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Tag: U.S. Secret Service

  • Man taken into custody after driving his car into security gate outside White House, authorities say – WTOP News

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    Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity or any potential motivation.

    A vehicle is seen after ramming a security barricade at the White House complex on Oct. 21, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The Secret Service reported that one individual was arrested and that the vehicle is now deemed safe. (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.

    The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.

    Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.

    Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity or any potential motivation.

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    © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • Man taken into custody after driving his car into security gate outside White House, authorities say

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    Man taken into custody after driving his car into security gate outside White House, authorities say

    Updated: 12:48 AM EDT Oct 22, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.

    WASHINGTON —

    A man was taken into custody late Tuesday after driving his car into a security barrier outside the White House, authorities said.

    The U. S. Secret Service said the man crashed into the security gate at a White House entrance at 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday. The man was immediately arrested by officers from the Secret Service’s uniformed division, the agency said.

    Investigators searched his car and deemed it to be safe, Secret Service officials said in a statement.

    Authorities did not immediately provide any additional information about the crash, the driver’s identity, or any potential motivation.

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  • The Latest: Candidates try to counter criticisms in dueling speeches

    The Latest: Candidates try to counter criticisms in dueling speeches

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    Derided by Donald Trump as a “communist,” Vice President Kamala Harris is playing up her street cred as a capitalist. Attacked by Harris as a rich kid who got $400 million from his father on a “silver platter,” Trump is leaning into his raw populism.

    The two presidential candidates delivered dueling speeches Wednesday that reflect how they’re honing their economic messages for voters in battleground states. Both are trying to counter criticism of them while laying out their best case for a public that still worries about the economy’s health.

    Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

    Here’s the latest:

    Speaker Johnson demands Zelenskyy remove Ukraine’s ambassador to US after Pennsylvania visit

    House Speaker Mike Johnson is calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fire his country’s ambassador to the U.S. as Republicans criticize the war-torn leader’s visit to a swing-state Pennsylvania site producing munitions for the Russia-Ukraine war as a political stunt.

    The Republican Johnson’s demand Wednesday came as Zelenskyy addressed the United Nations in New York on the eve of his visit to Washington, D.C., where he has plans Thursday to brief senators on Capitol Hill about the war effort before meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.

    “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy.

    Johnson said no Republicans were invited to the plant tour arranged by Ambassador Oksana Markarova to Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is Biden’s hometown.

    Johnson called the visit an “intentionally political move” and said it “has caused Republicans to lose trust in Ambassador Markarova’s ability to fairly and effectively serve as a diplomat in this country. She should be removed from her post immediately.”

    Read more here.

    Majority of Chinese Americans plan to vote this November

    More than three-fourths of Chinese Americans say they plan to vote in the upcoming general election, according to a survey conducted by the Committee of 100 and the NORC Center for Public Affairs at the University of Chicago.

    Potential voter turnout is one of several findings released Wednesday from the survey of 504 Chinese American adults. Other questions examine the threats and discrimination members of the community face, along with concerns over the impact of China-U.S. relations on the community.

    Chinese Americans make up more than a quarter of the Asian American population, the fastest growing segment in the U.S., the survey said. In an election expected to be decided by just thousands of votes in a small number of states, voter turnout will be critical.

    Vivien Leung, an assistant professor of Political Science, Santa Clara University, who worked on the report estimated that the Chinese American turnout was 55 percent in 2020. She said the turnout was lower than for other Asian American Pacific Islander groups. “Understanding the mental health, discrimination and political perspectives of Chinese Americans is essential to create inclusive and informed policies,” said Cindy Tsai, Interim President, Committee of 100. The Committee of 100 is a New York-based advocacy group for Chinese Americans.

    A Democratic group is setting aside money to give to states for post-election litigation

    The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State says it’s setting aside $5 million to give to states’ top elections officers for post-election litigation.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    The group is launching a legal defense fund to help the Democratic Secretaries of State in Maine, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina with expected litigation over the results of the 2024 election. The step comes as former President Donald Trump has signaled that he’ll challenge a possible loss in court.

    “This effort will help ensure that Secretaries of State can do their jobs of administering free and fair elections, and ensure that voters have their voices heard at the ballot box,” Travis Brimm, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

    Trump’s campaign says he’ll hold a rally in town that was site of July assassination attempt

    Trump next month plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was struck by a bullet in an assassination attempt.

    The former president’s campaign said Wednesday that Trump will hold a rally Oct. 5 at the same place he did during the July 13 attack.

    The Republican presidential candidate plans to honor Corey Comperatore, the ex-fire chief who was shot and killed at the July rally, along with two other attendees who were injured by the shooter.

    “After not one, but two attempts on his life in the past nine weeks, President Trump is more determined than ever to see his mission through to the end,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.

    Biden’s advice for Harris to win the election is for her to ‘be herself’

    President Joe Biden said his advice to Vice President Kamala Harris for winning the November election was to “be herself.”

    Biden was in New York on Wednesday and sat down with the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View.” He fielded a range of questions about the presidential race, ending his reelection campaign and tensions in the Middle East.

    Biden endorsed Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination and said she is “smart as hell.”

    “She has the energy. She has the intelligence. She has the grit. She has the stamina, and she has the guts to do the right thing,” he said.

    Biden, 81, also said he was “at peace” with his decision to end his campaign but remained confident he could have defeated Republican Donald Trump.

    Harris will visit the US-Mexico border on Friday

    Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Friday as her campaign increasingly tries to make the issue of immigration more of a strength.

    That push could counter a line of attack from Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump.

    Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the trip but insisted on anonymity Wednesday to confirm details that had not been announced publicly.

    Trump has built his campaign partly around calling for cracking down on immigration and the southern border, even endorsing using police and the military to carry out mass deportations should he be elected in November.

    Since taking over for President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris has leaned into her experience as a former attorney general of California, saying she frequently visited the border and prosecuted drug and people smuggling gangs in that post.

    As she campaigns around the country, the vice president has also frequently criticized top Republicans for voting down a sweeping, bipartisan immigration package in Congress earlier this year after Trump opposed it.

    — By Zeke Miller and Colleen Long

    Wisconsin mayor says he did nothing wrong when he removed an absentee ballot drop box

    The mayor of a central Wisconsin city who ran for office on his opposition to absentee ballot drop boxes said Wednesday he did nothing wrong when he put on work gloves, donned a hard hat and used a dolly to cart away a drop box outside City Hall.

    Wausau Mayor Doug Diny posed for a picture Sunday to memorialize his removal of the city’s lone drop box that had been put outside City Hall around the same time late last week that absentee ballots were sent to voters.

    “This is no different than the maintenance guy moving it out there,” Diny said Wednesday. “I’m a member of staff. There’s nothing nefarious going on here. I’m hoping for a good result.”

    The move, which prompted a protest in the city Tuesday night and anger among drop box advocates, is the latest example in swing state Wisconsin of the fight over whether communities will allow absentee ballot drop boxes. Several Republican-run municipalities, including six in Milwaukee County, two in Waukesha County and three in Dodge County, have opted against using drop boxes for the presidential election in November, while they’re being embraced in heavily Democratic cities including Milwaukee and Madison.

    The Wisconsin Supreme Court, then controlled by conservatives, banned the use of drop boxes in 2022. But in July, the now-liberal controlled court reversed that decision and said drop boxes could be used. However, the court left it up to each community to decide whether to install them.

    Vance says the war in Ukraine has taken resources ‘at a time when Americans are suffering’

    Vance says the “biggest problem” with the Russia-Ukraine war is that it “has distracted and consumed a lot of resources at a time when Americans are suffering.”

    During a call Wednesday with reporters about union support for the Trump-Vance campaign, the GOP vice presidential nominee echoed Trump’s claims that “Russia would have never invaded Ukraine” if Trump, not Biden, had been in office.

    And if Trump is returned to the White House, Vance said “everything is going to be on the table, but I think that nothing is going to definitively be on the table” in terms of Trump’s approach to negotiating an end to the war.

    Vance did not respond directly when asked about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent criticism of him as “too radical” in an interview with The New Yorker. The Ohio senator has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine in the war, saying in his speech at the Republican National Convention this summer that there should be “no more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

    Vance says he doesn’t think he needs to prepare as much as Walz is for the debate

    Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance says he’s not planning to have a debate camp because “we have well developed views on public policy.”

    Speaking to reporters on a call with union supporters Wednesday, the Ohio senator said he feels no pressure to do “anything similar” to the debate preparation being done by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

    “I don’t think we have to prepare that much” because “we don’t have to hide our record from the American people,” Vance said.

    Vance also said former President Donald Trump supports the rights of workers to unionize and collectively bargain, but he demurred from full-throated support by also saying states should choose their own labor laws that can support or reduce unionization efforts.

    Trump’s supporters gather at a manufacturing plant ahead of speech

    Trump was set to address a relatively small crowd inside a massive Charlotte-area manufacturing plant.

    The Republican former president’s supporters gathered among metal machines and and palettes of red, white and blue tubing. Trump’s podium was flanked by rows of work stations, metal beams and a large campaign sign that proclaimed, “JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!”

    Harris will do a sit down interview with MSNBC

    Vice President Kamala Harris will sit down with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC on Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

    The Democratic candidate is visiting the city to give a speech on the economy and manufacturing.

    Harris has faced criticism for avoiding media interviews during her abbreviated campaign for the presidency. The conversation with Ruhle will be her first one-on-one interview with a national network since becoming her party’s nominee. Harris previously sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate.

    Top Muslim-voter organization endorses Harris as Middle East conflict escalates

    Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the endorsement of one of the nation’s largest Muslim American voter mobilization groups, marking a significant boost to her campaign since many Muslim and Arab American organizations have opted to support third-party candidates or not endorse.

    Emgage Action, the political arm of an 18-year-old Muslim American advocacy group, endorsed Harris’ presidential campaign Wednesday, saying in a statement provided first to The Associated Press that the group “recognizes the responsibility to defeat” former President Donald Trump in November.

    The group, based in Washington D.C., operates in eight states, with a significant presence in the key battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania. The organization will now focus its ongoing voter-outreach efforts on supporting Harris, in addition to down-ballot candidates.

    A tale of crushing security lapses and missed chances to stop the man who shot Trump

    The acting director of the Secret Service was incensed at what had happened that July evening. “What I saw made me ashamed,” Ronald Rowe Jr. said. “I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”

    The unguarded roof, easily within shooting distance of the rally stage, is just one of the myriad questions behind the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. The more that investigators unpack from that day, the more missed opportunities that could have prevented the attack are revealed.

    As the United States grapples with a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, in Florida, there remains a reckoning to be done from the Pennsylvania shooting on July 13 that killed one man and wounded three — the ex-president among them.

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  • What to know about the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team

    What to know about the Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Secret Service sniper killed the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump in a split-second decision, taking out the man perched on an adjacent rooftop.

    Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has publicly praised the sniper’s quick work on Saturday. But the Counter Sniper Team is now subject to a review by the Office of the Inspector General, which aims to determine how well the team is “prepared to respond to threats at events.”

    The Secret Service was already subject to a more general probe from the Inspector General as well as congressional subpoenas regarding the shooting at the Trump campaign rally, in what has become the most intense scrutiny the agency has faced since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

    Here’s what to know about the agency’s elite sniper group.

    Sniper team is ‘very elite and difficult to get into’

    The Counter Sniper Team was established in 1971. It provides intelligence and observations of potential threats from far away in an effort to protect U.S. presidents, vice presidents, first ladies and others, according to a 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office on federal tactical teams.

    Those who join the team have already worked for the Secret Service for at least two years, according to the agency’s website. They must undergo 11 weeks of counter sniper selection and basic training, along with a color vision test. Counter snipers must have excellent eyesight and hearing.

    “It’s very sought after, it’s very elite and difficult to get into,” Pete Piraino, who spent 23 years with the Secret Service, including five years in the presidential protective division, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

    They typically work in pairs

    The counter snipers are on the look out for threats from far away, even beyond the established security perimeter, said Piraino, who is now vice provost for academics and a criminal justice professor at Tiffin University in Ohio. They often work outdoors, focusing on rooftops and the windows of surrounding buildings.

    They typically work in teams of two — one serves as a spotter while the other trains their rifle’s sight on the same area.

    “They’re trained to scan an area, remember what they see and come back to scan it again and see if there’s any change,” Piraino said. “It’s not just a matter of picking up their binoculars and looking around. They are trained very thoroughly and specifically with rangefinders and their equipment.”

    If they don’t qualify, they don’t work

    The counter snipers, code named “Hercules,” can respond to a threat from a distance with their .300 Winchester Magnum rifles, according to Ronald Kessler’s 2009 book, “In the President’s Secret Service.” And they have to prove they can do so on a monthly basis.

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    “Counter-Snipers are required to qualify shooting out to a thousand yards each month,” Kessler wrote. “If they don’t qualify, they don’t travel or work.”

    The snipers shoot with a rifle called a JAR, said Paul Eckloff, a retired Secret Service agent who served on details protecting three different presidents during his 23-year career.

    “You’ve never heard of it because the Secret Service makes them,” Eckloff said.

    It stands for “just another rifle” and they’re built specifically for each counter sniper by the Secret Service’s armorer to take into account things like the length of the shooter’s arms, wrists and trigger finger.

    Eckloff wouldn’t disclose how many counter sniper teams there are but noted that it’s a finite resource and they could always use more.

    What happened?

    Police learned of a suspicious character outside the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, before Trump took the stage. Minutes into his speech, shots were fired.

    A counter sniper shot and killed Thomas Matthew Crooks in the seconds after he opened fire from a rooftop some 150 yards (135 meters) from the stage. Secret Service agents threw themselves on top of the former president before hustling him off stage.

    Stephen Colo, who retired from the Secret Service in 2003 as an assistant director, told The AP on Sunday that presidential candidates and former presidents don’t typically get the same level of protection as the sitting president.

    Colo said he was surprised that the agency had staffed the event with a counter sniper team because there are not many of those highly trained operatives and they are usually reserved for the president.

    Kessler told the AP that the Counter Sniper Team should not be the focus of all of the scrutiny and investigations. He said the Secret Service members working closer to Trump should have called off the speech and moved him to safety as soon as they heard reports of a suspicious person in the crowd and then on a nearby rooftop.

    “They should have just evacuated as soon as there was any hint of danger,” Kessler said.

    Trump was not seriously injured and two days later he arrived in Milwaukee, with his right ear bandaged, to the adulation of his supporters at the Republican National Convention.

    The shooting had more serious ramifications for others at the rally. Former fire chief Corey Comperatore was shot and killed and two other people were wounded.

    Cheatle, the Secret Service director, told ABC News on Tuesday that the sniper who shot Crooks made a “split-second decision.”

    “They have the ability to make that decision on their own. If they see that it’s a threat and they did that in that instance,” she said.

    “And I applaud the fact that they made that decision and didn’t have to check with anybody and thankfully neutralized the threat.”

    ___

    Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.

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  • Why Commander Is No Longer His Master’s Dog

    Why Commander Is No Longer His Master’s Dog

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    “Dog Bites Man,” in journalism lore, is a boring headline about a predictable event—a non-news story that should never be written, let alone read. But what if the dog in question belongs to the president of the United States? And what if the president’s dog bites not one man, but many?

    Joe and Jill Biden’s two-year-old German shepherd, Commander, is that dog. After the U.S. Secret Service confirmed late last month that Commander had been involved in 11 “biting incidents” at the White House, CNN reported this week that the canine had actually been even more prolific with his canines, biting several White House staffers. At some point in the past two weeks, Commander was sent away.

    “The President and First Lady care deeply about the safety of those who work at the White House and those who protect them every day,” Elizabeth Alexander, the communications director for the first lady, said in a statement to CNN. Commander, she added, “is not presently on the White House campus while next steps are evaluated.” Woof.

    Read: Basil the opossum has one eye, a big heart, and a job to do

    The whole situation has been traumatic. For the bite victims, of course—at least one of whom went to the hospital for treatment—but also for Commander, who now has to leave the only family he’s ever known. And for the Biden family: Not three full years into his administration, the president and the first lady have had to say goodbye to not one, but two family dogs. (The Bidens’ older dog, Major, was similarly expelled in 2021 for his own biting proclivity.)

    Banishing the Bidens’ dog is not just a matter of OSHA compliance. It’s political too.

    The flurry of really newsworthy dog-bites-man stories has been rough for the president, who comes off as both an unfeeling boss and a negligent dog owner. In the vortex of negative press—impeachment, Hunter Biden’s legal problems, inflation, dipping approval ratings—Commander’s bad behavior is practically the one negative news story that Biden can attempt to control.

    The Commander drama has been building toward a climax for months. Major bit a Secret Service agent shortly after moving into the White House, in 2021, and was subsequently sent to live with family friends in Delaware—not a euphemism, we’re told. Commander, the younger of the two, has been biting people for months. In July, reports emerged that the dog had attacked or bitten members of the Secret Service multiple times from last October to January of this year. (This pattern added injury to insult in an already tense relationship between the Biden administration and the Secret Service, many of whom are reportedly fans of Donald Trump.)

    Olga Khazan: I don’t like dogs

    As if that situation was not fraught enough, we now know that Commander has chomped on more arms and legs than was previously reported, including on a number of White House executive staffers’. Asked where the dog was taken, Alexander, the East Wing spokesperson, declined to comment directly. She also did not comment on how the Biden family is feeling, though that’s easy to guess: sad, sort of embarrassed, probably annoyed by all the dog coverage when Republicans in Congress are engaged in their own very public brawling.

    More than anything, though, I wonder how Commander feels—and whether things might have turned out better if more consideration had been given to that question.

    The life of a president’s dog can be stressful. The White House is a working office and a public museum as well as a home, with multitudes of people coming in and out all the time. Even on a normal day, the scene can be a chaotic sensory overload for a dog: Rotating members of the Secret Service detail, uniformed and not, stand outside every room, earpieces in, eyes darting, faces unsmiling; aides fly through doorways with varying degrees of excitement and alarm, waving papers. And the first family is always leaving on trips and official visits; sometimes they bring the dog; other times they leave him behind in the care of a butler or an operating engineer, who is on-site around the clock.

    All of this is difficult for a human to adjust to, let alone a dog with limited English comprehension who cannot understand that his owner is the most important person in the Western world.

    Read: Dogs needs understanding, not dominance

    Presidential pets always take some time to acclimate, according to Jennifer Pickens, the author of Pets at the White House. Eventually, most White House dogs have been able to adapt to the schedule of nights in the first family’s residence, and days with the run of the building (or parts of it). They might spend time sleeping in the chief usher’s office or waiting for the president in the Outer Oval. They’ll go on regular walks through the 18-acre White House campus with Dale Haney, who has been the groundskeeper and unofficial presidential dog handler since he first tended to Richard Nixon’s Irish setter, King Timahoe. During the George W. Bush administration, the president’s squat little Scottish terrier, Barney, liked to follow the pastry chef around in the basement hallways, licking powdered sugar from his shoes, Pickens told me. Bo and Sunny Obama, the 44th president’s Portuguese water dogs, were accustomed to being paraded around for snuggles from children visiting the White House.

    But other dogs don’t settle in so easily—or they become irritated by the attention. After all, they don’t get to choose to become part of the first family: In 1961, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the Kennedy family a fluffy white puppy named Pushinka, whose mother had been shot into space on Sputnik 5. Pushinka—who went on to have her own puppies, which John F. Kennedy referred to as the “pupniks”—became “a little nippy” later in life, according to Caroline Kennedy.

    The adjustment to White House life has been a challenge for many presidential pooches. Ronald Reagan’s 65-pound Bouvier des Flandres, Lucky, was sent back to the family’s Santa Barbara ranch after a few months, because she was deemed “a little too much for the Reagan White House,” Pickens said. One of the Carter family mutts, JB—short for Jet Black—used to snap at the maids and butlers, Gary Walters, a former chief usher, told me. The dog nipped at Walters on occasion too: “We’d just say, ‘Oh, JB, shut up and go away.’” In 2008, Barney bit the finger of Jon Decker when the Reuters reporter reached out to pet him; Barney could be, as Jenna Bush put it later, “a real jerk.”

    I wish I could tell Commander all of this—that dogs act like dogs, and sometimes like real jerks, even when they live in the White House.

    Read: What kind of villain doesn’t clean up after their dog

    Commander’s adjustment to White House life may have been more challenging than it was for other pets. Although German shepherds can be loyal and trustworthy companions, they have to be diligently trained, especially during their adolescent months, Sue Kewley, a dog behaviorist who specializes in the breed, told me. “I don’t think people realize how sensitive German shepherds can be,” she said. They’re herding dogs, and “if you don’t give them a job to do, they’ll go self-employed.”

    Young shepherds need to be taught how to behave when a visitor or stranger arrives—how to go to their “place” or grab a toy, something that desensitizes them to the constant flow of bodies coming and going. This appears to be the gap in Commander’s education. “He’s been allowed to make mistakes, which is a real shame,” Kewley said. “But I don’t blame him. It’s not his fault.”

    It probably didn’t have to be this way, in other words. With better training and more attention, Commander might have been able to stay in the White House. As with other presidential dogs, he could have been an emblem for the president, something happy and sweet for the American people to latch on to. Instead, he’s become a workplace hazard, an unfortunate headline, and now, sadly, an exile.

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    Elaine Godfrey

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  • White House gun violence program with philanthropies ends

    White House gun violence program with philanthropies ends

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    NEW YORK — It was small, as Washington celebrations go — two senior Biden administration advisers gathered with program participants near the White House on a Thursday afternoon in December to mark the end of a little-known initiative with a budget of less than $8 million.

    The impact of The Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC), though, may yet be larger, both in the fight to slow the growth of gun violence and in the way philanthropy and government work together. The Biden administration used CVIC to get public funding to fight gun violence to 50 grassroots organizations that would normally be too small to get federal funding directly, as well as training and other support for 18 months to prepare them to receive even more funding.

    It’s an effort some participants applauded, while others argued the president could have backed it more forcefully.

    There was a feeling of momentum at the CVIC celebration, said Nancy Fishman, director at the Schusterman Family Philanthropies, toward what she and other advocates hope is the beginning of a shift in governmental approaches public safety. And it went beyond the attendance of nonprofit leaders, whose workers often go without recognition or pay, in a “rarefied space with others being celebrated,” she said.

    Daamin X Durden, executive director of the Newark Community Street Team, called it surreal “to be with one another, to hear the testimony and the journey experience and just to share that camaraderie and fidelity for one another.”

    On top of that, each of the 50 community violence interruption organizations at the celebration in the office building across from the White House also received $20,000, as a final “mini-grant,” which Durden said was much appreciated because it came with few strings attached.

    A nonprofit, Hyphen, coordinated the initiative, which included peer exchanges, training and mentorship, provided by five national nonprofits.

    Aqeela Sherrills, the advisor for the initiative at Hyphen, thinks many more officials and communities now understand violence interruption is a compliment to policing, not a strategy that is anti-police.

    “We’re not expecting our cops will be everything, to be teachers, lawyers, therapists and counselors,” he said.

    President Joe Biden announced the initiative in June 2021 shortly after the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. During the second summer of the pandemic, hundreds were being shot daily, as the jump in gun homicides that started in 2020 across the country continued.

    As one piece of the administration’s response, Biden urged local governments to use coronavirus relief funds to strengthen public safety through investments in police as well as community-based programs.

    CVIC was another part of this public safety plan aimed to prepare grassroots groups to be accept more public funding by strengthening their infrastructure and sharing best practices to design programs.

    “The theory of change for this collaborative was to focus on community groups that were the hardest to reach, that were doing incredible work locally and had very little support,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, who leads the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, one of the organizations providing training.

    Decades of research has documented that small groups of people drive a disproportionate amount of gun violence and homicides in any given community. Violence interruption programs seek to identify those people, with some working out of hospitals, others offering a carrot-and-stick approach along with the police, while others provide cognitive behavior therapy and mentoring.

    If people agree to participate, the programs often also provide economic aid like paying for food or rent and connecting them to job trainings or other skills development — interventions that reveal the close connection between poverty and violence.

    Measured in terms of funds delivered to the grassroots organizations, the collaborative’s record is mixed. Six of the cities participating have so far not reported that they plan to spend coronavirus relief funds on violence interruption as of June, according to an academic analysis of Treasury Department data.

    Community violence interruption programs could be funded by about $350 billion included in the American Rescue Plan available for states, cities and municipalities to use for a broad range of programs, as well as another $120 billion in aid for schools.

    Alex Johnson, of the California Wellness Foundation, which funded early models of violence interruption in the 1990s, said many officials who control local budgets still do not understand the value of the approach.

    Four cities, including Newark, along with several of the grassroots organizations, recently won grants from the Department of Justice.

    Amanda Kass, of DePaul University, and Philip Rocco, of Marquette University, have been studying the use of coronavirus relief funds with support from The Joyce Foundation. They warn that numerous factors make it difficult to track spending, especially since municipalities have until 2026 to finalize their plans.

    So far, Kass and Rocco found participating cities allocated $71.7 million toward violence interruption programs — less than 1% of the $7.8 billion in coronavirus relief funds available. Their study excluded participating counties, Washington, D.C., and Rapid City, South Dakota.

    Some CVIC participants said they expected more money to come to them through the initiative. Dujuan Kennedy, who leads the violence interruption work for FORCE Detroit, felt Biden wasn’t sincere in his support.

    “It may be a talking point for him. It may be a campaign, but for us, it’s our little brothers, our sons, our daughters, our babies,” he said. “People are really dying out here.”

    In the summer, Pastor Mike McBride, the leader of the nonprofit Live Free USA, who has advocated for violence interruption for two decades, invited Kennedy and others to attend the signing ceremony at the White House for the gun safety legislation that helped states put in place “red flag” laws and included $250 million in funds for violence interruption. The U.S. Secret Service turned Kennedy away at the gates, along with several others, he thinks because of his manslaughter conviction. A U.S. Secret Service spokesperson said Kennedy and others, did not “meet federal security entrance requirements” and that the decision was not made by the White House.

    “My issue with that is: How can you acknowledge us and say we’re responsible enough to curb violence, but you’re allowing our records to prevent us from standing on your front grass?” Kennedy said.

    Kennedy doesn’t want an apology but instead, a pathway to redemption for people like him who are saving lives in their community and have made amends with the loved ones of the people they harmed or killed.

    Archana Sahgal, president of Hyphen, said the White House gathering in December proved there is no space between the administration’s words and actions and said she expects funding for violence interruption to increase as a result of the initiative.

    Julie Rodriguez, a senior advisor to Biden who has championed the collaborative, was not available to be interviewed and did not respond to a request for comment.

    Nina Revoyr, who leads the Ballmer Group’s work in Los Angeles, believes the White House has conferred a new level of credibility and legitimacy on violence interruption work. That along with George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police and the suffering and anger caused by the pandemic, has created a moment where both foundations and governments are more open to investing in violence interruption.

    “It’s not that the work hasn’t existed,” Revoyr said. “What has shifted is the moment in time.”

    ———

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

    Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump, demanding his personal testimony as it unveiled startling new video and described his multi-part plan to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to his supporters’ fierce assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    With alarming messages from the U.S. Secret Service warning of violence and vivid new video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders pleading for help, the panel showed the raw desperation at the Capitol. Using language frequently seen in criminal indictments, the panel said Trump had acted in a “premeditated” way ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, despite countless aides and officials telling him he had lost.

    Trump is almost certain to fight the subpoena and decline to testify. On his social media outlet he blasted members for not asking him earlier — though he didn’t say he would have complied — and called the panel “a total BUST.”

    “We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6′s central player,” said Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s vice chair, ahead of the vote.

    In the committee’s 10th public session, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, the panel summed up Trump’s “staggering betrayal” of his oath of office, as Chairman Bennie Thompson put it, describing the then-president’s unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

    While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish, more a nod to history than an effective summons, the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

    In one of its most riveting exhibits, the panel showed previously unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning for help during the assault as Trump refused to call off the mob.

    Pelosi can be seen on a call with the governor of neighboring Virginia, explaining as she shelters with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others that the governor of Maryland has also been contacted. Later, the video shows Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders as the group asks the Defense Department for help.

    “They’re breaking the law in many different ways,” Pelosi says at one point. “And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”

    The footage also portrays Vice President Mike Pence — not Trump — stepping in to help calm the violence, telling Pelosi and the others he has spoken with Capitol Police, as Congress plans to resume its session that night to certify Biden’s election.

    The video was from Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker.

    In never-before-seen Secret Service messages, the panel produced evidence that extremist groups provided the muscle in the fight for Trump’s presidency, planning weeks before the attack to send a violent force to Washington.

    The Secret Service warned in a Dec. 26, 2020, email of a tip that members of the right-wing Proud Boys planned to outnumber the police in a march in Washington on Jan. 6.

    “It felt like the calm before the storm,” one Secret Service agent wrote in a group chat.

    To describe the president’s mindset, the committee presented new and previously seen material, including interviews with Trump’s top aides and Cabinet officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia — in which some described the president acknowledging he had lost.

    Ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump once looked up at a television and said, “Can you believe I lost to this (expletive) guy?”

    Cabinet members also said in interviews shown at the hearing that they believed that once legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

    “In my view, that was the end of the matter,” Barr said of the Dec. 14 vote of the Electoral College.

    But rather than the end of Trump’s efforts, it was only the beginning — as the president summoned the crowd to Washington on Jan. 6.

    The panel showed clips of Trump at his rally near the White House that day saying the opposite of what he had been told. He then tells supporters he will march with them to the Capitol. That never happened.

    “There is no defense that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” said Cheney. “No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in our constitutional republic, period.”

    Thursday’s hearing opened at a mostly empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing. Police officers who fought the mob filled the hearing room’s front row.

    The House panel said the insurrection at the Capitol was not an isolated incident but a warning of the fragility of the nation’s democracy in the post-Trump era.

    “None of this is normal,” Cheney said.

    Along with interviews, the committee is drawing on the trove of 1.5 million pages of documents it received from the Secret Service, including an email from Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of the main lawsuits Trump’s team had brought against the election results.

    “Just fyi. POTUS is pissed,” the Secret Service message said.

    White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, recalled Trump being “fired up” about the court’s ruling.

    Trump told Meadows “something to the effect of: ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out,’” Hutchinson told the panel in a recorded interview.

    Thursday’s session served as a closing argument for the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress. Cheney lost her primary election, and Kinzinger decided not to run.

    The committee, having conducted more than 1,000 interviews and obtained countless documents, has produced a sweeping probe of Trump’s activities from his defeat in the November election to the Capitol attack.

    Under committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December. The committee will dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in January.

    At least five people died in the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol Police.

    More than 850 people have been charged by the Justice Department, some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles. Several leaders and associates of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with sedition.

    Trump faces various state and federal investigations over his actions in the election and its aftermath.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

    More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

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  • Ex-Oath Keeper: Group leader claimed Secret Service contact

    Ex-Oath Keeper: Group leader claimed Secret Service contact

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    WASHINGTON — Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told a member of the extremist group before the 2020 election that he had a contact in the Secret Service, a witness testified Thursday in Rhodes’ Capitol riot trial.

    John Zimmerman, who was part of the North Carolina chapter, told jurors that Rhodes claimed to have a Secret Service agent’s number and to have spoken with the agent about the logistics of a September 2020 rally that then-President Donald Trump held in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

    The claim came on the third day of testimony in the case against Rhodes and four others charged with seditious conspiracy for what authorities have described as a detailed, drawn-out plot to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the election.

    Zimmerman could not say for sure that Rhodes was speaking to someone with the Secret Service — only that Rhodes told him he was — and it was not clear what they were discussing. Zimmerman said Rhodes wanted to find out the “parameters” that the Oath Keepers could operate under during the election-year rally.

    The significance of the detail in the government’s case is unclear. Rhodes, from Granbury, Texas, and and the others are accused of spending weeks plotting to use violence in a desperate campaign to keep Trump in the White House.

    Trump’s potential ties to extremist groups have been a focus of the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Another Oath Keeper expected to testify against Rhodes has claimed that after the riot, Rhodes phoned someone seemingly close to Trump and made a request: tell Trump to call on militia groups to fight to keep him in power. Authorities have not identified that person; Rhodes’ lawyer says the call never happened.

    A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency is aware that “individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries.” The agency said that when creating a security plan for events, it is “not uncommon for various organizations to contact us concerning security restrictions and activities that are permissible in proximity to our protected sites.”

    The others on trial are Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia; Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida; Jessica Watkins of Woodstock, Ohio; and Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida. The trial is expected to last several weeks.

    Authorities say the Oath Keepers organized paramilitary training and stashed weapons with “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel in case they were needed before members stormed the Capitol alongside hundreds of other Trump supporters.

    Jurors also heard testimony from a man who secretly recorded a Nov. 9, 2020, conference call held by Rhodes in which the leader rallied his followers to prepare for violence and go to Washington.

    The man, Abdullah Rasheed, said he began recording the call with hundreds of Oath Keepers members because Rhodes’ rhetoric made it sound like “we were going to war with the United States government.”

    Rasheed said he tried to get in touch with authorities, including the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI, about the call but that no one called him back until “after it all happened.” An FBI agent has testified that the bureau received a tip about the call in November 2020, and when asked if the FBI ever conducted an interview, he said ”not to my knowledge.” The man contacted the FBI again in March 2021, was interviewed and gave authorities the recording of the call.

    Rhodes’ lawyers have said the Oath Keepers leader will testify that his actions leading up to Jan. 6 were in preparation for orders he believed were coming from Trump, but never did. Rhodes has said he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up a militia to support his bid to hold power.

    The defense says the Oath Keepers often set up quick reaction forces for events but they were only to be used to protect against violence from antifa activists or in the event Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.

    Zimmerman, the former Oath Keeper from North Carolina, described getting a quick reaction force ready for the “Million MAGA March” in Washington on Nov. 14, 2020, in case Trump invoked the Insurrection Act. Thousands of Trump supporters that day gathered at Freedom Plaza along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington to rally behind Trump’s false election claims.

    Zimmerman told jurors that the Oath Keepers stashed at least a dozen rifles and several handguns in his van parked at Arlington National Cemetery to serve as the quick reaction force. He said they never took the guns into Washington.

    Zimmerman wasn’t in the city on Jan. 6 because he was recovering from the coronavirus and he said that after the Nov. 14 event, the North Carolina Oath Keepers split from Rhodes. Zimmerman said the split came over Rhodes’ suggestion that the Oath Keepers wear disguises to entice antifa activists to attack them so the Oath Keepers could give them a “beat down.”

    Zimmerman said Rhodes suggested dressing up as older people or mothers pushing strollers and putting weapons in the stroller.

    “I told him ‘No, that’s not what we do,’” Zimmerman said. “That’s entrapment. That’s illegal.”

    In a separate case on Thursday, Jeremy Joseph Bertino of North Carolina became the first member of the Proud Boys extremist group to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack. Three Oath Keeper members have also pleaded guilty to the charge.

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    For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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