APPLENEWS - STORY ADD
Trump admin live updates: Dems react to Hegseth discussing Yemen strike in 2nd chat
The Signal chat included Hegseth's wife, brother and lawyer, sources said.
President Donald Trump continues to take sweeping executive actions in his second term, including an order this week targeting a senior official from his first administration who became one of his critics.
Focus continues on the legal battle regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who was living in Maryland when he was wrongfully deported by the administration.
Latest headlines:
3rd Pentagon official placed on leave for leak investigation: Officials
A third top official at the Pentagon has been placed on administrative leave, two U.S. officials told ABC News on Wednesday.
Colin Carroll, the chief of staff for Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg, was placed on administrative leave in relation to the Defense Department's leak investigation.
-ABC News' Luis Martinez
Trump calls into Gov. Greg Abbott meeting in support of school choice
President Donald Trump called into a meeting Wednesday morning held by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, in which he backed school choice in Texas, according to the governor's post on X.
The state legislature will vote on Senate Bill 2, which would create an education savings account program to allow families to help pay for private school with taxpayer dollars.
"Now, we're going to be leading in education too," Trump said on speaker phone. "So I just think it's a really forward-thinking vote. There's nothing complex about it."
-ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh
Federal judge finds probable cause to hold Trump administration in criminal contempt
Judge James Boasberg has found probable cause that the Trump administration acted in contempt of court when officials last month defied his order to turn two planes around carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.
"As this Opinion will detail, the Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt," he wrote.
-ABC News' Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin and Peter Charalambous
State Department to shutter office aimed at countering foreign disinformation campaigns
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he will close the State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) hub, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center,a small office within the department that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.
Rubio said he was doing so because the hub, he alleged, "spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving."
Shuttering FIMI will eliminate the only office inside the agency dedicated to thwarting disinformation campaigns spawned by U.S. adversaries such as Iran, China and Russia.
Critics of the initiative have long claimed that it silenced conservative voices. Rubio's claims of protecting free speech also come as the State Department targets some on visitor visas who participate in protests that agency leaders have deemed to be "pro-Hamas."
-ABC News' Shannon Kingston