Politics

WASHINGTON — It was the first White House Faith Office summit with business leaders, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from using expletives and charged language against his foes in a room full of business leaders who contribute to faith-based charitable work.

For nearly an hour, Trump rambled about multiple topics his administration has tackled so far, ranging from tariffs to transgender people in sports while veering into tangents about his previous legal battles and first administration.

He spent little time, however, getting into the specifics of his newly established Faith Office.

Trump touted recent actions he made limiting the participation of transgender women in women’s sports, arguing how only two genders are recognized in America.

“We’ve restored the fundamental principle that God created two genders, male and female, that was a tough one. And we’re defending parents’ rights where the parents’ rights have been taken away from them in schools. You look at some of these school boards, it’s like they’re brutal dictatorships. And we brought it all back.”

The crowd cheered at Trump’s rhetoric; however, transgender advocates have argued how notions like that hurt the transgender community.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”

In his freewheeling speech, Trump argued he was centering American culture around faith in his freewheeling speech, heavily criticizing Democrats as unfaithful.

“I’ll tell you religion took a big hit because of the way they treated all of us,” Trump said of Democrats. “And, we now have a confident nation, an optimistic nation, and we have one nation under God. And we’ll always keep that term.”

Trump also directly attacked former President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, arguing without evidence that Biden wasn’t faithful enough and sought to persecute religious leaders.

“I think one of the reasons we won so bad is they really wanted to take God and religion out of your lives, and there was nobody to, you know, look up to. There was just nobody. It was – we were freewheeling and we can’t free wheel. No, we have to bring religion back into the country. And we’re starting to do that, I think, at a very high level,” Trump said.

“As president, I’ve ended the radical left war on faith, and we’re once again protecting religious freedom instead of destroying it. And God is once again welcomed back into our public square. It’s very important,” he added.

Trump used profanity while talking about his indictments, calling them “bull—-” and other explicit language throughout his speech in front of the faith-based group.

His attacks also extended to Republicans, calling Federal Reserve Chair Jermone Powell “a knucklehead. Stupid guy,” and attacking the intelligence of politicians like former Sen. Mitt Romney and his former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Trump lightly talked about his faith when reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the attempted assassination on him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump stated that he was saved by God to make the country great.

“It was only one year ago this week that my time on Earth nearly ended. And if you look at that, God was with me. Because that’s something in theory, I should not — I should not be with you,” he said. “I believe it that my life was saved by God to really make America great again.”

On the campaign trail, the president spent time courting faith leaders throughout the country, often refusing to soften his language in those venues as well.

Trump has previously even quipped about how Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse and a Trump ally, would ask him to temper his cursing.

“‘Mr. President, it’s Franklin Graham, and I just want to tell you, I love what you do, I love what you say. I love your stories. I think they’re great, and keep telling them, but they’d be even better if you wouldn’t use foul language,’” Trump told a campaign rally in October.

“So I thought about it, and I said, ‘I’m going to try.’ And I did try, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure I’d make the emphasis quite as good.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has come to the defense of Attorney General Pam Bondi amid an all-out revolt among his MAGA base over the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

But his effort over the weekend to quell the outrage only seemed to add fuel to to the fire.

“What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post to his conservative social media platform on Saturday evening.

“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump continued.

Trump’s post was ratioed, meaning the post received far more replies than likes or re-posts, often a sign of widespread disapproval — despite Trump’s platform Truth Social being home to many of his most diehard supporters.

Some of Trump’s fiercest defenders have continued to target the attorney general, warning the president that the issue is not going away and could cost him heading into next year’s midterms.

“People make their own choices and decisions, but mark my word, the lack of actual results at the DOJ and lack of transparency that translates into incompetence will cost the GOP House and Senate seats. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Laura Loomer, who has been leading the charge for months against Bondi, posted on X.

Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, who endorsed and campaigned for Trump in 2024, was still putting heat on Bondi even after Trump’s post.

“I’m sure it’s a relief for Pam Bondi to hear the president is still in her corner. Unfortunately, huge swaths of the party are not. She repeatedly misled on Epstein. Then didn’t have the courage to explain herself. Suddenly, she’s camera shy & no Qs allowed. Good luck!” Kelly wrote on X.

At the conservative Turning Point USA conference in Florida on Friday, Fox host Laura Ingraham asked if the crowd to clap if they were satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation. The crowd loudly booed in response.

But on Monday, Turning Point USA co-founder and conservative commentator Charlie Kirk said Trump had called him and that he would trust the administration and wanted to move on from the controversy.

Kirk said Trump told him over the weekend that he still backed Bondi, sources confirmed to ABC News. Trump made the call after being shown a clip of Kirk seeming to support Bongino over Bondi at the Turning Point summit, sources said.

Notably, in recent days and weeks, Kirk has not been one of the MAGA voices leading the charge regarding the Epstein files controversy, and has at times been more trying to calm things down inside the base as other voices on the right raise the alarm.

At the same time, Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon pushed for action regarding Epstein, posting online that Trump should “Give Epstein Evidence to the Special Prosecutor — NOW.”

Meanwhile, Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law and a Fox News host, told MAGA influencer Benny Johnson on Monday that she believed there did need to be “more transparency” regarding the administration’s handling of the Epstein case and said she believed “that that will happen,” predicting more information would be released “sooner rather than later.”

Lara Trump’s message to the MAGA base: “But to everybody out there who’s all worked up about it, there’s no great plot to keep this information away that I’m aware of.”

The political firestorm kicked off after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo stating they found no evidence the deceased financier kept a “client list” of associates whom he blackmailed or conspired with to victimize dozens of women. No further charges are expected in connection with their probes into Epstein, the memo stated.

The department also released hours of footage as part of its review, which officials say further confirmed Epstein died by suicide while in custody in his jail cell in Manhattan in 2019.

Bondi, in particular, has come under fire over her comments to Fox News in February when asked about Epstein’s alleged “client list.” She told the outlet at the time, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

Bondi argued in a Cabinet meeting last week that she was simply referring to a file on Epstein.

“I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, it’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That’s what I meant by that,” Bondi said.

Trump in his social media post on Saturday sought to put his own spin on the Epstein files, claiming without any evidence they were created by some of his political foes, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Biden administration.

The Epstein files have also caused infighting within the administration.

Last week, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino had a fiery confrontation with Bondi over how she has handled the review of the Epstein files and the Monday memo, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Sources said that Bongino has recently suggested to allies he may resign.

Trump was asked by ABC News on Sunday if Bongino was still his deputy director of the FBI. Trump responded by saying, “Oh, I think so.”

“I did, I spoke to him today, Dan Bongino, very good guy. I’ve known him a long time. I’ve done his show many, many times, and he sounded terrific, actually. No, I think he’s in good shape,” Trump said.

Trump, in his social media post, insisted that his administration is achieving success and shouldn’t get sidetracked by this. He encouraged both Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to focus on other things he deems as a priority, like voter fraud or the 2020 election.

“LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” Trump wrote.

In another show of support, Trump brought Bondi along to the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday night.

 

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are expected to spend the week rushing to try to deliver President Donald Trump a package that formalizes some of the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by striking $9.4 billion from the previously approved federal budget.

Congress has until the end of the week to send the bill to Trump’s desk, but the path forward for the rescissions package remains a bit murky ahead of a series of critical votes on it this week.

The package, which narrowly passed the House in May, would cull back funding from Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, and would also formalize many of the cuts to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a foreign aid arm of the government that was heavily targeted by DOGE earlier this year.

Unlike many bills in the Senate, Republicans can pass the package with a simple majority of votes. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Monday that he “hopes” to hold two procedural votes on Tuesday that would advance the White House’s rescissions package and then move forward with an amendment process to shore up GOP support for the bill ahead of its final vote.

But at present, there are a few vocal opponents of the package who have made clear that they want to see major changes implemented. And some Senate Republicans are raising alarm bells about cuts that make up the bedrock of the package.

A number of Republicans that represent states with rural communities — such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — have expressed concerns about cuts to public broadcasting that could affect the ability of certain communities to access emergency alerts.

Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been the most vocally skeptical Republicans of the whole package, in part because of the cuts to public broadcasting.

“There is a lot of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does that I support, such as the 70 percent of the money that goes to the emergency fund to local stations. They maintain the emergency alert systems. They do public programming,” Collins said to reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Collins has also joined a number of Republicans in expressing concern about cuts in the bill to PEPFAR, a historically bipartisan and popular HIV and AIDS relief program championed by former President George W. Bush. The House-approved version of the bill would formalize $400 million in cuts to the program as part of its larger swath of cuts to USAID.

Thune said he hopes an upcoming amendment process lessens concerns among Republicans.

“We’re hearing people out, and we are obviously weighing what an amendment process on the floor … might look like,” Thune told reporters at the Capitol on Monday.

Thune said that the amount of support he’d have to pass the package would be dependent on their amendment process.

“There has been a lot of back and forth, as you might expect, over the weekend, and we’ll probably have more report on that tomorrow,” he said.

On Thursday, in a post on social media, Trump threatened to withhold his support for any Republican who votes against this package.

“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions [sic] Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together. Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Collins, a rare moderate Republican in the Senate, is up for reelection in 2026 and has not yet announced whether she intends to run.

Senate Republicans may attempt to modify the bill on the Senate floor to make it more palatable to holdouts, but seriously modifying or eliminating cuts implemented in any part of the package would be a blow to the cuts Republicans want to tout. Also, $9.4 billion is already a relatively small value in comparison to the trillions in spending the government does annually.

The procedural process on the Senate floor is also complicated with limited time to execute. The Senate is expected to kick things off on Tuesday with a vote to move the bill out of the Senate Appropriations Committee to the Senate floor, since the legislation was not formally advanced by the committee.

If the Senate manages to clear a number of procedural votes, they’ll also have to hold a vote-a-rama, during which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have the opportunity to vote on an unlimited number of amendments to the package. These processes can sometimes last through the night.

If the Senate amends the package in any way, it will have to go back to the House and pass again. Under the rules governing rescissions packages like this, Congress must complete work within 40 days of a request for rescission being issued by the White House. That means Congress has until Friday to complete this whole process.

Sen. Rand Paul, one of the conference’s deficit hawks who notably voted against Trump’s megabill late last month due to spending concerns, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he said he believes the final vote on the package will be “close.”

“I suspect it’s going to be very close. I don’t know if it will be modified in advance, but I can’t really honestly look Americans in the face and say that I’m going to be doing something about the deficit if I can’t cut $9 billion,” Paul told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden, in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, said that he personally made every clemency and pardon decision during the last few weeks of his presidency — including those made with an autopen.

However, he and aides told the Times that some decisions for large batches of pardons were based on broad categories that various people fell into, not based on reviewing individuals on a case-by-case basis. Biden said he approved the categories and standards for choosing who to pardon.

“I made every single one of those. And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with,” Biden said of the clemency and pardon decisions.

In December, Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges; commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on home confinement; and pardoned 39 people who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.

In January, he pardoned nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders; on the last day of his presidency, he issued preemptive pardons to potential targets of the incoming Trump administration and to several close family members.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have also focused their ire on Biden’s use of an autopen device to sign pardons and other documents, claiming either that the pardons Biden approved are void because they were signed using an autopen, or that it matters who controlled the autopen when the pardons were signed. Trump has said he has used an autopen for some trivial matters, but criticized its use for pardons.

In June, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether the Biden administration sought to conspire to cover up his mental state while in office, and to look through Biden’s use of the autopen.

Biden defended the use of autopen.

“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”

“They’re liars,” Biden also said of Trump and Republicans. “They know it … they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else.”

He called the furor “consistent with Trump’s game plan all along … if I told you three years ago, we’d have a president doing this, I think you’d look at me in the eye and say, ‘What, are you, crazy?'”

Asked about the Times’ report Monday morning, Trump called Biden’s use of autopen a “tremendous scandal.” The president once again claimed without evidence that Biden wasn’t aware of what was being signed.

“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Biden’s latest remarks come as Trump and Republicans continue to argue that Biden was not the one making decisions to grant pardons or clemencies, or in charge of decisions more broadly during his presidency.

In May, Senate Republicans announced their plans to launch the probe into Biden’s mental fitness while in office, including his use of autopen.

The House Oversight Committee is also conducting an investigation into Biden’s health in office. Last week, Biden’s former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor briefly appeared before the Oversight Committee behind closed doors, where he declined to cooperate, invoking the Fifth Amendment and asserting physician-patient privilege.

The Times said it reviewed emails from the Biden White House that corroborated that it had put in place a process where Biden made decisions before clemency records were signed by an autopen device. ABC News has not obtained or reviewed these emails.

For larger categories of individuals being considered to be pardoned, the Times reported, Biden did not approve every single name, but approved what standards would be used to figure out which people would get their sentences adjusted. Biden himself did discuss pardons for higher-profile figures, such as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, according to the New York Times’ report.

“Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic,” Biden told the Times.

“So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy. We know how vindictive Trump is and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason … I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add,” Biden told the Times.

The Times said there were some small changes made to the lists of people set to receive pardons after Biden had approved the category based on new information from the Bureau of Prisons, and that aides did not bother to run the revisions by Biden before putting the pardons through autopen, although the aides saw that as routine.

Biden further defended the decision to pardon his family members because Trump would “go after me through my family,” he told the Times.

“I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is,” Biden told the Times. “So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. And my family didn’t do anything wrong … and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are expected to spend the week rushing to try to deliver President Donald Trump a package that formalizes some of the cuts made by Elon Musks’ Department of Government Efficiency by striking $9.4 billion from the previously approved federal budget.

Congress has until the end of the week to send the bill to Trump’s desk, but the path forward for the rescissions package remains a bit murky ahead of a series of critical votes on it this week.

The package, which narrowly passed the House in May, would cull back funding from Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, and would also formalize many of the cuts to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a foreign aid arm of the government that was heavily targeted by DOGE earlier this year.

Unlike many bills in the Senate, Republicans can pass the package with a simple majority of votes. But at present, there are a few vocal opponents of the package who have made clear that they want to see major changes implemented. And some Senate Republicans are raising alarm bells about cuts that make up the bedrock of the package.

A number of Republicans that represent states with rural communities — such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — have expressed concerns about cuts to public broadcasting that could affect the ability of certain communities to access emergency alerts.

Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been the most vocally skeptical Republicans of the whole package, in part because of the cuts to public broadcasting.

“There is a lot of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does that I support, such as the 70 percent of the money that goes to the emergency fund to local stations. They maintain the emergency alert systems. They do public programming,” Collins said to reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Collins has also joined a number of Republicans in expressing concern about cuts in the bill to PEPFAR, a historically bipartisan and popular HIV and AIDS relief program championed by former President George W. Bush.

The House-approved version of the bill would formalize $400 million in cuts to the program as part of its larger swath of cuts to USAID.

On Thursday, in a post on social media, Trump threatened to withhold his support for any Republican who votes against this package.

“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions [sic] Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together. Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Collins, a rare moderate Republican in the Senate, is up for reelection in 2026 and has not yet announced whether she intends to run.

Senate Republicans may attempt to modify the bill on the Senate floor to make it more palatable to holdouts, but seriously modifying or eliminating cuts implemented in any part of the package would be a blow to the cuts Republicans want to tout. Also, $9.4 billion is already a relatively small value in comparison to the trillions in spending the government does annually.

The procedural process on the Senate floor is also complicated with limited time to execute. The Senate is expected to kick things off on Tuesday with a vote to move the bill out of the Senate Appropriations Committee to the Senate floor, since the legislation was not formally advanced by the committee.

If the Senate manages to clear a number of procedural votes, they’ll also have to hold a vote-a-rama, during which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have the opportunity to vote on an unlimited number of amendments to the package. These processes can sometimes last through the night.

If the Senate amends the package in any way, it will have to go back to the House and pass again. Under the rules governing rescissions packages like this, Congress must complete work within 40 days of a request for rescission being issued by the White House. That means Congress has until Friday to complete this whole process.

Sen. Rand Paul, one of the conference’s deficit hawks who notably voted against Trump’s megabill late last month due to spending concerns, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he said he believes the final vote on the package will be “close.”

“I suspect it’s going to be very close. I don’t know if it will be modified in advance, but I can’t really honestly look Americans in the face and say that I’m going to be doing something about the deficit if I can’t cut $9 billion,” Paul told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — About two dozen state attorneys general and Democratic governors sued the Trump administration on Monday for withholding more than $6 billion in federal funds for several education programs nationwide.

“This is plainly against the law,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson told ABC News in an exclusive interview ahead of the lawsuit.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. It includes the attorney general of the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

“It’s against the Constitution,” Jackson explained, adding, “It’s against the Impoundment Act. From a legal standpoint, this is not a hard case.”

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says Congress must consider and review executive branch withholdings of budget authority, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The law requires the president to report any withholdings promptly to Congress.

Federal aid for schools is typically allocated each year on July 1, but aid was paused on June 30 in an ongoing programmatic review of education funding, according to a Department of Education memo sent to Congress obtained by ABC News.

“If the courts don’t act promptly, the consequences will be dire,” Jackson warned, arguing that districts face immediate harm as the school year approaches.

Jackson said the funding review also broke the constitutional separation of powers as the executive branch unilaterally halted congressionally authorized money for programs that serve millions of America’s students.

The Department of Education referred questions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which told ABC News many of the programs “grossly misused” government funds to promote a “radical leftwing agenda.” The Impoundment Control Act specifically states OMB should specify the duration of proposed partial-year deferrals. However, in a statement to ABC News, an OMB spokesman said no decisions have yet been made.

Even though no funding has been cut, Jackson condemned the administration, contending the effect of the pause is going to be massive and could result in North Carolina firing about 1,000 educators. He said workforce training, teacher preparation, suicide prevention and after-school programs could all be shuttered.

“Everybody knows when it comes to juvenile crime, you want a safe place for teenagers to be able to go, to be able to keep them out of trouble,” Jackson told ABC News. “Nobody thinks that eliminating after-school programs across the entire country is a good idea.”

The pause has so far included Title II-A grants for effective educator instruction, Title IV-B grants for after-school programming, Title IV-A grants for student support, Title III-A funding for English Language Acquisition, Title I-C funding for Migrant Education and grants for adult education, according to the department’s memo to Congress.

Parents groups, nonprofits, and education advocates decrying the review are also expected to mount lawsuits against the administration, according to sources familiar.

“This is one of those moments where something really big and potentially really damaging could be getting ready to occur,” Jackson said.

“I’m going to do everything that I can to stop it,” he added. “It would be great if parents across the country lent their voices to this cause. I think everybody needs to hear from them.”

The funding pause comes as the administration has threatened to dismantle the Department of Education, reduced nearly half the agency’s staff and made cuts to grants and programs that run afoul of its priorities.

Jackson and state education leaders around the country believe vulnerable students will bear the brunt of any delayed funding. Alabama, California, and Washington state’s education chiefs slammed the review, saying they haven’t been given a timetable on when it might be completed. OMB has not said when it will make a decision.

Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey said this will affect students with the “greatest need” as the stalled funding meets his state’s ongoing educator shortage.

“The loss of funding for those rural, poor, high poverty school districts, is just going to be, you know, more fuel for the fire that makes it more difficult to educate children in those communities,” Mackey told ABC News.

The National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union that represents teachers and other education professionals, estimates Alabama could lose about $100 million if the funds aren’t reinstated, Washington would be out $150 million, and more than $900 million in funding remains halted in California by the administration.

“It is a huge threat to our districts, many of whom don’t have the reserves to cover the balance here,” California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond told ABC News.

“They built their budgets based on the expectation that federal funds would flow, as they have for many years, and so it creates threats for local districts that they may have to lay staff off. It raises threats for us as a state agency that provides technical assistance to many districts. You know, how will we continue to fund these positions?” he said.

Both California and Washington state’s attorneys general joined the lawsuit. The education programs likely can’t withstand a review that stretches into the school year, state education leaders say.

“If we don’t have assurances that the money is going to be there [by September], school districts will have already started cutting programs,” Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal told ABC News. “We will start our school year under the belief that we’re going to go at least a year without these funds,” he said.

Meanwhile, as districts in Alabama return to school within three weeks, Mackey warned some programs may be eliminated for years to come.

“Let’s say we get eight, nine months down the road, and we’re still in this pause situation and the funds haven’t come. Then, I think as we begin to budget for the 2026-2027 school year then you’re going to see a lot of programs cut,” Mackey said.

“People, as long as they can, will hold out. But if they see that this is kind of a permanent thing, that that funding is just not going to be consistent, then they are going to have to go with the more conservative approach,” he added.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden, in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, said that he personally made every clemency and pardon decision during the last few weeks of his presidency — including those made with an autopen.

However, he and aides told the Times that some decisions for large batches of pardons were based on broad categories that various people fell into, not based on reviewing individuals on a case-by-case basis. Biden said he approved the categories and standards for choosing who to pardon.

“I made every single one of those. And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with,” Biden said of the clemency and pardon decisions.

In December, Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges; commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on home confinement; and pardoned 39 people who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.

In January, he pardoned nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders; on the last day of his presidency, he issued preemptive pardons to potential targets of the incoming Trump administration and to several close family members.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have also focused their ire on Biden’s use of an autopen device to sign pardons and other documents, claiming either that the pardons Biden approved are void because they were signed using an autopen, or that it matters who controlled the autopen when the pardons were signed. Trump has said he has used an autopen for some trivial matters, but criticized its use for pardons.

In June, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether the Biden administration sought to conspire to cover up his mental state while in office, and to look through Biden’s use of the autopen.

Biden defended the use of autopen.

“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”

“They’re liars,” Biden also said of Trump and Republicans. “They know it … they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else.”

He called the furor “consistent with Trump’s game plan all along … if I told you three years ago, we’d have a president doing this, I think you’d look at me in the eye and say, ‘What, are you, crazy?'”

Asked about the Times’ report Monday morning, Trump called Biden’s use of autopen a “tremendous scandal.” The president once again claimed without evidence that Biden wasn’t aware of what was being signed.

“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Biden’s latest remarks come as Trump and Republicans continue to argue that Biden was not the one making decisions to grant pardons or clemencies, or in charge of decisions more broadly during his presidency.

In May, Senate Republicans announced their plans to launch the probe into Biden’s mental fitness while in office, including his use of autopen.

The House Oversight Committee is also conducting an investigation into Biden’s health in office. Last week, Biden’s former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor briefly appeared before the Oversight Committee behind closed doors, where he declined to cooperate, invoking the Fifth Amendment and asserting physician-patient privilege.

The Times said it reviewed emails from the Biden White House that corroborated that it had put in place a process where Biden made decisions before clemency records were signed by an autopen device. ABC News has not obtained or reviewed these emails.

For larger categories of individuals being considered to be pardoned, the Times reported, Biden did not approve every single name, but approved what standards would be used to figure out which people would get their sentences adjusted. Biden himself did discuss pardons for higher-profile figures, such as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, according to the New York Times’ report.

“Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic,” Biden told the Times.

“So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy. We know how vindictive Trump is and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason … I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add,” Biden told the Times.

The Times said there were some small changes made to the lists of people set to receive pardons after Biden had approved the category based on new information from the Bureau of Prisons, and that aides did not bother to run the revisions by Biden before putting the pardons through autopen, although the aides saw that as routine.

Biden further defended the decision to pardon his family members because Trump would “go after me through my family,” he told the Times.

“I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is,” Biden told the Times. “So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. And my family didn’t do anything wrong … and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump toured the devastation left by flash flooding in central Texas amid growing questions about how local officials responded to the crisis as well as questions about the federal response — including the fate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Trump’s visit on Friday came a week after heavy rainfall caused the Guadalupe River in Kerr County to rise 26 feet in less than an hour, killing at least 121, including dozens of children at the nearby Christian summer camp, Camp Mystic.

“The first lady and I are here in Texas to express the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation in the aftermath of this really horrific and deadly flood,” Trump said as he spoke at a roundtable event with first responders and local officials.

“We mourn for every single life that was swept away in the flood, and we pray for the families that are left behind,” the president added. “It’s amazing, the incredible spirit from those families.”

The search for more than 170 people still missing continues with more than 2,100 responders on the ground in Texas from local, state and federal agencies.

Meanwhile, local officials are under scrutiny about what steps were taken to adequately warn people and how long it took for authorities to take action based on escalating weather and other alerts.

Trump, notably, hasn’t engaged in similar criticism about how the crisis was handled — as he has done in the case of other disasters.

“Nobody has any idea how and why a thing like this could happen,” Trump said on Friday.

Trump was asked for his response to those who say the warning alerts didn’t go out in time and that more people could have been saved.

“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” Trump said. “I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. There’s just admiration.”

Trump went on to criticize the reporter for asking the question: “Only an evil person would ask a question like that,” he pushed back.

“I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible. Really, the job you’ve all done,” Trump added. “It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘Oh, what could have happened here or there, maybe we could have done something differently.’ This was a thing … that’s happened before.”

Trump later added, “Two words: Unity and competence. If you were to ask me two words that I’ve seen here.”

It’s a marked contrast to how Trump has reacted in the past, including to the California wildfires earlier this year, where he blasted California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local Democratic officials.

Some of the hardest-hit areas of central Texas, including Kerr County, are areas of strong Republican support that voted for Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Texas earlier this week. On Friday, it was expanded to include more areas affected by the floods.

Trump, instead, has largely focused on his relationship with Gov. Gregg Abbott — a Republican and strong ally of the president.

Trump and Abbott met with first responders on the scene on Friday. Abbott earlier Friday said the federal government updated Trump’s disaster declaration for the state to include more counties.

“There has been extraordinary collaboration with the state and the federal government to make sure that we address Texans’ needs as quickly as possible through disaster assistance programs,” Abbott said in a press release. “The State of Texas will continue to work with our federal and local partners to provide impacted Texans with the support they need to heal and recover.”

The White House has pushed back heavily on criticism of the administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service, which led to some to question if staffing levels or forecasting abilities were impacted.

“Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said from the briefing room podium on Monday.

Trump’s also avoided answering questions on whether he is still aiming to phase out FEMA.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, discussed the federal response to the floods during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters, the state does,” Noem contended. “We come in and support them. And that’s exactly what we did here in this situation. FEMA went to an enhanced level immediately. But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration, we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state lot grants to help them with cleanup. And we’re still there in presence.”

Later in the week, though, Noem went after FEMA during the Biden and other previous administrations — alleging the agency has suffered from “gross mismanagement and negligence.”

“The list of famous failures is staggering,” Noem claimed in comments to the FEMA Advisory Council, a task force designed to recommend reforms to the agency, including possible dismantlement of the agency as it exists today. Trump appointed Abbott as a new member to the group back in April.

Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson had yet to visit the affected areas in Texas as of Thursday afternoon.

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The State Department is sending formal layoff notices to 1,107 civil service employees and 246 foreign service officers with domestic assignments, according to internal department communication reviewed by ABC News.

All notifications for civilian service employees and foreign service officers are expected to go out by the end of the day on Friday, according to the communication.

Impacted civil service employees will generally be placed on 60 days of administrative leave before termination, while foreign service officers will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days and then separated from the department.

Officials say more areas of the department were impacted than originally anticipated. ABC News was told that the workforce reduction includes multiple employees within the population, refugees and migration wings of the State Department and within the diplomatic security bureau.

There were also many cuts from the areas of the department that were anticipated, including its energy resources and conflict and stabilization operations wings, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Office of Global Women’s Issues. Other impacted areas include Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, officials said.

In all, 3,000 employees are expected to depart as part of the reduction in force, according to the communication, but that number also includes voluntary departures.

Department leadership previously emphasized that they wanted to handle the layoffs with care, individually notifying each impacted employee; however, many are learning of the change in their employment status by seeing a downloadable Official Personnel Folder that was added to an online human resources portal in the overnight hours.

Employees have been informed they will lose access to the building, their email and some applications by the end of the day. Boxes for personal effects are being distributed at multiple points across the State Department’s campus. The department has also set up “Transition Day Out Processing” stations through the department

Impacted employees are also being instructed to send their teams a “brief update” on their projects, leave any hard files in their work area and to set an out-of-office message.

While these layoffs are focused of the domestic work force, they are based on personnel assignments on May 29 of this year. As such, a limited number of the impacted employees have been transferred abroad between then and now. They are being told to follow checkout procedures at their respective posts.

The State Department released a letter to all employees Thursday evening informing them that the department was officially moving to implement a “targeted reduction in domestic workforce.”

“Soon, the Department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force. First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States,” the letter, signed by Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Michael Rigas, reads.

The letter advised that once these notifications have taken place, the department will go into the “final stage” of reorganization, where the new organizational chart unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier in the year will fully take effect.

Senior State Department officials described the changes as “the most complicated reorganization in government history,” emphasizing that the cuts were largely made to eliminate Cold War-era redundancies as well as eliminating functions that were “no longer aligned with the president’s foreign policy priorities.”

“At the end of the day, we have to do what’s right for the mission,” one senior official said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of sort of unnecessary bureaucracy,” the second official asserted.

The State Department previously reported to Congress that it would aim to reduce its domestic workforce by around 15% as part of the reorganization. However, the senior officials specified that more than half of that goal would be met through “voluntary reductions” — people who elected to take the deferred resignation plan offered through the “Fork in the Road” emails earlier this year.

The officials also said the department did not have current plans to reduce its force overseas.

“The secretary wants to take this one step at a time,” one official said.

The officials also defended the department’s decision to cut some highly trained foreign service officers rather than reassign them.

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