Politics

(BOSTON) — On the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous moonshot speech, President Joe Biden on Monday outlined a new “American Moonshot” aimed at eradicating cancer “as we know it.”

“President Kennedy set a goal to win the space race against Russia and advance science and technology for all humanity,” Biden said during a speech at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. “And when he said that goal, he established a national purpose that could rally the American people and the common cause, and he succeeded. Now in our time, on the 60th anniversary of his clarion call, we face another inflection point.”

After being introduced by Kennedy’s daughter, U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, Biden pointed to the parallels between his efforts and those of JFK, who, at the time, declared the America’s objective to put a man on the moon — noting that both plans were unprecedented for their times.

“I believe … the same national purpose will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills to end cancer as we know it. And even cure cancers once and for all,” he said.

The cause is a personal one for Biden, who launched the moonshot originally as vice president just months after his son, Beau, died from glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, in 2015.

Biden reiterated the importance of this cancer moonshot to him, saying it was one of the reasons he ran for president in 2020.

“As president of the United States Senate, I presided over the overwhelming bipartisan vote and watched my friend Mitch McConnell name the cancer provisions in that bill after my son Beau who had lost his life to that disease just months earlier. And when we left office, Jill and I knew we had to keep going through, keep it up. So, we initiated the Biden cancer initiative. We focused on turning the moonshot into a movement, not just a shot, a movement,” Biden said.

In the years since President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act in 1971, “enormous progress” has been made in the nation’s fight against cancer, Biden said, adding that progress has increased at a faster pace in recent years, with the death rate due to cancer falling more than 25% over the last 25 years. Cancer, however, remains the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease.

Earlier this year, Biden relaunched the cancer moonshot initiative, unveiling his goals of cutting cancer deaths in half in the next 25 years, and on Monday he pointed to how technology can be used to further efforts to find a cure.

“Today, I’m setting a long term goal for the cancer moonshot to rally America, an ingenuity that we can engage like we did to reach the moon that actually cures cancers — not all cancer — cancer — cures cancer once and for all. ” Biden said.

Biden also introduced Dr. Renee Wegrzyn — his pick for the first Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a program Biden campaigned on creating to help drive research to cure diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s and Diabetes, and one he views as critical to the success of the moonshot.

“Scientists are exploring whether mRNA vaccine technology that brought us safe and effective COVID 19 vaccines could be used to stop cancer cells when they first arrive to target the right treatments,” Biden said.

Looking ahead, Biden asked the audience to imagine what was possible.

“Imagine the possibilities. Vaccines that could prevent cancer, like there is for HPV. Imagine molecular zip codes that could deliver drugs and gene therapy precisely to the right tissues. Imagine simple blood test during an annual physical that can detect cancer early with a chance of cure best. Imagine getting a simple shot instead of grueling chemo, or getting a pill follicle pharmacy instead of invasive treatments and long hospital stays,” he said.

But Biden warned that the federal effort and investments would not be enough to cure cancer.

“We need everyone to get the game. That’s why I’m also calling on the science and medical communities to bring the boldest thinking to this fight. I’m calling on the private sector to develop and test new treatments. Make drugs more affordable, share more data, and knowledge that can inform the public and benefit every company’s research,” he said. “And I’m respectfully calling on people living with cancer and caregivers and families to keep sharing their experience and pushing for progress,” Biden said, urging them to share their ideas with the administration as well.”

Earlier, the White House said Biden would not be seeking additional funding from Congress for what is bound to be an costly effort.

ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday responded to the Justice Department in the latest round of court filings regarding the review of materials seized at his Mar-a-Lago country club last month.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday requested U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to stay the portion of her ruling enjoining the government from further review of abut 100 documents bearing classification markings taken during the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago Aug. 8.

The government cited the risk of “irreparable harm” to national security and its ongoing criminal investigation if she declined to grant its request for a stay.

Cannon had required law enforcement to disclose those materials to a special master — an independent third-party — for review.

The DOJ said in Thursday’s court papers that if Cannon doesn’t grant a stay by Sept. 15, it will “intend to seek relief from the Eleventh Circuit” — a federal appeals court.

She gave Trump’s legal team until 10 a.m. Monday to respond.

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

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(WASHINGTON) — This story is part of ABC News’ series “Democracy in Peril,” which examines the inflection point the country finds itself at after the Jan. 6 attacks and ahead of the 2022 election.

The House Jan. 6 hearings this summer highlighted the pressure placed on officials across the country to overturn the 2020 presidential election — and how close some of Donald Trump’s demands came to being a reality.

Trump, the committee has already said, was directly involved in trying to have election workers and lawmakers both at the federal and local level declare him the winner of the race rather than Joe Biden.

As the committee detailed in its summer hearings, that effort was ultimately unsuccessful in large part thanks to a handful of people who resisted Trump’s demands despite the consequences that followed.

“They represent the backbone of our democracy at its most important moments: when the citizens cast their votes and when those votes are counted,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said during a hearing in which some of those people testified live.

The officials — heavily criticized by Trump in social media posts or in statements for opposing him — have since recounted the harassment they said they and their family members faced. Election antagonism didn’t end after 2020: ABC News previously reported that at least nine states have experienced election staff departures or retirements prompted in part by harassment, threats and misinformation, officials and experts said.

Some leading Republicans who chose to support the 2020 election result have said it was their moral and legal duty, regardless of politics.

Here are some of the key officials, according to the Jan. 6 committee, who were pressured by Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence

Pence, Trump’s second-in-command, was hailed by the committee at its summer hearings for rejecting Trump’s entreaty to unilaterally reject Biden electors at the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Thanks in part to Mike Pence, our democracy withstood Donald Trump’s scheme and the violence of Jan. 6,” Chairman Thompson said during one of the hearings.

Trump and Pence had a phone call just hours before the joint congressional session began, in what onlookers described as a “heated” conversation. As the Capitol attack unfolded and the mob threatened to kill the vice president, Pence was forced to hide in an underground location while Trump continued to criticize him on social media. Pence resumed the certification of Biden’s victory in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2021.

“President Trump is wrong. … I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence said at a speech earlier this year. “The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was one of the most pressured local officials, as Trump fixated on his loss in the Peach State (the first time a Republican presidential nominee was defeated there in 28 years).

A now-infamous phone call between Raffensperger and Trump revealed the former president asked him to “find” 11,780 votes in Georgia — just one vote over the margin by which he trailed Biden. At one point on the call, Trump suggested to Raffensperger that his inaction could mean he was criminally liable, but Raffensperger denied Trump’s request and his false assertions including his claim that thousands of dead people voted in the election.

Raffensperger told the Jan. 6 committee in live testimony that his wife received sexually threatening texts and his daughter-in-law had her home broken into. Raffensperger went on to face a Trump-backed primary challenger but won.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers

Bowers, then the top Republican in the Arizona State House of Representatives, became emotional as he described to the committee the toll of being asked to violate his oath of office. Trump asked Bowers to help with a plan to replace the state’s electors committed to Biden during a phone call weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election. Bowers insisted on seeing evidence of voter fraud, which he said Trump’s team was never able to produce.

Speaking to ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, Bowers said in a subsequent interview that some Arizonians thanked him for his testimony before the committee but others deemed him a “traitor.” When asked by Karl if he ever considered going along with Trump’s plan, Bowers — who went on to lose his next election against a Trump-endorsed Republican — said: “The idea of throwing out the election of the president is like, okay, so what part of Jupiter do I get to land on and colonize?”

Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt

Al Schmidt, the only Republican on the city’s election board during the 2020 election, was the subject of a social media post by Trump in which Trump alleged Schmidt “refuses to look at a mountain of corruption dishonesty.”

Schmidt told the Jan. 6 panel that they investigated every allegation no matter how “fantastical” or “absurd.”

After that Trump tweet, Schmidt said the threats against him “became much more specific, much more graphic, and included not just me by name but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home.” Schmidt resigned from his position in late November 2021.

Richard Donoghue, Jeff Rosen, Steven Engel

These three former Justice Department officials described the many efforts by Trump to change the results — from suggesting the agency seize voting machines or file a lawsuit in the Supreme Court to sending letters to state legislatures furthering baseless claims of fraud.

“I will say that the Justice Department declined all of those requests that I was just referencing,” Rosen told the committee, “because we did not think that they were appropriate based on the facts and the law as we understood them.”

When Trump tried to appoint a less qualified but more loyal official to attorney general when his demands weren’t met, Donoghue said he told Trump that assistant attorney generals across the country would resign “en masse.”

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(NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.) — With the midterm elections less than two months away, Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday said the “stakes could not be higher” as both parties wrestle for control of Congress.

Speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Maryland, Harris echoed President Joe Biden’s recent attacks on “MAGA” Republican leaders who he says are a threat to the nation.

“We need to speak truth about that,” Harris said. “Today, we all by coming together reaffirm that we refuse to let extremist, so-called leaders dismantle our democracy.”

The vice president criticized the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as one example of such leaders attempting to “take away freedoms.” At least 15 states have ceased nearly abortion services since the court’s ruling in late June.

Harris warned Republicans could decide to ban abortion nationwide or go after other rights such as contraception or marriage equality if they become the majority in the House and Senate.

“Without a Democratic majority and conference, who knows what other rights they will come after?” she asked.

She condemned Republicans who say issues like abortion rights should be left up to individual states while also “intentionally make it more difficult for people in those states to vote” and called out three states — Florida, Texas and Georgia — for restrictive laws targeting abortion rights and the LGBTQ community.

Like Biden, she also framed the midterm elections as a stark choice between the Democrats’ agenda and that of some of their Republican colleagues.

“If there was any question about whether there’s a difference between the parties, well, over the last 18 months, it has become crystal clear,” she said. “There is a big difference. We all know that American families have been struggling but while Republican Party leaders have gone on TV to opine about the situation, Democrats actually did something about it.”

The vice president went on to tout administrative accomplishments on COVID-19 relief, infrastructure, gun safety and the announcement of student debt cancelation.

Other parts of the Biden-Harris agenda, including child care and voting rights, have stalled in Congress but Harris said if Democrats can pick up two more seats in the Senate more can be done — specifically highlighting her role as the Senate’s tie-breaking vote.

“In our first year in office, some historians here may know, I actually broke John Adams’s record of casting the most tie breaking votes in a single term,” she said, before adding: “I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights.”

Biden has called on the Senate to change the filibuster rules to pass voting reforms and to codify Roe but was met with opposition from Republicans and a few members of the Democratic Party.

Republicans, in their midterm messaging, have criticized the Biden administration over inflation, gas prices and crime.

The GOP has been generally favored to win back control of the House and Senate this cycle but recent legislative and electoral wins are signs Democrats’ odds may be improving.

Harris celebrated Democrat Mary Peltola’s victory over Republican Sarah Palin in Alaska’s special election for the state’s vacant U.S. House seat, as well as Kansas voters rejecting an anti-abortion ballot measure.

“We’ve got momentum on our side,” she said.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report

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(WASHINGTON) — Since returning to the campaign trail last month after a mid-May stroke, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat vying for the state’s open Senate seat, sometimes speaks haltingly to voters — pausing in the middle of sentences and slurring his words.

Otherwise, he has said, he has “no physical limits” and no issues with memory or language comprehension. In an interview on MSNBC last week, Fetterman, who works with a speech therapist, said he was “expecting to have a full recovery over the next several months.”

But Republicans have seized on his public appearances and his post-stroke behavior to suggest that he is not fit to serve in the Senate, a claim outside medical experts reject as reductive.

“It’s just not possible to be an effective senator if you cannot communicate,” retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, whose seat Fetterman hopes to fill, said Tuesday at a press conference with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the GOP nominee and Fetterman’s opponent.

Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, was even more blunt in his criticism last week on Newsmax: “John Fetterman is simply not capable of doing this job. He’s hiding in his basement, he’s not able to talk, he’s not able to process.”

The scrutiny of and questions about Fetterman’s health underscores the stakes of his race against Oz, which could decide who controls Congress’ upper chamber next year. Major politicians suffering health challenges mid-campaign — when they would normally be stumping for voters, night and day — is also relatively rare, and Fetterman’s campaign has been careful of overexposing him while he recovers.

His aides did not respond to requests to make his medical team available for this story. He has, however, previously responded directly to the GOP jabs at his recovery: “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges,” he tweeted in August.

“Anyone who’s seen John speak knows that while he’s still recovering, he’s more capable of fighting for [Pennsylvania] than Dr. Oz will ever be,” a spokesman said earlier this week.

His campaign has said his stroke was the result of a condition called atrial fibrillation, or irregular heart rhythm, which led to a clot; he subsequently had a pacemaker and defibrillator implanted.

The attacks on him increased as he remained mum on debating Oz, who has pushed to share a stage. Last week, Fetterman declined an invitation from KDKA, a Pittsburgh station, to participate in a debate that would have taken place on Tuesday.

“John Fetterman is either healthy and he is dodging the debates because he does not want to answer for his radical left positions, or he’s too sick to participate in the debate,” Oz said in the news conference with Toomey, where the two men spoke in front of photographs of debates in previous Senate cycles.

Fetterman then told Politico on Wednesday that he would debate Oz once. In response, an Oz spokeswoman accused Fetterman in a statement of still not being forthcoming on details about the time, place and the topics.

“It was just simply only ever been about addressing some of the lingering issues of the stroke, the auditory processing, and we’re going to be able to work that out,” Fetterman told Politico.

Outside medical experts said stroke victims’ speech difficulties are not indicative of their cognitive abilities at work.

“You certainly should not conflate language troubles with cognitive trouble,” John Krakauer, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for the Study of Motor Learning and Brain Repair, told ABC News in an interview. “That’s just being mean. It’s not scientifically valid. It would be like saying that a stutterer has a cognitive problem.”

ABC News spoke with several neurologists in general terms about stroke recovery. None of the experts interviewed have treated Fetterman or reviewed his medical history.

“Let’s say you have a little tiny stroke in the part of your brain that controls your right arm,” suggested Robert Friedlander, Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “Your right arm is not going to move, but you’re still thinking as you did before.”

“You can impact the speech part of the brain [and] might not sound the way you did before the stroke, but the cognitive component could be preserved,” added Friedlander, who said that, in some cases, language and cognition could both be affected.

If elected, Fetterman wouldn’t be the first stroke victim in the Senate. For example, both Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., suffered strokes earlier this year and have both returned to work. (Luján told ABC News in an interview in May that his stroke left him “wobbly” and a “little weak on the left,” but without any motor movement or voice issues.)

Fetterman also wouldn’t be the first politician to have a health scare while running for office. In late 2019, Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack while seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Sanders was hospitalized but quickly returned to the trail.

“Everyone who experiences a stroke will have their own unique recovery process, which is why the only people who can judge fitness for work are the individual’s treating physicians,” said Dr. Leah Croll, stroke neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

After an earlier period of well wishes and relative silence on Fetterman’s health, the Oz campaign has made his stroke a part of its campaign — sometimes in sharply personal terms. Last month, an aide, Rachel Tripp, was quoted asserting that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”

In a recent statement, the Oz campaign said that it would “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby” during a debate.

“I offered John Fetterman numerous opportunities to explain to me how I can make it easier for him to debate, but at this point, since he’s given numerous reasons for not showing up, including the fact he didn’t have time in his schedule, I’m of the opinion that he’s hiding his radical views,” Oz said on Fox News in August.

Krakauer, who overlapped with Oz at Columbia University as a medical student but has no relationship with the GOP Senate candidate, told ABC News that stroke victims tend to fatigue when speaking for long periods of time.

“Your best level of performance can drop over time,” he said. “A half an hour debate, an hour debate, over and over again is a lot to expect someone with aphasia [language difficulties from brain damage] to do. But that doesn’t mean they’re not cognitively capable.”

Some Democratic voters told ABC News they hope Fetterman debates Oz but insist they’re not concerned.

“People have illnesses all the time, but I think he got the right care,” said Geraldine Eckert, from Mercer County, who attended a recent Fetterman event. “I’m not worried about John Fetterman’s health.”

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(NEW ALBANY, Ohio) — After voting for the bipartisan computer chip manufacturing bill earlier this year, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, was one of several lawmakers with President Joe Biden on Friday in Licking County, to mark the groundbreaking of Intel’s new semiconductor chip factory.

But as a Democratic candidate in a competitive Senate race, Ryan has kept his distance from Biden — who lost Ohio to former President Donald Trump by eight points in 2020.

The Ryan campaign has not asked Biden or anyone from the White House to campaign with the Senate hopeful, with “no plans to do so,” spokesperson Izzi Levy told ABC News.

Ryan is not alone: In many key states with crucial Senate, House and gubernatorial races, Democrats are carefully managing their association with the president, toeing the line between appearing too friendly with the White House, and breaking with him and a party who have consistently received low marks from voters on their handling of inflation and the economy.

Ryan went as far as to categorize himself as an “independent” during an interview with Youngstown’s WFMJ-TV on Thursday, ahead of the president’s arrival.

“Well, not really asking anybody. Like I just I’m not one of those guys like, ‘Oh, I need someone to come in and help me.’ I’ve been I’ve been doing this I know what I’m doing. I know what I believe in. I know where I’m from. I know who I’m fighting for. I don’t need anyone else to like, you know, gum that message up,” he said.

When pressed by ABC News on whether he’s renouncing his ties with the Democratic Party, Ryan backtracked, saying he’s campaigning as an “independent-minded person.”

“I’m running as an independent-minded person who’s taken on President Obama, who’s taken Nancy Pelosi, has taken on Bernie Sanders but also agreed with Trump on trade and China and General Mattis and other things,” Ryan said. “People want an independent-minded person, they don’t want someone who’s just going to pull the lever with their own party, and I will be capable of saying ‘no’ to my own party.”

During Thursday’s WFMJ interview, Ryan notably highlighted the policy platforms he’d agreed with former President Trump on while pointing out the times he’d delineated from Biden, with whom he has voted with 100% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.

“I agree with Biden on CHIPS and infrastructure and some of these things,” Ryan said. “I’ve agreed with, you know, Trump, for example, on China trade. I’ve agreed with Trump on renegotiating NAFTA, strong defense, space force, General Mattis, on those things.”

This isn’t the first time that Ryan has attempted to render a stark divide between himself and the president. When Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan in August, Congressman Ryan distanced himself from the plan, saying it “sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.”

And when President Biden delivered a prime-time speech last Thursday denouncing “MAGA Republicans” and urging the country to unite against threats to American democracy, none of the Democratic Senate nominees that ABC News initially reached out to for responses reacted to the president’s speech, with Ryan later telling ABC News at an Ohio State University game that “we all have to be extremely vocal about people who stormed the Capitol.”

“I think we absolutely have to be very clear about speaking out about that,” the congressman told ABC News.

Ryan also joins a growing sect of national Democrats who have publicly declared their opposition to something Biden and his administration has confirmed he would do for months — run for a second White House term in 2024. He told WFMJ that “we need new leadership across the board” in response to a question on whether he believes Biden should declare another bid for the slot.

When pressed whether yes or no if he wants to see the president run again in 2024, Ryan told ABC News, “That’s not up to me” and reiterated the need for “generational change.”

“Guys like Mitch McConnell, these people have been there for a very long time,” he added. “As we move out of this age of stupidity that we’ve been in officially long. I think it’s time to hit the reset button and get people that don’t want to focus on us being Americans first.”

In Wisconsin over Labor Day weekend, as President Biden touted the power of union workers at a “Laborfest” in Milwaukee — Democratic Senate nominee and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was noticeably absent.

At a presser last week in Tempe, Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly told ABC News that on the issue of whether he wanted the president to come join him in the state before the general election, he said, “We welcome anybody to come out. We’ve got a lot of issues we’re dealing with right now. Water, wildfires, being some of the top of my priority list.”

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat running for governor, did not join the president at his second Labor Day stop in Pittsburgh, after appearing with Biden at an official White House event in Wilkes-Barre the previous week.

Shapiro did tell CNN in May that he would “welcome” Biden in Pennsylvania to campaign for him, adding that he is “focused on running a race here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, listening to the people of Washington County, not Washington, D.C.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat in a competitive reelection race with Republican businessman Tim Michels, and Barnes marched in a “Laborfest” parade before the president’s arrival in the city, with supporters asking for pictures and opportunities to shake hands with Barnes, the candidate several voters told ABC News will be “the next senator of Wisconsin.”

In Georgia’s Senate race, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has also been on record distancing himself from President Biden as he fights for reelection, locked in a tight battle against former football star and GOP nominee Herschel Walker.

When pressed by ABC News at a campaign stop in Union City on Tuesday, Warnock wouldn’t say if he supports Biden coming to Georgia to campaign for him.

“Frankly, I’m not focused on who I’m campaigning with but who I’m campaigning for,” Warnock said. “That’s why I spend time in places like Union City. Before this stop, I was in Newnan — a place that folks don’t expect Democrats to show up — because I’m determined to represent all the people of Georgia.”

That campaign strategy marks a departure from just last year, when Biden campaigned in Georgia for Sens. Warnock and Jon Ossoff during their runoff elections.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Florida has dismissed former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against his 2016 presidential challenger Hillary Clinton that accused her of “acting in concert” with top FBI leadership to invent what became known as the Russia investigation.

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks seemingly mocked the lawsuit in his order of dismissal, calling the suit “difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner.”

“It was certainly not presented that way,” the judge wrote.

Trump had argued that the Russia probe was “prolonged and exacerbated by the presence of a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice,” a group that included defendants James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Bruce Ohr.

The judge said the lawsuit was rife with “glaring problems,” claims that were “not warranted under existing law,” and legal theories that lacked factual support.

“At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum,” the order said.

“We vehemently disagree with the opinion issued by the Court today,” Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said in a statement following the dismissal. “Not only is it rife with erroneous applications of the law, it disregards the numerous independent governmental investigations which substantiate our claim that the defendants conspired to falsely implicate our client and undermine the 2016 Presidential election.”

Habba said Trump’s legal team would immediately move to appeal the decision.

Trump earlier tried to move the lawsuit to a different judge in the Southern District of Florida, but was unsuccessful. That judge, Aileen Cannon, is the same Trump-appointed judge who this week granted Trump’s motion for a special master to review the Justice Department’s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, completed in 2019, concluded that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systematic,” and the investigation led to seven guilty pleas and five jail sentences, mostly on charges of lying to investigators — but no charges were ever brought against Trump himself.

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(WASHINGTON) — Democratic congressional leaders are facing a progressive revolt — that could potentially risk a government shutdown — in the wake of the closed-door deal between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin that won the latter’s crucial support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

After repeatedly slamming that “disastrous side deal” that would streamline the permitting process for energy projects across the U.S. — which Schumer agreed to include with a must-pass spending bill to fund the federal government — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., promptly announced Thursday that he intends to oppose the funding resolution as a result.

“If the United States Congress goes on record and says, ‘Yes we are going to support more fossil fuel reduction, more carbon emissions,’ the signal we are sending to our own people and the planet is a terrible, terrible signal,” Sanders said in a floor speech.

He did not mince words with reporters afterward. Asked if he would vote no on funding the government if the Schumer-Manchin permitting deal is attached, he replied: “Yes. You’re talking about the future for the planet.”

Sanders’ opposition adds to the growing progressive pressure in the House, where some left-wing lawmakers have likewise threatened to block the government funding bill if it includes Manchin’s desired changes to energy permitting.

Sanders on Thursday read from a soon-to-be-released letter — obtained by ABC News Wednesday — that he said had been signed by “at least 59” House progressives opposing the Schumer-Manchin agreement.

That deal, Sanders said, quoting from the letter, “would silence the voices of environmental communities by insulating them from scrutiny. This would cause members to choose between protecting environmental justice communities from further pollution or funding the government. We urge you to ensure these provisions are kept out of a continuing resolution or any other must-pass legislation this year.”

Manchin has argued that permitting reform will also help speed projects related to wind, solar and other environmentally friendly sources of energy. He’s adamant that permitting reform must stay in the funding bill and, so far, he seems to have Schumer’s backing.

Despite the progressive rhetorical thunder, it is possible that the bill to fund the government — which will also include popular aid for Ukraine and disaster relief — will garner enough GOP support to render the threatened liberal blockade moot.

“It was a rank political deal,” Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the appropriations committee, told reporters Thursday of Manchin and Schumer’s agreement. But he stopped short of saying it would put government funding in jeopardy.

Still, some other Republicans are vowing to oppose the funding resolution because they oppose Schumer and Manchin’s dealmaking. Many conservatives have said they took umbrage at the last-minute nature of the deal among Democrats on the sweeping climate and health care reform legislation known as the IRA. It passed without a single GOP vote — not long after some Republicans had voted with Democrats on computer chip funding, thinking that the Democrats’ social spending bill was dead.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told ABC that “I would vote against it,” referring to government funding, and he said he was urging his Republican colleagues to do the same.

It’s not yet clear whether Republicans will unite behind Graham’s effort, but most GOP aides familiar with the matter say they do not expect that.

ABC News’ Mariam Khan contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice on Thursday moved to appeal a federal judge’s ruling in the dispute over documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where the government claims highly classified records were being improperly held.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review what was taken, including for items that might be covered by executive privilege, even though Trump is no longer the president and has never asserted privilege over any specific records.

The ruling, which enjoined the government from further use of the seized documents as part of its criminal investigation, was widely criticized by legal experts on both sides — including Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr.

“The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege,” Cannon wrote.

The DOJ’s appeal will go before the 11th Circuit.

Federal prosecutors also requested Thursday for Cannon to stay the portion of her ruling enjoining the government from further review of the documents bearing classification markings taken during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Cannon had required law enforcement to disclose those materials to the special master.

The DOJ said in Thursday’s court papers that if Cannon doesn’t grant a stay by Sept. 15, they will “intend to seek relief from the Eleventh Circuit.”

Trump “does not and could not assert that he owns or has any possessory interest in classified records” prosecutors wrote in a 21-page motion.

Cannon gave Trump’s team until Monday morning to respond to the request for a stay.

The DOJ is not seeking a stay on the handover of non-classified documents to an appointed special master but said that if Cannon doesn’t grant their stay it “will cause the most immediate and serious harms to the government and the public.”

Cannon noted in her previous order that the appointment of an independent third party would not impede the ongoing classification review and national security assessments being conducted by the intelligence community on what was retrieved from Trump’s home last month.

The judge had given DOJ and Trump’s team until Friday to confer and submit a joint list of proposed special master candidates and a proposed order outlining the special master’s duties and limitations.

‘Irreparable harm’

In Thursday’s motion, the DOJ repeatedly sought to undercut Cannon’s position in her ruling approving the appointment of a special master — and cited the risk of “irreparable harm” to national security and the ongoing criminal investigation if she declines to grant their request for a stay.

While they signaled they care relatively little about non-classified records seized from Mar-a-Lago being handed over to a special master, prosecutors argued that the classified records they say were found with Trump are critical to both their ongoing intelligence assessment and the criminal investigation and Trump has absolutely no legitimate legal claim to them.

While Cannon approved the intelligence community (IC) to continue with its separate evaluation of the documents, that “cannot be readily segregated” from the DOJ and FBI criminal investigation and the IC has been forced to temporarily pause its review out of an abundance of caution, prosecutors wrote.

“The application of the injunction to classified records would thus frustrate the government’s ability to conduct an effective national security risk ​assessment and classification review and could preclude the government from taking necessary remedial steps in light of that review—risking irreparable harm to our national security and intelligence interests,” the DOJ filing states.

They noted that the injunction could prevent the FBI from being able to identify “the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored” past those that were already seized at Mar-a-Lago — reflecting investigators’ concerns that there could be more materials taken by Trump from the White House that they still have yet to recover. (ABC News previously reported federal law enforcement has some worry for the potential that classified records could potentially be somewhere other than Mar-a-Lago. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.)

“Among other things, the classified records are the very subject of the government’s ongoing investigation,” the DOJ filing states.

The department said a partial stay would not harm Trump as it wouldn’t disturb the special master’s review of any other records, including those subject to attorney-client privilege, as the government has already been able to review the classified records for a month — “which, again, indisputably belong to the government, not [Trump].”

They said that being able to use the documents that were marked classified is an essential element of their ongoing investigation, specifically with respect to the two potential crimes of unauthorized retention of national defense information — “the classified records are not merely relevant evidence; they are the very objects of the relevant criminal statute” — and obstruction: “Again, the seized classified records at issue here—each of which the subpoena plainly encompassed—are central to that investigation.”

Prosecutors wrote that if Trump believed he ever had a valid assertion of executive privilege over the documents, he had more than enough time to make such assertions including after the DOJ issued its grand jury subpoena in May.

“Instead, on June 3, 2022, Plaintiff’s counsel produced a set of classified records to the government, and Plaintiff’s custodian certified that ‘[a]ny and all responsive documents’ had been produced after a ‘diligent search,'” the filing states. “Plaintiff cannot now maintain—following the government’s seizure of additional classified records that Plaintiff failed to produce—that classified records obtained in the search, which were responsive to the grand jury subpoena, are shielded from the government’s review by executive privilege.”

In a footnote in the latest filing, DOJ officials wrote that they don’t interpret Cannon’s order as barring their department, the FBI or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from briefing congressional leaders with intelligence oversight responsibilities regarding the records uncovered — suggesting they may seek to brief committee members at some point.

The dispute so far

Trump’s team made the request for a special master two weeks after the Aug. 8 search of his home.

The DOJ strongly opposed the request from the start, arguing the appointment would be “unnecessary and significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests” by causing a delay in their investigation.

The department said last week that a team tasked with identifying potential attorney-client privileged materials that were seized in the search of Mar-a-Lago had already completed its review and was in the process of addressing possible privilege disputes.

The DOJ also argued that Trump had no standing to ask for a special master because the documents “aren’t his” anymore and belong to the federal government.

“He is no longer the president and because he was no longer the president he did not have the right to take those documents,” said DOJ lawyer Jay Bratt as the two sides faced off in court on Sept. 1.

Trump’s lawyers, on the other hand, had said the third-party review was needed to deal with potentially privileged materials seized during the search, including both attorney-client and executive privilege.

Christopher Kise, a new addition to Trump’s legal team, cited a “public lack of faith” in the DOJ and “real or perceived lack of transparency” during the court appearance.

At one point, a Trump lawyer compared the former president’s refusal to turn over documents to the National Archives to an “overdue library book.”

Trump’s team has celebrated Cannon’s ruling, while a swath of legal experts and observers criticized her for going too far.

Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, criticized the decision during an appearance on Fox News: “The opinion, I think, was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it. It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.”

ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said in a statement on Queen Elizabeth II’s death that “the thoughts and prayers of people all across the United States are with the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in their grief.”

“Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was more than a monarch,” Biden and first lady Jill Biden said Thursday in a written statement, shortly after the queen’s death was announced. “She defined an era.”

“In a world of constant change,” they continued, “she was a steadying presence and a source of comfort and pride for generations of Britons, including many who have never known their country without her.”

The Bidens said the late queen helped make the U.S.-U.K. relationship “special.”

“Queen Elizabeth II was a stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy who deepened the bedrock alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States,” they wrote.

Senior advisers informed Biden of the queen’s death during a meeting in the Oval Office, according to a White House official.

He ordered flags flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public U.S. buildings around the world until sundown on the day her body is laid to rest. After her funeral, her body is expected to be buried at Windsor Castle outside London.

The Bidens said they looked forward “to continuing a close friendship” with her son, now King Charles III, and his wife, Camilla, the queen consort, “in the years ahead.”

“We send our deepest condolences to the Royal Family, who are not only mourning their Queen, but their dear mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother,” they said. “Her legacy will loom large in the pages of British history, and in the story of our world.”

The news of the death of the queen, who was 96, broke earlier Thursday as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was holding a regular news briefing. Jean-Pierre learned of Buckingham Palace’s announcement from reporters.

“Our hearts go to the people of the United Kingdom, to the queen and to her family,” Jean-Pierre said.

At the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also ordered flags lowered to half-staff.

“Today, Americans join the people of the United Kingdom in mourning the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II,” Pelosi tweeted. “Over her seven decades on the throne, Her Majesty was a pillar of leadership in the global arena and a devoted friend of freedom.”

Earlier Thursday, Biden spoke with British Prime Minister Liz Truss about the queen and told Truss he was “thinking very much” about the ailing monarch, the White House said.

On a pre-scheduled call with European leaders about Ukraine, which White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters was ongoing early Thursday afternoon, the president said he and first lady Jill Biden were “thinking” of the British royal family.

“He did convey to Prime Minister Truss, who is on the video teleconference, that he and Dr. Biden are thinking very much of the queen and the family and the people of the United Kingdom,” Kirby said.

Biden has been briefed on developments and “will be updated throughout the day concerning news out of the United Kingdom,” Kirby said.

“His and the first lady’s thoughts are solidly and squarely with the queen today, and her family,” Kirby said.

Buckingham Palace has said earlier Thursday that Queen Elizabeth’s doctors were “concerned for” her health, and had “recommended she remain under medical supervision.”

Queen Elizabeth met 13 sitting U.S. presidents in her lifetime, and met every U.S. president since World War II, with the exception of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Biden met with the queen last year during a trip to the United Kingdom — his first travel abroad as president.

He had previously met the queen in 1982 as a U.S. senator, during another trip to the U.K.

ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.

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