Speaker 1: We are going to start though with the President's first week returning to the White House and his cabinet beginning to take shape this morning. The Senate confirming Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security, just hours after Pete Hegseth was sworn in as Secretary of Defense. All of this as President Trump travels to Las Vegas to wrap up his cross-country road trip after touring disaster zones in North Carolina and Los Angeles. Overnight, the President fired at least 17 inspectors general across multiple federal agencies, eliminating some critical government oversight and sparking backlash, as you would imagine, from some Democratic lawmakers. Here's Senator Chuck Schumer speaking from the Senate

Speaker 2: floor this morning. This is a chilling purge, and it's a preview of the lawless approach Donald Trump and his administration are taking far too often as he's becoming president. These dismissals are possibly in violation of federal law. ABC's Perry Russom has the latest for us.

Speaker 1: Perry, let's start with the President's cabinet taking shape. As we mentioned, Kristi Noem just confirmed after Pete Hegseth's narrow win. What has the response been like, and does this mean anything for future cabinet picks? Yeah, so we are starting to see some

Speaker 3: momentum with Trump's cabinet now taking shape, with Noem being the fourth cabinet member to be passed through by the Senate. Her vote was 59-34. So with her, we did see some more Democratic support than we saw with Pete Hegseth last night with that 50-50 vote that was broken by J.D. Vance. But Noem did post online after she was confirmed saying, I will work to make America safe again. So we are starting to see some Democrats support more of Trump's cabinet picks. We saw that 99-0 vote for former Senator Marco Rubio, now the Secretary of State. But some names to watch going forward. Tulsi Gabbard, for Director of National Intelligence, and then RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services Secretary. They could see some more pushback compared to some of the others that we have seen. More in the line of what we saw with Pete Hegseth going forward.

Speaker 1: Right. And Kash Patel for the FBI as well. President Trump firing 17 independent inspectors general at federal agencies. There's a lot to talk about this. You heard Chuck Schumer just now. What

Speaker 3: more can you tell us? Yeah, so at least 17 have been fired that we know of. These are essentially independent watchdogs from different federal agencies or kind of like checks and balances within the federal government. But the issue that's at hand right now is the way that this was done. We are hearing from some members of Congress who are concerned about the way that Trump fired these people, because what's supposed to happen is the president is supposed to give Congress a 30-day heads up that these people are being fired and he has to give them a reason why they are being fired. That did not happen. And we are hearing that from some Republican leadership as well, including Senator Chuck Grassley, who is saying, look, we want to know why this is happening, why these people were fired. And that simply did not happen this time around.

Speaker 1: President Trump is out in Vegas today for a rally. He's obviously doing things differently. And there are these series of rallies. What's the focus today?

Speaker 3: So the speech tonight is going to be on the economy. So we can expect to hear things like tariffs, which is kind of, you know, this weapon that he has been waving in front of other countries for the past couple of weeks, saying, if you don't do what I want you to do, we will tariff you. He's talked about that with Mexico. He's talked about that with Canada. But with these Trump speeches, you know, he likes to go off script, likes to go off teleprompter, talk about different things. So we could hear him talk about Hegseth, a victory lap on that win last night for him, and then possibly even some of the latest updates from overseas with Israel and Hamas, with some of those hostages being released. And we're going to talk a little bit about that now.

Speaker 1: Perry Rossum, thank you.