(MINT HILL, N.C.) — Former President Donald Trump didn’t mince words Wednesday at a rally in North Carolina following more reports from security officials that Iran has been plotting to assassinate him.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence met with Trump and his campaign Tuesday, according to a spokesman for DNI. While the agency declined to discuss specifics about the meeting, the former president’s campaign said the meeting involved “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”
During his rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump echoed that statement and sent a stark warning to the country.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We’re going to blow it to smithereens,” the former president said to cheers. “There would be no more threats.”
Trump blamed the Biden administration for the escalating threats.
“We don’t have that leadership or the necessary people,” he said Wednesday.
The FBI is still investigating the assassination attempt in July during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where one person was killed, and the apparent assassination attempt that took place earlier this month at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
Investigators do not have a motive in either of the cases.
Before the Butler shooting, the Secret Service increased Trump’s security due to intelligence indicating there was an Iranian threat to assassinate the former president, sources told ABC News.
Counter snipers were assigned to the Butler rally because of the increased threats from a foreign threat prior to the event, according to a report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Trump tried to connect the two assassination attempts to foreign connections without any evidence during his rally Wednesday.
“There have been two assassination attempts on my life that we know of, and they may or may not involve…Iran. But I don’t really know,” he said.
However, there is no indication that Iran was connected to the suspected shooter in the Butler incident, officials said.
Intelligence officials are briefing senators about foreign threats in general later Wednesday.
Iran and Trump have had a long, contentious history, especially after the January 2020 strike ordered by the former president that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
In the aftermath of Soleimani’s killing, Iranian officials vowed they would eventually exact revenge.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reiterated his country’s hatred toward Trump and the U.S. government during an interview in January with ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
“That was a big, big mistake made by Trump. That is not something that we will be able to forget,” Amir-Abdollahian said, adding that Tehran still wanted to see “all the people involved” in the strike “brought to justice.”
“What does that mean?” Raddatz asked. “Does that mean killed?”
(WASHINGTON) — A piece of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible’s deadly catastrophic implosion showed “anomalies,” a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Kramer said his team examined material from the manufacturing of the hull and found “several anomalies within the composite and the adhesive joints, including waviness, wrinkles, porosity and voids.”
They also examined a piece of the hull recovered from the ocean floor and found similar anomalies, including “waviness and wrinkles within the hull layers” and voids within the adhesive that joined the layers, he said. The recovered hull also showed “features consistent with rubbing damage at one of those adhesive joints.”
Kramer said the Titan debris on the ocean floor showed that the hull “encountered a significant amount of delamination” — or separating into layers — most of which was within or adjacent to co-bonded adhesive interfaces.
Asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the delaminations, voids or rubbing damage could have been present before the implosion, as opposed to being caused by the implosion, Kramer said he is not offering analysis as to when they occurred.
Further asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the issues he observed could have caused the implosion, Kramer said that is “still subject to our own internal analysis at this point.”
Kramer also discussed the loud bang passengers heard as the Titan ascended during a dive that occurred a year before the implosion, on July 15, 2022 — referred to as dive 80. The bang was also detected by the Titan’s real-time monitoring system, which had sensors to detect acoustic events, as well as multiple strain gages to monitor mechanical strain, he said.
Kramer said his team determined that the hull’s strain response changed after this loud bang incident in subsequent dives in 2022. He said the strain gage data showed a change in the strain in the hull for four of the eight gages.
“Those changes persisted from dive to dive,” he said.
There was no difference when comparing the strain response to a dive prior to dive 80, Kramer said.
No strain data is available for dives conducted in 2023, according to Kramer.
Phil Brooks, OceanGate’s former engineering director, testified on Monday that following the loud bang on dive 80, the strain gage data showed a minor “shift,” though they did not see “any further shifts in strain data” on subsequent dives in 2022. Nothing “really seemed out of the ordinary,” and OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush made the decision to continue dives, Brooks said.
Asked how his team arrived at its determination on the change in strain response based on the graphs of the available data, Kramer said, “I guess it’s a matter of opinion as to whether one can discern the changes in strain output.”
Brooks said Rush theorized that the loud bang was caused by the frame “readjusting back to its original shape” as it returned to the surface.
Kramer noted that the NTSB’s investigation is still ongoing, and the scope of his presentation was therefore limited.
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The two-week hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.
(BALTIMORE) — A Maryland woman who pleaded guilty to a neo-Nazi plot to attack multiple energy substations surrounding Baltimore was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison and a lifetime of supervision upon her release, according the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel pleaded guilty in May to federal conspiracy and firearms charges.
Clendaniel communicated her plans to use a high-powered rifle to shoot through key infrastructure at five substations that the U.S. government estimated could have caused roughly $75 million in damage, had the plot not been foiled, according to prosecutors.
Clendaniel and a co-defendant still set to face trial, Brandon Russell — who co-founded the neo-Nazi group AtomWaffen — believed the destruction of the substations would lead to a “cascading failure” of Baltimore’s electrical grid that would “permanently completely lay this city to waste,” Clendaniel said in recorded conversations with a confidential informant, according to federal prosecutors.
Russell had been incarcerated when the two first met, stemming from a 2018 conviction related to his possession of an unregistered destructive device, officials said.
Prosecutors described the scheme as a racism-fueled plot to spark mass chaos in the majority-Black city.
“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel was quoted in charging documents telling the informant.
Clendaniel agreed that if she were to carry out the attacks the total costs of repairs to the energy facilities would have exceeded $100,000, according to plea documents.
The pair crafted their plot to shoot up the five substations while both were out on probation, according to charging documents, when Russell began communicating with a confidential FBI source in 2022 about his hopes of attacking critical infrastructure sites.
Russell allegedly told the informant that “putting holes in transformers … is the greatest thing somebody can do,” and told the informant they should carry out an attack “when there is greatest strain on the grid” to incur mass disruption, according to court documents. Russell further told the informant of Clendaniel and his alleged coordination with her to attack an energy facility and offered to connect the two to coordinate their attacks in order to “maximize impact.”
Upon meeting the informant, Clendaniel told them in early 2023 that she expected she would die of a terminal illness in a few months and was hoping to obtain a rifle as soon as possible in order to attack five substations she had singled out around Baltimore — all on the same day, prosecutors said.
“[Clendaniel] described how there was a ‘ring’ around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they ‘would completely destroy this whole city,'” the affidavit stated.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks during an event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre September 20, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(PITTSBURGH) — Vice President Kamala Harris is defining her economic views in a speech in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday as she tries to to close the gap between her and former President Donald Trump on who Americans better trust to handle the economy.
Harris planned to tell voters that “as a capitalist she understands the limitations of government” and that the government must “work in partnership with the private sector and entrepreneurs,” according to the senior official, who was granted anonymity to preview Harris’ speech. The official noted Harris would make clear “she is unafraid to hold bad actors accountable if she needs to.”
Harris was also expected to evoke former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal agenda brought America back from a steep economic downturn during the Great Depression, in her remarks, according to another senior campaign official.
The vice president was also expected to argue that her economic philosophy is “rooted in her middle-class upbringing” and contrast that with Trump’s “gilded path to wealth,” as part of a larger values argument, the senior official said.
“For Donald Trump, our economy works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers. Not those who build them. Not those who wire them. Not those who mop the floors,” Harris was prepared to say Wednesday.
In drawing that comparison, Harris planned to highlight the “pressures of making ends meet” that her mother experienced trying to balance a budget late at night at the kitchen table.
The remarks at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, come as Harris and her advisers see an opening to erode Trump’s edge on the economy in voters’ eyes as many Americans get to know the vice president, a senior official said.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the ABC News presidential debate earlier this month found that the economy was the top issue for voters, with 91% saying it was an important issue for them. In that poll, voters trusted Trump to do a better job handling the economy than Harris by 7-point margin. A recent NBC News poll out Sunday found showed Trump led Harris in dealing with the economy by a 9-point spread.
Harris has made the economy and the cost of living a focal point of her campaign. In recent weeks, Harris has rolled out proposals to give first time homebuyers $25,000 down payment assistance for first time homebuyers, increasing the small businesses start up tax credit tenfold to $50,000, and a $6,000 child tax credit for the first year of a newborn’s life.
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike near the southern Lebanese village of Al-Mahmoudiye on September 24, 2024. (RABIH DAHER/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Israel and Hezbollah are exchanging hundreds of cross-border strikes in the wake of the shocking explosions of wireless devices across Lebanon last week.
Here’s how the news is developing:
US in ‘active discussions’ to secure cease-fire between Israel, Hezbollah
The U.S. is currently “in active discussions” with Israel and other countries to try to secure a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a U.S. official.
The Biden administration has floated at least one draft proposal aimed at temporarily halting the conflict, but Israel has signaled it intends to move forward with battle plans aimed at ending months of tit-for-tat exchanges with Hezbollah across its northern border by decimating the militant group, two officials told ABC News.
Negotiations are still ongoing, but at this hour officials said they are growing increasingly resigned to full-blown warfare on a second front in the Middle East.
The U.S. also has little leverage over Hezbollah, so it’s unclear whether the group would abide by any such agreement to pause the fighting, officials said.
The administration could potentially rely on partners with direct ties to Hezbollah to contain the group, but all of its efforts to halt its attacks on Israel over the last year have been unsuccessful, officials said.
The U.S. is still pursuing “concrete options” for de-escalation, and Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday that Israeli leadership remained “open-minded,” officials said.
The Biden administration is also still fervently focused on keeping Iran — a chief military and financial supporter of Hezbollah — on the sidelines through indirect diplomacy. Multiple conversations between countries that communicate directly with Iran are taking place on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly, officials said.
-ABC News’ Shannon K. Kingston and Michelle Stoddart
Netanyahu says operation in Lebanon will continue
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation in Lebanon will continue, despite international calls for a diplomatic resolution to Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah.
“I cannot detail everything we are doing, but I can tell you one thing, we are determined to return our residents in the north safely to their homes. We are inflicting blows on Hezbollah that [the group] did not imagine. We do it with power, we do it with guile. I promise you one thing — we will not rest until they come home,” Netanyahu said.
Biden says ‘all-out war’ is possible in the Middle East
When asked about how real the threat of a wider war in the Middle East really is, President Joe Biden said “an all-out war is possible,” but added that there’s still the opportunity for a resolution contingent on Israel changing “some policies.”
“We’re still in play to have a settlement that can fundamentally change the whole region,” Biden said, in an interview on “The View,” which covered a range of topics.
“The Arab world very much wants to have a settlement, because they know what it does for them. They’re willing to make arrangements with Israel and alliances with Israel, if Israel changes some policies.”
Biden said he has a strong relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he said that there “needs” to be a two-state solution.
“I don’t agree with his position. There needs to be a two-state solution. Ultimately, it needs to happen. There’s a way to do it, and they have a possibility,” Biden said.
Biden added that if a cease-fire agreement is reached in Lebanon, then they’ll have to deal with Gaza, but he insisted that he and his team are “using every bit of energy” to
Israel preparing a ground operation into Lebanon
Israel is preparing a ground invasion into Lebanon, according to Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the chief of the General Staff for the Israel Defense Forces.
“We will continue, we are not stopping; we keep striking and hitting them everywhere. The goal is very clear — to safely return the residents of the north,” Halevi said Wednesday, while visiting Israeli troops at the northern border.
“To achieve that, we are preparing the process of a maneuver, which means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory and carry out attacks on Israeli civilians,” Halevi said.
Full-scale Israel-Hezbollah war ‘wouldn’t solve the problem,’ Blinken says
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday that the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon “needs to be contained.”
“We’re working to make sure this doesn’t get into a full-scale war,” Blinken said.
Asked if he believes such escalation can be prevented, Blinken responded: “I do.”
“Israel has a legitimate problem it has to solve,” Blinken said, noting Hezbollah’s near-constant cross-border strikes since Oct. 8 and the subsequent evacuation of parts of northern Israel.
Blinken also acknowledged those fleeing their homes amid Israeli retaliation in southern Lebanon.
The “best way” to address Israel’s problems in the north, Blinken continued, “is through diplomacy.”
There were “a number of times” where full-scale war at the shared Israel-Lebanon border seemed imminent since Oct. 7, Blinken said.
“Diplomacy by the United States prevented that from happening,” he said.
“But if there were to be a full-scale war, that wouldn’t solve the problem,” Blinken said.
President Joe Biden and his top administration officials say they are working hard to de-escalate the situation in Lebanon.
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden condemned Hezbollah’s “unprovoked” attacks into Israel since Oct. 8.
“Almost a year later, too many on each side of the Israeli-Lebanon border remain displaced,” the president said.
“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” he added. “Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes on the border safely.”
“That’s what we’re working tirelessly to achieve,” Biden said.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a series of posts to X on Wednesday that Hezbollah would survive Israel’s ongoing airstrike campaign in Lebanon.
Khamenei touted the “organizational and human strength and the authority and ability” of Hezbollah, which is supported by Tehran and coordinates closely with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Israeli attacks “martyred some of the effective and valuable elements of Hezbollah,” Khamenei wrote.
“This was definitely a loss for Hezbollah, but it is not to the extent that it destroys Hezbollah,” he added.
27,000 people in Lebanon displaced by Israeli bombing, UN says
More than 27,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli military action over the past 48 hours, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Wednesday — citing Lebanese authorities.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said on Tuesday that the country already had around 110,000 people displaced before the intensification of Israeli strikes beginning on Monday.
“Now probably they’re approaching half a million” Habib said.
Filippo Grandi, UN high commissioner for refugees, said the “bloodshed is extracting a terrible toll, driving tens of thousands from their homes.”
“It is yet another ordeal for families who previously fled war in Syria only now to be bombed in the country where they sought shelter. We must avoid replaying these scenes of despair and devastation. The Middle East cannot afford a new displacement crisis. Let us not create one by forcing more people to abandon their homes. Protecting civilian lives must be the priority,” Grandi said.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees and over 11,000 refugees from other countries, per UNHCR’s count.
IDF in third day of ‘extensive strikes’ in Lebanon
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday it was again “conducting extensive strikes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa area” to the east of Beirut.
Almost 600 people — including at least 50 children — have been killed by Israeli strikes across Lebanon since Monday, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
Hezbollah targets Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv
Hezbollah claimed the launch of a Qadir-1 ballistic missile targeting the Mossad intelligence agency’s headquarters on the outskirts of Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning.
“It is the headquarters responsible for the assassination of leaders and the bombing of pagers and hand-held radios,” the militant group said in a statement, referring to last week’s communication device explosions in Lebanon and Syria.
Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv amid the attack.
“One surface-to-surface missile was identified crossing from Lebanon and was intercepted,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
The IDF later said in a social media post that it destroyed the launcher from which the missile was fired in southern Lebanon.
The launch at Tel Aviv is the first time Hezbollah has attacked the city in central Israel since the war in the Gaza Strip began on Oct. 7.
Hezbollah confirms death of division commander
Hezbollah has confirmed the death of rocket and missile division commander Ibrahim Qubaisi in a post on their Telegram channel.
Hezbollah said he was killed in southern Lebanon.
Earlier Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said an Israeli air attack in Da’ahia in Beirut killed Qubaisi.
52 killed in Gaza in past 24 hours, officials say
Israeli forces targeted eight residential homes in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, killing at least 52 people, spokesperson Major Mahmoud Basal of the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense said Tuesday.
At least five of those people were killed after a house in the town of Al-Nasr, northeast of Rafah, was targeted, the civil defense spokesperson added.
The IDF said they were conducting “precise, intelligence-based operations in the Rafah area” in a statement Tuesday.
Nearly 500,000 displaced in Lebanon, foreign minister says
The number of people displaced in southern Lebanon as a result of Israeli airstrikes may be approaching half a million, according to Lebanese Foreign Minister Bou Habib, who stressed that “the war in Lebanon will not help the Israelis return to their homes, and negotiations are the only way to do so.”
Habib spoke at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday while attending the United Nations General Assembly.
He expressed his “disappointment” over U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech at the U.N., saying it was “neither strong nor promising and will not solve this problem,” but said he “hopes that Washington can intervene to help.”
“Lebanon cannot end the fighting alone and needs America’s help, despite past disappointments,” Habib said, adding that the U.S. is “the only country that can truly make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon.”
Mediators as far from a cease-fire deal as ever, US officials say
Mediators between Israel and Hamas are as far away from a cease-fire deal as they have ever been, with both sides impeding negotiations, multiple senior U.S. officials told ABC News.
Many officials have long been skeptical that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar would ever sign off on an agreement that involves ceding rule of Gaza, and in recent weeks Hamas has deeply frustrated the Israeli government by adding demands related to Palestinian prisoners that would be released in an exchange.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also become increasingly intractable, according to U.S. officials. While high-level engagements between the U.S. and Israel often moved the needle at the beginning of the conflict, those meetings are now unproductive, officials said — a major reason Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn’t stop in Israel during his last visit to Middle East.
When it comes to these negotiations, the ball is actually in the Biden administration’s court. Blinken promised during the first week of September that the U.S. would present a new, final proposal to both Israel and Hamas “in the coming days,” but almost three weeks later, there’s no indication that has happened yet.
The reason for the delay is the struggle to devise an arrangement both sides might agree to — but that’s just one more factor contributing to the gridlock, according to U.S. officials.
-ABC News’ Cindy Smith, Shannon K. Kingston and Martha Raddatz
Israel has ‘additional strikes prepared,’ Gallant says
Israel has “additional strikes prepared” against Hezbollah, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, in a discussion with troops on Tuesday.
“Hezbollah, today, is different from the organization we knew a week ago – and we have additional strikes prepared. Any Hezbollah force that you may encounter, will be destroyed. They are worried about the combat experience you have gained,” Gallant said.
G7 warns escalation could lead to ‘unimaginable consequences’ in the Middle East
The foreign ministers of the Group of 7 said they have “deep concern” over “the trend of escalatory violence” in the Middle East, in a joint statement Tuesday.
The statement doesn’t call out Israel by name, it does call for “a stop to the current destructive cycle,” warning “no country stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East.”
“Actions and counter-reactions risk magnifying this dangerous spiral of violence and dragging the entire Middle East into a broader regional conflict with unimaginable consequences,” it reads, while calling for the full implementation of the U.N. Security Council resolution that implemented a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Additionally, the statement reaffirms the G7’s “strong support” for the ongoing efforts to broker a hostage release and cease-fire deal in Gaza.
Israel claims it killed top Hezbollah commander
Israel claimed it killed a top Hezbollah commander in Tuesday’s strike on Beirut, which killed at least six people and injured 15 others, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
The IDF said it targeted and killed Ibrahim Muhammad Kabisi, a commander of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket array.
“Kabisi commanded the various missile units of Hezbollah, including the precision missile units. Over the years and during the war, he was responsible for the launches towards the Israeli home front. Kabisi was a central center of knowledge in the field of missiles and was close to the senior military leadership of Hezbollah,” the IDF said in a statement.
The IDF also claimed he was responsible for the planning and execution of many terrorist plots against IDF forces and Israeli citizens.
At least six dead in Israeli strike on Ghobeiry neighborhood in Beirut
At least six people were killed and 15 others were wounded after Israel carried out a strike on the Ghobeiry neighborhood of Beirut on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
It appears the top floor of a concrete apartment building took the brunt of the strike.
US continues to urge Israel to avoid ‘all-out war’ with Lebanon as tensions remain high
The U.S. is continuing to urge Israel to avoid an “all-out war” with Lebanon as tensions between the two countries remain high, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview on “Good Morning America” Tuesday.
“I think we don’t believe it’s in Israel’s interest for this to escalate, for there to be an all-out war there on the north on that blue line between Israel and Lebanon. If the goal is to get families back to their homes, we think there’s a better way to do that than an all-out conflict,” Kirby said.
“The Israelis will tell you, yesterday, that they had to take some of these strikes because they were about to be imminently attacked by Hezbollah. They do have a right to defend themselves, but what we’re going to keep doing is talking to them about trying to find a diplomatic solution here, a way to de-escalate the tensions so that the families can go back in a sustainable way,” Kirby added.
Given the State Department’s warning to Americans to get out of Lebanon while commercial travel is still available on if he believes Israel may target airports in Lebanon as they have in the past.
“We want to make sure that there are still commercial options available for Americans to leave, and they should be leaving now while those options are available. But I won’t get ahead of operations,” Kirby said.
Kirby also dodged questions on what we might see from Hezbollah’s response to Israel, telling GMA he “won’t get into the intelligence assessment.”
“It’s obviously going to be something we’ll monitor very, very closely. I will just tell you that while we won’t get involved in the conflict itself there, around that blue line, because we don’t want to see a conflict at all. We’ll do what we have to continue to do to make sure Israel can defend itself.”
Lebanon death toll rises to 558 people, ministry says
At least 558 people have been killed — including 50 children and 95 women — and another 1,853 people wounded by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since Monday, according to the latest data from the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
Officials released the updated figures during a press conference on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces said it struck at least 1,600 targets in Lebanon over the past 24 hours.
Israeli bombing prompts exodus from southern Lebanon
Thousands of people fled their homes in southern Lebanon after Israel killed hundreds in intensified airstrikes through Monday and Tuesday.
The mass movement of people — encouraged by the Israel Defense Forces before and during its expanding bombing campaign — prompted gridlock on highways running north toward the capital Beirut.
A journey that usually takes 90 minutes took up to 13 hours.
Authorities are working to turn schools and other educational institutions into makeshift shelters to house displaced people.
IDF, Hezbollah begin new day of cross-border fire
The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday its warplanes struck “dozens of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon,” with artillery and tanks also conducting fire missions in the area.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, fired at least 125 rockets overnight into Tuesday morning. Sirens were sounding through the early morning in northern Israel.
At least nine people suffered minor injuries as a result of rockets fired into the Western Galilee region of northern Israel on Tuesday morning, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service.
At least 492 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes on Monday, according to Lebanese authorities. At least 1,645 people were reported injured.
The IDF said it struck at least 1,600 targets in Lebanon over the past 24 hours.
Blinken seeks ‘off ramp’ as Israel pounds Lebanon, official says
A senior official in President Joe Biden’s administration told ABC News the U.S. cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli invasion into Lebanon following the escalation of its airstrike campaign on Monday.
“I think it is important for everyone to take Israeli preparations seriously,” the senior administration official said.
The U.S. is putting its hope in engagements on the sideline of the United Nations General Assembly this week, said the senior administration official, who expressed hope that the informal meetings could lead to “illusive solutions” or “at least make some progress” toward resolving the crisis in the Middle East.
The official said Secretary of State Antony Blinken would discuss “the increasing challenges” across the so-called “Blue Line” dividing Israel and Lebanon at a meeting with his G7 counterparts.
At that engagement and through the week, the a key U.S. focus will be “finding an off ramp,” they said.
“We’ve got some concrete ideas with allies and partners we are going to be discussing,” the official added.
New details emerge over US troops being sent to Middle East
A U.S. official tells ABC News that the “small number of additional U.S. military personnel being sent to the Middle East,” announced this morning by the Pentagon is a small special operations team that will work in planning for a non-combatant evacuation operation should it be needed.
Lebanon warns UN its citizens face ‘serious danger’ amid Israel-Hezbollah conflict
A Lebanese parliament member addressed the United Nations General Assembly Monday sharing a warning that the country’s citizens are in danger as tensions between Israeli forces and Hezbollah intensify.
Member Bahia El Hariri attended the U.N. meeting in place of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
“The people of Lebanon are in serious danger after the destruction of large areas of agricultural land and the targeting of residential buildings in the majority of the regions of Lebanon,” Hariri said.
“This has damaged the economy of our country and threatened our social order, especially since several countries have asked their nationals to leave our country,” she added.
Separately, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “gravely alarmed” by the escalating situation between northern Israel and southern Lebanon and the “large number of civilian casualties, including children and women, being reported by Lebanese authorities, as well as thousands of displaced persons, amidst the most intense Israeli bombing campaign since last October,” in a statement issued by his spokesperson Monday.
“The Secretary-General is also gravely alarmed” by the continued Hezbollah strikes on Israel, the statement added.
Israeli Air Force fighter jets attacked “1,600 terrorist targets of Hezbollah” in parts of southern Lebanon in “several attack waves,” on Monday, the IDF said in a post on X.
US Embassy in Jerusalem issues travel restriction for government employees
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued a security alert “temporarily” restricting travel for U.S. government employees and their family members to parts of northern and northeastern Israel.
“U.S. government employees and their family members have been temporarily restricted from any personal travel north of highway 65 toward Afula and north/northeast of highway 71 from Afula to the Jordanian border. Any official travel in this area will require approval. Approved travel will take place only in armored vehicles. This is provided for your information as you make your own security plans,” the U.S. Embassy alert said.
Afula is a city in northern Israel.
“US citizens should take this into consideration when planning their own activities,” the alert read.
(WASHINGTON) — The House is expected to hold a vote Wednesday afternoon on a bill that would avert a government shutdown at the end of the month.
House leaders are confident the short-term measure, which will keep the government funded until Dec. 20, will achieve a two-thirds majority and pass the chamber under a suspension of the rules with the help of Democrats.
The move comes after Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to pass a funding measure that included the SAVE Act — a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote — failed last week due to Democratic opposition and several Republican defections.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he supports the funding measure, but he pointed out that it has been House Democrats that have helped Republicans avoid shutdowns during the current Congress.
“Can anyone name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have been able to do on their own to make life better for the American people? A single thing? Just one,” he asked. “Can the American people name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans have done to make their lives better? Zip, zero. So that is the track record that will be presented to the American people,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump had called on congressional Republicans to allow the government to shut down over the SAVE Act.
Johnson told ABC News, “I am not defying President Trump” when asked if the former president approved of the new solution to avoid a shutdown.
“I’ve spoken with him at great length, and he is very frustrated about the situation,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “His great concern is election security, and it is mine as well. It is all of ours.”
Johnson asserted Trump “understands the current dilemma” with House Republicans and said, “there’s no daylight between us.”
The White House and congressional Democrats all slammed Johnson’s attempt to tie the voter eligibility legislation to government funding, noting that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
But the “clean” short-term measure to avert a shutdown was praised by Democratic leaders and the Biden administration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said the Senate will “immediately move” to pass the measure as soon as the House sends it over, and “if all goes well in the House, the Senate should be sending President Biden a bill before the end of today.
“Americans can breathe easy that because both sides have chosen bipartisanship, Congress is getting the job done,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We will keep the government open. We will prevent vital government services from needlessly coming to a halt. We will give appropriators more time to fully fund the government before the end of the year. And I’m especially pleased we’re getting the job done with some time to spare.”
In addition to funding the government through Dec. 20, the bill includes funds to replenish FEMA and $231 million for the U.S. Secret Service in the wake a second apparent assassination attempt against Trump.
The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday released a statement calling for “swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Secret Service failed to make clear decisions and did not communicate properly with local law enforcement or provide necessary resources that caused “foreseeable, preventable” security failings on July 13, when a would-be assassin opened fire on former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to a new Senate committee report.
The highly anticipated interim report was released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by both Republicans and Democrats and reflects the work of the committee since it opened its probe following the Butler attack.
This report focuses on the Butler shooting and does not extend to investigatory efforts launched after a separate second assassination attempt on the former president at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this month.
Since the Butler attack, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe has acknowledged that the event was a “failure” by the agency, but the committee, which interviewed multiple Secret Service personnel, found that individuals “declined to acknowledge individual areas of responsibility for planning or security as having contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting that day, even when as an agency, the USSS has acknowledged ultimate responsibility for the failure to prevent the former president of the United States from being shot.”
On a call with reporters, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Gary Peters pointed to several failures by the Secret Service.
“Every single one of those failures was preventable and the consequences of those failures were dire,” Peters said. “This was the first assassination attempt of a former president and the presidential candidate in more than four decades.”
Peters was joined on the call by committee ranking member Rand Paul, R-Ky., Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., ranking member on the investigations subcommittee.
“Whoever was in charge of security on the day of Butler, whoever’s in charge of security during the recent assassination attempt, those people can’t be in charge. They there’s so many human errors,” Paul said. “No amount of money that you give to Secret Service is going to alleviate the human errors if you leave the same humans in charge who made these terrible, dramatic mistakes with regard to security.”
On Friday, the Secret Service released a four-page Mission Assurance Report, which affirms many of the findings in the committee’s report, but the committee report offers additional details from interviews with USSS and local officials. ‘
In a statement to ABC News, the Secret Service’s Chief of Communications said “many of the insights” gleaned from the Senate report “align with the findings from our mission assurance review and are essential to ensuring that what happened on July 13 never happens again.”
“We have reviewed the interim report on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump,” Chief of Communications for the U.S. Secret Service Anthony Guglielmi said. “The weight of our mission is not lost on us and in this hyperdynamic threat environment, the U.S. Secret Service cannot fail.”
He said in addition to the mission assurance report their efforts include cooperating with Congress, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security Independent Review, DHS Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office.
“We take the work of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee seriously and have begun to implement many of their proposed enhancements,” Guglielmi said.
As part of the investigation, the committee interviewed Secret Service agents, as well as the Secret Service counter-snipers that were at the rally.
A closer look at the roof of the building where shots were fired from
The Senate report pays special attention to the American Glass Research building from where Thomas Matthew Crooks fired, and unveils new details about the timeline of events on that day.
In the lead-up to the event, local law enforcement raised concerns about the building. The report finds that the line of sight from the AGR building plagued rally planning and that it was identified as a concern, but that no steps were taken to mitigate the threat. Trees obstructed the view of the sniper team that was positioned atop one of the nearby roofs.
The Secret Service initially began planning for the rally in early July with state and local law enforcement. The planning meetings lacked answers or a general plan, according to the report.
A Butler County Emergency Services Unit commander told the committee the July 11 site walkthrough was “incredibly disorganized” with “no coordination,” and said he felt like “there was really no plan.”
When the USSS counter-sniper team leader did a walkthrough of the area, he told the committee he “wasn’t independently looking at the threat areas,” but rather making sure the roofs were safe for law enforcement to stand on.
The leader assumed that if there were an issue with one of the lines of sight with a sniper position, that counter-sniper would have told the head of the unit.
Agents from the Secret Service were notified of a suspicious person with a rangefinder 27 minutes before shots were fired, but that information was not relayed to senior Secret Service leaders on the ground.
Three minutes before shots were fired, local law enforcement communicated over the radio that someone was on the roof of the AGR building. The information was passed to the Secret Service two minutes before Crooks fired. A local officer said there was someone armed on the roof 22 seconds before shots were fired, but that information wasn’t passed on to the Secret Service.
Secret Service counter-snipers did see local law enforcement running towards the AGR building with their guns drawn, but “the thought did not cross” the counter-sniper’s mind to alert the former president’s protective detail, because they were trying to figure out what was going on.
“[W]hen we looked, just plain eyes, no optics or anything, you could see police running towards the building with their hands on their pistols. I think one actually had a pistol facing towards the ground, out of a holster,” the counter-sniper told the committee. “That’s a pretty big deal for us, so immediately we turned and faced our guns towards the threat area. We didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed pretty serious, especially with the locals’ response.”
The counter-sniper told the Committee “police running, guns out, and there were a couple of people just running away from the AGR building, that looks like citizens, I guess you would say, just normal people.”
He said, “something was wrong” and the “police were the main identifier that something bad was happening.”
“At that time, we didn’t know what we were working with,” a USSS counter-sniper told the committee.
Though counter-sniper efforts ultimately failed to prevent Crooks from firing, the Senate report finds that Trump’s Butler rally was the first time that a USSS counter-sniper team was assigned to a protectee who was not the president, vice president, or formally nominated party nominee. Snipers were only at the rally in response to “credible intelligence” of a threat. Though the committee did not identify what that threat was, sources have told ABC News that Iran has targeted the former president since the killing of General Soliemani.
When the Secret Service sniper took his shot at Crooks, he did so “mere seconds” after identifying him, his partner told the committee.
Officers told the committee they didn’t get resources they needed
Rowe has repeatedly asserted publicly that no assets were denied for the Butler rally. But some of the committee’s findings suggest otherwise.
The operator of the USSS counter drone measures, known as C-UAS, told the committee he requested additional C-UAS equipment and personnel in the11 days before the rally. However, these requests were denied, at times without explanation, according to the report.
The USSS lead advance agent told the committee Trump’s Secret Service detail requested counter assault team liaisons to help coordinate tactical assets in advance of the July 13 rally, but USSS denied this request, the report found.
When the CUAS system went down, the agent who was responsible for it called the manufacturer hotline to start troubleshooting the problem, delaying the deployment of the system for hours.
Previous testimony from the acting director stated that Crooks flew a drone over the rally site during the few hours the CUAS system was down.
Secret Service communications and those of local law enforcement were “siloed” in real time, according to the committee’s report.
Those issues included inoperable radios — in one instance, the head of the Pittsburgh Field Office gave his radio to the lead advance agent on the ground because his radio wasn’t working. These types of problems were commonplace, according to the report.
At one point, some of the agent’s communications were getting crossed with those of the detail of first lady Jill Biden, who was nearby.
Blumenthal called the Secret Service’s lack of accountability an “Abbott and Costello” routine, making reference to the infamous “Who’s on First” skit.
“It was really truth being stranger than fiction,” Blumenthal said of the finger-pointing as to who was responsible and who was in charge of the Butler event.
Committee leaders stress that the report is an interim set of findings meant to be expanded upon by further lines of questioning.
Blumenthal also called for new leadership at the Secret Service.
Peters told reporters last week that there have been instances in which agencies were not as responsive to committee requests as he would’ve liked.
Though the committee staff examined “over 2,800 pages” of documents provided by USSS and transcribed 12 interviews with USSS personnel, the report does reflect instances in which agencies did not meet committee requests.
“The majority of documents provided by the USSS and DHS are heavily redacted. This has unnecessarily hindered the Committee’s ability to carry out its constitutional authority to investigate and acquire information necessary to identify needed reforms,” the report says.
Guglielmi said the Secret Service has “been and continue to work cooperatively, transparently, and in good faith with Congress.”
“The U.S. Secret Service has implemented changes to our protective operations including elevating the protective posture for our protectees and bolstering our protective details as appropriate in order to ensure the highest levels of safety and security for those we protect,” Guglielmi said.
(TEMPE, Ariz.) — An office in Arizona used by Kamala Harris’ campaign was shot at early Monday morning in the second apparent gun attack in a week, according to investigators.
Police in Tempe, Arizona, responded to the office, which the local Democratic Party also uses, after they received calls from staffers about the damage. At least five bullet holes were found in the windows and the door.
“No one was inside the office during the overnight hours, but this raises concerns about the safety of those who work in that building, as well as those nearby,” Tempe Police spokesperson Sgt. Ryan Cook told ABC News.
Tempe police said they were analyzing evidence and were taking “additional measures” after the shooting “to ensure the safety of staff and others in the area.” A motive for the shooting has not yet been determined and the investigation continues, according to the police.
The same office was shot at just a week prior, on Sept. 16, in an incident the police said appeared to involve a BB or pellet gun. That shooting also happened just after midnight and caused “criminal damage,” according to the police.
Arizona Democratic Party Chair Yolanda Bejarano condemned the vandalism in a statement to ABC News Phoenix affiliate KNXV.
“It’s extremely sad that the Arizona Democratic Party has become the target of violence — it’s not who we are as Arizonans or Americans. We are working with law enforcement to ensure this threat is taken seriously and that our staff members are safe while they’re at work,” she said in a statement.
Law enforcement around the country is under heightened alert over an increase in political violence threats.
(LOS ANGELES) — At least one person is dead after a Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus was hijacked with the driver being forced to drive at gunpoint before police were able to apprehend the suspect, according to authorities.
The incident began at approximately 12:45 a.m. when the Los Angeles Police Department received radio calls to a disturbance on a bus in the area of Manchester Street and Figueroa Street in southern Los Angeles, said Deputy Chief Donald Graham in a briefing to the media Wednesday morning. Initial reports said that there was a potential assault with a weapon before officers discovered the bus stopped at 117th St and Figueroa St.
However, when the LAPD tried to make contact with the people on the bus, the bus started to pull away from the responding officers which led to an hourlong pursuit into the downtown area, officials said.
The bus eventually ended at Alameda St. and 6th Street at approximately 2:10 a.m. after police deployed multiple spike strips and were able to puncture a tire on the right side of the vehicle. On the bus there were two passengers, the driver and suspect.
A SWAT team was immediately called in to assist in the hostage situation and were able to get on the bus and rescue two people, the driver and a passenger, Graham said in his briefing to the media.
The suspect surrendered immediately and was brought into custody. However, when police were clearing the bus, a fourth person was found on with multiple gunshot wounds.
The victim was taken to a local hospital where he later died from his injuries. Two other patients declined treatment, authorities said.
(NEW YORK) — Alabama is set to perform the second-ever nitrogen gas execution in the United States on Thursday.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of his then-coworkers Lee Holdbrooks and Christoper Scott Yancy, and his former supervisor Terry Lee Jarvis.
Miller was to be executed in September 2022 via lethal injection, but it was called off after officials had trouble inserting an intravenous line to administer the fatal drugs and were concerned they would not be able to do so before the death warrant expired.
Prior to the botched execution, the state had considered carrying out the death sentence via nitrogen hypoxia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a non-profit that provides data and analysis on capital punishment.
In November 2022, Alabama officials agreed not to execute Miller by lethal injection again but said if they made a second effort, the state would use nitrogen hypoxia as the method, the DPIC said.
In May 2024, the Alabama State Supreme Court agreed to let the Department of Corrections carry out Miller’s death sentence by nitrogen hypoxia.
The execution is scheduled to take place at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, with the window opening on Thursday, Sept. 25 at 12:00 a.m. ET and expiring on Friday, Sept. 27 at 6:00 a.m. ET.
It comes after Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner, Kenneth Eugene Smith, by nitrogen gas in January of this year.
Nitrogen hypoxia is the term for a means of death caused by breathing in enough nitrogen gas to deprive the body of oxygen — in this case, intended to be used as a method of execution.
The protocol in Alabama calls for an inmate to be strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask and a breathing tube. The mask is meant to administer 100% pure nitrogen, depriving the person of oxygen until they die.
About 78% of the air that humans breathe is made up of nitrogen gas, which may lead people to believe that nitrogen is not harmful, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
However, when an environment contains too much nitrogen and the concentration of oxygen becomes too low, the body’s organs, which need oxygen to function, begin shutting down and a person dies.
State officials have argued death by nitrogen gas is a humane, painless form of execution and that the person would lose consciousness within seconds of inhaling the nitrogen and die within minutes.
Three states — Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma — have approved nitrogen gas as a form of execution and Ohio lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year to allow execution by nitrogen gas.
However, medical and legal experts have told ABC News that nitrogen gas as a method for execution is untested and there’s no evidence the method is any more humane or painless than lethal injection.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor in the department of anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine, said he reviewed Smith’s autopsy which showed blueness of the skin, pulmonary congestion and edema, which he says indicated that he died from being asphyxiated “slowly and painfully.”
“If that’s what Alabama thinks is a job well done, well then there seems to be a wide disagreement on what a job well-done means,” he told ABC News. “So, if this is again, what they intend, then they intend to kill him cruelly, and they will intend to kill Alan Miller in the same cruel way.”
Zivot has previously reported analyzing autopsies after lethal injection cases and reports finding that many show signs of pulmonary edema.
Attorney General Steve Marshall described Smith’s execution as “textbook” but Zivot said it’s hard to describe nitrogen hypoxia as “textbook” and that it’s a “proven method” when it’s never been a tested method.
“I recognize that [people were] murdered and that what is at stake here is a very, very serious problem,” he said. “We’re not saying that Kenneth Smith or Alan Miller have become saint-like men as they have been incarcerated. It doesn’t matter whether they’re good or bad at this point with respect to how their punishment should be delivered. That doesn’t give us license to torture them.”
