Biden says Israel, Lebanon agree to ceasefire designed to be permanent end to fighting
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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a deal brokered by the U.S. “to end the devastating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
“This has been the deadliest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in decades,” Biden said in remarks from the Rose Garden.
Biden said the agreement reached will go into effect early Wednesday.
“At 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end. Will end,” Biden said. “This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — ABC projects that Democrat Adam Gray will win the race for California’s 13th Congressional District, unseating incumbent Republican John Duarte and flipping the final unresolved seat in the 2024 election.
With all 435 House races projected, ABC News estimates Republicans will hold 220 seats and Democrats 215 in the 119th Congress.
“People are excited about what we were able to achieve in electing another Republican House majority, keeping the majority,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday morning.
But it’s not clear how vacancies — or, illness or other absences — will impact the day-to-day division of power when the House convenes on Jan. 3.
President-elect Donald Trump initially tapped three House Republicans for positions in his upcoming administration: Florida Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. Gaetz has already resigned from Congress and withdrew last month from consideration to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general. And though he won reelection to his seat last month, he said he won’t serve another term.
Republicans could have a 217-215 majority while their seats are vacant — the narrowest GOP majority in history — and special elections to fill those seats can take months to complete.
In this case, any single Republican can hold Johnson’s agenda hostage: Losing just one Republican on a vote would result in a 216-216 tie.
But several elderly Democrats have missed votes recently, which could give Republicans a little more breathing room next year.
In California’s 13th District, Duarte conceded to Gray on Tuesday, according to the Turlock Journal.
“I’m a citizen legislator, and I didn’t plan on being in Congress forever,” Duarte told the newspaper. “But whenever I think I can make a difference, I’ll consider public service in different forms, including running for Congress again.”
Gray released a victory statement on X Tuesday evening, extending his gratitude and saying the “final results confirm this district is ready for independent and accountable leadership that always puts the Valley’s people ahead of partisan politics.”
-ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(PARIS) — President-elect Donald Trump kicked off his first foreign trip since his reelection with a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.
Ahead of the meeting, Macron welcomed Trump, saying, “It’s a great honor for the French people to welcome you five years later.”
Macron thanked Trump for his “solidarity” and “immediate action” during his first presidency: “You were at the time the president, the first time, and I remember the solidarity and your immediate action. Welcome back again. Thank you. We are very happy to have you here.”
Trump in return celebrated the “great success” the United States and France had together on “defense and offense” during his first term and said they will talk about how the world is “going a little crazy right now.”
“Thank you very much. Very great honor. And we had a great relationship. As everyone knows, we accomplished a lot together,” he said. “And the people of France are spectacular. I guess it’s one of our largest groups in the United States, French people, and we respect them and we love them. Very talented people, extremely energetic people, as you know very well, yeah, and it’s an honor to be here.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined Macron and Trump at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern time. However, he did not offer remarks ahead of the meeting.
Trump is in France to partake in the reopening ceremonies for Notre Dame more than five years after a fire severely damaged the cathedral. First lady Jill Biden is also among the representatives from around the world attending the ceremonies.
The meeting comes at a time when Macron’s government is undergoing a political crisis after his prime minister, Michel Barnier, resigned after facing a no-confidence vote. Macron, who became president in 2017, has vowed he will serve until the end of his term in 2027 despite facing calls from some to resign.
“We had a good time together, and we had a lot of lot of success, really great success, working together on defense and offense too,” Trump said of the U.S.-French relationship in his first administration. “And it certainly seems like the world is going a little crazy right now, and we’ll be talking about that.”
Trump arrived at the Elysee Palace around 10:41 a.m. and met with Macron outside before walking into the building around 10:43 a.m. Eastern time. He was also set to meet with Prince William, the Prince of Wales, for the first time since 2019, but their meeting before the Notre Dame ceremony was canceled.
(WASHINGTON) — There were many mistakes made on the day of the July assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump by the Secret Service, but an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security revealed systemic issues within the organization and found that without reforms to the agency, “another Butler can and will happen again.”
In the aftermath of the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assigned a panel of four former law enforcement and national security officials to examine what went wrong, and how they recommend the Secret Service moves forward after the attempt on former president’s life.
“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the letter addressed to Secretary Mayorkas said, which was included in the report. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”
On the independent panel are former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, former Maryland State Police Superintendent David Mitchell and former Deputy National Security Adviser Fran Townsend.
The scathing 35-page report from the independent panel said the findings illustrated “deeper concerns” within the U.S. Secret Service.
“The Panel has observed that many of the Secret Service personnel involved in the events of July 13 appear to have done little in the way of self-reflection in terms of identifying areas of missteps, omissions, or opportunities for improvement,” the report said. “July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee.”
The panel said that even a “superficial” level of reflection would have been meaningful.
Plaguing the Secret Service are “corrosive cultural attitudes” regarding resourcing events – a “do more with less” attitude, according to the report.
The report also found there was a troubling “lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service personnel “before, during and after” the assassination attempt.
“A prominent instance of this is the fact that personnel had been read into significant intelligence regarding a long range threat by a foreign state actor against former President Trump, but failed to ensure that the AGR building was secured despite its proximity to the rally stage and the obvious high angle line of sight issues it presented,” the report found.
Other instances “revealed a surprising lack of rigor in considering the specific risks posed to particular individual protectees.”
The report said, for example, Trump, though not formally the Republican nominee at the time, had essentially clinched it months before and thus the Secret Service’s approach was formulaic “rather than an individualized assessment of risk.”
The failure to take ownership of planning the Butler rally and the lack of cohesion with state and local law enforcement during the planning of events, a lack of experienced agents to perform “certain critical security tasks,” a lack of auditing mechanisms to learn from mistakes in the field, a lack of training facilities, and a lack of agents feeling comfortable to speak up.
In particular, the operational tempo for younger agents who came up during the COVID-19 pandemic was slower than most election years, and thus those agents did not get as much experience in the field as agents would normally get.
The panel is calling for new leadership at the Secret Service – saying the agency needs a change with people from outside the agency.
“Many of the issues that the Panel has identified throughout this report, particularly regarding the Panel’s “deeper concerns,” are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the Service’s culture,” the report said. “A refreshment of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service’s resolution of those issues.”
Among the other recommendations the panel made are a restructuring of the agency’s protective office, new training initiatives, new communication technologies that are more reliable and an evaluation “of the Secret Service’s method for how it resources protectees to ensure that it is risk-based, and not overly formulaic or reliant on a protectee’s title for making resource determinations.”
“The Panel also recognizes the bravery and selflessness exhibited by Secret Service agents and officers who put themselves in harm’s way to protect their protectees, including in Butler after Crooks fired at former President Trump and others. However, bravery and selflessness alone, no matter how honorable, are insufficient to discharge the Secret Service’s no-fail protective mission.”
Specific to July 13, the panel’s findings are in line with the Secret Service’s mission assurance review that came out last month.
Some of the findings are an absence of law enforcement to secure the AGR building where Thomas Matthew Crooks eventually fired from, the failure to mitigate the line of site from that building, having two communications rooms, the failure of anyone to encounter Crooks despite spotting him 90 minutes before Trump took the stage, the failure to inform the former president’s detail and the drone detection system not working.
The panel recommends the Service has integrated communications, a mandatory situation report when a protectee arrives, better counter-drone technologies and an advanced line of site mitigations.
A footnote in the report says the second assassination attempt against Trump didn’t impact the panel’s work but might’ve reinforced the report.
The panel recommends the Service implement the Butler reforms no later than March 31, 2025, and the broader reforms by the end of 2025.
