Politics

(NEW YORK) — The House Oversight Committee is set to depose Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accountant on Wednesday, potentially shedding light on how the disgraced financier was able to manage his multimillion-dollar fortune.

Richard Kahn served as Epstein’s accountant for over a decade, and some of Epstein’s victims allege he played an instrumental role in creating the “complex financial infrastructure” that enabled the financier’s crimes.

Kahn has consistently denied any wrongdoing and says he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes while serving as his accountant. The closed-door deposition — a recording of which is expected to be released by the committee — could provide a rare window into how Epstein paid for his lavish lifestyle and funneled thousands of dollars to his victims.

While some of the recent witnesses deposed by the House Oversight Committee — including Bill and Hillary Clinton and retail billionaire Leslie Wexner — have drawn immense publicity, the interviews have largely left unchanged the public’s understanding of Epstein’s life and crimes.

By turning to Epstein’s former inner circle with Kahn and his longtime lawyer Darren Indyke — who is set to be deposed next week — the congressional investigation could offer a broader window into Epstein’s life, legal troubles and the complex web of bank accounts and shell companies that comprised his fortune.

Kahn began working as Epstein’s in-house accountant in the mid-2000s and worked for Epstein until his death in 2019. Kahn and Indyke served as the co-executors of his will, and Epstein planned to give Kahn $25 million, according to documents released by the Department of Justice earlier this year.

Following Epstein’s death, his estate was valued as much as $650 million, though the fortune has decreased over the last decade as the estate has paid out multiple settlements to Epstein’s victims.

Last month, Kahn and Indyke agreed to settle one of the last class-action lawsuits filed by victims of Epstein for at least $25 million without an admission of wrongdoing. The estate was last valued at approximately $127 million, according to a court filing last October.

The class action complaint alleged that both men were “personally essential” for Epstein by helping structure his back accounts, managing cash withdrawals, and creating a complex financial infrastructure “created to simply facilitate the illegal sex-trafficking venture.” The lawsuit also alleged that the men helped Epstein facilitate at least three “sham marriages” to obtain immigration status for Epstein’s victims.

“Knowing that they would earn millions of dollars in exchange for facilitating Epstein’s sex abuse and trafficking, Indyke and Kahn chose money and power over following the law,” the complaint said.

The settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing and still needs to be approved by a federal judge. While both men were named as defendants in the case, the settlement will also be paid through Epstein’s trust, rather than by them directly.

“Neither of the co-executors has made any admission or concession of misconduct,” said Dan Weiner, an attorney for both men said in a statement to ABC News last month. “That is not surprising — not a single woman has ever accused either man of committing sexual abuse or witnessing sexual abuse, nor claimed at any time that she reported to them any allegation of Mr. Epstein’s abuse.”

Lawmakers last year began increasing their scrutiny of both Kahn and Indyke following a report in the Wall Street Journal that both men were never questioned by law enforcement investigating Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“In light of the work Indyke and Kahn performed for Epstein and the outsize role they played in his personal and financial affairs; it is inexcusable that the DOJ and the FBI never questioned these individuals in connection with investigations into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” a group of five Democratic Senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel last year. “A failure of this magnitude cannot be attributed to simple oversight or misunderstanding, and it is incumbent on Congress to understand why such a failure occurred.”

Documents released earlier this year offered some new details about Kahn’s role, managing expenses for Epstein and serving in roles in some of the companies that comprised the complex web of Epstein’s finances. According to a 2020 lawsuit against the Epstein estate filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands government, Epstein paid Kahn more than $10 million dollars between 2011 and 2019 for his services.

Ahead of the deposition, Daniel Ruzumna, an attorney for Kahn, declined to comment.

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(NEW YORK) — The Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm is investigating 2020 election results in Arizona, the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday.

It is not typical for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate election results, though the agency has investigated voter fraud cases in the past. The agency serves as the investigative arm of DHS and usually investigates transnational crime, including drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Mayes, a Democrat, told ABC News in a statement, “The Trump administration is engaged in an unserious investigation into an election that took place six years ago based on nothing but conspiracy theories and lies. At the request of local leadership at Homeland Security Investigations, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office provided them with public records from the 2020 election investigation conducted under the prior Attorney General, Mark Brnovich. We were happy to share them, because those materials speak for themselves.”

The investigation by Brnovich, Mayes added, included “10,000 hours investigating every claim made by election deniers, from bamboo ballots imported from China to Italian spy satellites flipping votes to President Biden” and found no evidence to support any of the allegations.

“Those conclusions were true then and they remain true now. There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election in Arizona,” Mayes wrote.

A separate source confirmed to ABC News that it’s believed HSI communicated the investigation to the attorney general a week after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited an HSI office in Arizona in February.

When Noem visited Arizona in February, she was asked by reporters to identify cases of voter fraud in the state.

“I’m sure there are many of them,” she responded, without providing specifics.

A DHS spokesperson told ABC News the department could not comment on “any active investigations,” but said that HSI “is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found. We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”

The Atlantic first reported the HSI investigation.

It is unclear if the HSI investigation is connected to a subpoena from the Trump administration of records related to the 2020 election in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen confirmed on Monday. (The Atlantic reported that the state attorney general’s office did not believe the investigations were connected.)

The records sought under the subpoena are related to the Arizona state Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results, conducted by cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas in 2021. That audit came to the same conclusion election officials in Maricopa County did — that President Joe Biden won the county. Both the Maricopa County Elections office and the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office told ABC News on Monday that they have not received subpoenas.

The investigation in Arizona comes after the FBI seized 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, while serving a search warrant in January. Fulton County officials have sought to have the files returned, arguing to a judge the FBI probe lacked “even the faintest possibility of probable cause.”

Election results in Georgia and Arizona, more broadly, have both been at the center of election conspiracies about the 2020 election.

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(WASHINGTON) — Russian officials denied in a phone call with President Donald Trump that they are sharing intelligence on U.S. military assets with Iran, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday.

“We can take them at their word,” Witkoff said during an interview with CNBC. “That’s a better question for the intel people, but let’s hope that they’re not sharing.”

Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday for about an hour. 

“Yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing. That’s what they said,” Witkoff said. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Trump and Witkoff sent a message to Russia that “if that was taking place. It’s not something they would be happy with, and they hope that it is not taking place.”

“As for further details about the discussions between these two leaders, I’ll leave it to the president to divulge any more of that conversation,” Leavitt said. 

ABC News reported on Friday that the U.S. believes that Russia has been providing Iran the locations of American troops in the Middle East, including aircraft and ships, according to two people familiar with the intelligence.

An intelligence official confirmed to ABC News the U.S. belief that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran but did not say exactly what type of information was being shared. 

The intelligence sharing could enable the Iranians to target specific locations with ballistic missiles and drones, putting U.S. service members at risk.  

Trump himself downplayed Russia’s involvement during a news conference Monday in Florida.

“… he wants to be helpful,” Trump said of Putin and his involvement with Iran. 

Putin has been a firm supporter of Iran as the conflict has unfolded. Putin congratulated the country’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and said in a statement that he reaffirmed Russia’s “unwavering support for Tehran and our solidarity with Iranian friends” in a letter put out by the Kremlin.

Trump said that Putin was “very impressed” with Operation Epic Fury. 

“We talked about that with President Putin. He was very impressed with what he saw because nobody’s ever seen anything quite like it,” Trump later added in the news conference. 

Over the weekend, Trump said any intelligence sharing between Russia and Iran was inconsequential. 

“If you take a look at what’s happened to Iran in the last week, if they’re getting information, it’s not helping them much,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Miami.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said that he and Vice President JD Vance are “philosophically a little bit different” when it comes to U.S. war with Iran after ABC News previously reported that Vance internally expressed reservations about the strikes late last month.

When asked during his Monday evening news conference in Florida if there were any disagreements between him and Vance on action against Iran, Trump said he didn’t “think so.”

“We get along very well on this,” Trump said. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic. But I felt it was something we had to do. I didn’t feel we had a choice. If we didn’t do it, they would have done it to us.”

Trump’s comments about their differences on Iran come after ABC News reported that Vance, who has largely opposed U.S. intervention abroad, made his reservations about the strikes against Iran known internally, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Once it became clear that the decision had been made to move forward with the strikes, Vance shifted his focus to supporting the military operation, a source told ABC News.

This is not the first time Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, has expressed concerns internally about possible U.S. foreign military intervention.

Last year, in the Signal group chat discussing the U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen that a journalist was inadvertently invited to join, Vance appeared to break with Trump and questioned whether the president recognized that a unilateral U.S. attack on the Houthis to keep international shipping lanes open was at odds with his tough talk about European nations paying their share of such efforts.

A few days before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, Vance told The Washington Post that there was “no chance” of a drawn-out war in Iran if the U.S. moved forward with the strikes.

Vance reiterated that same sentiment in a recent interview with Fox News, but also added that the operation against Iran “could go for a lot longer.”

“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective. What is different about President Trump, and it’s frankly different about both Republicans and Democrats of the past, is that he’s not going to let his country go to war unless there’s a clearly defined objective,” Vance told Fox News.

“He’s defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability. It’s pretty clear. It’s pretty simple, and I think that means that we’re not going to get into the problems that we’ve had with Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Ahead of his second term, Trump campaigned on “America First” policies, which attracted his MAGA base. After the strikes on Iran, there has been criticism from within his base — including former political adviser Steve Bannon, who called the it “a mistake not to put America first.”

Trump said Monday that the U.S. is making “major” progress in achieving its military goals and that the operation is “ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.”

“We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they’re pretty well complete. We’ve wiped every single force in Iran out very completely,” Trump said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said the U.S. will end its war with Iran “on our timeline” and “at our choosing” amid mixed messaging from the administration on the timing of the operation and its ultimate objective.

Hegseth notably declined to give a further assessment on how much longer the military campaign will last, saying Tuesday would be the most intense day of strikes yet in the 11-day conflict and that it will be up to President Donald Trump to decide when the war is over.

“The president has set a very specific mission to accomplish, and our job is to unrelentingly deliver that,” Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing.

“Now he gets to control the throttle. He’s the one deciding. He’s the one elected on behalf of the American people when we’re achieving those objectives. And so, it’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. That’s his. And he’ll continue to communicate that,” the defense secretary said.

Trump himself has made conflicting statements on the matter.

Trump told CBS News on Monday afternoon that the war is “very complete, pretty much.” But around that time, the Defense Department’s rapid response social media account posted on X: “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”

ABC News White House Correspondent Selina Wang pressed Trump later Monday evening at a news conference: “So, which is it and how long should Americans be preparing for this war to last for?”

“Well, I think you can say both. The beginning — it’s the beginning of building a new country, but they certainly, they have no navy, they have no air force, they have no anti-aircraft equipment,” Trump said.

“We could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further and we’re going to go further,” the president added.

Trump said on Monday he thinks the war will be over “very soon” and repeatedly called the war a “short-term excursion.”

Trump and his top officials have outlined four objectives of the military offensive: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities; annihilate their Navy; ensure they can never obtain a nuclear weapon; and prevent the Iranian regime from arming and funding terrorism outside its borders. But broader goals on what comes after the fighting ends remains unclear.

Trump’s signaled he could declare the military campaign a success at any time, even as the Iranian regime remains in power and Iran still maintains its enriched uranium stockpile. Trump’s repeatedly said Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon — and over the weekend said he was not ruling out the possible use of U.S. ground troops in Iran, but said that they would be used only “for a very good reason.”

The president has also sent mixed messages on regime change, and how involved the U.S. intends to be in what new leadership will take control in Tehran.

Trump expressed disappointment in the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike at the beginning of the war.

In a phone interview with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Sunday, Trump said the new leader is “going to have to get approval from us.”

“If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it,” Trump told ABC.

Hegseth, though, on Tuesday vowed the U.S. would not be involved in “mission creep.”

“This is not endless. It’s not protracted,” Hegseth said.

“This is not 2003. This is not endless nation-building … Those days are dead. Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance, and an unbreakable will to accomplish the president’s objectives,” Hegseth said.

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(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump said on Monday he doesn’t “know enough” about the strike on an Iranian elementary school that Iran says killed at least 168 people, including dozens of children, but that he was “willing to live” with the findings of a U.S. investigation into the incident.

A newly surfaced video appears to show a U.S.-made missile, a Tomahawk, hitting a building in Iran adjacent to the girls’ school, experts told ABC News.

Trump suggested Monday it could have been a Tomahawk fired by Iran.

“I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, it’s sold and used by other countries, you know that,” Trump said. “And whether it’s Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had more, but, whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk — a Tomahawk is very generic, it’s sold to other countries. But that’s being investigated right now.”

The U.S. makes and sells Tomahawks to its closest allies, including the U.K. and Australia. But it has never sold the technology to Iran or other adversaries. While other countries like Russia use cruise missiles, only the U.S. makes Tomahawks, as the missile experts say appears to be seen in the video of the school strike. 

Israel has already said it wasn’t operating in the area of the school bombing. 

The president faced questions Monday on the Feb. 28 incident during a news conference at Trump National Doral Miami, including his comment over the weekend that Iran was behind it.

“Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing just behind the president on the plane, said the matter was under investigation and that “only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

But pressed on those remarks, Trump said on Monday, “I just don’t know enough about it.”

“I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation. But Tomahawks are –are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us,” Trump said.

“But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” the president continued.

The U.S. military was striking targets in the country last Saturday in an area where an elementary school was hit and dozens of children were killed, two people familiar with the initial findings previously told ABC News.

An analysis of satellite imagery by ABC News suggests the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab was near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps compound but had been separated from it more than decade ago.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, rejected Trump’s claim that Iran was behind the hit on the girls’ elementary school.

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(WASHINGTON) — Ten days into the U.S. war with Iran, Americans are starting to feel the economic fallout as oil and gas prices soar.

Gas prices skyrocketed to a national average of $3.47 on Monday, up nearly 50 cents from last week, according to data from AAA. Plus, oil prices on Monday surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 before falling lower later in the day.

President Donald Trump has dismissed the higher cost, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce it’s “a little glitch.”

“I think it’s fine. It’s a little glitch. We had to take this detour,” Trump told ABC’s Bruce in an interview on Sunday before going on to tout the U.S. military campaign against Tehran.

In a social media post on Sunday night, Trump argued: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”

Yet the cost of living remains one of the biggest issues heading into the 2026 midterms, where Trump and Republicans are seeking to maintain narrow majorities in Congress.

A poll released by NBC News on Sunday found Trump received his lowest ratings in the poll on his handling of inflation and the cost of living as 36% of registered voters approve and 62% disapprove.

On Iran, the NBC poll found a majority of registered voters (54%) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the matter.

Trump, on the 2024 campaign trail, vowed to bring gas down below $2 a gallon. During the first year of his second term, Trump routinely pointed to the drop in prices at the pump, including in his State of the Union address last month.

“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon,” Trump said in his speech on Feb. 24.

Now, gas prices are closing in on $3.50 a gallon and are expected to continue to keep rising the longer the Middle East conflict lasts.

Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live that Americans are currently experiencing “sticker shock.”

“Gas stations are seeing their costs go up in real time again today, as oil markets are jumping, and that’s going to be in another round of price increases over the course of this week, prices could jump another 15 to 35 cents a gallon for gasoline over the next three days, as long as nothing changes,” De Haan said. “And it’s going to be worse for the price of diesel, which could jump 35 to 50 cents a gallon, that would put it close to nearly a $5 a gallon national average.”

Some Democrats are seizing on the price jump to criticize Trump and the administration for the handling of the war.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for President Trump to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to alleviate the financial burden for Americans.

“American families are suffering from higher prices as the effects of Trump’s reckless war become pain at the gas pump and beyond as high gas prices trickle down making everything more expensive,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday. “They cannot afford to simply wait and hope prices come down. The President has a solution right here at home, and he should use it.”

“Trump promised a Golden Age in America. Meanwhile. Republicans are crashing the economy, gas prices are out of control and the extremists are spending billions dropping bombs in the Middle East. You deserve better,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, wrote on X on Monday.

Trump was asked over the weekend if he would use the SPR to bring some relief, but declined to say, instead criticizing former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve. Biden released oil from the SPR several times over the course of 2022 as prices increased due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“I filled it up and he brought it down to the lowest level it’s ever been. We will start at the appropriate time, which is basically a gut instinct, we will start filling up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.

“Biden used them so that he could get some extra votes in the election,” Trump added.

Analysts previously told ABC News that the SPR is a “valuable resource” for the administration to bring some relief to Americans and assuage market fears, but likely wouldn’t be enough oil in the long term to make up for the 20 million barrels of oil currently being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz every day.

Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Sunday night that ships holding at the Strait of Hormuz need to “show some guts” and push through the channel.

Several war-risk insurers have canceled their coverage for vessels amid the widening conflict. Trump said the U.S. government was going to provide some risk insurance and guarantees, and if necessary the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through the strait. 

Like Trump, several Republicans are contending that higher gas prices will be temporary.

“The prices will come back down as soon as we get out of Iran, as soon as we finish turning them into fish food, which will be pretty soon,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News on Sunday.

How long the Iran war will last remains an open question. President Trump initially estimated four to five weeks for the U.S., though he later said the timeline would be whatever it takes.

On Sunday, Trump told ABC’s Bruce: “I don’t know. I never predict. All I can say is we are ahead of schedule both in terms of lethality and in terms of time.”

GasBuddy’s De Haan told ABC News Live that the longer the conflict lasts, the more time it will take to see oil and gas prices to get back to their previous levels

“Every day the situation continues, it could add another several weeks to the recovery time,” De Haan said.

ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Youn and Max Zahn contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Defense Department on Monday identified another U.S. service member who died following the opening wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks across the Middle East, marking the seventh U.S. service member to die in the war with Iran. 

Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, 26, died Sunday from injuries he sustained during a March 1 retaliation strike on U.S. troops at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia from Iran.

“He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved,” Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, the top officer for Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement. “That makes him nothing less than a hero, and he will always be remembered that way. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.”

Pennington enlisted in the Army in 2017 as a supply specialist and was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade at Fort Carson, Colorado. He is set to be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Army announced. 

Pennington was working at a strategic radar installation responsible for early warning against incoming missile threats, a critical node in the U.S. military’s missile-defense architecture, according to a source familiar with the situation.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump attended the dignified transfer of the other six American service members killed in the war’s opening hours, after an Iranian drone struck in Kuwait. All six were killed in the same attack.

Even as the ceremony underscored the war’s early toll, the president and senior Pentagon officials have been preparing the public for the likelihood that more casualties are ahead.

“The president’s been right to say there will be casualties,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in an interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes” on Sunday. “Things like this don’t happen without casualties. There will be more casualties.”

Hegseth cast the losses as a grim but familiar feature of war for a country that has spent more than two decades fighting in the Middle East.

“Especially our generation knows what it’s like to see Americans come home in caskets,” he said. “But that doesn’t weaken us one bit. It stiffens our spine and our resolve to say this is a fight we will finish.”

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senator Andy Kim, D-N.J., is aiming to tackle the nation’s literacy crisis with a new bill focused on increasing children’s access to books.

Kim will introduce his “Open Books, Open Doors Act” on Monday, urging the Department of Education to authorize $100 million in annual grants to states and local communities to combat illiteracy and what he calls the country’s “book deserts,” which is an area that doesn’t have reliable access to books.

“Reading is a powerful tool that every child in America should have,” Kim said in a statement to ABC News. “We know literacy and reading unlocks life-long success in school and out, but right now millions of kids across our country are living in book deserts.”

He told ABC News in an exclusive interview that he feels it’s his responsibility to pass legislation that helps more kids develop their reading skills.

“This is not meant to be a messaging bill,” Kim said, adding, “This is not just meant to put the idea on the table, like, I want to get this done.”

“I want us to be able to immediately be able to benefit the kids in this country as they grow up,” he said.

His legislation aims to ensure every child is positioned for long-term success in school and in life. Kim noted that illiteracy is dire, not only for children, but also for adults. When adults have difficulty reading, it hurts the economy and American families, he said.

If passed, Kim’s bill would use the federal education department grant program to support states’ efforts to combat reading rates while prioritizing the locations that struggle most with access to books and “high quality” reading materials.

Actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton, who for two decades helped young students get excited about literature as the host of PBS’ “Reading Rainbow,” endorsed Kim’s push to provide children with equitable access to books.

“We must ensure that books are easy to find and free to borrow in every neighborhood — because when a child can read, they possess the power to write their own future,” Burton told ABC News in a statement.

The reading crisis is widespread. Recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” found about a third of fourth graders are unable to read above the basic level. Access to books and a decrease in students who read for enjoyment are major factors contributing to the country’s sliding reading scores, according to the legislation and education experts.

Education Department skeptics and government officials, however, believe the agency has too much spending power already — without achievement results.

After a vocal minority of House Democrats and education advocates decried public school funding for lagging national test scores, Education Secretary Linda McMahon noted that continuing to spend federal dollars on the literacy issue was the wrong solution.

“Instead of solutions to confront our nation’s literacy crisis, they [Congressional Democrats] defended the status quo,” McMahon wrote in a recent post on X.

“The solution: return education to the states and empower local leaders to focus on the basics,” she added.

The future of Kim’s legislation could ultimately rest with McMahon, who has been tasked with putting herself out of a job by shuttering the department. Kim, who sits on the Senate’s education committee, has been critical of McMahon since she was tapped to lead the agency.

Kim said he has “deep disagreements” with moves made under her leadership that he alleged harm kids and their opportunities in life.

The Department of Education has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.

On the heels of Read Across America week, the bill supports science of reading programs — the phonics-based reading approach — and early screening and intervention for reading disabilities. The legislation also establishes a federal clearinghouse that would identify evidence-based “book access” strategies to help advance literacy in local communities.

More than 20 education organizations support Kim’s bill, from the American Library Association to Reach Out and Read, a nonprofit organization that encourages families to read aloud together and provides books to millions of households nationwide.

Reach Out and Read CEO Lynette Fraga told ABC News having early access to books at home not only fuels literacy outcomes but also helps students thrive in life.

“If we think about early childhood we think about return on investment,” Fraga said. “We know that if we invest in the earliest years through things like access, through things like meaningful programs and child centered practices and systems, the return on investment is huge.”

Kim suggested that books “open doors” for millions of children. His bill currently has no co-sponsors — and its fate is unclear at this time — but he’s optimistic about support for this issue across party lines.

“I hope that all of us can get on the same page about increasing literacy in America and can see the value of that,” Kim said. “We are stronger as a society if we have a more literate society. I think everyone can recognize that.”

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(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at a ‘Shield of the Americas’ Summit on Saturday in Doral, Florida, an event that is billed by the White House as a ‘historic’ grouping of over 17 Latin American countries that are committed to cooperating with the U.S. in taking on the cartels and securing the American border following the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump will host heads of state from 12 nations across the Western Hemisphere, according to a White House official.

They are:

Argentinian President Javier Milei,
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira,
Chilean President-elect Jose Antonio Kast
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles
Dominican Republic’s President Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona
Ecuadorian President Daniel Roy Gilchrist Noboa Azín
El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele Ortez
Guyana’s President Mohamed Irfaan Ali
Honduran President Tito Asfura
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino Quintero
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña; and the
President of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bissessar

“On Saturday, the point of this newfound Latin America Summit is to promote freedom, security and prosperity in our region,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing this week.

“The President will be speaking with the leaders of this country who have really formed a historic coalition to work together to address criminal, narcoterrorist gangs and cartels encounter illegal and mass migration into not only the United States but the western hemisphere, which remains a key and top priority of this President,” she added.

Trump’s relationships with some Latin American leaders have turned tense at times and his policies have drawn criticism. Some leaders criticized the U.S. raid that captured Maduro as an attack on Venezuela’s sovereignty. Trump has also been critical of Mexico’s efforts to fight drug cartels and traded barbs with the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro. However, following the Jan. 3 Venezuela raid, the two leaders appeared to have patched up their differences. Trump invited Petro to the White House and the two issued complimentary statements.

The summit has shifted in prominence after Trump announced he was removing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from her post and shifting her to a new role as a special envoy for “The Shield of the Americas.”

Noem emailed DHS staff overnight on Thursday, informing them that her official final day at the department will be March 31 and writing, “In my new role, I will be able to build on the new partnerships and national security expertise I forged over my time as Secretary of Homeland Security.”

The summit also comes amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has resulted in major movements in the U.S. energy markets.

To combat the spikes in crude oil prices, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday on Fox that the U.S. was “drilling expeditiously here at home” and tapping into the new markets in Venezuela.

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