(WASHINGTON) — A Massachusetts man was found to be carrying a gun after attending a tour of the U.S. Capitol as he left the nearby Library of Congress on Tuesday, police officials told ABC News on Thursday.
Authorities in Washington were alerted by police in Carlisle, Massachusetts, on Monday that a man with a gun who had expressed suicidal ideations on social media was headed to Washington.
The U.S. Secret Service and Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police found the man in a Washington hotel early Tuesday morning and interviewed him, sources said. They searched for a gun and found no weapon and no further action was taken at that time, they said.
Later that day, the man went through a Capitol Police magnetometer screening and entered the Capitol Visitor Center. The magnetometer sounded an alarm and “an officer performed a secondary hand search, and the man was let into the building,” according to a statement from U.S. Capitol Police.
After getting past security, Capitol Police were alerted to his presence and issued a bulletin to be on the lookout for the man. They located him after he had completed the full tour of Congress outside the Library of Congress a short time later and found that he had a 9mm handgun in his waistband, law enforcement sources said.
Authorities said the suspect was arrested for “Unlawful Activities, Carrying a Pistol Without a License, Possession of an Unregistered Firearm, Unlawful Possession of Ammunition, and Resisting Arrest.” The case is currently with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Capitol Police statement said.
The officer who performed the screening at the magnetometer at the Capitol Visitor Center “is suspended while the USCP’s Office of Professional Responsibility is conducting an administrative investigation into the officer’s performance of that search.”
There is no indication he intended to cause any harm to harm the Congress, according to Capitol police. But sources told ABC News that a man who was possibly suicidal was able to take a full tour of Congress with a gun with members of the public and Congress nearby.
“A full review of this incident has already been ordered, as well as mandatory refresher training on security screening, so this never happens again,” Capitol Police said in their statement.
Members of Congress were briefed on the situation on Thursday.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As Elon Musk continues to dismantle government agencies, threaten workers with layoffs and gain access to government data, congressional Republicans on Wednesday blocked Democratic efforts to compel him to answer for his actions under oath.
Musk, who has not made any public appearances since the inauguration, has publicly called for cutting down the federal government and through his non-government organization Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has frozen funding for several agencies including USAID the international aid agency.
Designated a special government employee by the White House, Musk claims he has been in talks with President Donald Trump about his tactics.
“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said Monday on his effort to curtail USAID.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, tore into Musk during a committee hearing on Wednesday as he moved to subpoena the controversial billionaire.
“It’s a puzzling role for many people, certainly on this side of the aisle, and I think for some on yours, who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence,” he said.
Republicans on the committee pushed back and engaged in a shouting match with Democrats over Musk. When GOP chairman Rep. James Comer put the motion to a vote, it failed along party lines.
Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who has shown support for DOGE in the past, abstained from voting.
Comer and other Republicans came to Musk and DOGE’s defense contending, without evidence, that the federal government was wasting taxpayer dollars and those agencies needed to be reviewed and scaled back.
“Elon Musk trimmed the fat on X and we have the chance to do the same here,” Comer said about Musk deep cuts at the social media giant.
Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022 has been seen by some business analysts as an unsuccessful investment as the company’s value has gone down sharply over the years with users and advertisers dropping the platform.
The mutual fund Fidelity marked down its estimate of X’s value by 78.7% as of the end of August, according to a financial disclosure.
Republicans have maintained that Musk is not in charge and answers to Trump.
When asked about Democrats’ concerns and anger over DOGE, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump campaigned to make the government more efficient and defended Musk’s involvement in it.
While Musk won’t be taking questions from leaders anytime soon, he has spent a lot of time on his social media platform making his case for the cuts.
On Thursday he reposted a X post that had screenshot from a news article talking about DOGE aides looking at the Medicare payment system.
“Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening,” Musk wrote in his post without any further details or evidence to back his claim.
The Medicare system wasn’t the only government agency that was put on notice this week.
The Treasury Department said that officials connected to DOGE have been granted “read-only” access to the sensitive Treasury system that manages trillions of dollars in government payments.
Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that DOGE is not allowed to write new code.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for forecasting the weather, researching and analyzing climate and weather data and monitoring and tracking extreme weather events like hurricanes, is now being scrutinized by Musk’s team, several sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
DOGE is looking for anything tied to DEI and that they removed anything DEI-related from bulletin boards, including posters and signs, the sources said. They also checked bathroom signs to ensure they complied with Trump’s executive orders.
A former NOAA employee told ABC News that he is concerned that representatives from DOGE will employ what he called the Musk’s strategy of breaking things now and fixing them later. He said he’s worried that NOAA’s irreplaceable climate and weather data could be damaged or lost and that DOGE may be following the Project 2025 playbook.
Trump has distanced himself from the plan. However, his nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was one of the authors.
Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA and privatizing forecast operations. In the document, the authors wrote that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.
As these moves take place, questions have been raised by leaders, critics and others about by how much and how exactly its operating.
Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing but told people he thought it was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News. Instead, he took an office inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the sources said.
Musk moved beds into both the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the United States Office of Personnel Management, according to sources. The move is intended to allow both Musk and his staff to sleep there if working late, the sources said.
It follows a familiar trend for tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Musk’s team is staffed largely by engineers and young people with little experience in government policy. At least one as young as 19 years old, according to sources.
Trump was asked Tuesday about Musk’s team including the younger members and their access to government data and facilities and said he thought it was a good move.
Democratic leadership on the Hill has repeatedly downplayed the power Musk claims for DOGE.
“It has no authority to make spending decisions, to shut down programs or ignore federal law. This is not debatable. This is an indisputable fact. No authority for spending decisions to shut down programs or ignore federal law,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Matthew Glasser, Will Steakin, Katherine Faulders and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday morning was still speaking on the Senate floor, staging a filibuster he started at 7 p.m. Monday night, in what he called a protest against the national “crisis” he said President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had created.
On Monday night, he said he was set to last “as long as [he is] physically able.”
“I’m heading to the Senate floor because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have shown a complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution, and the needs of the American people. You can tune in on CSPAN, YouTube, X, and Facebook,” the senator posted on X as he took to the floor.
Booker, who said he would keep the Senate floor open through the duration of his remarks, said at the top of his speech that he “rise[s] with the intention of disrupting the normal business” of the chamber because he believes the country is in “crisis” due to the actions of the White House since Trump started his second term.
“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis, and I believe that not in a partisan sense, because so many of the people that have been reaching out to my office in pain, in fear, having their lives upended–so many of them identify themselves as Republicans,” Booker said.
“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people For from our highest offices, a sense of common decency. These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such,” he said.
So long as Booker is holding the floor, the Senate won’t be able to conduct other business unless he temporarily yields.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday as talks continue to try to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Their conversation came one day after Trump failed to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a 30-day total ceasefire proposed by the U.S. and backed by Ukraine, though Putin agreed to pause attacks on energy infrastructure.
Trump, in a social media post, said the call with Zelenskyy lasted an hour and was “very good.”
“Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” Trump wrote. “We are very much on track, and I will ask Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, to give an accurate description of the points discussed. That Statement will be put out shortly.”
Zelenskyy previously told ABC News Chief International Correspondent James Longman he was counting on having a conversation with Trump about the “details” of a partial energy ceasefire.
“We have always supported the ceasefire position and not to use any weapons against the energy infrastructure, and also we have supported the position of not to attack the naval corridors,” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.
But Russia and Ukraine continued to trade strikes overnight following the Trump-Putin call. Ukrainian authorities reported a drone attack on a hospital, while Moscow said Ukraine struck an oil depot facility.
The actions prompted Zelenskyy to say “only a real cessation by Russia of attacks on civilian infrastructure as evidence of a desire to end this war can bring peace close.”
Wednesday’s call was the first between Trump and Zelenskyy since their Oval Office clash last month, in which Trump accused the Ukrainian leader of not being ready for peace and not holding any cards in negotiations.
Following the tense exchange, the Trump administration cut off military assistance and some intelligence sharing to Kyiv. Those tools, however, were reinstated after Ukraine agreed to a 30-day truce during talks with top U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia last week.
Trump had expressed optimism ahead of his call with Putin that there would a good chance of success in securing the monthlong ceasefire. But then in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night, Trump conceded it “would have been tough.”
The Kremlin said following Tuesday’s call that in terms of the monthlong ceasefire, Russia “identified a number of significant issues related to ensuring effective control over a possible ceasefire along the entire line of contact.”
Plus, it said a key condition for ending the war would be the total “cessation” of military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv.
“Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire. It would be right for the world to respond by rejecting any attempts by Putin to prolong the war,” Zelenskyy responded on Tuesday.
“Sanctions against Russia. Assistance to Ukraine. Strengthening allies in the free world and working toward security guarantees. And only a real cessation of strikes on civilian infrastructure by Russia, as proof of its willingness to end this war, can bring peace closer.”
