Politics

(WASHINGTON) — The mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew was ordered released from immigration detention on Monday, according to her attorney.

Bruna Caroline Ferreira, who is in the process of obtaining a green card and previously held DACA status, was ordered released by an immigration judge on a minimum bond of $1,500.

Ferreira’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told ABC News that he argued at a hearing that his client is not a “criminal illegal alien,” as described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), nor that she is a flight risk.

Ferreira is expected to be released Monday or Tuesday, according to Pomerleau.

The White House did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.

DHS confirmed two weeks ago that Ferreira had been detained. A reporter with ABC New Hampshire station WMUR spoke with Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt, who also confirmed the arrest and said Ferreira had been detained a few weeks previously.

A DHS spokesperson then described Ferreira, a Brazilian national, as a “criminal illegal alien” who had a previous arrest for battery and had overstayed a visa that expired in 1999.

“ICE arrested Bruna Caroline Ferreria, a criminal illegal alien from Brazil. She has a previous arrest for battery. She entered the U.S. on a B2 tourist visa that required her to depart the U.S. by June 6, 1999,” the DHS spokesperson said. “She is currently at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center and is in removal proceedings. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation,” the spokesperson said.

“Bruna has no criminal record whatsoever, I don’t know where that is coming from. Show us the proof,” Pomerleau told Boston ABC station WCVB after Ferreria’s arrest was announced. 

Pomerleau also said then that Ferreira entered the country lawfully, previously held DACA status and was in the process of obtaining a green card. He further said that his client was arrested in her car in Massachusetts after being stopped with no warrant, adding that he now has to litigate her case in Louisiana, thousands of miles away from her home.

Pomerleau also told WCVB that he did not believe that his client’s connection to Karoline Leavitt could affect the case, adding that he believes it’s just “happenstance.”

ABC News’ Armando Garcia, Jason Volack and Hannah Demissie contributed to this story.

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(WASHINGTON) — Members of Congress are tracking to pass new legislation that would compel Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers the unedited military video of 11 people being killed in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 2 after an initial strike on a suspected drug boat left two passengers alive in the water.

A provision tucked into the annual, must-pass Pentagon spending and policy bill says the Defense Department should hand over unedited copies of video to the House and Senate Armed Services committees. If the department does not comply, Hegseth’s travel budget would be slashed by 25% until the relevant videos are turned over, according to the legislation.

The provision could be amended before the bill is voted on in either chamber.

The House is expected to hold a floor vote on the bill this week. The Senate must take it up for a floor vote by the end of the month.

At issue is whether the Sept. 2 military strike on the alleged drug boat amounted to a war crime. Officials have confirmed there were four military strikes against the boat — the first strike killing nine of the 11 people aboard. Some 40 minutes later, a second strike was ordered to kill the remaining two survivors. Two more strikes were ordered to sink the boat, officials say.

Lawmakers who have seen portions of the video of the strikes in a classified briefing last week have described the state of the survivors before being killed by the U.S. military in starkly different terms. Democrats insisted the survivors were helpless and should have been rescued to comply with international laws that call for either sides in a conflict to help combatants who fall overboard or are shipwrecked. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, however, said the survivors were trying to “flip” the boat “so they could stay in the fight.”

President Donald Trump last week said he is open to releasing the video.

“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last Wednesday.

Hegseth, however, has not committed to doing so. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday, Hegseth said he was concerned that releasing the video could expose sources and methods tied to an ongoing operation. He said the military uses “bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures” that would have to be protected.

“I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else. So, we’re viewing the process, and we’ll see,” he said.

Hegseth also has suggested that the people killed in the strike were an imminent threat.

“I was told, ‘Hey, there had to be a reattack, because there were a couple folks who could still be in the fight [with] access to radios.’ There was a link-up point of another potential boat, drugs were still there … I said, ‘Roger, sounds good,'” Hegseth said.

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who was briefed on the video, said there were no radios and called Hegseth’s description “ridiculous.”

“They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false and people will get a look at it and they will see,” Smith said.

ABC News’ Lauren Peller and Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is set to announce a $12 billion aid package for American farmers on Monday, a White House official confirmed to ABC News.

The package is set to include $11 billion in one-time payments to crop farmers through a new Department of Agriculture bridge payment program. The remaining funds will then go to other crops not covered by that program.

The long-promised aid package is intended to provide relief to farmers who have been hurt directly by Trump’s trade policies, including his global tariffs.

The news of the aid package announcement was first reported by Bloomberg.

A White House official confirmed that Trump will announce the package at an event with farmers at the White House on Monday afternoon.

Impact of tariffs on farmers

The aid package comes as the U.S.-China trade war has hit soybean farmers especially hard. Through most of this fall, during a bumper harvest season, China had blocked all purchases of soybeans from the U.S.

China was the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans in 2024, accounting for $12.64 billion in sales, according to the USDA.

During Trump’s high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi in late October, the U.S. and China announced a framework trade agreement that included a deal on soybeans. China agreed to purchase 12 million metric tons of soybeans in the final two months of this year and 25 million metric tons in 2026, 2027 and 2028 — on par with levels before the trade war.

So far, China has purchased about 2.2 million metric tons of soybeans from the U.S. since the end of October, USDA data shows.

New package comes after Argentina bailout controversy

The administration’s new actions also come on the heels of the administration’s $20 billion bailout of Argentina, a move many American farmers and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle criticized.

This fall, as China stopped buying all soybeans from U.S. farmers, it purchased soybeans from Argentina instead. So as the U.S. was giving a financial lifeline to Argentina, a country that directly benefited from the trade war, American farmers said they felt left behind.

“Farmers VERY upset [about] Argentina selling soybeans to China right after USA bail out Still ZERO USA soybeans sold to China,” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote in a September social media post about the bailout.

Trump, in his first term, also took action to bail out American farmers. His administration approved two packages in 2018 and 2019 totaling $28 billion for farmers impacted by his economic policies.

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(WASHINTON) — For more than 100 years, independent government agencies have regulated American monetary policy and stock trades, transportation systems and election campaigns, consumer product safety and broadcast licenses all free from direct political interference and supervision by the White House.

A major case before the Supreme Court on Monday could upend that tradition and dramatically transform the federal government, eliminating a spirit of bipartisanship and policy continuity that Congress had intended to instill in key areas of American life when it created the agencies.

At issue is President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, as a member of the Federal Trade Commission on grounds that her service is “inconsistent with the administration’s priorities.” She was appointed to a seven-year term in 2023.

Lower courts have held that Slaughter’s termination was illegal since federal law stipulates a president may only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The for-cause removal protection was intended to insulate the FTC from politics.

Trump argues the arrangement is unconstitutional and that a president must have full control over the leadership of government bodies that set policies and enforce regulations.

If he prevails, presidents could win unfettered power to terminate members of independent agencies at-will, which in turn could mark the end of their independence.

“Congress designed these agencies, like the FTC, like the [Federal Reserve], like [Securities and Exchange Commission], the whole panoply of independent agencies to have bipartisan voices so that there could be accountability and transparency,” Slaughter said in an interview with ABC News earlier this year.

Some two dozen organizations, including the Federal Election Commission, Federal Communications Commission and National Transportation Safety Board, are also made up of members appointed by presidents for a fixed term and protected by law from removal for purely political or policy reasons.

Trump has also tried to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board, Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and Federal Reserve — all of whom have challenged their removals in court.

The Constitution “vests all ‘the executive Power’ in the president and requires him to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'” Trump’s attorneys argue in their brief to the high court, quoting from Article II. They insist the language inherently includes power to remove “executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed.”

In a unanimous 1935 decision, however, the Supreme Court upheld the design of independent agencies, concluding their role as quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial bodies makes them distinct from executive branch departments and not subjected to a president’s whims.

Several members of the current Supreme Court have publicly indicated they believe the ruling should be overturned or at least not applied to this case.

“I think we all expect the Court to give the president a lot more control over these so-called independent administrative agencies and bring back some political accountability within the executive branch,” said Sarah Isgur, SCOTUSblog editor and an ABC News legal contributor.

“We also have to hope that will force Congress to stop delegating vast and vague powers to the executive branch and these agencies once they’re under his direction,” she added.

The implications for the public could be significant, some legal experts say.

“It may influence how agencies conduct investigations, enforce regulations and oversee markets, while introducing uncertainty into regulatory oversight that affects investment and long-term planning,” said Varu Chilakamarri, a former Justice Department attorney and appellate litigator with the law firm K&L Gates.

In other words, giving a president full control of independent agency leadership will allow him to align agency actions with the administration’s agenda — bolstering power of the executive branch while opening the door to significant policy changes following each presidential election.

The FTC currently has no Democratic members on the five-member panel after Trump dismissed Slaughter and fellow Democratic commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, in March.

In September, the Supreme Court rejected Slaughter’s bid to remain on the commission while the litigation is pending. The 6-3 decision, with all three liberal justices dissenting, signals that the likely outcome of her case will be in Trump’s favor, analysts said.

The Supreme Court’s decision will also determine the fate of Cathy Harris, a Trump-fired member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne Wilcox, a Trump-fired member of the National Labor Relations Board, both of whom are also contesting the president’s actions on grounds identical to Slaughter’s.

One independent agency not directly implicated in the case: the Federal Reserve. While removal protections for members of the central bank’s board of governors are similar to those at the FTC and other agencies, the justices have made clear in their view that the bank is different.

“The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the Supreme Court wrote in an unsigned opinion in May.

Trump’s unprecedented attempt to remove a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, Lisa Cook, will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in a separate case next month.

A decision in both cases is expected before the end of the court’s term in June 2026.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration’s surge in law enforcement has created a chilling effect on student attendance in school districts nationwide, but it appears that preliminary data and attendance trackers from some districts do not show a large-scale enrollment plunge due to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations near school grounds.

In September, President Donald Trump sent additional federal troops to aid immigration enforcement in Chicago. Despite this, the Chicago Public Schools system said its attendance remains “largely consistent” with last year as some student groups are seeing dips in attendance at “discrete points” — referring to individual, separate events — this fall.

In Washington, D.C., the city’s local law enforcement has always worked alongside federal agencies. After it saw a surge in troops in August and September during a 30-day federal takeover, preliminary data shows the city’s attendance rate was within one percentage point of the same time period in the previous school year for “all students,” according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. That office said the preliminary data from Sept. 30 included each student group and racial ethnicity group.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second largest school system after New York City’s, has a 94% attendance rate for the 2025-2026 school year, according to the district’s website.

Falling birth rates, self-deportation, migration and other factors have caused a drop in K-12 enrollment and attendance in certain parts of the country so far this year, according to data from school districts around the country, including the Los Angeles and Miami-Dade County public school systems, which both saw 4% decreases in 2025-2026 enrollment.

Fear from immigrant communities

Despite preliminary estimates of student enrollment, the Trump administration’s immigration curb has left immigrant families and communities fearful of returning to school each day — from the nation’s capital to Los Angeles, California — according to education leaders and experts who spoke to ABC News. The immigration operations near LAUSD, home to over 400,000 students, coincided with a drop in more than 16,000 students to start the current school year, according to an LAUSD spokesperson.

Coupled with existing factors like affordability and family migration, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said the widespread disruptions from immigration arrests in town have put a strain on students in the school district. He also suggested that the district is experiencing enrollment patterns that are “deeply connected” to the realities immigrant families are facing.

“When families are afraid to be seen, or when they cannot afford to remain in their communities, they are less likely to enroll, reenroll, or stay in public schools,” Carvalho said in a statement to ABC News.

“Our responsibility is to ensure every child — regardless of where they were born — feels safe in our schools. We will continue to stand firmly with our immigrant communities and protect every student’s right to a welcoming, stable, and supportive education,” Carvalho added.

The Trump administration has lifted longstanding restrictions that kept ICE from conducting immigration enforcement raids on K-12 schools and other sensitive areas, including churches and hospitals, but this decision was made to ensure students and school communities are safe from criminal activity, according to Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

McLaughlin stressed that the agency is not invading or raiding classrooms, and shared a DHS memo outlining the department’s approach with ABC News.

“ICE agents use discretion,” it read. “Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a school. We expect these to be extremely rare.”

‘[She] probably won’t go to classes’

In Charlotte, North Carolina, on the first day back to school after federal agents implemented an operation dubbed Charlotte’s Web, an immigration enforcement action around Mecklenburg County last month, 30,000 students were absent from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the school district said.

The dip in attendance to start that week accounted for roughly one in every five students missing school, which was about a 14% drop from regular attendance rates, according to the school district. However, the district did not indicate that the federal law enforcement presence accelerated those absences.

Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, who previously chaired the House’s Education and Workforce Committee, told ABC News that other North Carolina districts are experiencing absenteeism as well and there’s been little K-12 growth overall due to recent declines in birth rates. 

Pablo de la Canal, a career and technical education middle school teacher in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, told ABC News that he saw a noticeable absence in his immigrant students during the Charlotte’s Web operation.

According to de la Canal, he received an email on Sunday, Nov. 16, from an immigrant student’s parent, warning him that the student wouldn’t be attending school during the surge. In the email, which was reviewed by ABC News, the parent asked de la Canal if the child could do schoolwork at home to keep up, he said.

“[She] probably won’t go to classes, until we see how this [immigration operation] situation continues,” the email reads in part.

The teacher told ABC News that he wasn’t the only one to get such a message.

“I know that there were a couple other teachers that got, you know, similar emails from parents, basically letting us know that the kids were not going to show up for school,” de la Canal said.

Meanwhile, many school districts like Charlotte, Los Angeles and Chicago have been offering remote learning, including for the immigrant families who are wary of the federal law enforcement agents in their communities. School district leaders and experts have warned that both mixed-status and documented families are choosing between leaving home for school — as they risk being stopped by immigration agents — and migrating to districts in other cities.

In a statement this fall, Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice, argued that children are now paying the price.

“We do not need violence, chaos and fear in order to fix our broken immigration system,” Cardenas said. “We need a plan that works for America — and protects — not harms — all of our children.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Department of Justice officials, citing privilege, did not disclose details on the legal advice given to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the decision to continue the deportation of more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador in March.

The declarations filed in court Friday are a response to a contempt inquiry initiated by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who is determining whether Noem or anyone else should be referred for potential contempt prosecution.

The court filings Friday were submitted after DOJ lawyers said in a filing last week that Noem directed the deportation flights to continue despite Boasberg’s order to return the planes to the U.S. as he heard a legal challenge to the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport the Venezuelans, whom the Trump administration accused of being gang members. 

In her declaration, Noem confirmed she made the decision to continue the transfer of the detainees after receiving legal advice from DOJ leadership and from Joseph Mazarra, the acting general counsel of DHS.

In the filings Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, a DOJ official in March who is now a U.S. circuit judge, declined to provide details on the “privileged” legal advice they gave to Noem.

“DOJ has not authorized me to disclose privileged information in this declaration,” Bove said.

Mazarra, in his declaration, said that he analyzed Judge Boasberg’s order that sought to block the deportations and then provided Noem with legal advice.

“DHS had removed these terrorists from the U.S. before this Court issued any order (or oral statement regarding their removal),” Mazarra wrote in the filing Friday.

In a separate filing, DOJ attorneys said it would be “prejudicial and constitutionally improper” to compel testimony from the officials who submitted declarations in advance of a referral for prosecution.

“[The] Court has all the information it needs to make a referral if it believes one to be justified, and further factual inquiry by the Court would raise constitutional and privilege concerns,” the DOJ attorneys stated.

In response to the declarations, Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the AEA deportations in court, told ABC News “the Trump administration is again refusing to cooperate with a federal court.”

In March, the Trump administration invoked the AEA — an 18th-century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.

In a March 15 court hearing, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order and ordered that the planes carrying the detainees be turned around, but Justice Department attorneys have said his oral instructions directing the flight to be returned were defective, and the deportations proceeded as planned.

Boasberg’s earlier finding that the Trump administration likely acted in contempt was halted for months after an appeals court issued an emergency stay. A federal appeals court last month declined to reinstate Boasberg’s original order, but the ruling allowed him to move forward with his fact-finding inquiry.

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(WASHINGTON) — Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the commander at the center of the controversial Sept. 2 strikes on an alleged drug-running boat in the Caribbean Sea, has served for decades as a Navy SEAL officer while rising through the ranks to lead all U.S. special operators globally.

Bradley will brief lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday in a bipartisan inquiry into the incident, in which two survivors from a first strike were later seen climbing back into the boat, a source familiar with the incident told ABC News.

The source said the pair of survivors were later killed in a second strike because they were deemed to “still be in the fight” because they were in communications with other vessels nearby and were gathering some of the cargo of drugs the boat had been carrying.

The White House and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have said it was Bradley’s call to order the second strike.

The initial attack was overseen by Hegseth himself, who told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he watched the first strike unfold before leaving for meetings. He said he did not see any survivors or any further strikes that followed.

“Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat,” Hegseth said.

“He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back,” he said.

At the time of the attack, Bradley was the three-star admiral in command of the Joint Special Operations Command that oversees the most sensitive special operations missions carried out by units like SEAL Team Six and Delta Force.

Bradley graduated in 1991 from the U.S. Naval Academy, where he studied physics and was a varsity gymnast, according to his Navy biography, and has commanded at all levels of U.S. special operations.

He was among the first to deploy into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks, his bio says.

Originally from Eldorado, Texas, Bradley earned a Master’s Degree in physics from Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he received a provisional patent for his research in 2006, according to his bio.

Those who served with him characterized him as among the military’s best.

Retired Navy Cdr. Eric Oelerich, a former SEAL and current ABC News contributor, said Bradley, who’s been a mentor to him for decades, is an adaptive leader and “one of the most intelligent officers” in the U.S. military.

“Bradley is an example of the very best of what is in the U.S. military,” said Oelerich, who commanded special operators as a Navy officer. “And he is a man extremely grounded in morality.”

Retired Brig. Gen. Shawn Harris, who worked with Bradley and is now a Democratic candidate for Congress in Georgia, told ABC News the admiral is “an outstanding leader.”

Used to operating in the shadows as a senior special operations leader, Bradley made a rare public appearance in July at a Senate confirmation hearing.  Nominated to serve as the four-star commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, he was confirmed and assumed the rank and command role in October.

At the time of the September strike, Bradley headed Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has operational authority over the military’s elite special warfare units.

In his confirmation hearing to lead Special Operations Command, the parent organization of JSOC, Bradley said officers under his command would be focused on preventing civilian harm and the laws of war.

“Just to resonate, it is not only an obligation to adhere to the law of armed conflict to protect civilians, it is critical to our success and competition to represent our values,” Bradley told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “I believe that every uniformed, every civilian, and every contractor that is employed or in oversight of the use of lethal force has a critical obligation to be able to do that, and I do commit to keeping that as a focus for our command, if confirmed.”

Warren replied, “That is a strong answer, and I appreciate it.”   

The administration has maintained that the 11 people killed in the Sept. 2 incident — as well as the more than 80 killed by strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean — were not civilians but rather terrorist combatants that the U.S. was empowered to kill on self-defense grounds.

Some legal experts, including a group of former military lawyers, have said they believe the people killed in the follow-up strikes were no longer in the fight and therefore not legal military targets.

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(WASHINGTON) — A Pentagon watchdog concluded that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked exposing classified information that could have endangered U.S. troops when he relayed details about a planned military strike in Yemen using the Signal commercial messaging app, according to a person who read the classified investigative report and another source with knowledge of the findings.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military has deployed its first squadron of one-way attack drones to the Middle East, employing a U.S.-built drone that was reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed drones that have been used by Iran against Israel and by Russia against Ukraine.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Wednesday the establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS) that will oversee the first of its kind operational deployment by the U.S. military.

The employment of the new one-way drones is an indication of how low-cost drone technology has changed the battlefield in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Iran.

A common thread in both those conflicts is Iran’s one-way Shahed drones, capable of carrying explosives over long distances. Used by Iran to target Israel, Russia has purchased large quantities of them to launch large swarm attacks against Ukraine.

The Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drones, built by SpektreWorks, that CENTCOM has deployed to the Middle East are based off the reverse engineering of a delta-winged Shahed-136 drone obtained by the U.S. several years ago, according to a Department of Defense official.

At a cost of $35,000 each, the drones are an improvement on the Iranian drone and a more effective military option at a much lower price point than the deployment of manned fighter aircraft, the official said.

Able to travel long distances, the LUCAS drone is also designed to operate autonomously and can be launched from catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground and vehicle systems.

The new drones will be sent to various locations in the Middle East, said the official, who declined to provide information as to how many of the drones were being deployed to the region.

Interestingly, the drone squadron does not belong to one of the military services but will be operated by a joint special operation unit operating under CENTCOM.

“This new task force sets the conditions for using innovation as a deterrent,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander. “Equipping our skilled warfighters faster with cutting-edge drone capabilities showcases U.S. military innovation and strength, which deters bad actors.”

Israel’s attack on Iran in November severely disabled Iran’s sophisticated missile air defense systems, making it much less able to counter against any air threats, including one-way drone attack, the official said.

“We are essentially flipping the script” on Iran said the official, who noted that the new drone system is a more effective deterrent because there is less risk about its potential use as an offensive capability than if manned aircraft were to be used.

The system’s deployment was spurred in part by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “drone dominance” initiative that accelerates the delivery of low-cost and effective drones to U.S. forces.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is granting a pardon to Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife, who were indicted on charges including bribery in 2024.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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