GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik announces 2026 run for New York governor, aiming to challenge NY Gov. Hochul
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) speaks during a hearing before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, a top ally of President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, officially launched a campaign for governor in 2026 against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday after months of hinting at the move.
She has been a vocal critic of Hochul and doubled down on attacks against her after the upstate moderate governor endorsed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani following his Democratic primary victory.
In a statement Friday through her campaign, Stefanik slammed Hochul, her likely opponent in the election if both Stefanik and Hochul win their respective party primaries.
“Kathy Hochul is the Worst Governor in America. Under Kathy Hochul’s failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery prices crushing hardworking families,” Stefanik wrote.
“I am running for Governor to bring a new generation of leadership to Albany to make New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state,” Stefanik wrote. “Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to Fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to Save New York.”
An announcement video Stefanik posted on Friday focused on a similar message, with the video’s narrator largely pinning affordability issues and other key concerns on Hochul.
The video does not mention President Donald Trump.
But Hochul and the New York State Democratic Party are pointing to her close relationship with Trump as a detriment. And New York went blue in the 2024 presidential election — with Trump receiving 43% of the vote in New York state, trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by around 13 percentage points.
“Elise Stefanik is running to deliver New York for Donald Trump and raise your costs,” Hochul said in a post on X on Friday. “Not on my watch. My message to Trump’s ‘top ally’ — bring it on.”
After Tuesday’s election victories for Democrats, a spokesperson for the New York State Democratic Party said New Yorkers will reject Stefanik, who was briefly nominated for a position as United Nations ambassador by Trump earlier this year.
“Voters in New York and across the country rejected Trump and his enablers earlier this week, and Stefanik will face the same fate when she launches her campaign to put Trump ahead of New Yorkers,” Addison Dick wrote in a statement.
Press releases from Stefanik’s campaign on Friday released after the announcement said that Stefanik has already netted endorsements from more than half of New York’s Republican county chairs and from the chair of the New York Republican Party.
“There will not be a Republican primary and a year from now, Elise will lead our team to victory over Kathy Hochul, end one-party Democrat rule, and make New York affordable again,” New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox wrote in a statement.
The upstate New York congresswoman, a onetime staffer for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign who helped former House Speaker Paul Ryan prepare for his vice presidential debate, gained prominence in the MAGA movement during the first Trump administration as a vocal defender of the president on the House Intelligence Committee during Democrats’ first impeachment inquiry in 2019.
New York last elected a Republican governor in 2002 when George Pataki won a third term in office.
(CHICAGO) — The Illinois National Guard has received an official notification from the Pentagon authorizing a mission in Chicago, according to an Illinois official.
The official confirmed the mission will involve 300 Guardsmen tasked with protecting federal property under Title 10 authorities.
The Guard has not received mobilization orders, which means it will take a number of days to process and muster soldiers — and train them for the mission, according to the official.
At the very earliest, Guardsmen would be deployed in Chicago at the end of this week, the official said.
“The Governor did not receive any calls from any federal officials. The Illinois National Guard communicated to the Department of War that the situation in Illinois does not require the use of the military and, as a result, the Governor opposes the deployment of the National Guard under any status,” a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement.
The authorization comes amid escalating tensions in Chicago over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents on Saturday shot and wounded a woman they alleged was part of a convoy of protesters that rammed their vehicles during an “ambush.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Border Patrol agents opened fire on the woman in self-defense, alleging she was armed with a semiautomatic weapon and was driving one of three vehicles that “cornered” and rammed the CBP agents’ vehicles.
Describing the incident as “really strange,” Noem alleged that before the shooting, a caravan of 10 vehicles was following the CBP agents and officers through the streets of Chicago.
“They had followed them and gotten them cornered, pinned them down and then our agents, when getting out of their cars, they tried to run them over and had semiautomatic handguns on them to where our agents had to protect themselves and shots were fired and an individual ended up in the hospital that was attacking these officers,” Noem said in a statement on Sunday.
President Donald Trump speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia. Alex Wong/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday told the military’s top generals about his controversial plans to send troops to “dangerous” Democratic cities, arguing, “We’re under invasion from within.”
Trump made clear that the military’s job is not only to protect the United States from threats abroad but also what he repeatedly referred to as a domestic enemy in American cities.
“It’s a war from within,” the president said to the room of high-ranking military generals who flew from across the globe to Quantico, Virginia. “We’re under invasion from within.”
Trump talked about his efforts to increase the use of U.S. military in American cities. Trump specifically said that Democratic-run cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco, are in “bad shape,” and that he threatened to “straighten them out, one-by-one.”
“I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard,” he said.
Over the weekend, Trump announced that he ordered federal troops to Portland, Oregon, because of what he alleged were threats from domestic terrorists. The city’s Democratic Mayor Keith Wilson and the state’s Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek both stressed that they did not request the troops and objected to the action.
Trump mentioned his call with Kotek on Tuesday, claiming that Portland “is burning down.”
“I said ‘You don’t have it under control, governor, but I’ll check it and I’ll call you back.’ I called [her] back. I said ‘you, this place is a nightmare,'” Trump said.
Throughout Trump’s speech — which came after Hegseth called for an end to what he called “woke” culture in the military — the president’s words were met generally with silence and subdued reaction from generals, who did not seem to respond to the president’s often highly-partisan talking points. Reaction in the room among the military’s top leaders was even more limited when Trump talked about sending troops into American cities such as Chicago and Portland.
It was an unusual reception for Trump, who is used to delivering blockbuster speeches to friendly audiences.
The president took note of the mood in the room soon after he began talking, and appeared to be surprised.
“I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said before making jokes.
“Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future, but you just feel nice and loose, OK, because we’re all on the same team,” Trump added.
There were a few chuckles from the crowd, including when Trump joked that he liked his own signature.
By the end of the speech, some members of the crowd stood and some lightly applauded.
Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, October 7, 2025 in Washington. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) —President Donald Trump’s tightening grip over the Justice Department to target his political opponents and lawmakers’ increasing calls for the release of more files from federal investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein took center stage at a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is the first time since July that Bondi has faced questions from lawmakers and follows a tumultuous summer for the department that included deployments of federal law enforcement to Democratic-run cities, a growing number of investigations announced into Trump’s political foes and the controversial indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley kicked off the hearing with extensive remarks seeking to highlight instances of what Republicans have labeled “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden Administration, citing selective disclosures by FBI Director Kash Patel of the investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“These are indefensible acts,” Grassley said. “This was a political phishing expedition to get Trump at all costs.”
Specifically, Grassley singled out a timely disclosure by the FBI on Monday that showed former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigators at one point sought limited phone toll records of several Republican senators around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As part of his investigation, Smith extensively investigated Trump and his allies’ pressure campaign on lawmakers to block the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win — including calls that were made to senators after the Capitol was breached by the pro-Trump mob.
There’s no indication that Republican senators were a target of Smith’s investigation, and the toll records sought by investigators would not include any information about the content of conversations they may have had.
“We’re pointing this all out because we can’t have this repeated in the United States,” Grassley said. “We want to end it right now, whether we have Republican or Democrat administrations.”
Grassley made no mention of recent directives from Trump to have the Justice Department act “now” to carry out prosecutions of his political foes, or other instances of alleged politicization during Bondi’s tenure that have led to scores of departures of longtime career officials who have sounded alarm about the department being used as a tool to enact political retribution.
Ranking Democratic member Dick Durbin said in his opening statement assailed the Trump administration for the conduct in Chicago, a city in which Durbin represents.
“As President Trump turns the full force of the federal government on Chicago and other American cities, the assault on the city I am proud to represent is just one example of how President Trump and Attorney General Bondi shut down justice at the Department of Justice, even before the president’s party controlling the white House, Senate and House of Representatives shut down the government,” Durbin said.
“The attorney general has systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies and attack his opponents. And sadly, the American people. You have purged hundreds of senior career officials since you first appeared before us,” he added.
Durbin listed off the greatest hits for critics of Bondi’s Justice Department, not to include the closed investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, the Eric Adams case being dropped, the hiring of a Jan. 6 defendant who attacked MPD officers, the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the case against James Comey.
“What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil. This is your legacy,” Durbin said.
Bondi pushed back against her critics and Democrats during the hearing. In her opening statement, she framed her tenure as the “end” of weaponization of law enforcement, while reinforcing her extensive efforts to enact President Trump’s agenda.
“We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.
She also railed against judges who have ruled against the administration in the months since Trump took office, while highlighting the Justice Department’s string of victories at the Supreme Court.
“My attorneys have done incredible work advancing President Trump’s agenda and protecting the Executive Branch from judicial overreach,” she said.
Bondi continued to hit back at Durbin, who questioned her about the federal deployment to Illinois.
The attorney general taunted the senator about Chicago’s crime rate. Bondi said that Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were on their way to the city.
As ABC News first reported, the move to seek Comey’s indictment came over the objections of career prosecutors and followed Trump’s removal of his appointee to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who expressed reservations about pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sources told ABC News.
Trump eventually installed a White House aide and former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan to lead the office and move forward with the case against Comey, and a grand jury narrowly voted to indict him on two counts of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — while declining to indict on a third false statements charge. Comey has denied wrongdoing and is set to appear Thursday in federal court for his arraignment.
While sources told ABC News that leadership at the DOJ expressed reservations about pursuing the case, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel went on to publicly cheer news of Comey’s indictment in news interviews and social media posts.
The next week, the administration moved to fire a top national security prosecutor in the office, Michael Ben’Ary, over a misleading social media post that falsely suggested he was among the prosecutors who resisted charging Comey.
Ben’Ary was leading a major case against one of the alleged plotters of the Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a scathing departure letter, Ben’Ary set his sights squarely on the Justice Department’s leadership and labeled his removal as just one in a series of recent moves taken to root out career officials for political reasons at the expense of the nation’s security.
“This example highlights the most troubling aspect of the current operations of the Department of Justice: the leadership is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security,” Ben’Ary wrote. “Justice for Americans killed and injured by our enemies should not be contingent on what someone in the Department of Justice sees in their social media feed that day.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked about Ben’Ary’s letter.
Those actions have caused unprecedented turmoil at the Eastern District, which oversees some of the nation’s most sensitive national security, terrorism and espionage investigations.
Current and former officials say that turmoil has reverberated further across the Justice Department’s workforce around the country, with attorneys concerned they’ll face professional repercussions if they resist taking part in politicized investigations or prosecutions.
On Monday, nearly 300 DOJ employees who left the department since Trump’s inauguration released a letter on the eve of Bondi’s hearing describing her leadership as “appalling” in its treatment of the career workforce and the elimination of longstanding norms of independence from the White House.
“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously,” the former employees said. “Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing. And we call on all Americans — whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ — to speak out against its destruction.”
The DOJ declined to comment on the letter.
Bondi will likely also face heavy scrutiny over conflicting statements out of the administration on the Epstein files, after the Justice Department and FBI said in a July letter that no further releases were warranted and that there was no evidence suggesting others participated or enabled Epstein’s abuse of minor girls.
Democrats have accused the administration of seeking to cover up any mentions of Trump or high-profile appointees who had past associations with Epstein, which the administration has denied.
Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women, were friends in the 1990s but the president said the relationship soured after Epstein poached some employees from Trump’s Florida club after he explicitly warned him not to do so.
An effort underway in the House of Representatives to hold a vote on a measure that would demand the administration release the entirety of the files has been put on hold after Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home amid the ongoing government shutdown.
The recent rise in acts of political violence will also likely be a central focus of questions for Bondi. Trump has recently ordered the department to ramp up investigations into so-called “radical left” organizations that he and other senior White House officials have alleged, without providing evidence, as helping to fund perpetrators who have attacked federal law enforcement officials dispatched around the country.
Just days after Trump’s comments, a senior official in the Justice Department ordered several U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country to prepare to open sweeping criminal investigations in to the Open Society Foundations founded by billionaire George Soros, naming criminal statutes ranging from robbery, material support for terrorism and racketeering, ABC News previously confirmed.
In a statement, the Open Society Foundations called the accusations “politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.”
In her most recent appearances before the House and Senate in late June, Bondi sought to brush off pointed questions from Democrats by repeatedly deflecting to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in their states and districts that were among the briefing materials she brought with her to the hearings.
She has also dismissed any characterization of the Justice Department appearing to work in lockstep with the White House as “politicization” of law enforcement. Bondi and other senior DOJ officials have instead argued that the two federal cases brought against Trump by a special counsel under the Biden Administration represented a far more egregious example of weaponization, echoing grievances leveled at the department by Trump.
“Whether you’re a former FBI director, whether you’re a former head of an intel community, whether you are a current state and local elected official, whether you are a billionaire funding organizations to try to keep Donald Trump out of office — everything is on the table,” Bondi said in a Fox News appearance last month. “We will investigate and will end the weaponization — no longer will there be a two-tier system of justice.”
