Kamala Harris to blame Trump for abortion bans during Arizona visit
CBSN
Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Tucson Friday to cast former President Donald Trump as the architect of the restrictive abortion bans emerging nationwide in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down the federal right to an abortion.
Harris is making her second trip to the battleground state of Arizona this year, days after the state Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.
"Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis," Harris is expected to say, according to an excerpt of her prepared remarks. "And that's not a fact he hides. In fact, he brags about it." And a second Trump term "would be even worse," Harris will warn.
More than 2 million federal employees face a looming deadline: By midnight on Thursday, they must decide whether to accept a "deferred resignation" offer from the Trump administration. If workers accept, according to a White House plan, they would continue getting paid through September but would be excused from reporting for duty. But if they opt to keep their jobs, they could get fired.
More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.