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Story by Atlanta Black Star News

Tennessee Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones is being widely praised after delivering a blistering on-air rebuttal to Fox News host Sean Hannity, cutting through the network’s familiar immigrant crime rhetoric by turning it back on one of Hannity’s most protected figures: Donald Trump.

The segment quickly grew tense from the start. As Hannity began scrolling through a list of violent crimes he attributed to immigrants in Tennessee, Jones cut in. “You don’t even have to go through the theatrics of scrolling a list,” he said adamantly. “I’m glad you’re bringing up a list, because if you want to talk about rapists and criminals, maybe you would stop hanging out with perverts and pedophiles in the White House, Sean.”

Hannity ignored the interruption, talking over Jones as he ticked off offenses including homicide, rape, and sexual assault. But Jones wasn’t done. Leaning forward, he asked the question that immediately shifted the tone of the conversation: “Are you going through Trump’s charges?”

As Hannity repeatedly tried to deflect, the interaction escalated. Speaking directly to Fox’s millions of viewers, Jones said, “He wants you to be afraid. He does not care about crime. He hangs out with pedophiles in Mar-a-Lago. He wants you to be fearful, to control you, because he wants to distract you from the real enemy — the corporate CEOs, who are screwing you over.”

Visibly flustered, Hannity shot back, mocking Jones. “You feel better about yourself now? Now that you’ve gotten your little talking points out?”

Jones held his ground and composure, lifting a photo of ICE agents. “This is what looks like the KKK,” he said. Hannity shot back: “What do you know about the KKK?”

“I come from Tennessee, where the KKK was founded,” Jones replied steadily. “They ran my grandparents out of the state.”

He pressed the issue further, comparing masked ICE agents to the Klan, underscoring the historical context of violence and intimidation. Hannity tried to downplay the comparison, insisting ICE agents are not nearly as violent, but Jones maintained the focus on systemic harm and the broader message of fear being used to control public perception.
Story by Harry Thompson

Despite President Trump’s claims about a miraculous economy, planned layoffs reached their highest level for January since the Great Recession.

New data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas released on Thursday revealed that last month saw more job-cut announcements than in any January since 2009.

The outplacement firm said that the 108,435 announcements made were up 205 percent compared to December 2025. That’s also 118 percent higher than January 2025.

Breaking down the 17-year high, the firm’s workplace expert Andy Challenger said, “Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January.” He added, “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026.”

Key industries led the month’s layoffs, with the transport sector accounting for 31,243 planned cuts, largely due to UPS’s announcement to remove 30,000 people from its payroll.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the majority of the 22,291 planned job cuts in the technology industry were credited to Amazon, which plans to axe 16,000 roles.
Story by Billal Rahman

Federal judges in Oregon, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania scolded the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, citing warrantless arrests, mass detention efforts, and what one jurist called needless spending and strain on the courts.

The rulings issued on Wednesday signal growing judicial resistance to the government’s efforts to broaden the scope of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the country.

Oregon
In Oregon, U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, who was appointed by then President Joe Biden in 2024, issued a sweeping preliminary injunction blocking federal immigration officers from making warrantless civil immigration arrests unless they first conduct an individualized assessment that a person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, according to court filings.

The order, issued Tuesday in a case brought by two immigrants, found “ample evidence” that federal agents had engaged in a pattern and practice of ignoring statutory limits on their arrest authority. Judge Kasubhai said that ICE officers in the state routinely made warrantless arrests without the case-by-case determination required by federal law.

“Ample evidence in this case demonstrates a pattern and practice in Oregon that amounts to final agency action of executing warrantless arrests without individualized determinations of flight risk,” Judge Kasubhai wrote.

The ruling directly rebuked the government’s stance that broad enforcement circumstances could justify bypassing warrants. Federal law, Judge Kasubhai emphasized, allows warrantless immigration arrests only when officers have probable cause to believe that a specific individual is likely to flee before a warrant can be secured, not based on generalized assumptions or operational convenience.
Story by Billal Rahman

A U.S. Army veteran who had lived in the United States for more than five decades was deported to Jamaica on Tuesday, according to his family.

Godfrey Wade, a Jamaican-born lawful permanent resident and military veteran, was taken into custody last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and ultimately removed, despite appeals from his family and advocates.

Christian Wade, his daughter, told Newsweek that her father informed the family he would begin the “outtake process” at 10:30 p.m. Central time on Wednesday and believed he was already on a flight to Jamaica.

“Unfortunately, my dad will be arriving in Jamaica today,” Christian Wade told Newsweek in an exclusive statement.

Newsweek has contacted ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, for comment.
Story by Rebecca Beitsch

The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a rule that gives it the power to more easily fire an estimated 50,000 federal workers who focus on policy, striking many civil service safeguards while also gutting their whistleblower protections.

The rule, dubbed Schedule Policy Career or P/C, converts a wide swath of federal workers into a status similar to that of political appointees who can be fired at will.

Federal worker unions have staunchly opposed the switch, casting it as a way for President Trump to politicize a workforce tapped for its expertise to neutrally carry out their role across administrations.

The administration has been clear that the goal of the rule is to more easily fire workers they argue are hindering Trump policies — a nod to the president’s claims of a “Deep State” within the federal government trying to undermine him.
Story by Ireland Owens

Most Americans think tariffs harm the nation’s economy, according to a new survey out Thursday.

The newly released Marist poll found that 56% of Americans think imposing tariffs or fees on imported goods from other countries is harmful to the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, 31% of respondents said tariffs help the economy and 12% said the taxes do not make much of a difference either way, according to the survey.

Moreover, 87% of Democrats and 63% of independents said tariffs hurt the American economy, compared to 20% of Republicans, the poll shows. About two in three Republicans, 66%, think that tariffs bolster the U.S. economy, per the survey.
Story by Alex Henderson

For generations, conservatives and libertarians attacked liberals and progressives for failing to respect states' rights, arguing that it was grossly unfair to make Alabama and Mississippi residents live by Massachusetts standards. The states' rights argument was often used by Republicans to criticize the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973; abortion laws, opponents of the decision argued, needed to be determined on a state-by-state basis instead of having a national standard.

In an article published on February 5, journalist Ross Rosenfeld cites a range of ways in which the second Trump Administration, he says, is showing a total disdain for states' rights.

"Beyond the immediate concern that Trump intends to interfere in upcoming national elections," Rosenfeld explains, "his comments and actions are a stark departure from previous Republican positions on states' rights. Just a decade ago, when Trump first sought the presidency, the Republican Party platform included complaints against the Obama Administration for 'bullying of state and local governments'…. And Trump himself stated, in 2016, that 'many, many things actually should be states' rights.' He said he was willing to leave issues involving transgender Americans and abortion to the states, and promised to 'make states the laboratories of democracy once again.'"
Story by Matt Naham

As inquiring minds want to know if the current iteration of the DOJ would consider prosecuting one of its own for the possible unauthorized leaking of grand jury information, the man at the center of the latest controversy is posting through it.

Early Thursday, Ed Martin shared an all-smiles photo on X of himself with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — the No. 2 DOJ official under U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — and with his oft-used caption, "Good morning, America. How are ya'?"

Martin presents a cheery disposition amid an apparently tumultuous time for the onetime U.S. attorney nominee and current U.S. Pardon Attorney: Over the last few days, he was reported to have been sidelined in January from his DOJ "Weaponization Working Group" czar role, which he used to pursue President Donald Trump's perceived enemies.
Story by Ewan Palmer

The top federal prosecutor in Minnesota has warned that his office is struggling to handle a surge of immigration cases stemming from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in October 2025, wrote in filings to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that his team has been forced to shift its “already limited resources” in order to handle the lawsuits filed by immigrants arrested and detained by ICE over the past few weeks.

This complaint was backed by multiple Department of Justice attorneys, who said the “sheer number” of immigration cases in January alone is “imposing a crushing burden” on federal prosecutors. “This has, in turn, compelled U.S. Attorney’s Offices to shift resources away from other critical priorities, including criminal matters,” they wrote.
ABC News' Will Steakin reports on the latest headlines involving the U.S. government's publication of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Story by Damon Root

"Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant."

Those are the complaining words of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.), who was voicing his support for the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which now claims that its agents have the right to forcibly enter private homes without first obtaining a warrant signed by a judge. According to ICE, its agents may forcibly enter homes in certain immigration enforcement contexts based merely on a so-called "administrative warrant," which is not actually a warrant at all, but is rather just a piece of paper signed by someone in the executive branch.

To fully appreciate the inherent lawlessness of the Johnson view, simply replace the phrase "getting a judicial warrant" with any constitutional requirement that you like in the above-quoted statement. For example:

・"Imagine if we had to go through the process of guaranteeing freedom of speech."

・"Imagine if we had to go through the process of respecting the right to keep and bear arms."

・"Imagine if we had to go through the process of paying just compensation when private property is taken for a public use."

You get the idea.

When a government mouthpiece complains that it would be too difficult to follow the commands of the Constitution in a given context, that's a dead giveaway that the government is already violating (or planning to violate) the commands of the Constitution in that context.
Story by BIN

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement faces mounting public backlash over aggressive raids and deadly encounters, unrest is also growing inside the agency itself.

According to reporting by WIRED, users on an online forum with more than 5,000 members, claiming to be current and former ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers, have been openly criticizing leadership, working conditions, and the pace of enforcement.

The forum, which has existed for more than a decade, serves as an unofficial space for deportation officers and retirees to discuss the job. While employment is not verified, many posts reference internal procedures and deployments consistent with agency operations, WIRED reports.
Story by Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Led by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, four Democratic senators on Wednesday outlined plans to reduce the costs of prescription drugs after President Donald Trump claimed he would do so—only to allow Big Pharma companies to delay negotiating lower prices and secure “zero commitments” from top executives on making lifesaving medications more affordable for millions of Americans.

“There is no greater fraud than Donald J. Trump when it comes to lower drug prices,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “Our doors are wide open to anybody who wants to take the bold next step forward on lowering drug costs for Americans.”

Along with a “flash report” on Trump’s “broken promises” regarding his pledge to bring drug prices down “to levels nobody ever thought was possible,” Wyden sent a Dear Colleague letter to Democratic senators regarding his committee’s plans to follow through with lowering costs.

“Finance Committee minority staff will dedicate substantial time and effort this year to developing the next generation of healthcare solutions that lower costs for American families,” Wyden wrote. “These solutions will rein in Big Pharma’s outrageous price increases, lower costs for consumers, guarantee predictability for patients, and reduce wasteful government spending that pads the profits of big corporations. Alongside the co-signers of this letter, I invite you to be a part of this bold vision.”
Story by Alison Durkee, Forbes Staff

Topline
The Justice Department’s latest release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein shows new ties with the world’s most powerful people—including information about his relationship to Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the president of the World Economic Forum Borge Brende and Bill Gates—and at least one is already out of a job.

Key Facts
The DOJ released approximately three million documents Friday, including 2,000 videos and 18,000 photos, part of the government’s requirement to release its full documents on Epstein under federal law—but coming more than a month after the files were required to be released by Dec. 19.

The files released Friday include a wide variety of documents, including emails between Epstein and his powerful friends—including billionaire Elon Musk—documents related to Epstein and associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s times in prison and witness interviews with Epstein victims, though many are heavily redacted.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche denied the Trump administration had “covered up” any of the Epstein files by failing to release them sooner, pointing to the millions of pages the government had to review and arguing, “There’s not some tranche of super-secret documents that we’re withholding.”

The documents include materials from the government’s criminal investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, “multiple FBI investigations” and the government’s investigation into Epstein’s death, the DOJ said.
Story by Adam Van Eekeren

TRUMP THREATENS IRAN
Fears that WWIII is on the horizon have intensified after US President Donald Trump issued a chilling four-word threat to Iran amidst mounting tensions. His comments come as experts claim that discussions between the White House and the brutal regime regarding nuclear weapons are now on the brink of collapse.

US IS 'LOCKED AND LOADED'
The president’s threats come as tensions between Iran and the US continue to mount. These tensions were sparked by Trump's previous warnings that he would military strike the region. This came after the revelation that Ayatollah Al-Khamenei had killed around 6,000 demonstrators as part of a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests. Trump then told Iran that the US was ‘locked and loaded’ to strike if the killings continued.

TRUMP SENDS ARMADA
Trump later doubled down on his threats to Iran by sending a massive naval armada towards the country ahead of key negotiations. ‘We have ships heading to Iran right now, big ones - the biggest and the best - and we have talks going on with Iran and we’ll see how it all works out,’ the US President told reporters in the Oval Office.
Story by Travis Gettys

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that California may use a new congressional map approved by voters.

Justices rejected arguments from Republicans asking the court to block district lines they claimed were rigged in favor of Democratic candidates, and their decision was issued as a one-sentence order that did not provide explanation or dissent, reported NBC News.
BuzzFeed

As tensions rise between ICE and the public, Donald Trump's former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, recently made a chilling comment about where he says ICE may show up next.

A clip from Bannon's political show, The War Room, has gone viral, garnering over 2.5 million views on X, where he claimed that ICE would be at the polls. You can watch it here.

At the beginning of the clip, Bannon said, "You're **** right. We're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November."
BuzzFeed

This morning, President Donald Trump spoke for an hour and 15 minutes at the 74th National Prayer Breakfast.

It was...about as spiritual as you'd expect.

He discussed his chances of getting into heaven:
Story by Jaja Agpalo

It is a peculiar hallmark of the current American political epoch that reality is frequently treated not as a fixed state, but as a negotiable position. This pliability was on full display this week when Donald Trump, sitting across from NBC News’ Tom Llamas, offered a denial so stark it seemed to challenge the very existence of recorded audio. “I didn’t say nationalize,” the president asserted, waving away suggestions that he had called for a federal takeover of the US electoral system.

The denial was swift, confident, and categorically false. This wasn’t a mumbled slip of the tongue or a vague aside that could be explained away; he had demanded a ‘take over’ of voting in “at least 15 places” on a massive platform. Yet, when the heat turned up, Donald Trump didn’t just spin the comment—he tried to erase it from the record entirely, looking into the camera and denying words the world had just heard him say.

It’s a classic Trumpian cycle, but this specific incident exposes something deeper than his usual loose relationship with the truth. It lays bare the sheer mess of his operation—a candidate saying whatever comes into his head in the moment, while his staff scramble behind the scenes, trying to retrofit his outbursts into something that sounds like coherent policy.
Story by Chris Perez

ICE agents "violated a longstanding privilege" barring civil arrests from happening in courthouses when they tried to arrest an undocumented immigrant that Hannah Dugan — the former Wisconsin judge who was found guilty last year of impeding agents during a courthouse bust — shielded from arrest, her lawyers say.

"ICE had no lawful right to execute the warrant in a state courthouse against a party with a court appearance that day," Dugan's legal team argues in a Jan. 30 motion for a new trial. "[Dugan's] conviction cannot stand, as a matter of law," the motion charges.

Dugan, 66, was indicted last year for allegedly helping an immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, evade federal officers shortly after he appeared in her Milwaukee County Circuit courtroom in connection with a domestic abuse case. A federal jury found Dugan guilty in December of one count of obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States, a felony. Jurors found her innocent of one count of concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest, a misdemeanor.

Steve Biskupic, one of Dugan's defense attorneys — and a former U.S. Attorney — told WISN in late December that her legal team had planned to ask U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a Bill Clinton appointee, to set aside Dugan's guilty verdict. Her lawyers filed their motion for a new trial on Friday with claims that recent court cases, including one in November 2025, established a "common-law privilege" that bars civil arrests from happening inside courthouses.
By SAM MERRIMAN, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Peter Mandelson offered to help Jeffrey Epstein obtain a Russian visa via a billionaire oligarch with close links to Vladimir Putin.

The paedophile financier planned to use the visa to travel to Moscow to meet young women, documents released by the US Department of Justice suggest.

Epstein emailed the disgraced ex-Labour minister, who had left government six months earlier, on 9 November 2010 asking if he could help acquiring a Russian visa.

Epstein emailed Lord Mandelson saying: 'I do not have a visa for Russia, it is a bank holiday in Paris today... any ideas how I can get one.'

The emails suggest Lord Mandelson replied hours later indicating he was willing to help Epstein, who had been released from prison about a year earlier after serving 13-months for soliciting a minor.

The following day Lord Mandelson emailed Epstein again and said that an associate 'can get visa through OD' - thought to refer to Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska who was sanctioned by the UK after the start of the Ukraine war.

A few hours later Lord Mandelson said to Epstein: 'OD office helping on visas. Told him he [should] meet u and of course he wants to. He's travelling at moment.'

There is a known link between Lord Mandelson and Deripaska. In 2008 the then EU trade commissioner and George Osborne, then shadow chancellor, were embroiled in controversy after attending a party on the oligarch's superyacht in Corfu.
Story by Will Stewart, Gavin Quinn

A key Putin propaganda media center was consumed by a mysterious blaze today.

Fire and smoke triggered an emergency at an office complex housing outlets of the National Media Group, led by the dictator's partner Alina Kabaeva, 42.

Dark smoke poured into the sky at the Izvestia building on Partiyny Lane in Moscow. The facility houses Izvestia newspaper, REN TV, and the editorial staff of Channel Five, Tsargrad and Regnum, all devotedly pro-Kremlin outlets. Sources indicated the fire was classified at an elevated severity level, with all personnel immediately evacuated from the building.

It comes after Trump posted a 'provocative' Putin photo after the Russian leader made him 'look weak'

Emergency services reported the inferno originated in a sauna at the Aquastar fitness club, situated on the third floor of the same structure.

"Firefighters rushed to the scene as people were led out of the building, according to one account.

"Additional units from the Emergency Situations Ministry were dispatched to assist, while ambulance crews, including a resuscitation team, remained on standby."
by Alexander Bolton

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he does not support President Trump’s proposal for Republicans to “take over” voting procedures in more than a dozen states and “nationalize” the midterm elections, declaring the president’s call to action blatantly unconstitutional.

“That’s not what the Constitution says about elections,” Paul said in an interview Tuesday with MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle, when asked about the president’s statement that Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.”

Paul noted the U.S. Supreme Court limits states in some ways, such as by barring them from setting different rules for some issues, including term limits. But he said the Constitution gives states the power to determine the time, place and matter of elections.

“The Supreme Court did rule that, for example, Washington state can’t set term limits on federal officials if Georgia doesn’t. It has to be a uniform election law,” the Kentucky Republican said.

“But as far as the time, place and manner of elections, that, under the Constitution, is a state activity,” he continued. “So, I’m not for nationalizing it.”
Story by Adam Lynch

MS NOW analyst Cornell Belcher argues a recent boo-down at a major professional wrestling event in Las Vegas reveals President Donald Trump may have lost a bigger sector of the voting class than originally expected.

“That clip … at a wrestling match is, quite frankly, startling because the cultural stuff has such importance,” Belcher told MS NOW host Alicia Menendez. “These blue-collar non-college voters have been the face of Trump's support for a long time. Non-college white voters broke for Trump by 34 points in the last election.”

Belcher pointed to surveys showing 57 percent of non-college white voters now believe Trump’s Department of Homeland Security personnel have “gone too far,” even on an issue that Trump once enjoyed widespread support.
Story by Kate Plummer

A video posted by U.S. President Donald Trump‘s Truth Social account contained a racist depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

At the end of the 62-second video—otherwise about voting machines—the Obamas’ faces appear on apes’ bodies for about 1 second as The Tokens’ song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays.

The video was posted to the account shortly before midnight ET.

The edited image of the Obamas, both Democrats, carries a watermark @XERIAS_X, which corresponds with a Trump-supporting X account with about 46,000 followers.

Given the bulk of the video is about elections, it is not clear if Trump watched the whole video and was aware of the content shared at the end. Newsweek reached out to the White House by email outside of normal business hours on Friday.

Why It Matters
Political polarization online has increased in the last few years, sparking conversations about the balance between free speech and offensive discourse.

What To Know
The 62-second video, which appears to have originated from the website Patriot News Outlet claimed Michigan officials had accessed voting tabulators that showed potential election interference. It comes amid Trump’s continuous unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was beset with electoral fraud and other issues, meaning former president Joe Biden’s win was false.
Story by Chris Melore, Assistant Science Editor For Dailymail.Com

The Trump Administration has given the green light to reveal the secret UFO facilities to one of the leading voices in Congress calling for full disclosure of alien life.

US Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri revealed that he has requested and been granted access to secure locations, such as Area 51, which have decades-old ties to UFOs and secret government projects.

Speaking on the ALN Podcast, Burlison added that the request to President Trump and his staff included visiting US military bases and facilities where evidence suggests unidentified craft, materials, bodies, or archives allegedly exist.

Burlison is a member of the congressional oversight committee involved in the ongoing investigation into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), commonly known as UFOs.

Although the US government and the Pentagon have officially denied that there has been any physical evidence of UFOs or alien life ever recovered, Congress has heard from multiple whistleblowers claiming secret programs have covered up the truth.

In fact, Burlison has previously claimed President Trump has been 'fully briefed' on the existence of aliens, UFOs recovered by the military since the 1940s, and alien-human hybrids allegedly living on Earth today.
Story by Janna Brancolini

Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is trying to expedite deportation proceedings against the family of a 5-year-old boy who has become the face of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy.

Photos of Liam Conejo Ramos standing in the snow wearing a Spiderman backpack and blue bunny-ears hat went viral last month after the preschooler and his father were detained by ICE in Minneapolis and sent to a detention facility more than 1,000 miles away in Texas.

Before Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, were released on Saturday on a federal judge’s orders, the boy became feverish, vomited, and grew lethargic, but was denied medication because the detention center said they didn’t have any, Arias told ABC News.

Earlier this week, top officials at the Department of Justice vowed to appeal the order granting the father and son’s release. Arias and his wife, who is pregnant with the couple’s third child, came to the U.S. from Ecuador with Liam and their oldest child in 2024 and legally applied for asylum.
Story by Kate Plummer

President Donald Trump has sparked online criticism after posting a video on Truth Social that contained a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes.

Near the end of the 62-second video about voting machines in the 2020 presidential election, the Obamas’ faces appear on the bodies of apes for about one second as the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays. A watermark from X user @XERIAS_X, a Trump-supporting account with 45,900 followers, overlays that portion of the video.

On X, various public figures condemned the video. Harry Sisson, a liberal social media influencer with over 374,000 followers, called it “incredibly racist and disgusting.”

Newsweek has contacted the White House and representatives for Obama for comment by email outside normal business hours.

Why It Matters
Political polarization has increased in the past few years, particularly in online spaces—sparking conversations about the balance between free speech and offensive discourse. The president, whose use of social media has long drawn scrutiny, was barred from Facebook and Twitter, now X, in 2021 after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. In response, Trump created Truth Social, where he posts frequently. His Facebook and Twitter accounts were later reinstated.

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump and his administration have been accused of racism and bigotry amid its rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and their efforts to carry out the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. Trump posting a video depicting Obama, the first Black president of the United States, as an ape during Black History Month has further fanned those accusations.
Story by Isabella Murray, Beatrice Peterson, Ivan Pereira

President Donald Trump on Thursday again shifted explanations of why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was at a controversial FBI search of a Georgia election office where 2020 ballots were seized amid his continuing false claims of voter fraud.

Trump told attendees of the National Prayer Breakfast that it was Attorney General Pam Bondi who "insisted" that Gabbard oversee the Jan. 28 raid at the Fulton County Elections Hub and Operations Center.

"She went in and she looked at votes that want to be checked out from Georgia," he said of Gabbard. "They say, 'Why is she doing it?'" he continued, referring to questions raised about why Gabbard -- who deals with foreign intelligence threats -- was getting involved in domestic law enforcement. "Because Pam wanted her to do it," he said. "And you know why? Because she's smart."
Story by Craig Hoyle

A far-right provocateur and pardoned January 6 rioter has been arrested in Minneapolis for vandalising a "PROSECUTE ICE" sculpture at the Minnesota State Capitol.

Jake Lang posted a video of himself on X in which he kicks down the ice installation, which was put in place earlier on Thursday by a veterans group in protest against ICE’s presence in Minnesota as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Lang, 30, dressed in military-style camouflage, begins the video speaking directly to the camera: “President Trump, we support you. We support ICE. Our country was made for Americans, not for Somalis.”

He then strides over to the sculpture and kicks out the six middle letters, so it reads “PRO ICE.”

Once the destruction is finished, Lang raises his arms triumphantly to declare: “Pro ICE baby! America first, America only.”

The 30-year-old was seen leaving the area in a vehicle and was subsequently stopped by a state trooper at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and University Avenue, local news affiliate Fox 9 reported; he was arrested without incident and booked into the Ramsey County Jail on suspicion of criminal damage to property.
Aliya Rahman gave her account of what happened during her now-viral account with ICE, where she was dragged out of her car. She also shared what she saw in the detention center.
Story by Julianna Bragg

The Winter Olympic Games are just beginning, but some athletes are already speaking out against the Trump administration and its immigration enforcement tactics.

The big picture: While the Olympic Charter prohibits political, religious or racial demonstrations at Olympic sites, athletes have used early interviews and social media posts to express their concerns.

Team USA rebranded its hospitality house from Ice House to Winter House, distancing it from current immigration enforcement.
The latest: Team Great Britain skier Gus Kenworthy shared a photo on Instagram that appeared to show 'f--k ICE' written in snow with urine just ahead of the Milan-Cortina games opening ceremony.

The Olympian, who was raised in the U.S., also urged constituents to call their senators and "put pressure on them" during Homeland Security funding negotiations. He shared an example script.

"Innocent people have been murdered, and enough is enough," Kenworthy wrote on Instagram. "We can't wait around while ICE continues to operate with unchecked power in our communities."

The backlash comes as Trump has expanded federal operations in Minnesota, which resulted in the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were both shot by federal agents.
Story by BILL BARROW and RIVER ZHANG

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ever since a racist video was posted on President Donald Trump's social media account, the White House has offered shifting responses.

First it dismissed “fake outrage," then it deleted the post and blamed a staff member.

Trump later told reporters Friday that “I didn't make a mistake." The Republican president insisted that before the video was posted, no one saw the part that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as primates in the jungle.

But the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus had a different explanation when she spoke to The Associated Press.

“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.

The AP interviewed Clarke, who leads the group of more than 60 Black House and Senate members, hours after the video was deleted on Friday, and she was unsparing in her criticism. “As my mother would say, ‘Too late. Mercy’s gone,'" Clarke said.

Here is an interview transcript, edited for length and clarity.

AP: What was your reaction when you saw that the post?

CLARKE: We’re dealing with a bigoted and racist regime. ... Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their M.O. at this point.
Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff
Cate Brown

Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney briefed on the existence of the call.

The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard – but rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, she took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the attorney, Andrew Bakaj, said.

One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office.

Details of this exchange between Gabbard and the NSA were shared directly with the Guardian and have not been previously reported. Nor has Wiles receipt of the intelligence report.
Opinion by Andrew O'Hehir

One explicit goal of the second Trump administration, if not its defining mission, is to undo the recent past and rewrite history to fit its own master narrative. By now it’s axiomatic that making America “great again” has never referred to any fixed point in the actual American past; it’s more like a mashup or highlight reel of random images taken from eras before any living American was born. We can see that vision embodied with startling literalness in the propaganda posters recently concocted by the Labor Department, such as the depiction of a whites-only church picnic apparently taking place in Uncanny Valley. If the rise of Donald Trump preceded the advent of AI slop, it may also have conjured it into existence: Never in cultural history have form and content been so perfectly matched.

We already know that Trump and his inner circle — which mostly means Stephen Miller and Russ Vought, the high priests of MAGA ideology — want to erase the gains of the civil rights movement, LGBTQ equality and feminism. But their true goals are far more ambitious, if less easy to define. This is a fake presidency devoted more to creating viral memes than shaping policy, and there’s no coherent or consistent narrative at work. Honestly, that’s less a flaw than a feature: The wholesale rejection of reality is central to the brand.

Team Trump claims to want the broadly shared prosperity of a 1950s-style industrial boom, but without the progressive taxation and expanded welfare state that made it possible. They also want a new American empire, vaguely modeled on the great-power glory days of the 1890s, but built on the cheap and based on extortion rather than military conquest. Spoiler alert: They don’t really want any those things. Those are just memes, about as realistic as the one about King Trump taking a dump on protesters, designed to distract attention from the imposition of a brutal but incompetent police state.
The Department of Homeland Security is using a little-known legal weapon, targeting dissenters with administrative subpoenas. MSNOW Legal Analyst Melissa Murray says the Trump administration isn’t using them “to fight crime or enhance public safety, but to minimize public dissent.” Tech reporter Joseph Menn warns, “This isn’t an isolated case.”
Democrats and some Republicans are raising the alarm about President Trump’s ideas to “nationalize” the midterms or assert “federal controls” over some polling locations. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), member of the House Armed Services Committee, joins Alex Witt to discuss election security and voting access ahead of the 2026 midterms.
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