Closing summary
This ends our live coverage of another day in the life of the second Trump administration, but we will be back at it on Friday. Here are the latest developments:
Daniel Rosen, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Minnesota, said in a court filing that charges should be dropped against an immigrant who was shot by a federal immigration officer last month because “newly discovered evidence” contradicts the account of the incident from federal officers.
Sensitive intelligence that a whistleblower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of mishandling concerned a report from the National Security Agency on an intercepted phone call last year between two members of foreign intelligence who were discussing Jared Kushner and Iran, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report.
Asked if he has “fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas,” Donald Trump said that he had not. The president then went on to excuse the racist clip, which depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes.
A federal judge denied a request on Thursday from the Trump administration to pause her order keeping temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants in place, and said that she would not be intimidated by death threats she read aloud in court.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, claimed US Customs and Border Protection in the San Diego ares have saved 1.7 billion lives by seizing drugs.
Trump-appointed prosecutor in Minnesota says federal officials gave false information about immigrant shot by ICE agent
Daniel Rosen, the Trump-appointed US attorney in Minnesota, said in a court filing on Thursday that charges should be dropped against an immigrant who was shot by a federal immigration officer last month, and another man accused of attacking the agent, because “newly discovered evidence” contradicts the account of the incident from federal officers in a charging document and in courtroom testimony.
“Accordingly, dismissal with prejudice will serve the interests of justice,” Rosen wrote.
The shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg in north Minneapolis on 14 January, days after the killing of Renee Good, drew protesters into the streets.
Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna were then charged in a federal criminal complaint with forcibly assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.
The day after the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security claimed Sosa-Celis had fled the scene of a “targeted traffic stop” in Minneapolis in his vehicle, crashed into a parked car and kept fleeing on foot. When an ICE agent caught up to him, two men allegedly attacked the agent with a broom handle and snow shovel, and Sosa-Celis allegedly broke free and also started striking the officer. DHS said an officer then fired a “defensive shot to defend his life.”
Those allegations were repeated to an FBI agent and documented in an affidavit Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor now calls false.
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Tulsi Gabbard stifled intelligence on intercepted call about Jared Kushner and Iran - reports
Sensitive intelligence that a whistleblower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of mishandling concerned a report from the National Security Agency on an intercepted phone call last year between two members of foreign intelligence who were discussing Jared Kushner and Iran, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report.
“The allegations in the conversation about Kushner,” the Journal reports, “would be significant if verified, according to other U.S. officials familiar with its contents. While those officials agreed there was no corroborating evidence to support the allegations, they said that didn’t prove they lacked any merit.”
“The intercept also included what officials described as ‘gossip’ or speculation about Mr. Kushner that was not supported by other intelligence,” the Times reports. “Some senior officials said the information was demonstrably false. While the whistle-blower believed that information should be circulated, the N.S.A.’s general counsel, Ms. Gabbard and the intelligence community’s inspectors general disagreed.”
As our colleague Cate Brown reported last week, when Gabbard became aware of the intercepted call mentioning the president’s son-in-law, who has extensive business dealings in the Middle East and has continued to play a leading role in US diplomacy in the region as a private citizen, she stopped the NSA from sharing it with other agencies and took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj.
One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office, Bakaj said.
On 17 April, the whistleblower contacted the office of the inspector general alleging that Gabbard had blocked highly classified intelligence from routine dispatch, according to Bakaj, who has been briefed on details surrounding the highly sensitive phone call flagged by the NSA. The whistleblower filed a formal complaint about Gabbard’s actions on 21 May.
That timeline means that the discussion of Kushner and Iran took place before the Trump administration ended efforts to seek a negotiated solution to concerns over Iran’s nuclear program and conducted strikes on Iranian sites, in support of an Israeli bombing campaign, at the end of June.
Kushner has recently helped lead new negotiations between his father-in-law’s government and Iran and presented plans for the rebuilding of Gaza focused more on the territory’s potential as a real estate development than the national aspirations of the Palestinians displaced by Israel to a narrow strip of sand dunes.
Kushner also helped broker the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, drawing on his family’s close ties to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who stayed at the Kushners’ home in New Jersey when Jared was a teenager.
Trump continues to make excuses for racist video of Obamas posted on his account
Asked by Weijia Jiang of CBS News on Thursday if he has “fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas,” Donald Trump said that he had not.
The president then went on to excuse the racist clip, which depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes, as a reference to the Lion King, an animated film which has no apes in it.
The video posted on Trump’s Truth Social account late at night spliced together part of a documentary that presented conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as fact, and a few seconds of the racist animation of the Obamas.
As Trump sought to downplay the abject racism his White House initially defended, before blaming on an unnamed staffer, he described the video as a “fairly long video, they had a little piece that had to do with the Lion King.” The entire video was, in fact, just over a minute.
In Trump’s telling that racist video was not a problem because it had already been widely seen online. “It’s been very well- it’s been shown all over the place, long before that as posted,” Trump claimed, apparently referring to the full-length animated clip the racist depiction of the Obamas was taken from, in which he was depicted as a lion.
“But that was … a very strong piece on voter fraud,” Trump added, of the video laying out baseless conspiracy theories, “and the piece that you’re talking about was all over the place, many times, I believe for years.”
Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, also dismissed concerns about the racist video on Wednesday, telling reporters in Azerbaijan that, because he was traveling, “the controversy had started and then died out before I even paid attention to it.”
Vance then repeated Trump’s own false claim that the video, which was up for 12 hours, was taken down as soon as the racist imagery was discovered. In fact, the White House press secretary initially defended the video and it remained on Trump’s account for hours until it was deleted after even Republican supporters of the president denounced it as a racist.
“You know, the president said a staffer posted a video, he hadn’t even watched the whole thing, when he watched the whole thing he took it down,” Vance said. “It’s not a real controversy.”
“Should he apologize for posting a video and then taking it down? No I don’t think so,” Vance said. “I think people post things on social media and if you post something and you don’t like it, you can take it down.”
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Federal judge keeps order in place preserving temporary protected status for Haitians, despite death threats
A federal judge denied a request on Thursday from the Trump administration to pause her order keeping temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants in place, and said that she would not be intimidated by death threats she read aloud in court.
One message directed at judge Ana Reyes, a Uruguayan-born lawyer appointed by Joe Biden to the US district court for the District of Columbia in 2022, told her “the best way you can help America is to eat a bullet”. Another said: “I hope you lose your life by lunchtime”.
“It’s common these days for judges to receive these kinds of threats,” Reyes said, according to reporters who listened to the hearing at which she denied a government motion to stay her prior order barring the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from removing temporary protected status from about 350,000 Haitians who are allowed to legally live and work in the US during unrest in their home country.
“Many of my colleagues have received worse threats,” Reyes said. “Tp those who would threaten judges… We will continue to do our jobs as best as we know how,” she added. “We will not be intimidated.”
Other messages attacked her sexual orientation and immigrant origins, Reyes said.
“People are entitled to their views,” she said. “I have absolutely no problem with anyone disagreeing with me. But I do feel compelled to clarify a couple of misconceptions.”
Minnesota organizer 'skeptical that this state-sponsored terror is over' despite Homan's claims
HwaJeong Kim, a member of the St Paul city council who has tracked ICE operations in the Twin Cities as a constitutional observer, said on Thursday that opponents of the federal crackdown are “deeply skeptical that this state-sponsored terror is over”, despite the claim that agents are being pulled back from Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued border czar.
Speaking in her role as the director of Minnesota Voice, a nonprofit focused on voting rights and civic engagement, Kim said in a statement:
Tom Homan can claim success all he wants, but we know this administration’s ‘drawdown’ is often just a pivot to a new phase of surveillance, intimidation, and family separation that keeps our neighbors living in constant fear. The deep scars left by these raids, including lives lost and families torn apart, won’t disappear just because the cameras are leaving. We are deeply skeptical that this state-sponsored terror is over and will remain vigilant to protect our communities. While the administration tries to wash its hands of the chaos it’s sowed, we will continue to mobilize our mutual aid network to provide life saving immigration lawyers, bail funds, mental health support, and money for basic needs like rent and groceries. Our resilience in the face of hatred will not change.
DHS unwisely picks a social media fight with Cardi B, who responds: 'let’s talk about Epstein and friends'
Just days after the Department of Homeland Security reportedly hired a 21-year-old with a history of white-nationalist posting to help run its social media accounts, the department’s official account on X picked a fight with the Bronx rapper Cardi B.
In response to a report that Cardi B joked at a recent show that she would jump and mace any ICE agents that might show up, the homeland security account referred to the rapper’s past statement that she drugged and robbed men when she worked as a stripper in the past.
“If we talking about drugs let’s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them,” Cardi B replied to the Trump administration department. “Why yall don’t wanna talk about the Epstein files?”
Noem's remarks at California news conference nearly drowned out by sirens and protesters
Kristi Noem’s outdoor news conference in Otay Mesa, California ended after about 20 minutes, with her remarks nearly drowned out by blaring sirens that might have been an attempt by the authorities to cover the chanting of protesters gathered outside.
Video posted on social media by a local news reporter who was present, Bianca Buono, showed that protesters outside the facility could be heard chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” shortly before Noem began her scheduled remarks.
As Noem spoke, a host for the rightwing, San Diego cable channel One America News noted, “multiple law enforcement vehicles” were “parked along the facility walls with their sirens blaring.”
While Noem’s words could be heard clearly enough on some of the television feeds that picked up her mic, another social media post from Buono showed that it was difficult for reporters at the event to hear what she was saying above the din.
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Noem claims Customs and Border Protection has saved '1.7 billion lives' near San Diego by seizing drugs
In a bizarre news conference that just started, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has been speaking for about 14 minutes in Otay Mesa, California over the sound of extremely loud sirens, which have been blaring the entire time as she cites what she calls impressive statistics on border security and drug interdiction.
At one stage Noem claimed that a vault of drugs seized at the location she visited on Thursday contained “1.7 billion lethal doses of narcotics, of fentanyl and cocaine” interdicted by US Customs and Border Protection in the San Diego area. “That’s 1.7 billion lives that are saved because of the work that they do,” Noem said over the screaming sirens.
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Obama says Americans will be 'less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change' after Trump's repeal of greenhouse gas regulation
Barack Obama, the former US president, is among those alarmed by Donald Trump’s decision to end the regulation of climate-heating pollution from greenhouse gases.
“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules,” Obama wrote on social media. “Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change—all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
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Here's a recap of the day so far
Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) open on Thursday. The legislation failed to clear the 60 vote threshold needed, and fell almost entirely along party lines in a 52-47 vote. This means that a department shutdown is all but inevitable, when the stopgap measure expires on Friday.
The Trump administration repealed a landmark scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The 2009 endangerment finding found that greenhouse gases have a detrimental impact on public health and welfare. It has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources. Today, Donald Trump heralded the rollback as the “single largest deregulatory action in American history”. The move is already set to face legal challenges, while experts and lawmakers have warned that it will be catastrophic for the health and safety of the general public.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, said the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota is ending. He touted the “success” in “arresting public safety threats” and the “unprecedented levels” of cooperation from local law enforcement – including access to county jails – as the reasons for the drawdown. This comes after the widely criticized immigration crackdown resulted in the fatal shootings of two American citizens and weeks of protests. Local officials, including governor Tim Walz, said that the repercussions will be longlasting, but the “long road to recovery starts now”.
A US judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from reducing Senator Mark Kelly’s retired military rank and pension pay because he urged troops to reject unlawful orders. In his ruling, Richard Leon, a George W Bush appointee, wrote that defense secretary Pete Hegseth had “trampled” on Kelly’s first amendment rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees”.
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Experts, officials and lawmakers decry Trump administration's rollback on landmark climate finding
In response to the Trump administration’s rescission of the endangerment finding – the landmark determination that greenhouse gases are detrimental to public health and welfare –several experts, officials and lawmakers have condemned the move.
“This EPA would rather spend its time in court working for the fossil fuel industry than protecting us from pollution and the escalating impacts of climate change,” said Gina McCarthy, former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, who now chairs America Is All In, a coalition of climate-concerned states and cities in the US.
Former secretary of state John Kerry called the new rule “un-American”.
“Repealing the Endangerment Finding takes Orwellian governance to new heights and invites enormous damage to people and property around the world,” said Kerry, who also served as Joe Biden’s climate envoy. “Ignoring warning signs will not stop the storm. It puts more Americans directly in its path.”
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said in a statement: “If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide – all while the EPA dismisses the overwhelming science that has protected public health for decades.”
Today, Trump described the endangerment finding as “the legal foundation for the green new scam”, which he claimed “the Obama and Biden administration used to destroy countless jobs”.
“This is all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook to replace facts with propaganda, to enrich a few while harming the rest of us,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has fully abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and the environment.”
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Earlier today, Trump said that he hadn’t spoken with Howard Lutnick following the news that the commerce secretary admitted to visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012 with his wife and children – four years after the disgraced financier was convicted on state prostitution charges.
Lutnick had previously claimed he distanced himself from Epstein after 2005, but the latest batch of documents released by the justice department showed that the commerce secretary made arrangements to visit the island, and corresponded with Epstein in the years following.
A reminder that while a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown is looking extremely likely, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) benefitted from a $75 billion infusion last year – via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It’s a backstop that allows much of the agency’s work to continue should DHS close shop this weekend as lawmakers negotiate guardrails on immigration enforcement.
A US judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from reducing Senator Mark Kelly’s retired military rank and pension pay because he urged troops to reject unlawful orders.
The preliminary ruling by Richard Leon, a George W Bush appointee, is the latest setback for Donald Trump in his campaign of vengeance against perceived political enemies, which has drawn opposition from judges across the ideological spectrum.
Kelly, a retired navy captain and former astronaut who represents Arizona in the US Senate, was one of six congressional Democrats who appeared in a November video that reminded service members of their duty to reject unlawful orders. In the clip, Kelly stated: “Our laws are clear: you can refuse illegal orders.”
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth issued a censure letter on 5 January, asserting that Kelly had “clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline” in violation of military rules that apply to active and retired personnel. Kelly filed his lawsuit against Hegseth’s attempt to reduce the military veteran’s rank and pension a week later.
In his ruling, Leon wrote that defense secretary Pete Hegseth had “trampled” on Kelly’s first amendment rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees”.
He admonished Hegseth for his handling of the issue, writing that “rather than trying to shrink the first amendment liberties of retired servicemembers, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our nation over the past 250 years”.
Senate Democrats block DHS funding bill as department shutdown looms
Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) open on Thursday. The legislation failed to clear the 60 vote threshold needed, and fell almost entirely along party lines in a 52-47 vote. Senator John Fetterman was the only Democratic lawmaker who voted for the bill.
This means that a department shutdown is all but inevitable, when the stopgap measure expires on Friday.
A reminder that the DHS appropriations bill that failed in the upper chamber today was the same legislation that Senate Democrats rejected just weeks ago, in favor of a short term measure to negotiate guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the wake of surge of agents in Minnesota and the fatal shooting of two US citizens in Minneapolis.
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When it comes to the stalled negotiations on Capitol Hill to pass a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Trump said that Democrats’ demands – which include requiring federal immigration officers to no longer wear masks in the field – would make law enforcement “totally vulnerable”.
“They have some things that are really very hard to approve,” Trump said.
When asked what the administration’s message is to climate scientists and experts who say the rollback could have a catastrophic impact on people’s health, the president simply said: “I tell them, ‘don’t worry about it’… it has nothing to do with public health. This was all a scam, a giant scam.”
However, the endangerment finding is based on substantial research that determined the negative impact of greenhouse gases on public health and welfare.
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As he announced the repeal of the endangerment finding, Lee Zeldin said that the determination was used by the Obama and Biden administrations to “steamroll into existence a left wing wishlist of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability”.
After Zeldin finished speaking, Trump said that his EPA administrator’s remarks were “long”.
'The science couldn’t be clearer': US scientist group criticizes Trump's rollback of key climate finding
In response to today’s announcement the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) critcized the decision.
“The science couldn’t be clearer,” FAS wrote in a statement. “Unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing the frequency and toll of disasters like flash flooding in Texas, catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles, and stifling heat domes that repeatedly blanket huge swathes of the country. Revoking the endangerment finding would shove science aside in favor of special interests – and at the expense of American health and wellbeing.”
Dharna notes that Thursday’s rollback comes a year and a half after Trump requested $1bn from oil bosses on the campaign trail – promising to scrap environmental rules if elected.
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The president notes that the endangerment finding “had no basis in fact, had none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law”. However, my colleague Dharna Noor notes that the determination was based on a large body of peer-reviewed research and has repeatedly defended and upheld in federal courts.
She reports that since it was codified, the evidence showing greenhouse gas emissions endanger society has only gotten stronger, said Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of EPA’s office of air and radiation at EPA.
“Science did not change when Donald Trump was inaugurated,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment finding.
Trump says they’re repealing the “ridiculous” endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emissions standards imposed “unnecessarily” on vehicle models between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.
He says this will save American consumers “trillions of dollars” and lower the cost of a new vehicle by “close to $3,000”, though he doesn’t say how.
Trump announces move with EPA to repeal finding foundational to US climate rules
Trump and Zeldin have now arrived. They’re here to announce “the single largest deregulatory action in American history … by far”, Trump says.
Trump announces that they are “officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding”, which he dubs a “disastrous Obama-era policy” that he says damaged the auto industry and drove up prices for consumers.
Climate leaders gathered outside the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters yesterday to condemn the Trump administration’s plans to repeal the legal finding underpinning all federal climate regulations, and promised to fight against the rollback.
“This is corruption, plain and simple. Old-fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, senator for Rhode Island, at the rally.
This is an agency that has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters.
The rescinding of the 2009 endangerment finding will be finalized by Donald Trump and the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, this afternoon. The seminal ruling established the legal basis to regulate planet-warming pollution under the Clean Air Act.
We’re waiting to watch Trump’s announcement here, and we’ll bring you any key lines that come from it when it gets under way. Right now it’s just the podium and a placard bearing the words:
Largest deregulation in US history.
Updated
During the Senate homeland security hearing with top federal immigration officials earlier, senator John Fetterman, of Pennslyvania, told his fellow Democratic lawmakers not to allow the Department of Homeland Security to shut down at the end of the week as they try to negotiate an ICE overhaul with the Trump administration.
He pointed out that Trump’s sweeping domestic policy legislation, which was passed last year, had already provided ICE with $75bn. So in effect, Fetterman argued, shutting down the DHS would just punish other agencies under the department, including TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and CISA.
He told senators:
I want to remind everybody that you have ... ICE has plenty of money, and that vote to shut DHS down will have no functional impact on ICE because they have that $75bn from the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (paywall), the Trump administration smuggled thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran after the regime’s brutal crackdown on demonstrations last month in an effort to keep dissidents online following Tehran’s internet blackout.
Citing US officials, the WSJ reports that the US covertly sent roughly 6,000 of the satellite-internet kits into Iran, the first time the US has directly sent Starlink into the country.
Donald Trump was aware of the deliveries, officials told the paper, but they didn’t know if he or someone else directly approved of the plan. The White House declined to comment on the report.
Fulton County commission chairman Robb Pitts addressed the possibility that the FBI seizure of elections records last month may be a pretext for the state to attempt to take over the county’s elections apparatus ahead of the 2026 election.
“What I think is going on is a serious attempt to overturn and to take control of the election in Fulton County, Georgia,” Pitt said. “The president himself has mentioned some 15 other states that he has an interest in. And Georgia would be at the top of that list, for a number of reasons.”
Pitts said he had been in contact with leaders in Detroit and Philadelphia, two other cities that the president has attacked, questioning the integrity of their elections. “They’re watching very closely what’s happening here,” he said.
Pitts noted that state senator Greg Dolezal, a Republican running for lieutenant governor, yesterday called for the state board of elections to take over Fulton County’s election administration, citing the FBI raid.
The world is watching Fulton County because of what is at stake in 2026 and 2028, he said. “This is campaign season,” Pitts said of Dolezal’s comments. “I’m sure there’ll be others … But that’s not going to happen here now in Fulton County, Georgia. We have had successful elections.”
Hennepin county says it still does not cooperate with ICE
In response to Tom Homan’s announcement that the immigration crackdown in Minnesota is ending, the Hennepin County sheriff’s office – which oversees the state’s largest county – said it will still not “conduct civil immigration enforcement,” adding that its policies remain “unchanged”.
Homan has touted cooperation between local law enforcement and federal agents, particularly by securing access to county jails to arrest people at the moment of their release. But Trump’s border czar has not specified which counties have agreed to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In response to questioning from the committee’s top Democrat, senator Gary Peters, both Todd Lyons and Rodney Scott said that neither of them gave information to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem for her to label Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist”, after he was fatally shot by immigration agents in January.
“How would she possibly come to that kind of conclusion?,” Peters asked the officials. Lyons and Scott both said they couldn’t speculate on Noem’s comments.
Top immigration officials testify before senators on Capitol Hill
We’re keeping an eye on the Senate homeland security committee hearing with top federal immigration officials. Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Rodney Scott; and Joseph Edlow, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are all addressing questions from lawmakers.
As Minnesota’s immigration crackdown winds down, the battle over Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding continues on Capitol Hill.
Congress has just two days to strike a deal or trigger another DHS shutdown when the current stopgap expires on Friday. Democrats have laid out several conditions for agreeing to a full‑year funding bill – including requiring judicial warrants for immigration raids and arrests, and ensuring officers are identifiable and not masked. Republicans have largely called those demands non-starters.
Senate majority leader John Thune is expected to push for another continuing resolution to keep the department open, but Democrats insist they won’t support another temporary fix. Thune would need at least seven of them to pass a short-term bill and restart negotiations, which remain stalled.
In Minneapolis, Tim Walz said he has been in touch with Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, urging them to “hold the line” until Congress secures what he called “the minimum reforms necessary in this rogue agency to get something done”.
The governor noted today that the change in tenor from the administration came after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, when the immigration crackdown in the state turned into “an albatross” around the administration’s neck.
He also said that while he and Tom Homan disagreed on a number of matters, they were able to speak consistently throughout his time in the state– unlike when Gregory Bovino was the face of the operation. As a result, Walz said, he got “indications” that a drawdown was where federal immigration enforcement was headed.
“I’m certainly not going to spike the football, but you’re not going to hear me express any gratitude for the people who cause this unnecessary, unwarranted, and in many cases, unconstitutional assault on our state,” Walz added.
Walz added that he’s convinced the reason why Minnesota was targeted by the Trump administration was because it is a “successful, multiracial, multicultural state that has one of the highest standards of living”.
He added: “I’ll say it again, Minnesotans are decent, caring, loving neighbors, and they’re also some of the toughest damn people you’ll ever find.”
Walz says he is 'cautiously optimistic' after Homan announces end of immigration crackdown in Minnesota
Tim Walz told reporters that he is “cautiously optimistic” after the Trump administration announced the end of the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
“The fact of the matter is, they left us with deep damage, generational trauma,” Walz added. “They left us with economic ruin. In some cases, they left us with many unanswered questions. Where are our children? Where and what is the process of the investigations into those that were responsible for the deaths of Renee [Good] and Alex [Pretti]?”
He noted the resolve that Minnesotans showed in the face of the surge of federal immigration officers throughout the state, and announced a loan program to help local businesses recover from the negative economic impact of Operation Metro Surge.
“Today is a very small first step, but it is a concrete step that that can make a difference,” Walz said.
'The long road to recovery starts now', Walz says as immigration crackdown in Minnesota concludes
In another statement, Tim Walz said that the “long road to recovery starts now” for Minnesota as federal immigration enforcement operation ends in the state.
“The impact on our economy, our schools, and people’s lives won’t be reversed overnight. That work starts today,” Walz said.
'It's time for a great comeback': Minneapolis mayor heralds end of immigration crackdown
Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, and a vocal opponent of the surge of federal immigration enforcement officers throughout the city, heralded the end of the surge today.
“This operation has been catastrophic for our neighbors and businesses, and now it’s time for a great comeback,” he said. “We will show the same commitment to our immigrant residents and endurance in this reopening, and I’m hopeful the whole country will stand with us as we move forward.”
Frey has consistently urged the drawdown of federal agents, particularly after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation,” the mayor added in his statement. “These patriots of Minneapolis are showing that it’s not just about resistance – standing with our neighbors is deeply American.”
Minnesota governor Tim Walz, issued a short and simple statement in response to Tom Homan’s announcement that the federal immigration surge in Minnesota is ending.
“Thank you, Minnesota,” he wrote on social media.
Homan touts cooperation from Minnesota jails
During his press conference today, Tom Homan announced that cooperation from local law enforcement was a significant factor in the decision to conclude the surge of immigration officers in Minnesota.
“We now have the ability to arrest criminal aliens and the safety and security of jails throughout the state at the time they’re being released, like we’ve done in other states,” Homan said.
Access to county jails is one of the border czar’s long-standing goals. In Minnesota, each sheriff decides on their level of cooperation with federal immigration officials. However, jails are banned under state law from holding a detainee beyond their release date – known as an “ICE detainer”.
Today, Homan said that he has “not met one county jail that says ‘no’ to us”. However, he did not say whether the state’s two largest counties, Hennepin and Ramsey, have agreed to coordinate with ICE agents and make arrests at the time of release.
Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) already works with ICE to transfer non-citizens in state prisons, who have completed felony sentences, to federal custody. Homan added that the administration is “moving further on our agreements for the state”.
Homan says that Minnesota surge in immigration crackdown is ending
Tom Homan just announced that given the “success that has been made arresting public safety threats” and the “unprecedented levels of coordination we have obtained from state officials and local law enforcement” the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota is concluding. He said that he proposed winding down the operation, and Donald Trump agreed.
Homan added that law enforcement officers drawing down from this operation will either return to their duty station or be assigned elsewhere across the country, as the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda continues. “A small footprint of personnel will remain for a period of time to close out, and transition full command and control back to the field office, as well as to ensure agitator activity continues to decline.”
The border czar said that there were more than 4,000 arrests throughout the Minnesota operation, but didn’t have the exact breakdown of those who were part of ICE’s targeted efforts to arrest undocumented criminals. This comes amid several examples of people caught in the immigration dragnet in the state who are either US citizens or living in country with legal status.
“We’ve had great success with this operation, and we’re leaving Minnesota safer,” Homan said.
Updated
Homan says Minnesota immigation crackdown has been successful
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan kicked off his press conference today announcing that the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota has “yielded the successful results” they were looking to achieve.
Homan also noted that Immigation and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not made any arrests at hospitals, elementary schools or churches. However, many people in the Twin Cities have told the Guardian that they’re fearful of federal immigration officers who patrol near these spots, and appear to make indiscriminate arrests throughout the region. The anxiety has resulted in parents keeping their children at home, and patients missing hospital appointments.
“Those locations are not off the table,” Homan added. “I said on day one, there’s no sanctuary for a significant public safety threat or national security threat.”
Trump’s border czar to hold press briefing on Minnesota immigration crackdown
In a short while, we’ll hear from Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, who will address members of the media at 9am ET. A reminder that Homan took over the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota from senior border official Gregory Bovino, after the second fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minneapolis by immigration officers, and the ensuing backlash from residents.
On Tuesday, governor Tim Walz said that after recent conversations with Homan, he is convinced that the immigration crackdown in his state will end in a matter of days. A reminder, that the administration drew down 700 federal immigration officers last week — still leaving around 2000 stationed in the North Star State.
Trump plans to announce rollback of key environmental protection rule
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We’ll hear from him at 1:30pm ET, when he’s expected to formally announce the rollback of the Obama-era endangerment finding. This is 2009 determination that concluded CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a detriment to public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. My colleague, Dharna Noor, notes that this underpins virtually all federal climate regulations, and the repeal will likely be challenged in court. The president will be joined today by Enivironmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin.
We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines as that gets underway.
Venezuelan interim leader president Delcy Rodríguez said she has been invited to the United States, according an interview released Thursday by NBC News as US energy secretary Chris Wright visited Caracas.
“I have been invited to the States,” Rodríguez was quoted as saying. “We’re contemplating coming there once we establish this cooperation and we can move forward with everything.“
Rodriguez, the former vice president and oil minister, was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president in early January after the United States deposed president Nicolás Maduro.
She and Wright face the task of organizing the recovery of Venezuela’s oil industry after decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and US sanctions, while putting US investors at the front of the line.
Yadin Eldar, 21, has been betting on prediction markets since 2019. His friends think he’s “crazy”, he said. But the craze surrounding these platforms is rapidly gathering steam.
Users can bet on virtually anything, from the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl to whether the US will invade Greenland, every second of every day.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are now wagered each week, generating odds that users promptly screenshot, post and meme far and wide, from social media feeds to mainstream news networks.
Polymarket and Kalshi, two of the leading platforms, collectively saw about $1.2bn in trading volume on Sunday, according to analysis by Piper Sandler, as the Super Bowl spurred a betting frenzy.
“I wouldn’t describe it as gambling,” stressed Eldar, a student at Florida State University, but “a mix of betting and options trading”.
“It’s not like when you go to the casino, and play against the house, and hope you get to win against the house,” he said. “That’s not what it is.”
About six in 10 US adults say president Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into American cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
Views of Trump’s handling of immigration - which fell over the course of his first year - remained steady over the past month, with about four in 10 saying they approve of the president’s approach.
But the poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also found that the Republican party’s advantage on Trump’s signature political issue has shrunk since October.
The data also found that about three in 10 adults trust Republicans to do a better job handling immigration, while a similar share say the same of Democrats.
An additional three in 10, roughly, do not think either party would do a better job handling the issue, and about one in 10 say both parties would handle it equally well.
The House on Wednesday passed the Save America Act, which would dramatically change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting.
The legislation, which passed 218 to 213, faces an uphill battle in the Senate, close observers say.
“I’m skeptical that the Senate will vote on this bill, because this bill goes farther than the bill they’ve already sent to the Senate, [which] it hasn’t taken up,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state and a Democratic candidate for governor.
One Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, joined Republicans in passing the bill.
The House previously passed a version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility – the Save Act – in 2024 with three Democratic votes. Without some Democratic support in the Senate, however, it has languished on the margins.
The Save America Act, introduced by Chip Roy of Texas this year, expands on changes to voting laws in the 2024 bill, adding a nationwide photo ID requirement to vote, with a list of acceptable identification that is stricter than many states that already have voter ID requirements. Student IDs are explicitly not allowed.
Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year.
Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. But the case was abruptly dismissed after video evidence emerged showing that an agent had steered his vehicle into Martinez’s car.
Lawyers for Martinez have pushed to make evidence in the dismissed criminal case public, saying they were especially motivated to do so after a federal agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis under similar circumstances.
The new evidence – which includes emails, text messages and videos – was released this week after a US district judge, Georgia Alexakis, lifted a protective order. Federal prosecutors had argued the documents could “further sully” reputation of the agent who shot Martinez.
“I don’t know why the United States government has expressed zero concern for the sullying of Ms Martinez’s reputation,” Alexakis countered.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth failed to attend a gathering of defense ministers at Nato headquarters in Brussels this morning, with Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, representing the US instead.
Hegseth’s absence marks the second time in a row that a top Trump administration official has skipped a Nato meeting, after secretary of state Marco Rubio missed a gathering of the alliance’s foreign ministers in December, Reuters reported.
Those absences and repeated tensions between president Trump and European nations - most recently over Greenland - have prompted fresh questions from European officials and commentators about Washington’s commitment to Nato, which for decades has been the foundation of the continent’s defence.
Updated
House backs bid to block Canada tariffs in rebuke of Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the House has voted to rescind tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on Canada last year, in what has been seen as a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House’s trade policy.
The largely symbolic resolution to disapprove of the national emergency Trump declared to impose tariffs on Canada passed 219 to 211, with six Republicans – Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Kevin Kiley of California, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Jeff Hurd of Colorado – voting with all Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against it.
“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” Trump warned on Truth Social before the vote was finalized, adding:
TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.
Undoing Trump’s tariff policy would ultimately require his approval, which was unlikely. On Wednesday, he warned Republicans against voting for the resolution, which GOP leaders had worked to forestall. The measure next goes to the Senate.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump’s tariffs were “causing prices to skyrocket and creating unnecessary uncertainty for American families”.
“For months, sycophantic Republicans in the House have tried to block us from acting on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said in a statement after the resolution was approved. “Today, House Democrats forced a successful vote to detonate the Trump tariffs on Canada.”
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year. Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle.
The US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions.
The number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday. The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress.
The wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months - despite having a valid work permit – is pleading for help in instigating his release from the “dire conditions” he is facing in detention. “I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started,” Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference.
Donald Trump has said that he is still seeking a deal with Iran to prevent it from seeking a nuclear weapon following a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader was expected to advocate for a more forceful intervention by the US military. Netanyahu’s sixth visit to the White House since Trump returned to office ended without any public remarks between the two leaders.
