Gen. Chris Donahue assumed command of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in December 2024. (U.S. Army)
(WASHINGTON) — One of the Army’s most seasoned and high-profile officers is abruptly relinquishing command next week, according to the service.
Gen. Chris Donahue has spent the past 18 months leading U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the command responsible for Army operations across both continents. He will relinquish command halfway through what is normally a three-year assignment.
“Gen. Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish command on July 2, 2026,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement. “The Army thanks Gen. Donahue for his leadership of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.”
His departure comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presses ahead with a sweeping overhaul of the Pentagon’s senior ranks, firing or sidelining large numbers of top officers with little public explanation, including the Army’s top officer Gen. Randy George.
The command Donahue now leads is also set to be downgraded from a four-star command to a three-star post, according to another U.S. official, part of Hegseth’s broader push to shrink the number of generals across the force.
Officers serving as four-star generals are only eligible to hold a position of that rank. If there are no other slots available, then the only option left for them is to retire.
The Atlantic first reported Donahue’s expected departure.
Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral, the current commander of the Army’s III Armored Corps, is expected to be nominated to take over the role, according to a U.S. official.
Donahue’s resume includes command of the Army’s elite Delta Force and the famed 82nd Airborne Division, along with extensive combat experience across two decades of war. Inside the Army, he has long been viewed as one of its top officers and a potential future Army chief of staff.
He rose to wider public attention as the last U.S. service member to leave Afghanistan during the 2021 withdrawal, photographed in night vision boarding a C-17 when he was commanding the 82nd Airborne Division.
Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, deputy commander, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, will serve as acting commander, according to the Army.
The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 20, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — For generations, cops have obtained warrants to lawfully seek information from a specific suspect in a crime.
The Supreme Court on Monday is considering whether investigators can also use so-called “geofence warrants” to do the reverse — scanning cell phone data of thousands of innocent individuals in hopes of finding a suspect to apprehend.
The landmark case is the first time the justices will consider whether the controversial practice of digital dragnets, which have grown in popularity among law enforcement with advances in technology, violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.
Critics say the warrants intrude on Americans’ reasonable expectation of privacy by compelling service providers to turn over broad swaths of user location history and time stamps within a specified area over a specified timeframe.
Advocates for geofence warrants call them a critical tool that will help police more quickly solve crimes, in turn making communities safer. They also emphasize that most cellphone users knowingly transmit location data to third-party tech companies already.
The petitioner in the case, Okello Chatrie, was indicted on charges related to an armed robbery of a Virginia credit union in 2019 and wants key cellphone location evidence against him thrown out.
Authorities relied heavily on data obtained from Google under a geofence warrant that placed Chatrie’s cellphone within 150 meters of the bank during the crime.
The Trump administration, which is defending the law enforcement tool and Chatrie’s prosecution, argues that by sharing location information with apps and service providers like Google, a person forfeits any expectation of privacy.
A decision in the case — Chatrie v U.S. — is expected by the end of June.
Fernando Mendoza #15 of the Indiana Hoosiers dives for a fourth quarter touchdown against the Miami Hurricanes in the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship at Hard Rock Stadium on January 19, 2026 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Indiana Hoosiers — 2025 College Football Playoff national champions — will visit the White House on Monday, May 11, according to a source familiar with the team’s plans.
It’s unclear whether former Indiana quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza will attend. Mendoza was the first player chosen in April’s NFL draft.
ABC News reached out to the White House about the upcoming visit but did not receive an immediate response.
Led by a late-game touchdown run by Mendoza, the Hoosiers’ undefeated season was capped off in storybook fashion this past January, when the team defeated the Miami Hurricanes 27-21 for their first-ever championship.
Indiana Head Coach Curt Cignetti is also expected to attend.
The White House trip is an honor bestowed to the championship winning teams in both college and professional sports. It’s often coupled with visits to Capitol Hill but the source couldn’t determine whether the team’s schedule would feature a trip to Congress.
President Donald Trump welcomed several NCAA collegiate champions to the White House last month.
The Hoosiers’ expected visit comes amid Trump’s efforts to “save” college sports. The president signed an executive order last month urging Congress to “expeditiously” pass legislation that addresses the future of competition and opportunity in all college sports, especially football and basketball.
Meanwhile, the Hoosiers championship also comes as name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals have been scrutinized by the White House and lawmakers in Washington concerning pay-for-play and player eligibility.
Looking to repeat as national champions, the Hoosiers finished spring practice last week with a reloaded squad that features top transfer portal pickups, quarterback Josh Hoover and wide receiver Nick Marsh.
Students walk through the halls between classes at Rippowam Middle School on September 14, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Nayleen Escalante-Villatoro, a sixth grader at Brookland Middle School in Washington, D.C., has struggled significantly with attending school.
She said whenever there are family problems that force her mother to take off work, she has to step in.
“Me and my older sibling stay home to watch the little ones,” Nayleen told ABC News, adding, “It makes me feel stressed because I’m missing school and I’m not learning.”
This not only frustrates Nayleen, but it also impacts her studies: “I have to do a lot of makeup work after all the missing assignments that I haven’t done,” she added.
Kids like Nayleen face a multitude of challenges at school — when they’re there.
From the rigors of learning how to read and write to addressing mental health concerns and outside distractions, students juggle more than just their classroom workloads. A combination of these issues and other societal factors has fueled an attendance crisis that’s led to a spike in student chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of the school year — in recent years, according to experts who spoke to ABC News.
While one in three students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 academic year, the rate is declining, from up to 30% to roughly 24% by the start of the past school year, according to estimates from the Return 2 Learn tracker reviewed by ABC News.
Government officials are also collecting data on K-12 chronic absenteeism but the Department of Education recently told ABC News it couldn’t yet provide it. Its National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) told ABC News in 2023 that chronic absenteeism increased from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there’s been no silver bullet to the problem. Different states have taken their own approach, from going door-to-door to check on students to providing high-impact tutoring at school. Education and health experts also emphasize family engagement, community relationships, extracurricular activities and outdoor recreation are potential solutions for chronically absent students.
Hedy Chang, CEO of Attendance Works, a nonprofit focused on addressing absenteeism, said that when kids aren’t showing up to school, it’s an indication that engagement isn’t happening.
“When you treat it as a matter of engagement, that’s when we build the relationships with families, which make them trust schools and it builds a relationship so that we can actually find out what are the underlying causes of why kids aren’t showing up,” Chang told ABC News.
United Family Advocates Executive Director Joanna Lack is calling for more attention to those underlying causes. Lack worked on the issue for many years as the chief performance officer in Camden, New Jersey, and has since transitioned to the non-profit organization dedicated to keeping families safe and together.
“We’ve been looking at the wrong problem instead of opening up the hood and saying ‘What’s actually going on here?'” she said.
Home life among ‘constellation’ of issues
Student absenteeism is often correlated with household or child welfare problems that impact the student’s school life, according to UFA’s Lack.
“Chronic absenteeism is like the symptom that you experience, but it’s not the disease, and we’ve been treating it like it’s the disease,” Lack said.
The Department of Health and Human Services does not have a specific initiative targeting chronic absenteeism. However, Head Start and the Family Opportunity, Resilience, Grit, Engagement-Fatherhood (FORGE) program under the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) both aim to improve outcomes in child welfare and enhance early childhood education, according to HHS officials.
Chang said there isn’t an urgent need for new federally funded programs or aid, just better use of ones that are available.
“I need existing programs to think about how they use chronic absence data to collaborate and work together to support kids and families and make sure the kids who need their resources, or the schools that need their resources, are getting it,” she said.
There’s a “constellation” of issues that contribute to increased absences, from child welfare involvement to unstable housing, but Lack noted that families are complex and kids don’t come in silos.
Activity makes a ‘huge difference’
Nayleen is one of the thousands of students across the country who participate in extracurricular activities through the SCORES program, which creates safe environments where young people can build connections with their communities, according to its website. She said DC SCORES — which provides soccer, poetry, and service-learning programs — has helped her return to class more regularly.
She explained that playing soccer with DC SCORES has empowered her and she looks forward to talking to her coach after attending school.
“It helps me because whenever I’m going through stuff he will understand me,” she said. “Sometimes he will help me. He will sit down and have a talk with me,” she said, adding, “Whenever I’m down, he will ask me if I’m OK.”
At the last month’s inaugural National Executive Forum on Health and Outdoor Recreation, which combined outdoor recreation industry and health leaders to promote using recreation as a pillar of public health, experts told ABC News that recess makes a “huge difference” for holistic growth in adolescents.
Outdoor Recreation Roundtable President Jessica Turner emphasized that being outside is fundamental to student health.
“We’ve stepped back so far from incorporating the outdoors into our lives and to step back into it doesn’t take very much,” Turner told ABC News. “It’s not a heavy lift.”
Schools supporting parents and kids
Chang, of Attendance Works, said chronic absenteeism isn’t inevitable.
She stressed that schools are starting to adopt more effective family engagement strategies for those dealing with attendance issues.
Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which operates the largest public charter school network in the nation, has utilized some simple yet effective solutions to correct absenteeism.
Jeffries told ABC News that when a student doesn’t show up, they call the family “immediately.”
“‘Johnny, Mary, didn’t come to school today. We really need them because they are going to miss an opportunity to learn,'” he said, adding “Then, frankly, sometimes we also say: You got to figure it out.”
“Get your baby to school because they can’t learn to fulfill that potential if you’re not able to do that,” Jeffries added.
