Illinois National Guard authorized for Chicago mission, official says
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(CHICAGO) — The Illinois National Guard has received an official notification from the Pentagon authorizing a mission in Chicago, according to an Illinois official.
The official confirmed the mission will involve 300 Guardsmen tasked with protecting federal property under Title 10 authorities.
The Guard has not received mobilization orders, which means it will take a number of days to process and muster soldiers — and train them for the mission, according to the official.
At the very earliest, Guardsmen would be deployed in Chicago at the end of this week, the official said.
“The Governor did not receive any calls from any federal officials. The Illinois National Guard communicated to the Department of War that the situation in Illinois does not require the use of the military and, as a result, the Governor opposes the deployment of the National Guard under any status,” a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement.
The authorization comes amid escalating tensions in Chicago over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents on Saturday shot and wounded a woman they alleged was part of a convoy of protesters that rammed their vehicles during an “ambush.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Border Patrol agents opened fire on the woman in self-defense, alleging she was armed with a semiautomatic weapon and was driving one of three vehicles that “cornered” and rammed the CBP agents’ vehicles.
Describing the incident as “really strange,” Noem alleged that before the shooting, a caravan of 10 vehicles was following the CBP agents and officers through the streets of Chicago.
“They had followed them and gotten them cornered, pinned them down and then our agents, when getting out of their cars, they tried to run them over and had semiautomatic handguns on them to where our agents had to protect themselves and shots were fired and an individual ended up in the hospital that was attacking these officers,” Noem said in a statement on Sunday.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate narrowly approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion from the federal budget, including funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting.
The final vote early Thursday morning was 51-48 with Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voting with Democrats against the rescissions bill.
President Donald Trump requested the cuts, which include significant cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The passage marks a win for Trump, who called the cuts a priority even though some Republicans voiced opposition.
A number of Republicans that represent states with rural communities — such as Murkowski of Alaska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — have expressed concerns about cuts to public broadcasting that could affect the ability of certain communities to access emergency alerts.
The bill now returns to the House with a deadline for final passage on Friday. The House must pass the bill on or before Friday in order to meet the deadline on this package.
The final vote happened after an hourslong and slow-moving vote-a-rama — or marathon voting session — during which Democrats offered numerous amendments to the bill. The bulk of Democratic amendments focused on trying to fight back against cuts to both public broadcast and global health that are in the bill.
The Senate’s process to advance the package began on Tuesday night when Republicans narrowly advanced the rescissions package with the assist of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President J.D. Vance.
Three Republicans crossed the aisle on Tuesday night to cast votes against the bill after raising concerns about the lack of detail in the White House’s rescission plan: Sens. Collins, Murkowski and Mitch McConnell.
Former Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Susan Monarez arrives to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on September 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez is appearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday for her first public appearance since she was pushed out of her position leading the nation’s public health agency.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the panel’s chair and a doctor from Louisiana who was one of the key votes to confirm Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said he was focused on learning what led to the abrupt firing of Monarez just weeks after her confirmation.
“Part of our responsibility today is to ask ourselves, if someone is fired 29 days after every Republican votes for her, the Senate confirms her, the secretary said in her swearing in that she has ‘unimpeachable scientific credentials’ and the president called her an incredible mother and dedicated public servant — like what happened? Did we fail? Was there something we should have done differently?” Cassidy said.
Monarez, in her opening statement, gave a detailed timeline on the chain of events that she said led to her ouster.
“Since my removal, several explanations have been offered: that I told the secretary I would resign, that I was not aligned with administration priorities, or that I was untrustworthy. None of those reflect what actually happened,” Monarez said.
Monarez said there was a meeting in which she says Kennedy told her to preemptively accept recommendations from a CDC vaccine advisory panel and to fire career officials overseeing vaccine policy.
“I would not commit to that, and I believe it is the true reason I was fired,” Monarez said. She later added, “I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity.”
She also claimed that Kennedy spoke to the White House “several times” prior to the meeting about firing her.
Kennedy, in his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4, disputed Monarez’s version of events, which she first shared that same day in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal.
“Did you, in fact, do what Director Monarez has said you did, which is tell her, ‘Just go along with vaccine recommendations, even if you didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence?'” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Kennedy.
“No, I did not,” Kennedy replied.
In a fiery exchange with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Warren noted that Kennedy had just a month before described Monarez as “unimpeachable” after she was confirmed.
“I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said, ‘No,'” Kennedy replied. “If you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy, would you ask them to resign, Senator?”
Monarez on Wednesday, however, testified Kennedy told her the childhood vaccine schedule would be changing in September and “I needed to be on board with it.” Monarez said Kennedy spoke to President Trump “every day” about changing the childhood vaccine schedule.
“He did not have any data or science to point to,” Monarez said. “As a matter of fact, we got into an exchange where I had suggested that I would be open to changing childhood vaccine schedules if the evidence or science were supportive, and he responded that there was no science or evidence associated with the childhood vaccine schedule. And he elaborated that CDC had never collected the science or data to make it available related to the safety and efficacy.
“To be clear, he said there was not science or data, but that he still expected you to change the schedule?” Sen. Cassidy asked.
“Correct,” Monarez said.
Monarez is being joined at Wednesday’s hearing by Deb Houry, former chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at the CDC, who was one of four top CDC officials who resigned in protest after Monarez was ousted.
The high-profile departures raised alarm over Kennedy’s vaccine policy agenda, which the public health officials said they were being asked to endorse without adequate science. Kennedy stood by the recent shakeups at CDC, saying they were “absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.”
Sen. Cassidy told Monarez and Houry on Wednesday that “the onus is upon you to prove that the criticisms leveled by the secretary are not true.”
Cassidy’s decision to pursue oversight of the CDC turmoil signifies a new, firmer era for his relationship with Kennedy — a shift was on full display during Kennedy’s own hearing before the Senate earlier this month.
Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who sits on the HELP Committee and has called for Kennedy to step down, said Cassidy’s decision to call Monarez to testify showed a continued “weakening” of support for the secretary.
“I think Secretary Kennedy’s actions at the Finance Committee left a lot of not just Democrats, but Republicans very unsettled,” Blunt Rochester told ABC News in an interview.
“The fact that a Republican is chairing the committee and called for her to come is a positive step, and maybe shows there is some weakening. But the reality is, you know, Secretary Kennedy needs to go — whether that is he’s fired, whether he quits, he is unsafe for America,” she said.
During the Senate Finance Committee hearing on Sept. 4, Cassidy was joined by two other Republicans on the committee — Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the second most powerful GOP senator, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced earlier this year he was not running for reelection — in expressing concern over Kennedy’s handling of vaccines and the CDC.
Other high-level Republicans have also voiced criticism, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said Kennedy had to “take responsibility” for firing Monarez just four weeks after the Senate confirmed her. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she didn’t see any “justification” for the termination.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy, Cassidy’s counterpart in Louisiana, called Kennedy’s handling of the CDC a “multiple vehicle pileup.”
Monarez, who HHS publicly announced was “no longer director” on a Wednesday afternoon in late August, drew widespread attention when she refused to leave her post, asking Trump to weigh in and fire her directly if he agreed with his HHS secretary. She said she was pushed out because she wouldn’t agree to rubber-stamp Kennedy’s agenda or fire high-ranking scientists.
The move put a spotlight on Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes, which have ramped up in recent weeks. Kennedy canceled around $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccines, changed the recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women to receive COVID-19 vaccinations and, through the FDA, oversaw the narrowing of approval for the updated COVID shots this fall only to people over 65, or younger Americans with underlying conditions.
A CDC committee will soon meet to discuss vaccine recommendations more broadly, including the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).
Kennedy has replaced all of the members of the committee with handpicked people, some of whom have expressed criticism of vaccines. Asked by ABC News if he plans to limit access to any of those vaccines, Kennedy said the committee would decide after a “real gold standard scientific review.”
Monarez on Wednesday expressed concerns with the composition of the advisory committee.
“Based on what I observed during my tenure, there is real risk that recommendations could be made restricting access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review. With no permanent CDC director in place, those recommendations could be adopted,” Monarez said.
WASHINGTON — It was the first White House Faith Office summit with business leaders, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from using expletives and charged language against his foes in a room full of business leaders who contribute to faith-based charitable work.
For nearly an hour, Trump rambled about multiple topics his administration has tackled so far, ranging from tariffs to transgender people in sports while veering into tangents about his previous legal battles and first administration.
He spent little time, however, getting into the specifics of his newly established Faith Office.
Trump touted recent actions he made limiting the participation of transgender women in women’s sports, arguing how only two genders are recognized in America.
“We’ve restored the fundamental principle that God created two genders, male and female, that was a tough one. And we’re defending parents’ rights where the parents’ rights have been taken away from them in schools. You look at some of these school boards, it’s like they’re brutal dictatorships. And we brought it all back.”
The crowd cheered at Trump’s rhetoric; however, transgender advocates have argued how notions like that hurt the transgender community.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.”
In his freewheeling speech, Trump argued he was centering American culture around faith in his freewheeling speech, heavily criticizing Democrats as unfaithful.
“I’ll tell you religion took a big hit because of the way they treated all of us,” Trump said of Democrats. “And, we now have a confident nation, an optimistic nation, and we have one nation under God. And we’ll always keep that term.”
Trump also directly attacked former President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, arguing without evidence that Biden wasn’t faithful enough and sought to persecute religious leaders.
“I think one of the reasons we won so bad is they really wanted to take God and religion out of your lives, and there was nobody to, you know, look up to. There was just nobody. It was – we were freewheeling and we can’t free wheel. No, we have to bring religion back into the country. And we’re starting to do that, I think, at a very high level,” Trump said.
“As president, I’ve ended the radical left war on faith, and we’re once again protecting religious freedom instead of destroying it. And God is once again welcomed back into our public square. It’s very important,” he added.
Trump used profanity while talking about his indictments, calling them “bull—-” and other explicit language throughout his speech in front of the faith-based group.
His attacks also extended to Republicans, calling Federal Reserve Chair Jermone Powell “a knucklehead. Stupid guy,” and attacking the intelligence of politicians like former Sen. Mitt Romney and his former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
Trump lightly talked about his faith when reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the attempted assassination on him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump stated that he was saved by God to make the country great.
“It was only one year ago this week that my time on Earth nearly ended. And if you look at that, God was with me. Because that’s something in theory, I should not — I should not be with you,” he said. “I believe it that my life was saved by God to really make America great again.”
On the campaign trail, the president spent time courting faith leaders throughout the country, often refusing to soften his language in those venues as well.
Trump has previously even quipped about how Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse and a Trump ally, would ask him to temper his cursing.
“‘Mr. President, it’s Franklin Graham, and I just want to tell you, I love what you do, I love what you say. I love your stories. I think they’re great, and keep telling them, but they’d be even better if you wouldn’t use foul language,’” Trump told a campaign rally in October.
“So I thought about it, and I said, ‘I’m going to try.’ And I did try, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure I’d make the emphasis quite as good.”