Comey pleads not guilty in case accusing him of lying to Congress…

Trump announced on his social media site Wednesday night that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the “first Phase” of his peace plan.

“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” Trump wrote. “All Parties will be treated fairly!

Newsom said it’s “shameful” that the Republican-controlled Congress hasn’t approved disaster aid to help thousands of people who are displaced after devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year.

“It’s been months, not a peep from the president of the United States,” Newsom said at an unrelated press conference. “Not a word from Speaker Johnson.”

Federal officials earlier today charged a 29-year-old man for sparking the Palisades Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in the state’s history. The fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

▶ Read more about the Palisades Fire

The president will get what the White House is describing as a “routine yearly check up’ at Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday morning.

While press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it as a yearly exam, Trump actually got an annual physical at Walter Reed earlier in April, about six months ago. A physician’s note at the time says the president “remains in excellent health.”

On Friday, he’ll return to the White House afterward but may go to the Middle East, where negotiators are trying to finalize an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “shortly thereafter,” Leavitt said.

Correction: An earlier post incorrectly described the Walter Reed visit as an annual physical. While the White House described it as an “yearly” exam, Trump got his annual physical six months ago.

The president will get his annual physical at Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday morning, according to the White House.

While there for his “routine yearly check up,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt says, Trump will also speak to the troops.

He’ll return to the White House afterward but may go to the Middle East, where negotiators are trying to finalize an Israel-Hamas ceasefire, “shortly thereafter,” Leavitt said.

The note that Rubio handed Trump during an unrelated meeting at the White House implores the president to give his OK to a social post related to a Middle East deal.

“You need to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first,” the hand-scrawled note read, on White House stationary.

Rubio wasn’t part of Trump’s roundtable discussion with conservative influencers but walked into the room, handed Trump the note and whispered something to him.

As Trump fielded some questions from gathered reporters, Rubio stood off to the side, seemingly anxious for the president to come with him to turn toward the Middle East negotiations. Trump told the room “we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East” before he left but gave no other details.

Trump made that comment after Rubio handed him a note during an event at the White House on Wednesday.

Rubio entered the room where Trump had bee n holding a roundtable discussion with conservative influencers about anti-immigration enforcement protests in various U.S. cities.

Trump said earlier in that discussion that he might go to the region “sometime toward the end of the week.”

His top Middle East adviser, the prime minister of Qatar and other senior officials joined a third day of peace talks between Israel and Hamas at an Egyptian resort on Wednesday, a sign that negotiators aim to dive deeply into the toughest issues of an American plan to end the war in Gaza.

A federal judge in Chicago says immigration agents have repeatedly violated a 2022 consent decree outlining how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can make so-called “warrantless” arrests.

The ruling comes amid the Trump administration’s National Guard deployment and immigration crackdown in the Chicago area.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings has extended the consent decree until February. It comes out of an agreement between Chicago groups and the federal government. Among other things, it requires ICE to show documentation for each arrest it makes for people besides those being targeted.

The order applies nationwide, but remedies for individual cases have been focused in six Midwest states covered by the ICE field office in Chicago, where the lawsuit was filed.

Immigrant advocacy groups believe hundreds of people recently arrested around Chicago could qualify for reduced bond or have ankle monitors removed.

“This is likely the tip of the iceberg,” said Mark Fleming with the National Immigrant Justice Center.

The House may be out of session, but that hasn’t stopped its members from clashing in the Capitol’s hallways.

On Wednesday, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had a heated back and forth with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, hours after House Speaker Mike Johnson sparred with two Democratic senators over the government shutdown.

“You’re making a show of this to make yourself relevant,” Jeffries told Lawler – both New Yorkers — as Lawler held a bipartisan bill temporarily extending ACA tax credits and urged Jeffries to sign it. Jeffries called Lawler an “embarrassment.”

Jeffries previously called a one-year extension of ACA tax credits “laughable.” Little of substance was resolved in the exchange, as the two talked over each other.

“Why don’t you just keep your mouth shut,” Jeffries said.

“Is that the way to talk?” Lawler shot back.

Democratic leaders have said they don’t want National Guard on their streets because it’s not necessary.

Noem rejected their assertion after meeting with the Oregon governor and Portland mayor.

“They are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets,” she said. She said antifa wants “to destroy the American people and their way of life.”

The president said Wednesday afternoon that he may travel to the Middle East if a Gaza peace deal comes together.

“I may go there sometime toward the end of the week,” Trump said as he opened a roundtable event on a different matter.

Trump said he could go there on Sunday, adding that “negotiations are going along very well.”

The president is spending part of Wednesday afternoon hosting a roundtable that highlights the impact of antifa protesters.

Antifa is short for “anti-fascists” and is used to describe far-left-leaning militant groups. They include groups that resists fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.

The roundtable is set to include administration officials and conservative influencers who have been on the ground in Portland and other cities with demonstrations.

The preliminary data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows the number of international visitors arriving to the U.S. on student visas declined 19% in August compared with the same month in 2024.

The numbers declined also in June and July, but August is the summer month that typically sees the most foreign student arrivals — 313,138 this year.

The dip is the latest sign of a hit to international enrollment at American colleges and universities as the Trump administration clamps down on student visas.

▶ Read more about foreign students

The Congressional Budget Office says the federal budget deficit was $8 billion less than the shortfall recorded during fiscal year 2024.

The agency says revenues increased by an estimated $308 billion compared to this time last year — and a boost in individual income tax collections and tariff income partly offset the decline in corporate tax receipts.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement that the nation’s debt is about the size of the entire U.S. economy and will exceed its highest ever record as a share of the economy soon.

“We are on track to borrow nearly $2 trillion per year for the next decade. How can anyone think this is sustainable?”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was briefing Republican senators privately over lunch at the Capitol on the Israel-Hamas peace plan and other matters.

Rubio said peace in Gaza “all begins with all the hostages coming home and I think we have to be optimistic but there’s still some work to be done.” He said he may be traveling to the region.

“Things have moved so quickly over there we think we may need to be there pretty soon.”

Asked if president would also travel there in event of ceasefire, Rubio said “potentially.”

“That’s up to the president. He’ll have to make that decision. But I anticipate that he would be interested in doing so if the timing could work. Like I said, good progress has been made today. Events are moving in a good direction, but there’s still some work to be done.”

Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday reiterated that “the federal government has not communicated with us in any way about their troop movements.”

“I can’t believe I have to say ‘troop movements’ in an American city, but that is what we’re talking about here,” he told reporters.

When asked what he would do if a federal court rules in his favor to block National Guard deployment in Chicago yet they continue operations, Pritzker said he would do what is needed to enforce the ruling.

“We would enforce a judicial ruling,” he said. “You should hope that the federal government, the state government, the local government would be able to enforce a federal court’s order. That’s why we went to court.”

The IRS will furlough nearly half of its workforce as part of the ongoing government shutdown according to the an updated contingency plan posted to the IRS website, Wednesday, and most IRS operations are closed, the agency says in a separate letter to IRS workers.

The news comes after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to fund federal operations and the government shutdown has entered its second week, with no discernible endgame in sight.

The IRS’ initial Lapse in Appropriations Contingency Plan provided for the first five business days of operations, when states that the department would remain open using Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act funds.

According to the new lapse plan, only 39,870 employees, or 53.6%, of the total employee population of 74,299 will remain working as the shutdown continues.

Reps. Derek Tran and Gabe Vasquez co-led a letter signed by 53 other Democrats calling for Johnson to bring a bill that would “ensure that military service members, as well as civilian personnel and contractors, will continue to receive pay during a government shutdown” to the House floor.

“We urge you to bring legislation to pay America’s service members to the House floor for a vote in time to ensure military personnel get paid on October 15th,” the letter reads. “If Congress does not act by October 15th, nearly three million military families will miss their next paycheck. That’s unacceptable — our military families and troops deserve better.”

Frustration is running high in the Capitol, spilling over in a hallway debate between House Speaker Mike Johnson and two Democratic senators.

Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego gathered reporters in front of the speaker’s office Wednesday afternoon to call on Johnson to swear in an Arizona congresswoman-elect who won a special election two weeks ago.

But Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was not about to let them stand outside his office without a challenge.

After quickly shaking their hands, Johnson said he would swear in Adelita Grijalva after the government shutdown: “We need the lights turned back on, so we encourage both of you to go open the government.”

Gallego argued that Johnson was trying to keep Grijalva from providing crucial support to force a vote on a bill to release the Epstein files.

“Get your people in and stop covering up for the pedophiles,” Gallego snapped at Johnson.

Top union leaders representing federal employees, along with allied labor groups, on Wednesday pressured both parties to reach a solution to end the shutdown.

“No American should ever have to choose between serving their country and feeding their family,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Union leaders criticized both parties in Congress but also targeted Trump, accusing him of using federal workers as “political pawns” after warnings Tuesday that back pay is not guaranteed.

“He intends to either violate the law, or degrade, frighten, antagonize hardworking federal employees whose only crime is caring and wanting to work for the American people,” said Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

“Congress, do your damn job,” added Erwin. “And president, you better start obeying the Constitution.”

Trump arrived in office in January 2017 as Comey, appointed to the FBI director job by President Barack Obama, was overseeing an investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The dynamic was fraught from the start, with Comey briefing Trump weeks before he took office on the existence of uncorroborated and sexually salacious gossip in a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy.

In their first several private interactions, Comey would later reveal, Trump asked his FBI director to pledge his loyalty to him and to drop an FBI investigation into his administration’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Comey said Trump also asked him to announce that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation as part of the broader inquiry into Russian election interference, something Comey didn’t do.

Comey was abruptly fired in May 2017 with Trump later saying he was thinking about “this Russia thing” when he decided to terminate him. The firing was investigated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller as an act of potential obstruction of justice.

Comey in 2018 published a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” that painted Trump in deeply unflattering ways.

The federal judge ruled Tuesday on the arrests that happened during the early days of President Trump’s second term.

The ACLU of Illinois and other Chicago immigration advocates sued DHS and ICE in March, alleging the January arrests of 26 people in the Midwest violated a 2022 consent decree that bans ICE from arresting people without warrants or probable cause.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered ICE to start making monthly disclosures of how many warrantless arrests agents make each month.

“Today’s decision makes clear that DHS and ICE — like everyone else — must follow the Constitution and the law,” Michelle García, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Illinois and co-counsel in the case, said in a statement. “The federal government’s reckless practice of stopping, harassing and detaining people — and then finding a justification for the action must end.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson is rejecting calls from some lawmakers for Congress to hold a stand-alone vote on paying military service members, who will potentially miss a paycheck next week if the shutdown isn’t resolved soon.

Johnson said the House already had that vote as part of a stop-gap spending bill that would have funded the federal government through Nov. 21.

“Every Republican and at least one Democrat had the common sense to say ‘of course we want the government to stay in operation, of course we want to pay our troops and our air traffic controllers and our border patrol agents, TSA and everybody else,’” Johnson said. “We did have that vote.”

“The House is done,” he added. “The ball is now in the Senate’s court. It does us no good to be here dithering on show votes.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments during a news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday follow the Trump administration’s warning of no guaranteed back pay for federal workers during a shutdown, potentially reversing what has been long-standing policy for some 750,000 furloughed employees.

Johnson said he had yet to dig into legal analysis that is the basis for the administration’s warning.

But he said it is tradition “and I think it is statutory law that federal workers be paid.”

“And I think they should be,” Johnson said.

The criminal case has thrown a spotlight on the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of President Trump.

Comey pleaded not guilty through his lawyer to allegations that he lied to Congress five years go.

Comey is expected to plead not guilty during his appearance at federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday.

Comey’s arraignment is expected to be brief. But the moment is nonetheless loaded with historical significance given that the case has amplified concerns that the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of President Trump’s political enemies and is operating at the behest of a White House determined to seek retribution.

Comey’s legal team includes Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney in Chicago.

The White House hasn’t released details about the meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Trump has said he plans to designate antifa, an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups, as a “major terrorist organization” but it’s not clear how that would work against the decentralized movement.

The president said in a Wednesday morning social media post that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritkzer, both Democrats, “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump was specifically objecting to with his post, but it was the latest example of his brazen calls for his opponents to be prosecuted or locked up, a break from longtime norms as the Justice Department traditionally sought to maintain its independence.

Authorities said a woman was shot over the weekend in Chicago when Border Patrol vehicles were boxed in and struck by other vehicles.

Outside Chicago, in the village of Broadview, there have been skirmishes between protesters and agents outside a detention center.

They include his daughter Maurene, who was fired by the Justice Department earlier this year from her position as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, as well as Troy Edwards Jr., a son-in-law of Comey’s who minutes after Comey was indicted resigned his job as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia — the same office that filed the charges.

Tours at the Capitol have come to a standstill. The House is keeping its doors closed, while the Senate is stuck in a loop of failed votes on a rejected plan to reopen the government. President Trump is threatening to mass fire federal workers and refuse back pay for the rest.

As the government shutdown enters a second week, there’s no discernible endgame in sight.

The Republicans who have majority control in Congress believe they have the upper hand politically, as they fend off Democratic demands to quickly fund health insurance subsidies as part of any plan to end the shutdown. But so have Democrats dug in, convinced Americans are on their side in the fight to prevent the looming health care price spikes and blaming Trump for the shutdown.

Behind the scenes, though, signs of discomfort are apparent.

A loosely formed collection of senators, Republicans and Democrats, have bantered about options for addressing the health insurance problem.

And Trump himself signaled he was open to negotiating with Democrats over their demands to save health care subsidies.

▶ Read more about the government shutdown

A partisan battle is playing out in a Washington courtroom that could decide the fate of President Trump’s federal law enforcement intervention in the nation’s capital.

Dozens of states have taken sides in a lawsuit challenging the open-ended National Guard deployment in Washington, with their support falling along party lines. It shows how the law enforcement operation in the nation’s capital remains a flashpoint in the Republican president’s broadening campaign to send the military to cities across the country and underscores the deepening divisions over the move.

The lawsuitfiled Sept. 4 by Washington Attorney General Brian Schwalb, challenges the Trump administration’s use of the National Guard in the heavily Democratic city as part of an emergency order issued by Trump to stem what the president called “out of control” crime. Although the order has lapsed, hundreds of troops are still in the city, which is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the deployment.

▶ Read more about the lawsuit over federal intervention

Michael Nachmanoff has built a quiet reputation in the federal courthouse in northern Virginia — a onetime public defender turned judge known for methodical preparation and a cool temperament. On Wednesday, he finds himself at the center of a political storm: presiding over the Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.

Confirmed to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2021, Nachmanoff was randomly assigned to the case after a Virginia grand jury indicted Comey last month on charges including obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The assignment instantly drew President Trump’s attention. Trump, long fixated on Comey, blasted him as a “Dirty Cop” and derided Nachmanoff as a “Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge” while celebrating the charges as “JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!”

Despite the political noise, lawyers who know Nachmanoff say he is unlikely to be swayed.

▶ Read more about Judge Michael Nachmanoff

President Trump publicly implored Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey and other perceived adversaries.

The Republican president also replaced the veteran attorney who’d been overseeing the investigation with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor. Halligan rushed to file charges before a legal deadline lapsed despite warnings from other lawyers in the office that the evidence was insufficient for an indictment.

The two-count indictment alleges Comey made a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, by denying he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source to the news media and that he obstructed a congressional proceeding. Comey has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was looking forward to a trial.

▶ Read more about the case against James Comey

• 11 am and; The president will receive his intelligence briefing
• 3 p.m.: Trump will join a round table on Antifa