Indicted ex-Trump adviser John Bolton accused of sharing 1K+ docs on government info

New York City mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa tried to blunt Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s momentum during a contentious first general election debate Thursday evening.

The president, who has threatened to arrest Mamdani, deport him and even take over the city if he wins, was invoked early and often.

Mamdani said he would stand up to Trump while also being willing to work with him on lowering costs and affordability.

“What New Yorkers need is a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver,” he said.

Cuomo warned that if Mamdani wins, “It will be Mayor Trump.”

“I’d like to work with you. I think we could do good things together. But No. 1, I will fight you every step of the way if you try to hurt New York,” Cuomo pledged.

He said Sliwa would not stand up to Trump, and as for Mamdani, the president “would knock him on his face.”

Sliwa warned that taking too contentious a tone would end up hurting the city.

“If you try to get tough with Trump,” he said, “New Yorkers will suffer.”

Venezuelan government officials have floated a plan in which President Nicolás Maduro would eventually leave office, a bid aimed at easing mounting U.S. pressure on the government in Caracas, according to a former Trump administration official.

The proposal, which was rejected by the White House, calls for Maduro to step down from power in three years and hand over authority to his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who would complete Maduro’s current six-year term that runs until January 2031. That’s according to the former Trump official, who was briefed on the plan but was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official said the White House had rejected the proposal because it continues to question the legitimacy of Maduro’s rule and accuses him of overseeing a narco-terrorist state.

The revelation of Maduro’s attempts to offer a plan to slowly ease himself out of power comes amid growing unease in the Venezuelan leader’s government that Trump could order military action to try to oust him.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

▶ Read more about the rejected proposal here

Trump wants to leave his mark on the nation’s capital by building a Paris-style arch just west of the Lincoln Memorial.

The proposed arch bears a striking resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the famous monument at the end of the Champs-Élysées honoring those who fought for France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.

Trump unveiled the plan at a White House dinner on Wednesday for the wealthy businesspeople who have pledged money toward the $250 million cost of adding a massive ballroom to the Executive Mansion. Trump did not put a price tag on the cost of the arch.

It was unclear if the White House has presented the proposal to the National Capital Planning Commission, which has responsibility over planning and siting monuments, memorials and statues in the city.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced the first round of experimental drugs that will receive drastically expedited reviews at the agency, part of an effort to prioritize medicines the Trump administration deems as “supporting U.S. national interests.”

The nine medicines announced by the FDA include potential treatments for vaping addiction, deafness, pancreatic cancer and other conditions.

Several of the drugs would compete with higher-priced drugs already on the U.S. market.

A drugmaker received the specialty review to expand U.S. manufacturing of ketamine, the powerful anesthetic that has grown into a trendy psychedelic treatment.

Under the program announced earlier this year, the FDA will aim to decide whether to approve the drugs in one to two months, an unprecedented pace for the in-depth safety and effectiveness reviews performed by agency scientists.

The attorneys general of more than a dozen states on Thursday sued the Trump administration over the termination of $7 billion in funding intended for affordable solar energy projects across the U.S.

The coalition, which also included the District of Columbia and other stakeholders, argued in the lawsuit that the Environmental Protection Agency’s cancellation of the Solar for All program violated the law governing federal agencies and the constitutional separation of powers.

The program was introduced in 2022 as part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, intended to make the renewable energy accessible to nearly 1 million Americans.

The EPA rescinded the Solar for All funds in August after Trump’s massive tax and spending law passed in Congress a month earlier.

The canceled $27 billion is just one example of the efforts the administration has taken against clean energy.

▶ Read more about the lawsuit here

“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement.

Bolton is the third Trump adversary to be prosecuted in the last month.

The University of Southern California says it “respectfully declines” to join Trump’s higher-education compact, which would have granted it favorable access to federal funding in exchange for adopting the president’s conservative agenda.

The private Los Angeles university joins the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in rejecting the compact.

In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim said the university was concerned that tying research benefits to the compact “would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote.”

Kim said other countries that lack “America’s commitment to freedom and democracy” have shown how academic excellence can suffer when tilting the “research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”

“I don’t know about the views of that,” he said when asked by a reporter about such objections after his announcement that a drugmaker would reduce the costs related to in vitro fertilization.

“You can’t get more pro-life than this,” he said.

Some religious conservatives oppose IVF or certain aspects of it. Anti-abortion activists are already decrying the announcement.

For decades, the Catholic Church has called IVF immoral because it replaces natural procreation with laboratory procedures and often involves the destruction of surplus embryos, which the church considers human life.

The Southern Baptist Convention lamented the “destruction of embryonic human life” in a 2024 resolution and urged members to carefully weigh IVF’s ethical implications. The resolution echoed a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos have the full rights of people.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is demanding that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva during a pro forma session scheduled for Friday.

Jeffries noted in a letter he sent to the speaker Thursday that Grijalva’s special election victory has been certified by Arizona, and he asserted that the refusal so far to swear the Democrat in “for partisan advantage undermines the integrity of this institution.”

“In April, Republican Representatives Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine were sworn in during a pro forma session less than 24 hours after their election,” Jeffries wrote. “The decision to seat right-wing Republicans with record speed, while denying a newly elected Democrat the opportunity to serve is an unacceptable disgrace.”

Johnson has insisted he’ll administer the oath of office when the House meets again in a legislative session. He has said that’s generally when swearing-ins take place so new members can enjoy the pomp and circumstance.

The indictment alleges that Bolton abused his position as national security adviser by sharing more than 1,000 pages of information about “his day-to-day activities” in his job with two people who were related to him and who were not authorized to view them.

He also is accused of illegally retaining at his Maryland home “documents, writings, and notes” related to national defense, including information that was classified up to the top secret level, according to the indictment.

An attorney for Bolton said his client “did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

“These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” attorney Abbe Lowell said in an emailed statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime.”

The indictment against the former national security adviser alleges that the personal email account Bolton used to share national defense information with two relatives was hacked by an entity believed to be associated with Iran.

A Bolton representative told the FBI about the hack in July 2021, but Bolton never told the government that he used the hacked account to share sensitive national defense information with his relatives, according to the indictment.

“Nor did he tell the FBI that the hackers now had this information,” the indictment says.

Three labor unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its surveillance of visa holders’ social media accounts.

The unions, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Muslim Advocates and the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic, filed the lawsuit against the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and others on Thursday.

They are seeking to block a federal program they say is “designed and executed primarily to surveil, intimidate, and silence noncitizens lawfully present in the United States who express views that the government disfavors.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, argues that the government is using the threat of immigration enforcement to suppress dissent, in violation of the First Amendment. It claims the government’s use artificial intelligence allows it to “review and process large volumes of social media and online activity at a scale previously difficult or impossible to analyze with human review alone,” allowing it to continuously surveil of 55 million U.S. visa holders, with the goal of punishing those who express “disfavored” viewpoints.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a message for comment Thursday.

A federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration and said a lower court’s temporary ban on deploying the National Guard to assist immigration officers in Illinois would stay in place while the government pursues an appeal.

The “spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions” of protesters “does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority,” a three-judge panel at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday.

The Trump administration wanted to deploy Guard troops from Texas and Illinois to the Chicago area. But the strategy was halted on Oct. 9 for at least two weeks by U.S. District Judge April Perry, who found that immigration enforcement has continued despite confrontations with protesters.

Perry said disruptions can be handled by local and state police. The appeals panel said the Guard could be federalized in Illinois but not deployed.

News of the charges broke during the president’s conversation with reporters in the Oval Office. Trump said he hadn’t known about the indictment and then criticized his former national security adviser, who has been an outspoken critic.

“I think he’s a bad person,” Trump said. “He’s a bad guy.”

He added, “That’s the way it goes, right?”

Former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton was charged Thursday in a federal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

The investigation into Bolton, who served for more than a year in President Donald Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019, burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington for classified records he may have held onto from his years in government.

The existence of the indictment was confirmed to the AP by a person familiar with the matter who could not publicly discuss the charges and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

▶ Read more about John Bolton indictment

The president, who is fond of using the two weeks timeframe for virtually anything, said his summit with the Russian leader in Budapest could happen in two weeks.

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, is set to host the meeting, Trump said.

Aides will formally set up the date and location, Trump added.

Asked about conservatives who are critical of his support for IVF for religious reasons, Trump said he wasn’t aware of those views.

“I think this is very pro-life,” he said at his Oval Office announcement, which included a deal to make a fertility drug cheaper and new guidance to encourage employers to offer IVF coverage. “You can’t get more pro-life than this.”

“It’s not going to be us,” Trump told reporters. “We won’t have to. There are people very close, very nearby that will go in and they’ll do the trick very easily, but under our auspices.”

Trump earlier on Thursday in a Truth Social post warned Hamas “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them” if internal bloodshed persists in Gaza.

The grim warning from Trump came after he previously downplayed the internal violence in the territory since a ceasefire took hold last week.

Trump said he got started on the whole issue of affordability for IVF treatments because of an Alabama Supreme Court case from 2024, which said that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law — a decision that at the time raised serious questions about a treatment used to enable people to become parents.

In their February 2024 ruling, justices said that an 1872 Alabama law that enables parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”

The ruling in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine temporarily stopped in vitro fertilization services in the state and became a political controversy as states grappled with the implications of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned abortion rights in the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade.

Trump said in remarks while rolling out his plans to reduce IVF costs that Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., got him started on this issue by bringing to his attention the Alabama Supreme Court ruling. While campaigning for the presidency in 2024, Trump came out in support of IVF as a result.

By December 2024, a judge dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit that had led to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling.

The president said at the White House on Thursday that his administration struck a deal with EMD Serono to cut the cost of the drug, Gonal-f. It’s the third deal the administration has made with pharmaceutical companies to cut drug prices in recent weeks.

Trump also said his administration will work with the company to expedite FDA approval of another one of its fertility drugs, Pergoveris.

Texas National Guard soldiers and troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety will be deployed to Austin to help law enforcement manage Saturday’s “No Kings” protest in the state’s capital, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.

“Texas will deter criminal mischief and work with local law enforcement to arrest anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property,” Abbott said in a statement Thursday.

In June, Abbott deployed more than 5,000 Texas National Guard troops around the state to monitor similar protests against President Donald Trump and ongoing federal immigration raids.

Earlier this month, Abbott sent about 400 Texas National Guard troops to Illinois to help the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Chicago.

Congress has been told the funding needed to pay the troops this week will tally be about $6.5 billion, according to a person granted anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the situation.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, which is headed by Russ Vought, informed Congress that the money would cover one pay period.

Trump had instructed the Pentagon to come up with funding to ensure the troops don’t miss a paycheck. The budget office tapped unused research and development money.

It is unclear how the troops will be paid during the next payday, in two weeks.

The Trump administration is appealing a federal judge’s decision blocking the Education Department’s attempts to forbid diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the nation’s schools.

The Education Department filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday following a lower court’s decision in August. The initial ruling in Maryland found the agency violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from schools and colleges that continued with DEI efforts.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association. It centers on two Education Department memos ordering schools and universities to end all “race-based decision-making.”

The memos have been on hold since April when multiple federal judges blocked the anti-DEI measures.

The Kremlin said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call with U.S. President Donald Trump was “frank and trusting.”

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters that the call that was initiated by the Russian leader and lasted nearly 2 ½ hours.

Ushakov said that Putin congratulated Trump on the Gaza ceasefire, noting that “the U.S. President’s peacekeeping activities have been highly praised in the Middle East, in America itself, and in most countries around the world.”

Turning to Ukraine, the Russian leader noted that possible supplies of the U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine will not change the situation on the battlefield but will inflict significantly damage U.S.-Russian relations, Ushakov said.

The Kremlin adviser specifically noted that Putin highly assessed Melania Trump’s efforts to help reunite Russian and Ukrainian children with their families.

Ushakov said that preparations for Putin’s meeting with Trump in Budapest will start with a phone call between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats.

The president on his social media site said he’s “outraged” by a vote planned on Friday by the International Maritime Organization to impose a global fee on the carbon emissions produced by container ships.

Trump urged other nations in the organization to vote no, saying on Truth Social that the United States “will not adhere” to the fee “in any way, shape, or form” if it passes. In April, the organization agreed to the framework for the fee that is meant to reduce the use of fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change.

But Trump, who has imposed sweeping tariffs on goods coming into the U.S., called the fee a “scam” that could worsen inflation.

“We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers,” he posted.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says the Senate will consider bipartisan legislation to impose steep tariffs on countries that purchase Russia’s oil, gas, uranium and other exports in the coming weeks as President Donald Trump announced that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Thune said the Senate will consider the bill “in the next 30 days” and that the legislation’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, will introduce revised legislation soon.

The White House has been working with lawmakers on the bill, which has stalled for months as Republican leaders waited for Trump to give his approval.

“I don’t want to commit to a hard deadline, but it will be soon,” Thune said.

Trump said Thursday he will meet with Putin in Hungary in an effort to end the war in Ukraine, though a date has not been set.

Retired military leaders are criticizing the possibility of a National Guard deployment to the Chicago area as inappropriate and dangerous.

Randy Manner, a retired Army major general, was among several former military leaders who appeared with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday in Chicago amid an ongoing federal immigration crackdown.

“Soldiers are trained to eliminate threats, not to deescalate tensions or protect constitutional rights during protests,” Manner said. “When we blur that line, we risk turning our own streets into battlefield and our citizens into potential enemies.”

A judge has temporarily blocked a Chicago area deployment saying the federal government hasn’t presented evidence to justify it.
Pritzker and other local leaders have said military deployments aren’t needed or wanted.

The Interior Department rejected a mining company’s bid for 1.3 million tons of coal beneath a national forest in Utah, marking the third proposed coal sale from public lands in the West to fall through this month.

The failed sales mark a setback in President Donald Trump’s push to revive a coal mining industry that’s been in decline for almost two decades.
Interior officials rejected the sole bid received for coal on a proposed 120-acre (49-hectare) lease on the Manti-La Sal National Forest in central Utah because it did not meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act.
The leasing act requires companies to pay fair market value for coal from public lands.

The department last week rejected a bid for 167 million tons of coal in Montana and indefinitely postponed an even larger sale in Wyoming.

The Energy Department said Thursday it has finalized a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to a subsidiary of one of the nation’s largest power companies to upgrade nearly 5,000 miles of transmission lines across five states, mostly in the Midwest.

AEP Transmission will upgrade power lines in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia to enhance enhance grid reliability and capacity and help meet surging electricity demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.

Parent company American Electric Power primarily produces electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear power, along with renewable resources such as wind and hydroelectric power..

The move comes as the Trump administration has moved to cancel $7.6 billion in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, all of which voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.

The University of Pennsylvania is the latest campus to reject President Donald Trump’s higher-education “compact.”

The Ivy League university told Trump officials that it “respectfully declines” to sign the agreement, according to a campus message from Penn President J. Larry Jameson. The message cited “substantive concerns” but did not elaborate.

It follows other rejections from Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Penn faced pressure to turn the deal down, including from its faculty senate and state Democrats.

The Trump administration invited nine universities to become initial signatories of the compact, offering “multiple positive benefits” including favorable access to federal funding. In exchange, universities were asked to make commitments aligned with Trump’s agenda.

It asked for commitments to remove race from admissions decisions, to promote conservative views on campus, to limit protests and to ensure “institutional neutrality” on current events, among other provisions

Trump on Thursday warned Hamas “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them” if internal bloodshed persists in Gaza.

The grim warning from Trump came after he previously downplayed the internal violence in the territory since a ceasefire went into effect last week.

Trump said Tuesday that Hamas had taken out “a couple of gangs that were very bad” and had killed a number of gang members. “That didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you,” he said.

▶ Read more about Gaza

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’ll meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Hungary to try to resolve the war in Ukraine, but a date has yet to be determined.

Trump spoke with Putin on Thursday as he considers Ukraine’s push for long-range missiles. The call comes ahead of Trump’s meeting on Friday at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been pressing Trump to sell Kyiv Tomahawk missiles that would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory. Zelenskyy has argued such strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war more seriously.

▶ Read more about Russia-Ukraine War

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey on Thursday dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to move World Cup matches scheduled to take place in Massachusetts as “political theatre.”

“Oh, God. Come on. You know, that’s just more political theater, so I don’t really pay that too much mind,” she said, when asked about Trump’s comments by a reporter at a press conference in Boston.

Healey said “it doesn’t make any sense” for the matches to be moved, and emphasized that Massachusetts has some of the lowest crime statistics in the U.S. She said Patriots Owner Robert Kraft and others have been working hard planning for the events, set to take place at Gillette Stadium, and they have safety measures “under control.”

“But that’s another day, another Donald Trump comment. So you got to understand what that is,” Healey told reporters.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is praising a federal judge who said she will require federal immigration agents in the Chicago to wear body cameras.

Pritzker, a Democrat, told reporters Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s statements about arrests are often inaccurate.

That includes last month’s fatal shooting of a suburban Chicago man. DHS officials initially said an officer was “seriously” injured but local police body camera showed him saying his injuries were “nothing major.”

“They clearly lie about what goes on,” Pritzker said. “It’s hard for us to know right away what the truth is.”

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said in a ruling Thursday that the Republican administration’s decision to withhold the earmarked money, based on the Big Apple’s “sanctuary city” protections for illegal immigrants, was “arbitrary, capricious, and a blatant violation of the law.”

The post-9/11 Transit Security Grant Program, Kaplan noted, was created with instructions that money be allocated solely on the basis of terrorism risk. The judge had previously issued an order temporarily freezing the move.

The state sued Department of Homeland Security after it said last month that it was eliminating funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s transit system.

The MTA said its allocation, the largest of any transit agency, pays for targeted counterterrorism patrols, security equipment, infrastructure enhancements, cybersecurity technology and weapons detection technologies.

A new initiative launched Thursday seeks to provide immigrants with free access to lawyers by donating funds to legal service providers that work in legal deserts, areas near U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention centers, or communities with large immigrant populations.

Defending Our Neighbors Fund, created by the American Civil Liberties Union, United We Dream and Abundant Futures Fund, aims to raise $30 million. It already raised $10 million before its public launch.

Money will go to nonprofit legal service providers that have seen their budgets shrink, such as those providing representation for unaccompanied child immigrants.

“So one lawyer can mean one more family kept whole. One fund can mean one more future protected,” Greisa Martinez-Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, said.

The U.S. president wrote on his social media site that he is on the phone with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“I am speaking to President Putin now. The conversation is ongoing, a lengthy one, and I will report the contents, as will President Putin, at its conclusion. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump said on Truth Social late Thursday morning.

The call comes ahead of Trump’s meeting on Friday at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader has been pressing Trump to sell Kyiv Tomahawk missiles, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory.

In response to a federal judge saying she will require immigration agents in the Chicago area to wear body cameras, an attorney for the federal government said they don’t have body cameras.

Sean Skedzielewski also said the Department of Homeland Security has limited resources to hand those out immediately.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis responded: “I understand that. I would not be expecting agents to wear body worn cameras they do not have.”

She said details could be worked out starting at an additional hearing on Monday.

Celia Monreal worries every day about the cartilage loss in her husband’s knees. Not just because it’s hard for her to see him in pain but also because she knows soon their health care costs could skyrocket.

Monreal, 47, and her husband, Jorge, 57, rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplace for health coverage. If Congress doesn’t extend certain ACA tax credits set to expire at the end of the year, their fully subsidized plan will increase in cost, putting it out of reach. Without insurance, they won’t be able to afford his expected knee replacement surgeries, much less the treatment they need for other issues, like her chronic high blood pressure and his high cholesterol.

“It worries me sometimes, because if you’re not healthy, then you’re not here for your kids,” Monreal said. “It’s a difficult decision, because, OK, do I spend $500 on a doctor’s visit or do I buy groceries?”

Those are the types of choices facing the millions of Americans whose state or federal marketplace health insurance plans will be up for renewal in November. The enhanced premium tax credits that have made coverage more affordable for low- and middle-income enrollees for the last four years will expire this year if Congress doesn’t extend them. On average, that will more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay for premiums next year, according to an analysis by health care research nonprofit KFF.

▶ Read more about the people who will be impacted if health care subsidies expire

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, is sending a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that criticizes the Department of Justice’s handling of a congressional subpoena for the investigative files into the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“Your response to our bipartisan subpoena has been completely insufficient,” Garcia writes. “The only production of documents by DOJ consisted almost entirely of documents that were either already public or in the Committee’s possession.”