Rescuers and firefighters operate at the scene after the Gloria funicular cable railway derailed in Lisbon, Portugal, 03 September 2025. (Zed Jameson/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — At least 15 people are dead and another 23 injured after a streetcar derailed in Portugal’s capital on Wednesday, officials said.
At least five people are in serious condition following the crash in Lisbon, according to the city’s communications department.
One 3-year-old child is included in the 23 injured, according to an official.
It appears the safety cable on the electric streetcar broke, causing the car to derail, the department said, based on preliminary information.
Carris, the operator of the streetcar, said that all maintenance protocols were complied with, including daily inspections.
The mayor of Lisbon declared a three-day period of mourning.
“I offer my sincere condolences to all the families and friends of the victims. Lisbon is in mourning,” Mayor Carlos Moedas said in a statement.
Portugal’s Prime Minister’s Office also declared a national day of mourning for Thursday, expressing its “deep dismay” over the accident, and said it is in contact with local officials.
The incident — which happened around 6:15 p.m. local time — remains under investigation. Carris said it immediately opened an investigation along with the authorities to determine the cause of the accident.
The rescue mission lasted around two hours, a Public Ministry official told ABC News.
The tram cabin that derailed can hold up to 40 people. The famed streetcar, known as the Elevador da Gloria, is a funicular that travels up and down a steep hill.
“It is with sadness that I learned of the derailment of the famous ‘Elevador da Glória,'” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “My condolences to the families of the victims.”
All the other funiculars of the city have been suspended for now: Lavra, Graça and Bica, according to an official.
(NEW YORK) — Many parents, school districts and the federal government alike have embraced artificial intelligence this back-to-school season, but some experts warn artificial intelligence could widen the teacher shortage by eliminating jobs.
In a Pew Research Center study released last spring, 31% of AI experts, whose work or research focuses on the topic, said they expected artificial intelligence to lead to fewer jobs for teachers. Nearly a third of the experts surveyed predicted that AI will place teaching jobs “at risk” over the next 20 years, according to they Pew Research study.
The warning comes after the Learning Policy Institute — an organization that conducts independent research to improve education and policy practices — in July issued an overview of teacher shortages, which estimated that about one in eight teaching positions in 2025 are either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments.
Indiana’s 2024 Teacher of the Year Eric Jenkins suggested AI could end up replacing “some parts” of teaching, but as a tool — not a replacement.
Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield emphasized that using AI to address the long-standing staffing shortage shouldn’t be considered.
“In no universe do I think that AI is going to replace a teacher,” Critchfield told ABC News.
“The teacher is the most important part and component of the classroom, but [AI] is a very useful tool in helping them provide the best educational environment that they can in the classroom,” she said.
The White House encourages K-12 students to use AI. While the Trump administration hasn’t directly addressed whether AI could replace teachers, the administration has launched its own action plan on the technology, which says “AI will improve the lives of Americans by complementing their work — not replacing it.”
Last week, first lady Melania Trump launched an AI contest challenging students to develop projects that use AI to address community challenges. Education Secretary Linda McMahon endorsed the challenge.
“AI has the potential to revolutionize education, drive meaningful learning outcomes, and prepare students for tomorrow’s challenges,” McMahon wrote in a post on X.
Teachers say they offer what AI can’t: connection Nearly three years after the launch of ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, most of the United States has developed guidance on AI use in schools.
Many districts tell ABC News that they are embracing the technology so long as it is used appropriately — by adhering to local education agency guidance — with academic integrity. Critchfield even downplayed concerns that AI use in schools encourages cheating.
“Teachers can tell if you were writing like a seventh grader on Wednesday and then, all of a sudden, your paper you turn in on a Friday sounds like your post-doctorate in philosophy,” she said. “They know how to tell those differences.”
But in the wake of the pandemic, Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd — an education policy center at Georgetown University, argued students need connection — to their peers, family and education tools such as AI chatbots — more than ever. Still, Toch rejected the full-time use of AI in place of humans.
“The loss of that connection during the pandemic, when kids were learning virtually, created widespread mental-health challenges,” Toch told ABC News. “The notion that, you know, a machine will be the only entity that interacts with kids is problematic in that regard.”
Education experts, such as Toch, contend K-12 education has “perpetual” teacher shortages with about a half-dozen areas in need, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and special education instructors. The shortages have plagued the workforce for many years now, educators have told ABC News, with many of them citing strict time demands, persistent behavioral issues and lack of administrative support, among other obstacles.
Toch and Jenkins told ABC News they both appreciate AI for the powerful tool it can be in assisting teachers. It helps teachers plan lessons, grade students’ essays and is used as a “time saver” that helps them do their jobs better, according to Toch.
Preparing educators to work with AI tools Jenkins said AI is inevitable and that he believes teachers need to lean in and embrace its capabilities.
“I don’t think we can put our head in the sand about it,” Jenkins told ABC News. “I don’t think that it’s necessarily going to replace teachers because teachers can offer something that AI can’t, which is a connection, like authentic connection and community.”
Jenkins argued the chatbots lack the human element of what teachers do: making sure that students feel seen and heard. He said that is not going away.
With AI’s presence in education, Jenkins added, “it’s going to make those moments even more important.”
In Idaho, Critchfield said she has been excited about students and educators using the technology, but suggested the challenge ahead focuses on making AI be seen as a tool and not a negative. According to Critchfield, using AI wisely can aid in the shortage by increasing teacher retention and reducing educators’ workloads.
“How are we preparing and training our teachers to use [AI] so that we don’t add new problems as we’re trying to solve some other problems?” Critchfield said.
Ultimately, Critchfield said she doesn’t see AI as a boogeyman that is going to eliminate jobs, but she stressed that teachers who know AI could replace those who are less familiar with the technology.
After teachers in his district suggested banning ChatGPT just a few years ago, School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington told ABC News that instead of removing AI, Philadelphia is now learning from it together. The school district is implementing AI 101 Training for its teachers, school leaders, and superintendent through a partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.
Watlington said it’s about “getting people around the table, and we are learning together.”
“We’re not hiding from AI,” Watlington said. “We’re also thinking about its implications and we’re really paying attention to what the prospective unintended consequences could be as well.”
Watlington added: “I think that’s the responsible way to think about artificial intelligence.”
(LONDON) — Ukrainian teenager Katya says she was living with her foster parents in the Russian-occupied region of Kherson in 2023 when Russian authorities approached her family and told them they would take her to a summer camp. But, in reality, she says she was being trained for military service.
“The school told us we are going for a vacation to the sea,” she tells ABC News in Kyiv, Ukraine. “Then we traveled for three days by bus, on the third day we were put on a train. And we were sent to a military camp.”
“Katya,” who has asked to remain anonymous to protect her identity, was 16-years-old at the time but now, at 18, she tells ABC News that she used to get up “at seven in the morning, had breakfast by nine, did exercises, then we went to the orientation. During orientation, we were forced to learn the Russian anthem and the anthem of this platoon.”
There were both Russian and Ukrainian teenagers in the military camp, which was inside Russian territory, Katya said. But Ukrainians were forbidden from speaking Ukrainian or expressing their identity, and told they were being trained to fight for the Russian army.
They would be forced into punishment exercises if they did not comply, she said. Katya can be seen doing squats and push ups in a video taken inside the camp shared with ABC News.
“As our instructors told us, we were being prepared for war,” she said. “They told us that as soon as we turned 18 [we would go to fight.]”
Katya was just one of thousands of Ukrainian children estimated to have been taken into Russia since the invasion of Feb. 24, 2022, with Ukraine saying that more than 19,500 children have been abducted or forcibly displaced into Russia since then.
Just over 1,500 children have been rescued from Russia, with almost half of those facilitated by Save Ukraine, a charity dedicated to the return of Russian children who helped Katya get back to Ukrainian territory after her weekslong ordeal in the military camp.
“Her story is really common, because now what we see from children who were rescued recently, we see that all of them were engaged in some military activities,” Natalia Savchenko, the head of communications at Save Ukraine, told ABC News. “It’s a policy and we see that the policy of Russia now is to take Ukrainian children, erase their identity, and force them to take part in military activities and, after that, make them Russian soldiers.”
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights in 2023. The ICC said they were allegedly “responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Russia, however, denies kidnapping the children and claims it evacuated them for humanitarian reasons.
The prospect of an elusive ceasefire dominated the agenda at the Alaska Summit last month when President Trump hosted Vladimir Putin and hand-delivered a letter written by first lady Melania Trump, calling for the protection of children. The letter did not specifically mention Ukrainian children taken into Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also raised the subject of Ukrainian children who have been taken into Russia when European leaders met with the U.S. President last month as well.
“This issue lies at the heart of the war’s humanitarian tragedy — our children, broken families, the pain of separation,” Zelenskyy said.
“It is a subject at the top of all lists and the world will work together to solve it, hopefully bringing them home to their families,” President Trump said.
Savchenko told ABC News that she hoped the diplomatic efforts would help “change the future of these children.”
“But at the same time, we continue to do our work, we are continuing to rescue them, to rehabilitate and to reintegrate, because these are Ukrainian children, and we cannot surrender. And let them be in the hands of war criminals,” she continued. “In our mind discussion about Ukrainian children should be done before the discussion about lands, because children, they are our future. It’s not the question of politics. It’s a question of humanity.”
(LONDON) — The death toll from Sunday’s powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan is now 2,205, with another 3,640 people injured, a Taliban government spokesman said Thursday.
Search and rescue efforts are ongoing in the affected areas, according to Taliban spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat, who provided the updated casualty numbers via social media.
“Tents have been installed for displaced families in multiple locations,” he said, “and the organized distribution of primary and urgent humanitarian assistance is currently underway.”
The 6.0 magnitude quake struck just before midnight on Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A series of aftershocks struck amid rescue efforts, including a 5.2 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday about 20 miles northeast of Jalalabad, according to the USGS.
(LONDON) — Russia’s Foreign Ministry again warned that Moscow will not accept the presence of any Western troops in Ukraine as part of a future peace deal, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to meet a group of top European leaders in Paris on Thursday.
“Russia does not intend to discuss unacceptable foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form whatsoever,” spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in comments published by the Foreign Ministry on Thursday. “Western war instigators view Ukraine as a testing ground for their military developments,” she said.
Moscow has repeatedly rebuffed proposals for Western forces to be deployed to Ukraine in any capacity as part of a deal to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, which began in February 2022.
Nonetheless, the prospect is still under discussion by NATO leaders and the Ukrainian government as an element of the security guarantees Kyiv says are needed to facilitate any U.S.-brokered peace deal.
Zakharova said Thursday that the protections under discussion “are not security guarantees for Ukraine, they are guarantees of threat to the European continent.”
Zelenskyy will gather with European leaders — the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” — for further talks in Paris on Thursday. The group will then speak with U.S. President Donald Trump virtually at around 8 a.m. ET, according to a schedule published by French President Emmanuel Macron’s office.
Macron welcomed the Ukrainian leader to the Élysée Palace — which houses the presidential office — on Wednesday.
“We are ready as Europeans to offer security guarantees to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, the day a peace deal is signed,” Macron said while standing alongside Zelenskyy.
“The contributions that were prepared, documented and confirmed this afternoon at the level of the defense ministers in an extremely confidential manner allow me to say the preparatory work is complete,” he added. The measures the pair discussed on Wednesday weren’t immediately detailed.
“It will now be endorsed politically, and it allows us to do so in a solid way, and we will come back to you tomorrow, after these meetings and discussions, to say that we are ready for a robust, lasting peace for Ukraine and for the Europeans,” Macron said.
Zelenskyy said that, although “we have not received any signals from Russia that it truly wants to end this war,” he was “convinced” that a close union with Europe and the U.S. “will help us increase pressure on Russia to move towards a diplomatic solution to this complex issue.”
Other European leaders attending Thursday’s talks in Paris are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Several other European leaders are joining the meeting virtually.
The White House said Trump will speak with Zelenskyy on Thursday. The president is expected to join the discussion virtually.
Speaking with journalists on Wednesday, Trump pushed back on one reporter’s suggestion of his “lack of action” on Russia in response to its continued offensive operations and long-range attacks in Ukraine, despite his repeated threats of further sanctions and tariffs on Moscow.
“How do you know there’s no action? Would you say that, putting secondary sanctions on India, the largest purchaser outside of China, they’re almost equal, would you say there was no action that costs hundreds of billions of dollars to Russia? You call that no action?” Trump said.
The president was referring to the recent imposition of 25% tariffs on all imported Indian goods in response to New Delhi’s purchases of Russian energy goods and military equipment.
“And I haven’t done phase two yet,” Trump continued. “Or phase three. But when you say there’s no action, I think you ought to get yourself a new job. Because if you remember, two weeks ago, I did — I said, if India buys, India’s got big problems. And that’s what happened. So don’t tell me about that.”
Trump and Putin met in Alaska nearly three weeks ago. After that event, Trump suggested that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy should be the next step in the negotiations process.
The Kremlin has given no indication of its willingness to support such a meeting, though Putin suggested this week that a meeting could take place in Moscow.
Kyiv quickly dismissed that proposal. Foreign Minister Andri Sybiha said in a post to X, “Putin continues to mess around with everyone by making knowingly unacceptable proposals.”
Trump told reporters on Wednesday he had “no message” for Putin. “He knows where I stand, and he’ll make a decision one way or the other whatever his decision is will either be happy about it or unhappy and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen.”
“We’ve taken very strong action, as you know, and in other ways we’ve taken very strong action,” Trump continued. “But I’ll be speaking to him over the next few days and we’re going to see with him. I’m going to know exactly what’s happened.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a week of fast-moving shakeups at the nation’s health agency, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will come before the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over his department, on Thursday for hours of questioning that is sure to center on his vaccine policy.
It comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) significantly narrowed access to the COVID-19 vaccine, a move that precipitated a public fallout and ousting of the newly installed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Susan Monarez. Four top CDC officials also resigned in protest.
The new FDA approval for COVID shots allows for people who are aged 65 and older to get the vaccine, or younger Americans who have an underlying condition that puts them at a higher risk of severe illness from the virus.
Public health officials and pharmacist groups have said the change will make it harder for young and healthy people to get the vaccine — should they still choose to — and raises questions about where they can get it or whether insurance will cover it.
Thursday will be the first time Kennedy has faced questions from senators since May, when he testified before a Senate committee and a House committee, defending the massive cuts to the department’s workforce carried out in April.
Kennedy is expected to tout the overhauls at HHS so far, which he has said are aimed at eliminating bloated bureaucracy and conflicts of interest at public health agencies that get in the way of “gold-standard science.”
In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said Kennedy will use the hearing to “reaffirm his commitment to Make America Healthy Again: restoring gold-standard science at HHS, empowering patients with more transparency, choices and access to care, and reestablishing trust in public health.”
While Republicans like Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo will attempt to keep the focus on chronic disease and Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, Democrats and even some Republicans are expected to push Kennedy for answers on the FDA’s latest change as well as an upcoming CDC meeting on vaccines, which could lead to more changes to the nation’s vaccine policy.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which discusses vaccine data and makes recommendations for which vaccines Americans should get and when, is going to weigh in on the FDA’s latest change, further informing insurance companies and pharmacies of how to carry out the policy.
But ACIP is also going to discuss a slate of different vaccines, including the COVID vaccine; hepatitis B vaccines; the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine.
In June, Kennedy replaced all 17 sitting members of the committee with his own hand-selected members, including some who have expressed vaccine-skeptic views fervently sought to discredit the safety and efficacy of mRNA COVID vaccines.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, said he had spoken to other members of his caucus who agreed that they needed to investigate what potential changes Kennedy and the CDC committee were weighing to the childhood vaccine recommendations.
“The issue is about children’s health, and there are rumors, allegations, that children’s health, which is at issue here, might be endangered by some of the decisions that are purported to be made. I don’t know what’s true,” Cassidy said. “I know that we need to get there. And I’ve talked to members of my Republican Caucus, several of them. They’ve agreed with me that we need to get at it.”
Cassidy, who pushed Kennedy during his confirmation hearings to issue support for vaccines and publicly struggled over his vote for him, has tasked the committee he chairs, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), to do “oversight” of Monarez’ ousting, he wrote on X last week.
Cassidy maintained that he isn’t “presupposing someone is right or wrong.” “I just know we’ve got to figure it out,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy has also called for the CDC meeting to be postponed until “significant oversight has been conducted,” citing “serious allegations” about the “meeting agenda, membership and lack of scientific process.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is on the HELP committee with Cassidy, told reporters on Wednesday that she is “concerned” and “alarmed” by Monarez’s firing.
“I know that the president has the right to fire whomever he wishes when it comes to that kind of appointment, but I don’t see any justification for it,” Collins said.
Monarez, who was in the job for only a month, was pushed out after she declined to fire top officials and support Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes in a meeting with the secretary early last week, a source familiar with her conversations with the secretary told ABC News.
“When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted,” Monarez’s attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a statement late last week.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez because she “was not aligned with the president’s mission to make America healthy again.”
“It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5,” Leavitt said. “This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission.”
Other CDC officials who followed Monarez out the door included:
Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science Dr. Dan Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Dr. Jennifer Layden, Director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology. The officials cited the political climate and a refusal to accept science that didn’t align with Kennedy’s beliefs.
Daskalakis, in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week”, said he thought the changes Kennedy has so far made are “the tip of the iceberg.”
In addition to the recent FDA changes for the COVID vaccine, Kennedy has also canceled up to $500 million in research and development for mRNA vaccines and changed the COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.
“I mean, from my vantage point as a doctor who’s taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming. I may be wrong. But based on what I’m seeing, based on what I’ve heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they’re really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination,” Daskalakis said.
Kennedy, when he testified in his confirmation hearings to be health secretary in January, denied that he was anti-vaccine and said he supports “the childhood schedule” for vaccinations.
“I am pro-vaccine. I am going to support the vaccine program. I want kids to be healthy, and I’m coming in here to get rid of the conflicts of interest within the agency, make sure that we have gold standard, evidence-based science,” Kennedy said.
When pressed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Kennedy committed to supporting the measles and polio vaccines.
“Senator, I support the measles vaccine, I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines,” Kennedy said.
(NEW YORK) — A 30-year-old man has drowned in Pennsylvania near a family picnic area while attempting to swim across the river and went under, officials said.
The emergency communications center at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, received a report of a drowning in the Delaware River near the Kittatinny Point picnic area at about 4:10 p.m. on Tuesday, according to a statement from the National Park Service.
National Park Service rangers and dive team members, New Jersey State Police and water rescue teams from the Portland Volunteer Fire Department responded to the call, officials said, and the crews “quickly located and recovered the body of a 30-year-old Parsipanny, New Jersey, man from the river, where the water was approximately 17 feet deep.”
“The man was swimming with family members near the picnic area when he tired while attempting to swim across the river and went under,” NPS said.
Authorities have not yet named the man and it is unclear what the swimming conditions were like at the time of the drowning, but the National Park Service took the opportunity to remind all river users to wear a properly-fitted, U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket while swimming, floating, fishing or boating on the Delaware River.
Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — No winner was declared after Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing, resulting in the jackpot climbing to $1.7 billion.
The jackpot’s estimated cash value of $770.3 million is now the third-highest in U.S. lottery history, according to Powerball.
The numbers drawn were: 3, 16, 29, 61 and 69, with Powerball 22 and Power Play multiplier of 2.
After there was no billion-dollar Labor Day Powerball winner, the jackpot continued to climb and reached $1.4 billion before the drawing.
The next drawing will take place on Saturday, Sept. 6, at 10:59 p.m. ET.
Nationwide, 11 tickets matched all five white balls to win $1 million prizes. The $1 million-winning tickets were sold in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Powerball said.
Winners can choose between annual payments over 30 years, with a 5% increase each year, or the immediate cash option.
Powerball’s history includes record-breaking prizes, with the largest being a $2.04 billion jackpot won in California in November 2022, followed by a $1.765 billion prize claimed in California in October 2023, and a $1.586 billion jackpot split among winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in January 2016.
Saturday’s drawing will be the 42nd since the Powerball jackpot was last won on May 31, 2025, in California. The current streak has tied the game’s record for the most consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner.
Tickets cost $2 and are available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, while the overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24.9.
Drawings are broadcast live from Tallahassee, Florida, every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET and streamed on Powerball.com.
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to the media after meeting with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, at the US Capitol, Washington September 2, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday cast the Jeffrey Epstein controversy as “irrelevant” amid an effort on Capitol Hill to force a vote to release all files related to the deceased sex offender.
“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the push for more transparency in the Epstein matter.
“From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given,” the president said. “But it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”
The comments came as a group of survivors joined House members in a push to compel the Justice Department to release records so far withheld from Congress.
ABC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Jay O’Brien asked the victims for their reaction to Trump’s characterization that it is a “hoax.”
One survivor, Haley Robson, said it felt like “being gutted from the inside out.”
“Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican — not that that matters because this is not political — however, I cordially invite you to meet me in the Capitol in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma,” she responded.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna’s effort to force a vote on the files has led to a showdown with House Republican leadership and the White House.
Massie’s discharge petition had 206 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. It needs 218 to compel a vote on the House floor.
So far, four Republicans have signed on to the Massie and Khanna discharge petition — a procedural tool to bypass GOP leadership and force a vote. Those signers include Massie, Reps. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. If all 212 Democrats sign the petition, only two more Republicans are needed.
Speaker Mike Johnson urged Republicans to not support Massie’s discharge petition during a closed conference meeting Wednesday morning, according to multiple sources. Johnson instead argued the ongoing investigation by the House Oversight Committee is the better path forward.
The House on Wednesday adopted a resolution by a vote of 212-208-1 that instructs the Oversight Committee to continue its Epstein investigation that began weeks ago.
The measure was Johnson’s preferred vote on the Epstein controversy. Massie has called it a “placebo.”
Johnson said he spoke to Trump about the Epstein files on Tuesday night, and Trump instructed him to “get it out there” and “put it all out there.”
“This is going to be an ongoing effort. It will be bipartisan, which is great and the Oversight Committee’s effort, this is really important to point out, goes further than the discharge petition,” Johnson argued. “It requests more information than the discharge even encompasses. For example, the Epstein estate documents, which is a treasure trove of information not referenced in the discharge. And it has the force of law because we have subpoena authorities.”
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting with members of his administration in the Cabinet Room of the White House on August 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. This is the seventh cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — During an Oval Office event, President Donald Trump was asked about a video that began circulating online this past weekend of what appears to be a bag being thrown out of a second-story window at the White House.
Trump said on Tuesday that it was “probably AI-generated” and said that you can’t open the windows at the White House. It’s not clear when the alleged incident occurred.
A reporter asked if Trump was aware of the video, saying, “There is a video that is circulating online now of the White House where a window is open to the residence upstairs, and somebody is throwing a big bag out the window. Have you seen this?”
To which Trump suggested it was made with artificial intelligence and said, “You can’t open the windows. You know why? They’re all heavily armored and bulletproof.”
“I know every window up there,” Trump continued. “The last place I’d be doing it is that because there’s cameras all over the place, right? Including yours?” the president asked the reporter.
Earlier on Tuesday, however, a White House official implied in a statement to TIME magazine that the video was real and showed a contractor doing “regular maintenance.”
ABC News has reached out to the White House about the discrepancies between the two different answers.
ABC News has not independently verified the video’s authenticity. But one expert said it appeared unlikely the video is an AI fake. Hany Farid, chief science officer at GetReal Labs and an expert on synthetic media, told ABC News that he does not see any evidence that indicates the video is AI-generated.
“I’m not seeing any evidence that this video is AI-generated or manipulated,” Farid said. “We do not detect any digital watermarks that are sometimes inserted at the point of AI-generation. The shadows in the scene, including the shadow cast by the tossed bag, are all physically consistent. The motion of the waving flags has none of the tell-tale signs that you often see in AI-generated videos. The overall structure of the White House appears to be consistent, including the flying of the American and POW/MIA flag.”
Farid noted that AI-based video generation models today typically produce videos no more than eight to 10 seconds long, a limitation that can be circumvented by stitching two clips together by generating a new video based on the final frame of the last one.
“Having said that, the length of this video does add some evidence that it is unlikely to be AI-generated,” Farid said.
