Bryan Kohberger admits to Idaho college killings in plea hearing

(JUNEAU, Alaska) — A search is ongoing for a 62-year-old cruise passenger who went missing while on a hike in Alaska, authorities said Thursday.

Marites Buenafe, of Kentucky, was reported missing Tuesday, a day after her birthday, when she did not return to the cruise ship Norwegian Bliss, according to the Alaska State Troopers.

That morning, she had texted her family “stating she was heading up Mount Roberts Tramway and then planned to hike Gold Ridge to Gastineau Peak,” the Alaska State Troopers stated in a missing person bulletin.

Buenafe was captured on security footage at the top of Mount Roberts Tramway at about 7:30 a.m. local time Tuesday, troopers said.

She was reported missing to local state troopers Tuesday afternoon when she did not return to the ship by the all-aboard time while docked in Juneau, a Norwegian Cruise Line spokesperson said.

Rescue crews have conducted a ground search, and the aerial search has included thermal drones and helicopters, troopers said.

On Wednesday, over a dozen professional volunteers from Juneau Mountain Rescue and SEADOGS joined state troopers and Juneau police officers “for an extensive search using drones, K-9s, and ground teams, with no signs of Marites,” Alaska State Troopers said in a dispatch.

“Weather conditions allowed limited helicopter searches late in the day,” it added.

The ground and aerial search is ongoing Thursday, troopers said.

Norwegian Cruise Line is “providing assistance to local authorities as appropriate” amid the search, the spokesperson said, adding, “Our CARE team is providing support to the guest’s family and our thoughts are with them during this difficult time.”

Buenafe is 5 feet tall and weighs 118 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, troopers said. Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact the Alaska State Troopers in Juneau at 907-465-4000 and reference incident AK25063914.

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(BOULDER, Co) — As law enforcement agents investigate Sunday’s fiery attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, crime data shows the rampage came amid a dramatic increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes across the nation, suggesting further that the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists continues to spill into the U.S.

The suspect in the Boulder attack, 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman, allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” while targeting the pro-Israel demonstrators with a “flamethrower” fashioned from a commercial backpack weed sprayer and Molotov cocktails at a pedestrian mall, authorities said.

Soliman entered the United States in August 2022 on a B2 tourist visa, which expired in February 2023, according to Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. He filed for asylum in September 2022, McLaughlin said.

Court documents made public in the case allege Soliman, who was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait for 17 years before moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado, three years ago, “wanted to kill all Zionist people and wish they were all dead.”

While some politicians and pro-Israel activists have used antisemitism as a catchall word for an alleged motive in the attack, the suspect told investigators, “This had nothing to do with the Jewish community and was specific in the Zionist group supporting the killings of people on his land (Palestine),” according to state court documents.

But Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee, noted that the attack came less than two weeks after a gunman shouting “Free Palestine” killed two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

“These are not isolated incidents,” Deutch told ABC News. “This is a war against people who support Israel, it’s a war against the Jewish people and nobody should tolerate it.”

Deutch added, “We have to acknowledge that the incitement that we’ve seen from the language that’s being used, the lies about genocide, the calls for globalizing the Intifada, resistance by any means necessary, all of this language contributes to an environment in which violence will, and now twice in two weeks, has taken place.”

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told ABC News that while there has been a spike in attacks on the American Jewish community since the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise assault on Israel by Hamas terrorists, antisemitic attacks in the United States have been steadily climbing for the last decade.

“The last few months have put a fine point on the fact that there are those who are using the guise of protesting Israel to target and violently attack Jews,” Spitalnick said.

Spitalnick said the term Zionism is “woefully misunderstood” by the general public.

“What Zionism means to me is generally the belief that Jews should have a homeland somewhere in this part of world where we have deep historical connections. And it actually goes hand-in-hand with the belief in Palestinian self-determination and dignity for me and many others,” she said.

“When the term is used in this pejorative as we have seen it particularly over the last few years, but long before that as well, it effectively says that 80% to 90% of Jews should be discriminated against, or cast out of spaces, or in extreme cases violently targeted as we saw this weekend. That is antisemitism when you’re saying the majority of American Jews are fair game,” Spitalnick added.

She said the majority of American Jews have a relationship with Israel.

“That doesn’t mean that we agree with its government,” Spitalnick said. “In fact, many of us, and many Israelis, don’t agree with the government and don’t necessarily support what’s happening in Gaza right now.”

National alarm sounded before attack

According to an audit issued in April by the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents, including assaults and vandalism, has jumped 344% over the past five years and increased 893% over the past 10 years.

“For the first time in the history of the Audit, a majority (58%) of all incidents contained elements related to Israel or Zionism,” according to the ADL.

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists, more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents have been reported in the United States alone, according to the ADL.

In addition to the Washington, D.C., and Boulder attacks, a 38-year-old man was arrested in April and charged with firebombing the Pennsylvania governor’s residence in Harrisburg, while Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, and his family were asleep inside, officials said. According to a search warrant affidavit, the suspect allegedly targeted Shapiro “based upon perceived injustices to the people of Palestine.”

Islamophobic attack have also been on the rise, according to a report issued in March by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. CAIR reported that it received more than 8,650 complaints in 2024, the highest number the group has ever gotten.

Among the high-profile anti-Muslim incidents reported over the last two years was the fatal Oct. 14, 2023, stabbing of 6-year-old Palestinian American boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, by his Illinois landlord, 73-year-old Joseph Czuba, who prosecutors said killed the child and attacked his mother in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Czuba was convicted of murder and hate crime charges in February and was sentenced in May to 53 years in prison.

On Nov. 25, 2023, three college students of Palestinian descent were shot, including one who was paralyzed, in Burlington, Vermont, when they were allegedly targeted by 48-year-old Jason J. Eaton, a former Boy Scout leader, as the students, who were visiting the city during the Thanksgiving holiday, were walking in his neighborhood speaking a mix of Arabic and English, authorities said. Two of the students were wearing keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian scarves. Eaton has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder and is awaiting a trial.

While there were widespread calls for a hate crime charge against Eaton, prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to support such a charge.

Following the deadly May 21 Washington, D.C., rampage, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning law enforcement that “violent extremist messaging continues to highlight major sporting and cultural events and venues as potential targets.”

“The May attack that killed two Israeli Embassy staff members at an event in Washington, D.C., underscores how the Israel-Hamas conflict continue to inspire violence and could spur radicalization or mobilization to violence against targets perceived as supporting Israel,” according to the DHS, adding that some online users were sharing the suspect’s alleged writings and “praising the shooter and generally calling for more violence.”

The increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks have come against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The administration has also threatened to withhold federal funding to universities, including Harvard and Columbia, for not doing enough to tackle antisemitism on campuses. The administration has attempted to deport or revoke visas of foreign students who have engaged in pro-Palestinian protests and activism on college campuses.

In April, five Democratic Senators, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Trump accusing his administration of weaponizing antisemitism.

“We are extremely troubled and disturbed by your broad and extra-legal attacks against universities and higher education institutions as well as members of their communities, which seem to go far beyond combatting antisemitism, using what is a real crisis as a pretext to attack people and institutions who do not agree with you,” the Democratic senators wrote, urging Trump to “reverse course immediately.”

‘An act of terrorism’

Within hours of the Boulder attack on Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel was quick to say the case is being investigated as “an act of terrorism.”

Twelve people, including members of the group Run for Their Lives, an organization that regularly holds demonstrations in Boulder to bring attention to the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, were injured in the attack, which unfolded around 1:26 p.m. local time at Boulder’s outdoor Pearl Street Mall, directly across the street from the Boulder County Courthouse, authorities said.

Video taken of the incident showed a shirtless Soliman allegedly holding his makeshift weapons prior to the attack. Soliman was immediately taken into custody without incident. Soliman, who is being held on $10 million bond, made his first court appearance on Monday afternoon. He did not enter a plea to the charges.

Unlike previous high-profile hate-crime investigations, the Boulder attack was immediately described as an act of terrorism, signaling a change in the approach federal investigators have taken in such incidents under the new Trump administration.

“Back when I was in [the FBI], so before 2016, everything was terrorism until it wasn’t terrorism. We still were working off the 9/11 response,” said retired FBI special agent Rich Frankel, an ABC News contributor. “And after that, it appeared that they started calling it hate crime.”

Frankel said the FBI’s decision to immediately refer to the Boulder incident as an act of terrorism is apparently because it allows investigators to use additional laws and investigative techniques, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which establishes the legal framework for the gathering of intelligence, electronic surveillance and physical searches. He said it also enables prosecutors to file additional enhanced charges.

“If you think there might be an international angle naming a group or a country, it is terrorism and that gives you a whole host of different laws that you can use and also investigative techniques because now you’re under the FISA system, you’re under the secret system. Instead of getting search warrants, you can get a FISA,” Frankel said. “The new administration might want that more than a hate crime.”

President Donald Trump has also used the word terrorism to describe the Boulder case, saying in a post Monday on his Truth Social platform that the suspect “came through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly.”

“He must go out under ‘TRUMP’ POLICY,” Trump added. “Acts of Terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland.”

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(LOS ANGELES) — A federal appeals court Thursday delayed an order requiring the Trump administration to return control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, dealing the administration a temporary reprieve to what would have been a major reversal of its policy on the protests in Los Angeles.

Earlier Thursday, a federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order that would have blocked Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops during protests over immigration raids in LA and returned control of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who did not consent to the Guard’s activation.

The order was set to take effect on noon Friday local time, but a panel of three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay of the lower court’s order and set a hearing for June 17. Two of the judges on the panel were nominated by President Donald Trump, and one was nominated by former President Joe Biden.

In a Friday morning post to Truth Social, Trump praised the appeals court’s decision, saying once again “If I didn’t send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now.” Newsom and local officials have said the federalization of the National Guard and deployment of the military violated the state’s sovereignty, was unnecessary and has served to inflame the situation.

In its appeal to the Ninth Circuit, administration lawyers called the district judge’s order “unprecedented” and an “extraordinary intrusion on the President’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.”

The district judge’s order, which did not limit Trump’s use of the Marines, called Trump’s actions “illegal.”

“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not,” U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said in his order granting the temporary restraining order sought by Newsom. “His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”

In a press conference after the district court’s order, Newsom said he was “gratified” by the ruling, saying he would return the National Guard “to what they were doing before Donald Trump commandeered them.”

“The National Guard will go back to border security, working on counter drug enforcement and fentanyl enforcement, which they were taken off by Donald Trump. The National Guard will go back to working on what we refer to as the rattlesnake teams, doing vegetation and forest management, which Donald Trump took them off in preparation for wildfire season. The National Guard men and women will go back to their day jobs, which include law enforcement,” Newsom’s speech continued.

Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta had filed an emergency request on Tuesday to block what they called Trump and the Department of Defense’s “unnecessary” and “unlawful militarization” after Trump issued a memorandum over the weekend deploying more than 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles amid the protests — over objections from Newsom and other state and local officials.

What the lower court judge said in his order

In his order, Breyer pointed to protesters’ First Amendment rights and said, “Just because some stray bad actors go too far does not wipe out that right for everyone. The idea that protesters can so quickly cross the line between protected conduct and ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ is untenable and dangerous,” he wrote.

Breyer wrote that the protests in Los Angeles “fall far short” of the legal requirements of a “rebellion” to justify a federal deployment. Rebellions need to be armed, violent, organized, open, and aim to overturn a government, he wrote. The protests in California meet none of those conditions, he found.

“Plaintiffs and the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life, but deprives the state for two months of its own use of thousands of National Guard members to fight fires, combat the fentanyl trade, and perform other critical functions,” the judge wrote in his order.

“Regardless of the outcome of this case or any other, that alone threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments, and it sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” the judge wrote.

Some 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines were ordered to the Los Angeles area following protests over immigration raids. California leaders claim Trump inflamed the protests by sending in the military when it was not necessary.

Protests have since spread to other cities, including Boston, Chicago and Seattle.

To send thousands of National Guardsmen to Los Angeles, Trump invoked Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which allows a federal deployment in response to a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” In his order, Trump said the troops would protect federal property and federal personnel who are performing their functions.

The judge did not decide whether the military’s possible involvement in immigration enforcement — by being present with ICE agents during raids — violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from performing civilian law enforcement. The judge said he would hear additional arguments on that point at a hearing next week.

During a court hearing earlier Thursday, Breyer said during Thursday’s 70-minute hearing that the main issue before him was whether the president complied with the Title 10 statute and that the National Guard was “properly federalized.”

The federal government maintained that the president did comply while also arguing that the statute is not justiciable and the president has complete discretion. The judge was asked not to issue an injunction that would “countermand the president’s military judgments.”

Meanwhile, the attorney on behalf of the state of California and Newsom said their position is that the National Guard was not lawfully federalized, and that the president deploying troops in the streets of a civilian city in response to perceived disobedience was an “expansive, dangerous conception of federal executive power.”

Bonta additionally argued in the emergency filing that Trump failed to meet the legal requirements for such a federal deployment.

“To put it bluntly, there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together,” Bonta wrote.

Breyer had earlier declined California’s request to issue a temporary restraining order immediately and instead set the hearing for Thursday afternoon in San Francisco and gave the Trump administration the time they requested to file a response.

In their response, Department of Justice lawyers asked the judge to deny Newsom’s request for a temporary restraining order that would limit the military to protecting federal buildings, arguing such an order would amount to a “rioters’ veto to enforcement of federal law.”

“The extraordinary relief Plaintiffs request would judicially countermand the Commander in Chief’s military directives — and would do so in the posture of a temporary restraining order, no less. That would be unprecedented. It would be constitutionally anathema. And it would be dangerous,” they wrote.

They also argued California should not “second-guess the President’s judgment that federal reinforcements were necessary” and that a federal court should defer to the president’s discretion on military matters.

Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to send in the National Guard and Marines, saying the situation in LA was “out of control.”

“All I want is safety. I just want a safe area,” he told reporters. “Los Angeles was under siege until we got there. The police were unable to handle it.”

Trump went on to suggest that he sent in the National Guard and the Marines to send a message to other cities not to interfere with ICE operations or they will be met with equal or greater force.

“If we didn’t attack this one very strongly, you’d have them all over the country,” he said. “But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they’re going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here.”

ABC News’ Jeffrey Cook and Peter Charalambous, Alyssa Pone and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.

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