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WATCH: Donald Trump sworn in as 47th US president
Chief Justice John Roberts administered the presidential oath of office to Donald J. Trump.
How will new Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson elevate Caleb Williams? ‘This offense will be calibrated with him in mind.’
Quarterback Caleb Williams was driving on the highway when he received the call from Chicago Bears leaders with the news Monday. Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson was set to become his new head coach .
Williams thanked the Bears, and when he hung up, he let out his emotion.
“I don’t know if it was safe or not, but I gave out a loud yell and scream of just excitement,” Williams said. “It just brings a bunch of clarity to the offseason.”
After a bumpy rookie season in which Williams had two head coaches, two play callers and three offensive coordinators, the Bears put in place a coach they believe can help the quarterback grow into his NFL potential for years to come in Chicago.
Two days later, Williams sat in the front row of Johnson’s introductory news conference Wednesday at Halas Hall, along with wide receivers DJ Moore and Rome Odunze and tight end Cole Kmet. They listened as Johnson delivered a message about what’s ahead for the Bears players.
“Get comfortable being uncomfortable,” Johnson told them. “The bar has been set higher than it’s ever been set before. The only way for this team, and for you as individual players, to reach your potential is to be pushed and to be challenged, and that’s exactly what I and my staff plan on doing.
“We’re going to push. We’re going to challenge. And along with those high standards, there’s also going to be a high level of support as well. Everybody in this building is going to be all about helping you guys out. How do you become the best versions of yourselves?”
When general manager Ryan Poles introduced Johnson to Chicago on Wednesday, he lauded the 13-year NFL assistant coach for “his passion, his leadership, his football IQ and his vision for winning football.”
The Bears hope that within those qualities lies the formula for unlocking the best version of Williams. That includes Johnson using his creativity and vision to craft an offense tailored to Williams, and it includes the coach knowing how to demand accountability and use discipline in his leadership.
Williams said at the end of the 2024 season that he wanted the Bears to hire a coach who would challenge him. Two days into his tenure, Johnson already had spoken with Williams about his no-nonsense approach to coaching and how he plans to support him while also holding him accountable.
“(Williams) is going to be challenged to be a professional football player, to do the little things the right way,” Poles said. “That foundation, I know Ben is going to hit that early and often, get that foundation strong, because you’re going to build everything off of there. … Now we can continue to get better and play more consistently.”
After leading a top-five offense in Detroit during his three seasons as coordinator, Johnson was one of the top candidates of this NFL hiring cycle and had other interested suitors, including the Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars.
But Chairman George McCaskey said Johnson opened and ended his videoconference interview with the Bears by telling them, “I want this job.”
Johnson’s conviction that the job was for him came from his admiration for the city of Chicago, his belief that the roster already is “stocked” with talent, his confidence in working with Poles and — a large component — his belief in Williams.
“Having a quarterback helps,” Johnson said with a smile.
Johnson lauded Williams’ ability to fit the ball into tight windows, his fearlessness and his confidence throwing inside and outside of the numbers as special traits.
He said the Bears already are working on an action plan to identify some of Williams’ weaknesses and work to improve them, and he already spoke with Williams about things within his game he wants to address. Johnson said he expects to spend a lot of time with Williams this spring with the goal that the quarterback can see the game through his eyes as the play caller.
“He is a phenomenal talent that had — as many quarterbacks do — an up and down rookie year,” Johnson said. “Where I see my role is as a supporter of him. This offense will be calibrated with him in mind. We’re going to build this thing. This is not simply a dropping of a previous playbook down on the table and starting there. Nope, we’re ripping this thing down to the studs, and we’re going to build it out with him first and foremost and then with the pieces around him next.”
That professed willingness to adapt what he did in Detroit to the Bears personnel is another thing that excites Williams, who said it reminded him of what USC coach Lincoln Riley did for him in his college offense.
It also drew Poles to Johnson.
“I would have been concerned if he said that ‘This is a cookie-cutter thing. I’ll bring Detroit’s playbook here and just drop it,’” Poles said. “He probably wouldn’t be here if he said that. But he understands that he’s got to shift and change and adapt to the talent that he has. And that awareness is really encouraging.”
Even before Johnson was hired, Williams said he admired Johnson’s creativity in Detroit from afar. On Wednesday, Williams linked that creativity with the leadership he expects Johnson to bring to the Bears.
“What he’s been able to do over there with Detroit in that offense, you don’t see an offense doing things that they were doing without somebody like Ben at the helm of it,” Williams said. “Just because there’s so much time and so much effort and so much energy and passion that goes into it. … Without the discipline and accountability, you don’t get to do all those cool things.”
Williams’ first interaction with Johnson this week started cautiously.
Earlier this month, Williams was pranked by a group of kids who texted his number pretending to be Johnson and declaring that they were taking the Bears job. Williams was duped into doing a FaceTime call with them, which was then posted to social media.
On Monday upon the deal being done, Bears chief administrative officer Ted Crews sent Johnson’s number to Williams so he knew it was the right one. Johnson also called Williams on FaceTime, sending a photo of his face to give the quarterback confirmation it was him.
Soon enough, Williams was connecting with his new coach and identifying Johnson’s drive to be great.
“You can see the competitiveness in his eyes,” Williams said. “The fire in his eyes. It was really cool seeing that.”
Mexican border states prepare migrant shelters as Trump begins deportation campaign
Mexico raised sprawling tents on the U.S. border Wednesday as it braced for President Donald Trump to fulfill his pledge to reverse mass migration.
Teen fatally shoots a female student and himself at Antioch High School in Nashville, police say
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A female student was killed and another student was wounded Wednesday in a shooting in a Nashville high school cafeteria, nearly two years after another deadly school shooting in the city that ignited an emotional debate about gun control in Tennessee.
The 17-year-old shooter, who was also a student at Antioch High School, later shot and killed himself with a handgun, Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron said during a news conference. Police identified him as Solomon Henderson.
Police Chief John Drake said the shooter “confronted” a 16-year-old female student in the cafeteria and opened fire, killing her. Police identified her as Josselin Corea Escalante. Drake said police are looking into a motive and whether he targeted the specific students he shot.
The male student who was wounded suffered a graze and was treated and released from the hospital, Drake said. Another student was taken to a hospital for treatment of a facial injury that happened during a fall, Aaron said.
There were two school resource officers in the building when the shooting happened around 11 a.m. CDT, Aaron said. They were not in the immediate vicinity of the cafeteria and by the time they got down there the shooting was over and the gunman had killed himself, Aaron said.
The school has about 2,000 students and is located in Antioch, a neighborhood about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of downtown Nashville.
At a family safety center close to a hospital, officials were helping shocked parents to reunite with their children.
Dajuan Bernard was waiting at a Mapco service station to reunite with his son, a 10th grader, who was being held in the auditorium with other students on Wednesday afternoon. He first heard of the shooting from his son who “was a little startled,” Bernard said. His son was upstairs from the cafeteria but said he heard the gunfire.
“He was OK and let me know that everything was OK,” Bernard said.
“This world is so crazy, it could happen anywhere,” he said. “We’ve just got to protect the kids, and raise the kids right to prevent them from even doing this. That’s the hardest part.”
Fonda Abner, whose granddaughter is a student at the school, said Antioch High does not have metal detectors that would alert officials to the presence of a gun. She said her granddaughter had called her a couple of times but that she only heard commotion and thought it was a pocket dial. They spoke briefly before being cut off.
“It’s nerve-wracking waiting out here,” Abner said.
Adrienne Battle, superintendent of Nashville schools, said public schools have implemented a “range of safety measures,” including partnerships with police for school resource officers, security cameras with weapon-detection software, shatter-resistant film for glass, and security vestibules that are a barrier between outside visitors and the main entrance.
“Unfortunately, these measures were not enough to stop this tragedy,” Battle said.
She noted that there are questions about whether stationary metal detectors should be considered.
“While past research has shown they have had limitations and unintended consequences, we will continue to explore emerging technologies and strategies to strengthen school safety,” Battle said.
In October, a 16-year-old Antioch High School student was arrested after school resource officers and school officials discovered through social media that he had taken a gun to school the prior day. When he was stopped the following morning, officials found a loaded gun in his pants, police said.
Wednesday’s school shooting comes nearly two years after a shooter opened fire at a separate Nashville private elementary school and killed six people, including three children.
The tragedy prompted a monthslong effort among hundreds of community organizers, families, protesters and many more pleading with lawmakers to consider passing gun control measures in response to the shooting.
However, in a Republican-dominant state, GOP lawmakers refused to do so. With the Republican supermajority intact after November’s election, it’s unlikely attitudes have changed enough to consider any meaningful bills that would address gun control.
Instead, lawmakers have been more open to adding more security to schools — including passing a bill last year that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds, and bar parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed.
Antioch, a growing and diverse area of Nashville, has endured other prominent shootings in recent years. A 2017 fatal shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ killed one woman and wounded seven people. And in 2018, a shooter killed four people at a Waffle House.
State Rep. Shaundelle Brooks ran for office in large part due to her son’s death in the Waffle House shooting and was elected last year after the Covenant shooting. She said the Antioch High shooting reinforces the need for gun control reforms. “We must do better,” she said.
“Ever since I lost my son, Akilah, in a mass shooting in 2018, I have been fighting to ensure this never happens again,” the Nashville Democrat said in a statement. “Here we are almost 7 years later, and our communities are still being impacted by gun violence.”
Samantha Dickerson had taken her 14-year-old son’s phone away as a punishment, so when she got a message from his school about the shooting, she had no way to reach him.
“I was nervous,” she said. “I really was about to break down.”
After about three hours of waiting, she finally got a call from his English teacher and spoke with her son.
“When I heard his voice, I just broke down and started crying,” she said.
Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.
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160 national security staffers are sent home as the White House aligns its team to Trump’s agenda
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser on Wednesday sidelined about 160 National Security Council aides, sending them home while the administration reviews staffing and tries to align it with Trump’s agenda.
The career government employees, commonly referred to as detailees, were summoned Wednesday for an all-staff call and told they will be expected to be available to the council’s senior directors but would not need to report to the White House. The council provides national security and foreign policy advice to the president.
Brian McCormack, chief of staff to national security adviser Mike Waltz, delivered the news in a two-minute phone call, telling the detailees they “are directed to be on call and report to the office only if contacted by the NSC leadership.”
“As anyone who has had the privilege of working here in the white House knows, it’s a tremendous honor, to support the executive office of the president and the presidency itself,” said McCormack, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Associated Press. “We also know that every president is entitled to have a staff and the advisers that they need to implement the goals that the American people elected him to pursue.”
Trump, a Republican, is sidelining these nonpolitical experts on topics that range from counterterrorism to global climate policy at a time when the United States is dealing with a disparate set of complicated foreign policy matters, including conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Such structuring could make new policy experts brought in to the NSC less likely to speak up about policy differences and concerns.
Waltz had signaled before Inauguration Day that he would look to return holdover civil servants who worked in the council during President Joe Biden’s administration to their home agencies. That was meant to ensure the council is staffed by those who support Trump’s goals.
By the end of the review, Waltz will look to have a “more efficient, flatter” NSC, one official said. The officials declined to comment on the ultimate number of personnel — nonpolitical detailees as well as political appointees — whom Trump and Waltz would like to see as part of the council once the review is completed.
Officials said they have already begun bringing detailees from agencies with expertise that the new administration values, including some who had served during the first Trump administration.
Some directors have made decisions to inform detailees they will be sent back to their home agencies. For example, multiple holdover detailees assigned to the counterterrorism directorate were told on Tuesday that their assignments were being cut short, according to two people familiar with the move who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
At least some holdover detailees sent home Wednesday had their White House emails turned off soon after the call ended, but were told to remain reachable on their personal cellphones. It is unlikely they will be assigned any substantive work during the review.
Waltz “promised and authorized a full review of NSC personnel,” council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement. “It is entirely appropriate for Mr. Waltz to ensure NSC personnel are committed to implementing President Trump’s America First agenda to protect our national security and wisely use the tax dollars of America’s working men and women. Since 12:01 pm on Monday personnel reviews and decisions based on the evaluations are being made.”
The dozens of staff members affected by the decision are largely subject matter experts from the State Department, the FBI and the CIA on temporary duty that typically lasts one year to two years.
Incoming senior Trump administration officials this month also had questioned some career civil servants about which 2024 candidate they voted for, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by Trump’s team, a person familiar with the matter told the AP. That person spoke on the condition of the anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel matter.
Waltz in a recent interview with Breitbart News said that he wanted the NSC to be staffed by personnel who are “100% aligned with the president’s agenda.”
The NSC was launched as an arm of the White House during the Truman administration. It was tasked with advising and assisting the president on national security and foreign policy and coordinating among various government agencies. It is common for experts detailed to the NSC to carry over from one administration to the next, even when the White House changes parties.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, made a case for the incoming Trump administration to hold over career government employees assigned to the NSC, at least through the early going. He called the career appointees “patriots” who have served “without fear or favor for both Democratic and Republican administrations.”
Trump, during his first term, was scarred when two career military officers detailed to the NSC became whistleblowers, raising their concerns about Trump’s 2019 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump sought an investigation of Biden and his son Hunter. That episode led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Alexander Vindman was listening to the call in his role as an NSC official when he became alarmed at what he heard. He approached his twin brother, Eugene, who at the time was serving as an ethics lawyer at the NSC. Both Vindmans reported their concerns to superiors.
Man convicted of stalking Chinese ex-official by leaving him a dire note gets prison in U.S.
A man who taped a sinister note to a Chinese ex-official’s door in New Jersey was sentenced Wednesday to 16 months in prison. He was convicted of participating in what U.S. authorities called a Beijing-driven pressure campaign targeting expatriates.
Boebert vows to offer Jan. 6 protests tour of the Capitol
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said on Tuesday she would offer guided tours of the Capitol to the Jan. 6 rioters who just received a sweeping pardon from President Trump.
“I’ll be the first member of Congress to offer them a guided tour in the Capitol,” Boebert said on Tuesday, standing outside a Washington, D.C. jail, where some defendants were being held, according to footage from NBC News.
The staunch Trump ally was surrounded by onlookers who cheered in response to her announcement.
“President Trump signed a pardon yesterday, demanding that they be pardoned, all of them, and released,” Boebert said, adding, “But now we’re waiting on 22 hostages, here in this jail.”
Trump on Monday night, in one of his first official acts as president, granted roughly 1,500 “full, complete and unconditional pardons” for rioters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. There have been 1,583 total defendants charged.
About 600 Jan. 6 defendants were accused of assaulting, resisting or impeding police. Ten defendants were convicted of sedition, the crown jewel of the Justice Department’s sprawling prosecution.
“These men have already paid too much time, more time than they ever should have. They should’ve never been locked up,” Boebert said on Tuesday outside the jail.
“I’m hoping that these guys are out before I’m able to return,” she added. “And if they’re not, I’m coming back. I want to see them for their release.”
The Hill has reached out to Boebert for comment.
Worker falls several stories at Obama Presidential Center site: authorities
A worker at the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park fell several stories down a ventilation duct and had to be extricated early Wednesday afternoon, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
The man fell sometime after 1 p.m. Wednesday at the presidential center under construction in the 6000 block of South Stony Island Avenue. He sustained several injuries from the fall but was alert and conscious as he was being taken to University of Chicago Medical Center, authorities said.
A spokesperson for the Lakeside Alliance, the group of construction companies building the center, said the company was aware of the incident and would release further information as it became available.
A spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration was also at the construction site but had no other information immediately available.