Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down, John Ternus set to replace him
(NEW YORK) — Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down, with the company announcing on Monday that John Ternus will take his place as the head of the technology giant.
Cook will become the executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors, the company said. Ternus will officially become CEO on Sept. 1.
“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement on Monday.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future,” Cook added.
Cook has served as Apple’s CEO since 2011.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building is seen on March 27, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Department of Health and Human Services announced it is cutting 10,000 jobs and closing offices aimed at cutting $1.8 billion (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration took steps this week to reinstate hundreds of health and safety officials who had previously been dismissed in widespread layoffs, granting a major win for advocates of workplace safety.
The newly reinstated employees belong to the National Institute of Safety and Health, or NIOSH, a small federal office within the Department of Health and Human Services that’s focused on protecting coal miners from black lung respiratory disease. Critics of the Trump administration have accused the government of stripping away key protections for miners in its bid to reinvigorate the coal industry, ABC News has previously reported.
“This moment belongs to every single person who refused to stay silent,” Dr. Micah Niemeier-Walsh, an industrial hygienist at NIOSH and the vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees outpost in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday following news of the reinstatements.
In April 2025, hundreds of NIOSH officials were terminated as part of a so-called Reduction in Force, or RIF. Under pressure from lawmakers and labor organizers, the administration brought back some officials months later, and on Tuesday, hundreds more received an email saying the prior “notice is hereby revoked.”
“You are not affected by the RIF and remain employed in your position of record,” according to an email obtained by ABC News.
The reinstatement “ensures the continuation of critical programs that protect all working people, including mine safety research, chemical hazard assessment, and research on emerging occupational risks,” read a statement from AFGE, the federal workers union.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that “the Trump Administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases.”
Nixon confirmed that the reinstatement applies to all NIOSH officials except those who voluntarily left government.
The new MQ-9 Predator B, an unmanned surveillance aircraft system, unveiled by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), October 30, 2006 (Photo by Gary Williams/Getty Images)
(EL PASO, Texas) — The Department of Defense mistakenly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone over El Paso, according to a statement from House representatives and a congressional aide.
Congress was briefed on the incident on Thursday, a source confirmed to ABC News.
The Federal Aviation Administration expanded its temporary flight restrictions over the Fort Hancock airspace in Texas, about 50 miles to the southeast of El Paso, which prohibits all flight operations there through June 24, due to “security” reasons.
The location of the airspace restriction does not impact commercial flights, according to the FAA.
The Pentagon, CBP and the FAA released a joint statement in response to the incident.
“This reported engagement occurred when the Department of War employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace,” the statement said.
“The engagement took place far away from populated areas and there were no commercial aircraft in the vicinity,” the statement went on to say. “These agencies will continue to work on increased cooperation and communication to prevent such incidents in the future.”
The statement didn’t include specifics about the nature of the drone that was shot down but said: “At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War, FAA, and Customs and Border Patrol are working together in an unprecedented fashion to mitigate drone threats by Mexican cartels and foreign terrorist organizations at the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
Congressional Democrats issued a statement criticizing the incident.
In the statement, ranking members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure said: “Our heads are exploding over the news that DoD reportedly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a high risk counter-unmanned aircraft system.”
The statement, from Rick Larsen, D-Wash., André Carson, D-Ind. and Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., called out the White House directly.
“We said MONTHS ago that the White House’s decision to sidestep a bipartisan, tri-committee bill to appropriately train C-UAS operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS and the FAA was a short-sighted idea. Now, we’re seeing the result of its incompetence,” the members said.
The incident comes after the FAA’s abrupt shutdown of airspace over El Paso earlier this month.
Sources with direct knowledge told ABC News at the time that it came days after a laser was used by the Department of Homeland Security to shoot down an object in the vicinity of Fort Bliss. One of the sources said the object was a balloon.
The FAA imposed a surprise 10-day shutdown of airspace within a 10-mile radius of El Paso, halting all arrivals and departures at its airport for what it initially described only as “special security reasons.”
Within hours, the FAA rescinded the order. The Trump administration said the closing of airspace was related to the military neutralizing cartel drones, not a balloon.
Printed documents available at Epstein Library on the U.S. Department of Justice website are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Justice on Thursday released three previously withheld FBI interview reports from 2019 related to a woman who made uncorroborated allegations that she was abused by Donald Trump in the 1980s, when she was a minor.
In a statement on social media, the Department of Justice said the interview summaries — known as FBI 302 reports — were initially withheld from the January release of millions of pages of DOJ documents related to Jeffrey Epstein because they were believed to be duplicative of other documents.
“What we found through extensive review is that a published 302 — additionally disclosed in a published spreadsheet — had subsequent 302s that were coded as ‘duplicative.’ After this was brought to our attention, we reviewed the entire batch with the similar coding and discovered 15 documents were incorrectly coded as duplicative,” the DOJ account said.
The statement did not appear to explain why, beyond possible human error, the records were marked as duplicative. As of Thursday evening, the DOJ database still does not include the handwritten notes from the interviews themselves.
According to the reports, the FBI interviewed the woman four times between July and October 2019. During each of the interviews with the woman, whose identity is redacted, she made allegations of abuse against Epstein.
In her second interview with federal investigators, she claimed that Epstein once took her to either New York or New Jersey where he introduced to Trump when she was between the ages of 13 and 15 years old. According to the report, she claimed Trump abused her during that trip.
In the fourth interview in October 2019, the woman declined to provide additional details about the alleged interaction with Trump when asked by agents, according to the summary of that interview.
Her statements to the federal agents allege that the incident with Trump took place in the early-to-mid 1980s — a period when Epstein and Trump did not appear to be in contact.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein or any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.
In her initial interview with the FBI, the woman claims she was sexually abused by Epstein after being hired for what she thought was a babysitting job, but she said there were no children present. Similar abuse occurred, she said, on several more occasions, according to the summary of the first report, which was released by the DOJ in January.
The witness said multiple alleged incidents with Epstein took place in South Carolina, a location not known to have been frequented by Epstein. The timing of the allegations would place them two decades before law enforcement in Florida began investigating Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors.
Before the additional records were released Thursday, Congressional Democrats had accused the Justice Department of illegally withholding the documents to protect the president.
“It is unconscionable, it is illegal, and [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and the president need to answer where those files are,” California Democrat Robert Garcia, D-Calif. said last week.
In a statement in January, the Department of Justice said that some investigative files in the massive tranche released would include unsubstantiated claims about Trump.
“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already,” the statement said.
