A bomb was found near an ethanol plant in central Illinois, prompting the authorities to evacuate residents near the industrial site, while law enforcement agencies continue to investigate the incident, authorities announced on Saturday.
The bomb was found on Friday afternoon inside the BioOrga Renewables facility in Peoria. While authorities confirmed that the explosive device had been “secured and neutralized,” all residents residing within one mile of the site remained under evacuation orders until Saturday morning, with searches of the facility continuing for any other explosive devices or additional evidence.
At the same time, the authorities announced the establishment of shelter centers for people who were forced to leave their homes due to the threat, according to the Associated Press.
“This is a real threat that needs to be taken seriously,” Peoria Police Chief Brad Dixon told reporters shortly after midnight. “We must take the scope of the potential explosion seriously.”
Ryan Pressley, a special agent with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that the office was investigating the incident, but he refused to provide further details.
He added: “We will work tirelessly to identify the person responsible for the incident and bring him to justice.”
No arrests have been made so far, and there have been no reports of injuries.
US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said on Saturday that he did not believe that the disruption of air traffic in the United States of America was due to an external cyber attack.
Duffy added, during a press conference in Washington, that air traffic returned to operating at full capacity after the flight stopped on Friday.
The US Secretary of Transportation indicated that it is not clear whether the cause of the flight disruption was a technical problem with the routers or a lack of efficiency, adding: “The malfunctions occurred during maintenance work to convert the cables from the regular type to the digital one.”
He pointed out that the devices used in air surveillance date back to the 1970s, and that US President Donald Trump called for modernizing air navigation devices.
For its part, the US Civil Aviation Authority reported that more than 16,000 flights were canceled on Friday and Saturday in the United States, following a suspension of air traffic that lasted for hours due to a communications failure. Federal Aviation Administration head Brian Bedford said during a press conference that “it was not possible to reschedule 12,000 flights” on Friday, including about nine thousand commercial flights and three thousand private flights.
He added, "We estimate that between four thousand and five thousand flights out of the 41 thousand flights scheduled for Saturday will be cancelled."
The Federal Aviation Administration announced, earlier on Saturday, that it had become possible to resume aircraft take-offs, after lifting the decision to stop all departing flights at the United States level, which the administration had imposed earlier “for exceptional circumstances and safety reasons,” after it had previously reported serious problems in air traffic control communications.
This is the second nationwide decision to stop all departing flights since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The other decision was in January 2023, when the authority stopped all domestic flights departing for less than two hours.
Last year, Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding to modernize the agency's outdated communications system.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House asked Congress to allocate another $30.1 billion to deal with other problems.
US President Donald Trump's decision to remove his deputy, J.D. Vance, from the Iran negotiations does not mean that the latter is out of the race to succeed him, but it does make his path to the 2028 elections more complicated. Vance, who needs to stop the Iran war to ease its electoral burden, lost the opportunity to lead a settlement that might give him independent credit, if he succeeds. On the other hand, a decline in his role may allow him distance from decisions over which he does not control, provided that the disagreement with the president does not turn into a rupture with his base.
This paradox puts Vance in front of the two battles of winning the nomination for a party in which Trump is still influential, and convincing a wider audience that he is capable of correcting the path that voters voted against in the midterm elections. But what strengthens his position in the first may weaken his chances in the second, and vice versa.
Marginalization or opportunity?
According to a report published by the Washington Post on Friday, the possibility of Vance running is still greater than the possibility of his reluctance, according to allies familiar with his thinking. The Republican defeat did not change his basic calculations, even if the decision had not been decided yet, with his intention to devote the holiday period to thinking about his political and family future.
But withdrawing the Iranian file from him deprives him of an important opportunity. If he had led an agreement that would end the war, he would have been able to combine defending the administration's goals and presenting himself as the one who had a way out of its crisis. As for his assignment to focus on corruption and crime in cities and states ruled by Democrats, it returns him to the role of partisan confrontation, where he can mobilize supporters, but it is difficult for him to build the image of a statesman with independent external achievement.
However, his removal from the file may turn into a conditional political benefit. If the attrition continues, his supporters can recall that he pushed for a settlement and warned of the cost of war. However, this defense remains limited, because voters may hold him accountable as the vice president and a partner in the administration’s decisions, rather than an official opposing it. Also, waiting for the president's policy to falter in order to benefit from it may appear opportunistic if it is not accompanied by a clear alternative.
Hence, his fortunes may not increase simply because of his marginalization, nor will they collapse automatically because of it. The issue depends on several conditions: Will Trump succeed in reducing the cost and achieving results? Will Vance maintain his influence and the trust of Al Qaeda? Can he distinguish his position without appearing helpless within the administration or denying his obligations to it?
A nomination does not guarantee the presidency
Vance has resources that are not provided by mere passing popularity, from a national position, to relationships with donors, strong connections to the “MAGA” movement, and all the way to his daily relationship with the president. The Washington Post indicates that Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced his support for his candidacy if he ran in the race, while Donald Trump Jr. continues to support him. Also, the multiplicity of potential competitors may serve him by distributing the votes rejecting him. But considering him the most likely candidate within the party does not mean that he is the most capable of winning nationally. Polls that measure whether a person is viewed as an “excellent candidate” do not equate to intentions to vote in a primary election, let alone facing a Democratic candidate. This is a fundamental distance between the current political presence and the ability to build an electoral majority after two years.
Donors' positions also reveal the limits of his power, as the newspaper quoted Eric Levin, one of the Republican fundraisers opposed to Vance, as saying that donors he spoke to were reluctance to support him. But generalizing this information is not valid to assess the intentions of the party’s funders, as Vance has his own network, including his relationships with the “Rockbridge” network of conservative donors, which Vance co-founded and connects him with investors and wealthy people who support the American right, and his work as head of the financial affairs of the Republican National Committee.
His allies believe that Democratic control of Congress will give him an opponent who will help him regroup the Republicans. Instead of just justifying war and the economy, he can attack opponents' investigations and agendas. But this bet assumes that partisan polarization will win back voters who turned away because of prices and policies, something that rhetorical campaigns alone cannot decide.
Most importantly, Vance wants to inherit the Trump movement while modifying some of its options. He held the war responsible for the loss, but the president expressed his agreement with his position before announcing it, according to the newspaper, and then publicly agreed with part of his diagnosis. Therefore, the fact that he was removed from the negotiations is not sufficient to prove the collapse of the relationship, as a margin of differentiation may exist, even if the decision-making president remains within its limits.
He studied Pence and history
Vance's dilemma brings to mind the experience of Mike Pence, Trump's deputy in his first term, whose disagreement with him culminated in his refusal to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 elections. During the storming of Congress on January 6, 2021, attackers demanded that he be hanged, according to the official report of the investigative committee. But Pence's crisis was constitutional and security, and not a dispute over the management of a foreign file.
The lesson for Vance is that years of loyalty do not provide political protection if Trump sees his vice president’s position as a personal challenge. But the difference in context prevents certainty that he will face the fate of Pence, as he did not enter into a declared confrontation with the president, but rather presents a review of the war as an attempt to save the republican project. His success remains dependent on his ability to differentiate his position in a way that the base understands and convinces voters looking for change.
Historically, four vice presidents have succeeded in winning the presidency while in office: John Adams, who was elected in 1796 to succeed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, who won in 1800 over President John Adams despite being his vice president, Martin Van Buren, who was elected in 1836 to succeed Andrew Jackson, and George H. W. Bush, who won in 1988 to succeed Ronald Reagan. The peculiarity of Jefferson's case is that the electoral system at that time awarded the position of vice president to the second-place finisher, which allowed for the presence of two political opponents at the head of the executive branch.
This scarcity does not prejudge Vance, but rather highlights the dilemma of taking advantage of his position without carrying all the burdens of the president. If the war ends and the economy improves, proximity to Trump may regain its electoral value. But if the attrition continues, it will not be enough to say that he preferred a settlement. The decisive question may become: Can he convince voters that he has the authority to change the approach, after he was unable to maintain the negotiation file?
