Kentucky governor calls on McConnell to ‘verbally address’ Kentuckians or resign
Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear speaks at the 38th Annual Michigan Democratic Women’s Caucus Legacy Luncheon on April 18, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called on Monday for Sen. Mitch McConnell to either “verbally” show proof to Kentuckians that he can still serve in the Senate or to resign from Congress.
“Important events are happening in our country right now during your absence,” Beshear, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to the Republican senator, according to a copy obtained by ABC News.
McConnell has been hospitalized since June 14, according to his office, which said on July 12 that the 84-year-old senator was recovering from a fall that left him briefly unconscious. He also had to deal with a “mild case of pneumonia,” his office said.
“President [Donald] Trump is stuck in a war of his own making and has greatly strengthened the very country he claims is a threat,” Beshear wrote. “Prices continue to rise, crushing Americans who are working hard but not getting ahead. Americans’ voting rights are being eliminated by the Supreme Court and threatened by congressional action. All while you are absent and refuse to communicate clearly and directly to the people you serve.”
“As Governor of the state you serve, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” he added.
ABC News reached out to McConnell’s office for comment, but didn’t immediately receive a response.
The letter followed a statement issued on Monday by McConnell’s office, in which the senator said he would miss an upcoming Kentucky political event in order to continue his rehabilitation.
“I’m still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate and in Kentucky, keeping up with intense physical therapy per my doctors’ orders,” McConnell said in the statement.
McConnell’s office also included a new image of the senator and his wife, Elaine Chao, that it said was taken on Sunday, July 26.
Beshear on Monday also sent a separate letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, calling on Thune to investigate McConnell’s condition and, if McConnell does not show he can continue serving in the Senate, to begin the process of potentially expelling McConnell from the chamber.
“Per our research, a vacancy in the Senate occurs when a senator dies, resigns, or is expelled by a vote of the Senate itself,” Beshear wrote in the letter to Thune. “If Senator McConnell is unwilling to voluntarily show that he still has the capacity to serve, I will insist that you as the Majority Leader of the Senate fully investigate his condition, report to the American people, and begin the process if warranted.”
Beshear as governor does not have the authority to alter McConnell’s standing in the Senate. If McConnell’s seat were to become vacant, Beshear would likely have to set up a special election to fill it.
Kentucky lawmakers previously passed legislation that blocked the governor from having the ability to appoint a temporary replacement.
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq Ali al-Zaidi, in the Oval Office of the White House on July 14, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump, in a primetime address on Thursday, announced he has declassified a slew of documents he claims reveal vulnerabilities in America’s elections systems, election fraud and interference in elections by China, and ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute those believed to be involved.
“America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country can be great without fair and honest elections, you have to trust your country,” Trump said. “Because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness, and that’s very simple: no trust, no greatness.”
But throughout the more than 20-minute speech, the president did not provide specific evidence that the election outcome, or any votes, were altered in the 2020 election, despite his repeated claims that the election was “stolen” or “rigged.”
Trump has long pushed debunked conspiracy theories to claim that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
The president’s speech led to his main argument: he wants Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, his sweeping elections reform bill that Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said does not have enough Republican votes to pass.
In his remarks, the president said that he would immediately declassify the release of “critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
According to the president, the documents focus on what he said were a number of areas of concern, including claims that China “compromised” election data during the 2020 election, and attempts to downplay the extent of China’s efforts.
Trump argued that the intelligence community suppressed information about China accessing 220 million voter files and trying to turn American opinion against him in the run-up to the 2020 election.
The president also accused the “deep-state” of keeping information about election meddling from him.
Trump claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies learned that tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states had been “bought, stolen, or hacked” by China, and that the intelligence community deliberately kept this information from him while he was president.
Trump’s remarks asserting that the Chinese undertook a far more ambitious role in attempting to dictate the outcome of the 2020 election goes beyond what U.S. intelligence community has previously assessed.
In March 2021, two months into the Biden administration, a declassified “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) that was produced at the end of Trump’s first term publicly acknowledged the belief among some intelligence officials that “China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s reelection chances.” But the ICA said any such actions were “primarily through social media and official public statements and media,” not through interference with “election processes.”
Further, the ICA said that while China was “probably” trying “to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials,” the more reliable intelligence indicated that such efforts were not actually intended to undermine Trump but instead to “predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome.”
The heavily redacted documents released by the White House on Thursday do not appear to back up Trump’s assertions, instead containing scattershot intelligence that descries efforts to obtain — but not alter — voter records and to conduct social media activity to sow social discord.
One heavily-redacted document titled “200M Voter Records Compromised. repeatedly references personally identifiable information being compromised. This information includes names, phone numbers and addresses — which can also be found from many other sources.
In another series of near-completely redacted memos, words such as “state voter registration data” and “personal identifiable information” appear between large blocks of black redaction markings. It is impossible to surmise the meaning of these records without context, but they appear to point to some Chinese efforts to gather American voter data, much of which is publicly available.
Notably, these memos document Chinese activities ahead of both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Trump alleged that former Justice Department officials slow-walked an investigation in Michigan that involved the submission of voter registration applications that had forged signatures and other indications of fraudulent applications. Trump called on FBI Director Kash Patel to look into whether any charges can still be brought.
Local media at the time said that a state-level investigation was halted so the FBI could continue with a related investigation. It’s unclear why no federal charges were ever brought or if federal charges were warranted.
At the time, state officials said that the fact that the fraudulent applications were detected shows that the system worked.
The president also said the documents released Thursday include a Department of Homeland Security report he called “stunning,” alleging approximately 278,000 non-citizens were included on voter rolls.
In the documents released by the White House, the DHS report that alleged 250,000 noncitizen voters on the rolls came from a review of “public voter files” that appear to have come from four states: California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada. DHS did not provide any methodology about how it reached that number, nor does it specify what “public voter files” it reviewed.
DHS acknowledged it did not have access to those states’ voter rolls, and alleges that in the 10 states that provided the federal government access to their rolls, the agency found 28,000 noncitizen voters.
Findings from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation have found only around 100 verified instances of non-citizen voting going back two decades.
-ABC News’ Lucien Bruggeman and Mike Levine contributed to this report.
Markwayne Mullin, secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. (Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEWARK, N.J.) — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin amped up his threats Thursday to pull Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who process international passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport to help control protesters outside of New Jersey’s Delaney Hall detention center.
Mullin continued to slam the protests, now in their seventh day, outside the Immigration Customs and Enforcement detention center over reports of poor living conditions and poor health among its 300 detainees. DHS has denied the allegations.
ICE agents have clashed with protesters who attempted to block vehicles from entering, prompting the federal agents to use pepper spray and batons against them.
Mullin told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday that DHS needed to “prioritize federal police officers” in response to the protests and is considering pulling CBP agents from the airport to help agents outside the detention facility, which would delay processing international travelers and cargo.
“That may effect international flights coming in and out of their airport because I’m going to have to pull Customs and Border Protection officers out of being able to process international flights and put them helping our ICE agents,” he said.
“By the way, if you can’t process international flights because Customs is closed, you can’t obviously process international flights coming in from out of country,” he added.
Mullin said on Fox News that if “things don’t change” he’ll have to make the move “pretty quick.”
“We are not going to halt the flights, we won’t be able to process them because we won’t have officers there,” he said. “We will have to pull out our Customs and Border Patrol officers that process these flights and put them in these [detention] facilities to help protect our employees coming out to work.”
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Newark Liberty International, did not immediately comment on Mullin’s proposal.
Mullin has long been teasing a plan to pull CBP officers from airports that are in so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions.” On Wednesday, he said he is “drawing up plans.”
However, Mullin’s controversial proposal has received pushback from travel groups.
U.S. Travel Association, a group representing the country’s travel industry, met with Mullin last week and expressed concerns about the plan to withdraw CBP officers from several cities.
“U.S. Travel believes such a move would have devastating consequences for the travel industry and communities that depend on international visitation,” the group said in a statement Friday.
At least one Trump administration official has questioned such a policy.
Asked about the proposal in a congressional hearing last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he wasn’t familiar with Mullin’s comments but said it wouldn’t be a good idea to implement such a policy based on politics.
“I’d like to take a look at [Mullin’s] comments and get the context and I’d even ask him a question of what he meant by that, but we have people from around the world and around the country that need to be able to fly into all different kinds of places. We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” Duffy said.
The demonstrations at Delaney Hall continued Wednesday night and protesters again clashed with federal law enforcement.
Several Democratic Congress members, including New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, have visited the detention center over the last week and say they have seen the decrepit conditions first hand.
“The stories I’ve gotten, especially from women inmates, about the access to medical attention, seemed unsatisfactory, if not downright dangerous to their conditions,” Booker said Wednesday.
That same day, Mullin denied the allegations and the reports of a hunger strike inside the facility contending that there were “only a handful of individuals that was refusing to eat” because they allegedly wanted their “ethnic right food.”
“Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” he told reporters.
Demolition of the East Wing of the White House, during construction on the new ballroom extension of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are aiming to secure $1 billion in funding for security-related aspects of the White House ballroom project as part of a broader, roughly $70 billion funding package for immigration enforcement, which they aim to pass with little-to-no support from Democrats.
Republicans began unveiling aspects of their reconciliation package late Monday night. Included within the bill is a $1 billion allocation to the Secret Service for “the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades … relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.”
The funding can only be used for security-related aspects of the project, according to the bill text.
The Trump administration has previously said it aims to raise $400 million in private donations to pay for the ballroom, and has said it will cost the taxpayer nothing.
President Donald Trump said in October that the ballroom would be “paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine,” referencing donors.
“The government is paying absolutely nothing,” Trump said.
Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that they have titled “The Stop Ballroom Bribery Act” to regulate the project and impose restrictions on donations.
A group of GOP senators led by Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced separate legislation that would provide $400 million in funding. The senators on that bill say their proposal is to offset the cost of the ballroom by using customs fees. Because it is not in a reconciliation bill, it will almost certainly fail to pass if it even gets a vote on the Senate floor.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul put forward a separate bill that would authorize the ballroom but not fund it. He attempted to pass that by unanimous consent last week and it failed.
This bill text comes as Republicans have increasingly called for the construction of the ballroom following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last month. They say a secure facility is necessary for the president and Cabinet members to gather with large groups on the White House grounds.
The White House said Tuesday that “Congress has rightly recognized the need for these funds.”
“Due in part to the recent assassination attempt on President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “As President Trump has repeatedly said, the White House must be a safe and secure complex that generations of future presidents and visitors to the People’s house can enjoy.”
In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said the bill does “does not fund ballroom construction,” but “provides funds for Secret Service enhancements that will ensure all presidents, their families and their staffs are adequately protected.”
The ballroom has been the target of a lawsuit filed late last year by historic preservationists, with a federal judge finding it to be illegal without the approval of lawmakers.
In a filing in the case last month, the Trump administration said that the security enhancements to the East Wing project would include “missile resistant steel columns, Military-grade venting, drone-proof ceilings and bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass,” all aimed at forming a “fortified structural buffer” to protect not only the ballroom, but also the main White House residence and the offices in the West Wing.
That April 27 Justice Department filing, which read in part like a social media post written in the president’s own voice, also said the upgrades would include “bomb shelters, a state of the art hospital and medical facilities, Top Secret military installations, structures, and equipment, protective partitioning, and other features.”
District Judge Richard Leon ruled in late March that building the ballroom without congressional authorization violated the law. While Leon carved out an exception for work that would be necessary to ensure the “safety and security of the White House,” he later clarified his decision to allow for “below-ground construction” on the project, as well as anything above ground that would be “strictly necessary” to secure and protect that work.
Leon’s injunction has been administratively stayed by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, pending oral argument at a hearing set for next month. The appeals court’s order means that, for now, work on both the ballroom and the project’s security-related features can continue.
For weeks, Republicans have been working to put forward a funding package in response to political gridlock that left Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol without their regular annual appropriations. Though these agencies received funding through the previously passed One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans say more funding is needed, and they’re looking to secure $26 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and $38 billion for ICE in this just-released bill.
Republicans are aiming to pass the funding using a budgeting tool called reconciliation, which, if successful, would allow Republicans to send this funding to Trump’s desk without the support of a single Democrat and without the possibility of a filibuster. But there are rules governing this process, and it’s not yet clear whether the Senate parliamentarian, who must determine whether items in a reconciliation package are “substantive to the budget,” will green light the ballroom security funding or other items in the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Republicans are “on a different planet” than American families with their spending priorities.
“Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom,” Schumer wrote in a post on X Tuesday.
