(LANSING, Mich.) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday ordered the state’s National Guard to limit its mission in Washington exclusively to events tied to the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration, drawing a line against the military’s prolonged presence in the capital and threatening to pull Michigan troops if they’re assigned to any other mission.

In a letter to Maj. Gen. Paul Rogers, the commander of the Michigan National Guard, Whitmer wrote she “has not deployed—and will not deploy—the Michigan National Guard to support the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Mission,” referring to the Guard’s ongoing presence and patrols across the city.

“If the National Guard is unable or unwilling to ensure the Michigan National Guard is only supporting the America 250 mission,” she added, “then I will end Michigan’s support for the America 250 mission.”

The Michigan National Guard has deployed 161 troops to Washington in recent weeks, while Minnesota has sent another 107, according to service figures, making them the first Democrat-led states to contribute sizable contingents to the capital since President Donald Trump surged National Guard forces there in August.

Puerto Rico has also deployed 155 National Guard troops to the capital ahead of the July Fourth weekend, while the U.S. Virgin Islands has sent 83.

There is precedent for National Guard units from across the country being activated for major events in Washington, including presidential inaugurations and the response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It is likely National Guard units would again be drawn from multiple states to support security operations tied to America’s 250th birthday celebrations.

It remains unclear how the two missions — ongoing security operations focused largely on high-traffic areas around the Capitol and downtown, and event-driven support for anniversary celebrations — would be separated in practice.

For most of the so-called “Safe and Beautiful” mission, the force has been drawn almost entirely from Republican-led states, aside from the District of Columbia National Guard. Troops have largely been assigned to high-visibility patrols around Washington’s tourist corridors and several downtown Metro stations, while also assisting with litter collection and graffiti removal.

The deployment has focused on some of the city’s safest and most heavily trafficked areas and is expected to continue through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.

An analysis from the think tank Niskanen Center found that the Guard’s presence hasn’t reduced violent crime but has reduced property crime. It also noted troops are far more expensive than police officers, estimating it costs $607 per Guardsman per day, compared with roughly $384 per day for a D.C. police officer, underscoring the higher cost of relying on military personnel with limited legal authority and civil training.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis estimated the Guard’s deployment to the capital would cost roughly $660 million this year, though that projection assumed an average force of about 3,000 troops, including pay, food and lodging for troops in hotels.

The estimate does not fully capture the federal government’s longer-term personnel costs, including the accrual of veterans’ benefits tied to active-duty service, such as retirement and education benefits.

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(SIMI VALLEY, Calif.) — A car crashed into the outdoor dining area of an Urbane Cafe in Simi Valley, California, on Monday afternoon, killing one person and injuring five others, authorities said.

The crash was reported at about 2:30 p.m. near Tierra Rejada and Madera roads in a busy shopping center, according to Simi Valley Police.

Aerial footage from ABC News Los Angeles station KABC showed a white Tesla lodged in the restaurant’s outdoor patio after the collision.

One person was pronounced dead at the scene, while five others suffered minor injuries, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.

Authorities have not released the identity of the person who died, and additional information about the victims was not immediately available.

Investigators said they are still working to determine the cause of the crash. The Tesla driver was a 64-year-old woman with four juvenile passengers in the car, police told KABC.

The driver and one passenger were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, according to KABC.

“We’re still trying to determine if speed was involved. We do know that the Tesla was going northbound through the parking lot. It was attempting to make a right-hand turn to go eastbound toward Madera and, unfortunately, did not make the turn and went over the sidewalk when it struck the female victim,” Simi Valley police Sgt. Rick Morton told KABC.

Earlier this month, a Tesla Model 3 crashed into a home in Katy, Texas, killing a woman. Her family has since filed a lawsuit against Tesla and the driver, alleging the vehicle’s driver-assistance technology contributed to the crash.

Tesla has disputed those claims, saying the driver manually overrode the system by pressing the accelerator. Federal safety officials are investigating the crash.

Authorities have not said whether any driver-assistance technology was engaged at the time of Monday’s crash.

“We don’t believe it was an intentional act, but until we can determine what the cause was, whether it was mechanical failure or there was impairment by the driver, it’s still to be determined,” Morton said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Doug Band, a former close adviser to President Bill Clinton, is on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a closed-door interview with the congressional committee probing the government’s investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Band, who began his tenure with Clinton as an intern in the mid-1990s, is expected to be questioned by the House Oversight Committee about the former president’s interactions and travels with Epstein in the years after Clinton left the Oval Office in 2001.

Often described as one of the architects of Clinton’s post-presidential endeavors, including the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, Band can also expect to be pressed about his own communications with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which were made public earlier this year by the Justice Department as part of the release of files mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“We know that Mr. Band set up several meetings between Clinton and Epstein,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters on his way into the hearing room. “We know Mr. Band accompanied Mr. Clinton on several flights on Epstein’s jet. We know that Mr. Band also had a lot of communication with Ms. Maxwell, so that’ll be a topic of several questions.”

Emails between Band and Maxwell included talk of meetings with Epstein and numerous exchanges containing suggestive innuendo and cheeky nicknames for each other like “babycakes” and “booboo,” according to files released by the DOJ.

The bulk of the messages were exchanged between 2001-2004, before Epstein first faced criminal charges in Florida in 2006. 

Band, 54, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. An attorney expected to accompany Band to the interview did not reply to a message seeking comment in advance of Band’s appearance in Washington, D.C.

Earlier this year, Band told The New York Times that his messages with Maxwell occurred when he was in his 20s and unmarried — and he denied any romantic involvement with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking and other offenses.

“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” Band said in a statement to the Times, in which he referred to Maxwell as “a monster.”

The committee is also expected to query Band about his explosive claim — reported by Vanity Fair in 2020 — that the former president had visited Epstein’s private estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands in early 2003. The article, which centered on Band’s contentious split with the Clintons, did not detail how Band knew about the purported island trip or if he had any evidence to bolster his claim.  

Records created by Epstein’s pilots made public through civil litigation show Clinton — and an entourage that typically included Band — aboard Epstein’s plane on more than two dozen flight legs in 2002-03, but none of those flights went to the island, according to the pilot’s logs. Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell have all denied that the former president had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein’s island was known.

“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone,” Maxwell told then then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a recorded interview last summer.

“I’ve never been to that island,” Clinton said in his own interview with the Oversight Committee in February.

The former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to his association with Epstein. He has said he stopped interacting with Epstein before any criminal allegations surfaced and has denied knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.

Clinton told the committee that he and Band were once “close,” and that Band had been one of the people he tasked to “operationalize” plans to develop the Clinton Global Initiative in his early post-presidency years.

“He worked for me for years,” Clinton said. “[H]e arranged airplane flights and things like that and was doing work on the first Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. And I know that he knew both Epstein and Maxwell. I do not know to what extent he was in contact with them.”

In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she began spending time with Clinton after he left the White House in 2001, as he was forging his post-presidential path through the establishment of the Clinton Foundation and, later, the Clinton Global Initiative.

“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them,” she said, according to a transcript of the July 2025 interview.

“I started spending time with the former president and with Doug and his team,” Maxwell said. “I had no purpose, really, other than I had — obviously offered something. I don’t know, ideas.” 

Band’s appearance before the Oversight Committee is voluntary and will not be recorded. The committee has typically released transcripts of interviews after they are reviewed for accuracy and redacted to remove any potential references to alleged victims.

In recent weeks the committee has heard from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and two of Epstein’s former assistants, Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff.

Later this summer, interviews are scheduled with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Epstein’s former private banker at JPMorgan Chase, Jes Staley.

Comer has indicated that a report on the investigation’s findings will be issued by the end of the year.

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(NEW YORK) –A dangerous heat wave is bringing prolonged extreme heat to the Midwest, the South and the East Coast this week.

The extreme heat hit the Midwest first. On Monday, the heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity– soared to the triple digits in Minneapolis and Chicago.

On Tuesday, the worst of the heat will stretch from the Great Lakes to the South to the central Gulf Coast.

The heat index is forecast to hit 105 degrees in Chicago, 111 in Detroit, 110 in Louisville, Kentucky, 106 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 105 in Houston.

Chicago has activated cooling centers throughout the city, including at community service centers, senior centers, libraries, city colleges and police districts. Chicago Public Schools said all summer programming will be inside Monday through Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the heat will continue in the Midwest and the South and also spread into the Northeast.

The heat index is forecast to reach a scorching 108 degrees in Detroit, 105 degrees in Houston, 102 in New York City, and 104 in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

The heat will stay in place in the Great Lakes and the South Thursday, with temperatures climbing even higher in the Northeast. The heat index could hit 107 degrees in New York City, 111 in Philadelphia and 110 in Washington, D.C.

There will be minimal relief overnight, which makes the heat even more dangerous.

The unrelenting heat continues Friday with the heat index forecast to reach 102 in Detroit, 106 in Memphis, Tennessee, 102 in Tampa, Florida, and 109 in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Extreme heat is considered the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S. At least 13,000 Americans have died from heat since 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On the Fourth of July on Saturday, the heat index will remain dangerously high, forecast to hit 104 in New York, 109 in Washington, D.C., and 108 in Philadelphia.

Click here for tips on how to stay safe.

ABC News’ Dan Peck and Michelle Simmons contributed to this report.

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