TV News LIES

Recent polling is painting a mixed picture for Democrats as they look to chart a path forward in the wake of their loss to President Trump in November.

Trump’s approval rating remains comfortably underwater as he reaches the six-month mark back in office on Sunday. But while Democrats have scored some notable victories in high-profile elections since then, they’ve been unable to pull away from the GOP as the party hopes to regroup for the midterms next year.

Data experts said Democrats’ position has improved since Trump started his second term, but they still have a lot of work to do to win back trust from the American people and be poised to take back control of the House.

“You can’t just be on the attack. You can’t beat something with nothing,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “We have to show and tell what we would do, but I think that we’re on the precipice of a big opportunity, and I hope we take advantage of it.”

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Twenty-five years ago, students across the country were encouraged to take out student loans in order to attend college, the cost of which had increased dramatically since the 1970s. It was played as an investment: You could safely borrow tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars because a college degree was a path to a good-paying job, so you’d have no trouble paying back the loans you took out for education.

But even college graduates with salaried jobs struggled to pay back loans. Wages stayed depressed and the cost of housing, food, and child care increased, forcing many college graduates with loans to stretch their budgets further than previous generations. Student debt, however, ballooned. At the end 2024, more than 43 million borrowers owed a combined $1.6 trillion.

There have been many suggestions on how to handle the student debt crisis — and it appears the Trump administration has settled on making it even harder to go at all.

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired two top deputies at the Department of Health and Human Services, ABC News has learned.

Heather Flick Melanson, Kennedy's chief of staff, and Hannah Anderson, deputy chief of staff of policy, are departing, according to a department spokesperson and another person familiar with the decisions.

No reason was given for the ousters. The person familiar with the situation told ABC that Kennedy "has every right to make personnel decisions."

Neither Flick nor Anderson immediately responded to an ABC News request for comment.

"Secretary Kennedy has made a leadership change within the Immediate Office of the Secretary," according to a statement provided by an HHS spokesperson to ABC News. "Effective immediately, Matt Buckham will serve as Acting Chief of Staff."

"Mr. Buckham currently serves as Kennedy’s White House liaison at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he oversees the recruitment and onboarding of political appointees across the agency. He brings valuable experience in personnel strategy and organizational management to this new role," the statement continued.

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The Justice Department’s senior ethics attorney, a position tasked with ensuring all employees abide by the department’s moral principles, announced Monday that Attorney General Pam Bondi had fired him.

Joseph Tirrell said he received notice from Bondi on Friday and shared a copy of her letter to him on LinkedIn. The notice did not provide any reasoning for his firing, which was effective immediately, but says he may appeal the decision.

Tirrell said in his LinkedIn post that he was “responsible for advising the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General directly on federal employee ethics” and led a team of 30 people dedicated to upholding ethics across the Justice Department.

His public service career spanned a quarter of a century, Tirrell wrote in his announcement, saying he began as a U.S. Naval officer before earning a law degree and working at the FBI before moving to the DOJ. He’s led the ethics office since 2023.

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A federal judge has ordered one of the organizers of Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally to pay a daily $2,000 fine, after weeks of skirting a civil court subpoena for records related to her role in the events.

Caroline Wren, a longtime Republican fundraiser, was a liaison between the Trump White House and participants in the Jan. 6 rally, helping arrange speakers, coordinate the timeline and boost attendance. She’s among the many witnesses subpoenaed by Capitol Police officers suing Trump, accusing him of fomenting the violence that occurred that day, in a lawsuit that has been pending for four years.

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks issued the order Wednesday after Wren was a no-show at a last-ditch hearing to explain why she hasn’t complied with the subpoena. He said the daily fine — one he said needed to be “stiff enough to enforce compliance” — was his preferred course of action.

“I don’t want to resort to incarceration if at all possible,” the judge said.