(FULTON COUNTY, GA) — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday satisfied the judgment against him that required him to pay two Fulton County election workers a total of $148 million for defamation.
A jury found Giuliani liable in 2023 for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely accusing them of tampering with the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia.
In the process of reaching a settlement in January, he was held in contempt twice, by two different federal judges, for failing to relinquish possessions and continuing to defame the two election workers.
Court documents showed that the settlement action was dismissed in district court on Monday after it was determined that Giuliani had fully satisfied his obligations to Freeman and Moss.
Giuliani began surrendering assets soon after a federal jury determined what he should pay Freeman and Moss in damages and penalties in December 2024.
The settlement last month allowed him to keep his condo in Florida and his World Series rings.
A statement from Giuliani at the time of the settlement said that he would agree not to further defame the two election workers. It did not include an admission of guilt.
Giuliani was previously disbarred in New York and in Washington after his law license was stripped over his efforts to aid President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election.
His representative, Ted Goodman, said in a statement last month that the plaintiffs’ attorneys could take the possessions from the former Trump lawyer, “but they can never take away his extraordinary record of public service.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats plan to target House Republicans in vulnerable districts by highlighting potential cuts to Medicaid and other federal spending in the budget blueprint GOP lawmakers hope to vote on this week, according to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo first obtained by ABC News.
The memo titled “Medicaid Cuts Prove Politically Perilous for House Republicans” outlines a plan to paint GOP members in swing districts as voting for a “budget blueprint that would inflict massive pain upon American families.”
The budget blueprint sets a goal of at least $2 trillion dollars in cuts to mandatory federal spending, which includes funding for entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans and those with disabilities, is expected to face the brunt of the cuts. Some GOP members have discussed including new work requirements for the program and limiting how much the federal government pays each state.
Republican leadership has repeatedly promised not to cut other entitlement programs.
“Rather than delivering on their campaign promises to lower the high cost of living, [Republicans] are poised to pass an extreme budget scheme that would decimate affordable health care and take food off the tables of millions of American families,” the memo reads. “Republicans will find that a ‘yes’ vote doomed their reelection chances come November 2026.”
Vulnerable Republicans, several of whom represent swing districts with a significant number of constituents on Medicaid, have expressed serious concern that safety net programs could be on the chopping block.
“Slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities where hospitals and nursing home are already struggling to keep their doors open,” Republican members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson in a letter last week.
GOP leadership has stressed to members that, while the budget blueprint calls for substantial cuts, specific cuts have yet to be determined. And Republican members have disputed their budget will have a negative impact on low-income families, pointing to policies like “No Tax on Tips,” a signature Trump campaign promise included in the budget plan.
The Democratic memo also notes House Republicans in safe red seats are already facing what it calls “massive political blowback” at town hall meetings back home, as angry voters speak out about potential funding cuts and thousands of recent firings by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“We are all fricking pissed off about this, you’re going to hear it,” a constituent said to Rep Rich McCormick, R-Ga., at a town hall last week.
Johnson told ABC News the protests were an “ambush” organized by Democratic advocacy groups.
“I think the American people largely applaud what’s happening. We need to get government cut back to its size and scope the way it should be and make sure people are doing their work,” he said.
The booking photo for Seth “Andrea” Gregori, Feb. 24, 2025. (Corpus Christi Police Department)
(HOUSTON, TEXAS) — Authorities in Texas said on Monday that they have thwarted a “mass casualty attack” after arresting a suspect who allegedly made terroristic threats against police officers.
Seth “Andrea” Gregori was arrested on a terroristic threats warrant Monday morning, the Corpus Christi Police Department said.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified of Gregori making terroristic threats against Corpus Christi Police Department Officers,” the police department said in a statement. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the threats and secured an arrest warrant for Gregori.”
The 21-year-old suspect allegedly planned an attack on police “similar to the 2016 Dallas ambush,” the FBI’s Houston office said.
In the 2016 incident referenced by the FBI, five Dallas police officers were killed and seven injured in an ambush-style shooting.
The shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, told a hostage negotiator that he wanted to kill white people, especially police officers, and expressed anger for Black Lives Matter, police said. The ex-U.S. Army reservist was killed by police when they detonated a bomb delivered by a robot.
The 21-year-old suspect allegedly planned an attack on police “similar to the 2016 Dallas ambush,” the FBI’s Houston office said.
In the 2016 incident referenced by the FBI, five Dallas police officers were killed and seven injured in an ambush-style shooting.
The shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, told a hostage negotiator that he wanted to kill white people, especially police officers, and expressed anger for Black Lives Matter, police said. The ex-U.S. Army reservist was killed by police when they detonated a bomb delivered by a robot.
Police did not release any additional details on the case involving Gregori.
No charges have been filed yet in the case, the Nueces County District Attorney’s Office told ABC Corpus Christi affiliate KIII.
It is unclear if Gregori has an attorney at this time.
Deb Cohn-Orbach/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York City’s congestion pricing toll generated nearly $50 million in revenue in its first month, officials said Monday, as the Trump administration moves to kill the first-in-the-nation program.
From Jan. 5, the first day of the program, to Jan. 31, tolls from the congestion pricing program generated $48.66 million, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which manages the city’s subways as well as bridges and commuter rails.
The net revenue for that period was $37.5 million when taking into account expenses to run the program, the MTA said.
The program is on track to generate $500 million in net revenue by the end of this year, as initially projected, the MTA said.
“With an initial performance in line with projections, we can confidently move forward with projects that rely on funds from the Congestion Relief Zone,” MTA Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing similar results in the coming months.”
The update comes after the U.S. Department of Transportation last week said it pulled federal approval of the plan following a review requested by President Donald Trump.
The review found that the “scope of this pilot project as approved exceeds the authority authorized by Congress” under the Federal Highway Administration’s Value Pricing Pilot Program, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.
Trump celebrated the DOT’s move, saying on his social media platform Truth Social, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The MTA said it immediately challenged the Trump administration’s reversal in federal court. The MTA is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court that the DOT’s move is “not proper” and is not turning off the tolls under the program until there’s a court order, Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday.
Duffy, who called the plan “unfair,” told CBS News on Wednesday that he’d be open to some form of congestion pricing while questioning the price of the NYC toll.
The congestion pricing plan charges passenger vehicles $9 to access Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours as part of an effort to ease congestion and raise funds for the city’s public transit system. During peak hours, small trucks and charter buses are charged $14.40 and large trucks and tour buses pay $21.60.
According to the MTA’s findings, 68% of the $48.66 million in revenue generated in January came from passenger vehicles, 22% from taxis and for-hire vehicles, 9% from trucks and 1% from buses and motorcycles.
New York officials have touted the success of the program in easing traffic, with Hochul saying last week that congestion has “dropped dramatically” since the program went into effect last month.
(WASHINGTON) — After a weekend of confusion, the Trump administration on Monday afternoon told federal agencies they don’t have to direct workers to comply with Elon Musk’s request for information about their activities at work, and that doing so is voluntary, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Office of Personnel Management — effectively the human resources agency for the federal government — updated agency human resources officers on a Monday call over Elon Musk’s call for the Trump administration to fire federal workers who did not reply to an email asking them to submit an email listing their accomplishments from the previous week.
Adding to the confusion are Trump’s own comments Monday, when he told journalists in the Oval Office there was a “lot of genius” behind Musk’s proposal, and that workers would be “sort of semi-fired” if they don’t respond.
OPM did not respond to a request for comment on the instructions given to federal agencies.
In the latest effort by the Department of Government Efficiency to investigate efficiency and reduce the size of the government, employees were asked in an email from the Office of Personnel Management on Saturday to list five accomplishments over the previous week and reply by 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday.
Musk threatened on social media that employees would face termination if they do not comply. The original email sent to employees did not include such an ultimatum, leaving some employees unaware of the threat.
However, some federal agencies told employees not to respond to the OPM email, some advised that employees should reply and others said that replying is “voluntary,” creating uncertainty among the rank and file.
Musk’s ultimatum raised questions about how much authority he holds in the government. While the White House argued in a court filing that Musk has no true power, Musk doubled down on his ultimatum Monday morning, warning that “Those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere.”
Trump endorsed the email while taking questions Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” Trump said. “So, by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?'”
“And then if you don’t answer like you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist,” Trump said.
Asked later Monday about the change in OPM policy, a White House official said, “DOGE is moving fast, at the direction of POTUS, and that’s exactly the point.”
“It’s all about efficiency, even internally,” the official added.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump. Any notion to the contrary is completely false.”
Mixed messages
Federal employees on Saturday began receiving the OPM email with the subject line “What did you do last week” that demanded they list “5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager,” according to multiple sources and an email reviewed by ABC News.
The subject line came from Musk’s playbook: “What did you get done this week?” is the same message he sent to the CEO of Twitter (now X) Parag Agrawal before Musk bought the company and fired the CEO.
A spokesperson from the Office of Personnel Management said Saturday that “agencies will determine any next steps.”
Yet management at multiple agencies told their staff that they were waiting on further guidance and, in some cases, told them to hold off on replying, according to multiple sources.
Employees at the Justice Department were told that they did not need to respond to the OPM request, according to an email obtained by ABC News. The Defense Department told employees who received the email to “please pause any response.” The Pentagon official filling in as the Department’s top personnel officer said that DOD would review any performance of personnel according to its own procedures, but added that “when and if required” it would coordinate responses to OPM’s email.
Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel also told staff to “please pause any responses” to the email.
Employees at agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Department of Energy were told by senior staff that they were waiting on further guidance and, in some cases, told to wait for further notice before responding.
NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro informed employees on Monday before OPM’s guidance went out that responding to the email was optional and that not responding would have “no impact to your employment,” according to an email obtained by ABC News.
“Employees may have already responded or may still choose to respond. You are not required to respond, and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond,” Petro wrote in the email.
Other agencies directed employees to reply. Speaking to Fox News on Monday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explained why his employees should respond to Musk’s email.
“If you can’t come up with five things that you did, maybe you shouldn’t be employed here,” Duffy said, calling it an “easy task” that “happens in the private sector all the time.”
Leadership at the Treasury Department sent an agency-wide email Monday morning instructing all employees — including those at the IRS — to comply with OPM’s email by the deadline, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
However, the email still left some employees confused, particularly because it does not clarify whether failure to respond by the deadline could result in termination.
Federal workers who don’t follow Musk on social media could be unaware there’s an ultimatum on the table. While the administration did ask federal employees to list their accomplishments, the email did not state that those who failed to respond by the deadline would be fired.
Employees across agencies told ABC News they hadn’t seen Musk’s threats until they were asked for their reaction to them.
One IRS employee told ABC News that when they asked their direct managers whether not responding would result in them being fired, they were told, “We are only to adhere to official emails and ignore any directives not communicated through official channels.”
Another employee in management at the IRS said staff are “freaking out.”
Managers at the Department of Veterans Affairs told employees to respond to the email. One manager at the agency told ABC News that workers are “scared.”
“It’s not an exaggeration,” they said. “Everybody is afraid they are going to lose their jobs on a daily basis. There’s this fear that you’re going to open your email and you will be terminated.”
How much authority does Musk have?
It is not clear if Musk has the authority to terminate employees in this manner. However, he continues to act as if he does, threatening employees on Monday morning with administrative leave if they do not return to work this week.
White House lawyers attested in federal court that Musk “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.”
Trump aides have also said publicly that Musk is operating in an advisory capacity as a special government employee.
While Trump has said that Musk cannot do anything without his approval, the president has publicly heralded Musk as the leader of DOGE and lauded him for the job he’s doing in that capacity. On Saturday, shortly before the OPM email went out, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, “ELON IS DOING A GREAT JOB, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.”
-ABC News’ Devin Dwyer, Peter Charalambous, Selina Wang, Emily Chang and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(OXFORD, OHIO) — A fraternity at Miami University in Ohio has been suspended after a student complained of “inhumane” hazing, according to a hazing incident report obtained by ABC News.
According to the report, which was made by a member of another fraternity, an unnamed student was “coerced and forced into accepting a Bid at Sigma Alpha Epsilon,” after which he was allegedly “hazed for multiple days and was forced to cut communication with all others.”
The student was allegedly “required to ingest an entire can of chewing tobacco and then do a handstand.” He vomited as a result, and “was then told to eat the throw up,” though the report states he did not.
Students pledging the fraternity were also “forced to do wall sits while covered in baby oil” and forced to drink every time they slipped, the report states.
They were allegedly also forced to stay in a basement and not permitted to leave except for food and showers, it states.
In a message the alleged victim showed the reporting student, an active member allegedly threatened a pledge, saying he would hold a “12 gauge down his throat and watch his brain splatter.”
As a result of the alleged hazing, the unnamed student contacted the student who made the report and asked to join his fraternity instead, saying Sigma Alpha Epsilon “was not the right fit for him,” the report states.
“During this phone call I noticed that his voice sounded shaky and fearful,” it states.
Upon informing Sigma Alpha Epsilon he would be dropping out of the pledging process, members allegedly tried to convince him to stay, according to the report.
Members “said things such as ‘the first week is always the hardest’ ‘you’ll see why we do all the things we do’ ‘we all had to go through it’ ‘some of the guys haze just to haze,'” the report states.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon was suspended as a result of the hazing incident report, the student newspaper, The Miami Student, first reported.
A spokesperson for the university did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News but confirmed the suspension in a statement to local ABC affiliate WCPO.
“A Miami University Greek organization (Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity) is under investigation and its activities have been summarily suspended by the Office of Community Standards for allegations of hazing,” the statement said.
The fraternity chapter, as well as the national organization, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Soldiers from 1st Battalion 4th Infantry Skynet team walking through the area of operations during Combined Resolve 25-1at Hohenfels Training Area on Feb. 5, 2025. (U.S. Army Reserve Photo by Spc. Airam B. I Amaro-Millan)
(WASHINGTON) — Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. troops in Eastern Europe are using the lessons learned on the battlefields in Ukraine to modernize the Army’s tactics and use of new technologies or what the U.S. Army calls Transformation in Contact.
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, thousands of U.S. military forces were sent to Eastern Europe to reassure NATO countries in the region and to deter Russia from expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders.
What started as a short-duration deployment has now grown to a current level of 23,000 U.S. Army troops maintained by a constant rotation of units on nine-month deployments.
“I have responsibility for (U.S. Army) forces from Estonia, U.S. forces that are stationed in Estonia all the way down to Bulgaria, 23 different foreign operating sites to assure our NATO partners and allies, but more importantly, to deter future Russian aggression.,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the commander of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Corps, told ABC News in an interview. “It’s just a critical time to be here right now.”
The deployment of those U.S. Army forces so close to Ukraine also means that they are able to apply what they are seeing on the country’s battlefields and how to apply it to their own operations.
“There’s not a better place to learn from the conflict in Ukraine than Eastern Europe,” said Costanza. “Our NATO partners are helping with training and equipping the Ukrainians. So we got a direct inject of all those lessons learned that are coming out of Ukraine.”
Those lessons learned include the revolutionary use of small commercially available drones to drop bombs on Russian targets, the development of long-range one-way attack drones, and techniques to evade electronic warfare detection that can be used to target forces on the frontlines by tracking radios and other communications gear.
“The speed of innovation on the SUAS and the counter-SUAS capability is incredible,” said Costanza, using the military acronym for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems used to describe small drones.
“The Ukrainians will develop a new capability for those SUAS, the very next day, the Russians will figure out how to counter that which causes the Ukrainians to have to innovate and adapt very quickly and figure out something else,” he said.
In early February, U.S. Army forces trained for two weeks with other NATO countries in Germany in Combined Resolve, an exercise that is part of the Army’s Transformation in Combat, which uses some of the Army’s new gear and allows soldiers to innovate just like what is happening in Ukraine.
“When they’re in Combined Resolve fighting the opposing force, they’re going to figure out how to make stuff work and innovate while they’re in contact,” said Costanza. “I think the Transformation in Contact effort is just going to speed up how we equip our soldiers now quickly, and how we organize maybe a bit differently.”
For example, soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a unit permanently stationed in Germany, used 3-D printers to make sensors provided to soldiers that Costanza said could detect drones.
They also used a novel way of communicating by using commercially available technology provided to them to facilitate their radio communications with the Polish forces they were training with who did not speak English.
“To the point where you can pick up a radio and talk to somebody in a Polish unit, and it actually translates what you say into Polish so when it comes out on the Polish radio, the Polish soldier hears it, understands it, and to respond back, and you hear his response in English,” said Costanza.
He praised the ingenuity of young soldiers who “figure out how to make all this work, and bang, you have something that bridges a gap.”
Transformation in Contact is also changing how the Army arranges itself on the battlefield as the U.S. Army shifts away from the large field headquarters seen in Iraq and Afghanistan towards smaller dispersed units that can do the same thing.
The war in Ukraine has shown that large headquarters can be destroyed with missiles because the high levels of electronic signals they emit can be detected by electronic warfare tools.
“Now it’s individual vehicles that are spread out all over the battlefield, much from the electromagnetics spectrum standpoint, the signature is so much smaller, and it’s just harder to figure out what’s a command post and what might just be an individual vehicle,” said Costanza.
“They can actually work distributed like that to have that same common operational picture of what’s going on and to be able to synchronize everything they need to do to win the fight, but without physically being together,” he added.
Also used in the exercise was the Army’s new lightweight all-terrain vehicle, the Infantry Squad Vehicle which can transport as many as nine soldiers on the battlefield.
“You get nine guys on there and all their kit and you can quickly move now and reposition forces in a way that infantry brigades haven’t been able to do in the past. And so it just gives you a lot more capability,” said Costanza.
As the rotation of U.S. Army units in Eastern Europe continues, some of them will have already gone through previous versions of Transformation in Contact exercises carried out in the United States.
Costanza said those units will bring their lessons learned from those exercises and will also innovate with new concepts much as the units they are replacing have been doing during their deployment.
“So, we’re just going to keep learning as we keep fielding this stuff out, and just continuing to get better on how we organize ourselves and how we equip ourselves,” said Costanza.
(WASHINGTON) — Elon Musk is the world’s richest man. He’s revolutionized electric cars as CEO of Tesla, launched rockets as head of SpaceX and seized control of a social media platform by buying Twitter for $44 billion.
The South African-born businessman spent $270 million to help President Donald Trump get reelected. When Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, he empowered Musk to slash federal spending and make key decisions about the future of the U.S. as a lead adviser in the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The following day, the Office of Personnel Management — which acts as the government’s human resources department — directed agencies to compile a list of workers whose positions could be eliminated.
By Jan. 22, there was a federal hiring freeze. All agencies were directed to put diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff on leave, related programs were shuttered and employees were ordered to remove pronouns from their signatures.
The next several days set off confusion and panic for many workers across the country. A federal funding freeze briefly denied Head Start — free early childhood development programs designed to help low-income households — access to funding on Jan. 27, despite a federal judge’s court order to the contrary.
Then, on Jan. 28, some 2 million federal workers received an email with an offer to resign and be paid through September or risk being fired. The email subject line “Fork in the road” mirrored the language Musk used when he slashed Twitter’s workforce in 2022.
Within 30 days, DOGE gained access to personal information of millions of Americans through at least 15 federal agencies. Much of Musk’s staff consisted of young engineers who moved into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing, but told people he thought what he was given was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News earlier this month.
Only Congress has the power to eliminate entire agencies, but Musk and his team proved they can still be stripped down when they went into the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“DOGE was in the building. We took down our Pride flags,” USAID contractor Kristina Drye told ABC News on Feb. 3. “I took out any books I felt would be incriminating. No one was talking.”
At the same time, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) workers were told to stay home — its headquarters closed and all work stopped. The consumer watchdog was created after the 2008 financial crisis and housing crash to protect American families from unfair and deceptive practices.
Around 75,000 workers took the Trump administration’s offer to resign, according to the White House. However, some people — like Kansas-based Department of Agriculture natural resource specialist Nick Detter — say they accepted within the timeframe and were fired anyway. The administration acknowledged that this has happened by mistake.
“I would never say that there’s no room for improvement, efficiency in the federal government,” Detter told ABC News. “But in my experience over the last month with this whole thing, that’s not what this has been.”
After the buyout offer closed, many federal workers said they started receiving emails and calls informing them that they were fired. Justine Beaulieu, who worked for the Department of Agriculture until last week, said she was among them.
“I was three days away from my due date on Friday when I got that termination letter. And I had my baby yesterday, right on time,” she told ABC News. “Paid maternity leave is off the table, and my health insurance is set to lapse at the end of this month.”
The administration has been reversing course in some cases, working to rehire the workers who manage the country’s nuclear weapons and the inspection officers who worked on containing the bird flu outbreak.
Musk has been designated as a special government employee. His companies Tesla and SpaceX have been awarded $18 billion in federal contracts over the last decade. Some of this money has come from agencies the president asked Musk to review, but Musk dismissed the notion that there could be conflicts of interest.
“No, because you have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract — it’s people at SpaceX,” he told ABC News on Feb. 11.
On the same day, Trump assured ABC News any possible conflicts of interest would be addressed.
“If we thought that, we would not let him do that segment or look in that area, if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest,” the president said.
Trump has fired independent watchdogs like Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch.
“When you just wholesale fire people like that without giving any reasons for doing it, it sends a message that that sort of oversight, that productive oversight, isn’t really valued,” Storch told ABC News on Feb. 12.
The total savings DOGE has made so far is still unclear, but the group’s work has already set the stage for one of the biggest modern shakeups of the federal government.
(WASHINGTON) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that the new coronavirus found in bats is currently not a cause for concern.
There is no reason to believe the virus poses a threat to public health at the moment and no infections have been detected in humans, according to the federal health agency.
“CDC is aware of a publication about a new bat coronavirus, but there is no reason to believe it currently poses a concern to public health,” the agency said in a statement. “The publication referenced demonstrates that the bat virus can use a human protein to enter cells in the laboratory, but they have not detected infections in humans.”
Chinese researchers, including from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Guangzhou Medical University, published a paper in the journal Cell on Friday indicating they had discovered a new bat coronavirus that could have the potential to infect humans.
The newer coronavirus is known as HKU5-CoV-2 and is a type of merbecovirus, which is the same family of another coronavirus known to infect humans called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
In a lab study, the new coronavirus was found to have the potential to enter cells through the ACE2 receptor, a protein found on the cells’ surface.
This is the same way the virus that causes COVID-19 infects people, which theoretically means the new coronavirus could pose a risk to spilling over into humans.
The spike protein of the new coronavirus infected human cells that had high levels of the ACE2 receptor in test tubes, as well as in small models of human airways and intestines.
The researchers found that the virus did not enter human cells as readily as the virus that causes COVID-19 — which is called SARS-CoV-2 — writing that the “risk of emergence in human populations should not be exaggerated.”
None of the animal studies that were conducted examined the virus’s ability to cause disease or its transmissibility.
If the virus were to infect humans, the researchers suggested antiviral drugs and monoclonal antibodies — laboratory-produced proteins that mimic the antibodies the body naturally creates when fighting a virus — could be effective.
There are hundreds of coronaviruses circulating in nature. Only a few can infect humans, causing illnesses ranging from mild respiratory tract infections to more severe conditions such as bronchitis or pneumonia.
Coronaviruses include some variations of the common cold, the virus that causes MERS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the virus that causes COVID-19.
The researchers wrote that “bats harbor the highest proportion of genetically diverse coronaviruses,” posing a risk of spilling over into humans.
(WASHINGTON) — Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent turned Fox News host and conservative podcast personality, will be the next deputy director of the FBI — a choice that is drawing criticism from Democrats as another one of President Donald Trump’s allies moves into a leadership position.
Trump named Dan Bongino, a 2020 election denier, as deputy FBI director on Sunday to serve under newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel. Bongino, who left Fox News in 2023, hosts the popular right-wing and pro-Trump podcast called “The Dan Bongino Show,” which ranks among Apple’s top 10 news podcasts.
On Monday morning, a very emotional Bongino told his show’s listeners that he was sitting at home watching TV when Trump called him to let him know he was going to appoint him as the deputy director of the FBI. Bongino told listeners that he wanted the deputy FBI director job.
“I got a call from the president, and he couldn’t have been nicer, and obviously, keep the contents of it between us, but I think you get the gist about what it was about and I kind of broke down a bit,” he said. “This is now real.”
Typically, the position of FBI’s deputy director is held by a career agent — something Bongino is not. The FBI’s deputy director is responsible for the day-to-day operations and running the agency. The position does not require Senate confirmation.
Democrats have expressed outrage at the pick of Bongino as a leader in the agency, concerned that Trump could use his allies leading the agency to go after his adversaries.
“Trump installs another loyalist who won’t say no to any immoral or unethical act,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff wrote of Bongino on X, adding that his appointment degrades law enforcement agencies and public safety.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X that “Trump has chosen grifters to lead the FBI.”
“Kash Patel sells ‘K$SH’ branded merch, vaccine reversal pills. Dan Bongino’s entire show is telling listeners the world is ending so they buy the dozens of survivalist products he sells,” Murphy wrote on X.
Bongino defended his appointment and said the job as the FBI’s deputy director is “unquestionably nonpartisan.”
“I’m going to ask you a simple question, have you seen what I did before I came here,” Bongino said on his podcast. “I’m committed to service. People play different roles in their lives: People are dads, people are soccer coaches. People are cops and military officers and military-enlisted people. People are carpenters, people are plumbers. We play different roles in our life, and each one requires a different skill set.”
Bongino joins an agency — like many others — undergoing changes under the Trump administration. In a message to the FBI workforce last week, Patel announced his intention to “reduce the footprint” of the FBI in “the National Capital Region,” including by “reallocating personnel to the field offices and Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville [Alabama].” One source told ABC News this could include as many as 1,500 agents and others from Washington being relocated.
The FBI, Bongino said, belongs to the American people and will work to restore trust in the agency. Bongino has said the FBI is “lost, broken” and “irredeemably corrupt,” when talking about the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach home in 2022.
“Every single DNA cell in my body is going to be dedicated towards keeping this homeland safe, no matter what, no matter what, that’s my job,” he said. “We’re going to reestablish faith in this institution, the good people that are doing their job, hitting the streets, developing sources. We’ll have your back. We are going to reestablish faith in this institution.”
The son of a plumber and a supermarket employee, Bongino grew up in Queens, New York, and started his career as a New York Police Department officer in the 1990s.
Bongino said in his 2013 book, “Life Inside the Bubble,” that joining law enforcement was a “dream of his” and he dedicated himself to his beat.
After leaving the NYPD, Bongino joined the Secret Service where he rose to the ranks and joined former President Barack Obama’s protection detail.
He said he was compelled to run for Congress in Maryland in 2014 after leaving the service because of “the fog of scandals in the Obama administration,” he told ABC News in 2013.
Bongino claimed that he overheard a series of secret negotiations around the Affordable Care Act during Obama’s first term, which drove him to leave the service and enter politics.
That campaign was unsuccessful, but it allowed Bongino to develop a platform to speak on conservative issues.
Bongino has been an outspoken supporter of Trump, and told Fox News in 2017 that the Trump-Russia collusion investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign was a “total scam.”
He also questioned the results of the 2020 election and claimed there were “anomalies” with the voting totals. Despite the numerous false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, there has been no evidence to back them up.
After Trump was shot during the 2024 campaign, Bongino was critical of the agency he now helps lead.
“They absolutely, resolutely, 100% failed,” he said of the Secret Service on Fox News in July. He also called for the firing of then-Deputy Director Ron Rowe in addition to the then-Director Christopher Wray.
