Trump expected to announce Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff in new administration
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(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump is expected to announce that Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner and one of his senior advisers, will become his deputy chief of staff for policy, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
It’s not clear when Trump plans to formally announce the job, the sources said.
Miller worked in the first Trump administration and played a key role in crafting immigration policies — including separating thousands of families at the border.
ABC News reported earlier this week that Miller is expected to drive immigration policy and has already been laying the groundwork on this for months.
Vice President-elect JD Vance posted on X saying “this is another fantastic pick by the president.”
News of Miller’s selection comes as Trump’s new administration begins to take shape. Last week, he announced his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, would be his White House chief of staff; on Sunday evening, Trump shared that former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan is going to be the “border czar” in his administration.
Trump also selected Rep. Elise Stefanik to be his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sources told ABC News.
The position is not a Cabinet position, so it does not need Senate confirmation.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump is set to visit Aurora, Colorado, for a campaign rally on Friday after weeks of pushing misleading narratives about the city’s migrant population.
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump has continued to focus on the issue of immigration, escalating his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants he often paints as violent criminals.
Specifically, the former president has used Aurora and Springfield, Ohio, to emphasize his point, both examples stemming from viral online stories he’s been quick to promote, often without proper context.
His false narratives on Aurora began last month when a video of armed individuals roaming around an apartment complex in Aurora went viral among right-wing social media influencers.
Trump, who has shared that video himself, has repeatedly claimed that members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang have “taken over” apartment complexes and “overrun” the city, despite the Aurora Police Department refuting allegations of the apartment complex being run by a Venezuelan gang.
Aurora’s Police Chief Todd Chamberlain has directly refuted Trump’s claims, saying in a press conference late last month that, “This is not an immigration issue. This is a crime issue.”
“We are not, by any means, overtaken by Venezuelan gangs,” he added.
The City of Aurora also provided clarity on the situation in a post on its official X account, stating that while there was a concern about a “small” presence of the Venezuelan gang members in Aurora, the city is taking the situation seriously. The city stressed that Aurora is a “safe community” and that reports of gang members are “isolated to a handful of problem properties alone.”
Still, Trump has continued to amplify these debunked stories to his supporters throughout the country as a rallying cry as he attacks the immigration policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
In the press release announcing Friday’s event, the Trump campaign described Aurora as a “war zone,” arguing people were crossing the border and descending upon the city “bringing chaos and fear with them.”
Similarly, Trump has repeatedly amplified debunked claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield.
Trump’s visit is one that he has been wanting to make for a while to bring more attention to the country’s immigration policies. At recent campaign rallies, Trump has become more vocal about his desire to visit Aurora and Springfield.
While the Republican mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, discouraged visits from candidates on both sides of the aisle, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has presented the trip as a learning opportunity for the former president.
“The reality is, Donald Trump continues to tell economically damaging and hurtful lies about Aurora,” Polis said in a statement to ABC affiliate Denver7 amid ongoing discussions of a potential visit. “If former President Trump does visit, he will find the city of Aurora is a strong, vibrant, and diverse city of more than 400,000 hardworking Coloradans and a wonderful place to live, run a business, raise a family, and retire.”
Trump has launched attacks on the local and state officials on the campaign trail, often making baseless claims that Republican Mayor Mike Coffman and Polis are “petrified,” saying Coffman “doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing” – and even claiming they don’t want to raise the immigration issue because they want to be “politically correct.”
Campaigning in Uniondale, New York, last month, Trump, while declaring that he planned to visit Aurora and Springfield soon, suggested that he might not make it back out after his visiting those places due to unspecified crime.
“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Trump said in Uniondale. “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do. Whatever happened to Trump? ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.’”
Trump’s visit to Aurora also comes as he’s pledged on the campaign trail to begin his promise of mass deportations in Springfield and Aurora.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said as he took reporter questions in Los Angeles, California, last month. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora, [Colorado].”
“We’re going to take those violent people, and we’re going to ship them back to their country, and if they come back in, they’re going to pay a hell of a price,” Trump also said.
Springfield has many Haitian residents who are either legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. or are protected from expulsion by law.
The FBI is investigating what it called an “attempted assassination” of former President Donald Trump after Secret Service agents fired at a man with an AK-47 rifle on or near Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, golf course on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump’s campaign said the former president is “safe.” Law enforcement sources told ABC News a suspect is in custody.
The incident comes around two months after Trump was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the gunman got as close as 300 to 500 yards away from the former president when he was spotted and agents fired four to six rounds at him before he dropped the gun and fled. It was not clear if the suspect was aiming his weapon at Trump.
The source said the suspect got into a vehicle and witnesses reported the license plate number, which was tracked by authorities. The suspect was stopped and taken into custody.
Bradshaw said along with an “AK-47-style rifle,” two backpacks were found at the scene with a GoPro camera and ceramic tiles inside.
The sheriff said the golf course was not surrounded by law enforcement because Trump is not the sitting president. “If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible. So, I would imagine that the next time he comes to the golf course, there’ll probably be a little bit more people around the perimeter.”
But Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he already had concerns about the Secret Service after the first assassination attempt against Trump and advocated moving the agency from under the Department of Homeland Security and back under the Treasury Department, “where it had more focus.”
A Republican who spoke with Trump shortly after the incident told ABC News that Trump said he was near the 5th hole of the Trump International golf course when he heard “popping sounds” in the vicinity. The source said Trump was in “good spirits.”
Sheriff Will Snyder of neighboring Martin County told ABC News that his units detained a man following the incident. Snyder said after the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department, the Secret Service and the FBI put out a “Be on the lookout for” alert, one of his officers saw the suspect vehicle northbound on Interstate 95 and other officers “forced it to a stop without incident.”
Snyder said the vehicle matched the description in the bulletin but “now we have to determine if this, in fact, was the right suspect.”
Shortly after the incident, Trump sent a fundraising email saying that he was safe and well and that no one was hurt.
“But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us,” he wrote.
In a follow-up fundraising email Sunday evening, Trump wrote, “My resolve is only stronger after another attempt on my life.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed on the “security incident at the Trump International Golf Course,” the White House said in a statement Sunday.
“They are relieved to know that he is safe. They will be kept regularly updated by their team,” the White House added.
After being briefed on the incident, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement, “There is no place in this country for political violence of any kind.”
“The perpetrator must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Schumer added.
(WASHINGTON) — The election will not only decide who will occupy the White House for the next four years, but also which party controls both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.
Republicans currently control the House while Democrats retain a narrow majority in the Senate.
See how the balance of power is playing out as election results come in:
Significant shifts and what to watch in the Senate race
Jim Justice is projected to win the Senate seat in West Virginia, which flips the state from Democrat to Republican. Incumbent Joe Manchin decided not to run for reelection, putting Justice against Democrat Glenn Elliot and Libertarian Party candidate David Moran.
ABC News also projects that former President Donald Trump will win in West Virginia. As Dan Hopkins, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote for ABC News’ live election coverage, “In most years, a Senate where every state votes for the same party for Senate and president is a Senate where the Democrats fall short of a majority.”
Another Democratic seat was lost in Ohio, where Republican nominee Bernie Moreno is projected to take the Senate position previously held — for three terms — by Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent. The presumed victory makes a large Republican majority in the Senate seem all the more likely.
In Maryland, Democratic Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is projected to win against former Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican. She is expected to replace Sen. Ben Cardin, also a Democrat, who did not run for reelection, putting the state’s Democratic Senate seat at risk in a year where the party had none to lose if they hoped to retain their narrow majority.
Alsobrooks currently serves as the first woman elected to a county executive position in Maryland, and she now seems positioned to become the state’s first Black senator. She would also be making history, as Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester are projected to be the first two Black women to serve on the Senate at the same time.
