The US Capitol is seen, April 20, 2026 in Washington. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After months of resistance, the House on Thursday passed the Senate-backed Department of Homeland Security funding bill, which funds all agencies inside DHS except immigration enforcement operations.
There was no recorded vote requested.
The measure now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk now for signature — ending the record-long DHS shutdown after 76 days. Trump will sign the DHS funding bill later Thursday, according to a White House official.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Nicole Saphier attends the Patriot Awards, December 5, 2024 in Greenvale, New York. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier to be the next surgeon general.
Trump made the announcement on social media, calling Saphier a “STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention.”
Saphier is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey and a regular medical contributor on Fox News.
According to her profile on the Memorial Sloan Kettering website, she has experience “performing minimally invasive, image-guided procedures of the breast, kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid and lymph nodes.”
Her nomination comes just two months after Trump’s previous nominee, Dr. Casey Means, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee for her confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Means indicated she supports vaccines but stopped short of recommending certain shots.
Means, who has a medical degree but does not hold an active medical license, appeared hesitant to say that some vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, prevent serious disease.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the HELP committee and is a physician, noted that two children died last year from measles and pushed Means on whether she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Means initially stressed personal autonomy and responded that she supported vaccination and that every patient should have a conversation with their doctor about getting vaccinated.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill on Thursday said that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday against the state’s congressional map means that the planned May 16 congressional primaries won’t proceed as scheduled as lawmakers consider drawing a new map.
“The Supreme Court previously stayed an injunction against the State’s enforcement of the current Congressional map. By the Court’s order, however, that stay automatically terminated with yesterday’s decision. Accordingly, the State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map. We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward,” they wrote in the statement.
Landry told at least some Republican House candidates in Louisiana that he plans on Friday to suspend the state’s primaries, according to multiple Republican sources.
A Republican source told ABC News that the governor called one candidate on Wednesday and said he is making calls to all of the candidates that he plans on Friday to suspend the election using executive power. The Washington Post was first to report about the governor’s calls.
The source said it was unclear if this will apply to all of the planned primaries, which include a closely watched Senate primary, or just the primaries for the House that would be impacted by a new congressional map.
ABC News has reached out to Landry’s office and the office of the Louisiana secretary of state.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday reverses lower court decisions that said Louisiana’s map, drawn after the 2020 census, violated the Voting Rights Act because only one of six districts was majority Black. More than a third of the state’s voting age population is Black.
Those courts had ordered Louisiana to add a second majority-Black district, a process which in turn explicitly relied on race. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that move infringed on the rights of white voters under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Absentee ballots in Louisiana have already been sent out, and votes have likely been cast, although early voting in person does not start until Saturday, May 2. Absentee voting is relatively limited in Louisiana and requires a valid excuse.
Democratic Rep. Troy Carter from Louisiana said on Wednesday at the Congressional Black Caucus press conference that elections are too close at this point for congressional maps to change.
“We are in the 2026 election cycle now. The Supreme Court has set precedent just four years ago in a case in Louisiana, they ruled the district to be unconstitutional, said it’s too close to the election now, therefore we will do it in the next cycle,” Carter said, later adding that “if precedent matters, then clearly this is something that will have to be taken up in 2028 cycle, not the 2026.”
But the Louisiana’s existing map cannot be used, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Technically the state could revert back to its original 2022 map with one majority-Black district or redraw a new map entirely. Some legal experts have argued Louisiana could still keep its current map for the May primaries.
On Thursday, Murrill put in a filing with the Supreme Court saying, “Louisiana currently ‘is prohibited from using SB8’s map of congressional districts for any election’. The Governor and Attorney General are thus working with the Legislature– which is in session until June 1 — to immediately produce a constitutional map and electoral process for Louisiana.”
On Wednesday, Landry praised the ruling, but declined to say if it would have an impact on those primaries or not.
“Look, I think that anyone who jumps to conclusions right now — I think it’s going to take us at least 24 hours to really pore through the opinion to understand what exactly that opinion is telling us,” he told reporters. But he left the option open to a map redraw: “I mean, look, the Supreme Court picked an interesting time to be able to drop that on us… the court decides to give it to us on the eve of the election. What are they telling us? Are they telling us we have to draw? Telling us we don’t have to draw?”
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
A man named Cole Allen, who appears to be the same person as the suspect in the shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 25, 2026, is interviewed by KABC in Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
Allen, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, appeared calm and did not speak during the hearing.
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea and is set to return to court on May 11.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
In an overnight court filing, Allen’s attorneys questioned what evidence the government has to determine Allen fired his weapon.
According to U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, “We know [Allen] fired off that 12-gauge shotgun one time.”
“The cartridge was still in the weapon. He fired that gun in the direction of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro told Fox News on Thursday. “The Secret Service officer fired his weapon five times and we know that based on the number of bullets that were left in the weapon.”
The Secret Service agent did not shoot himself, she said.
“We’re waiting for the official ballistics test, but at the same time we filed papers in court this morning for the detention hearing today indicating that this defendant was calculated, he was premeditated and he had every intention of killing the president and anyone who got in his way,” she said.
Pirro said Allen will face additional charges. She also said investigators are searching for anyone he might’ve threatened by name.
Allen’s court appearance came a day after federal prosecutors filed a detention memo, supporting their request for a judge to hold the defendant in custody pending trial.
“The defendant attempted to kill the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The crimes with which the defendant is charged are among the most serious in the United States Code, and the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,” prosecutors wrote.
Under what prosecutors titled in court records as “The Defendant’s Assassination Plan,” prosecutors cited his writings in which he allegedly laid out his plan to target top members of the Trump administration, according to the memo.
The suspect also sent a prescheduled email to his employer minutes before launching the attack, in which he allegedly apologized for his “unprofessionality [sic],” according to a pretrial detention memo prosecutors filed in federal court on Wednesday.
“Consider me to be submitting my resignation effective immediately (if it matters.),” Cole allegedly wrote in the email, according to the memo.
The tutoring company C2 Education, where Allen purportedly worked, said they are cooperating “fully” with law enforcement and denounced the “horrifying incident” at the correspondents’ Dinner, but omitted details of Allen’s work history.
“We were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” the tutoring company said in a statement on Sunday. “We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
The booking photo for Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson. (Jefferson Parish Jail)
(NEW ORLEANS) — A Louisiana sheriff has been indicted on over two dozen felony counts following a brazen jailbreak last year that saw 10 inmates escape from a New Orleans detention center, officials announced Wednesday.
A special grand jury indicted Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson on 30 felony counts, according to the Louisiana Attorney General’s office.
Bianka Brown, the chief financial officer for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, was also indicted on 20 felony counts, the office said.
“While Sheriff Hutson did not personally open the doors of the jail for the escapees, her refusal to comply with basic legal requirements and to take even minimal precautions in the discharge of her duties directly contributed to and enabled the escape,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.
Hutson was indicted on 14 counts of malfeasance in office and four counts of conspiracy to commit malfeasance in office. Additional counts included filing or maintaining false public records and obstruction of justice. A judge set her bond at $300,000.
Brown was indicted on similar charges and her bond was set at $200,000.
Both were booked into the Jefferson Parish Jail last night for security reasons and have since bonded out.
During a status hearing Thursday morning, they surrendered their passports and were told not to leave Louisiana.
Their attorneys declined to comment to ABC News New Orleans affiliate WGNO.
Murrill requested that Orleans Parish convene the special grand jury following the May 16, 2025, jailbreak, her office said.
Authorities said the 10 inmates escaped from the Orleans Justice Center in the early morning hours after climbing through a hole behind a toilet. Their disappearance was not noticed for several hours and touched off a massive manhunt.
Three of the 10 inmates who escaped were apprehended in New Orleans within the first 24 hours of the jailbreak. Others were captured in the following days, including in Baton Rouge and Texas.
The ninth inmate, Antoine Massey, was located in New Orleans in late June 2025 after the sheriff’s office said it received a tip. Louisiana authorities were investigating a video circulating online earlier that month that appeared to show Massey pleading to rappers and President Donald Trump to help him while he was still on the run.
The tenth and final inmate, Derrick Groves, was apprehended following a “brief stand-off” in Atlanta in October 2025, police said.
Over a dozen people were arrested on suspicion of helping the escapees, including another inmate in the jail and a jail maintenance worker who is accused of shutting off water to the toilet, allowing escapees to remove it.
“Nearly a year ago, I made a commitment to the people of New Orleans and the people of our state that those responsible for the Orleans Parish Prison break would be held accountable,” Murrill said in a statement. “Since that day, through the hard work of my office, along with the Louisiana State Police and our many federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, every escapee is behind bars, and others who facilitated and enabled the escape are currently being prosecuted.”
Hutson ran for reelection last year but drew just 17% of the vote. In a final speech to her staff on Tuesday, she said that over the past four years, the sheriff’s office has become a “stronger, more accountable and definitely more modern organization.”
She acknowledged the jailbreak while talking with reporters, saying, “It’s completely overshadowed the hard work.”
“It’s not going to define me,” she added. “That whole story hasn’t been told yet, but I hope it is told.”
Orleans Parish Sheriff-elect Michelle Woodfork will be sworn in on Monday. Murrill said she will continue to work with Woodfork “on how to improve operations, secure the facility, and build in basic financial oversight that complies with state law.”
A man named Cole Allen, who appears to be the same person as the suspect in the shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 25, 2026, is interviewed by KABC in Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
The government argued earlier that Allen poses a grave risk of danger to the public for allegedly seeking to carry out an attack at Saturday’s dinner.
“This was a planned attack of unfathomable malice that risked the lives of hundreds of people whose only transgression was attending an annual event celebrating the media and featuring the President of the United States,” prosecutors said in a filing on Wednesday. “It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.”
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office after signing an Executive Order April 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump doubled down on his claim that the term “86” is a “mob term” for a killing as former FBI Director James Comey faces a federal indictment over a social media post of seashells arranged to read “86 47.”
“’86’ is a mob term for ‘kill him.’ They say 86 him! ’86 47′ means ‘kill President Trump,'” Trump wrote in a social media post Wednesday night, before going on to assail Comey as a “Dirty Cop” who “knows this full well!”
Comey, who was indicted on Tuesday by a federal grand jury in North Carolina, made an initial court appearance on Wednesday after self-surrendering to law enforcement at the courthouse in the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey did not enter a plea.
The former FBI director, who was fired in 2017 by Trump during the president’s first term, faces one charge of threats against the president and successors, and one charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.
The indictment centers on a controversy that erupted nearly a year ago when Comey, in a since-deleted Instagram post, shared a picture showing the numbers “86 47” written in seashells on the beach with the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
“EIGHT MILES OUT, SIX FEET DOWN! Didn’t he also lie to the FBI about this??? I think so!” Trump said on Wednesday night, describing his apparent interpretation of what the eight and six represent.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary, which lists several definitions of “eighty-six,” says the most common use for the informal saying is to describe a way “to refuse to serve” or “to eject or ban” a customer from a restaurant or bar. The dictionary says it’s often used as a way to say something has been removed. The American Heritage dictionary says the term may have derived as a rhyming slang for “nix.”
The origin of the president’s assertion that the term comes from the mob is unclear. A search of scripts from the American Film Institute’s top 10 gangster films shows no instance of the phrase being used, despite Trump referring reporters to mob movies on Wednesday.
“You ever see the movies? ’86 ’em’ — the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, ’86 ’em.’ That means kill ’em. It’s — I think of it as a mob term,” he said.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said he did some of his own research on the term.
“I searched to the end of the internet last night, I can’t find one example where the number 86 had anything to do with any violent threat. So hopefully there’s more to it than just the picture in the sand,” Tillis told reporters on Wednesday. “Otherwise, I just think it’s another example of where we’re going to regret this because we’re setting a fairly low bar and political physics, like I’ve said around here for years, is what it is. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.”
Tillis later added, “maybe there’s deep history in the use of this word and communicating threats. I just can’t find it anywhere.”
The Department of Justice in announcing that the indictment that had been handed up said that “a reasonable recipient [of Comey’s image] who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”
And while the president has repeated his claim that Comey’s post was a call for him to be killed, Trump appeared to hedge when asked directly Wednesday whether he believed his life was in danger.
“Probably, I don’t know,” he said. “You know, based on — based on what I’m seeing out there, yeah.”
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on April 21, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After drama and delay, House Republicans narrowly approved a blueprint for legislation to fund immigration enforcement agencies, the first step in the GOP’s plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.
The party-line vote, which was held open for more than five hours, was called at 10:39 p.m. on Wednesday after Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leaders huddled with holdouts.
Reps. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Andy Harris of Maryland, Michael Cloud of Texas and Victoria Spartz of Indiana flipped their votes to yes after hours of discussion. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an Independent who conferences with Republicans, voted present.
The final vote was 215-211-1.
The budget resolution kicks off the drafting process of a bill that Republicans said would provide billions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
Trump has set a June 1 deadline for Republicans to fund the immigration enforcement agencies.
Republicans are using reconciliation, a lengthy and complex process, to overcome Democratic opposition.
Democrats have said they won’t support funding for ICE and CBP without reforms to their operating procedures, after two American citizens in Minneapolis were fatally shot by federal agents earlier this year.
DHS has been shut down since mid-February, making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The shooting at the White House Correspondents Association dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday rekindled the DHS funding fight. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the funding lapse a “national emergency.”
But it’s currently unclear when House Republican leaders plan to put a Senate-passed bill to fund the rest of DHS on the floor for a vote.
Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been identified as the man fatally shot at a home in Brookline on Dec. 15, 2025. (MIT)
(WASHINGTON) — The shootings in December that targeted Brown University and an MIT professor were “symbolic in nature,” according to a report released by the FBI.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national and a legal permanent resident who had been living in Miami, Florida, committed a mass shooting at a building on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, before driving north to Brookline, Massachusetts, to kill an MIT professor, authorities said.
Two students died and nine others were injured in the shooting at Brown University on Dec. 13, 2025, and Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an MIT professor, was shot and killed at his home in Brookline by Neves Valente, two days later.
The shooting at the Ivy League school, where the 48-year-old Neves Valente had previously been a physics graduate student, rocked the tight-knit community in Providence.
The suspect was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a storage unit in New Hampshire following a dayslong manhunt, authorities said.
“Based on analysis of the information and evidence gathered throughout the investigation, the FBI assesses Neves Valente’s victims were symbolic in nature,” the FBI said in a release. “Brown University as a whole and Dr. Loureiro represented to the shooter his personal failures and injustices he perceived were inflicted by others over time. By attacking them, Neves Valente was likely able to overcome his shame and envy by using violence to punish those communities that he perceived contributed to his downfall.”
Portugal’s Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) previously confirmed to ABC News that Neves Valente and Loureiro had studied in the school’s physics engineering program between 1995 and 2000.
The FBI determined Neves Valente had no criminal record and the shooting had no nexus to terrorism.
”The FBI has determined that Neves Valente was committed to conducting the attack and had completed his planning,” the report said. “He considered, planned, and prepared for the mass shooting at Brown University in increments over a period of several years in isolation, spanning multiple geographic locations. Neves Valente’s transient lifestyle, long-term planning, and social isolation provided little to no opportunity for bystanders to observe and contextualize the significance of his behaviors.”
The bureau’s report added, “The shooter lacked traditional support, such as family, peers, and authority figures, who would have been able to observe any potential warning signs and contact law enforcement.”
More than 1,327 audio files recovered after the shooting made by Neves Valente outline his thoughts for carrying out the shooting, according to the FBI.
“The FBI believes the shooter experienced a failure to thrive, long-standing suicidality, and his current situation was incongruent to where he felt he should be at this stage in his life. As his failures outweighed successes, his paranoia increased, compounding his continued inability to thrive, leading to him being mentally unwell and committed to dying. However, mental health stressors alone cannot fully explain the attacks that occurred.”
The FBI said they recovered guns at a storage facility used by Neves Valente in New Hampshire that matched the guns used to carry out the attack.
Janet Mills, governor of Maine and Democratic US Senate candidate, during a roundtable discussion with community leaders in Westbrook, Maine, US, on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Photographer: Sofia Aldinio/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday morning that she is suspending her U.S. Senate campaign, leaving Graham Platner as the likely Democratic nominee.
She cited financial resources as a reason for suspending her campaign.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
