Biden to attend Dick Cheney’s funeral, Bush will deliver tribute
: Former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the Sunshine Summit opening dinner at Disney’s Contemporary Resort on November 12, 2015 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Tom Benitez – Pool/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral will be held in Washington on Thursday, with several high-profile political figures set to be at the service for the man considered one of the most influential vice presidents in U.S. history.
Former President Joe Biden plans to attend, a spokesperson confirmed to ABC News.
The funeral will be held at Washington National Cathedral at 11 a.m. ET.
Former President George W. Bush, who Cheney served for two terms, will offer a tribute at the service. According to the cathedral’s program, Cheney’s daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, and his grandchildren will also give remarks.
Cheney died on Nov. 3 at the age of 84 due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the family said in a statement at the time. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The shooting of two National Guard personnel allegedly by an Afghan refugee in a bustling downtown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has reopened a debate over a Biden-era program that rushed to resettle thousands of Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government during its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The Biden administration brought some 76,000 Afghan refugees to the U.S. in 2021, according to a report at the time by the Department of Homeland Security. It’s likely that the suspect officials have identified, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was one of only 3,300 of those refugees that year who were granted a “special immigrant visa,” a document that would have expedited his entry because of his employment with the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. agencies.
Officials say Lakanwal came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021 during the Biden administration and applied for asylum in 2024. According to three law enforcement sources, Lakanwal was granted asylum in April 2025 under President Donald Trump.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a news conference Thursday morning that the Biden administration did “absolutely zero vetting” of the refugees.
That isn’t accurate, though some questions remain around how thorough the vetting process would have been for Lakanwal in 2021 and again this year when the Trump administration granted him asylum.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the suspect had worked with the CIA during the war — an arrangement that would have almost certain required him to be vetted by the agency at the time.
It’s also likely he was vetted before being granted asylum this year. According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there have been 8,000 such individuals since Trump took office. Noem and Patel have both suggested in recent congressional testimony that the administration had carefully scrutinized all of them.
“During my tenure, we are going through the databases to make sure that no known or suspected terrorists enter this country to harm our nation,” Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.
In 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas, then President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, insisted in a document to Congress that all Afghans were vetted before entering the U.S.
“Prior to entering the United States, Afghan evacuees must successfully complete a rigorous and multi-layered screening and vetting process that includes biometric and biographic screenings conducted by intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals from multiple federal agencies,” he wrote in a 2021 briefing on the program.
The question is how comprehensive that vetting was, considering the rush to settle Afghans who were hastily airlifted to Doha, Qatar, and Europe in the wake of the chaotic U.S. troop withdrawal. Shortly after U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the government in Kabul collapsed and the Taliban took control.
FBI and other U.S. officials have warned for years that vetting refugees from certain war-town countries can be difficult when the U.S. has limited capabilities to gather intelligence in those countries.
According to a New York Times report, the process of resettling Afghan refugees spurred a humanitarian crisis in Doha as refugees packed into airport hangars and tents at a military base there. Flight manifests were at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status was unknown, and there was a lack of demographic data, the Times reported.
Biden administration officials defended the program at the time as a moral imperative, providing protection to Afghans who would have otherwise been killed by the Taliban for cooperating with Americans during the war.
Anti-immigrant conservatives seized on the idea of resettling tens of thousands of desperate Afghans in a matter of months as dangerous.
“Just because an Afghan works with us, and is friends with us, does not actually mean they are safe to bring here,” Sean Parnell, now the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in 2021.
Advocacy groups say there’s no evidence that the vetting process failed.
AfghanEvac, which works to resettle Afghan refugees who helped the U.S. government during the war, said the immigrants undergo some of the most extensive security vetting of any population in the U.S.
“This individual’s isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community,” AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump renewed his pledge to crackdown on immigration following the shooting of two National Guard members in the nation’s capital.
The White House posted a video Wednesday evening in which Trump called the shooting an “act of hatred,” and noted the alleged suspect, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was among hundreds flown to the U.S. during and after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 during the Biden administration.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted on X that the suspect entered the U.S. “under Operation Allies Welcome on September 8, 2021.” It wasn’t clear whether the flight was part of the evacuation or resettlement process. Officials have confirmed Lakanwal worked for the CIA and the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
Trump railed against immigrants and those fleeing war-torn countries, calling for the reexamination of all Afghan immigrants admitted under Biden.
“This attack underscores the greatest national security threat facing our nation,” he said. “The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world, from places that you don’t even want to know about. No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival.”
“We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country, who does not belong here, or add benefit to our country. If they can’t love our country we don’t want them,” he added.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Wednesday evening that it had paused immigration applications from Afghans.
“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” the agency said in an X post.
While Trump was quick to blame Biden, Lakanwal applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April 2025, under Trump’s second administration.
Groups that have supported Afghan nationals pushed back against the administration’s actions.
Richard Bennett, the U.N. special Rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, said Thursday that “the perpetrator should face accountability but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual.”
“That would be terribly unjust and complete nonsense,” he said.
Shawn VanDiver, the president of Afghan Evac, an organization that helps Afghans immigrate, also condemned the suspect but called on leaders to “not demonize the Afghan community for the deranged choice this person made.”
“Afghan immigrants and wartime allies who resettle in the United States undergo some of the most extensive security vetting of any population entering the country,” he said in a statement.
The president on Wednesday night went on to attack Somalis living in Minnesota, which comes in the wake of his decision to once again attempt to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Somalis living in the state.
“An example is Minnesota, where hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state. Billions of dollars are lost and gangs of Somalians come from a country that doesn’t even have a government, no laws, no water, no military, no nothing as their representatives in our country preach to us about our Constitution and how our country is no good,” Trump alleged.
“We’re not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country,” he added.
In the past, Democrats and immigration advocates have pushed back against the president’s immigration restrictions, including on asylum seekers, contending that he has exaggerated national security concerns and turned away millions of families in need.
“It’s not surprising that the President has chosen to broadly target an entire community. This is what he does to change the subject,” Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said in a social media post this week after Trump announced he was ending TPS protections for Somali nationals.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (L) at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 28, 2025 in Turnberry, Scotland. Photo curtesy Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Tuesday head to the United Kingdom for a historic second state visit, where he will also meet with top U.K. officials to deepen ties with one of America’s closest allies.
The visit and invitation for the state visit are historic because Trump will become the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted for two state visits by a British monarch.
During a background call on Monday with reporters, White House officials said that this visit will highlight what they called the deep ties between the United States and the United Kingdom.
“This historic second state visit is set to highlight and renew the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time, the visit will recognize and celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States,” a White House official told reporters during a background call previewing the trip.
Pomp and circumstance at Windsor Castle The visit will have much of the same pomp and circumstance as Trump’s first state visit to the U.K., but there will be some notable differences. For one thing, the events will take place at Windsor Castle, while Trump’s previous visit was held at Buckingham Palace.
Another notable difference: the royals themselves. Trump’s previous visit was headed by then-monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. This time King Charles III will host the president, supported by the Prince and Princess of Wales — William and Catherine — who will play a major role as the red carpet is rolled out for Trump for the second time.
Back in February, in the Oval Office, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer hand-delivered an invitation from the king to Trump.
There will be gun salutes from Windsor and London, and for the first time a U.S. president will take a carriage ride through the grounds of Windsor Castle, and enjoy a joint flyover performed by the Red Arrows and U.S. F-35 military jets.
One notable royal will not be present at all during the visit. Prince Andrew will not participate. Andrew’s ties to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were major U.K. news.
The disgraced Duke of York’s lack of attendance comes as the Epstein files and his own relationship with the late financier have been a political headache for Trump. And just days before Trump’s visit, the U.K. sacked their ambassador to the U.S. over emails showing his close relationship with Epstein.
Deepening US-UK ties In addition to the ceremony and regalia, Trump will take time for diplomacy. On the final day of his visit, Trump is set to meet with the Starmer. The leaders will hold a bilateral meeting at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country estate outside of London.
Pressing global issues, including Russia and Ukraine, Russia’s threat to NATO’s Eastern flank and the war in Gaza will surely be a main topic for the leaders. Their visit comes after Starmer and other European leaders traveled to the White House to meet with Trump and Zelenskyy just after Trump’s summit in Alaska with Russian President Putin. But since that meeting, during which allies expressed optimism of a path forward on security guarantees, no progress has materialized.
The meeting also comes as Russia has shown staggering provocation by violating Polish airspace with drones. Poland then invoked NATO’s Article 4 and European nations are rattled by the overt action. But Trump has seemed to suggest that the drone incident may have been a mistake. Starmer will surely want to discuss the issue with Trump, a leader who has not always been keen on the U.S. upholding Article 5 of NATO’s treaty — calling for mutual defense when one member is attacked.
The leaders will also surely discuss their relationship, namely announcing deals to strengthen tech partnerships between the nations and a deal to vastly increase the U.K.’s investment in nuclear power with the US.
Starmer will also likely make the case more favorable trade terms with the U.S. While the U.K. has solidified a tariff deal with the U.S., negotiations remain for some things, including steel and pharmaceuticals.
The White House adds that Trump will meet with U.S. and U.K. business leaders, but White House officials declined to confirm ones.
Asked for a dollar amount for how much these investments could be, a White House official on the call could not give an exact figure but said that the White House was “looking at more than 10 million, perhaps tens of billions.”
The visit will also highlight mutual cooperation in civil nuclear power, research, investment and development. The U.S. and the U.K. are expected to sign new deals that will enhance the build-out of new nuclear power stations in both countries and clear the way for a significant expansion of new nuclear projects in the U.K.
The agreement will enable companies to build new nuclear power stations more quickly in both countries by reducing bureaucratic hurdles and delays, officials said.
Kelly also said there will be advances in defense technology cooperation and an examination of how both the U.S. and U.K.’s leading financial hubs can be sustained into the future.
Other top officials will be traveling alongside Trump in the U.S. delegation include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Ambassador Warren Stevens and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
