Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Is the U.S. on the brink of war with Iran? Officials hope not. But how President Joe Biden responds to this weekend’s deadly attack on an American military base in Jordan could have far reaching implications in the region for years.

Experts say Biden’s goal is to rein in Iran-backed militia groups operating out of Iraq, Syria and Yemen without plunging the Middle East into war.

Here’s what to know:

The US officially pins blame on Islamic Resistance in Iraq

Soon after the drone attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members and wounded 40 more early on Sunday, Biden vowed that he’d hold those responsible and pinned the blame on Iranian-backed militants.

On Wednesday, the White House said U.S. intelligence was certain which militants were responsible.

Identifying the group responsible sets the stage for the attack, which officials say could happen at any time.

“We believe that the attack in Jordan was — was a plan resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which contains multiple groups, including Kataib Hezbollah,” White National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

He also said the response would involve multiple targets and that “the first thing you see won’t be the last thing.”

A U.S. official said Iranian assets outside of Iran could be targets, with most strikes inside Syria.

Another official told ABC News the attack would be carried out “over the course of several days” on facilities that enabled the drone strike.

On the determination that the drone attack in Jordan was facilitated by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a senior State Department official said the U.S. is continuing to develop its assessment and may still conclude that a specific group or specific groups within that umbrella played more a direct role.

While Iran has denied involvement, the senior State Department official said the U.S. has made clear to Iran since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, which sparked a war with Israel, that America will hold it responsible for the actions of its proxies.

Worries the US is acting too slowly

As the days ticked by since Sunday’s attack, military experts surmised that the U.S. was using its time to gather assets for a more significant and complex response than seen previously. But Republican critics were quick to say Biden was losing ground, giving the Iranians time to evacuate potential targets or move their own military assets.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. attack should have already happened by now and that Iran’s leadership and weapons caches should be hit directly.

“Every day that passes without a strong and unambiguous reprisal for the deaths of American service members invites our enemies – and allies – to question this administration’s resolve,” Wicker told ABC News in a statement.

‘A pretty big target list’

Retired Gen. Roger Abrams, a former combatant commander and an ABC News contributor, said the delay suggests to him that the U.S. response will be forceful and consequential and more widespread than recent strikes in the region.

“The longer it takes indicates to me that this is not going to be a little pinprick. A pinprick they could have done within six to 10 hours depending on available strike capability,” he said.

Instead, Abrams said there’s a “pretty big target list,” including command-and-control nodes, storage facilities, any transit route for weapons or even an Iranian intelligence ship on the Red Sea.

“If they’ve got a smoking gun on who actually flew this suicide drone into Tower 22, you can expect that that [command-and-control] network, the emitters where the nodes, where commands were coming from …those are all going to be fair game,” he said.

For its part, Iran has warned that its own response will be “decisive and immediate.”

“The U.S. should stop using the language of threats and pinning the blame on others and rather focus on a political solution. Iran’s response to threats will be decisive and immediate,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Triggering a retaliatory response from Iran and spurring a broader conflict is of obvious concern for the U.S, but experts and government officials say America must act.

“We’ve been trying to determine Iran’s red line for many years,” Abrams said. “And we haven’t found it.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump continues to brag and exaggerate about acing a cognitive test as his Republican challenger Nikki Haley highlights his recent stumbles on the trail to suggest he’s getting “confused” as he gets older.

Defending himself, Trump has repeatedly appeared to allude to taking the Montreal Cognitive Assessment while he was in the White House and afterward.

“There’s only about 2% in this room can do it, but I did it. I did it very easily,” Trump said about his results on the test at an event in Las Vegas over the weekend. “But I got mocked — they said, ‘Oh, that’s so easy.’ It’s not easy. It’s not easy. Go home and try doing it.”

Trump was seemingly referring to taking the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is not a test of intelligence and which doctors use to uncover early signs of cognitive impairment such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

The test involves various questions like identifying animals, recalling a list from memory and drawing a given time on a clock.

Trump took one as part of a physical exam in 2018, while he was president, ABC News previously reported.

He has been bragging about his results of the exam since at least the 2020 presidential campaign; however, at Saturday’s rally in Nevada he also claimed he recently took a test again and that there was a difficult question involving math.

The only math question on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment involves counting backwards from the number 100 in increments of seven.

But that’s not what Trump described. “Multiply 4,733, multiply times seven, divide — without paper and pencil by the way — divide it by four, add up another 37 and a half, point five,” he said this weekend, remembering the question. “I remember that. What’s your number? How many people in this room could do it? Not too many.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump usually brings up his cognitive testing as part of his stump speech questioning Joe Biden’s mental and physical fitness, mocking the sitting president’s speech or movements. (Biden has acknowledged concerns about his age — at 81, he’s four years older than Trump — but also said his record proves his fitness.)

On Biden’s 81st birthday, Trump released a letter from his doctor regarding a physical exam he had taken which, according to the letter, reported his cognitive exams as “exceptional.”

Now, as the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination comes down to two people, Haley is increasingly attempting to make Trump’s age and fitness a central focal point, too.

Trump continues to make some stumbles on the trail, including mixing up Nancy Pelosi for Haley as he was talking about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack at a campaign rally in Concord, New Hampshire, earlier this month.

“He’s not what he was in 2016. He has declined. That’s a fact,” Haley said about Trump during an appearance on CBS on Tuesday.

“Are we really in this country going to have two 80-year-olds running for president? It is a fact that when you are their age, you have mental decline,” Haley said.

Trump has backed mental aptitude or cognitive tests for people running for office, which Haley has proposed, but said he’s not as old as she suggests.

“She talks about, ‘Yeah, we don’t need 80 year old.’ Well, I don’t mind being 80 — but I’m 77. That’s a big difference,” he joked at a campaign stop earlier this month.

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(WASHINGTON) — As Senate negotiators neared an agreement on a long-awaited bipartisan border deal, House Speaker Mike Johnson told ABC News Tuesday that while he hasn’t seen the bill yet, the agreement is a “nonstarter in the House.”

“From what we’ve seen, clearly, what’s been suggested in this bill is not enough to secure the border,” Johnson told ABC Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott. “And we have to insist — we have a responsibility, a duty, to the American people to insist that the border catastrophe is ended. And just trying to whitewash that or do something for political purposes — that it appears that may be — is not going to cut it and that’s a nonstarter in the House.”

The border agreement worked out by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., comes as part of a national security spending bill that also includes aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

On the House floor Wednesday, Johnson criticized the rumored details from the emerging Senate border deal.

“But apparently, we’re concocting some sort of deal to allow the president to shut down the border after 5,000 people break the law. Why is it 5,000? If you add that up, that’d be a million more illegals into our country every year before we take remedial measures. This is madness. We should be asking what kind of enforcement authority kicks in at 5,000 illegal a day. The number should be zero,” he said.

“Anything higher is simply surrender. Anything higher than zero is surrendering our border, surrendering our sovereignty and our security.”

House Republicans have been coming out against the border deal, despite not yet seeing the bill’s full text. This comes as former President Donald Trump has encouraged Republicans to reject the deal.

Trump on Monday said that “a border bill is not necessary,” blasting the ongoing negotiations.

Johnson said he has spoken with Trump about this issue “at length,” but called any allegations that he’s trying to kill the bill to give Trump a win for his campaign “absurd.”

“We have a responsibility here to do our duty. Our duty is to do right by the American people to protect the people the first and most important job,” Johnson told Scott.

During a closed-door meeting with his conference last week, Johnson assured House Republicans that the deal is “dead on arrival” in the House, according to multiple members who were in the room — leaving big questions about the prospect of additional aid to Ukraine.

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is among the House Republicans criticizing the bill.

“I think to really clarify what the President [Trump] is saying — that this deal sucks,” Donalds told ABC News. “It’s a bad deal and to give cover to Joe Biden for his terrible policies on the border.”

While Senate Republicans continue to work on the border deal with the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Republicans are working to impeach him.

The House Homeland Security Committee, led by Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., brought two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas on Tuesday, arguing the secretary has demonstrated “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.”

“Alejandro N. Mayorkas knowingly made false statements to Congress that the border is ‘secure,’ that the border is ‘no less secure than it was previously,’ that the border is ‘closed,’ and that DHS has ‘operational control,’ of the border (as that term is defined in the Secure Fence Act of 19 2006),” the articles claim.

President Biden told reporters Tuesday that he’s exhausted all executive authority to address the immigration crisis at the southern border.

“I’ve done all I can do,” he said as he left the White House.

The president turned up the pressure on Republicans to reach a compromise on Friday, saying he would “shut down” the border when it’s overwhelmed, if given new emergency authority through this deal.

“Give me the border patrol. Give me the people, give me the people who judge it. Give me the people who can stop this and make it work,” Biden said Tuesday.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez, Allie Pecorin, John Parkinson and Quinn Owen contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The chief executives of the nation’s top social media companies are being grilled on Capitol Hill over child safety, with lawmakers accusing the tech leaders of failing to protect kids from exploitation and abuse.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us — I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in his opening remarks. The comment prompted applause from families gathered in the hearing room whose children died after being ensnared in some of the darker sides of their platform.

“You have a product that’s killing people,” Graham added.

Later on in the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on Meta’s Zuckerberg to directly apologize to the families in the room.

“They’re here. You’re on national television … Would you like to apologize for what you’ve done to these good people?” Hawley pressed.

The CEO of Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, then stood up and turned around to address parents.

“It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered,” Zuckerberg told them. “And this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry-leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a hearing intended to drum up support for federal legislation to safeguard children from the online world, is also hearing from X’s Linda Yaccarino, TikTok’s Shou Chew, Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Discord’s Jason Citron.

Sexual exploitation of children online is a growing problem in the U.S. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, daily cyber tips of child sexual abuse material online have gone up tenfold in the past 10 years, reaching 100,000 daily reports in 2023.

Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called online child exploitation a “crisis in America” fueled by rapid changes in technology that give predators “powerful new tools” to target kids.

Of the CEOs testifying, Durbin said “they are not only the tech companies that have contributed to this crisis, they are responsible for many of the dangers our children face online.”

“Their design choices, their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety and their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk,” he said in his opening statement.

Graham acknowledged there were some positives to the social sites, but “the dark side hasn’t been dealt with.”

“It’s now time to deal with the dark side because people have taken your idea and they have turned it into a nightmare for the American people,” Graham said.

In response, the CEOs largely leaned into highlighting actions they’ve taken to try to alleviate these problems. Meta recently announced plans to hide content it deems inappropriate for teens, and Zuckerberg highlighted the 30 tools they’ve built to protect kids and help parents navigate the online world.

Each of the CEOs addressed the families in the room and gave their condolences, though Zuckerberg also pushed back on the link between mental health and social media in his opening remarks.

“With so much of our lives spent on mobile devices and social media, it’s important to look into the effects on teen mental health and well being. I take this very seriously,” Zuckerberg said. “Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.”

Wednesday marks the first time Snap’s CEO, Spiegel, is providing testimony on Capitol Hill in response to allegations that Snapchat is harming children’s mental and physical health.

Snapchat is also being sued in a class action lawsuit by several parents in California, many of whom say they lost their child to fentanyl poisoning and overdose with pills bought on Snapchat.

Spiegel said he feels “profound sorrow” that his service has been “abused to cause harm.”

Spiegel also discussed his support for The Kids Online Safety Act during Wednesday’s hearing. The “KOSA” bill aims to remove “harmful ads and posts, such as addiction, eating disorders, and suicide from showing up on children’s accounts,” according to supporters of the bill.

“I want to encourage broader industry support for legislation protecting children online,” Spiegel said. “No legislation is perfect, but some rules of the road are better than none.”

Yaccarino said X was supportive of KOSA, but Chew, Citron and Zuckerberg didn’t commit to backing the bill in its current form.

Legislative efforts at the national level have mostly failed, but state legislators have introduced more than 100 bills that aim to regulate how children interact with social media.

Durbin noted the failure to push federal legislation forward, saying “the tech industry alone is not to blame for the situation we’re in, those of us in Congress need to look in the mirror.”

Graham, the ranking member of the committee, said Republicans are “ready to answer the call.”

“These companies must be reigned in, or the worst is yet to come,” Graham said.

But the CEOs largely showed no consensus of support for the various bills being pushed by lawmakers.

Snap’s Spiegel was the only CEO to support KOSA. X’s Yaccarino said she supported the SHIELD Act, which would allow criminal prosecution of people who share others’ private images online without consent, and the Stop CSAM Act, a bill to crack down on the proliferation of child sex abuse material. Asked if he supported the measure, Chew said the spirit of the bill is “in line with what we want to do” and would comply if it became law.

Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, said he agrees with the “goals” in some of the handful of bills, but not the specifics — and redirected to Meta’s own legislative proposal.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he wanted each CEO to put in writing what reforms they’d support to Section 230 — a 1990s law that has given sweeping legal immunity to tech and social media companies.

ABC News’ Becky Worley and Tenzin Shakya contributed to this report.

 

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(WASHINGTON) — After long negotiations, the House is set to vote Wednesday on a bipartisan tax bill that would enhance the popular Child Tax Credit to benefit millions of American families.

The $78 billion tax package called the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 would increase the child tax credit and restore critical research and development deductions. It includes new low-income housing tax credits and disaster tax relief and tax benefits for Taiwan. If passed, the changes would be in effect through 2025 when previous Republican tax cuts expire.

Despite overwhelming support for the bipartisan bill in the House, there are still several issues lawmakers have with the legislation, including the child tax credit and state and local tax deductions.

Several New York Republicans (Reps. Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito and Andrew Garbarino) were angered that the tax bill does not have state and local tax deduction limits — also known as SALT provisions. This is a top priority for New York lawmakers. Speaker Mike Johnson met with this group late Tuesday to discuss SALT provisions.

Meanwhile several conservatives including members from the far-right House Freedom Caucus (Reps. Bob Good and Byron Donalds) criticized the bill for expanding the child tax credit. Many liberal Democrats will vote against the bill because they argue the bill does not expand child tax credit enough.

Clearly not all lawmakers will get what they want. However, this legislation — if passed in the House — would be a rare bipartisan win.

The tax bill was negotiated by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith of Missouri. It passed with bipartisan support out of the House Ways and Means Committee on Jan. 19 by a vote of 40-3.

The vote, expected to occur between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., will be fast-tracked and voted on under suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds vote to pass.

The bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate.

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(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans voted early Wednesday to bring Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas one step closer to a historic impeachment over his handling of the country’s southern border.

After more than 10 hours of deliberation, the GOP-led House Homeland Security Committee decided in an 18-15 party-line vote to advance the impeachment articles against Mayorkas. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican, said in a statement that Mayorkas “has willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws enacted by Congress, and he has breached the public trust.”

“His actions created this unprecedented crisis, turning every state into a border state.” Green added. “I am proud of the Committee for advancing these historic articles. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing, put aside the politics, and agree that before we can fix Secretary Mayorkas’ mess, Congress must finally hold this man accountable.”

The issue will now go to the full House of Representatives for a floor vote, despite Democrats saying there’s no proof of high crimes and misdemeanors — the usual bar for impeachment. If the vote to impeach passes in the House, it forces a Senate trial.

If Mayorkas were to be impeached, it would be first of a Cabinet member in nearly 150 years. Only one Cabinet secretary has ever been impeached by the House: William Belknap, who resigned as then-President Ulysses Grant’s secretary of war shortly before the House voted against him in 1876.

Republicans say Mayorkas has failed to enforce the law at the southern border, allowing a flood of migrants into the United States from Mexico. During opening remarks of the hearing on Capital Hill on Tuesday evening, Green said the secretary “put his political preference above the law” and that his “actions have forced our hand.”

“We cannot allow this border crisis to continue,” he added. “We cannot allow fentanyl to flood our border.”

Green referenced the two articles of impeachment the conference released accusing Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.”

Green called on the committee to push to use Congress’ power of impeachment to “remove those unworthy from office.”

“Secretary Mayorkas is the very type of public official the framers feared as someone who would cast aside the laws by a coequal branch of government, replacing those with his own preferences, hurting his fellow Americans in the process,” Green said.

Ranking Member Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said “Republicans have failed to make a constitutionally viable case to impeach Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a dedicated public servant.” He called the hearing a “terrible day” for the committee.

“The sham impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is a baseless political stunt by extreme MAGA Republicans,” Thompson said.

Border security is a top issue in the 2024 elections with all eyes on how the Biden administration handles the surge of migrants crossing the border.

Senate negotiators are working — with Mayorkas’ help — on a bipartisan border security package with a deal in sight. However several in the GOP are threatening to derail the efforts. Former President Donald Trump is throwing cold water on the package, saying Monday that “a border bill is not necessary;” House Speaker Mike Johnson has said the bill appears “dead on arrival” in the House.

New York Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman contended that Republicans are doing Trump’s bidding by undermining a bipartisan negotiations in the Senate with impeachment in the House.

‘The irony of the fact that Secretary Mayorkas has spent the two months plus with a bipartisan group of senators working on legislation that would address the problems at the border should not be lost on anyone,” Goldman said. “You are sitting here right now trying to impeach a secretary of Homeland Security for neglecting his duties literally while he is trying to perform his duties and negotiate legislation.”

“The hypocrisy is the least of it. Your attack on the rule of law and our democracy is the worst of it. You better be careful about the bed that you make,” Goldman warned

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s most ardent supporters in the lower chamber, justified the impeachment effort by questioning Mayorkas’ honesty.

“Congress has responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable when they failed to uphold their oath of office abuse their authority, and or are dishonest with the American people,” she said.

Mayorkas called the impeachment proceedings against him “baseless” and the accusations made against him by the Homeland Security Committee “false” in a nearly seven-page letter to the committee.

Democrats have pushed back against the effort to impeach Mayorkas — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slamming the effort.

“Republicans have clearly turned their ever-shrinking majority over to the extremists,” Jeffries said Monday. “And this sham impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is just another sad example.”

“All they are endeavoring to do with respect to this sham impeachment is to run away from their do-nothing, extreme record, and try to distract the American people with this political stunt,” Jeffries said.

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee put out a report Monday that contends that House Republicans are abusing their power with the move to impeach. Democrats argue that Mayorkas is upholding the law while Republicans attempt to “sabotage” the administration’s efforts to secure the border — all to help Trump, the Republican front-runner, win the presidency this fall.

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(WASHINGTON) — China’s hackers are preparing to “wreak havoc” and “cause real-world harm” to Americans, FBI Director Christopher Wray will warn in Congressional testimony submitted on Wednesday.

Director Wray, along with U.S. Cyber Command Commander General Paul Nakasone, Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly and Harry Coker, the director of the National Cyber Director office, will be testifying in front of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist party.

“There has been far too little public focus on the fact that PRC hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure — our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems. And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention — now,” Wray says in selected testimony released by the FBI ahead of the hearing.

He says they are “attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data.”

Wray has been consistently sounding the alarm on how much of a threat China is to the United States, as other members of the administration, including President Joe Biden, seek to calm tensions with China.

The Justice Department has made several cases against Chinese hackers in the past with the most recent case in 2021.

Meanwhile, the FBI director will say that China deserves Americans’ attention now.

“They target our freedoms, reaching inside our borders, across America, to silence, coerce, and threaten our citizens and residents,” he says.

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(WASHINGTON) — Despite vacillating comments from key figures involved in negotiations to free the more than 100 hostages thought to still be detained in Gaza, U.S. officials remained bullish on Tuesday that months of gridlock could soon give way to an agreement that would also pause the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

“There’s no reason for us to change course here,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said. “I don’t want to sound too sanguine, but we believe that the work has been productive and we’re going to stay focused on that.”

The Biden administration’s cautiously optimistic outlook comes after a round of talks in Paris attended by CIA Director Bill Burns and representatives from Israel, Qatar and Egypt that resulted in a framework calling for a cessation in the hostilities that would last at least six weeks in exchange for the phased release of all hostages held by Hamas, according to two U.S. officials.

Israel has been bombarding Gaza for months, targeting Hamas fighters, since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack sparked the current war.

At the same time, the U.S., Qatar and others have worked with some success to broker pauses in the fighting — both to free the hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 and to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza for civilians there as the death toll exceeds 26,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

The two U.S. officials said that the latest proposal stipulates that the elderly, women and any remaining children in captivity would be released first and that toward the end of the initial truce period, the parties would begin coordinating the return of captured members of the Israel Defense Forces, potentially cooling the conflict for an even longer period.

The framework also proposes the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and additional humanitarian provisions for civilians in Gaza, the U.S. officials said.

On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a distinctly rosy report on the state of negotiations, declaring there was “some real hope going forward.”

“I think the work that has been done — including just this weekend — is important and is hopeful in terms of seeing that process resume,” Blinken said, referring to the staggered release of more than 100 hostages from Gaza during a weeklong pause in fighting in November.

“I believe the proposal that is on the table — and that is shared among all of the critical actors, of course Israel but also with Qatar and Egypt playing a critical role in mediating and working between Israel and Hamas — I believe the proposal is a strong one and a compelling one,” Blinken continued.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not denied that Israel has signed onto a framework, he has conveyed more skepticism than Blinken — declaring this week that “gaps remain” and bucking at the notion that Israel would remove troops from Gaza or free “thousands of terrorists” as part of a prisoner exchange.

After initially rejecting the broad terms of the framework, a senior Hamas official said on Tuesday that the militant group was studying the proposal.

One U.S. official cautioned against taking any of the public comments related to the negotiations at face value, saying many of the statements amount to posturing and don’t reflect the conversations playing out behind closed doors.

Still, officials acknowledge obstacles remain. Intermediaries that regularly communicate with Hamas leaders believe they can get them on board — but negotiators still haven’t received a meaningful reply from the group and expect it will respond with a counteroffer.

“We hope this proposal will be accepted. We hope it will be implemented, and we hope to see a pause in fighting and hostages returned to their families,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Tuesday. “And we’ll keep working on it.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump can remain on Illinois’ presidential primary ballot, the State Board of Elections voted on Tuesday, dismissing another challenge to the former president’s eligibility under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the insurrection clause.

The eight-person, bipartisan board voted unanimously against a lawsuit brought by a group of Illinois voters represented by national group Free Speech for the People and Illinois elections lawyers.

The body said it lacked the authority to decide on the challenge, which cited Trump’s push to overturn his 2020 election loss and accused him of inciting the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol where Congress was gathered to certify Joe Biden as the next president.

Trump denies all wrongdoing and has previously attacked the 14th Amendment cases as anti-democratic.

“Trump did not engage in insurrection, as that term is used in the Constitution,” Trump’s attorney Adam Merrill said on Tuesday. “It is a complicated legal term that has been rarely interpreted and it wasn’t even articulated correctly by the hearing officer in this case and, frankly, never should have reached it because of the lack of evidence, and because of the lack of jurisdiction.”

The Illinois board considered the eligibility challenge for roughly an hour before unanimously affirming Trump’s candidacy.

Free Speech for the People said they will appeal and expect that, under review, the courts would show “why Illinois law authorizes that ruling despite Trump’s subjective belief that the Constitution doesn’t apply to him.”

In his own statement, on social media, Trump celebrated the board’s ruling and said it was “protecting the Citizens of our Country from the Radical Left Lunatics who are trying to destroy it.”

The decision comes just over a week before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Feb. 8 on a similar 14th Amendment challenge to Trump out of Colorado, after that state’s top court ruled the former president ineligible for their primary ballot under Section 3.

Dozens of 14th Amendment challenges to Trump’s eligibility have been considered by courts, election boards or secretaries of state over the past year.

Only the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s secretary of state have ruled Trump ineligible to participate in their primary process.

The case in Maine is set for reconsideration by Secretary Shenna Bellows after the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the Colorado case.

The Illinois board on Tuesday upheld the recommendation of hearing officer Clark Erickson, who oversaw a two-hour administrative hearing for the case on Friday and suggested the body rule that Trump engaged in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 but should still not have his name removed from the state’s 2024 primary ballot.

“I want it to be clear that this Republican believes that there was an insurrection on Jan. 6. There’s no doubt in my mind that he manipulated, instigated, aided and abetted an insurrection on Jan. 6,” board member Catherine S. McCrory, a Republican, said on Tuesday.

Erickson, a Republican retired state judge, wrote last week that the Illinois State Board of Elections should reject the case against Trump because their body “isn’t suited” to rule on this issue — that a decision on the challenge instead belongs to the courts.

He also noted the difficulty of considering such a “sophisticated” case ahead of the state’s fast-approaching March 19 primary.

“In the context of the events and circumstances of January 6, 2024,” Erickson recommended the board favor the Illinois voters’ argument that Trump engaged in insurrection “on the merits by a preponderance of the evidence.”

He then concluded: “The Election Code is simply not suited for issues involving constitutional analysis. Those issues belong in the Courts.”

“All in all, attempting to resolve a constitutional issue within the expedited schedule of an election board hearing is somewhat akin to scheduling a two-minute round between heavyweight boxers in a telephone booth,” he wrote.

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(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) — Gayle Manchin, the wife of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, was injured in a car crash as a suspect allegedly fled police in Birmingham, Alabama, authorities said.

On Monday, the Homewood Police began a pursuit of an individual wanted on felony charges, authorities said. Police units pursued the vehicle through North Birmingham onto 18th Street North before losing contact with the suspect vehicle in the 1300 block of 18th Street North, officials said.

Homewood Police officers continued pursuit on 18th Street North where they subsequently observed that the suspect vehicle had apparently collided with another vehicle at the intersection of 18th Street North and 15th Avenue North. The driver was then apprehended without incident, police said.

Birmingham Fire and Rescue medics were called to the scene to help the two occupants of the other vehicle, one of whom authorities confirmed Tuesday afternoon was Gayle Manchin, wife of United States Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin and the other occupant were treated and taken to UAB Gardendale before later being transported to UAB’s downtown campus, authorities confirmed. They are both in stable condition, police said.

The Homewood Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division is currently investigating and is in the process of charging the suspect with multiple felony warrants. The suspect is currently being held at the Homewood City jail pending warrants.

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