Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close… but just for the day. We will be back at it on Tuesday. Thanks for reading and here are some of the latest developments:
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from stripping Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians, which allows them to legally live and work in the United States during the turmoil in their homeland.
Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify to a House oversight committee inquiry on Jeffrey Epstein.
Christian Menefee, a Texas Democrat who won a special election on Saturday, was sworn in as a congressman on Monday, further narrowing the slim 218-214 Republican majority in the US House.
Donald Trump repeated his denial that he ever visited Epstein’s private island, but appeared to catch himself referring to the late sex offender he socialized with for most of two decades by his first name.
Trump told reporters that he supports a decision by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to ensure that every federal officer in Minneapolis wears a body camera during the ongoing immigration crackdown in the city.
A group of survivors of Epstein’s abuse asked federal judges to order the US justice department to take down the entire public archive of files released in recent days and make proper redactions to remove identifying information of the victims.
JD Vance still angry his false claim Haitian refugees were 'illegal immigrants' was debunked in 2024 debate
The US vice-president, JD Vance, complained on social media on Monday about Democrats who point out that asylum seekers who are awaiting adjudication of their claims are not in the United States illegally.
“If your position is that a person can claim asylum after traversing eight countries, and they are therefore ‘legal immigrants’ because the president ignores the law and allows them to stay, then you’re advocating for an open border,” Vance wrote.
Vance was responding to a comment from a Rhode Island congressman, Seth Magaziner, who pointed out that the family of the five-year-old boy who was detained in Minneapolis while wearing a bunny hat, Liam Conejo Ramos, is in the US legally, since they applied for asylum. “Many of the families ICE has been snatching off the streets are like this. Immigrants who entered legally!” Magaziner wrote.
“This reminds me of when Margaret Brennan ‘fact checked’ me at the VP debate,” Vance responded.
What he was referring to was a moment in his 2024 vice-presidential debate against Tim Walz when Vance said that social and economic problems in Springfield, Ohio “and in communities all across this country,” were caused by bringing in “millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans” for homes, jobs and health care.
After Vance spoke, one debate moderator, Margaret Brennan, said: “just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status.”
Vance was enraged by what he called a violation of the debate rules. “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check”, he said. He then went on to repeat his claim that “an illegal migrant” applying for asylum or temporary protected status, and being granted the legal right to live and work in the US for a time, was effectively “the facilitation of illegal immigration… by our own leadership.”
A federal judge’s order on Monday, paused the Trump administration’s plan to strip legal status from 350,000 Haitians in the United States, including those in Springfield, Ohio that Vance amplified conspiracy theories about in 2024.
Immediately after a US border patrol agent shot two people in Oregon last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the targets were “vicious” gang members connected to a prior shooting and alleged they had “attempted to run over” officers with their vehicle.
In the weeks since, key parts of the federal government’s narrative have fallen apart.
The events took place on the afternoon of 8 January, one day after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
According to a DHS press release and social media posts issued the following day, border patrol agents were conducting a “targeted” stop of a vehicle in Portland occupied by two members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang. Yorlenys Zambrano-Contreras, a woman in the passenger seat, had been “involved” in a Portland shooting last year, the agency wrote.
During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, “weaponized their vehicle against” officers, DHS said, prompting an agent “to defend himself and others” by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.
But court records obtained by the Guardian reveal a Department of Justice prosecutor later directly contradicted DHS’ Tren de Aragua statements in court, telling a judge, “We’re not suggesting … [Niño-Moncada] is a gang member.” An FBI affidavit issued following the incident also suggests that in the previous shooting cited by DHS, Zambrano-Contreras was not a suspect, but rather a reported victim of a sexual assault and robbery. Neither Niño-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras have prior criminal convictions, their lawyers have said.
Immigration and criminal justice experts who reviewed the case records characterized the federal government’s communications as a “smear campaign” against the two Venezuelan immigrants, with mischaracterizations of their pasts and unsubstantiated allegations of criminality.
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Federal judge blocks Trump administration plan to remove protected status for Haitians in US
A federal judge in Washington DC on Monday blocked the Trump administration from stripping Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians, which allows them to legally live and work in the United States during the turmoil in their homeland.
Judge Ana Reyes issued a temporary stay that prevents the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from implementing her decision to remove the status, known as TPS, on Tuesday.
Reyes began her decision by putting the status into historical context. “On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: ‘America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions,’” the judge wrote. “More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program.”
Reyes notes that Noem, in announcing her decision on X (formerly known as Twitter), referred to those seeking refuge in the US as “killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.”
She then notes that the plaintiffs who asked her to block the order, five Haitian TPS holders, “are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.’”
“They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease…; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank…; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department…; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major…; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse”, the judge added. “They claim that Secretary Noem’s decision violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)… and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
At the end of her decision, Reys wrote:
Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.
There has been widespread speculation that, if TPS is removed from Haitians, the Trump administration could move to quickly deport Haitians from Springfield, Ohio, the immigrant community Donald Trump falsely accused, in a 2024 debate, of eating the dogs and cats of longtime residents.
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House swears in Democrat to replace Houston congressman who died in office, narrowing Republican majority
Christian Menefee, a Texas Democrat who won a special election on Saturday, was sworn in as a congressman on Monday, further narrowing the slim Republican majority in the US House. There are now 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats in the House, with three vacancies.
“It’s been more than 330 days since the people of the 18th Congressional district had representation, had a voice in Congress,” Menefee noted in his first remarks on the House floor, referring to the long delay by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, in calling a special election to replace Sylvester Turner, who died in March 2025.
Clintons agree to testify to House inquiry on Epstein
Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify to a House oversight committee inquiry on Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for the former president confirmed in a social media post.
Angel Ureña, the former president’s deputy chief of staff, responded to a post on X from the Republican-led House oversight committee, threatening to hold both Clintons in contempt, by writing:
They negotiated in good faith. You did not. They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.
Earlier on Monday, the Republican chair of the oversight committee, James Comer, rejected an offer from the former president to conduct a transcribed interview for the House committee’s investigation into Epstein.
A committee letter to the Clintons’ lawyers indicated the couple had offered for Bill Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” and for Hillary Clinton to submit a sworn declaration.
The Republican-controlled oversight panel had advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges last month, if the Clintons refused to testify.
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Trump again denies spending time on Jeffrey Epstein's island, but seems to refer to late sex offender by his first name
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump repeated his denial that he ever visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, but appeared to catch himself referring to the late sex offender he socialized with for most of two decades by his first name.
Asked if he does intend to sue Trevor Noah, the host of the Grammys who joked about Trump and Bill Clinton needing an island to hang out on together now that Epstein’s Little Saint James was out of the picture, the president said: “Yeah, well… he said that I spent time on Jeffrey’s— Jeffrey Epstein’s island. I didn’t.”
“No, he made a statement about me and Jeffrey Epstein’s- I have nothing to do with that. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.
Trump went on to suggest that the files into the federal investigations of Epstein released by his justice department raised “a lot of questions” about his ties to Democrats like Bill Clinton “but nothing on me”.
Trump’s anger at Noah over the indirect suggestion that he had visited Epstein’s island somewhat obscured the fact that there is also no evidence that Clinton spent any time on the island.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Clinton visited Epstein’s island dozens of times, usually to deflect questions about his own friendship with the notorious pedophile, but there remains no evidence that he was ever there.
A spokesman for Clinton flatly denied the allegation in 2019, after Epstein was charged with federal sex crimes in New York, saying the former president “has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida.”
“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” the former president’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, also said in 2019.
Clinton’s spokesman added that all four trips he took on Epstein’s private plane, to Europe, Asia and Africa, took place in 2002 and 2003, and other people – including staff, supporters of the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s Secret Service detail – “traveled on every leg of every trip.”
Trump’s own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted to Vanity Fair in December that Trump’s wild claim that Clinton had visited Epstein’s island “28 times” was false. “There is no evidence” of any such trips, Wiles acknowledged, or of anything incriminating about Clinton in the files. “The president was wrong about that” she said.
In a 2015 email, Epstein himself told the owner of the New York Daily News, Mortimer Zuckerman, the allegation that Clinton visited his island, made by one victim of Epstein’s abuse, was false and could be used as a way to destroy her credibility.
The victim, Epstein wrote in a typo-laden email, was a “story teller” who “crafted much of it out of whole cloth.. part of her story , is that she was at multiple orgies with clinton and speciifically, the minute details of a dinner had on the island with him… he sat on my left. came by black. heli. flown by ghislaine. clinton was NEVER EVER there, never.”
Epstein encouraged the Daily News owner to have someone “break the story” that this detail in the accuser’s story was false, “making it all apparent that it was fantasy. and delusional.”
On the same day, Epstein also urged a reporter for the New York Times to report that the allegation about Clinton visiting his island was false, again as a way to undermine the accuser’s credibility.
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Trump says he supports move to have federal agents in Minneapolis wear body cameras
Donald Trump just told reporters that he supports a decision on Monday by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to ensure that every federal officer in Minneapolis wears a body camera during the ongoing immigration crackdown in the city.
“Effective immediately we are deploying body cameras to every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” Noem announced, in response to pressure from Democrats in Congress for greater accountability in the wake of two fatal shootings of protesters by federal immigration agents in the city
Noem added that “the body camera program will be expanded nationwide” if Congress agrees to provide funding. Furhter funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US border patrol, is currently under negotiation between the White House and Democrats.
Although witness video recorded during the shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, revealed that the administration had lied repeatedly about what led officers to fire at least 10 shots at him from close range, Trump insisted on Monday that body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Ro Khanna repeats call for court-appointed special master to properly redact Epstein files
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, has seconded a call from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse for all of the documents released by the US justice department to be taken down from the internet and reviewed by a court-appointed special master to ensure proper redactions.
After the survivors documented multiple examples of the names and other identifying information of victims being posted online without redaction, Khanna said in a statement that this is what he and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman, “had asked the court to appoint a special master. Exactly what we wanted to avoid.”
Survivors of Epstein's abuse ask judges to order justice department to take down files and make proper redactions
A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have asked federal judges to order the US justice department to take down the entire public archive of files released in recent days and make proper redactions to remove identifying information of the victims.
In a letter to two federal judges in Manhattan requesting an emergency order, lawyers for the victims say that the justice department posted millions of records from the federal investigations into Epstein, the late sex offender “while failing to redact victim names and other personally identifying information in thousands of instances”.
In the letter, the lawyers list nine examples in documents released on Friday:
1. Documents in which Minor Victim 1 had her name revealed 20 times in a single document. After reporting the violation, DOJ redacted her name three additional times-leaving 17 instances still unredacted as of this filing.
2. An email listing 32 minor child victims, with only one name redacted and 31 left visible-despite DOJ’s possession of those names.
3. FBI 302 victim statements with full first and last names unredacted, including for minor victims.
4. Handwritten FBI interview notes with minor victims’ full names unredacted at the top and throughout.
5. Documents containing victims’ names alongside dates of birth, bank information, driver’s license numbers, email addresses, or home addresses.
6. Documents where victims’ names are redacted in some places but not others within the same document.
7. Documents where redactions are pencil-thin, revealing the complete name and email address beneath.
8. Documents where photographs are properly redacted in one instance and appear fully unredacted nearby.
9. Hundreds of documents exposing the names of four women who have been in near-constant communication with DOJ since December requesting protection.
The justice department, attorneys for the victims wrote, “cannot plausibly characterize this as error, negligence, or bureaucratic failure. The task was straightforward: take the list of known victims and redact those names everywhere they appear.”
Instead, they add, the department has “placed the burden on victims to search for and discover their own exposure-after the damage had already occurred.”
The victims ask the judges to order the justice department to: immediately take down “the DOJ website hosting Epstein materials”; perform a “comprehensive name-based search of all hosted documents using the victim list”; carry out “Proper redaction of all references to victims’ first, last, or full names”'; and appoint “an independent Special Master to oversee redaction and republication”.
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Trump says that he's working to get House to pass spending bills
Donald Trump said that he’s “working hard” with House speaker Mike Johnson to pass a five-bill funding package, and stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded. A reminder that the Senate passed the legislation last week, and the lower chamber is teeing the bills up for a vote this week.
“There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “We cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly – One that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats.”
Johnson has an uphill battle with many Democratic representatives suggesting that they’ll vote against the bills because they don’t trust the administration to negotiate a long term DHS funding bill in good faith.
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Here's a recap of the day so far
A five-bill funding package, as well as a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded is set for a procedural vote today. It will then head to the House floor this week, where it stands to face opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. The legislation passed the Senate last week, after Democratic lawmakers and a some GOP defectors said that Congress needs to negotiate the DHS’s funding and the tactics used in raids. This comes after the widespread backlash throughout the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, and the fatal shootings of two US citizens.
Donald Trump has announced that after a call with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi they had agreed to lower tariffs between their countries. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that India had agreed to halt purchases of Russian oil, committed to reducing tariffs on US goods to zero, and committed to purchasing over $500bn worth ofAmerican products.
Also on Truth Social today, Donald Trump reiterated his intention to sue Michael Wolff because he “conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency”, and reasserted that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island home. A reminder that Trump said on Saturday evening that he would probably sue Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically.
Immigrant right groups, nonprofits, legal organizations and several citizens have sued the Trump administration over the visa ban on 75 countries, issued in January. In the lawsuit, they accuse secretary of state Marco Rubio and the state department of implementing a “categorical nationality-based ban on legal immigration” for nationals of 75 countries based on “an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges’”.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the closely watched jobs report for January will be not be released on Friday because of the partial government shutdown. “The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner at the BLS, said in a statement.
Ron Johnson, a GOP senator from Wisconsin, said he did not “have a problem” with ICE officers wearing cameras, one of the key demands made by Democrats who are currently blocking the agency’s financing.
“I don’t have a problem with that personally,” Johnson, the chair of the Senate’s homeland security committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash on the State of the Union program.
Wearing body cameras has been among the conditions attached by Democrats to agreeing to continued funding of the agency, whose operations have come under fierce scrutiny over its patrols in Minneapolis following the fatal shootings of two people, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
The Senate passed a package of five measures last Friday to fund government departments until next September, as well as a bill to continue homeland security operations for two weeks.
The House of Representatives will consider the legislation this week. Democrats in the House are expected to continue demands for reforms to ICE’s activities after its caucus met on Sunday to plot a strategy.
Many Republicans in both chambers have said that that their demands are non-starters.
Johnson told CNN that agents were “on hair-trigger alert” and claimed some had been shot at and had their cars rammed by protesters. He conceded Bash’s point that wearing body cameras might serve to illuminate such situations.
But he rejected the call for judicial warrants, portraying that as the Democrats’ central demand and a “sneaky way” to derail Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
“This is immigration law that has always been adjudicated through … administrative judges,” he said. “We’ve got millions of cases backlogged. We’re talking about general criminal law. You’re talking probably hundreds of thousands of cases. We have millions of cases so demanding judicial warrants is their sneaky way of basically neutering our ability to enforce our immigration laws.”
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Renee Nicole Good's brothers to testify before Congress
A note that on Tuesday, there will be a bicameral hearing led by Democrats to hear testimony on the tactics and use of force by federal immigration agents during crackdowns across the country. Senator Richard Blumenthal and congressman Robert Garcia will lead the hearing, and two of the witnesses will be Renee Nicole Good’s brothers, Brent and Luke Granger.
Last month, Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis. Her death sparked further protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Two weeks after Good’s death, another US citizen, Alex Pretti, was killed by federal officers.
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Donald Trump repeats intention to sue Michael Wolff and again denies ever visiting Epstein's island
Over on Truth Social, Donald Trump has reiterated his intention to sue Michael Wolff because he “conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency”, and reasserted that he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island home.
Trump also claimed that he “wasn’t friendly” with Epstein. In fact, he and Epstein were close friends for some 15 years until they had a falling out around 2004.
Not only wasn’t I friendly with Jeffrey Epstein but, based upon information that has just been released by the Department of Justice, Epstein and a SLEAZEBAG lying “author” named Michael Wolff, conspired in order to damage me and/or my Presidency. So much for the Radical Left’s hope against hope, some of whom I’ll be suing. Additionally, unlike so many people that like to “talk” trash, I never went to the infested Epstein island but, almost all of these Crooked Democrats, and their Donors, did.
A reminder that Trump said on Saturday evening that he would probably sue Wolff, the author of an unauthorized biography of the president, for “conspiring” with Epstein to damage him politically. He told reporters aboard Air Force One:
So we’ll probably sue Wolff on it. And maybe the Epstein estate I guess, I don’t know, but we’re certainly gonna sue him … because he [Epstein] was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend.
Wolff featured prominently in the tranche of Epstein files released by the DOJ back in November, which appeared to show him acting as an unofficial adviser and publicist for Epstein.
To recap briefly, in one email, Wolff suggested that Epstein could be the “bullet” to end Trump’s 2016 campaign. In another, he advised Epstein in 2015 to let Trump “hang himself” regarding his denials of visiting Epstein’s house or flying on his plane. He suggested that Epstein use Trump’s potential lies about their relationship as “valuable PR and political currency” depending on the outcome of the 2016 election. “You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt,” Wolff wrote to Epstein.
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The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that the closely watched jobs report for January will be not be released on Friday because of the partial government shutdown.
“The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner at the BLS, said in a statement.
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Trump says US and India have reached trade deal and will lower tariffs immediately
Donald Trump has announced that after a call with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi they had agreed to lower tariffs between their countries.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that India had agreed to halt purchases of Russian oil, committed to reducing tariffs on US goods to zero, and committed to purchasing over $500bn worth ofAmerican products, covering energy, technology, and agriculture. In return, Trump announced a reduction of “reciprocal” tariffs on Indian goods from 25% to 18% “effective immediately”.
Truth added that India had agreed “to buy much more [oil] from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela”.
Modi confirmed the tariff reduction in a post on X, where he also praised Trump’s “efforts for peace”.
Trade talks between the US and India stalled last year owing to several factors, including New Delhi’s continued reliance on Russian oil, which proved a major sticking point amid Trump’s efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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Top homeland security Democrat urges lawmakers to vote against remaining funding bills
In a letter to Democratic House members, the ranking member of the homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, has urged his colleagues to vote against the package of bills that would keep much of the government funded, and a stopgap measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security operating for two weeks while negotiations continue.
“Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receive another dollar in funding,” Thompson writes in a letter, co-signed by his Democratic colleagues on the House homeland security committee.
Thompson notes that Democrats should not pass the short-term relief to allow for negotiations. Noting that they should ensure several provisions, like the use of judicial warrants to carry out arrests and ensuring immigration officers are identifiable, are already included.
Immigrant rights groups sue Trump administration over visa ban on 75 countries
Immigrant right groups, nonprofits, legal organizations and several citizens have sued the Trump administration over the visa ban on 75 countries, issued in January.
In the lawsuit, they accuse secretary of state Marco Rubio and the state department of implementing a “categorical nationality-based ban on legal immigration” for nationals of 75 countries based on “an unsupported and demonstrably false claim that nationals of the covered countries migrate to the United States to improperly rely on cash welfare and are likely to become ‘public charges’”.
Filed in a federal court in Manhattan, the plaintiffs cite examples of people from the list of countries – the overwhelming majority of which are non-European with significant nonwhite populations – who are unable to continue pursuing legal pathways to stay in the US because of the ban. In some cases, they are living with family members who have valid status in the US.
Democratic lawmaker slams Trump's proposal to close Kennedy center for two years
Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty has slammed the Donald Trump’s announcement that the John F Kennedy Center, DC’s foremost performing arts venue, will cease events for two years while it undergoes renovations.
Beatty, a representative from Ohio, said that the president had “acted with total disregard for Congress”, since the center receives a portion of its funding through appropriations. “Congress should have been consulted on any decision to shut down its operations or undertake major renovations, especially for a two-year period,” she said in a statement.
“Countless employees, artists, and others have existing contracts and agreements with the Center. What happens to them? Has Trump or his handpicked Board given any consideration to their livelihoods or futures? This is precisely why congressional oversight is essential,” she added.
After Trump returned to office last year he jettisoned the existing board, installed himself as chairman, and ensured that his handpicked board of trustees voted to rename the venue as the “Trump-Kennedy Center”. However, any official legal change to the name would require congressional approval.
In response to the president’s takeover, several artists and production companies have decided to cut ties with the Kennedy Center in protest.
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New CBS News contributor mentioned more than 1,700 times in latest Epstein files drop
A new CBS News contributor, Peter Attia, is mentioned more than 1,700 times in the latest release of Epstein files from the justice department. Just days ago, the Guardian reported that Attia – who hosts a popular podcast about longevity –had joined the ranks at CBS under embattled editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
Throughout the email exchanges released by the DoJ, Attia corresponded with Epstein on dozens of occasions after the late sex-offender pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution, and registers as a sexual offended.
“I get JE withdrawal when I don’t see him,” Attia writes in an email to Epstein’s assistant on 21 January 2016.
In CBS News’ press release, announcing Attia’s hiring, they note that he is “the founder of Outlive", a new app that translates longevity science into personalized daily practice” as well as Early Medical, “a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients, aiming to simultaneously lengthen their lifespan and increase their healthspan”.
In a 2023 interview with the Guardian, Attia outlined many of his theories around the science of longevity.
A rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown only targeted “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.
Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
“I [support] Donald Trump – I like the guy,” announced the South American TikToker and Instagrammer whose account purports to show “the reality of the United States” from a migrant’s perspective.
In a previous video, Pena reportedly urged Brazilians to stay calm and not “despair” after reports that ICE agents were rounding up migrants, including Brazilians. “But they’re all crooks. The lot of them,” he falsely claimed of the migrants being seized.
On Saturday, Pena was himself reportedly detained and sent to the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. One friend told the local newspaper the Brazilian Times that Pena had been taken into custody after missing a court hearing. The detainee’s lawyer, Andrew Lattarulo, was reportedly trying to resolve the situation and prevent him being transferred to another state.
The Brazilian influencer has reportedly lived in the US since 2009 and hails from Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, a state long known as a major source of migrants to the US and Europe.
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Johnson to swear in Houston Democrat
House speaker Mike Johnson is set to swear in Christian Menefee, a Democrat who recently won a runoff election for a reliably blue seat in Texas.
Menefee’s victory, however, means the margin in the House is even more slim: 218 Republicans to 214 Democrats. His current term will end at the end of the year, and he’ll have to start campaigning almost immediately for the 2026 midterms. But this time, it will be for a new district, after the GOP-controlled legislature successfully gerrymandered the state’s congressional map.
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House tries to advance outstanding funding bills for floor vote, as partial shutdown continues
The House will try and advance a five-bill funding package, as well as a continuing resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today.
Late last week, the Senate voted to pass the final bundle of appropriations bills, but separated legislation that funds the DHS, amid widespread backlash over the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. While the House prepares to vote, a partial shutdown is under way.
Instead, lawmakers in the upper chamber voted to pass a stopgap measure to keep the DHS operating for two weeks while Democrats hammer out negotiations with the Trump administration over the future of federal immigration enforcement.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has signalled to GOP representatives that this path is White House-sanctioned, and urging them to get on board. But he can only afford to lose one member of his own party to pass the funding bills, and he’ll also need to shore up support across the aisle.
Early reports show there are already cracks among Democrats, with some stating they’ll support the legislation that the Senate passed, while others don’t feel any negotiations with the president will be in good faith. On Sunday, Johnson even said that Democrats’ current demands – to require federal immigration officers to show their faces and to obtain judicial warrants for any raids – are futile.
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One quick note, Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’ll take part in signing time today, but that’s not open to the press. We’ll let you know if that changes.
At present, we’re not expecting to hear from the president today.
Beloved groundhog Punxsutawney Phil is said to be predicting six more weeks of wintry weather after he saw his shadow earlier today.
His annual prediction was translated by his handlers at Gobbler’s Knob in western Pennsylvania.
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club says that when Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, that means there will be an early spring. When he does see it, it’s six more weeks of winter.
Phil tends to predict a longer winter far more often than an early spring.
Tens of thousands of people were on hand at Gobbler’s Knob for the annual ritual that goes back more than a century, with ties to ancient farming traditions in Europe.
Punxsutawney’s festivities have grown considerably since the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray.
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Construction has resumed on four offshore wind mega-projects after they survived a near-fatal attack by Donald Trump’s administration thanks to rulings by federal judges. These are being seen as victories for clean energy amid a wider war being waged on it by the Trump administration.
The windfarms are considered critical by grid planners as America faces an energy affordability crisis. Together, the four projects will contribute nearly five gigawatts of energy to the east coast, enough to power 3.5m homes.
In December, the Trump administration issued an order halting the construction of five offshore wind projects along the east coast, citing “reasons of national security”. On 9 January, during a White House meeting with oil and gas executives, the president said: “My goal is to not let any windmill be built. They’re losers.”
But in mid-January, federal judges rejected the administration’s claims and allowed construction to resume on four of the five projects. Work began immediately on Vineyard Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Empire Wind 1 and Revolution Wind. A fifth project, Sunrise Wind, is also fighting the stop work order and has a court hearing on Monday that industry experts believe will have a positive outcome.
Judges across different jurisdictions ruled against the Trump administration. “This is a broad rejection of the administration’s arguments,” said John Carlson, the senior north-east regional policy manager for the climate non-profit Clean Air Task Force.
The stop-work order argued that wind turbines could interfere with military radar, but Carlson said it was a pretext to undermine wind power. “All these projects already went through very significant national security reviews,” he said.
“He’s losing in court, and I think he will continue losing in court. But that’s not the entire playing field,” Carlson noted.
To the wind industry, the court rulings are bittersweet. Trump may be losing the court battle against offshore projects already under construction, but he has succeeded in causing a nosedive in new projects, leaving the industry and its allies longing for the day he leaves office.
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A public health crisis is unfolding in Minnesota as people targeted by federal agents are afraid to seek healthcare while some healthcare staff are also fearful for their safety at work.
Community organizations and health providers are now arranging home visits, telehealth appointments and other alternate care.
“We’re seeing residents not wanting to leave their homes, not go to work, not go to their doctor appointments, not going to their regularly scheduled checkups, postponing surgeries, postponing care,” said Angela Conley, Hennepin county commissioner for district 4, where Renee Good was killed.
People who have been targeted by federal agents because of the color of their skin, their accent or their immigration status are now avoiding leaving their homes to seek routine or even emergency healthcare. They fear unfamiliar cars idling outside clinics and in hospital parking garages. Pregnant patients are laboring at home; diabetic patients are diluting or forgoing their insulin; injured and sick people are avoiding the hospital and postponing surgeries.
“They are afraid of being pulled out of their car and taken to the Whipple building and sent on a flight to Texas, even our legal permanent residents, United States citizens. Everybody is afraid,” Conley added.
Munira Maalimisaq, founder and CEO of the Inspire Change Clinic in Minneapolis, noted that “even people who are documented are not going to their doctor’s appointments People who have their citizenship are not coming in.”
“It is a health issue. When people are too afraid to seek care, diseases worsen and emergencies increase and people die unnecessarily,” Maalimisaq said.
Washington is negotiating with Havana’s leadership to strike a deal, Donald Trump has said, days after threatening Cuba’s reeling economy with a virtual oil blockade.
“Cuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up. So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.
“I think we’re going to make a deal with Cuba.”
Trump gave no indication what such a deal might entail.
The US president had said on Saturday: “It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal … They have a situation that’s very bad for Cuba. They have no money. They have no oil. They lived off Venezuelan money and oil, and none of that’s coming now.”
Trump’s second administration has been ratcheting up pressure on the communist-run island nation off south Florida since it ousted the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, whose country was a close ally of Havana and a crucial source for oil exports to Cuba.
The Reuters news agency is reporting that the US envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Israel for meetings with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its military chief, Eyal Zamir, citing two senior Israeli officials.
Witkoff’s visit will reportedly begin tomorrow. We don’t know exactly what will be discussed but the trip comes as the Gaza ceasefire agreement edges forward despite Israel’s frequent killing of Palestinian people in violation of its terms.
The next phases of Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza require governance to be handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israeli troops to withdraw from the territory while Gaza is rebuilt.
New Epstein files reveal he may have trafficked girls to others despite official denials
The disclosure of more than 3m files related to Jeffrey Epstein suggests that other men were involved in his sexual abuse, prompting questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties for potential involvement in the late financier’s crimes.
Some newly released documents contain allegations that Epstein provided victims to other men. Documents released in prior disclosures, as well as court documents, also point to others’ possible criminal involvement with Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
One accuser said that Maxwell told her that Epstein had to leave his house but that there was a friend staying who she could massage. During this encounter, this associate allegedly offered her money if she engaged in sex.
The woman alleged that she did so and that this friend paid her money. A “prosecution memorandum” dated 26 January 2021 and signed by assistant US attorneys from the southern district of New York described this encounter and said that when the woman’s lawyers showed her a photo of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, she identified him as this man. The names of the US attorneys are redacted.
It’s not clear to what extent authorities investigated these allegations. Weinstein was never charged for any conduct related to Epstein.
One document, and FBI presentation that appears to have been created sometime after late July 2025, described an allegation that Epstein “told [an accuser] to give [Harvey] Weinstein a massage, during which Weinstein tells her to take off her shirt, she refuses and then Weinstein threatens to get women to come force her too.”
Weinstein, who is in jail after being convicted of sexual assault and was one of the most prominent targets of the MeToo movement, rejects misconduct claims.
Trump threatens to sue comedian Trevor Noah over Grammys Epstein joke
President Donald Trump is once again in the mood for litigation. This morning he has threatened to sue Grammys host Trevor Noah after a joke he made about Jeffrey Epstein on stage.
Joking that this will be his last year as host, Noah quipped:
Song of the Year - that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.
In repsonse, the US president said the comedian, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central in the US for seven years, was a “total loser”, adding:
It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty.
Trump criticised South African-born Noah‘s joke, made after the song of the year gong was handed out.
Writing on Truth Social, in his usual frenetic, rambling style, Trump said:
Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!!
I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.
Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast.
He added:
Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!
In recent years, Trump has resorted to legal action against a slew of media outlets including the BBC, the New York Times, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.
Last July, US media giant Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle a lawsuit over a CBS interview with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.
In other developments:
Trump announced a two-year closure of the Kennedy Center, citing construction needs to make the “finest performing arts facility of its kind, anywhere in the world”. Writing on Truth Social on Sunday evening, Trump added that the center’s closure will pave way for a “new and spectacular entertainment complex”.
The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, the point person on the Trump administration’s Epstein files release, told ABC News on Sunday that prosecutors’ review of the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case “is over”. While Blanche acknowledged “there’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr Epstein or by people around him … that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody”.
Government documents have identified the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Jesus Ochoa, a border patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to ProPublica. According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the confrontation last weekend that resulted in Pretti’s death.
A five-year-old boy and his father were back in Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they were held for more than a week, according to US House representative Joaquin Castro.
Trump said his administration was in talks with Cuban leadership over a potential deal, following his earlier threats to stop the country from importing oil.
The ongoing partial US government shutdown is expected to continue into early next week, with no reopening likely before Tuesday, if what federal officials on both sides of the country’s political aisle are saying is any indication.
All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee, according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed the requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor.
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.
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