SYDNEY (AP) — A father and son are suspected by officials to have killed 15 people on a popular Australian beach, shocking a country where gun violence is rare. The government on Monday, a day after the shootings, proposed tougher new gun laws amid criticism that officials didn't take seriously enough a string of antisemitic attacks.
Here's a look at what to know from the attack at Bondi Beach:
Little is known about the suspects in the attack on Sydney's famous Bondi Beach, but there was widespread shock when officials said that the two men pictured firing weapons in social media videos were related.
The 50-year-old father, who was killed, arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, authorities said, and was an Australian resident when he died. Officials wouldn’t confirm what country he had migrated from.
His 24-year-old Australian-born son, who was shot and wounded, is being treated at a hospital
The target was a Hanukkah celebration where hundreds had gathered to celebrate the first day of the eight-day Jewish holiday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an act of antisemitic terrorism.
Albanese said that Australia’s main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency, had investigated the son for six months in 2019. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that the agency had examined the son’s ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State group cell. Albanese did not describe the associates, but said the spy agency was interested in them rather than the son.
The dead included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. Dozens of others were injured, some seriously.
Police said the father held a firearms license and that he was a member of a gun club, which suggests he was a target shooter.
One dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man’s weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.
The man was identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al Ahmed. The 42-year-old fruit shop owner and father of two was shot in the shoulder by the other gunman and survived.
A wave of antisemitic attacks have shocked and angered many in Australia over the last year.
Australia has 28 million people and about 117,000 Jews.
Antisemitic incidents, including assaults, vandalism, threats and intimidation, surged more than threefold in the country during the year after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza in response, the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal reported in July.
Last year, there were antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars have been torched, businesses and homes vandalized with graffiti, and Jews attacked in cities where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population lives.
Albanese in August blamed Iran for two of the attacks and cut diplomatic ties to Tehran.
Israel urged Australia’s government to address crimes targeting Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he warned Australia’s leaders months ago about the dangers of failing to take action against antisemitism. He claimed Australia’s decision — in line with scores of other countries — to recognize a Palestinian state “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”
Australia has strict gun control laws.
Mass shootings are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gunman killed 35 people, prompted the government to drastically tighten gun laws, making it much more difficult to acquire firearms.
Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides with death tolls of five people in 2014 and seven in 2018, in which gunmen killed their own families and themselves.
In 2022, six people were killed in a shootout between police and Christian extremists at a rural property in Queensland state.
The prime minister said he was pushing for tougher gun laws.
People leave notes at a flower tribute for shooting victims outside the Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, right, and Kellie Sloane, leader of the opposition, the New South Wales Liberal Party, lay wreaths at a tribute for shooting victims outside the Bondi Pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
Two onetime attorneys for President Donald Trump and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.
The hearing comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
Here's the latest:
The Trump administration is unrolling a new scholarship competition that will include a televised “civics bee” testing high schoolers on their knowledge of America’s founding.
The Education Department announced its new Presidential 1776 Award on Monday, promising scholarships totaling $250,000 for three winners.
The contest has three rounds: an online test, regional in-person semifinals and a national final in Washington in June.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon says the contest gives students a chance “to push themselves, learn our history, and take pride in the principles that unite us.”
It’s being organized and supported by the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation.
The Trump administration has sought to promote “patriotic education” even as the president works to eliminate the Education Department.
President Trump responded to the reported killing of a Hollywood cultural icon and his wife with a striking political attack on the victims.
In a social media post, Trump said without evidence that Rob Reiner’s death was due to his opposition to Trump and his policies — in Trump’s words, “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
The Trump administration won’t immediately have to give up control of California National Guard troops it deployed to Los Angeles in June.
A federal judge’s order returning command of the troops to the state was set to take effect Monday, but a federal appeals court put it on hold.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday granted in part a temporary stay sought by the Republican administration while it considers an appeal of the judge’s order.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco ruled last week that Trump officials had to relinquish command of the troops and stop deploying them in Los Angeles, but he put the decision on hold until Monday.
The 9th Circuit panel refused to block the second part of the order requiring an end to the troop deployment in Los Angeles, where about a 100 troops remained.
In an extraordinary move, President Donald Trump called up more than 4,000 California National Guard troops in June without Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval to further the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. The number had dropped to several hundred by late October, but California remained steadfast in its opposition to Trump’s command of the troops.
The latest round of talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. envoys ended Monday as they and European allies seek an end to Russia’s nearly four-year war.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who’s working as an outside adviser, were in the German capital for the peace talks.
The U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, along with European officials, met for about 90 minutes Monday. That follows a five-hour session Sunday.
The U.S. government said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after Sunday’s meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”
▶ Read more about talks with Ukraine
The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections.
The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 election.
Voters approved California’s new U.S. House map in November through Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.
▶ Read more about California’s redistricting effort
Even though Republican Brian Jack is only a first-term congressman, he has become a regular in the Oval Office these days. As the top recruiter for his party’s House campaign team, the Georgia native is often reviewing polling and biographies of potential candidates with Trump.
Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congresswoman who does similar work for Democrats, has no such West Wing invitation. She is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue working the phones to identify and counsel candidates she hopes can erase Republicans’ slim House majority in November’s midterm elections.
Although they have little in common, both lawmakers were forged by the lessons of 2018, when Democrats flipped dozens of Republican-held seats to turn the rest of Trump’s first term into a political crucible. Underwood won her race that year, and Jack became responsible for dealing with the fallout when he became White House political director a few months later.
Underwood wants a repeat in 2026, and Jack is trying to stand in her way.
▶ Read more about Underwood and Jack
The Arizona Democrat is emerging as a crucial surrogate for a party desperately seeking to win back the Latino support that slipped in 2024 with the election of President Trump. His fall travels have included trips to New Jersey, Virginia and Florida, where he campaigned for Democrats who went on to win their elections. Strategists say Gallego is flexing his muscle as a rising star for the party while also laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run despite not being a household name like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It’s a role Gallego is expected to continue next year, when Democrats hope to break Republicans’ hold on Congress and counter Trump’s agenda.
“Ruben Gallego is going to be our not-so-secret, secret weapon,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime Democratic operative and member of the Democratic National Committee.
Gallego is among the Democrats named as possible 2028 contenders who had the busiest travel calendar in 2025. He stumped for Democratic female candidates in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial races and Miami’s mayoral race.
▶ Read more about Gallego
Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.
“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.
The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in the ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed in the attack. Syrian officials said the attack wounded members of Syria’s security forces as well.
▶ Read more about the attack
Two onetime attorneys for President Donald Trump and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.
The hearing on Monday comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who was joined by the other two defendants in his motion, alleged that the judge did not write a previous order issued in August declining to dismiss the case. Instead, he accused the father of the judge’s law clerk, who was a retired judge, of actually writing the opinion.
Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.
▶ Read more about the hearing
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, after attending the Army-Navy game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Washington, en route to Baltimore to attend the Army-Navy football game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
