Flying without a REAL ID is about to get expensive.
The Transportation Security Administration announced a new $45 fee for travelers going through security checkpoints without a valid REAL ID or other acceptable form of identification, such as a valid passport or passport card.
It’s part of the agency’s next phase of its long-winded rollout of REAL IDs as the federal identification standard.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is a REAL ID?
REAL IDs were created following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to enhance security measures. They’re treated as a universal form of federally accepted identification and are used for boarding domestic flights and entering certain federal buildings.
Enforcement for using them was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ramped back up this year.
The agency says about 94% of travelers already use a REAL ID or another acceptable form of identification.
What can I do with a REAL ID?
✅ Board domestic flights
✅ Enter federal buildings that require ID
✅ Access military bases
How much does a REAL ID cost?
A REAL ID in Pennsylvania costs a $30 onetime fee in addition to the standard renewal fee for your license or state ID ($39.50 in Pennsylvania).
This means it’s cheaper than TSA’s new $45 fee.
When does TSA implement the $45 fee?
Starting Feb. 1, 2026, travelers without a REAL ID or passport will be required to pay $45.
What will the $45 fee cover?
The $45 will cover travelers going through a biometric or biographic security checkpoint.
The agency said the fee covers administrative and IT costs associated with the ID verification program. It added that the purpose of the fee is to make sure the expense is covered by the specific traveler, not taxpayers.
The fee will also apply to travelers who arrive at the airport having lost or reported stolen their REAL ID or passport.
The fees cover access through the TSA checkpoint for up to 10 days. After that, if the person is traveling without a REAL ID or passport again, they’ll have to pay the fee again.
Can I pay the fee ahead of time?
Yes. And it’s recommended whenever possible.
Individuals traveling without a REAL ID or passport can visit TSA.gov and follow prompts to verify their identity and pay the $45 fee. From there, they’ll be emailed a confirmation to show TSA at the checkpoint.
The agency warns that travelers in the checkpoint line without a proper form of ID will be sent out of line to complete the online form.
How can I avoid the fee?
The most direct way to avoid the $45 fee starting next year is by ensuring that anyone traveling has either a REAL ID or valid passport before their next domestic flight.
For Pennsylvania readers, PennDot‘s website has additional details about applying, requirements, making an appointment, and more for a REAL ID. In New Jersey, information is available at the Motor Vehicle Commission website.
Indiana House members are expected to press forward Monday with redrawing the state’s congressional districts in Republicans’ favor, increasing pressure on their defiant counterparts in the GOP-led Senate to meet President Donald Trump’s demands.
Republicans who control the House have said there’s no doubt that redistricting will pass that chamber. But the fate of any proposal remains uncertain in the Senate. Republicans control that chamber, but caucus members have resisted pressure to redistrict for months.
Senate leadership recently backed off its previous intentions not to meet at all, agreeing to convene next Monday. However, it’s still unclear whether enough senators will support a new map.
Republicans hold seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats. Trump and other Republicans want to make the map 9-0 in the GOP’s favor, seeking to give the party two extra seats in the 2026 elections that will determine control of the U.S. House. Democrats only need to flip a handful of seats to overcome the Republicans’ current margin.
Indiana House Republicans published a draft of a map Monday morning still featuring nine congressional districts, but with new boundaries designed to oust the state’s two Democratic U.S. House members.
The city of Indianapolis would be split among four congressional districts, a major change to the current map where the city makes up the entirety of the 7th District, which reliably backs Democrats.
“It’s clear these orders are coming from Washington, and they clearly don’t know the first thing about our community,” longtime U.S. Rep. André Carson, a Democrat who represents Indianapolis, said in a statement.
Indiana’s other current Democratic district is in the state’s northwest corner near Chicago. The new map would instead group a large portion of Republican counties in northern Indiana with the cities of East Chicago and Gary to make a new 1st Congressional District.
The state House will meet Monday afternoon to begin the legislative process to advance the new map.
Indiana lawmakers have been under mounting pressure from the White House to redistrict, as Republicans in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina have done. To offset the GOP gains, Democrats in California and Virginia have moved to do the same.
But some Indiana Republicans have been far more resistant. Republicans in the state Senate rebelled against Republican Gov. Mike Braun in November and said they would not attend a special session he ordered on redistricting.
The chamber’s top Republican, President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, at the time said the Senate did not have the votes. A spokesperson for Bray’s office did not respond Friday when asked if that is still the case.
Meanwhile, Trump attacked Indiana senators on social media, particularly Bray. He swore to endorse primary opponents of defecting senators. A spree of threats and swatting attempts were subsequently made against lawmakers who either said they do not support redistricting or have not taken a stance. At least one lawmaker in favor of redistricting and Braun were also threatened.
Last week, the House announced plans to convene in Indianapolis on Monday.
“All legislative business will be considered beginning next week, including redrawing the state’s congressional map,” House Speaker Todd Huston said in a statement last week.
The Indiana Senate, where several lawmakers objected to leadership’s refusal to hold a vote, then said members would reconvene Dec. 8.
“The issue of redrawing Indiana’s congressional maps mid-cycle has received a lot of attention and is causing strife here in our state,” Bray said in a statement Tuesday. He said the Senate will finally decide the matter this month.
Mid-cycle redistricting so far has resulted in nine more congressional seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more congressional seats that Democrats think they can win, putting the GOP up by three. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states, and there’s no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they’ve redrawn.
NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione appeared in court Monday seeking to bar evidence from his state trial over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including the gun that authorities say matches the one used in the brazen New York City attack.
Among the evidence Mangione’s lawyers want to prevent the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from presenting to jurors are a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors say matches the one used in the Dec. 4, 2024, killing and a handwritten notebook in which they say Mangione described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.
After getting state terrorism charges thrown out in September, the defense lawyers are zeroing in on what they say was unconstitutional conduct that tainted his arrest and threatens his right to a fair trial.
They contend that the gun and other items should be excluded because police lacked a warrant to search the backpack in which they were found. They also want to suppress some of Mangione’s statements to police, such as allegedly giving a false name, because officers started asking questions before telling him he had a right to remain silent.
Eliminating the gun and notebook would be critical wins for Mangione’s defense and a major setback for prosecutors, depriving them a possible murder weapon and evidence they say points to motive. Prosecutors have quoted extensively from Mangione’s diary in court filings, including his praise for Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
In it, prosecutors say, Mangione mused about rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel” and said killing an industry executive “conveys a greedy bastard that had it coming.”
Court officials say the hearings could last more than a week, meaning they would extend through Thursday’s anniversary of the attack.
Mangione was allowed to wear normal clothing to the hearings instead of a jail uniform. He entered the courtroom Monday in a gray suit and a button-down shirt with a checkered or tattersall pattern. Court officers removed his handcuffs to allow him to take notes.
The prosecution’s first witness, Sgt. Chris McLaughlin of the New York City Police Department’s public affairs office, testified about efforts to disseminate surveillance images of the suspect to the news media and on social media in the hours and days after the shooting.
To illustrate the breadth of news coverage during the five-day search for the shooter, prosecutors played a surveillance video of the shooting that aired on Fox News Digital, footage from the network of police divers searching a pond in Central Park and clips from the network that included images of the suspected shooter that were distributed by police.
Mangione looked up at a courtroom monitor as video of the shooting played, but he didn’t appear to have any reaction.
A few dozen Mangione supporters watched the hearing from the back of the courtroom. One wore a green T-shirt that said: “Without a warrant, it’s not a search, it’s a violation.” Another woman held a doll of the Luigi video game character and had a smaller figurine of him clipped to her purse.
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The state charges carry the possibility of life in prison, while federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Neither trial has been scheduled yet.
Mangione’s lawyers want to bar evidence from both cases, but this week’s hearings pertain only to the state case. The next hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Jan. 9.
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo told a judge in an unrelated matter last week that Manhattan prosecutors could call more than two dozen witnesses.
Thompson was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., about 230 miles west of Manhattan.
Prosecutors in the state case have not responded to the defense’s written arguments.
An officer searching a backpack found with Mangione was heard on a body camera recording saying she was checking to make sure there “wasn’t a bomb” in the bag. His lawyers argue that was an excuse “designed to cover up an illegal warrantless search of the backpack.”
Federal prosecutors, fighting similar claims in their case, have said in court filings that police were justified in searching the backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items. His statements to officers, federal prosecutors said, were made voluntarily and before he was taken into police custody.
PHILADELPHIA — The Trump administration’s maneuvers to keep the president’s former lawyer Alina Habba in place as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor were illegal and she is disqualified, a federal appeals court said Monday.
A panel of judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in Philadelphia sided with a lower court judge’s ruling after hearing oral arguments at which Habba herself was present on Oct. 20.
The ruling comes amid the push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration to keep Habba as the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a powerful post charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law. It also comes after the judges questioned the government’s moves to keep Habba in place after her interim appointment expired and without her getting Senate confirmation.
Habba said after that hearing in a statement posted to X that she was fighting on behalf of other candidates to be federal prosecutors who have been denied a chance for a Senate hearing.
Messages were left Monday seeking comment from the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, Habba’s personal staffer and the Justice Department.
Habba is hardly the only Trump administration prosecutor whose appointment has been challenged by defense lawyers.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after concluding that the hastily installed prosecutor who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed to the position of interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Justice Department has said it intends to appeal the rulings.
The judges on the panel were two appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher as well as one named by Demcoratic President Barack Obama: Luis Felipe Restrepo.
A lower court judge said in August Habba’s appointment was done with a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and that she was not lawfully serving as U.S attorney for New Jersey.
That order said her actions since July could be invalidated, but he stayed the order pending appeal.
The government argued Habba is validly serving in the role under a federal statute allowing the first assistant attorney, a post she was appointed to by the Trump administration.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Nevada, where a federal judge disqualified the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney there.
The Habba case comes after several people charged with federal crimes in New Jersey challenged the legality of Habba’s tenure. They sought to block the charges, arguing she didn’t have the authority to prosecute their cases after her 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney expired.
Habba was Trump’s attorney in criminal and civil proceedings before he was elected to a second term. She served as a White House adviser briefly before Trump named her as a federal prosecutor in March.
Shortly after her appointment, she said in an interview with a right-wing influence that she hoped to help “turn New Jersey red,” a rare overt political expression from a prosecutor.
She then brought a trespassing charge, eventually dropped, against Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka stemming from his visit to a federal immigration detention center.
Habba later charged Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver with assault stemming from the same incident, a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress other than for corruption. McIver denied the charges and pleaded not guilty. The case is pending.
Questions about whether Habba would continue in the job arose in July when her temporary appointment was ending and it became clear New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, would not back her appointment.
Earlier this year as her appointment was expiring, federal judges in New Jersey exercised their power under the law to replace Habba with a career prosecutor who had served as her second-in-command.
Bondi then fired the prosecutor installed by the judges and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump had the authority to appoint his preferred candidate to enforce federal laws in the state.
Brann’s ruling said the president’s appointments are still subject to the time limits and power-sharing rules laid out in federal law.
HONG KONG – Hong Kong authorities said on Monday they had arrested 13 people for suspected manslaughter in a probe into the city’s deadliest fire in decades, pointing to substandard renovation materials for fueling a blaze that has claimed at least 151 lives. Police continued to sweep the seven burnt-out towers engulfed in Wednesday’s disaster at the Wang Fuk Court estate, finding bodies of residents in stairwells and on rooftops, trapped as they tried to flee the flames.
More than 40 people are still missing.
“Some of the bodies have turned into ash, therefore we might not be able to locate all missing individuals,” police official Tsang Shuk-yin told reporters, choking up with emotion.
Tests on several samples of a green mesh that was wrapped around bamboo scaffolding on the buildings at the time of the blaze did not match fire retardant standards, officials overseeing the investigations told a news conference.
Contractors working on the renovations used these substandard materials in hard-to-reach areas, effectively hiding them from inspectors, said Chief Secretary Eric Chan.
Foam insulation used by contractors also fanned the flames and fire alarms at the complex were not working properly, officials have said.
Thousands have turned out to pay tribute to the victims, who include at least nine domestic helpers from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, with lines of mourners stretching more than a kilometer (a half-mile) along a canal next to the estate.
Vigils are also due to take place this week in Tokyo, London and Taipei, authorities said.
Amid pockets of public anger over missed fire risk warnings, Beijing has warned it would crack down on any “anti-China” protests.
At least one person involved in a petition calling for an independent probe and a review of construction oversight among other demands was detained for around two days, sources familiar with the matter said.
Police have declined to comment on the case.
Hong Kong Security Chief Chris Tang also declined to comment on specific operations at a press conference on Monday.
“I’ve noticed that some people with malicious intent, aiming to harm Hong Kong and national security, have taken advantage of this painful moment for society,” he said.
“Therefore, we must take appropriate action, including enforcement measures.”
The buildings being scoured for remains are the worst damaged and the search may take weeks, authorities have said.
Images shared by police showed officers clad in hazmat suits, face masks and helmets, inspecting rooms with blackened walls and furniture reduced to ashes, and wading through water used to douse fires that raged for days.
Throngs of officers arrived at the site early on Monday morning to continue their search of the burnt-out buildings.
Members of the Disaster Victim Identification Unit work in an apartment in the aftermath of a deadly fire at Wang Fuk Court, a residential estate in Hong Kong.
The apartment blocks were home to more than 4,000 people, according to census data, and those that escaped must now try to get their lives back on track.
More than 1,100 people have been moved out of evacuation centers into temporary housing, with a further 680 put up in youth hostels and hotels, authorities said.
With many residents leaving behind belongings as they fled, authorities have offered emergency funds of HK$10,000 ($1,284) to each household and provided special assistance for issuing new identity cards, passports and marriage certificates.
Deadliest blaze since 1948
Residents of Wang Fuk Court were told by authorities last year they faced “relatively low fire risks” after complaining about fire hazards posed by the renovations, the city’s Labour Department said.
The residents raised concerns in September, 2024, including about the potential flammability of the mesh contractors used to cover the scaffolding, a department spokesperson said.
Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since 1948, when 176 people died in a warehouse blaze, has stunned the city, where legislative elections are due to be held this weekend.
Flowers are placed near the site of the deadly fire at Wang Fuk Court in Hong Kong.
On Saturday, police detained Miles Kwan, 24, part of a group that launched a petition demanding an independent probe into possible corruption and a review of construction oversight, two people familiar with the matter said. Reuters could not establish whether he had been arrested.
Kwan left a police station in a taxi on Monday afternoon, according to a Reuters witness.
Two others have also since been arrested on suspicion of seditious intent, the South China Morning Post said. The police declined to comment on those reported arrests.
China’s national security office warned individuals on Saturday against using the disaster to “plunge Hong Kong back into the chaos” of 2019, when massive pro-democracy protests challenged Beijing and triggered a political crisis.
“We sternly warn the anti-China disruptors who attempt to ‘disrupt Hong Kong through disaster’,” the office said in a statement. “No matter what methods you use, you will certainly be held accountable and strictly punished.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he’ll release the results of his MRI test that he received in October.
“If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,” the Republican president said Sunday during an exchange with reporters as he traveled back to Washington from Florida.
He said the results of the MRI were “perfect.”
The White House has declined to detail why Trump had an MRI during his physical in October or on what part of his body.
The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that the president received “advanced imaging” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “as part of his routine physical examination” and that the results showed Trump remains in “exceptional physical health.”
Trump added Sunday that he has “no idea” on what part of his body he got the MRI.
“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”
State police are investigating an early-morning shooting on I-95 that left one person wounded and partially shut down traffic for several hours.
The shooting occurred around 7 a.m. Sunday, in the northbound lanes of the highway approaching the Cottman Avenue exit, a Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson said.
The victim sustained a non-life-threatening injury to the shoulder. The suspected shooter was taken into custody, police said.
Portions of I-95 northbound remained closed until just before noon Sunday, the spokesperson said, while investigators gathered evidence from the crime scene.
Police have yet to release a motive or any charges in the incident. The identities of the victim and alleged shooter were not immediately available.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration will “permanently pause” migration from all “Third World Countries,” following the death of a National Guard member in an attack near the White House.
The comments mark a further escalation of migration measures Trump has ordered since the shooting on Wednesday that investigators say was carried out by an Afghan national who entered the U.S. in 2021 under a resettlement program.
Trump did not identify any countries by name or explain what he meant by third-world countries or “permanently pause.” He said the plan would include cases approved under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States,” he said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Trump said he would end all federal benefits and subsidies for “non-citizens,” adding he would “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility” and deport any foreign national deemed a public charge, security risk, or “non-compatible with Western civilization.”
White House and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Trump claims hundreds of thousands of migrants are unvetted
Earlier, officials from the Department of Homeland Security said Trump had ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under Biden’s administration and green cards issued to citizens of 19 countries.
The alleged gunman, identified by officials as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was granted asylum this year under Trump, according to a U.S. government file seen by Reuters.
He entered the U.S. in a resettlement program set up by Biden after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that led to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the country’s takeover by the Taliban.
In a separate post prior to his “permanently pause” announcement, Trump claimed that hundreds of thousands of people poured into the U.S. totally “unvetted and unchecked” during what he described as the “horrendous” airlift from Afghanistan.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Wednesday stopped processing all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely.
Trump pushes reverse migration
Trump indicated that his administration’s goals are aimed at significantly reducing “illegal and disruptive populations,” suggesting that measures would be taken to achieve this outcome.
“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.”
Even though Lakanwal was in the country legally, the incident bolsters Trump’s immigration agenda. Cracking down on both legal and illegal immigration has been a key focus of his presidency, and this case gave him an opportunity to broaden the debate beyond legality to include stricter vetting of immigrants.
Trump has already deployed additional immigration officers to major U.S. cities to achieve record deportation levels, including many long-term residents and individuals with no criminal record.
Over two-thirds of the roughly 53,000 people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained as of Nov. 15 had no criminal convictions, according to ICE statistics.
Robert A.M. Stern, 86, a leading architect over the past six decades who left his imprint on Philadelphia by designing the Comcast Center and the Museum of the American Revolution among other notable buildings, died Thursday, Nov. 27, at home in Manhattan after a brief pulmonary illness, his family said.
Mr. Stern also wrote respected architectural histories, taught at Columbia and Yale universities, and was dean of Yale’s School of Architecture from 1998 to 2016.
“Bob had a great sensitivity to urbanism in design. You can see that in Philadelphia, where his work certainly sits well where it is placed,” said developer John Gattuso, who worked closely with Mr. Stern on the Comcast Center, completed in 2008, the redevelopment of the Navy Yard, and other projects.
“He was less concerned with theatrical architecture, the gymnastics, and understood how buildings contribute to a sense of place that resonates with people,” he said. For that reason, Gattuso said, “he tended to be underappreciated.”
Stern and his firm designed the 975-foot Comcast Center, the headquarters for the cable and telecommunications giant, completed in 2008.
The 975-foot-tall shimmering Comcast Center, the company’s original skyscraper on JFK Boulevard, straddles the tracks and concourse of Suburban Station, a commuter gateway to the city. An airy 120-foot glass atrium connects the building to the station, providing for a dramatic arrival from below, and overlooks a public plaza.
“The Comcast Center may be his finest work in Philadelphia,” said architecture critic Inga Saffron, who writes for The Inquirer. “The scale is right. It’s not fat. It’s tapered.”
Classical indentations in the 58-story building draw the eye upward, she said. “It’s a good dignified skyscraper … Buildings like this are embedded in the city.”
Mr. Stern’s firm was also known for luxury apartment towers. In Manhattan they include 15 Central Park West, a limestone-clad condominium at the southwest corner of Central Park that was internationally hailed.
The firm’s work also includes university buildings, including the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia; Weill Hall at the University of Michigan; and Miller Hall at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., among many others.
In Philadelphia, Mr. Stern’s firm prepared the master plan for the Navy Yard, and designed buildings on Crescent Drive in that development and the 10 Rittenhouse condominium, as well as the American Water tower on the Camden Waterfront — and the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University.
Robert A.M. Stern designed the former U.S. headquarters for GSK at Five Crescent Drive in the Navy Yard, Philadelphia. He and his associates put together the master plan for the redevelopment of the massive property.
Mr. Stern was a proponent of post-modernism, a style of architecture that incorporated classical elements. He moved further in that direction as his career went on.
Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution was built in a Georgian style. But to Saffron, it was perhaps too much, and more out of place to the city.
“He embraces classicism more and more,” Saffron said. In the case of the museum, “It’s a schlocky classicism,” in contrast to the relatively modest scale of the historic buildings in Old City.
“It’s like Independence Hall on steroids,” Saffron said.
The latest Robert A.M. Stern Architects design in Philadelphia is nearing completion, a massive life sciences research building at Drexel University, on Cuthbert Street, by Gattuso Development Partners.
In an interview with the New York Times when he was 84, Mr. Stern said he still wasn’t using a computer and drew “everything by hand.”
Born in Brooklyn on May 23, 1939, Mr. Stern earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia and a master’s in architecture from Yale. In 1966, he married photographer Lynn Gimbel Solinger, a granddaughter of Bernard Gimbel, the department store magnate. They had a son, Nicholas, and later divorced.
Mr. Stern is survived by his son, three grandchildren, and other relatives.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump said that one of the two West Virginia National Guard members shot by an Afghan national near the White House had died, calling the shooter who had worked with the CIA in his native country a “savage monster.”
As part of his Thanksgiving call to U.S. troops, Trump said that he had just learned that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, had died, while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life.”
“She’s just passed away,” Trump said. “She’s no longer with us. She’s looking down at us right now. Her parents are with her.”
The president called Beckstrom an “incredible person, outstanding in every single way.”
Trump used the announcement to say the shooting was a “terrorist attack” as he criticized the Biden administration for enabling Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the Afghanistan War to enter the United States. The president has deployed National Guard members in part to assist in his administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Trump suggested that the shooter was mentally unstable after the war and departure from Afghanistan.
“He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts,” the president said. “It happens too often with these people.”
Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and Specialist Sarah Beckstrom.
The shooter worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan
The suspect charged with the shooting is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29. The suspect had worked in a special CIA-backed Afghan Army unit before emigrating from Afghanistan, according to two sources who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, and #AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, declined to provide a motive for Wednesday afternoon’s brazen act of violence which occurred just blocks from the White House. The presence of troops in the nation’s capital and other cities around the country has become a political flashpoint.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Webster Springs, where Beckstrom is from, will hold three prayer vigils Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, according to a Facebook post from the Webster County Veterans Auxiliary.
Pirro said that the suspect, Lakanwal, launched an “ambush-style” attack with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. The suspect currently faces charges of assault with intent to kill while armed and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence. Pirro said that “it’s too soon to say” what the suspect’s motives were.
The charges could be upgraded, Pirro said, adding: “We are praying that they survive and that the highest charge will not have to be murder in the first degree. But make no mistake, if they do not, that will certainly be the charge.”
The rare shooting of National Guard members on American soil, on the eve of Thanksgiving, comes amid court fights and a broader public policy debate about the Trump administration’s use of the military to combat what officials cast as an out-of-control crime problem.
Trump issued an emergency order in August that federalized the local police force and sent in National Guard troops. The order expired a month later. But the troops have remained in the city, where nearly 2,200 troops currently are assigned, according to the government’s latest update.
The guard members have patrolled neighborhoods, train stations and other locations, participated in highway checkpoints and been assigned to pick up trash and guard sports events. The Trump administration quickly ordered 500 more National Guard members to Washington following Wednesday’s shooting.
The suspect who was in custody also was shot and had wounds that were not believed to be life-threatening, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
Shooting raises questions about legacy of Afghanistan War
A resident of the eastern Afghan province of Khost who identified himself as Lakanwal’s cousin said Lakanwal was originally from the province and that he and his brother had worked in a special Afghan Army unit known as Zero Units in the southern province of Kandahar. A former official from the unit, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Lakanwal was a team leader and his brother was a platoon leader.
The cousin spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said Lakanwal had started out working as a security guard for the unit in 2012, and was later promoted to become a team leader and a GPS specialist.
Kandahar is in the Taliban heartland of the country. It saw fierce fighting between the Taliban and NATO forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 following the al-Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11. The CIA relied on Afghan staff for translation, administrative and front-line fighting with their own paramilitary officers in the war.
Zero Units were paramilitary units manned by Afghans but backed by the CIA and also served in front-line fighting with CIA paramilitary officers. Activists had attributed abuses to the units. They played a key role in the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country, providing security around Kabul International Airport as the Americans and withdrew from the country.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that Lakanwal’s relationship with the U.S. government “ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation” of U.S. service members from Afghanistan.
Lakanwal, 29, entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, officials said. Lakanwal applied for asylum during the Biden administration, but his asylum was approved under the Trump administration, #AfghanEvac said in a statement.
The initiative brought roughly 76,000 people to the U.S., many of whom had worked alongside U.S. troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators. It has since faced intense scrutiny from Trump and others over allegations of gaps in the vetting process, even as advocates say there was extensive vetting and the program offered a lifeline to people at risk of Taliban reprisals.
The Philadelphia region played a crucial role in supporting the largest resettlement effort since the end of the Vietnam War, as the United States evacuated thousands of allies from Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban.
Philadelphia International Airport served as the nation’s main arrival point for more than 25,000 evacuees, about 1,500 of whom needed immediate medical attention for everything from diabetes to gunshot wounds. The flights to Philadelphia came from first-stop, emergency evacuation centers in Germany, Bahrain, Qatar, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere.
Most arrivals to Philadelphia were bused from the airport to temporary living quarters at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in South Jersey. Others went to seven other military installations being used as “safe havens,” from where they were resettled in communities across the country.
At one point more than 11,000 Afghans were living in a tent city, christened “Liberty Village,” on the South Jersey base. The Trump administration recently designated the base as one of two military sites where it intends to hold immigration detainees.
Ultimately at least 600 evacuees were resettled in the Philadelphia area, many of them living in the Northeast, which already had a significant Afghan population.
Almost everyone who came to Philadelphia and to this country served the United States in a military, diplomatic, or development capacity, or was the family member of someone who did. Others worked in media, women’s organizations, or humanitarian groups that faced Taliban retaliation.
Lakanwal has been living in Bellingham, Wash., about 79 miles north of Seattle, with his wife and five children, said his former landlord, Kristina Widman.
The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, said in a social media post Thursday that Trump directed him to review the green cards of people from countries “of concern.”
Edlow didn’t name the countries. But in June, the administration banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of 12 countries and restricted access from seven others, citing national security concerns. Green card holders and Afghans who worked for the U.S. government or its allies in Afghanistan were listed as exempt.
Attack being investigated as terrorist act
FBI Director Kash Patel said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Agents have served a series of search warrants, with Patel calling it a “coast-to-coast investigation.”
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has previously questioned the effectiveness of using the National Guard to enforce city laws. Last week, a federal judge ordered an end to the deployment there, but the judge also paused her order for 21 days to allow the administration to remove the troops or appeal.
On Thursday, Bowser interpreted the shooting as a direct assault on America itself, rather than specifically on Trump’s policies.
“Somebody drove across the country and came to Washington, D.C., to attack America,” Bowser said. “That person will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.
