Rudy Giuliani hospitalized in critical condition: Spokesperson
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani attends the annual 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony on Sept. 11, 2025 in Manhattan. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Rudy Giuliani is hospitalized in critical condition, his spokesman said on Sunday.
The 81-year-old former New York City mayor is critical but stable, spokesman Ted Goodman said in a statement.
The statement does not say what led to the hospitalization.
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently in the hospital, where he remains in critical but stable condition,” the statement said. “Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak. We do ask that you join us in prayer for America’s Mayor — Rudy Giuliani.”
Giuliani served as New York City’s mayor from 1994 to 2001.
More recently, he was a personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, who wrote about Giuliani’s hospitalization in a social media post. The president called Giuliani “a True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR.”
A spokesperson for Eric Adams, who was the city’s mayor from 2022 to 2025, noted Giuliani’s service in a statement.
“From his years as a federal prosecutor to leading New York City through its darkest day on 9/11, he stood with this city when it needed him most,” Adams spokesperson Todd Shapiro said.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bill signing in the Oval Office of the White House on February 03, 2026 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump shared on his social media platform late Thursday night a video that included a racist animation of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama depicted with the bodies of apes.
After backlash, the White House at about noon Friday said the post had been taken down from the president’s page.
The roughly minutelong video, shared by Trump at 11:44 p.m. ET on Thursday, largely focused on debunked claims about the 2020 election.
At the end of the video, the Obamas’ faces appear abruptly and without explanation for seconds with the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” playing over it. The video then ends back on similar imagery of the conspiracy video footage.
The Obamas had no comment when ABC News reached out to their representatives for a response.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when first asked for comment early Friday, had said, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Though later Friday afternoon, a White House official told ABC News that a “staffer erroneously made the post.”
The video reposted by Trump overnight included only imagery of the Obamas.
The meme video referenced by Leavitt was shared in October by the Hardin County Republican Party of Kentucky on Facebook, which led the chairman to issue an apology and deleted the post after swift backlash noting the long history of racist tropes depicting Black people as apes or monkeys — a tool of slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize them.
Trump’s overnight repost was condemned by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, some of whom had called for it to be taken down and for the president to apologize.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the first Black leader of a party in Congress, wrote on X: “President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. Donald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder.”
“Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” Jeffries wrote.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and also the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, posted on X: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker wrote in a post: “This is totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, wrote in a post: “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent. This is dangerous and degrades our country — where are Senate Republicans? The President must immediately delete the post and apologize to Barack and Michelle Obama, two great Americans who make Donald Trump look like a small, envious man.”
US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the White House, Washington, D.C., US on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has pushed back against news reports that his top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, privately cautioned that if Trump ordered a U.S. military strike on Iran, a lack of critical munitions and support from allies could pose risks to American troops.
“General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won,” Trump posted Monday on his social media platform.
That statement came as Trump was said to be considering military options as he puts pressure on Iran to end its nuclear program or face “bad” consequences.
According to a U.S. official, Tehran was expected to offer a new nuclear proposal by Tuesday ahead of another round of negotiations in Geneva led by special envoy Steve Witkoff on Thursday.
The meeting would be the second round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran, with Omanis and Qataris passing notes between the delegations.
In a statement, a Joint Staff spokesman emphasized that Caine’s role is to provide “a range of military options, as well as secondary considerations and associated impacts and risks, to the civilian leaders who make America’s security decisions.”
The president added that he will make the final call regarding military action, and repeated that he wants a deal with Iran, but warned that if there is not a deal “it will be a very bad day for that Country.”
“I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them,” Trump said.
Trump also doubled down on his previous claims that Iran’s nuclear supply has been “obliterated” after last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer, saying that it was “blown to smithereens.”
“He knows Iran well,” he said, referring to Caine, “in that he was in charge of Midnight Hammer, the attack on the Iranian Nuclear Development. It is a Development no longer, but rather, was blown to smithereens by our Great B-2 Bombers.” Trump said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Iran during a speech to the Knesset on Monday, warning the Iranian ayatollah if Iran strikes Israel, “we will respond with a force they cannot even imagine,” according to remarks of his speech google translated from Hebrew to English.
“No one knows what the day will bring. We are vigilant, we are prepared for any scenario,” Netanyahu said.
On Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026, in front of the Orange County Courthouse, advocates and former elected officials asked President Trump to create a pathway to permanent residency for Haitians who face deportations as their temporary protected status expires on Feb. 3. (Natalia Jaramillo/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants.
In an 83-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes granted a stay maintaining the legal status of Haitian nationals “pending judicial review.” In her ruling, she accused Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of “preordaining” her termination decision, saying she “did so because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Judge Reyes wrote. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table.”
“Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side — or at least has ignored them,” Reyes continued. “Does not have the law on her side — or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).”
Judge Reyes wrote that while Noem has a First Amendment right “to call immigrants killers, leeches, [and] entitlement junkies,” she is constrained by the Constitution and federal law to “apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program.”
“The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste,” Reyes wrote. “Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight.”
The federal judge noted that Noem “has terminated every TPS country designation to have reached her desk — twelve countries up, twelve countries down.”
“The statutory design is straightforward: TPS exists because threats to life exist; when the threat persists, so should TPS protection, unless the Secretary articulates a well-reasoned and well-supported national interest to the contrary,” she wrote.
The D.C. federal judge listed the five plaintiffs by name, saying, “They are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.'”
“They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse,” Judge Reyes wrote.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin released a statement to ABC News on Monday night, saying, “Supreme Court, here we come.”
“This is lawless activism that we will be vindicated on. Haiti’s TPS was granted following an earthquake that took place over 15 years ago, it was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades. Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from an activist judge legislating from the bench,” McLaughlin said.
