The White House is touting a major Trump announcement on infrastructure.
President Donald Trump has kicked off his second term with a flurry of executive actions on immigration, the economy, DEI and more.
Federal agencies are being directed to place all employees working on DEI programs and initiatives to be put on paid administrative leave by Wednesday at 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, legal challenges have been mounted against Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship and action that makes it easier to fire career government employees. Fallout also continues from his pardoning more than a thousand rioters convicted in connection with the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Doug Collins, Trump's choice to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, will face questions from lawmakers as his confirmation hearing gets underway.
Collins, a former congressman, is a Navy veteran who currently serves as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command.
He was the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment, and had defended the president.
After being unanimously confirmed by the Senate on Monday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was officially sworn in by Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday morning.
Rubio joined ABC's "Good Morning America" ahead of the ceremony, where he discussed Trump's pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, TikTok and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Rubio sidestepped directly weighing on the pardons, saying his "focus needs to be 100% on how I interact with our counterparts, our adversaries, our potential enemies around the world to keep this country safe, to make it prosperous."
When asked about Trump's campaign pledge to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on Day 1, Rubio contended the matter is more complex and that negotiations would not be played out in public.
"Look this is a complex, tragic conflict, one that was started by Vladimir Putin that's inflicted a tremendous amount of damage on Ukraine and also on Russia, I would argue, but also on the stability of Europe," Rubio said. "So the only way to solve these things, we got to get back to pragmatism, but we also get back to seriousness here, and that is the hard work of diplomacy. The U.S. has a role to play here. We've been supportive of Ukraine, but this conflict has to end."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this morning that Trump will be making a a major announcement on infrastructure at 4 p.m. ET.
"I can confirm that the American people won't be hearing from me today," she wrote, indicating she would not hold a press briefing. "They'll be hearing from the leader of the free world," Leavitt said during an appearance on "Fox & Friends."
"Once again, President Trump will be speaking to the press later this afternoon at the White House, and we will have a big infrastructure announcement," she added.
Just before midnight on President Donald Trump's first day back in office, two convicted Jan. 6 rioters walked out of the Central Detention Facility in Washington, D.C.
Paul Ingrassia, who is the incoming White House liaison with the Department of Justice, emerged after more than an hour inside the jail and said that Andrew and Matthew Valentin -- two brothers from Pennsylvania arrested for assaulting law enforcement during the attacks on the Capitol -- were processed and had left the facility.
The brothers had just received their sentences of 2.5 years apiece and taken into custody to serve them out on Jan. 17. They pleaded guilty in September 2024.
They are the only two who are expected to be released tonight, according to Ingrassia. However, family members outside of the facility said that they remain hopeful.
According to the most recent numbers from the DOJ, a total of eight pardoned inmates - out of the over 1,500 pardoned - are incarcerated inside the facility.
ABC News has not yet confirmed the release beyond the liaison's statement.
-ABC News' Jay O'Brien, Alexander Mallin, Katherine Faulders and Briana Stewart
