A Massachusetts Air National Guard member was arrested Thursday in connection with the disclosure of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other top national security issues, an alarming breach that has raised fresh questions about America's ability to safeguard its most sensitive secrets.

The guardsman, an IT specialist identified as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, was taken into custody without incident after FBI officers converged on his Massachusetts home. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is to be charged with removing or transmitting classified national defense information, a crime under the Espionage Act.

Garland did not reveal a possible motive, but accounts of those in the online private chat group where the documents were disclosed have depicted Teixeira as motivated more by bravado than ideology.

Video below: Attorney General Merrick Garland announces Teixeira's arrest

While Thursday's arrest was a pivotal moment in an investigation into the highest-profile intelligence leak in years, the military and Justice Department were still scrutinizing how sensitive government secrets shared in a chat room ended up circulating around the world. The emergence of Teixeira as a primary suspect is bound to raise questions about how such a profound breach, one that the Pentagon termed a “very serious risk to national security,” could have been caused by such a young, low-ranking service member.

“We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age. Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. In that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance because he would have also been tasked with responsibility for ensuring protection for the networks, a defense official told the Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Hours after the arrest, Rep. Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a statement pledging to “examine why this happened, why it went unnoticed for weeks, and how to prevent future leaks.”

Teixeira, who was wearing a T-shirt and shorts at the time heavily armed tactical agents took him into custody, is due to have his initial court appearance in Massachusetts on Friday. He could also face charges in a military court.

It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf, and a phone message left at a number believed to belong to his mother was not returned.

Garland said the investigation is ongoing, but did not say if other suspects were being pursued.

WCVB’s Sky5 was overhead Thursday when armed officers approached the North Dighton home through the woods and an armored vehicle drove up the driveway. Moments later, a man in a green shirt and red basketball shorts exited the home, put his hands on his head, turned around and walked backward to where a team was waiting to take him into custody.

Video below: Congressman reacts to arrest of suspected document leaker in his district:

The Biden administration has scrambled to contain the potential diplomatic and military fallout from the leaks since they were first reported last week, moving to assure allies and assess the scope of damage. Pentagon officials have expressed alarm about the breach. President Joe Biden downplayed the lasting impact of the revelations, telling reporters in Ireland earlier Thursday that “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

The classified documents — which have not been individually authenticated by U.S. officials — range from briefing slides mapping out Ukrainian military positions to assessments of international support for Ukraine and other sensitive topics, including under what circumstances Russian President Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons.

There’s no clear answer on how many documents were leaked. The Associated Press has viewed approximately 50 documents; some estimates put the total number in the hundreds.

The leak is believed to have started on a site called Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games and where Teixeira is believed to have posted for years about guns, games and his favorite memes — and, according to some chatting with him, closely guarded U.S. secrets.

Video below: Pentagon spokesman calls intelligence leak ‘deliberate criminal act’

The investigative website Bellingcat and The New York Times first publicly identified Teixeira, minutes before federal officials confirmed he was a subject of interest in the investigation. They reported tracking profiles on other more obscure sites linked to Teixeira.

In previous Associated Press stories, the leaker was identified as “the O.G.” by a member of the online chat group. The person declined to give his name to the AP, citing concerns for his personal safety.

The chat group, called Thug Shaker Central, drew roughly two dozen enthusiasts who talked about their favorite types of guns and also shared memes and jokes, some of them racist. The group also held a running discussion on wars that included talk of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In that discussion, “the O.G.” would for months post material that he said was classified — originally typing it out with his own notations, then a few months ago switching to posting images of folded-up papers because he felt his writings weren’t being taken seriously, the person said.

Discord has said it was cooperating with law enforcement.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a statement issued after the arrest, said the Pentagon would conduct a review of its “intelligence access, accountability and control procedures” to prevent such a leak from happening again.

There are only a few ways the classified information that was leaked could have been accessed. Typically in classified briefings with slides like those that were placed on Discord, the information is shared electronically. That can be done either through secure computer terminals where users gain access based on their credentials or through tablets that are distributed for briefings and collected later.

If the slides need to be printed out instead, they can only be sent to secured printers that are able to handle classified documents — and that keep a digital record of everyone who has requested a printout.

For those with a security clearance, their handling of classified material is based largely on training and trust that they will safeguard the information.

“When you join the military, depending on your position, you may require a security clearance,” Ryder said. “And if you are working in the intelligence community, and you require a security clearance, you’re going to go through the proper vetting.”

Ryder said each service member who obtains a clearance signs a non-disclosure agreement and is trained on the military’s strict guidelines for handling classified material. The leaks were “a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines.”

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Associated Press writers Michelle R. Smith in Swansea, Massachusetts, Nomaan Merchant and Zeke Miller in Washington, Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Colleen Long and Darlene Superville in Dublin contributed to this report.

The Biden administration is again urging courts to step in and suspend a new Texas law that has banned most abortions in the state since early September.

The Justice Department on Monday night asked an appeals court to block the law and allow abortions to resume in the state. The request came as clinics in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states remain busy, with Texas patients journeying hundreds of miles away to get care.

Last week, a federal judge briefly blocked the law for a brief 48-hour window, but it was quickly reinstated upon appeal.

The coming days could prove crucial for the future of the legislation and women seeking urgent reproductive care, as courts decide whether to keep the law in place while its legality is sorted out.

The Texas law, SB8, is the most restrictive anti-abortion law that's gone into effect since the Supreme Court granted women the Constitutional right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade. The law bans all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which typically occurs around the sixth week of pregnancy — before many women even know they're pregnant.

However, SB8 specifically bans executive branch officials from enforcing the law. Instead, it deputizes private citizens and incentivizes them to sue anyone who conducts or assists in providing a woman with an illegal abortion. Those who successfully sue can win $10,000 and face few consequences if losing a lawsuit.

By putting the onus of enforcement on private citizens, SB8 has mostly been able to evade suspension from appeals courts. On Monday, the Justice Department claimed that if the law stays in place, it could provide a blueprint for other states to restrict Constitutional rights.

"If Texas's scheme is permissible, no constitutional right is safe from state-sanctioned sabotage of this kind," the Justice Department told the appeals court.

In wording that seemed to be a message to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department raised the specter that if allowed to stand, the legal structure created in enacting the law could be used to circumvent even the Supreme Court's rulings in 2008 and 2010 on gun rights and campaign financing.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Federal authorities have charged two men for allegedly plotting to blow up the Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, California. 

The men reportedly expressed hope the bombing would be the first in a series of politically motivated attacks.
According to the DOJ, the men said they wanted to attack Democrats because they believe Former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. 

Days after the election, the two reportedly began discussing possible attacks over messaging apps. A person close to one of the men reported him to authorities as "potentially dangerous to the community," according to the public information officer for the Napa County Sheriff's Office.

That man was taken into custody earlier this year, the second man was brought in recently and the federal indictment was unsealed this week.

The Justice Department says investigators found pipe bombs and arsenals of guns and ammunition in one of their homes.
Their first target was the John L. Burton Democratic Headquarters in Sacramento.

Kamil Zawadzki contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON —

Video above: Trump administration carries out executions during transition period

The Justice Department is halting federal executions after a historic use of capital punishment by the Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in six months.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Thursday night, saying he was imposing a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department conducts a review of its policies and procedures. He gave no timetable.

"The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely," Garland said. "That obligation has special force in capital cases."

Garland said the department would review the protocols put in place by former Attorney General William Barr. A federal lawsuit has been filed over the protocols — including the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injection.

The decision puts executions on hold for now, but it doesn't end their use and keeps the door open for another administration to simply restart them. It also doesn't stop federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty; the Biden administration recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the Boston Marathon bomber's original death sentence.

President Joe Biden has said he opposes the death penalty and his team vowed that he would take action to stop its use while in office. But the issue is an uncomfortable one for Biden. As a then-proponent of the death penalty, Biden helped craft 1994 laws that added 60 federal crimes for which someone could be put to death, including several that did not cause death. He later conceded the laws disproportionately impacted Black people. Black people are also overrepresented on death rows across the United States.

Anti-death penalty advocates had hoped for a more definitive answer from the Biden administration. Support for the death penalty among Americans is at near-historic lows after peaking in the mid-1990s and steadily declining since, with most recent polls indicating support now hovers around 55%, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Ruth Friedman, Director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, which represented some of the prisoners on death row, said Garland's action was a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. She called on Biden to commute the sentences.

"We know the federal death penalty system is marred by racial bias, arbitrariness, over-reaching, and grievous mistakes by defense lawyers and prosecutors that make it broken beyond repair," she said. There are 46 people still on federal death row.

The review is strikingly similar to one to one imposed during the Obama administration. In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

Barr announced the restarting of executions in 2019, saying the Obama-era review had been completed and clearing the way for executions to resume. He approved the new procedure for lethal injections that replaced the three-drug combination previously used in federal executions with one drug, pentobarbital. This is similar to the procedure used in several states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas, but not all.

Donald Trump's Justice Department resumed federal executions in July, following a 17-year hiatus. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions. The last inmate to be executed, Dustin Higgs, was put to death at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, less than a week before Trump left office.

They were carried out during a worsening coronavirus pandemic. Toward the end of the string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19, guards were ill and traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. It's impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn't consistently do contact tracing and haven't been fully transparent about the number of cases. But an Associated Press analysis found the executions were likely a superspreader event.

There were major discrepancies in the way executioners who put the 13 inmates to death described the process of dying by lethal injection. They likened the process in official court papers to falling asleep and called gurneys "beds" and final breaths "snores."

But those tranquil accounts are at odds with reports by The Associated Press and other media witnesses of how prisoners' stomachs rolled, shook and shuddered as the pentobarbital took effect inside the U.S. penitentiary death chamber in Terre Haute. The AP witnessed every execution.

Secrecy surrounded all aspects of the executions. Courts relied on those carrying them out to volunteer information about glitches. None of the executioners mentioned any.

Lawyers argued that one of the men put to death last year, Wesley Purkey, suffered "extreme pain" as he received a dose of pentobarbital. The court papers were filed by another inmate, Keith Nelson, in an effort to halt or delay his execution. But it went forward.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has declined to explain how it obtained pentobarbital for the lethal injections under Trump. But states have resorted to other means as the drugs used in lethal injections have become increasingly hard to procure. Pharmaceutical companies in the 2000s began banning the use of their products for executions, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.

Democrats on Friday seized on new voting restrictions in Georgia to focus attention on the fight to overhaul federal election laws, setting up a slow-building standoff that carries echoes of the civil rights battles of a half-century ago.

In fiery speeches, pointed statements and tweets, party leaders decried the law signed Thursday by the state's Republican governor as specifically aimed at suppressing Black and Latino votes and a threat to democracy. President Joe Biden released an extended statement, calling the law an attack on "good conscience" that denies the right to vote for "countless" Americans.

"This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century," Biden said, referring to laws of the last century that enforced heavy-handed racial segregation in the South.

"It must end. We have a moral and Constitutional obligation to act," he said. He told reporters the Georgia law is an "atrocity" and the Justice Department is looking into it.

Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, lashed back, accusing Biden of attempting to "destroy the sanctity and security of the ballot box" by supporting what the governor sees as federal intrusion into state responsibilities.

Behind the chorus of outrage, Democrats are also wrestling with the limits on their power in Washington, as long as Senate filibuster rules allow Republicans to block major legislation, including H.R. 1, a sweeping elections bill now pending in the Senate.

Biden and his party are seeking to build and sustain momentum in the realm of public opinion — hoping to nationalize what has so far been a Republican-led state-by-state movement to curb access to the ballot — while they begin a slow, plodding legislative process. Allies meanwhile plan to fight the Georgia law, and others, in court.

"What's happening in Georgia right now, underscores the importance and the urgency," said Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., in an interview Friday.

"This is about what is fundamental to our identity as an American people — one person, one vote."

The emerging brawl over the politics and policy of voting access is swelling like nothing seen in recent years, harkening back to what many Americans may assume are well-settled rules ensuring equal access to the ballot.

But as Republican-controlled state legislatures from Georgia to Iowa to Arizona are taking dramatic action to limit early voting and force new voter ID requirements, the debate in Washington threatens to exacerbate the nation's cavernous political divides in the early days of the Biden presidency, just as the Democratic president vows to unite the country.

It is expected to be a months-long slog in the narrowly divided Congress, specifically the Senate, where Democrats are, for now, unwilling to muscle their slim majority to change filibuster rules, despite the party's urgent calls for action.

Instead, the Democrats are prepared to legislate the old-fashioned way, unspooling arguments in lengthy Senate debates, spilling out of the committee hearing rooms and onto the Senate floor, and forcing opponents to go on the record as standing in the way — much as South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond was positioned when he filibustered the Civil Rights Act of the last century.

"They're literally squeezing the arteries of the lifeblood of America," Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., the son of civil rights activists, said in an interview. "They are choking what makes us distinct and unique on the planet Earth."

Booker would not, however, openly call for the end of the filibuster, a parliamentary tool requiring at least 60 votes to advance Senate legislation in some cases.

On Friday, the president revived his call on Congress to enact H.R. 1, an elections overhaul that would confront the Republican restrictions. He called as well for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore some aspects of a landmark law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.

But Biden, like a shrinking number of other powerful Democrats, remains unwilling to embrace the so-called "nuclear option" — ending the filibuster — for fear it would further divide the country.

Meantime, the political fight was intensifying in Georgia, where years of voter registration drives in Black communities and steady population changes helped Biden win the once solidly red state.

Just as Kemp and several white state lawmakers celebrated the signing of the state's new voting law on Thursday, state police officers handcuffed and forcibly removed state Rep. Park Cannon, a Black woman, after she knocked on the door of the governor's private office.

Cannon was charged with obstruction of law enforcement and disruption of the General Assembly, both felonies. She was released from jail late Thursday. Donald Trump, the former president who promoted false claims of election fraud, congratulated the Georgia governor and state leaders on the new law.

As Congress hunkers down for the fight, a groundswell of outside efforts is spending millions to try to influence the debate and apply political pressure on voters, corporations and lawmakers in both parties.

A $30 million advertising campaign is coming from the liberal group End Citizens United, working with former Attorney General Eric Holder's anti-gerrymandering group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, trying to persuade Democratic and Republican senators considered to be swing votes.

Other efforts are also underway, including from former first lady Michelle Obama, via the nonpartisan celebrity "When We All Vote" organization.

Civil rights leader Al Sharpton said Friday that he's working with religious leaders in West Virginia and Arizona to press the home-state Democratic senators. He's well aware that this fight may go on for a while.

"I'm prepared to go on this fight for however long it takes," he said. "Look at how long it took us to get the right to vote."

Sharpton also suggested that Black voters have been energized by the debate, which could lead to a surge in participation in next year's midterm elections despite the new voting requirements enacted by Republicans.

"By them being so blatant, I think that they play into our national strategy," Sharpton said. "We just need the Democrats in the Senate to stand up."

The Georgia law requires a photo ID in order to vote absentee by mail, cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed. The bill was a watered-down version of some of the proposals considered by the GOP-led General Assembly.

H.R. 1 is vast, and its Senate counterpart would confront the new Georgia law by expanding voting by mail and early voting, both popular during the pandemic. It would more broadly open ballot access by creating automatic voter registration nationwide, allowing former felons to vote and limiting the way states can remove registered voters from the rolls. It also addresses campaign financing and ethics laws.

Still, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison warned his party would take Republicans to court "and fight about it there." A lawsuit filed late Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta by three groups — New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise — challenged key provisions of the new Georgia law and said they violated the Voting Rights Act.

But Harrison also acknowledged that the filibuster was an "an obstacle" for the national Democrats' efforts to overturn the Republican-backed changes.

"I am delivering the message to everybody, particularly on my side of the aisle, that folks right now are very, very upset about where things are going," Harrison told The AP.

The chairman continued, "I'm going to do everything in my power, with every breath in my body, with every drop of blood that flows through my veins, to make sure that we fight back from this."

"We're not going back to Jim Crow 2.0," he said. "So we've got to do whatever we need to do to make sure that doesn't happen."

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Peoples reported from New York. Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow, Josh Boak and Aamer Madhani contributed.