(WASHINGTON) — The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Lance Schroyer to be the next Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, according to a notice posted on the White House website Thursday. 

The agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017. Former acting ICE Director Todd Lyons retired in May and David Venturella, a former private prisons executive, has been running the agency since then.

Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper and close confidant of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, was nominated in June but faced pushback from the president’s base and Democrats over what they said was his lack of qualifications for the job. His nomination had stalled in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The White House did not give a reason for withdrawing Schroyer’s nomination. ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.

ICE’s more than $75 billion budget is the largest of any law enforcement agency in the country.

The agency has become a focal point of the president’s second-term deportation push and the Republican-controlled Congress has given the agency the resources to carry out the administration’s agenda.

ICE has come under scrutiny during its push to deport those in the country illegally for what some Democrats say are heavy-handed tactics and a rush to hire candidates that weren’t qualified for the job.

In nominating Schroyer in June, Trump touted his 29 years of service as a law enforcement officer in Oklahoma and said Schroyer will enforce the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Schroyer, who served in the Marine Corps, is currently a senior adviser to Mullin, a former senator from Oklahoma. Schroyer was Mullin’s pick to lead ICE, a source with knowledge of the decision told ABC News. 

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Thursday directed the Trump administration to provide 30 days’ notice of any changes in the Kennedy Center’s renovation plans, “including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the Center’s main building,” as the jockeying over the future of the performing arts center continued.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper made his ruling the afternoon after President Donald Trump was photographed looking over a placard that appeared to include the words “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” over what appeared to be an image of a demolition.

In a federal court filing Thursday morning, Kennedy Center executive director Matt Floca said the current closure of the main building is only “temporary,” set to last for seven days, and will be reevaluated on a weekly basis. 

Judge Cooper, in his ruling, ordered the administration to update him on the status of the “‘temporary closure’ and emergency repairs” by next Wednesday.

The ruling came as Cooper turned down a request from Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty for an emergency hearing in the case, citing the morning’s announcement.

The photos of Trump examining the placard were taken Wednesday night through a cabin window on Air Force One by Agence France-Presse photojournalist Brendan Smialowski, who was acting as the pool photographer for White House coverage, as Trump landed at Joint Base Andrews.

It was not immediately clear what the full contents of the placard were or how they were generated. The published images don’t show the entire placard and the word that appears to be “DEMOLISHED” was not entirely visible, cut off as “DEMOLIS.”

ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.

The images were published on Wednesday evening, shortly after the president said the performing arts center could “close” or be “ripped down” if his administration doesn’t receive recognition on the performing arts site.

“I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down,” the president told reporters on the tarmac in North Carolina.

Congress last year appropriated $257 million for needed renovations. But Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday that those renovations will not take place unless his name is again added onto the building.

His name had been added to the center’s exterior after the Trump-controlled board voted in December to rename the building the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”

Judge Cooper ruled in May that Trump’s name had to come down. Cooper wrote in a decision that the center’s rebranding violated the law. He ordered that Trump’s name be removed from the building within two weeks.

In July, a panel of D.C. Circuit appeals court judges rejected a request by Trump and fellow members of the center’s board to stay the court’s order that Trump’s name be removed from the building.

Last month, the Kennedy Center board members — who Trump last year replaced with his allies — voted to close the famed cultural institution for a two-year renovation. They voted on Tuesday to close the building immediately.

Also on Tuesday, Cooper issued a written order blocking any attempt to add Trump’s name to the building, concluding it violated a previous court order and congressional statute. 

“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

ABC News’ Karen Travers, Michelle Stoddart and Devin Garbitt contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration acknowledges that the proposed construction of a 250-foot triumphal arch along the Potomac River at the foot of Arlington National Cemetery will cause “adverse effects” on the setting and views along the river — but it says those impacts “cannot be fully avoided” because the arch’s location is “central to the undertaking.”

The acknowledgment is contained in a document that has been sent by the National Park Service to four historic preservation and planning agencies in the Washington area, seeking their agreement with park service’s plans to mitigate the adverse effects.

Those efforts include monitoring construction vibration and controlling noise, an archeological study and various planned “improvements” to the parkland, including new walkways, curbs, lighting and plantings, according to the document.

Earlier this month, attorneys for a group of Vietnam War veterans who have sued to block construction of the arch, asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from moving forward with excavation work on the project. The veterans suing over the arch have argued it would obstruct views of Arlington National Cemetery and can’t be built without congressional authorization.

Federal rules call for agreements like this to be reached with a state’s historic preservation office or a tribal nation when there’s the potential for a project to “diminish the integrity” of a historic property. Memorial Circle, the planned site for the arch and a roundabout near the entrance Arlington National Cemetery, is a historic property listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

While the law requires consultation and an effort to minimize potential harms — “to the maximum extent possible” — agreement with state officials does not appear to be a requirement for a federal project at a historic site to continue.

The document circulated by NPS to historic preservation officials in Virginia and D.C. says that Memorial Circle “is located within a highly sensitive historic and commemorative landscape,” and that the arch at that space would affect the “setting, design, feeling, association, spatial organization, circulation, and contributing views and vistas” of the location.

Renderings of the arch show a 250-foot structure — more than twice as tall as the nearby 99-foot Lincoln Memorial — with an inscription reading “One Nation Under God” and at its top, a gold statue of Lady Liberty with outstretched gold wings. Four golden lions sit at each corner of the arch’s base, renderings showed.

The administration said in the document that the location is “central to the undertaking” and the arch can’t be placed elsewhere because “relocation outside Memorial Circle would constitute a materially different undertaking.”

Word of the agreement was first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump has said called the arch a “wonderful addition to the Washington D.C. area,” saying in a social media post earlier this year that it will be the “GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL” of structures “anywhere in the world.”

The arch received initial approval in July from the National Capital Planning Commission, a federal agency led by Trump’s hand-picked appointees, despite hours of public testimony against the project.

The arch still needs final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission. Several Democratic lawmakers say that the arch violates the Commemorative Works Act, which requires congressional approval for memorials on federal land in or near D.C.

An Interior Department spokesperson said it will “follow all laws and regulations” around the arch construction.

“Throughout the consultation process, Interior has received over 100,000 public comments, has accepted dozens of organizations as consulting parties, and has extended comment periods to allow for more robust discussion,” the spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News.

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