Jon Husted, Ohio’s lieutenant governor, tapped to replace JD Vance in Senate
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(WASHINGTON) — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday announced his lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, will replace Vice President-elect JD Vance in the U.S. Senate.
Husted, 57, will serve until a special election in November 2026, the winner of which will complete the remainder of Vance’s term.
Vance and President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn into office on Monday.
DeWine said at a news conference that when he mulled over his appointment, he wanted “someone who knew Ohio” and a proven “workhorse.”
“Serious times demand serious people,” he said.
DeWine praised Husted’s track record on economic development, which includes a commitment from Intel to invest more than $20 billion in manufacturing plants in the state.
“In my mind, my mission has always been clear: to ensure Ohioans have access to good jobs, quality job training and the opportunity to achieve their vision,” Husted said as he accepted the appointment on Friday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be FBI director.
The final vote was 51-49.
Two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted against Patel. Democrats were unanimous in their opposition.
Despite his controversial nomination, Republicans rallied around Patel, arguing he is the right person to bring reform to the nation’s top law enforcement agency they allege has been corrupted.
“Mr. Patel should be our next FBI director because the FBI has been infected by political bias and weaponized against the American people. Mr. Patel knows it, Mr. Patel exposed it, and Mr. Patel has been targeted for it,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said last week as the committee met to consider and advance his nomination.
Though not all GOP members backed him. Collins, explaining her decision to vote against his confirmation, said there is a need for an FBI director who is “decidedly apolitical” and Patel’s “time over the past four years has been characterized by high profile and aggressive political activity.”
Murkowski voiced similar concerns.
“My reservations with Mr. Patel stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership,” the senator said in a post on X. “The FBI must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores. I have been disappointed that when he had the opportunity to push back on the administration’s decision to force the FBI to provide a list of agents involved in the January 6 investigations and prosecutions, he failed to do so.”
Democrats, meanwhile, objected to Patel up until the last minute. Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, held a press conference outside FBI headquarters on Thursday morning railing against Patel’s “bizarre political statements” on Jan. 6 to retribution.
He accused Republicans of “willfully ignoring red flags on Mr. Patel,” who he argued has “neither the experience, the judgment or the temperament” to be FBI chief for the next 10 years.
“Mr. Patel will be a political and national security disaster,” Durbin said.
Patel, 44, is a loyalist to the president and worked in a number of roles during Trump’s first administration, including acting deputy director of national intelligence.
Shortly after the November election, Trump indicated he would fire then-FBI Director Christopher Wray and tap Patel to take his place. Wray, first appointed by Trump in 2017, stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
Patel has been a vocal critic of the FBI for years, and previously said he wanted to clean out the bureau’s headquarters in Washington as part of a mission to dismantle the so-called “deep state.”
He faced pointed questions from Democrats on those comments and more — including support for Jan. 6 rioters and quotes that appeared favorable to the “QAnon” conspiracy movement — during his confirmation hearings last month.
Patel sought to distance from some of his past rhetoric, and told lawmakers he would take “no retributive actions” despite his history of comments about targeting journalists and government employees.
Patel will take over an agency facing uncertainty and turmoil amid firings and other key changes.
The Justice Department’s sought a list of potentially thousands of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, ABC News previously reported, prompting agents to file a lawsuit to block the effort.
(WASHINGTON) — Seven people have filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that the U.S. government would only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth on government-issued documents.
The complaint, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, accuses the State Department of rejecting some applications from transgender citizens or issuing documents with their sex assigned at birth. The lawsuit also accused the department of holding some passports and other documents submitted by transgender and nonbinary people.
“I’ve lived virtually my entire adult life as a man. Everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man,” said Massachusetts resident and plaintiff Reid Solomon-Lane in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit.
“I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease,” Solomon-Lane added. “Now, as a married father of three, Trump’s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease. If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety.”
The lawsuit lists seven plaintiffs. In a news release, the ACLU said more than 1,500 transgender people or their family members have contacted the organization concerned about not being able to get passports that reflect their identity
ABC News has reached out to the State Department for comment on the lawsuit.
Trump’s executive order, signed his first day in office, legally declared that there are only “two sexes, male and female” and defined a “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” The order defined “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
The executive order stated: “Invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.”
The move was criticized by some medical and legal advocates, who argued the executive order rejected the reality of sexual and gender diversity.
In 2021, the State Department relaxed its rules, allowing applicants to self-identify as either “M” or “F” without needing medical certification or additional documentation to do so. Shortly after, the agency began issuing “X” gender markers for intersex or nonbinary residents.
In states across the country, some residents are allowed to self-select or change the gender or sex on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday said he’s had “good talks” with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin but not with Ukraine as the U.S. pushes negotiations to end the three-year conflict that began when Putin’s forces invaded its sovereign neighbor.
The comment, made at a gathering of Republican and Democratic governors at the White House, comes as Trump ramps up criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“I’ve had very good talks with Putin,” Trump said. “And I’ve had not such good talks with Ukraine.”
“They don’t have any cards, but they play it tough,” Trump said of Ukraine. “But we’re not we’re not going to let this continue. This war is terrible. It wouldn’t never happened if I were president. But it did happen.”
At a high-level meeting held in Saudi Arabia this week, U.S. and Russian officials agreed to start working together on peace negotiations — marking a seismic diplomatic shift in U.S. foreign policy.
Notably absent from the talks was Ukraine. Zelenskyy criticized the U.S. and Russia for going over Ukraine’s head, and said his country will not accept any agreement they don’t have a hand in negotiating.
Trump responded by calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and framed Zelenskyy as an illegitimate leader due to the postponement of the country’s 2024 presidential elections until after the war.
The White House has been repeatedly asked if Trump also considers Putin a dictator, but officials, including national security adviser Michael Waltz, have dodged the question.
Zelenskyy pushed back, pointing to polls that show him above 50% and describing Trump’s assertion as parroting Russian “disinformation.”
Trump continued to lash out at Zelenskyy on Friday.
“I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards. And you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it,” Trump said of Zelenskyy during a interview with Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade.
During the interview, Trump was repeatedly pressed about who was to blame for the war but he sidestepped each time. He at one point seemed to concede that Russia did attack Ukraine, but still blamed Ukraine for not making concessions.
“Every time I say, oh, it’s not Russia’s fault, I always get slammed by the fake news. But I’m telling you, Biden said the wrong things,” Trump said. “Zelenskyy said the wrong things.”
Trump seemed particularly upset about a mineral resources deal that Ukraine rejected. A U.S. official with knowledge of the negotiations said a new version of the proposal has been put on the table.
While Trump has been critical of Zelenskyy, Retired Gen. Keith Kellogg — the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine — praised him as “courageous” after meeting with him Thursday.
“A long and intense day with the senior leadership of Ukraine. Extensive and positive discussions with [Zelenskyy] the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war and his talented national security team,” Kellog wrote on his personal X account.
