The Latest: Kash Patel confronts Senate questions over probe into Charlie Kirk’s killing

Audio By Carbonatix

FBI Director Kash Patel touted his leadership of the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency as he faced questions from senators about the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing, the case against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the firings of senior FBI officials who have accused Patel of illegal political retribution.

His appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee represented the first oversight hearing of Patel’s young but tumultuous tenure and provides a high-stakes platform for him to confront skeptical Democrats at a time of internal upheaval and mounting concerns about political violence inside the United States, which President Donald Trump has squarely blamed on the left. Patel listed a series of what he said were accomplishments of his first months on the job, including his efforts to fight violent crime and protect children.

The Latest:

The chairman of the National Governors Association said Americans need to do some self-reflection in the wake of conservative leader Charlie Kirk’s shooting death and realize that, “We agree on a lot more than we disagree.”

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma made his comments during a Zoom news conference with the NGA’s vice chair, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. They had the event to stress governors’ support for education.

“We need to just tamp down the rhetoric,” Stitt said, adding that it’s a bipartisan sentiment. He said people agree that they want the best education for their children and “the best economy and the best roads and bridges.”

“People are looking for leadership. People are looking for common sense,” Stitt said. “That’s lacking right now, especially when the fringes are in control of some of the media.”

Leader Hakeem Jeffries pushed back against a proposal to punish a lawmaker for their comments in the aftermath of the Kirk assassination, and instead said leaders should be “lifting people up.”

“The question that should be asked is, ‘Has the president brought the rhetoric down?’” he said at a press conference at the Capitol. “We need to come together, not as Democrats or Republicans or independents, but as Americans.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that troops across all the services who need an exemption from shaving for longer than a year should now be kicked out of the service.

In a Aug. 20 memo that was made public Monday, Hegseth said that while commanders are still able to issue servicemembers exemptions from shaving – a policy that has existed for decades – those exemptions will now have to come with a medical treatment plan. Troops who still need treatment after one year will be separated from service, the memo decreed.

Most shaving waivers are for troops diagnosed with pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, a condition in which hairs curl back into the skin after shaving and cause irritation. It is a condition that disproportionately affects Black men. The memo is silent on what treatments the military would offer for troops impacted by the new policy or if it will front the cost for those treatments.

Attorneys defending immigrant families held in federal custody are alleging such things as bottled water for sale, a child with appendicitis told to wait three days, and families released from custody only to be re-detained.

The declarations are part of an ongoing lawsuit where the federal government is requesting to end protections for immigrant children. Since the unlicensed detention center in Dilley, Texas, started holding families when it reopened in March, families reported long detention stays, children fighting adults for clean water and a lack of adequate medical care.

The federal judge presiding over this case last month requested more information about the length of detention for children. ICE provided a report that said the children in custody over 72 hours went down from six days to five days in June and July, respectively. But attorneys representing the children who reviewed the report said the government has held some children for over a week and often without justification.

JB Pritzker, a frequent Trump critic, accused the president of being forgetful and unreliable, suggesting he “might be suffering from some dementia.”

“When he said that he wasn’t coming to Chicago, I didn’t trust that,” Pritzker said Tuesday. “When he says he is coming to Chicago, it’s hard to believe anything he says.”

Trump has vowed to send military troops to the nation’s third-largest city but repeatedly changed his statements. He’s said he’d prefer cooperative cities but on Tuesday again mentioned Chicago as a possibility for the next deployment.

Elected leaders and many residents strongly oppose any federal intervention.

The investment includes $15 billion in capital expenditures to build out cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. A project with British company Nscale aims to build the nation’s largest supercomputer, running on more than 23,000 advanced graphics processor chips.

“We’re focused on British pounds, not empty tech promises, because it’s easy to have big numbers but we will be good for every cent of this investment,” Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters Tuesday.

He said the investments were separate from those made through the Stargate project and Microsoft’s longtime partner OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, which is increasingly trying to set its own course without the software giant’s help.

Smith credited the U.K.’s “regulatory stability” and its commitment to expanding the supply of electricity needed to power data centers. He said Microsoft didn’t receive any request from the Trump administration to make the announcement.

A man detained by authorities days after he nearly died in an Iowa shooting is one of a growing number of crime victims who have been targeted in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Felipe de Jesus Hernandez Marcelo was shot in June during an attempted robbery in Muscatine, Iowa, and has been detained since shortly after he got out of the hospital.

In January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement rescinded a policy that had shielded many victims from detention and removal. The number of people applying for visas that allow some victims to remain in the country has plummeted since then. Others have been detained unexpectedly by ICE as they go through the lengthy application process.

▶ Read more about how ICE is moving to deport more victims of crime

Trump is extending a deadline for the social media app TikTok to shut down.

It will be the fourth time that Trump has ignored federal law and extended a deadline for TikTok to go out of business. Trump has signed an executive order to keep TikTok operating, a day after he said he’d reached a framework deal with China to keep it operating.

The president issued an executive order creating a Presidential Emergency Board meant to resolve a contract dispute that nearly triggered a strike on the Long Island Railroad this week.

“Once again, President Trump is stepping up when Democrats have failed,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in an apparent dig at Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Unionized LIRR workers voted to authorize a strike on Monday but also approved seeking federal intervention. The move pushed the possibility of a strike at least into January.

The Israeli prime minister says Trump had invited him to visit on Sept. 29, after he addresses the United Nations General Assembly.

It will be Netanyahu’s fourth visit to the White House since Trump assumed office in January.

A group of Democratic governors is urging congressional leaders to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits. They write in a letter that letting the credits expire would cause harm that “will be felt for years.”

The appeal comes as Congress is moving toward a potential government shutdown, with Republicans and Democrats at odds over how to continue the tax credits that have made health insurance more affordable for millions.

The 18 Democratic governors wrote that “these subsidies are the only reason health insurance is still within reach in a country where the cost of living keeps going up.”

The letter was sent Monday and advised both Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate that “this isn’t a partisan issue.”

Neither offered any further on-the-record detail after Trump suggested the U.S. military had carried out an operation on a third vessel from Venezuela.

Asked earlier on Tuesday by a reporter about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s angry response to two military strikes carried out by the U.S. military in recent weeks on alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, Trump replied “We knocked off, actually, three boats not two.”

The Pentagon referred questions to the White House, which has not provided details about where and when the third military operation took place.

President Trump says on social media that Republicans will hold the gathering to highlight “the great things we have done” since he was reelected in 2024.

The convention’s date and location are still to come, Trump says. But he promised that “it will be quite the Event, and very exciting!”

Trump first floated the idea after news reports that the Democratic Party was considering its own gathering before the 2026 midterm elections to highlight candidates and garner attention as the party aims to regain control of both houses of Congress next year.

Patel has finished testifying after a contentious 4 ½ hour hearing before Congress.

The final round of questioning for the FBI director came from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Tillis issued a call to both sides of the aisle, including fellow conservatives, to tone down the rhetoric in the face of escalating political violence in the U.S.

“How on earth are we de-escalating the situation with the tensions as high as they were last week with going out and saying we’re at war?” Tillis said. “There are people out here on our side of the aisle that still need to look in the mirror.”

The FBI director shouted over the California Democrat during questioning on how the Trump administration has handled the Jeffrey Epstein files and Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate,” Patel shouted at Schiff.

“You are a political buffoon at best!” Patel added.

Schiff tried to yell over him, saying, “You can make an internet troll the FBI director, but (he) will always be nothing more than an internet troll.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee, pounded his gavel repeatedly, but Patel continued.

The feud between Patel and Schiff dates back years, to when Patel was a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee and Schiff was a House member.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois says immigration agents have arrested 250 people in the Chicago area since a new enforcement campaign was announced last week.

The Democrat is a member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations and got the information after a requested briefing with immigration officials. She shared details late Monday.

Underwood says the arrests began Sept. 6, two days earlier than a program touted as “Midway Blitz” was publicly announced. She says the operation would include the entire state of Illinois and neighboring Lake County in Indiana.

Top administration officials arrived in Chicago Tuesday, potentially signaling a more aggressive phase of immigration enforcement. DHS officials have not responded to questions about the number of arrests in the Chicago area.

Immigrants are being detained in various locations, sparking fear and leading some people to stay home. Advocates report increased activity from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with unmarked vehicles targeting work vans and staking out neighborhoods with large immigrant populations.

One Metro Boston city canceled its Hispanic Heritage Month festival due to safety concerns. ICE’s “Patriot 2.0” operation follows a previous crackdown in Boston.

The U.S. Department of Justice has also filed a lawsuit against Boston over its so-called sanctuary policies. Advocates argue the city’s policy of limiting cooperation with ICE keeps the city safe and ensures Boston remains a place for all residents.

Opponents argue challenging the federal government risks much-needed federal funding and allows criminals to walk the streets.

▶ Read more about ICE detentions intensifying in so-called sanctuary cities

Patel had posted in the hours after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that “the subject” was in custody even though the actual suspect was still at large.

“I don’t see it as a mistake. I see it as something -- working with the public to identify that there was a subject in custody,” Patel told senators.

He said he wanted to inform the public that a subject had been taken into custody, even though that person did not end up being the suspect in the shooting.

He told senators: “Could I have been more careful in my verbiage and said we had a subject instead of the subject? Sure.”

Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, pushed back, saying it caused confusion by making it sound like authorities had caught the person suspected of killing Kirk.

Patel shot back by saying, “That’s not what I said.”

A group of Democratic senators say they are deeply concerned that a Pentagon plan to allow military lawyers to work as temporary immigration judges will violate a ban on using service members for law enforcement and affect the military justice system.

The letter, sent to the military services and provided to The Associated Press, comes two weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges. It is among the steps the Trump administration has taken to use the military in broader ways than previously seen, particularly in its immigration crackdown, including sending the National Guard into American cities and deploying active duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“These military officers would serve under the command and control of the Attorney General and would execute administrative determinations at the direction of the Attorney General,” according to the letter signed by 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It added that “these actions are inherently law enforcement actions that may not be performed by members of the armed forces.”

Republican Gov. Mike Braun said that the redistricting conversation is “moving” and it’s likely inevitable. But he doesn’t want to call a special session unless there will be a successful outcome.

“I’ve been very clear, I want it to be organic,” he said in a video reported by WRTV in Indianapolis.

Indiana GOP lawmakers have been hesitant about redistricting while Texas and Missouri barrel ahead, emblematic of Indiana’s independent streak. Braun said a special session could happen any time after November.

The GOP legislative caucuses met last week to discuss redistricting a few weeks after visiting the White House.

Gov. Josh Shapiro says the nation must “turn the tide” against political violence and the belief that government can’t solve problems while also rejecting vengeance.

Shapiro, a Democrat, delivered the remarks at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh. Shapiro said leaders must condemn all forms of political violence and shouldn’t use violence as a pretext for more violence or to prosecute constitutionally protected speech.

Shapiro also criticized Trump, saying some people “in the dark corners of the internet, all the way to the Oval Office, want to cherry-pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn.”

In April, Shapiro and his family fled the governor’s official residence in the middle of the night after an alleged arsonist set it on fire in an attempt to kill Shapiro.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he has had no direct conversations with the White House or Border Patrol and reaffirmed that Chicago police would not collaborate with ICE.

“I get that people are feeling a level of anxiety, but they should be assured that we’re going to work with all of our stakeholders to make sure the people of Chicago are safe and supported,” he said at a news conference following his signing of an executive order aiming to protect the right to protest.

The order states that, if federal law enforcement disrupts peaceful protests, Chicago police will “collaborate with protest organizers to develop a mutually acceptable alternative plan.”

Johnson said the order was an attempt to be “proactive” amid federal intervention and after protesters clashed with federal immigration agents Friday outside an ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois.

They unveiled a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government through Nov. 21.

The bill generally funds agencies at current levels, though there is an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday.

The budget year draws to a close at the end of the month and Congress has yet to approve funding levels for the coming fiscal year. So, lawmakers will need to pass a stopgap measure to keep agencies funded while they work out their differences for the full year.

Democratic leaders have insisted that Republicans negotiate with them on the spending bill to protect health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. But Republicans leaders have rebuffed those demands and say those discussions are for another time and would not be part of the continuing resolution.

Any spending bill that passes will need some support from Democrats in the Senate as the measure will need at least 60 votes to advance to a final vote.

Patel and the New Jersey Democrat got into a shouting match as Booker charged that Patel is responsible for a “generational destruction of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.”

Patel fired back at Booker, telling him that he was an “embarrassment.”

For several moments, the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, pounded his gavel but struggled to gain control of the two men.

Still, Booker predicted that Patel would not last long in his post. He told Patel that Trump “will cut you loose. This may be the last time I have a hearing with you.”

Patel took the opportunity to give a fiery retort to Democratic senators who say the reason he got the job was his loyalty to President Donald Trump.

Patel’s leadership of the FBI has been marked by turmoil and Democratic accusations that he’s using the law enforcement agency to carry out Trump’s goals.

But Patel told the Senate panel that it was “an entire falsehood” to suggest that he only got the job because he was a Trump loyalist.

Patel pointed to his experience as an attorney, congressional staffer and administration official, saying, “There was no loyalty then. There’s no loyalty now to anything but the Constitution.”