(NEW ALBANY, Ohio) — Police are looking for a motive after a man allegedly killed one person and injured five others in a workplace shooting at an Ohio manufacturing facility, officials said.
Officers responded to an active shooter report at a New Albany facility run by KDC/One, a beauty products manufacturer, around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, New Albany police said.
One victim was found dead inside the building and five others were hospitalized in unknown conditions, police said.
About 150 employees were safely evacuated, police said.
The suspect, identified as employee Bruce Reginald Foster III, fled the scene just before police arrived, New Albany Police Chief Greg Jones said.
Foster, 28, was taken into custody Wednesday morning at a home in Columbus, Jones said.
A motive remains under investigation, Jones said at a news conference Wednesday.
Authorities interviewed the evacuated employees and “nobody had reported that there was any conflict or that [Foster] was in trouble at work,” Jones said.
The chief described the victims as Foster’s co-workers and said they likely knew each other.
New Albany is a safe community, but “any community in America can fall victim to random workplace violence,” New Albany Mayor Sloan Spalding said at the news conference.
Foster legally bought the gun used in the shooting in September 2024, authorities noted.
Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. could “level the site” and rebuild the sovereign territory — after earlier saying Palestinians living there should leave.
“They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony” in other areas or countries, Trump said Tuesday night during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out,” he added.
The White House defended Trump’s proposal as “bold, fresh, new ideas.”
“The fact that nobody has a realistic solution, and he puts some very bold, fresh, new ideas out on the table, I don’t think should be criticized in any way. I think it’s going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions, if they don’t like Mr. Trump’s solutions,” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday.
Trump has not committed to putting American troops on the ground in Gaza, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners [in] the region to reconstruct this region,” she said.
“I can confirm that the president is committed to rebuilding Gaza and to temporarily relocating those who are there, because, as I’ve showed you repeatedly, it is a demolition site,” she later said.
International reaction to Trump’s proposal came in swiftly on Wednesday.
United Nations
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the proposal during remarks to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People at the U.N. on Wednesday.
“We must not make the problem worse,” Guterres said, in part, referring to Trump’s comments Tuesday but not addressing them directly or naming the U.S. president, adding: “It is vital to stay true to the bedrock of international law. It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”
“At its essence, the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people is about the right of Palestinians to simply live as human beings in their own land,” Guterres said.
The secretary-general called for reaffirming the two-state solution.
Arab nations
Saudi Arabia issued a statement repeating what it has said in the past, that the kingdom would not establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state — even though Netanyahu said he thought normalization with the Gulf kingdom was “going to happen.”
“Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.
Saudi Arabi reaffirmed its “unequivocal rejection” to attempts to displace Palestinians from their land, adding that its position to the Palestinians is “non-negotiable and not subject to compromises.”
Trump last month suggested Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians in order to “clean out” Gaza, something both Jordan’s king and Egypt’s president have fiercely opposed.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Wednesday called for swift reconstruction of Gaza without displacing Palestinians and for the Palestinian Authority to govern the territory.
In talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa in Cairo, the two leaders agreed on “the importance of moving forward with early recovery projects and programs, removing rubble and providing humanitarian aid at an accelerated pace, without moving the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
While the statement did not directly address Trump’s surprise remarks, it marked Egypt’s first official response to the proposal.
Abdelatty stressed “Egypt’s support for the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” emphasizing the need for a permanent, just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
“His Majesty King Abdullah II stresses the need to put a stop to settlement expansion, expressing rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians,” the Royal Hashemite Court of Jordan wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered a strong rebuke of Trump’s statements on Wednesday.
“We will not allow the rights of our people to be infringed upon, for which we have fought for many decades and made great sacrifices to achieve them,” Abbas said. “These calls represent a serious violation of international law, and peace and stability will not be achieved in the region, without the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, on the borders of June 4, 1967, on the basis of the two-state solution.”
The United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry also responded to the proposal, saying Wednesday in a statement, in part, that it “affirmed its categorical rejection of infringement on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and attempts to displace them and called for the need to stop settlement activities that threaten regional stability and undermine opportunities for peace and coexistence.”
“The Ministry urged the international community, the United Nations and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities and put an end to illegal practices that contravene international law,” the ministry said.
Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and which is not part of the Palestinian Authority, also condemned Trump and called on the president to retract his “irresponsible statements.”
“We call on the U.S. administration and Trump to retract the irresponsible statements that contradict international laws and the natural rights of our people,” Hamas said.
“We call on the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations to convene urgently to follow up on these dangerous statements. We condemn in the strongest terms and reject Trump’s statements aimed at the United States occupying the Gaza Strip and displacing our Palestinian people from it. We affirm that we, our Palestinian people and its living forces will not allow any country in the world to occupy our land or impose guardianship over our Palestinian people,” the group added.
Europe
Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Wednesday that Italy will look at Trump’s plan for Gaza, while adding that Rome remains in favor of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It seems to me that as far as the evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza is concerned, the response of Jordan and Egypt has been negative, so it seems to me that it is a bit difficult (to implement the plan),” Tajani told the Italian Foreign Affairs Committees of the Lower House and Senate.
“I have said what the Italian position is, then we will see when there are concrete proposals. We are in favor of two peoples, two states. I have said that we are even ready to send Italian soldiers for a mission to reunify Gaza with the West Bank. The government has not changed its mind,” Tajani said.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated its “opposition to any forced displacement of Gaza’s Palestinian population, which would constitute a serious violation of international law, an attack on the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians and also a major obstacle to the two-state solution and a factor of major destabilization for our close partners, Egypt and Jordan, and the whole region.”
“France will continue actively promoting the implementation of the two-state solution, which alone can guarantee long-term peace and security to Israelis and Palestinians,” the ministry said in a press release. “Gaza’s future must lie not in the prospect of control by a third State but in the framework of a future Palestinian State, under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas must be disarmed and have no part in the territory’s governance. France will continue to express its opposition to settlement activity — which is contrary to international law — and to any hint of the unilateral annexation of the West Bank.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock issued a statement saying, in part, “A displacement of the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza would not only be unacceptable and in breach of international law. It would also lead to new suffering and new hatred. And so the G7, the European Union and the United Nations have repeatedly made clear from the beginning that Gaza’s civilian population must not be displaced and Gaza must not be permanently occupied or resettled. A solution must not be put in place without consulting the Palestinians. A negotiated two-state solution remains the only solution which will enable both Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, security and dignity. This is also the clear stance taken by the Arab states in the region.”
Israel
Netanyahu, however, seemed supportive of the president’s proposal during the Tuesday press conference and, delivering remarks after Trump, praised the president for his “fresh ideas” to accomplish their goals, which he said included ensuring Gaza is not a threat to Israel.
“I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas will help us achieve all these goals,” Netanyahu said.
Benny Gantz, a former military chief and the top political rival of Netanyahu who resigned from Israel’s emergency government in June 2024, wrote on X that Trump’s statement “is further proof of the deep alliance between the United States and Israel.”
“President Trump has shown, and not for the first time, that he is a true friend of Israel and will continue to stand by it on issues important to strengthening its security,” Gantz said. “In his remarks, he presented creative, original and interesting thinking, which must be examined alongside the realization of the goals of the war, and giving priority to the return of all the abductees.”
An Israeli official told ABC News that Netanyahu’s visit with Trump in D.C. on Tuesday “exceeded all our expectations and dreams.”
ABC News’ Hugo Leenhardt, Ayat Al-Tawy, Nasser Atta, Jordana Miller, Phoebe Natanson, Kelsey Walsh, Michelle Stoddart and Justin Ryan Gomez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Housing prices are soaring twice as fast as overall inflation. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage topped 7% in January for the first time since last spring. Observers as disparate as J.P. Morgan and the left-leaning nonprofit Center for American Progress have declared a “housing affordability crisis.”
The cost crunch could last longer or even worsen, however, as a result of potential tariffs on Mexico and Canada, experts told ABC News.
The Trump administration threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, but the U.S. reached an agreement with each of those countries on Monday to pause the tariffs for one month.
Such duties would likely raise expenses for imported home-building materials, hiking construction costs and increasing home prices, some experts said. Meanwhile, they added, potential price increases for a range of goods across the economy could pressure the Fed to raise interest rates, which in turn would push mortgage rates even higher.
“There are a lot of questions about how we can deal with the housing affordability crisis — these tariffs would do the exact opposite,” Gregg Colburn, a real estate professor at the University of Washington, told ABC News.
In a series of social media posts over recent days, President Donald Trump said the tariffs target Canada, Mexico and China for hosting the manufacture and transport of illicit drugs that end up in the United States. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump urged the three countries to address his concerns, while acknowledging the tariffs may cause some financial hardship within the U.S.
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID,” Trump wrote.
The Trump administration did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Roughly 30% of softwood lumber used in the U.S. is made up of imports, which arrive primarily from Canada. Another component of home construction, wallboard, originates mostly in Mexico, according to tracking site Global Gypsum.
Experts said they expect the prices of soft lumber and wallboard to rise if tariffs on Mexico and Canada take effect, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to buyers.
In turn, the added homebuilding costs could push up home prices, putting some of the cost burden onto homebuyers, the experts said.
“It will increase home prices by a noticeable amount,” Ken Johnson, a real estate economist at the University of Mississippi, told ABC News.
Home prices surged about 24% over a nearly two-year period beginning at the outset of the pandemic in December 2019, the fastest rate on record, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found.
Price hikes have slowed since then, however. Home prices rose about 4.5% in 2024, Goldman Sachs said.
“Prices have stopped rising at these incredible rates,” Johnson said, but he warned they could pick up again after tariffs. “People will feel it,” he added.
Tariffs may also impact another source of housing cost woes: high mortgage rates.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage stands at 6.95%, Freddie Mac data last week showed. That figure has ticked up over recent months, despite a series of interest rate cuts at the Federal Reserve.
Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell left interest rates unchanged, saying further rate cuts may slow over the course of 2025.
Duties on Mexico and Canada could further delay interest rate cuts or even trigger rate hikes, since the Fed may move to fight a potential burst of inflation, some experts said.
“If costs are going up, the Fed will do what it’s mandated to do,” Marc Norman, associate dean at the New York University School of Professional Studies and Schack Institute of Real Estate, told ABC News.
The Fed’s benchmark interest rate helps set the level of mortgage rates, which closely track the yield on a 10-year Treasury bond, or the amount paid to a bondholder annually.
If the Fed raises rates in order to control tariff-induced inflation, mortgages could very well rise, some experts said.
“The worry is the Fed might respond to potential inflation growth by either not lowering their rates or by raising their rates, which could lead to higher mortgage rates,” Johnson said.
But the tariffs may not worsen affordability challenges much, Norman said, in part because they would arrive at a moment when challenges already abound, including insufficient housing supply and high construction costs.
(SEATTLE, Wash.) — The right wing of a taxiing Japan Airlines flight hit the tail of a parked Delta plane at Seattle’s SeaTac Airport on Wednesday, according to the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration.
No one was injured but passengers on both flights were forced to deplane, SeaTac Airport said.
Delta Flight 1921 was set to fly to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with 142 customers on board.
Delta said in a statement, “While in sequence for deicing, the tail of a Delta 737 aircraft reportedly made contact with a wing tip of another airline’s aircraft. There are no reports of injuries for crew or customers on the flight, and we apologize for the experience and delay in travels.”
The FAA said it will investigate.
“The aircraft were in an area that is not under air traffic control,” the FAA noted.
The airport said the incident had a “minimal impact” on its operations.
(WASHINGTON) — Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency faces its first major legal hurdle this afternoon when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., considers blocking the newly formed arm of the federal government from accessing sensitive records from the Treasury Department.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is hearing arguments Wednesday over whether she should issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting DOGE from accessing or using Treasury Department data as part of DOGE’s effort to trim the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump.
The hearing follows a lawsuit filed by three federal unions that alleged DOGE employees violated federal privacy laws when they accessed data from the Treasury Department, including the names, social security numbers, birthdays, bank account numbers, and addresses of taxpayers.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” the lawsuit alleged.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and the Alliance for Retired Americans alleged that Musk and DOGE — with the consent of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — unlawfully accessed the sensitive records without providing any legal justification, public reasoning, or legal procedure to collect taxpayer data.
According to the lawsuit, DOGE’s “full, continuous, and ongoing access” of sensitive data risks the security of millions of Americans.
“People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs requested a temporary restraining order preventing the Treasury Department from providing DOGE sensitive information as well as enjoining DOGE employees from using any of the records they might have already obtained.
Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. could “level the site” and rebuild the sovereign territory — after earlier saying Palestinians living there should leave.
“They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony” in other areas or countries, Trump said Tuesday night during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out,” he added.
The White House defended Trump’s proposal as “bold, fresh, new ideas.”
“The fact that nobody has a realistic solution, and he puts some very bold, fresh, new ideas out on the table, I don’t think should be criticized in any way. I think it’s going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions, if they don’t like Mr. Trump’s solutions,” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday.
Trump has not committed to putting American troops on the ground in Gaza, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners [in] the region to reconstruct this region,” she said.
“I can confirm that the president is committed to rebuilding Gaza and to temporarily relocating those who are there, because, as I’ve showed you repeatedly, it is a demolition site,” she later said.
International reaction to Trump’s proposal came in swiftly on Wednesday.
Arab nations
Saudi Arabia issued a statement repeating what it has said in the past, that the kingdom would not establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state — even though Netanyahu said he thought normalization with the Gulf kingdom was “going to happen.”
“Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.
Saudi Arabi reaffirmed its “unequivocal rejection” to attempts to displace Palestinians from their land, adding that its position to the Palestinians is “non-negotiable and not subject to compromises.”
Trump last month suggested Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians in order to “clean out” Gaza, something both Jordan’s king and Egypt’s president have fiercely opposed.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Wednesday called for swift reconstruction of Gaza without displacing Palestinians and for the Palestinian Authority to govern the territory.
In talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa in Cairo, the two leaders agreed on “the importance of moving forward with early recovery projects and programs, removing rubble and providing humanitarian aid at an accelerated pace, without moving the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
While the statement did not directly address Trump’s surprise remarks, it marked Egypt’s first official response to the proposal.
Abdelatty stressed “Egypt’s support for the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” emphasizing the need for a permanent, just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
“His Majesty King Abdullah II stresses the need to put a stop to settlement expansion, expressing rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians,” the Royal Hashemite Court of Jordan wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered a strong rebuke of Trump’s statements on Wednesday.
“We will not allow the rights of our people to be infringed upon, for which we have fought for many decades and made great sacrifices to achieve them,” Abbas said. “These calls represent a serious violation of international law, and peace and stability will not be achieved in the region, without the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, on the borders of June 4, 1967, on the basis of the two-state solution.”
Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and which is not part of the Palestinian Authority, also condemned Trump and called on the president to retract his “irresponsible statements.”
“We call on the U.S. administration and Trump to retract the irresponsible statements that contradict international laws and the natural rights of our people,” Hamas said.
“We call on the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations to convene urgently to follow up on these dangerous statements. We condemn in the strongest terms and reject Trump’s statements aimed at the United States occupying the Gaza Strip and displacing our Palestinian people from it. We affirm that we, our Palestinian people and its living forces will not allow any country in the world to occupy our land or impose guardianship over our Palestinian people,” the group added.
Europe
Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Wednesday that Italy will look at Trump’s plan for Gaza, while adding that Rome remains in favor of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It seems to me that as far as the evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza is concerned, the response of Jordan and Egypt has been negative, so it seems to me that it is a bit difficult (to implement the plan),” Tajani told the Italian Foreign Affairs Committees of the Lower House and Senate.
“I have said what the Italian position is, then we will see when there are concrete proposals. We are in favor of two peoples, two states. I have said that we are even ready to send Italian soldiers for a mission to reunify Gaza with the West Bank. The government has not changed its mind,” Tajani said.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated its “opposition to any forced displacement of Gaza’s Palestinian population, which would constitute a serious violation of international law, an attack on the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians and also a major obstacle to the two-state solution and a factor of major destabilization for our close partners, Egypt and Jordan, and the whole region.”
“France will continue actively promoting the implementation of the two-state solution, which alone can guarantee long-term peace and security to Israelis and Palestinians,” the ministry said in a press release. “Gaza’s future must lie not in the prospect of control by a third State but in the framework of a future Palestinian State, under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas must be disarmed and have no part in the territory’s governance. France will continue to express its opposition to settlement activity — which is contrary to international law — and to any hint of the unilateral annexation of the West Bank.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock issued a statement saying, in part, “A displacement of the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza would not only be unacceptable and in breach of international law. It would also lead to new suffering and new hatred. And so the G7, the European Union and the United Nations have repeatedly made clear from the beginning that Gaza’s civilian population must not be displaced and Gaza must not be permanently occupied or resettled. A solution must not be put in place without consulting the Palestinians. A negotiated two-state solution remains the only solution which will enable both Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace, security and dignity. This is also the clear stance taken by the Arab states in the region.”
Israel
Netanyahu, however, seemed supportive of the president’s proposal during the Tuesday press conference and, delivering remarks after Trump, praised the president for his “fresh ideas” to accomplish their goals, which he said included ensuring Gaza is not a threat to Israel.
“I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas will help us achieve all these goals,” Netanyahu said.
Benny Gantz, a former military chief and the top political rival of Netanyahu who resigned from Israel’s emergency government in June 2024, wrote on X that Trump’s statement “is further proof of the deep alliance between the United States and Israel.”
“President Trump has shown, and not for the first time, that he is a true friend of Israel and will continue to stand by it on issues important to strengthening its security,” Gantz said. “In his remarks, he presented creative, original and interesting thinking, which must be examined alongside the realization of the goals of the war, and giving priority to the return of all the abductees.”
An Israeli official told ABC News that Netanyahu’s visit with Trump in D.C. on Tuesday “exceeded all our expectations and dreams.”
ABC News’ Hugo Leenhardt, Ayat Al-Tawy, Nasser Atta, Jordana Miller, Phoebe Natanson, Kelsey Walsh, Michelle Stoddart and Justin Ryan Gomez contributed to this report.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As Elon Musk continues to dismantle government agencies, threaten workers with layoffs and gain access to government data, congressional Republicans on Wednesday blocked Democratic efforts to compel him to answer for his actions under oath.
Musk, who has not made any public appearances since the inauguration, has publicly called for cutting down the federal government and through his non-government organization Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has frozen funding for several agencies including USAID the international aid agency.
Designated a special government employee by the White House, Musk claims he has been in talks with President Donald Trump about his tactics.
“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said Monday on his effort to curtail USAID.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, tore into Musk during a committee hearing on Wednesday as he moved to subpoena the controversial billionaire.
“It’s a puzzling role for many people, certainly on this side of the aisle, and I think for some on yours, who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence,” he said.
Republicans on the committee pushed back and engaged in a shouting match with Democrats over Musk. When GOP chairman Rep. James Comer put the motion to a vote, it failed along party lines.
Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who has shown support for DOGE in the past, abstained from voting.
Comer and other Republicans came to Musk and DOGE’s defense contending, without evidence, that the federal government was wasting taxpayer dollars and those agencies needed to be reviewed and scaled back.
“Elon Musk trimmed the fat on X and we have the chance to do the same here,” Comer said about Musk deep cuts at the social media giant.
Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022 has been seen by some business analysts as an unsuccessful investment as the company’s value has gone down sharply over the years with users and advertisers dropping the platform.
The mutual fund Fidelity marked down its estimate of X’s value by 78.7% as of the end of August, according to a financial disclosure.
Republicans have maintained that Musk is not in charge and answers to Trump.
When asked about Democrats’ concerns and anger over DOGE, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump campaigned to make the government more efficient and defended Musk’s involvement in it.
While Musk won’t be taking questions from leaders anytime soon, he has spent a lot of time on his social media platform making his case for the cuts.
On Thursday he reposted a X post that had screenshot from a news article talking about DOGE aides looking at the Medicare payment system.
“Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening,” Musk wrote in his post without any further details or evidence to back his claim.
The Medicare system wasn’t the only government agency that was put on notice this week.
The Treasury Department said that officials connected to DOGE have been granted “read-only” access to the sensitive Treasury system that manages trillions of dollars in government payments.
Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that DOGE is not allowed to write new code.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for forecasting the weather, researching and analyzing climate and weather data and monitoring and tracking extreme weather events like hurricanes, is now being scrutinized by Musk’s team, several sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
DOGE is looking for anything tied to DEI and that they removed anything DEI-related from bulletin boards, including posters and signs, the sources said. They also checked bathroom signs to ensure they complied with Trump’s executive orders.
A former NOAA employee told ABC News that he is concerned that representatives from DOGE will employ what he called the Musk’s strategy of breaking things now and fixing them later. He said he’s worried that NOAA’s irreplaceable climate and weather data could be damaged or lost and that DOGE may be following the Project 2025 playbook.
Trump has distanced himself from the plan. However, his nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was one of the authors.
Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA and privatizing forecast operations. In the document, the authors wrote that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.
As these moves take place, questions have been raised by leaders, critics and others about by how much and how exactly its operating.
Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing but told people he thought it was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News. Instead, he took an office inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the sources said.
Musk moved beds into both the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the United States Office of Personnel Management, according to sources. The move is intended to allow both Musk and his staff to sleep there if working late, the sources said.
It follows a familiar trend for tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Musk’s team is staffed largely by engineers and young people with little experience in government policy. At least one as young as 19 years old, according to sources.
Trump was asked Tuesday about Musk’s team including the younger members and their access to government data and facilities and said he thought it was a good move.
Democratic leadership on the Hill has repeatedly downplayed the power Musk claims for DOGE.
“It has no authority to make spending decisions, to shut down programs or ignore federal law. This is not debatable. This is an indisputable fact. No authority for spending decisions to shut down programs or ignore federal law,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Matthew Glasser, Will Steakin, Katherine Faulders and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Pilots and air traffic controllers notified authorities about airplanes and helicopters flying alarmingly close at Reagan National Airport (DCA) in at least 15 incident reports dating back to 1991, according to an ABC News review of the reports.
Some of the reports warned that the flight space was “an accident waiting to happen” with others describing scenarios eerily close to what occurred when a military Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 last week as the passenger jet approached the airport.
“One of these incidents would have been too many,” said former Air Force pilot and ABC News aviation consultant John Nance. “This barometer is in the red. It’s telling us there is a real problem here. There is a very, very clear track record of something that needs to be fixed.”
There are at least four reports of safety incidents associated with runway 33, the same runway that AA 5342 was approaching when the collision that took 67 lives occurred.
“This has been happening too many times over the years, and it’s now led to a tragedy that could have been prevented,” said Steve Ganyard, a former Marine Corps fighter pilot and ABC News contributor.
The safety reports were filed with the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a program established by the FAA and managed by NASA that enables professionals within the aviation community to voluntarily and confidentially report safety concerns and incidents in a non-punitive manner.
In response to questions from ABC News, the FAA said, “Due to the ongoing NTSB investigation, we cannot provide information at this time.” The FAA added that ASRS reports are “one of many data sources we use to identify system-level safety risks.”
The reports detail accounts of airplane flight crews at DCA who were surprised by helicopters flying too close, oftentimes describing near misses in the air within just hundreds of feet.
One captain for a major carrier went so far as to call DCA “probably the most dangerous airport in the United States” in a report concerning their broader safety concerns about flying in and out of the airport.
In 2015, the flight crew of a regional jet reported a near mid-air collision when it was switched from landing on runway 1 to runway 33 at DCA, coming “within very close contact” of a helicopter also in air. The safety report continues, “This occurred about 400 feet off the ground to the point where the pilot monitoring had to take the controls to make a correction in order to prevent it from becoming a midair collision.”
The reporting crew says that only after taking action to avoid a collision was the regional jet informed by DCA air traffic control of the close traffic, with the flight crew adding “at that point it would have been too late.”
American Airlines Flight 5342 was also switched to runway 33 after lining up for runway 1, in order to keep traffic moving, a common practice at DCA.
It is not yet known whether air traffic control ever communicated the helicopter’s close proximity to the American Airlines flight crew, though the Black Hawk helicopter was asked if they had the airplane in sight and replied that they did.
One airplane captain reported a near mid-air collision with a helicopter in April 2024, writing, “We never received a warning of the traffic from ATC so we were unaware it was there.” The captain urged “better separation for DCA traffic on the river visual to the helicopter traffic that is flying up and down the river.”
In 2013, an airplane captain reported coming within 200 feet of a military helicopter while approaching DCA to land, writing, “There are always numerous military and government helicopters running up and down that river at all times of the day and night. Because of this, what would normally be alarming at any other airport in the country has become commonplace at DCA. The FAA allows these aircraft to operate in this environment and we have no choice, but to accept it and deal with it.”
The concerned airplane pilot in that incident continued, “I cannot imagine what business is so pressing that these helicopters are allowed to cross the paths of airliners carrying hundreds of people!”
Nance said this collection of safety incident reports “details a tale of dress rehearsals for what happened last week.”
In a separate incident report filed in 1997, an airplane first officer detailing a close encounter with a military helicopter said, “I was not comfortable with the level of safety involved with flying within 400 ft [vertically] of a heli and that is considered a normal op.”
In 1993, a captain of an airplane that came close to a helicopter flying above the Potomac River said, “This heli conflict around DCA is a daily prob!… This is an accident waiting to happen.”
In 1991, yet another flight crew reporting a converging flight path with a military helicopter wrote, “Here is an accident waiting to happen.”
Nance said an examination of these reports illustrates “flight crew confusion at critical junctures in the approach caused by alarming interactions with helicopter traffic,” “wildly variable altitudes flown by the helicopter traffic,” and “overburdened tower controllers” who “appear to consider the pace of operations and the number of close calls with helicopters in critical areas as business as usual.”
“The helicopter routes around DCA allow for little margin for error,” Ganyard said. “You cannot have aircraft constantly flying so close together and expect to maintain safety.”
“In the AA crash we see the consequences of a minor mistake becoming a tragedy,” Ganyard added. “Step one for the FAA is to reroute helicopter traffic around DCA.”
In the aftermath of the crash last week, the FAA restricted helicopter traffic over the Potomac River around DCA while the NTSB completes its preliminary investigation. At that point, the FAA said, it will review the airspace based on the NTSB’s report.
The Aviation Safety Reporting System was established in 1976 to “support the FAA in its mission to eliminate unsafe conditions in the national aviation system, and prevent avoidable accidents,” according to its website. The program is managed by NASA as an independent third party with no regulatory or enforcement role, which says it “ensures that de-identified incident data and the results of special studies are communicated to those responsible for aviation safety.”
On its website, the FAA said it established it is “a positive program intended to ensure the safest possible system by identifying and correcting unsafe conditions before they lead to accidents.”
In a report last year on near mid-air collisions, ASRA said, “Such incidents are independently submitted and are not corroborated by NASA, the FAA or NTSB. The existence in the ASRS database of reports concerning a specific topic cannot, therefore, be used to infer the prevalence of that problem within the National Airspace System.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats are outraged over President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” and rebuild Gaza — calling the plan everything from “horrifying” to “ethnic cleansing,” while Republicans were supportive, but admitted they were short on details.
“This is an insane proposal, and there’s been a huge backlash already, because the president of the United States was saying that he would use U.S. military force, if necessary, to forcibly remove 2 million Palestinians from Gaza — that’s ethnic cleansing by another name — so that it could be redeveloped,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told CNN on Wednesday morning, adding that it could be “dangerous” for both the U.S. and the Middle East.
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said that Trump is “completely ignoring the sovereignty and the self determination of the Palestinian people who have lived in this place for generations and he’s got his eye on some real estate deal because he thinks the coastline of Gaza is going to be great for some new hotel.” She told CNN that the plan is “horrifying” and “ridiculous,” shortly after Trump announced it Tuesday night during a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In addition to announcing his desire to “take over” Gaza, Trump pushed for Palestinians to leave Gaza and relocate, a suggestion that was roundly rejected by neighbors in the region and from U.S. allies.
Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green announced on Wednesday that he intends to file articles of impeachment against Trump over his proposal.
Some Democrats also asserted that Trump’s comments were meant to distract from Elon Musk being given access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system and disrupting other government agencies.
“I have news for you — we aren’t taking over Gaza. But the media and the chattering class will focus on it for a few days and Trump will have succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story — the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said on X. He also later referred to the plan as a “bad, sick joke.”
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers were quick to praise Trump’s proposal while also admitting that they weren’t certain of the specifics.
House Speaker Mike Johnson came to Trump’s defense Wednesday morning, calling the president’s surprise announcement “a bold move” while acknowledging he’s waiting on “further details on what exactly that looks like.”
“It’s a bold move, certainly far bolder than what’s been done before, but I think we’ve got to stand unequivocally in an unwavering manner…with Israel, our closest ally and friend in the Middle East,” he said during a press conference at the Capitol.
Earlier Wednesday, Johnson told reporters, “I think this is a good development” and “I think it’s one that we’ll applaud.”
Other Republicans went even farther.
“The status quo hasn’t worked,” Rep. Brian Mast, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told ABC News. “Two-state solution is the idea of making a state of an entity that would immediately have to be labeled a state sponsor of terror. And so that’s not the solution at all.”
When asked if this means troops would be deployed to the region, he said, “that’s not a guarantee. That’s something that is on the table.”
Other lawmakers were also unclear on whether Trump had deploying troops in mind.
“As far as I know, it’s not troops,” Rep. Byron Donald, a close Trump ally, said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested that the president “wants to bring a more peaceful, secure Middle East, and he’s put some ideas out there.”
He later doubled down on that sentiment, saying, “Look, there are a lot of ideas that are coming out to try to address what is clearly a crisis in that region.”
Lisa McClain, R-Mich., stopped short of endorsing Trump’s plan but told reporters that “it is going to take unconventional wisdom to get us out of this mess that we’re in” and said the president is “throwing everything in the kitchen sink out there.”
-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim and Emily Chang contributed to this report.
Yana Paskova/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WEST POINT, N.Y.) — The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has disbanded a dozen clubs on campus related to gender and race, ABC News has confirmed.
The National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers Club, the Latin Cultural Club and the Native American Heritage Forum were among the clubs ordered to cease operations.
The changes were made “in accordance with recent Presidential Executive Orders, Department of Defense guidance, and the Department of the Army guidance,” according to a memo obtained by ABC News.
The memo, dated Tuesday, comes amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping eradication of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government.
The directive “cancels all sections, meetings, events, and other activities associated with these clubs,” according to the memo.
Websites for the various clubs are no longer available online.
The memo also suggests a full review of other clubs on campus is underway.
West Point did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
