In this screen grab from a video, the orbit of 2025 TF is shown close to Earth’s orbit. (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
(NEW YORK) — An asteroid just flew closer to Earth than many satellites, according to space agencies.
The space object, named 2025 TF, zoomed over Antarctica at a distance of just 265 miles above the Earth’s surface last Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 8:47 p.m. ET, the European Space Agency said on Monday. The International Space Station orbits at a similar altitude.
The majority of satellites are low earth orbit, at altitudes between 100 miles and 1,242 miles, the research project Aerospace Security notes.
The small asteroid is between 3.2 feet to 9.8 feet across and didn’t pose significant danger to the planet, the ESA said. However, the agency noted that it could have produced a fireball if it struck Earth’s atmosphere and became a meteorite once it hit the ground.
Astronomers didn’t notice the asteroid until a few hours after it passed, according to the ESA. The Catalina Sky Survey, a mission funded by NASA to track near-Earth objects, first spotted the object. Shortly after that, it was observed by astronomers at the ESA’s Planetary Defence Office.
“Tracking down a metre-scale object in the vast darkness of space at a time when its location is still uncertain is an impressive feat,” the ESA said. “This observation helped astronomers determine the close approach distance and time given above to such high precision.”
The object is not expected to fly by Earth again until April 2087, according to NASA.
Another small asteroid — named 2025 TQ2 — flew within Earth’s vicinity the day after 2025 TF’s approach, according to the Minor Planet Center. The asteroid zoomed over Canada at a distance of about 3,014 miles last Thursday, Oct. 2, according to EarthSky.org.
Space agencies track thousands of near-Earth objects, but they are only considered Potentially Hazardous Asteroids if they are larger than 500 feet in diameter and get closer than 4.65 million miles of Earth, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.
Between Sept. 23 and Sept. 28, 10 asteroids passed near Earth at a distance closer than the moon, according to data from NASA.
Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Democratic, Republican leaders differ on hearing focus
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”
Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.
There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.
“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”
Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.
Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.
“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.
“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.
Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also pressed Bondi on Tuesday over whether Bondi personally approved closing the investigation into Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
“Miss Bondi, did you approve closing the Homan investigation? Bribery investigation?” Hirono said.
“Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, the Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi responded.
Hirono then pressed Bondi over the department’s removal of dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations involving President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Bondi shot back, “I’m not going to discuss personnel matters with you.”
Hirono concluded her questioning by accusing Bondi of deliberately politicizing the department, turning it from the Department of Justice into the “Department of revenge and corruption.”
Bondi pushes back against Democrats
Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.
“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.
She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.
“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.
Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.
The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.
“Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you’re sitting here as law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.
Durbin was taken aback by Bondi’s responses.
“Madam attorney general, it’s my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this – this committee, you mean. I’d like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner,” he said.
Bondi in the hot seat over Epstein files
Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.
Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.
Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman — an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.
She again surfaced Hoffman’s alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.
Political targeting questioned
Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.
Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.
She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.
DOJ under scrutiny amid growing controversies
As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.
While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.
The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.
“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Bondi repeatedly on Tuesday over instances of pressure on the department by Trump and what conversations she may have had with him in the days leading up to the indictment of Comey.
“I’d like to know from you what conversations you had with President Trump about the indictment of James Comey,” Blumenthal said.
“Senator, I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States. You’re an attorney, you have a law degree, and you know that I’m not going to do that,” Bondi said on Tuesday.
Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Democratic, Republican leaders differ on hearing focus
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”
Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.
There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.
“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”
Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.
Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.
“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.
“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.
Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also pressed Bondi on Tuesday over whether Bondi personally approved closing the investigation into Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
“Miss Bondi, did you approve closing the Homan investigation? Bribery investigation?” Hirono said.
“Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, the Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi responded.
Hirono then pressed Bondi over the department’s removal of dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations involving President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Bondi shot back, “I’m not going to discuss personnel matters with you.”
Hirono concluded her questioning by accusing Bondi of deliberately politicizing the department, turning it from the Department of Justice into the “Department of revenge and corruption.”
Bondi pushes back against Democrats
Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.
“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.
She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.
“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.
Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.
The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.
“Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you’re sitting here as law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.
Durbin was taken aback by Bondi’s responses.
“Madam attorney general, it’s my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this – this committee, you mean. I’d like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner,” he said.
Bondi in the hot seat over Epstein files
Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.
Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.
Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman — an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.
She again surfaced Hoffman’s alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.
Political targeting questioned
Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.
Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.
She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.
DOJ under scrutiny amid growing controversies
As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.
While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.
The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.
“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Bondi repeatedly on Tuesday over instances of pressure on the department by Trump and what conversations she may have had with him in the days leading up to the indictment of Comey.
“I’d like to know from you what conversations you had with President Trump about the indictment of James Comey,” Blumenthal said.
“Senator, I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States. You’re an attorney, you have a law degree, and you know that I’m not going to do that,” Bondi said on Tuesday.
Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Democratic, Republican leaders differ on hearing focus
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”
Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.
There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.
“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”
Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.
Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.
“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.
“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.
Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, also pressed Bondi on Tuesday over whether Bondi personally approved closing the investigation into Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
“Miss Bondi, did you approve closing the Homan investigation? Bribery investigation?” Hirono said.
“Senator Hirono, as I stated earlier, the Department of Justice and the FBI conducted a thorough review, and they found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing,” Bondi responded.
Hirono then pressed Bondi over the department’s removal of dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations involving President Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Bondi shot back, “I’m not going to discuss personnel matters with you.”
Hirono concluded her questioning by accusing Bondi of deliberately politicizing the department, turning it from the Department of Justice into the “Department of revenge and corruption.”
Bondi pushes back against Democrats
Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.
“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.
She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.
“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.
Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.
The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.
“Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government and you’re sitting here as law enforcement officers aren’t being paid. They’re out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump,” she said.
Durbin was taken aback by Bondi’s responses.
“Madam attorney general, it’s my job to grill you. Investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility. And this – this committee, you mean. I’d like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner,” he said.
Bondi in the hot seat over Epstein files
Bondi faced heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.
Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
When asked on Fox News about the alleged Epstein client list, the attorney general told Fox News in February, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
She refused to elaborate about those past comments or the growing calls for the Epstein files while testifying.
Bondi responded to individual Democrats who sought more details by surfacing donations they allegedly may have received from Reid Hoffman — an entrepreneur and founder of LinkedIn who is known to have past associations with Epstein.
She again surfaced Hoffman’s alleged donations in an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, in which she again refused to answer his direct questions about the Epstein files.
Political targeting questioned
Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.
Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.
She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.
DOJ under scrutiny amid growing controversies
As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.
While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.
The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.
“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal pressed Bondi repeatedly on Tuesday over instances of pressure on the department by Trump and what conversations she may have had with him in the days leading up to the indictment of Comey.
“I’d like to know from you what conversations you had with President Trump about the indictment of James Comey,” Blumenthal said.
“Senator, I am not going to discuss any conversations I have or have not had with the President of the United States. You’re an attorney, you have a law degree, and you know that I’m not going to do that,” Bondi said on Tuesday.
Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”
Stock image of stethoscope. ATU Images/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A fast-rising form of breast cancer that’s harder to detect on mammograms now makes up more than one in ten cases in the United States, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS).
Invasive lobular carcinoma, the second most common breast cancer type, is increasing about 3% each year, more than triple the rate of other breast cancers, the report, published on Tuesday morning, found.
About 80% of breast cancers are the invasive ductal type, which occurs when cancer cells grow in the milk ducts and invade the surrounding breast tissue.
However, incidence of invasive lobular carcinoma, a cancer than develops in the milk-producing glands of the breast — once rare — has doubled since the 1970s.
Lobular breast cancer hasn’t drawn much attention partly because many people view the five-year survival rate, which is over 90%, as a “cure rate,” but survival often drops after that point, Rebecca Siegel, an author of the report and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the ACS, told ABC News.
“And so, if you look at five-year survival, actually women with lobular breast cancer do better than ductal breast cancer,” she said. “I think that’s probably why it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.”
However, Siegel added that the long-term outlook is poorer than for other breast cancer subtypes.
“For metastatic disease, women with lobular breast cancer are about half as likely to be alive at 10 years,” she said.
Lobular cancers are rising even faster for women under 50, at more than twice the rate of other breast cancers, the report found.
The cancer is most common in white women, with about 14 cases per 100,000 — 33% to 55% higher than in other racial and ethnic groups — but the fastest rise, at nearly 4.5% a year, has been seen among Asian American and Pacific Islander women.
Diagnosing and treating lobular breast cancer differs from other types in several ways, Dr. Anita Mamtani, a surgical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told ABC News.
Mamtani explained that instead of forming a lump, “lobular cancers tend to grow in a straight line or sheet-like patterns.”
This growth pattern can make lobular tumors harder to spot on mammograms, Mamtani said. Patients tend to notice subtle changes such as breast fullness, firmness, swelling, skin redness, nipple changes or discharge.
Compared with other types of breast cancer, lobular cancers are also less responsive to some treatments and more likely to occur in both breasts, which may contribute to poorer long-term outcomes, according to the report.
However, lobular breast cancer still has a strong outlook when found early. The five-year survival rate for early-stage disease is about 99%, and overall survival across all stages is roughly 91%. Outcomes are even better for women who keep up with regular breast cancer screening.
“We will use a variety of diagnostic tools for most patients but, for lobular cancer, that arsenal will include not only mammograms but also ultrasound, contrast-enhanced mammograms, and MRIs,” Mamtani said.
With proper screening, lobular cancer can often be caught in its early stages, she added.
Overall, breast cancer deaths have dropped 44% since 1989, but the disease still affects one in eight women and remains a leading cause of cancer death, according to the ACS.
For all types of breast cancer, regular mammograms remain the best way to catch disease early. For women at average risk, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening every two years from ages 40 to 74.
Women who are at higher risk with a family history of breast cancer or other risk factors should discuss timing of screening with their health care provider.
Nearly half of uninsured women skip breast cancer screening because of cost concerns, the report noted. Free or low-cost options are available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Breast Cancer Foundation, the American Breast Cancer Foundation and local programs.
Experts also recommend maintaining a healthy weight, staying active, limiting alcohol and speaking with your doctor about personal risk factors.
Jamie Parkerson, MD, MS, is a fourth-year psychiatry resident and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at a news conference October 06, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images
(CHICAGO) — As members of the Texas National Guard boarded a plane on Monday, as state and city leaders in Illinois were holding a news conference asking them to stay away from Chicago.
It was not immediately clear when the Guardsmen would arrive in Chicago. Texas Gov. Abbott on Monday shared a photo on social media showing the state’s “elite” National Guard boarding a plane — but he did not say where they were headed.
“Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said. “We will use every lever at our disposal to stop this power grab because military troops should not be used against American communities.”
Earlier in the day, Abbott had replied to Pritzker on social media, saying, “I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials.”
The state and city of Chicago filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to block the federalization and deployment of the National Guard.
The foundational principle separating the military from domestic affairs is “in peril” as Trump seeks to deploy the National Guard to cities across the country, lawyers for Illinois and Chicago wrote in a lawsuit.
“Let me be clear, Donald Trump is using our service members as political props and as pawns in his illegal effort to militarize our nation’s cities,” Pritzker said during a news conference.
To support his point, Pritzker played a video of an ICE raid conducted last week on an apartment complex in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, which he claimed was filmed by federal authorities with high-definition cameras for social media purposes. He said it was the same video Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted on social media on Saturday.
“They brought Black Hawk military helicopters and more than 100 agents in full tactical gear,” Pritzker said.
He added, “In the dead of night and seemingly for the cameras, armed federal agents emerged from the Black Hawk helicopters, rappelling onto the roof of that apartment building.”
The governor alleged the Trump administration is following a playbook to “cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city,” Pritzker said.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, Trump said he did not yet see the need to use the Insurrection Act, but “if I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney at The White House on May 6, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are scheduled to meet at the White House on Tuesday amid the trade war between the neighboring nations.
In July, Trump issued a 35% tariff on most goods and raw materials from Canada.
Canada originally issued retaliatory tariffs. However, in August, Carney announced exemptions for goods covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
During their last meeting in May, Carney pushed back against Trump’s controversial proposal to make Canada the 51st state.
“As you know from real estate, there are some places that are not for sale. And Canada is not for sale, it will never be for sale,” Carney told Trump.
: Fox TV analyst Mark Sanchez looks on prior to the game between the Washington Football Team and Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on December 21, 2021 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
(INDIANAPOLIS) — The 69-year-old truck driver who police say was seriously injured during an altercation with former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez is “thankful to be alive and is recovering at home with his wife,” his attorney said.
Sanchez, a Fox Sports color commentator, was initially arrested for multiple misdemeanors in connection with this weekend’s confrontation in Indianapolis. On Monday, after investigators learned of the severity of the victim’s injuries, prosecutors announced Sanchez was also charged with a felony: battery involving serious bodily injury.
Perry Tole was the victim of a “violent,” “unprovoked” attack from Sanchez and tried to defend himself by stabbing the former NFL player, Erik May, an attorney for Tole, told ABC News.
Sanchez, 38, suffered several stab wounds while Tole “suffered a severe laceration to the side of his face, penetrating all the way through his left cheek,” according to court documents.
Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV obtained this photo, with the black bar in place, showing who his family says is the alleged victim in the hospital.
“You can see from the pictures that he’s got an enormous wound, cut on his face,” that impacted his jaw, mouth and tongue, May said.
“The scarring that he has and is gonna have, it effects his speech right now. Obviously, he’s in a lot of pain, there’s a lot of swelling,” May said, explaining that is one of the reasons why Tole is not giving interviews.
“Mentally, what he and his wife are going through has been considerable,” May said. “He’s just really shaken up.”
Tole’s son is getting married next week and “he’s not gonna be able to attend the wedding, so he’s sad about that,” victim attorney Eddie Reichert added.
The incident unfolded early Saturday morning, when Sanchez allegedly approached Tole, who was doing his assigned work at a hotel loading dock and told him he couldn’t park there, according to police and prosecutors. Sanchez allegedly climbed into the victim’s truck and kept him from calling for help, according to court records.
The victim said Sanchez shoved him when he tried to get his phone, and he felt he was “in physical danger,” so he pepper-sprayed Sanchez, according to court documents.
When Sanchez allegedly advanced toward him again, the victim said he thought, “this guy is trying to kill me,” so he pulled out a knife, “and when Mr. Sanchez came at him,” the victim stabbed Sanchez several times, according to court documents.
The victim said he went “flying back into the dumpster and falling onto the pallets on the ground,” and that he “was not aware of what Mr. Sanchez was physically doing to him, whether he was punching him or otherwise striking him,” court document said. The victim said he could only see Sanchez’s feet “coming at him,” and once the victim stood up, he stabbed Sanchez again, the documents said.
Tole has filed a civil suit against Sanchez and Fox.
Sanchez’s brother said in a statement, “This has been a deeply distressing time for everyone involved. Mark and our family are incredibly grateful for the concern, love, and support we’ve received over the past few days.”
“Mark remains under medical care for the serious injuries he sustained and is focused on his recovery as the legal process continues,” the statement said.
The sentence for the felony charge could be one to six years, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.
Sanchez, a first-round draft pick of the New York Jets in 2009, is next due in court on Nov. 4.
Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are likely to take center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.
While sources told ABC News that leadership at DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.
The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.
“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.
Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”
The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.
Bondi will likely also face heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.
Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
An effort underway in the House of Representatives to hold a vote on a measure that would demand the administration release the entirety of the files has been put on hold after Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home amid the ongoing government shutdown.
The recent rise in acts of political violence will also likely be a central focus of questions to Bondi. Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.
Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
In her most recent appearances before the House and Senate in late June, Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.
She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.
“Whether you’re a former FBI director, whether you’re a former head of an intel community, whether you are current state and local elected official, whether you are a billionaire funding organizations to try to keep Donald Trump out of office — everything is on the table,” Bondi said in a Fox News appearance last month. “We will investigate and will end the weaponization — no longer will there be a two-tier system of justice.”
Portland Police Chief Bob Day speaks with ABC News. (ABC News)
(PORTLAND, Ore.) — The Portland police chief is disputing President Donald Trump’s claim that the Oregon city is a “war zone” that is burning down and “war-ravaged” by protesters and violent criminals, amid legal challenges to the White House’s deployment of National Guard troops.
“No, I would not say Portland’s war-ravaged,” Portland Police Chief Bob Day told ABC News on Monday, calling the narrative that the city is under siege by protesters “disappointing.”
“It’s not a narrative that’s consistent with what’s actually happening now,” Day said. “Granted, 2020 and ’21, that conversation made a lot more sense. But in the last couple of years, under my administration, we’ve seen great strides made in the area of crime and safety.”
A U.S. district judge over the weekend temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard to Portland, where the White House sought to have troops protect federal buildings.
Day said the demonstrations centered on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility take up a single block of the 145-square-mile city. He said in the past three months, there have been a few dozen arrests at the facility for assault and vandalism, but that his department is able to manage it with regional support.
“We have been engaged. We have been addressing violence. We have been addressing vandalism,” he said.
Sending in the National Guard would increase attention and potentially draw outsiders “looking to create some energy,” he said.
“The National Guard is not needed at this time for this particular problem,” Day said. “We are grateful for their service, respectful of the National Guard. These are citizen soldiers, Oregonians, or our neighbors, our friends. But for that role, we don’t need them right now.”
On Sept. 27, Trump directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to provide “all necessary troops” to Portland amid protests at the city’s ICE facility.
The State of Oregon and the City of Portland sued, with officials in the city and state denouncing the action as unnecessary. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Saturday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sending the National Guard to Portland, finding that conditions in Portland were “not significantly violent or disruptive” to justify a federal takeover of the National Guard, and that the president’s claims about the city were “simply untethered to the facts.”
The Trump administration swiftly appealed the order and sent 200 California National Guard troops to Portland, leading Immergut to issue a second restraining order on Sunday that temporarily bars any federalized members of the National Guard from being deployed to Oregon.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt maintained Monday that Trump is working within his authority as commander-in-chief to deploy the National Guard to Portland because he has deemed the situation there “appropriate” to warrant the action.
“For more than 100 days, night after night after night, the ICE facility has been really under siege by these anarchists outside,” she said during a press briefing. “They have been disrespecting law enforcement. They’ve been inciting violence.”
Trump on Monday continued to rail against the city, calling Portland a “burning hellhole” and likened the situation there to an “insurrection.”
“Portland is on fire. Portland’s been on fire for years, and not so much saving it,” he said while taking questions in the Oval Office on Monday. “We have to save something else, because I think that’s all insurrection. I really think that’s really criminal insurrection.”
