Vance, a Marine veteran, will tour a multi-agency Federal Joint Operations Center as well as a Federal Mobile Command Center. He will also meet with leadership and Marines before giving remarks, according to his office.
His visit comes as protests and law enforcement clash in Los Angeles over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s raids and deportations — a key part of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Another conflict in the city stems from Trump’s decision to deploy thousands of National Guardsmen and hundreds of Marines to LA against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes.
A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Trump can keep the National Guard in Los Angeles for now — allowing the president to continue to use the military to quell protests against his deportation plans. Trump called the decision a “BIG WIN” in a social media post.
Earlier this month, Vance attacked the protests and used the events unfolding in LA to push for passage of the megabill that would advance Trump’s legislative agenda.
“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vance wrote in an X post. “Time to pass President Trump’s beautiful bill and further secure the border.”
Many Democrats have spoken out against the Trump administration’s immigration practices. Last week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, was forcibly removed from a Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference on the topic after he said he was trying to ask a question.
(WASHINGTON) — House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is making a marathon last stand against President Donald Trump’s major tax cut and spending bill.
Jeffries took to the House floor around 5 a.m. on Thursday and shortly after noon had been speaking for more than seven hours, delaying a final vote in the chamber on the domestic policy bill at the heart of Trump’s second-term agenda.
Jeffries has stacks of binders next to him at the podium as he picks apart the bill and some of the Republicans who voted for it.
“Donald Trump’s deadline may be Independence Day. That ain’t my deadline,” Jeffries said. “You know why, Mr. Speaker, we don’t work for Donald Trump, we work for the American people. That’s why we’re here right now on the floor of the House of Representatives, standing up for the American people.”
The “magic minute” speech is a procedure that grants members of House leadership unlimited time to speak after debate on a bill has concluded. For context, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, spoke for more than eight hours in 2021 when the House passed President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
Jeffries is getting close to that mark, and appears to be aiming for a new record.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to speak for about 10 minutes once Jeffries has wrapped up. After that, a final vote will take place on the bill.
Johnson, who has said he has the votes to pass the bill, told reporters he expected a signing ceremony for the bill will be held on Friday.
Jeffries has focused much of his speech on the bill’s projected impact on Medicaid, the federal program that primarily serves seniors and people with disabilities, sharing personal stories from people he says will struggle as a result of the megabill.
“People will die. Tens of thousands, perhaps year after year after year, as a result of the Republican assault on the healthcare of the American people,” Jeffries said. “I’m sad. I never thought I would be on the House floor saying this is a crime scene.”
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Medicaid cuts and changes passed by the Senate could cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health insurance over the next decade.
Jeffries is excoriating the Trump-backed megabill’s “assault on healthcare.”
“Every single house Democrat is fighting hard to protect your Medicaid,” Jeffries said. “We value you and we’re working hard to defend you.”
Republicans have defended the changes as reforms to entitlement programs they claim are riddled with “waste, fraud and abuse.” The Trump administration has also pushed back on the nonpartisan budget office itself and its analysis, claiming bias.
Jeffries didn’t stop at health care and is criticizing other portions of the bill, including its impact on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and its immigration provisions.
“You see, budgets are moral documents. And in our view, Mr. Speaker, budgets should be designed to lift people up,” he said. “This reckless Republican budget that we are debating right now on the floor of the House of Representatives tears people down.”
“This reckless Republican budget is an immoral document,” Jeffries continued. “And everybody should vote no against it because of how it attacks children, seniors, and everyday Americans, and people with disabilities. This reckless Republican budget is an immoral document. And that is why I stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives with my colleagues in the House Democratic caucus to stand up and push back against it with everything we have.”
Those comments prompted House Democrats gathered near Jeffries to stand in applause.
Members of the National Guard arrive at the Guard’s headquarters at the D.C. Armory on August 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will seek more permanent federal control of the Washington, D.C., police force as he continues his efforts to ramp-up crime enforcement in the nation’s capital.
Earlier this week, Trump announced his plans to deploy National Guard troops in the nation’s capital, declaring a public safety emergency in order to put the Washington police department under federal control and station the National Guard on the city’s streets. Trump’s control of the D.C. police force expires in 30 days, after which Congress would have to weigh in.
Asked Wednesday whether he’d work with Congress to extend the emergency authorization allowing him to seize temporary control of local law enforcement, Trump said he’ll ask Congress for a “long-term” extension of federal control of the Washington police force.
“We’re going to be asking for extensions on that — long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days,” Trump said at an event at the Kennedy Center Wednesday afternoon.
Trump indicated at one point that he’d ask Congress for more funds to fight crime and to make repairs to Washington.
“We’re going to make Washington beautiful. We’re going to redo roads. We’re going to redo the medians. The pavers and the medians are all throughout the city. We’re going to take all the graffiti off. We’re going to have to remove the tents. And the people that are living in our parks, we’re going to be redoing the parks, the grasses and all. We’re going to be going to Congress for a relatively small amount of money. And Lindsey [Graham] and the Republicans are going to be approving it,” Trump said.
Trump has long threatened to take control of Washington, saying he wants to crack down on violent crime in the District although police statistics show that in the past two years, violent crime has fallen dramatically.
“Fighting crime is a good thing. We have to explain we’re going to fight crime — that’s a good thing,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon. “Already they’re saying, ‘He’s a dictator.’ The place is going to hell. We’ve got to stop it. So instead of saying, ‘He’s a dictator,’ they should say, ‘We’re going to join him and make Washington safe.'”
Trump pledged to make Washington “crime-free.”
“We’re going to be essentially crime-free. This is going to be a beacon, and it’s going to also serve as an example of what can be done,” Trump said.
On Tuesday night, more than 1,450 federal law enforcement officers and National Guard members patrolled Washington, according to a White House official. Forces made 43 arrests on Tuesday night — nearly twice the amount they made Monday night.
Those forces included 750 D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers who were “uniformed, marked as patrol and directly assigned as anti-crime officers,” the White House official said. That was in addition to the federal law enforcement who had been previously mobilized in the area. The White House official said that there were about 30 National Guard troops on the ground last night.
The forces, which included 19 inter-agency teams, were “deployed throughout all seven districts in D.C. to promote public safety and arrest violent offenders,” the White House official said.
After Trump’s announcement Monday, approximately 850 officers and agents fanned out over D.C. right after Trump declared a crime emergency in the capital, making 23 arrests, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
The surge in federal law enforcement has yielded more than 100 total arrests since Aug. 7, according to a White House official. The official said that the charges have included one homicide charge, seven narcotics charges, 33 firearms charges, 10 warrants, 23 charges against undocumented immigrants and 29 other charges. The official adds that they have seized 24 firearms since operations began.
The official said that on Wednesday night they expect “significantly higher National Guard presence to be on the ground throughout Washington, D.C.” The White House official adds that beginning Wednesday night, the operations will transition to round-the-clock, 24/7 operations. Operations had been previously focused on evening and overnight hours.
On Tuesday, National Guard troops were spotted on the National Mall, with many stationed around the base of the Washington Monument. The troops left Wednesday morning. It was not immediately clear why the presence of U.S. troops along the National Mall was needed, other than to put Trump’s orders on display. The area, marked by museums, monuments and long stretches of grass, is known as a relatively safe part of the city that attracts mostly tourists and school groups.
(WASHINGTON) — Gathered on the Senate floor after a 26-hour, record-breaking vote-a-rama series, senators voted hastily on two final Republican-led amendments before getting to the main event: final passage of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Vice President JD Vance was presiding over the chamber after breaking a tie on a previously considered wraparound amendment to the bill. It was assumed that he would soon break another tie on the bill’s final passage, with a number of Republican holdouts remaining to make the vote math still uncertain.
It was just a matter of who would be the third “no” vote Republicans could afford to lose and still pass the bill. Sens. Thom Tillis and Rand Paul had already committed to voting it down.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was widely thought to be the last opponent, with a temporary SNAP carveout for her state of Alaska hanging in the balance down until the last minute.
When the final vote started, Murkowski was seated in the second row near the middle of the chamber. Next to her was Mississippi GOP Sen. Roger Wicker and next to him was another moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who eventually proved to be the third and final GOP “no” vote.
Collins, dressed in a hot-pink pantsuit, votes near the top of the alphabet. But she left near the beginning of the vote’s final passage to go to the cloakroom. She missed her chance to vote when her name was called, coming out shortly after and walking directly to Murkowski. Collins put her arm around Murkowski, and then went up to the clerk and put her thumb down: no. She then left the chamber.
Focus was then squarely on Murkowski, whose vote could have tanked the entire bill. But former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came up to sit next to her. The two talked quietly and then shook hands. When her name was called, Murkowski quietly said “Aye.”
Senators had added additional sweeteners for her state, including a provision aimed at insulating Alaska from some of the bill’s harshest impacts on SNAP.
She then started to leave the chamber, shaking hands with GOP Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana before exiting.
Afterward, Murkowski told ABC News’ she “struggled mightily with the [bill’s] impact on the most vulnerable in this country.”
“I needed help, and I worked to get that every single day. And did I get everything that I wanted? Absolutely not,” she added.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune didn’t speak to either woman after their votes. He was seated in his chair in the front of the chamber.
Collins later explained her vote in a statement: “My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”
She also said she had problems with cuts to energy tax credits and that the rural hospital relief fund that was created to try to get Republican holdouts to vote for the bill was insufficient.
ABC News’ John Parkinson and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
