Summary
Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act – which allows the president to use the military domestically to suppress an invasion or rebellion – as protests against federal immigration agents continued in Minneapolis. In a social media post, Minnesota governor Tim Walz called on Trump to “turn the temperature down” but at a press conference this afternoon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Walz and the president had not spoken today. During a meeting with Trump this afternoon, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told the president ICE raids “are dangerous and putting more people at risk”.
Federal agents deployed teargas to disperse dozens of protesters outside the a federal building in Minneapolis that houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement today, and border patrol commander Gregory Bovino told Fox News that “recent arrests” were made outside the building.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming that it has used federal law enforcement to target Somali and Latino communities in Minnesota. The ACLU is suing on behalf of three US citizens from the North Star state, all of whom were arrested or accosted by federal immigration officers.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado met with Donald Trump at the White House and a bipartisan group of senators on Capitol Hill. After, she said that she had presented Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal.
An appeals court dismissed Mahmoud Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his initial detention, and opened up the path for his re-arrest. Khalil – a green card holder and Columbia graduate – was released from an immigration detention facility last year, after he was initially arrested for his role in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
At a press conference today, Karoline Leavitt said “the president was simply joking” when Trump said “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” during an interview with Reuters yesterday.
Trump has selected the members of an international “Board of Peace” designed to temporarily govern Gaza as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the president announced in a social media post. Reuters reports that the names are expected to be announced at Davos next week.
The justice department is undertaking an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information about tens of millions of Americans. The department has asked at least 43 states for their comprehensive information on voters, including the last four digits of their social security numbers, full dates of birth and addresses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The New York Post has shared an “exclusive photo” of Donald Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, with the president holding Machado’s Nobel peace prize medal.
Tomorrow's cover: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal in White House meeting https://t.co/rGEx5AnVR8 pic.twitter.com/ASkIxUlkw0
— New York Post (@nypost) January 16, 2026
Machado told reporters that she had presented the medal to Trump during her meeting with the president today and the president later posted on social media thanking her for the gift.
The photograph shows that Machado presented the medal in a gold frame, alongside text that read: “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”
In an appearance on CNN tonight, an attorney for Renee Nicole Good’s family said his office has sent a letter to the federal government demanding it preserve evidence related to her fatal shooting.
“Since we know that there isn’t going to be cooperation with the federal government, we need to make sure that when the time for litigation comes, we get the evidence that we need,” said attorney Antonio Romanucci, who previously represented George Floyd’s family, winning a $27 million settlement against the city of Minneapolis.
“I would love to have all the confidence in our government doing what they’re supposed to do,” he said. “But because we know that we’re getting stonewalled our level of confidence decreases.”
Romanucci also called the words Donald Trump and other federal officials used to describe Good in the wake of her shooting “slanderous” and described her as “a housewife. She is a mother, she’s a daughter, she’s a sister”.
Updated
Donald Trump says that his newly appointed “Board of Peace” overseeing Gaza will “secure a COMPREHENSIVE Demilitarization Agreement with Hamas, including the surrender of ALL weapons, and the dismantling of EVERY tunnel.”
Trump’s statement came in the form of a Truth Social post, responding to special envoy Steve Witkoff’s announcing a second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire yesterday. Witkoff said the second phase would begin the “full demilitarisation and reconstruction of Gaza, primarily the disarmament of all unauthorised personnel”.
The first phase of the ceasefire plan began on 10 October. Although Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is committed to demilitarising the Gaza Strip, no agreement has been reached on disarming Hamas.
As my colleagues Julian Borger and Lorenzo Tondo reported yesterday, “Two groups representing Israeli former hostages and their families had urged the US not to declare the start of the second phase of the ceasefire until the remains of the last hostage yet to be accounted for, Ran Gvili, had been returned by Hamas.”
In his social media post today, Trump wrote: “Hamas must IMMEDIATELY honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization.”
Some employees at CBS News have expressed concerns after the network cited two anonymous “US officials” who said the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis “suffered internal bleeding to the torso” after the incident.
My colleague Jeremy Barr reports:
CBS initially published the account about officer Jonathan Ross on X, formerly Twitter. About 30 minutes later, the network followed up with another post, containing a link to an article by two correspondents that similarly cited “two US officials briefed on his medical condition”.
The report, which was not extensively covered by other news organizations, drew an immediate response on social media from critics who questioned the network’s sourcing – and whether it aligned with the Trump administration’s preferred focus.
But there was also internal skepticism at the network about the report, according to emails viewed by the Guardian. It was met with “huge internal concern” by some, one CBS News staffer said. Others viewed the conversations as standard editorial discussions.
Here’s the full story:
The Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have arrested a man who allegedly stole body armor “out of an FBI vehicle in Minneapolis last night”, according to social media posts from attorney general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel.
“This criminal is a perfect example of what our brave federal law enforcement agents are up against every day as Minnesota leadership ENCOURAGES lawbreaking,” Bondi said, describing the suspect as a gang member.
“There will be more arrests. Again: any individual who attacks law enforcement or vandalizes federal property paid for by hardworking taxpayers will be found and arrested,” Patel said. The FBI had offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest in a flyer that included photographs of a vandalized vehicle.
The Trump administration has sued California over a 2022 law banning new oil wells within 3,200 feet of hospitals, homes, schools and businesses open to the public.
The Justice Department lawsuit challenged the law under an executive order president Donald Trump signed last year to speed up fossil fuel production.
“This is yet another unconstitutional and radical policy from Gavin Newsom that threatens our country’s energy independence and makes energy more expensive for the American people,” attorney general Pam Bondi said.
California governor Gavin Newsom has said the law is an important public health protection.
Trump thanks María Corina Machado for giving him 'her Nobel peace prize'
Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump thanked the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for giving him her Nobel peace prize medal during her visit to the White House on Thursday.
According to Trump, Machado “presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” which he called, “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
However, while Machado told reporters that she did present Trump with her medal, the Norwegian Nobel Committee made it quite clear in a statement earlier on Thursday that she was free to hand over the medal, but that does not make anyone she gives it to a Nobel prize winner. “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” the committee said. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
“A medal can change owners,” the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo explained, “but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”
Updated
The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children has filed suit against his company, alleging explicit images were generated of her by his Grok AI tool.
My colleague Helena Horton reports:
St Clair, 27, who is estranged from Musk, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator. She and Musk are the parents of a son born in 2024.
She is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights lawyer who specialises in holding tech companies accountable and has previously represented women who were victims of sexual harassment and abuse.
Goldberg told the Guardian: “xAI is not a reasonably safe product and is a public nuisance. Nobody has born the brunt more than Ashley St Clair. Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing nonconsensual, abusive, and degrading images of her and publishing them on X.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations is investigating “every single organization or person responsible for paying or contributing in any way to the organization of these protests” as well as “the criminal actors at those protests” over immigration operations across the United States, FBI director Kash Patel said in an appearance on the right-wing television channel Real America’s Voice.
“These protests, whether it’s Minneapolis, or LA, or Portland or where have you, aren’t spontaneous. They don’t magically appear,” Patel said. “It is an organized, in my opinion, effort to criminally disrupt and cause chaos into our communities.”
The only supposed evidence that protests against immigration officers are inauthentic cited by Patel was his contention that “somebody has to pay for the signs” held by protesters, which he claimed appear to be mass-produced. “Every single person is holding the exact same sign on the exact same piece of wood and the exact same placard,” Patel said. But this claim, as we have reported in the past when it was made by the president, is just not borne out by even the most cursory examination of news images of protests, which instead show a wide variety of homemade placards carried by demonstrators in Minneapolis, Portland and across the nation.
Real America’s Voice is a partisan pro-Trump outlet that was originally created to broadcast Steve Bannon’s podcast. In addition to Bannon, its leading figure is Brian Glenn, a Trump supporting White House correspondent, best known for dating Marjorie Taylor Greene, and for asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy the provocative question of why he was not wearing a suit during his first visit to the Oval Office to meet Trump last year.
Updated
El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner will likely classify the death of a man in a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camp as a homicide, the Washington Post reports.
After Geraldo Lunas Campos died on 3 January, ICE said “staff observed him in distress” and gave no cause of death. But according to the Post’s reporting, which cites a recorded conversation the county medical examiner had with Lunas Campos’s daughter, the county “is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression”.
Pending a toxicology report, the county medical examiner “is believing that we’re going to be listing the manner of death as homicide.”
Donald Trump has selected the members of an international “Board of Peace” designed to temporarily govern Gaza as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the president announced in a social media post.
“The Members of the Board will be announced shortly, but I can say with certainty that it is the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place,” he wrote.
Reuters reports that the names are expected to be announced at Davos next week.
According to a recent analysis by the New York Times, Israel has demolished more than 2,500 buildings in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire began on 10 October.
Just over a week since Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, residents gathered for another day of protests over immigration actions there.
Here are a few photos of the day from the wires:
CNN reports that a team of its journalists were hit by pepper balls while covering a protest against ICE in Minneapolis today.
The United States has seen an uptick in law enforcement violence against journalists in recent years, particularly since the George Floyd protests of 2020. In 2025, the US press suffered about as many assaults as in the previous three years combined, according to a new report from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Here’s more of our reporting over the years on these growing attacks:
Schumer tells Trump ICE raids 'are dangerous and putting more people at risk'
Chuck Schumer met Donald Trump at the White House today, to discuss funding the president halted to construct and refurbish railway tunnels between New York City and New Jersey.
The Senate minority leader, who represents New York, met the presdient to discuss the stalled Gateway tunnel project. According to a readout of the meeting provided by Schumer’s office, the senator also raised “the 3-year extension of the ACA tax credit bill that has already passed the House” and told the president that ICE raids “are dangerous and putting more people at risk” and agents “must pull back” from US cities.
Updated
Donald Trump has released his healthcare affordability framework, a year and a half after he said he had the “concepts of a plan” for healthcare reform during a campaign debate against Kamala Harris.
As my colleagues Richard Luscombe and Melody Schreiber report:
The short document, titled the Great Healthcare Plan, provides four headline objectives, but few specific details as to how they will be achieved.
The Trump administration says it intends to lower prescription prices and healthcare premiums; hold big insurance companies accountable by requiring them to publish their claim costs, overheads and profits; and push insurers and medical providers to provide greater transparency over pricing.
Here’s the full story:
In her remarks to reporters this afternoon, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said Venezuela has a president-elect, who is not current interim leader Delcy Rodríguez.
“I have insisted – and I will continue to insist – that Venezuela has a president-elect, and I am very proud to work alongside him,” Machado said, naming Edmundo González, who ran against Nicolás Maduro in the country’s 2024 presidential election.
Her remarks came just hours after Rodríguez appeared to criticize Machado during her first state of the union address.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem announced that ICE’s principal legal advisor Charles Wall will take over as deputy director of the agency after Madison Sheahan annnounced she would be stepping down to run for Congress.
In a social media post announcing his appointment, Noem said that Wall “has served as an ICE attorney for 14 years”.
According to Wall’s biography on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, he previously worked as an assistant district attorney in New Orleans.
Machado says she presented Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado told reporters outside the US Capitol that she presented Donald Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal during their meeting earlier today.
“I told him this, 200 years ago, General Lafayette gave Simón Bolivar a medal with George Washington’s face,” she said, which she called a symbol of unity between Venezuela and the United States. She added that giving Trump her Nobel peace prize called back to that history.
She did not confirm whether the president accepted the award.
Here’s our developing story:
Updated
Donald Trump is meeting with the 2025 Stanley Cup champions, the Florida Panthers, currently at the White House.
Wishing energy secretary Chris Wright happy birthday at the start of the event, who Trump calls his “oil man”, the president said, “We are now drilling more oil than anytime, any country ever in history. And oil prices in many states are down to $1.90 a gallon. That’s like a major tax cut.”
Saying he felt uncomfortable on stage with a group of young, powerful men, Trump later quipped, “But I’ve got power too, it’s called the United States military.”
As Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, was scheduled to meet with senators in Washington, following her meeting with Donald Trump, acting Venezuelan president Delcy Rodríguez spoke to the National Assembly in Caracas.
Rodríguez asked lawmakers to reform the oil industry to allow greater foreign investment during her first state of the union speech. “Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the US, she said. Rodríguez also leveled a veiled critique of Machado, saying: “And if one day, as acting president, I have to go to Washington, I will do so with my head held high, not on my knees.”
Machado is currently meeting with a bipartisan group of senators, which includes Democrats Dick Durbin, Jeanne Shaheen, Peter Welch, Tim Kaine, Ruben Gallego, Alex Padilla, Chris Murphy and Jacky Rosen; Republicans Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, Bernie Moreno, and John Curtis; and independent Angus King.
Three US citizens sue Trump via ACLU over encounters with ICE agents
The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit over the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minneapolis describes a mass “racial profiling campaign” resulting in “an unprecedented level of violence” against Minnesotans of color.
“People targeted by ICE have been handcuffed, tackled, and beaten by federal agents. Agents have broken car windows, dragged people from their cars, and used pepper spray and tear gas against compliant, non-violent people,” the lawsuit reads.
The three plaintiffs in the case, who are all US citizens, are Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a 20-year-old Somali man who grew up in the United States after his family came to the country as refugees, Mahamed Eydarus, a 25-year-old Somali-American and Javier Doe, a 22-year-old Hispanic man.
On December 10, 2025, Hussen encountered immigration agents while on his lunch break. The lawsuit describes agents pushing him into a restaurant, dragging him outside, placing him in a headlock, and then driving him to an ICE field office where he was denied medical assistance and water – despite Hussen’s repeated statements that he was a US citizen.
Also on December 10, Eydarus was shoveling his parking space after leaving work when ICE agents approached him and his mother, asked his mother to remove her niqab, a cultural and religious face covering, and criticized them for speaking a “foreign language”.
And on January 8, 2026, Doe was approached by four masked Border Patrol agents and CBP commander Gregory Bovino. After asking if he was a citizen, which Doe said he did not need to answer, an agent tackled Doe to the ground, pinned him, and pressed his knee to Doe’s neck.
Updated
ACLU sues Trump administration for targeting Somali and Latino communities in Minnesota
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming that it has used federal law enforcement to target Somali and Latino communities in Minnesota.
The ACLU is suing on behalf of three US citizens from the North Star state, all of whom were arrested or accosted by federal immigration officers. The suit alleges that the president’s xenophobic rhetoric in recent weeks and months has led to law enforcement “indiscriminately” arresting Minnesotans “without warrants or probable cause” but “solely because the agents perceived them to be Somali or Latino”.
“The government can’t stop and arrest people based on the color of their skin, or arrest people with no probable cause,” said Kate Huddleston, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality that remain a bedrock of our legal system and our country.”
Updated
Border patrol commander confirms arrests of protesters outside Minneapolis federal building
Border patrol commander Gregory Bovino told Fox News today that “recent arrests” have been made outside the federal building in Minneapolis where demonstrators congregated to protest federal immigration agents. He did not confirm the number of arrests or when exactly they took place.
Bovino added that “rioters want to block the road, make it difficult for federal law enforcement to do its job, so they’re being pushed out of the road, and if they don’t move, they’re being arrested”.
The senior official claimed that some of the protesters came from “out of state” and suggested that law enforcement is looking into whether they’re paid and the “groups that are assisting, aiding and abetting these rioters”.
Updated
Teargas used on protesters outside DHS building in Minneapolis
Federal agents have deployed teargas to disperse dozens of protesters outside the a federal building in Minneapolis that houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Demonstrations have been consistent outside the facility since Wednesday’s shooting of an undocumented immigrant by an ICE agent. An incident that the administration has described as self-defense, after the man allegedly hit the federal officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
Machado leaves White House after first meeting with Trump
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has left the White House after her first meeting with Donald Trump. She was seen waving to supporters as she left the building and heading to the US Capitol to meet with a bipartisan group of senators. She’s due to hold a press conference on the Capitol steps later.
On the topic of Greenland, Karoline Leavitt said that the Wednesday meeting between vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland was “productive”.
“In that meeting of the two sides agreed to really establish a working group of individuals who will continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland. Those talks will take place, I’m told, every two to three weeks,” the press secretary told reporters. “This is a conversation the administration intends to keep having with the Danes and with the respected delegation from Greenland. But the President has made his priority quite clear, he wants the United States to acquire Greenland. He thinks it’s in our best national security to do that.”
This comes as a new CNN poll released Thursday showed that 75 % of Americans oppose the US attempting to take control of Greenland.
In the briefing room today, Karoline Leavitt said that Donald Trump spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, but did not confirm reports that Israeli prime minister urged the US to postpone military action on Iran.
“It’s true that president spoke with prime minister Netanyahu, but I would never detail details about their conversation without giving the expressed approval by the president himself,” the press secretary said.
Earlier, we reported on the president’s interview with Reuters in which he said that “we shouldn’t even have an election” when discussing the upcoming midterms.
Today, the press secretary brushed off Trump’s remarks as lighthearted jokes.
“It was a closed door interview, obviously there was not audio or video. The president was simply joking,” Leavitt said. “He [Trump] was saying: ‘We’re doing such a great job. We’re doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”
On the situation in Iran, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday were halted”.
She noted that the Donald Trump and his team are still monitoring the situation closely, and “all options remain on the table”.
White House calls on Walz to 'stop inciting harassment' of federal immigration agents
Speaking to the press today, Karoline Leavitt said that the president and Tim Walz have not spoken today, after calls from the Minnesota governor to “turn the temperature down” and “stop this campaign of retribution”.
Instead, the press secretary implored Walz to stop “inciting the harassment and illegal obstruction of law enforcement in his state”. This comes after a Venezuelan undocumented immigrant was shot by an ICE agent on Wednesday, an incident that homeland security officials say was an act of self-defense.
“He should pick up the phone,” Leavitt said of the Minnesota governor, “and he should say that he will cooperate with this president and with the federal government in making Minnesota safer, because that’s all President Trump and his administration wants to do.”
At today’s White House briefing Karoline Leavitt was asked for the administration’s position on the FBI raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter in what the newspaper has called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move.
The press secretary said that the administration “is not going to tolerate leaks”. On Wednesday, attorney general Pam Bondi said that a Pentagon contractor was arrested and jailed for sharing classified information to the Post reporter. “Action will be taken against anyone, whether it’s a member of the press or whether it’s an employee for a federal agency who breaks the law,” Leavitt added today.
She also evaded a question about whether the White House believes journalists in the US have the right to publish classified information under certain circumstances.
“I think it’s a basic tenet of journalistic integrity not to publish information that could directly endanger the operational security or the brave men and women who are serving this country in uniform,” Leavitt said instead.
It comes on the heels of Trump’s embrace of interim president Delcy Rodríguez, whom he said yesterday he spoke with directly this week.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio and the administration have been in “constant” communication with Rodríguez and her government, Leavitt says.
They have been extremely cooperative. They have thus far met all of the demands and requests of the US and the president.
Pointing to the energy deal and the release of political prisoners, Leavitt adds: “The president likes what he is seeing and we expect that cooperation to continue.”
Updated
Trump meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader under way, Leavitt says
Donald Trump’s meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is underway right now, Leavitt confirms.
Trump expects it to be a “good and positive” discussion, she adds.
Updated
White House press briefing
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is due to brief reporters shortly. I’ll bring you all the key lines here, so stay tuned.
Updated
Speaking to Reuters yesterday, Donald Trump expressed frustration that his party could lose control of the House or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections, citing historical trends that have seen the Republican party in power lose seats in the second year of a presidency.
“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election”.
The Trump administration has indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries, freezing applications from 21 January as part of a sweeping crackdown on legal immigration pathways.
We would like to hear from people from countries on the visa ban list who are currently in the immigrant visa application process, particularly those who are at an advanced or final stage.
How has the freeze affected you and your plans? How long have you been in the process, and what stage were you at when you heard the news? How is the uncertainty affecting your work, studies, family life or future plans?
You can tell the Guardian about your experience at the link below:
Walz calls on Trump to 'turn the temperature down' in Minnesota, urges demonstrators to 'not fan the flames of chaos'
Minnesota governor Tim Walz called on Donald Trump to “turn the temperature down” as protests escalate in Minneapolis after the shooting of an immigrant by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
In a statement he asked the president to “stop this campaign of retribution” and thousands of federal immigration agents remain in the city after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
Walz also urged demonstrating Minnesotans to “speak out loudly, urgently, but also peacefully,”. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said that those gathering at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday were “engaging in unlawful behavior”.
“We cannot fan the flames of chaos,” Walz added. “That’s what he [Trump] wants.”
Officials name immigrant shot by ICE agent in Minneapolis
The Department of Homeland Security has identified the undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, who was shot in the leg by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, as Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
Officials said that Sosa-Celis is in the US illegally, and that he and two other undocumented immigrants assaulted the ICE agent with a “snow shovel and broom handle” and “fired a defensive shot to defend his life”.
DHS said that all three immigrants were successfully arrested, and Sosa-Celis and the law enforcement officer are both in hospital.
Kristi Noem also defended the use of federal immigration officers demanding Americans “on the street” to provide proof of citizenship.
“If we are on a target doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there, and having them validate their identity,” the homeland security secretary told reporters outside the White House today. “That’s what we’ve always done in asking people who they are, so that we know who’s in those surroundings, and if they are breaking our federal laws.”
Updated
When asked by reporters about the use of force by federal immigration agents, Noem remained resolute that they were abiding by the law.
“Every single action that our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years, that this administration has used, that the previous administration used,” she said. “They are doing everything correctly, and over and over again in litigation, in the courts, we’ve proven that they’ve done the right thing.”
Speaking to reporters outside the White House today, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem declined to comment on how many the oil-carrying ships the administration is tracking, and their routes.
This comes after the US seized a sixth tanker amid the crackdown on Venezuelan oil following the capture of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
“I can’t speak to the specifics of the operation, although we are watching the entire shadow fleet,” she said today. “I’m very proud of our Coast Guard and how they partnered with the Department of War to do unprecedented actions in bringing these flags under jurisdiction.”
Appeals court dismisses Mahmoud Khalil's challenge to immigration detentions, opens path to re-arrest
An appeals court on Thursday dismissed Mahmoud Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his initial detention, and opened up the path for his re-arrest.
Last year, Khalil – a green card holder and Columbia graduate – was released from an immigration detention facility, after he was initially arrested for his role in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
However, a 2-1 decision by a panel of the third US circuit court of appeals today ruled that a lower court judge did not have the authority to grant Khalil’s release. His lawyers are set to appeal the ruling, meaning any re-arrest would not happen immediately.
A reminder that Khalil became an early symbol for the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech on university campuses – an effort that targeted immigrant students and those studying on visas.
Updated
Noem says that that Minneapolis mayor needs to work with federal law enforcement
The homeland security secretary added that Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, “needs to start working with our law enforcement officers”, as tensions in the city rise, following the shooting of an immigrant during an enforcement operation on Wednesday. The city remains on edge after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good last week.
“We could go get these criminals off the streets with their partnership, and do it in a safe manner with less agents, if he [Frey] told everybody to go home and said it was no longer acceptable,” Noem said in an interview with Fox News today. “The violent rioters that we’re seeing on the streets today are there because of the mayor and how he’s spoken. He needs to make sure that he’s working with us, with his law enforcement officers, to make sure we’re arresting the dangerous ones and sending the rest of them home.”
Noem says she spoke with Trump about possible invocation of Insurrection Act
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said that she spoke to Donald Trump this morning about his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continued in Minneapolis against federal immigration agents.
“That certainly is within the president’s constitutional authority to use that if he thinks he needs to keep people safe,” she said. “What I love about this president is the very first question that he asks me is ‘how are you doing, and how are our people doing in this country? How are the people doing and our law enforcement officers?’”
The US military has seized another oil tanker at sea in support of Donald Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela, military officials announced Thursday.
Veronica, a crude oil tanker that marine records suggest is sailing under a Guyanese flag, was boarded in a pre-dawn action by US marines and sailors, the US Southern Command said in a post on social media.
The operation was conducted in cooperation with the Coast Guard, homeland security department and justice department, the post said. It included blurry, black-and-white aerial footage appearing to show service members descending on to the tanker’s deck from a helicopter.
It is the sixth known boarding and seizure by the US military of a foreign-flagged oil tanker in support of Trump’s clamping down on the Venezuelan oil industry since the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in Caracas and subsequent removal to the US earlier this month.
As tensions rise in Minneapolis and protests over the use of force by federal immigration agents continue, my colleague, Maanvi Singh, is on the ground.
She reports that at a news conference at Minneapolis City Hall on Wednesday night, police chief Brian O’Hara said protesters were “engaging in unlawful behavior” and urged everyone who had gathered at the shooting scene in north Minneapolis to leave.
The Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, said: “I’ve seen conduct from ICE that is disgusting and intolerable.” But he urged protesters out Wednesday night to go home. “We cannot counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos … Anyone who is taking the bait tonight, stop,” he said. “You are not helping the undocumented immigrants in our city.”
Updated
Trump has routinely threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, most recently in Portland, Oregon last October.
The president also threatened to invoke the act in June when California governor Gavin Newsom sued Trump to block the use of military forces to accompany federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, calling it an “illegal deployment”.
In 2020, Trump asked governors of several states to deploy their national guard troops to Washington DC to quell protests that arose after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Many of the governors agreed, sending troops to the federal district.
At the time, Trump also threatened to invoke the act for protests following Floyd’s death but never actually did so.
While campaigning in 2024, the president also promised to deploy the national guard to help carry out his immigration enforcement goals.
A reminder that the most recent use of the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when George HW Bush used the law to respond to the deadly riots in Los Angeles, after the four white police officers filmed beating the Black motorist Rodney King were acquitted.
Trump threatens to invoke insurrection act as protests continue in Minneapolis
Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests against federal immigration agents continue in Minneapolis.
In a post on Truth Social today, Trump said he would institute the centuries-old, seldom used law – that allows the president to use the military domestically to suppress an invasion or rebellion – if “the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job”.
On Wednesday, a federal officer shot a man in the leg during an enforcement operation in north Minneapolis, sparking further protests in the city, just a week after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
Trump said that by implementing the act he would “quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State”.
Also today, we’ll hear from press secretary Karoline Leavitt when she holds a White House briefing at 1pm ET.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’s due to meet with Mariá Corina Machado – Venezuela’s opposition leader – at 12:3opm ET. At the moment that’s closed to the press but we’ll let you know if that changes and bring you the latest.
Later, Trump is set to host the champions of the 2025 Stanley Cup, the Florida Panthers, at the White House. We’ll be watching to get his reaction to the news of the day.
Renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War could cost US taxpayers as much as $125m depending on how broadly and quickly the change is made, according to an analysis released Wednesday from the Congressional Budget Office.
Donald Trump signed an executive order in September that authorized the Department of War as a secondary title for the Pentagon. At the time, Trump said the switch was intended to signal to the world that the US was a force to be reckoned with, and he complained that the Department of Defense’s name was “woke”.
Indeed, the order came as the military began its campaign of deadly airstrikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in South America. Since then, a stunning military operation has captured ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and the Trump administration has threatened military action in places from Iran to Greenland.
Congress has to formally approve a new name for the department, and it has shown no serious interest in doing so. Nevertheless, Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, embraced the rebrand and proceeded to use it immediately on several signs after Trump’s order.
He had employees remove the large gold letters that spelled “Secretary of Defense” outside his office and replaced the sign on his door to read “Secretary of War”. The Pentagon’s website also went from “defense.gov” to “war.gov” the same day the executive order was signed.
Pentagon officials said then that they could not offer a cost estimate for the name change because they expected costs to fluctuate. They promised a clearer estimate later.
Trump celebrates judge's decision to allow ICE to continue operations in Minnesota
President Trump has posted on social media in support of yesterday’s decision from a Minnesota judge to refused to issue a restraining order to halt ICE operations across the state, citing the need for further evidence.
Writing on his own Truth Social website, Trump referred to Judge Kate Menendez as “highly respected” and said the state of Minnesota was “highly politically corrupt”.
He wrote:
A highly respected judge declined to block I.C.E. operations in the very politically corrupt State of Minnesota. I.C.E. will therefore be allowed to continue its highly successful operation of removing some of the most violent and vicious criminals anywhere in the World, many of them murderers, from the State. The great patriots of Law Enforcement will continue to make our Country safe. RECORD LOW CRIME NUMBERS!!!
The decision from Menendez came after Minnesota’s decision earlier this week to sue the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and other federal officials over their involvement in a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the state.
Speaking about her decision, Menendez said:
I think the issues are really important and I don’t want to suggest by not acting immediately one way or the other that I think they are unimportant … To the contrary, I understand this is important to everybody.
The plaintiffs petitioned the court for a temporary restraining order, arguing that ICE’s immigration sweeps are infringing on constitutional rights and that a brief suspension would allow legal teams to fully develop their arguments.
Meanwhile, government attorneys pushed back, asserting that there is no justification for pausing the operations because the state has not substantiated its allegations. The government has until 19 January to respond while Minnesota’s state lawyers have until 22 January.
One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It was an extraordinary proposal. And it originated from a longtime friend of the president who would go on to acquire business interests in the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton learned, was Ronald Lauder. Heir to a makeup fortune – the global cosmetics brand Estée Lauder – he had known Trump, a fellow wealthy New Yorker, for more than 60 years.
Bolton said he discussed the Greenland proposition with Lauder. After the billionaire’s intervention, a White House team began to explore ways to increase US sway in the vast Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.
Trump’s renewed pursuit of Lauder’s idea during his second term is typical of how the president operates, Bolton said. “Bits of information that he hears from friends, he takes them as truth and you can’t shake his opinion.”
The proposal seems to have stirred Trump’s imperialist ambitions: eight years on, he is mulling not just buying Greenland but perhaps taking it by force.
Like many of those around the president, Lauder’s policy suggestions appear to intersect with his business interests. As Trump has ratcheted up his threats to seize Greenland, Lauder has acquired commercial holdings there. Lauder is also part of the consortium whose desire to access Ukrainian minerals appears to have spurred Trump to demand a share of the war-torn country’s resources.
Lauder has said he met Trump in the 1960s when they went to the same prestigious business school. After working for the family cosmetics business, Lauder served under Ronald Reagan at the Pentagon, then as ambassador to Austria, before running unsuccessfully for mayor of New York in 1989.
Donald Trump will host María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel peace prize winner, at the White House on Thursday for a high-stakes talks on the oil-rich nation’s future following the US capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Many in Venezuela and abroad had expected Machado to take charge after an elite US military team seized Maduro in a pre-dawn raid on 3 January and transported him to a New York City jail.
But the White House has largely sidelined Machado, instead recognizing Maduro’s former vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, as Venezuela’s interim leader even as Trump insists the US will “run” the country.
A close Rodríguez ally, Venezuela’s ambassador to the UK Félix Plasencia, was also set to land in Washington on Thursday to meet Trump officials as part of the dramatic rapprochement brought about by Maduro’s downfall. That official visit – the first in years – was reportedly partly designed to pave the way for the reopening of the Venezuelan embassy.
Machado, a 58-year-old former legislator, won a primary to run against Maduro in 2024 but was blocked by the government from running. Her replacement, the retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, was recognized by Washington as the legitimate winner of the presidential election after the opposition presented strong evidence that Maduro had lost the race by a wide margin.
Trump has sent mixed signals about Machado’s role in Venezuela’s transition, publicly questioning her domestic standing. On the day of Maduro’s capture, he remarked that Machado was a “nice woman”, but claimed she lacked the “respect” needed to govern Venezuela.
Alarm as Trump DoJ pushes for voter information on millions of Americans
The justice department is undertaking an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information about tens of millions of Americans, a push that relies on thin legal reasoning and which could be aimed at sowing doubt about the midterm election results this year.
The department has asked at least 43 states for their comprehensive information on voters, including the last four digits of their social security numbers, full dates of birth and addresses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Eight states have voluntarily turned over the information, according to the Brennan Center, and the department has sued 23 states and the District of Columbia for the information.
Many of the states have faced lawsuits after refusing to turn over the information, citing state privacy laws. Some of the states have provided the justice department with voter lists that have sensitive personal information redacted, only to find themselves sued by the department. Nearly every state the justice department has sued is led by Democratic election officials.
“Our position on this starts and ends with the law. We looked at state law and federal law regarding disclosure of this very sensitive personal information on millions of people, and what we discovered, or at least the way we’ve concluded, is that the law protects voters from this kind of disclosure under these circumstances,” said Steve Simon, a Democrat who is the top election official in Minnesota, one of the states being sued.
Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, another state being sued, was more blunt. “Pound sand,” he posted on X in response to a justice department official who announced the department was suing his state.
There are a few reasons that Donald Trump – now self-anointed acting President of Venezuela, as well as the United States – might be so excited about appropriating Venezuela’s oil.
Trump may be counting on some boost from cheap oil to the US economy: he is obsessed with the price of gas. As the midterm elections approach, he has become concerned about unemployment. Deeply imprinted memories of scarcity during the oil crises of the 1970s may prime his belief that cheap oil cures it all.
The US president may also consider Venezuelan oil as an easy source of cash, either for the US government – to add to the tariff bonanza that he implausibly claims is being paid by foreigners – or for his own personal stash, which he may want to diversify away from crypto.
My guess is he’s dreaming: dreams built from Upton Sinclair tales of wildcatters striking it rich at the turn of the 20th century, mixed in with ingrained images from the Beverly Hillbillies, which debuted on CBS when Trump was 16, and visions of gold-plated palaces, so common in the oil fiefdoms of the Middle East. A child’s lust for buried treasure.
None of this makes any sense.
A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again.
The 21-country survey for the influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank also found that under Trump, the US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies – particularly in Europe – feel ever more distant.
Most Europeans no longer see the US as a reliable ally and are increasingly supportive of rearmament, it found, while Russians now see the EU as more of an enemy than the US, and Ukrainians are looking more to Brussels than to Washington for support.
The poll, of nearly 26,000 respondents in 13 European countries, the US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, found majorities in almost every territory surveyed expected China’s global influence to grow over the next decade.
These ranged from 83% in South Africa, 72% in Brazil and 63% in Turkey through 54% in the US, 53% in 10 EU states and 51% in India to 50% in the UK. Most EU citizens expected China to soon lead the world in electric vehicles and renewable energies.
The US Senate has voted against a war powers resolution that would have prevented Donald Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela without giving Congress advance notice.
Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana, who had joined three other Republicans to advance the resolution alongside Democrats last week, flipped after they said they received assurances from the Trump administration.
With Hawley and Young’s votes, the Senate was split 50-50 on the resolution. JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Republican senators Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins cast their votes for the war powers resolution alongside Democrats.
Senate Democrats forcefully condemned Republican opposition to the resolution, which aimed to check the president as he threatens further action in other countries including Greenland, Iran and Mexico.
“Make no mistake about it: this vote makes things more dangerous, not less,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said. “It emboldens Donald Trump to push further down this reckless path.”
Trump set to meet Venezuelan opposition leader at White House today
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that president Donald Trump is set to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado at the White House later today.
Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by then-president Nicolás Maduro before the United States captured him in an audacious military raid this month, AP reported.
Less than two weeks after US forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges, Trump will host the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, having already dismissed her credibility to run Venezuela and raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in the country.
“She’s a very nice woman,” Trump told Reuters in an interview about Machado. “I’ve seen her on television. I think we’re just going to talk basics.”
The meeting comes as Trump and his top advisers have signaled their willingness to work with acting president Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice-president and along with others in the deposed leader’s inner circle remain in charge of day-to-day governmental operations.
Rodríguez herself has adopted a less strident position toward Trump and his ‘America First’ policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro - a move reportedly made at the behest of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.
Trump said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.
“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump told reporters. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”
In other developments:
The US Senate has voted against a war powers resolution that would have prevented Donald Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela without giving Congress advance notice. Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana, who had joined three other Republicans to advance the resolution alongside Democrats last week, flipped after they said they received assurances from the Trump administration.
The Trump administration received approval from the justice department to use the military to seize Nicolás Maduro even as it declined to address whether the operation would violate international law, according to a legal memo. The dark-of-night raid to capture Venezuela’s president has raised a host of legal issues concerning the president’s power to start an armed conflict without congressional approval and possible breaches of international law.
The Trump administration has indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries, marking one of its most expansive efforts yet to restrict legal pathways to the United States. The freeze, which takes effect on 21 January, targets applicants officials deem likely to become a “public charge” – who they describe as people who may rely on government benefits for basic needs.
Donald Trump has said it would be “unacceptable” for Greenland to be “in the hands” of any country other than the US, reiterating his demand to take over the arctic island, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. “The US needs Greenland for the purpose of national security. Nato should be leading the way for us to get it,” the US president said on social media. The alliance “becomes far more formidable and effective” with the territory under US control, he said.
The Iranian government has signalled that detained protesters are to face speedy trials and executions, defying a threat by Trump to intervene if authorities continue their crackdown.
The Democratic representative Robin Kelly on Wednesday formally introduced articles of impeachment against Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, following the fatal shooting of a US citizen by an immigration agent in Minneapolis last week.
The Trump administration on Tuesday evening unexpectedly canceled up to $1.9bn in funding for substance use and mental health care, which providers say will immediately affect thousands of patients. “The scope of care that’s disrupted by these grants is catastrophic,” said Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy organization for people in and seeking recovery. “Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will die.”
