who has been an advocate for institutionalized children and adults with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, working toward their deinstitutionalization over the past 25 years, according to the State Department.

“Georgiana is a watchdog who defends the dignity of Romanians whose voices cannot be heard,” Trump said. “She fearlessly enters facilities designated as care centers to rescue people with disabilities who are unwittingly held captive.”

Pascu “usually shows up unannounced and discovers the unimaginable: helpless adults and children bound, sedated, starving and, in extreme cases, dying,” she said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he “affirm[ed] the importance of protecting women and girls and promoting their well-being [as] American goals.”

“They also happen to be a strong goal of our president, President Donald Trump,” Rubio said.

He honored Amit Soussana, an Israeli woman kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

After surviving 55 days of captivity and her release, Rubio noted that Soussana “shared details of the sexual violence she endured as a hostage, which allowed medical professionals to document the atrocities that she suffered.”

Soussana said it is an “an honor I never imagined receiving and one I wish I didn’t have to accept under these circumstances,” calling the moment overdue for the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity.

“In captivity, I had no control over my body, no control over my life,” she said. “I resisted as best as I could, but it was not enough to stop what happened to me. The darkness was suffocating. Yet even in the darkness, there was one thing they could not have taken from me: the strength my mother instilled in me, the belief that we must always stand for what is right, no matter the cost.”

The awards honored eight women from as far as Papua New Guinea and Burkina Faso and included a Filipino woman who helps protect coral reefs from illegal fishing and a Sri Lankan investigative journalist whose work combats corruption, according to the State Department.

While the first lady’s appearance marked a rare public showing, she is no stranger to the International Women of Courage Awards. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted earlier Tuesday that this was the fifth year the first lady would participate in the award ceremony.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer were also in attendance.

Rubio noted that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was not in attendance, joking that she was “probably spying somewhere right now.”

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(WASHINGTON) —  The House voted on Tuesday to reject a rule that would have blocked Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bipartisan discharge petition to allow proxy voting for new lawmaker parents up to 12 weeks after giving birth.

Nine Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the joint “rule” — a procedural maneuver to advance legislation — which said the discharge petition by Luna, a hard-line Republican, and other similar bills that would address proxy voting are out of order.

House Republican leaders had said they would take the unprecedented step to block Luna’s petition — the latest move in a weekslong internal House GOP clash.

Luna’s legislation seeks to allow new mothers and fathers in the House to vote on legislation remotely. Luna had a child in 2023 as she was serving in Congress.

Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen and Sara Jacobs introduced the effort with Luna and Republican Rep. Michael Lawler in January.

“I am doing this because I believe this governing body needs to change for the better and young American parents need to be heard in the halls of Congress,” Luna said last week.

Pettersen spoke in favor of Luna’s resolution on Tuesday as she held her 9-week-old son, Sam.

As Sam cooed, squealed, squeaked and cried in his mother’s arms, Pettersen — with a burp cloth slung over her shoulder — pleaded for bipartisan cooperation to “modernize Congress” and address life events for lawmakers.

“No mom or dad should be in the position that I was in and so many parents have found themselves in. It is anti-woman, it’s anti-family and we need to come together,” she said on the House floor.

Pettersen is only the 13th member of the House to have given birth while serving in Congress — and returning to Washington after her son was born prematurely meant she “faced an impossible decision.”

“We have a long ways to go to make this place accessible for young families like mine,” Pettersen said. “For all of the parents here, we know that when we have newborns, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life. It’s when they need 24-7 care.”

The extraordinary move from GOP leaders to block the legislation comes after Luna received 218 signatures on her resolution — enough needed to force the House to vote on the measure. Lawmakers use discharge petitions to circumvent leadership, who determine what legislation comes to the floor.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna have been at odds over proxy voting for new parents. The speaker has argued the effort is unconstitutional and made his case during the closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning, sources told ABC News.

Johnson has argued that proxy voting is the start of a slippery slope that could lead to more and more members voting remotely. Proxy voting was used during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many Republicans were against.

“I believe it’s unconstitutional. I believe it violates more than two centuries of tradition in the institution, and I think that it opens a Pandora’s box where, ultimately, maybe no one is here, and we’re all voting remotely by AI or something. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what Congress is supposed to be,” Johnson said at a news conference last week.

Despite some Republican support for the bill, Johnson said “as the leader of this institution and the one who’s supposed to protect it, I don’t feel like I can get on board with that.”

“This is a deliberative body. You cannot deliberate with your colleagues if you’re out somewhere else. Now, there are family circumstances that make it difficult for people to attend votes. I understand that. I’ve had them myself,” he said.

Luna said in a post on X Tuesday that she asked that the legislation just cover new moms to vote by proxy “and they still said no.”

“The argument here is no longer making sense,” Luna wrote. “They say it is unconstitutional yet they voted by proxy.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar declared that it’s time for Republicans to stop with the “pro-family” lecturing.

“Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family when they’re opposing this uniformly,” he said at the party’s weekly press conference on Tuesday.

Aguilar praised Rep. Pettersen for working across the aisle with Luna as Republican leadership has fumed about the bipartisan effort.

“It’s shameful and terrible. Our members will oppose these efforts, our hope is reasonable Republicans who have worked with us on these issues will oppose effort too,” Aguilar said about the discharge petition block. “It’s clear that Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House. The majority of the members in the House of Representatives would support this legislation.”

The vote comes a day after Luna resigned from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus over her legislation, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.

“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus. I cannot remain part of a caucus where a select few operate outside its guidelines, misuse its name, broker backroom deals that undermine its core values and where the lines of compromise and transaction are blurred, disparage me to the press, and encourage misrepresentation of me to the American people,” she wrote in the letter.

ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.

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