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(WASHINGTON) — More than 21 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, new details of how President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney reacted that day in the lead-up and aftermath are now public.

They come in 31 pages of newly declassified notes of the interview Bush and Cheney gave the independent 9/11 Commission in 2004 as it investigated the attacks and related issues.

Bush and Cheney sat together for the interview in the Oval Office on April 29, 2004, along with three aides.

The National Archives released the declassified notes this week.

One of the more dramatic portions is Bush, who was being rushed from Florida onto Air Force One for a day of hopscotching around the nation, recounting giving Cheney the authority to authorize a shootdown of a plane if necessary.

Bush said he understood the basic rules of engagement from his days as a Texas National Air Guard pilot.

“He had been trained to shoot down planes. He understood generally how this worked – one plane would lock on, one would ID. He understood the consequences for the pilot, how a pilot might feel to get the order to shoot down a US airliner. It would be tough. He and Dick discussed it. He talked about what it would be like. Yes, engage the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down an airplane,” according to the notes of the interview.

Later in the interview, the subject of a shootdown comes up again. As officials tried to figure out how many planes were unaccounted for, they thought three were still in the air.

“The Vice President remembered getting ”word then that they [Air Force] were trying to cap up’ over D.C. He opened up a line to the President and raised the issue of rules of engagement. He (the President) authorized shootdown. The President approved this before 10:00. Condi (National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice) heard his (the Vice President’s) end of the conversation,” the notes state.

Cheney would then order the military to shoot down any unresponsive aircraft. What exact authority Bush gave to Cheney that day has been an ongoing question since that time.

Bush, in his 2010 memoir Decision Points, wrote he initially thought the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania was the result of the shootdown order as did Cheney.

“The Vice President thought we’d shot it down. It took a while to sort this out. In the next half hour there were two or three occasions like this: a report of an incoming, would he reiterate authorization? Yes. In every case, though, the problem was resolved without shots being fired. Later in the day there were other reports of incidents … a jet squawking a hijack code, a Korean Airlines jet. There was a lot of this, five reports during the day of hijacked planes. None turned out to be true,” according to the interview notes.

Kean, the chairman, asked Bush and Cheney if they knew the Secret Service had ordered aircraft, out of the chain of command, scrambled out of Andrews Air Force Base. Bush responded he was not aware.

The notes, first reported on by the Wall Street Journal, also detail how Bush and Cheney were questioned about some of the intelligence controversies regarding the attacks. Commission chairman Tom Kean asked about the famous Aug. 6 Presidential Daily Brief entitled “bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.”

As he had done publicly, Bush said it was more of a document summarizing what was known about al Qaeda than an assessment of current intelligence and stressed he had actually asked for the report.

“The report itself was historical in nature. It said what al Qaeda was doing,” the notes state. “Bin Ladin had long been talking about his desire to attack America. There was some operational data on the FBI. That 70 investigations were underway was heartening, that this was taking place.”

He told the commissioners the government was then developing a strategy to eliminate it. However, what wasn’t known was some of the missed signals and the lack of information sharing between the CIA and the FBI.

Both men also discussed pushing Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the hijackers and which had come under criticism for not taking more action to crack down on terrorism financing, to do more.

Cheney recalled calling the Saudi Crown Prince on July 5th.

“He went over what was known to him about the al Qaeda and Bin Ladin threat. He said the U.S. wanted to send a team to Saudi Arabia to alert Saudi counterparts about a potential attack. Tenet was talking to Prince Turki about this. The team would come over to work on this. The President said he thought that if there had been a serious concern in August, he would have known about it,” the notes state.

Bush then said a “fundamental” problem facing every president was how to deal with the Saudis.

“There was a sort of split personality there. Some found favor with al Qaeda and the extremists, supporting their radical policies,” the notes said.

“The U.S. had to have a process to push them to change their ways. The U.S. supported political reform. This stand had, the President commented, been widely disparaged. The last (to change) will be Saudi Arabia. The President understood that. But they were feeling the pressure. The royal family, the President added, was not a monolith. There were splits within the family. Crown Prince Abdullah may not know what his stepbrother is doing with certain NGOs spreading hate. The family was a complex organization, with different power centers. The President said he was worried about Saudi Arabia. He did not want it to become an al Qaeda country. Nor did he want it to form an alliance with Iran. He was not sure what else he could say, except that he was working the problem on a daily basis,” the notes said.

The Director of National Intelligence had no comment about the timing of the declassification.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Texas on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s student debt forgiveness policy, ruling that it goes beyond the authority of the Education Department and the power of the executive branch — a decision that marks the second major legal obstacle to the program, which had hoped to begin implementation this fall.

The U.S. district judge, Mark T. Pittman, was appointed by former President Donald Trump, and the lawsuit was brought in October by the conservative Job Creators Network Foundation.

The debt cancellation program was already on hold, unable to discharge any loan payments because of a temporary stay in a federal appeals court that is reviewing a separate lawsuit brought by six conservative states. (A final decision in that case is pending.)

The federal government has said some 43 million people would be eligible for student debt cancellation under the policy.

As of Nov. 3, 26 million people had applied. Of those, the Biden administration said 16 million peoples’ applications had been reviewed and prepared for relief, if and when the program is allowed to move forward.

But in the Texas ruling, Pittman found that whether the loan relief “constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine,” instead focusing on government overreach: “No one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States,” he wrote.

Pittman wrote that there wasn’t clear justification for the Biden administration to wield such influence.

“The Court is not blind to the current political division in our country. But it is fundamental to the survival of our Republic that the separation of powers as outlined in our Constitution be preserved,” he wrote.

“And having interpreted the HEROES Act, the Court holds that it does not provide ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the Program proposed by the Secretary,” he wrote, referring to a Bush-era law that provides broader-than-usual authority to the secretary of education during emergency periods, which the Biden White House says includes the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neither the White House nor the Education Department immediately commented on Pittman’s ruling, though the administration has vowed to appeal legal threats to the policy.

Administration officials have previously dismissed other such legal challenges, arguing that loan forgiveness is trying to help Americans get some “breathing room” while critics are “siding with special interests.”

“While opponents of our plan are siding with special interests and trying every which way to keep millions of middle class Americans in debt, the President and his Administration are fighting to lawfully give middle-class families some breathing room as they recover from the pandemic and prepare to resume loan payments in January,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan said in October.

The case so far

The lawsuit from the Job Creators Network Foundation argued that the Biden administration should have let the public weigh in before announcing the policy.

However, the Biden administration argued in its response that there was no requirement for a notice-and-comment period in this situation, though that is typical for certain agency policies.

“Instead of providing notice and seeking comment from the public, the Department hammered out the critical details of the Program in secret and with an eye toward securing debt forgiveness in time for the November election,” the suit argues — also contending that the forgiveness policy excludes people unfairly.

“The result of this arbitrariness is predictable: some will benefit handsomely, some will be shortchanged, and others will be left out entirely,” the lawsuit states.

One plaintiff in the lawsuit, Myra Brown, didn’t qualify for the program because of a rule change that disqualified about 700,000 borrowers from the program — a late change that the Biden administration made seemingly in order to protect the policy against another lawsuit.

The other plaintiff, Alexander Taylor, qualified for $10,000 in student loan forgiveness but not the $20,000 because he wasn’t a Pell grant recipient, which is reserved for people from low-income families.

The president of the Job Creators Network Foundation has called the program an “unprecedented executive power grab” that would allow “greedy and bloated colleges” to keep raising tuition.

“Bailing out this debt only kicks this problem down the road. By blocking this inflationary taxpayer bailout, JCN’s lawsuit can lay the groundwork to actually solve the student debt crisis by holding its college perpetrators accountable,” Elaine Parker said in an earlier statement.

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(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump on Thursday escalated his criticism of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, suggesting he views DeSantis as a potential challenger in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

In a lengthy statement — echoed on his social media website, Truth Social — Trump jabbed at DeSantis as an “average” governor who benefited from “great Public Relations.”

He also repeated a new derogatory nickname for DeSantis: “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

In his statement, which also included characteristic complaints about his media coverage and repeated unfounded claims of election fraud, Trump touted himself as being a key endorser during the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary, when DeSantis ran against Adam Putnam for the GOP nomination.

“He was politically dead,” Trump argued of DeSantis at the time, insisting that his support had been key to the primary win.

“And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs [in 2024], and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Trump said.

Sources with direct knowledge of the matter have told ABC News that Trump is leaning toward announcing a third run for the White House, possibly as early as the week of Nov. 14. The former president has also been teasing a 2024 run at rallies across the country for several months.

He said last week during an Iowa rally, “In order to make our country successful, and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again,” adding, “Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon. Get ready.”

Trump said earlier this week there will be a “very big” announcement on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump went on to say Thursday that he had faced similar rivals in the 2016 GOP presidential primary and “I easily knocked them out, one by one.”

Aides for DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment on Trump’s criticism.

Sources close to the former president immediately categorized this statement as a “miscalculation” on Trump’s behalf. Two former senior White House officials who still advise Trump told ABC News Thursday night that this is the weakest they’ve seen him politically.

“His overreaction against DeSantis is making it even worse,” one top aide said.

“Unhinged. This is not going to work for him,” another top aide added.

In recent days, the former president has alternated between swipes at the Florida governor, such as the “DeSanctimonious” label, which he first used last weekend, and then telling a rally on Sunday to reelect DeSantis, the closest comments he made to an endorsement.

He also publicly said he voted for DeSantis, who went on to beat Democrat Charlie Crist by nearly 20% — a notable margin in a state famous for its close races. By comparison, many other Republican candidates suffered this midterm cycle despite predictions of a possible “red wave” against the in-power Democrats.

Multiple Trump-backed candidates were defeated, including Michigan gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race.

Two senior DeSantis campaign officials earlier told ABC News — before Trump’s statement on Thursday — that the campaign made a conscious decision in the final days not to respond to Trump’s taunts. Those included the nickname and Trump telling Fox News on election eve that he “would tell you things about [DeSantis] that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody other than, perhaps, his wife.”

DeSantis’ aides also said he and his team were aware of his success compared to others in the party who were closely tied to Trump.

When asked what DeSantis was thinking after his election win this week, a top adviser told ABC News that he was focusing not on politics but on Tropical Storm Nicole.

Like Trump, DeSantis campaigned for multiple other Republican candidates this midterm season, such as J.D. Vance in Ohio (who won) and Mark Ronchetti in New Mexico (who lost). When DeSantis stumped for Colorado Republican Senate nominee Joe O’Dea, who had broken with Trump, the latter called it a “big mistake.”

DeSantis has repeatedly played down speculation that he will run for president in 2024 — even as that became an attack line from Crist during the campaign.

“He’s in no hurry. He doesn’t have to be in a hurry … What he’s doing is continuing to elevate his stature and his name ID, his conservative credentials to a larger audience,” Stephan Lawson, DeSantis’ director of communications for his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, previously told ABC News. “I think he’s doing it in a way that’s like, ‘I’m gonna go court and talk to this base of our party in a way that could potentially have broader appeal based on my record of results in Florida.'”

“Put another way — ‘I’m gonna get all the good without the bad of taking on Trump directly,'” Lawson said at the time.

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(WASHINGTON) — Two days after the midterms, the Senate races in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada remain undecided. With Georgia headed toward a runoff in December and Arizona and Nevada still counting votes, Alaska is moving to ranked choice voting to determine its winner.

None of the candidates in the Alaska Senate race received 50% of the vote, meaning the state’s rank-choice voting system will decide which candidate will represent the state in Congress.

With 71% of the expected vote reporting, Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka has 44%, Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski has 43%, Democratic candidate Patricia Chesbro has 10% and Republican candidate Buzz Kelley has 3%.

Alaskan voters approved an initiative in 2020 to establish a ranked choice voting general election system and a nonpartisan pick one primary election system. The 2022 August special election was the first time these two systems were implemented in the state.

Here’s how those two systems work:

Nonpartisan Pick One Primary Election system

Under this system, all the candidates are on one ballot during the primaries, regardless of political affiliation. Voters then cast their ballot for one candidate in each race. The four candidates who receive the most votes advance to the general election.

If fewer than four candidates are in a race, they all advance to the general election.

Primary elections are no longer used to determine the candidate nominated by a political party. Instead, all candidates are on the same ballot, so voters can cast their ballot for any candidate, regardless of what party they are affiliated with.

There is no limit on how many candidates can file for the primary election and candidates do not need to be registered with a political party to run for office.

Since none of the candidates on the general election ballot received enough votes to win in the first round, the ranked choice voting system will decide the winner.

Ranked Choice voting system

Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference and then votes are counted in rounds. But, each voters’ vote only counts once.

In the first round, all the first choices are counted, if a candidate wins 50% of the vote plus one then the counting stops and that candidate is the winner. If not, round two begins.

In round two, the candidate who received the fewest votes in round one is eliminated. If a voter chooses that last-place candidate, their vote goes to their second choice. If a voter’s first choice was not eliminated, their vote stays with that candidate. The votes are now counted again.

If after round two of counting no candidate receives 50% of the vote plus one, then round two is repeated and the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated.

This process continues until two candidates are left and the one with the most votes is declared the winner.

Voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they wish. If a voter does not wish to rank a candidate, they can leave their row blank. If a voter only votes for one candidate, their vote is counted and it remains with that candidate throughout the process.

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