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On another busy day in Washington, D.C., another Cabinet pick of President Donald Trump faced intense scrutiny, and the president made headlines as he signed the first piece of legislation signed during his administration.
A busy day on Capitol Hill kicked off with the first confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
In what figured to be one of the most contentious hearings of Trump’s presidency so far, Kennedy was grilled on a variety of questions pertaining to his history of vaccine skepticism, his stance on abortion access, and his push to curtail certain types of food additives.
Kennedy had also been criticized for his argument against putting fluoride in drinking water, among other stances. He also was pressed on past comments about Medicaid, among others.
Kennedy will face a second confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Arguments also continued over a federal funding freeze Wednesday. A memo drafted by the Office of Management and Budget had said that funding for a variety of programs would be paused and evaluated beginning on Tuesday afternoon, but a court had paused that freeze until Monday, Feb. 3.
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On Wednesday, OMB issued another memo rescinding the previous memo, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement on X saying that the federal funding freeze “remained in full force and effect” and that only the OMB memo had been rescinded.
Attorneys General who had filed legal challenges after the issuance of the OMB memo sought a temporary restraining order in federal court on Wednesday following Leavitt’s comments, arguing that there was “continuing harm” in allowing funding freezes to remain in effect while the legality of the orders was weighed.
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Trump also signed the first bill of his presidency on Wednesday, signing the Laken Riley Act into law at the White House.
The bill was named after the 22-year-old Riley, who went for a run in Feb. 2024 and was killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national who was in the country illegally. He was found guilty in her killing in November and had been sentenced to life without parole.
The legislation requires federal officials to detain any immigrant arrested or charged with a multitude of violent crimes, but the bill also included non-violent offenses like theft and shoplifting.
Those inclusions sparked condemnation from various groups and some Democrats on Capitol Hill, though the legislation passed with bipartisan support.
During the bill signing ceremony, Trump announced that he had signed an executive order directing that Guantanamo Bay, Cuba be the site of a detention center capable of holding up to 30,000 migrants who are living without legal status in the United States, but who cannot be deported to their home countries.
The military base had been used to house detainees from the U.S. campaign against terrorism for decades. Use of the base had ebbed and flowed over the years, with presidents at times accelerating its use and calling for its closure.
The base still does house several inmates from the War on Terror, but now could be used to detain migrants under the Trump order.
Washington is also still reacting to the offer floated by the Trump administration for nearly all federal employees to accept a “buyout” as part of an effort to downsize the government’s employment rolls.
According to the Associated Press, workers who opt to accept the offer would be exempt from in-person work requirements through the end of September, and would receive salary and benefits through that date.
The offer also sparked reaction from critics, who argued that it could be used as a way to “purge” workers not considered loyal to the president, according to Everett Kelley of the American Federation of Government Employees.
According to NPR, attorneys are warning that the buyout should be called a “deferred resignation,” and warned that accepting the offer could allow them to be placed on administrative leave or even fired before the Sept. 30 deadline.