Gen. Chris Donahue assumed command of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in December 2024. (U.S. Army)
(WASHINGTON) — One of the Army’s most seasoned and high-profile officers is abruptly relinquishing command next week, according to the service.
Gen. Chris Donahue has spent the past 18 months leading U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the command responsible for Army operations across both continents. He will relinquish command halfway through what is normally a three-year assignment.
“Gen. Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish command on July 2, 2026,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement. “The Army thanks Gen. Donahue for his leadership of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.”
His departure comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presses ahead with a sweeping overhaul of the Pentagon’s senior ranks, firing or sidelining large numbers of top officers with little public explanation, including the Army’s top officer Gen. Randy George.
The command Donahue now leads is also set to be downgraded from a four-star command to a three-star post, according to another U.S. official, part of Hegseth’s broader push to shrink the number of generals across the force.
Officers serving as four-star generals are only eligible to hold a position of that rank. If there are no other slots available, then the only option left for them is to retire.
The Atlantic first reported Donahue’s expected departure.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral, the current commander of the Army’s III Armored Corps, is expected to be nominated to take over the role, according to a U.S. official.
Donahue’s resume includes command of the Army’s elite Delta Force and the famed 82nd Airborne Division, along with extensive combat experience across two decades of war. Inside the Army, he has long been viewed as one of its top officers and a potential future Army chief of staff.
He rose to wider public attention as the last U.S. service member to leave Afghanistan during the 2021 withdrawal, photographed in night vision boarding a C-17 when he was commanding the 82nd Airborne Division.
Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, deputy commander, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, will serve as acting commander, according to the Army.
(NEW YORK) — A wildfire burning in Utah has grown to more than 31,000 acres, prompting mandatory evacuations of homes and campgrounds and completely closing a highway in the mountainous area.
Fueled by drought conditions and blustery winds, firefighters are waging twin battles against two major blazes, both measuring more than 48 square miles, officials said.
The Cottonwood Fire in Beaver County started Monday afternoon and spread rapidly, fanned by wind gusts of up to 50 mph, according to Utah Fire Info.
Overnight, the Cottonwood fire grew by nearly 7,000 acres “due to high temperatures, gusty winds, and extremely dry fuels,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement early Wednesday. The fire remains 0% contained.
The Cottonwood Fire ignited around 3:36 p.m. on Monday, threatening populated areas in Beaver County, according to officials.
Just after 9 p.m. local time on Monday, residents in the Eagle Point and Merchant Valley areas of Beaver County were ordered to evacuate immediately as flames bore down on the area, authorities said.
Evacuation orders remained in effect on Wednesday morning.
Fire officials said on Tuesday that they suspect the Cottonwood Fire is a human-caused blaze, but released no additional details, according to ABC affiliate station KTVX in Salt Lake City.
The Cottonwood Fire is one of 349 wildfires currently burning across Utah consuming more than 105,000 acres combined, according to Utah Fire Info.
The biggest active fire is the Iron Fire burning in Juab County, about 28 miles southwest of Provo. As of Tuesday, the Iron Fire had burned 31,314 acres and was 9% contained, said Al Nash, public information officer for the Great Basin Team 3, a federal agency in charge of the incident.
The fire has prompted numerous evacuations in the area, including the complete evacuation of the town of Eureka, which has a population of just over 600.
Kelly Wicken, a spokesperson for the Utah Division of Forestry, said the blaze started on private land and has now spread across Juab and two other counties, crossing onto federal land and shutting down a highway.
Before the fire, the National Weather Service had issued red flag fire danger warnings for a large part of the state.
Red flag warnings and fire weather watches are in place across southern and central Utah and through much of western and central Colorado, Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Strong winds and low humidity are expected to fuel the existing fires and enable new fires to spark and spread rapidly.
Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on March 04, 2026 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from arresting migrants at immigration courts, saying that officials violated the Administrative Procedures Act in enacting the policy.
U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts of the Northern District of California wrote in a blistering 71-page decision Tuesday that policies by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office of Immigration Review were “arbitrary and capricious” and violated the APA, and he issued nationwide injunction blocking the practice across the United States.
“Because the record before the Court demonstrates ICE and EOIR failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA,” he wrote in his decision.
The Justice Department attempted to curtail the request to only the Northern District of California instead of a nationwide block.
Scenes of migrants being arrested at immigration courts across the country, including notably in New York City, drew scrutiny from local lawmakers and advocacy organizations, who said migrants were often arrested after their deportation cases were dismissed.
Deportation hearings in immigration court are legal proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security in which an immigration judge determines whether a migrant should be removed from the United States. Often, an immigration judge will dismiss a case to allow the individual to pursue legal relief by seeking asylum, according to attorneys. Other times, DHS attorneys will request dismissals if the individuals are not a priority for removal.
In most cases, when a deportation case is dismissed, it is a positive outcome for a migrant. Immigration attorneys ABC News spoke with said the Trump administration has been using dismissals to detain people at immigration courts and place them into expedited removal without allowing them to fight their cases.
In previous years, ICE has prioritized conducting courthouse arrests of people who were considered risks to the public or were convicted or accused of certain crimes.
The Trump administration had argued that an executive order issued by President Donald Trump allowed for the agencies to enact the policy, but Judge Pitts disagreed.
“It is now clear that the lack of connection between ICE’s stated rationales for the 2025 courthouse-arrest policies and the expansion of arrests at immigration courthouses results not from merely unreasoned decision making but a complete lack of decision making. As the government recently revealed, contrary to its prior representations, ICE’s 2025 courthouse arrest policies do not cover immigration courthouses at all,” he wrote.
That is a reference to a case in New York, in which the DOJ notified a judge that it had been erroneously relying on an ICE memo to justify arrests at immigration courts, according to a court filing. In fact, the ICE memo does not apply to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near immigration courts, the DOJ told the judge in that case.
James Percival, the DHS general counsel, said Tuesday’s ruling is “anti-American.”
“When a judge sentences a defendant, the defendant is taken into custody. If an alien is ordered removed by an immigration judge, the same should happen,” he said in a post on X. “A district judge ordering otherwise is naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda.”
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for a working session on promoting economic growth with G7 leaders and G7 outreach partners as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz looks on, during the G7 Summit on June 17, 2026 in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is putting off signing a bipartisan housing reform bill until Congress passes his SAVE America Act.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Search and recovery workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding near Camp Mystic on July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. . (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
(HUNT, Texas) — Camp Mystic, the Christian all-girls sleepaway camp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, according to court records.
The Chapter 11 filing comes nearly a year after the deadly flood that killed 25 girls and two teen counselors in the Texas Hill Country last year.
According to the Wednesday filing, Camp Mystic has a total debt that exceeds $10 million.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Frank Carone, a former chief of staff to ex-New York Mayor Eric Adams, was arrested on Wednesday morning along with his brother Anthony and two others as part of a federal bribery case, sources familiar with the case told ABC News.
Carone and the others were expected to be arraigned in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday. Their indictment remained sealed on Wednesday, so the exact charges were not immediately known.
The case centers on a city contract issued during the Adams administration, sources told ABC News.
Carone helped with Adams’ transition into office in January 2022 and served as the mayor’s chief of staff until that December, when he departed the administration. He said as he departed that it had been an “honor keeping the trains running for this administration,” according to a press release from the time.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Close up of the NYPD logo on a police car. (Tim Drivas Photography/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The FBI and New York Police Department conducted searches on Wednesday morning at various locations around the city as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption at the nation’s largest police department.
The investigation is targeting current and former police executives, sources familiar with it told ABC News.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch issued a statement confirming the searches, saying the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau was working alongside the FBI in executing search warrants “as part of a criminal investigation being pursued by the NYPD, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.”
“The investigation is ongoing and concerns conduct by former and current members of the NYPD,” she said.
The investigation is examining, among other things, promotions and assignments and how they were carried out, the sources said. Tisch in her statement did not identify potential suspects or charges.
“When I became Police Commissioner, I promised New Yorkers that under my leadership the NYPD would conduct itself with integrity and that there would be a thorough investigation of any claim that members of service failed to meet that standard,” Tisch said. “This investigation and our actions this morning are part of the ongoing effort to fulfill that commitment and hold the Department to its highest ideals.”
The investigation was targeting the current chief of Manhattan South, Jimmy McCarthy, who has been placed on modified duty, according to the NYPD. Another target is the department’s former chief spokesman, Tarik Sheppard, sources said.
FBI agents were spotted outside the Brooklyn home of Jeffrey Maddrey, formerly chief of Department, the highest ranking uniformed officer. It was not immediately clear whether Maddrey was a part of the investigation
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — France has confirmed its first Ebola case linked to the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, officials said.
The patient is a humanitarian doctor who recently returned from the DRC and has been transferred to a specialist hospital, authorities confirmed.
French health officials say the case was detected quickly, the necessary precautions are in place and that there is no indication of local spread.
“France has specialized capabilities for managing highly transmissible infectious diseases,” France’s Ministry of Health said in a statement announcing the case. “Patients are treated in a designated healthcare facility, following strict biosafety protocols (negative pressure room, dedicated equipment and protocols). Health authorities are fully mobilized and the situation is being continuously monitored.”
“All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination,” the statement continued.
Officials said a thorough epidemiological investigation is underway to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient and that they will be contacted “without delay” by the regional health agency before undergoing 21 days of home isolation while being closely monitored the entire time.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has assessed the risk of infection as “low” for European residents and travelers to areas of active transmission, and “very low” for the general European population.
Female doctor talking with young woman in exam room (MoMo Productions/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Cervical cancer deaths are 49% higher for women living in poverty, a major report released on Thursday finds.
Women living in poverty were also 23% more likely to develop cervical cancer compared to those living in higher-income areas, according to the report from the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR).
“The disparities in this situation arise from an access to care issue,” Dr. Paul DiSilvestro, division director of gynecologic oncology at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, who was not involved in the report, told ABC News.
“I think we often don’t understand the pressure on women as it relates to screening. Sometimes you have to make a choice between going to work, caring for your children, putting food on the table and getting a screening test,” he added.
Cervical cancer is typically caused by a virus called human papillomavirus (HPV). The disease is now largely preventable thanks to the introduction of the HPV vaccine nearly two decades ago. Studies show the vaccine has drastically reduced mortality rates from cervical cancer.
If cervical cancer is caught early, it is usually easier to treat, according to the National Cancer Institute. However, not all women are able to get vaccinated as a teenager or get regular screenings in adulthood.
Some public health specialists say that new data suggests stark racial disparities appear to be easing, although there is still a long way to go.
In 2000, Hispanic women were 70% more likely to die of cervical cancer compared to white women, according to the AACR report. By 2024, Hispanic women were 10% more likely to die of cervical cancer, the report found.
Efforts and strategies to decrease these disparity gaps have been in effect nationally. The AACR reports that cervical screening increased by 62% after incorporation of patient navigation services.
A study in the AACR summary combined data from 20 trials done across the country, which included information about services including transportation assistance, interpreter services, home visits, patient education, scheduling assistance and individualized financial support.
It found that lay Hispanic/Latino community members who receive specialized training to provide basic health education in the community, known as promotoras, played key roles — alongside social workers, telephone counselors and social workers — in delivering these services.
Policy changes, such as Medicaid expansion, have also produced measurable increases in screening uptake among previously uninsured populations, according to the study.
Despite these efforts, patients living in poorer counties are still experiencing worse outcomes, DiSilvestro said.
“We need to do a better job of delivering the screening to the community as opposed to expecting the community to present itself to us for the screening,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends two doses of the HPV vaccine at age 11 or 12, a shot that has proven to prevent up to 90% of cervical cancer cases.
The CDC also recommends that screening pap smears start at age 21. Pap smears look for cell changes on the cervix that could develop into cervical cancer.
“I think we can’t forget that in this situation, cervical cancer screening works,” DiSilvestro said. “But it only works if we can provide it to the people.”
Areta Bojko, MD is a board-certified OBGYN and gynecologic oncology fellow at Women and Infants Hospital and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Lesley Groff (C), a former assistant to Jeffrey Epstein, arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on June 09, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Lesley Groff, the former executive secretary of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, attempted to deflect any culpability in Epstein’s crimes, telling lawmakers that she routinely scheduled massages for her boss but never booked appointments for anyone she knew to be underage, according to a House Oversight Committee transcript released Tuesday.
“I never met these women, so I didn’t know if they were young or how old they were,” Groff said during her appearance earlier this month. “I thought that it was just something that he did, like going to the gym.”
Groff, who worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, was previously described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.” She appeared as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged accomplices.
Once identified by federal prosecutors as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein’s crimes, Groff said she hoped her interview would “dispel the false notions” that she “knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts.”
Over the course of an eight-hour interview, Groff faced at times skeptical inquiries from committee members and staff, who questioned how she could have been unaware of Epstein’s predilection for sexualized massages, the transcript shows.
“You want us to believe that after 18 years working in the employ of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein that not on one occasion did you believe that any of your contacts in setting up these appointments with Jeffrey Epstein were either a minor or an underage person, correct?” asked Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
“Ms. Groff, do you think that a 14-year-old sounds the same as a person in their 20s or 30s or 40s?” asked an attorney for the committee.
“It’s possible. I don’t know. I was not evaluating voices,” Groff replied. “Nobody ever sounded like they were underage.”
Groff, now 59, appeared voluntarily for the interview, which was not under oath and not recorded. It marks the first time she has faced questions since speaking to the FBI in New York in 2021, two years after Epstein’s death. Later that year, prosecutors informed her that she would not be charged, according to her attorneys.
Groff told the committee that she was hired by Epstein in 2001 and was immediately “astonished by the truly impressive people in his circle,” including past presidents, actors, musicians and scientists.
“I actually felt lucky to have found such an amazing job. I was thrust into the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” she said in her prepared opening remarks.
She said Epstein’s directive for daily massages was a “very small part” of her duties in coordinating Epstein’s schedule. From the moment she was hired, Epstein and his then-partner Ghislaine Maxwell “established guardrails” and made it clear that she was never to associate with their friends.
“Their business was none of my business,” she said she was told.
When Epstein came under law enforcement scrutiny in Florida in the mid-2000s — first by the Palm Beach police and later by the FBI — Groff said he told her he had been set up for blackmail by a girl who lied about her age.
“It was a shakedown, he claimed, for money,” Groff said. “At the time, I actually felt sorry for him. I thought, ‘Wow, this must be really difficult to be a wealthy person and not know who you can trust because everybody wants your money.'”
Groff said she first learned of the criminal investigation when the FBI showed up at her home in Connecticut in 2007.
“I let them in my house and sat with them on my sofa, and they started asking me some questions. That’s how I found out,” she said. “I think my head was probably spinning. I had no idea.”
Groff told the committee she excused herself to check on her son and then called Epstein’s in-house lawyer about the FBI visit. She said she was advised not to talk to the agents without a lawyer.
“And so I went downstairs and said, ‘I don’t think I should be speaking to you without an attorney present.’ And they didn’t really like that, and then they left,” she said.
Groff said that after Epstein went to jail in 2008, she considered resigning. She stayed, she said, because she “actually believed he had been set up” and because she saw that the “same VIP’s continued to surround” him after his conviction.
“I looked around the office and I felt people smarter than me were still there and stayed there. All his contacts and business people, no one left,” she said, according to the transcript.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Her attorney informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that Groff “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury, according to DOJ records released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Prosecutors informed Groff’s lawyer that “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused,” and that she should consider cooperating with the investigation, according to the DOJ records.
Groff eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein.
The DOJ files also include an account from a witness — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse by Epstein — who told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on.” The witness also alleged that she explicitly told Groff she was not 18 years old and needed money for an abortion, according to the FBI report.
Asked by a committee attorney about those allegations, Groff said she felt “terrible for this survivor” but contended the witness’s recollections were inaccurate.
“I’m not saying that what she’s thinking — that she told someone — but she did not tell me,” Groff said. “I think she is mistaken. I know she is mistaken.”
Groff said that after Epstein was released from jail in 2010, she was never again asked to book a massage appointment for him. She acknowledged she booked travel — at Epstein’s direction — for women who would later allege to have been sexually exploited. But she contended she had no reason to think the women were being abused.
“I believed them to be traveling assistants, and none of them ever looked unhappy or under duress,” she said. “In hindsight, it’s terrible, I can’t imagine what they were going through.”
She said she was not alarmed by now-public email messages from Epstein’s associates sharing photographs and information about foreign women — because of Epstein’s connections in the modeling and fashion industries. She conceded that some of the emails released by the Justice Department appear alarming in retrospect, but insisted she had no reason to be concerned at the time.
“I did not know that this was occurring. I never saw anything inappropriate,” she said. “Everything to me — that I was doing, I feel like now, looking through a dirty lens, things look dirty. But at this time, I was unaware of anything that was going on.”
Groff said that since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she has struggled to sleep and eat, been the target of harassment and death threats, and been “shunned” by many of her friends and acquaintances.
She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which she said, “remains her scarlet letter.”
