Missouri firefighter-paramedic stabbed to death in ‘senseless act’: Officials
KCFD
(KANSAS CITY, MI) — In what officials called “a senseless act,” a paramedic Graham Hoffman, 29 years old, had been with the Kansas City Fire Department since 2022.
“Early Sunday morning, Firefighter Hoffman was critically injured after being stabbed in the chest, piercing his heart, while transporting a patient to a local hospital on what began as a routine medical call from the police,” a statement from the city said. “His partner immediately initiated a crew emergency.”
He was rushed to North Kansas City Hospital, where he died from his injuries, Fire Chief Ross Grundyson said.
“KCFD crews worked tirelessly to save Firefighter Hoffman’s life en route to North Kansas City Hospital,” the city’s statement added. “Lifesaving efforts continued in the emergency room before Graham was moved into surgery. Despite the heroic efforts … Firefighter Hoffman, succumbed to his injuries in the intensive care unit.”
Officials said the suspect was in custody on Sunday, but did not provide details.
“I expect and will demand justice,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said at a news conference on Sunday. “I never expected a line of duty death like this one.”
“Graham was a dedicated professional who loved serving his city,” the KCFD posted on Facebook. “He will be greatly missed.”
(NEW YORK) — A lone wolf actor poses the biggest threat to Fourth of July celebrations in New York and San Francisco, according to multiple intelligence bulletins obtained by ABC News.
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are concerned about the potential for copycat attacks from the New Orleans terror attack on New Year’s Day, as well as homegrown extremists.
“We are concerned about the potential threat of copycat attacks inspired by the 2025 New Year’s Day vehicle-ramming attack in New Orleans and continued [foreign terrorist organizations] messaging calling for attacks against Western targets,” both bulletins say.
Those who could be inspired by terrorist organizations who are in the U.S., are of concern for law enforcement, according to the bulletins.
In New York, officials are concerned about individuals “motivated by a broad range of racial, ethnic, political, religious, anti-government, societal, or personal grievances.”
“Of these actors, US-based violent extremists supporting FTOs and [Domestic violent extremists] not linked to FTOs represent two of the most persistent threats,” the bulletins say. “Lone offenders, in particular, remain a concern due to their ability to often avoid detection until operational and to inflict significant casualties.”
In San Francisco, “malicious actors, including violent extremists and criminals, could potentially exploit or target First Amendment-protected demonstrations via mass casualty or opportunistic attacks; dangerous, destructive, or disruptive activity; or other criminal disruptions, as we have seen with other events in the past,” according to DHS.
“We remain concerned that these malicious actors and violent extremists may attempt to create public safety hazards using weapons, chemical irritants, bodily fluids, or other hazardous materials, and enter and disrupt designated event areas that are closed to public access,” say both bulletins dated June 23, 2025.
Authorities are also concerned about drones, which may pose a danger to participants, attendees and law enforcement, authorities say.
The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas is also of concern, and authorities cite last month’s Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder, Colorado, and bias against the Jewish community as an indicator.
“Individuals with grievances linked to the conflict could also perceive large gatherings, such as Independence Day celebrations, as opportunistic targets symbolic of the West in general,” according to the law enforcement bulletins.
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration’s attempt to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua hit another legal roadblock Tuesday with a federal judge in Colorado blocking some removals under the wartime authority.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney issued a temporary order Tuesday that prohibits the administration from using the law to deport noncitizens currently within the state of Colorado, further requiring that noncitizens subject to the AEA removal receive at least three weeks’ notice before deportation..
The Trump administration last month touched off a legal battle when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that “many” of the men deported on March 15 lack criminal records in the United States — but said that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a subsequent 5-4 decision, allowed the Trump administration to resume deportations of alleged migrant gang members under the Alien Enemies Act — but said detainees must be given due process to challenge their removal.
The Colorado case is one of several lawsuits challenging the use of the AEA in Colorado, New York, and Texas, in which lawyers have argued that the Trump administration is shortchanging noncitizens by failing to provide them the “reasonable time” promised by the Supreme Court.
Judge Sweeney, in Tuesday’s order, criticized the Trump administration for attempting to remove two men in a manner she said is “deficient and fails to comport with due process.” According to the judge, the notices used by the Trump administration did not provide the men a reasonable amount of time to act on their due process and were only provided in English.
“The Court has grave concerns that Petitioners would be afforded notice that comports with due process to challenge the determination,” she wrote.
The judge also cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the use of the Alien Enemies Act, writing that the plaintiffs were likely to prove that the proclamation violates Immigration and Nationality Act and humanitarian protections.
The Colorado ruling comes as a federal judge in New York is set to hear arguments Tuesday after he temporarily ruled that detained migrants being held in the Southern District of New York could not be deported without due process.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled earlier this month that several alleged Venezuelan gang members could not be deported under the AEA without them first receiving notice and an opportunity for a hearing.
Judge Hellerstein, in his temporary order blocking the deportations, suggested his decision was meant to define the parameters of the Supreme Court’s opinion requiring due process be granted.
The relief Hellerstein granted is limited to approximately a dozen migrants currently detained in a few New York counties.
