Biden rings the bell after completing course of radiation therapy for cancer
Joe Biden is seen at Janssen’s Market, Sept. 7, 2025, in Wilmington, Del. Mega/GC Images/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden has completed his current course of radiation therapy, a spokesperson told ABC News on Monday.
It’s unclear at this time if any additional radiation therapy will be needed, the spokesperson added.
A short video of the former president ringing a bell to signify the completion of his course of radiation was posted on Ashley Biden’s Instagram story, with the caption: “Rung the bell! Thank you to the incredible doctors, nurses, and staff at Penn Medicine. We are so grateful!”
It was reported on Oct. 11 that Biden had been undergoing radiation therapy in addition to hormone treatment. A source familiar with his treatment said Biden had begun radiation therapy a few weeks before it was reported.
The former president’s office in May announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, which has spread to his bones, noting that while it was an aggressive form, “the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
Later in May, the former president told reporters his treatment was underway.
“It’s all a matter of taking a pill, one particular pill, for the next six weeks and then another one,” Biden said in May.
Aerial view of Trenton New Jersey Skyline featuring state capitol dome of New Jersey. (Visions of America/Joseph Sohm/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(TRENTON, N.J.) — As New Jersey’s 2025 election for governor — one of only two being held in the country this year — approaches, the candidates are grappling with whether the race is a bellwether for how voters feel about President Donald Trump, the upcoming battle for the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms, and the more general national sentiment against incumbent leaders.
In other words: as goes the Garden State, so goes the nation?
“All eyes in the United States are going to be on New Jersey. This looks like the most competitive race, certainly of one of magnitude in the country,” Daniel Bowen, a political science professor at The College of New Jersey, told ABC News.
On the Republican ticket, former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli is making a third try for the office and hopes to flip the state’s governorship currently held by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who cannot run for a third consecutive term. On the Democratic ticket is U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who beat out a crowded primary field in June and now looks to keep New Jersey’s governorship blue.
“I understand why people say there’s national implications here. There’s only two governor races in the entire country this year,” Ciatterelli told ABC News in a recent interview.
“But this is all about New Jersey’s future and that’s where I keep my focus. My only concern is fixing New Jersey … as I go around the state, that’s exactly what people want to hear. That’s exactly what people want.”
Sherrill, in a statement to ABC News, brought up her campaign aims of helping with affordability and accountability, while also framing the race as having national stakes.
“New Jerseyans know what’s at stake in this election, and we know that the nation is watching,” Sherrill said. “We can choose to elect a Trump lackey who is going to do whatever the President says, and make New Jerseyans foot the bill, or we can chart a different path forward… by delivering for working families, we’re laying the groundwork for Democrats in 2026 and beyond.”
The race could measure how voters are looking for change, Bowen told ABC News, given that “a fact of politics in 2025 is this distrust of politicians, distrust of those in power, dissatisfaction with where things are, and that could advantage an opposition candidate,” which could help Republicans in the state campaigning against New Jersey’s currently Democratic-controlled government.
But at the same time, Bowen added, “if you think of trying to react against the way things are going right now, who is determining the way things are going? Well, that’s largely being set by the federal government and the Trump administration. So your response isn’t necessarily to the state government. It’s probably more likely going to be the response to the federal government.”
The question of who voters are seeing as the “incumbent” played out during Sunday night’s gubernatorial debate, one of two where Ciattarelli and Sherrill are facing off. Sherrill, for instance, occasionally brought up Trump, and at one point criticized Ciatterelli’s praise of parts of the president’s signature tax and policy bill.
“I’m sure he would like you to focus on those four things, because he doesn’t want you to focus on his tariff plan, which is putting small businesses out of business … In every single way, we’re seeing costs go up on New Jersey families and Jack just says he has nothing he disagrees with Donald Trump on,” she said.
But Ciattarelli later tied Sherrill to incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy and the current Democratic control of the state, which he framed as causing disillusionment and challenges for New Jerseyans.
“Their party’s been in control [of the state legislature] for 25 years, and they’ve had the executive branch for eight years. But you don’t hear her, you don’t hear my opponent criticizing the current [New Jersey] administration, or the 25 year reign of the Democrats,” he said.
The governor’s race in New Jersey is projected to see $140 million in ad spending, an expected 268% increase over spending in the state’s 2021 gubernatorial race, according to media tracking agency AdImpact. The agency has also tracked millions more spending in support of Sherrill than of Ciatterelli as of mid-September.
Those ads are playing for unaffiliated voters as well, which number over 2 million in New Jersey.
“The independent vote is really a material part of New Jersey’s political history … the fact that New Jersey has gone, and the governor’s mansion, from red to blue to red to blue,” Keith Norman, vice president for political practice at LG Ad Solutions, told ABC News. “It’s a state that doesn’t typically see one party holding the office consistently.”
Republicans point to 2024 as a sign they can flip the governorship. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris won New Jersey by around 6 percentage points in 2024, even though Joe Biden won the state by about 16 percentage points in 2020.
The campaigns are also working to reach the large number of voters around the state who don’t have traditional over-the-air TV or cable, and can target New Jerseyans using streaming platforms and internet-connected TV more precisely.
Off the airwaves, meanwhile, both sides are running large ground games to turn out the vote.
Kate Gibbs, the executive director of the New Jersey Republican Party, told ABC News that the party aims to knock on 1.2 million doors, is working with every local GOP organization, and is trying to narrow the gap between New Jersey’s registered Democratic and Republican voters.
As of the beginning of September, there were over 860,000 more registered Democrats in New Jersey than Republicans, according to data from the New Jersey Department of State.)
And Gibbs says the party feels voters are anti-incumbent towards the current governor: “What we’re hearing overwhelmingly is that people think the state’s on the wrong track and that they want change.”
The Sherrill campaign, meanwhile, says it has contacted over 1.7 million voters since the primary, knocked on almost 150,000 doors, and gotten donations from all 21 counties.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Democratic statehouse legislators are planning to leave Texas on Sunday in order to break the quorum of a special legislative session in which Republican state legislators are aiming to pass a new congressional map that could create up to five new GOP seats.
The move comes after a marathon public hearing on the plan in the state Capitol on Friday and less than a week after state Republican legislators proposed the new maps. Republicans hold a majority in the Texas state legislature; Democrats had said they would consider all options to stop the maps from being passed, although their options for striking back have been limited.
“We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent. As of today, this corrupt special session is over,” state Rep. Gene Wu, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement.
After news broke of Democratic legislators breaking quorum, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in a post on X that Democrats who left should be arrested and brought back to the state capitol.
“Democrats in the Texas House who try and run away like cowards should be found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately,” he wrote. “We should use every tool at our disposal to hunt down those who think they are above the law.”
The walkout itself cannot stop the passage of the bill, but Democrats aim to run out the clock on the 30-day special legislative session, which would mean Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would have to call another one. Texas House Democrats previously broke quorum in 2021 to try to stop an elections bill and in 2003 to try to stop a similar redistricting effort by Republicans. Republicans eventually managed to pass the bills both times.
President Donald Trump has previously said he wanted Texas legislators to draw five new Republican districts.
More than 51 legislators are leaving the state, denying the state House the two-thirds majority out of 150 legislators it needs to have a quorum. An exact number of how many of the 62 Democratic legislators from the state House were leaving was not immediately available.
Democrats who break quorum risk accruing a $500-a-day fine, according to the state House rules, and potential legal action.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, speaking with “War Room” host and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on Thursday, “The House rules and the Senate rules both allow for these people to be arrested if they leave … The challenge is, if they go out of state, we lose jurisdiction, and that — it’s been a challenge in the past, but in the end, as long as the governor is willing to keep calling sessions, ultimately they have to come home.”
Paxton also said he was not worried about defending the maps in court: “We’ve got, we’ve got good maps. And the legislature has the right to draw the maps they want. They’re politically based, not race based. And if they’re politically based, then they’re defensible.”
Some of the Democratic legislators fleeing the state will appear on Sunday evening with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker at a press conference. Pritzker has been a staunch supporter of Texas Democrats and has floated the possibility of getting Illinois’ own congressional maps redrawn if Texas redraws its maps. Illinois’ maps have been criticized by outside observers as highly partisan in favor of Democrats.
In late June, the chair of the Texas Democrats, Kendall Scudder, flew from Dallas to Oklahoma to see Pritzker, who was giving remarks at the state Democratic Party’s dinner. The pair had a private meeting during that to talk about the possibility of lawmakers fleeing the state to Illinois — and if they were to flee the state, that they would have a place they would feel safe and supported.
Since then, Pritzker and Texas Democrats have been in touch, and a small group of them traveled to Chicago in July when members of the delegation left for Illinois and California for brief meetings.
Pritzker and his team have been helping behind the scenes to help find hotels in the area for the Democrats, help their operation, and grease the wheels so things go smoothly for them as they head to Illinois.
The bill containing the maps had been scheduled to be taken up on the state House floor on Monday.
Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday evening is expected to host a group of top administration officials at his residence for a strategy session as the administration considers whether to release the transcript from the Department of Justice interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
It’s one of many meetings that has consumed the White House and top administration officials as they attempt to quell the fallout from their handling of the Epstein files and as pressure mounts for the DOJ and the White House to be transparent about what Maxwell said in her nine hours of meetings last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
During her interview, Ghislaine Maxwell said nothing that would be harmful to President Donald Trump, telling Blanche that Trump had never done anything in her presence that would have caused concern, according to sources familiar with what Maxwell said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles are expected to attend the session with Vance, the sources said.
As ABC reported Tuesday, the administration could release a transcript of the interview as soon as this week.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Vance’s office didn’t immediately respond to a similar request.
