politics

Reporting from New York, NY — Media outlets are reporting that federal prosecutors have granted immunity to the executive in charge of the National Enquirer amid an investigation into hush-money payments made on behalf of President Trump.

Vanity Fair and the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, were first to report Wednesday’s development involving David Pecker, CEO of the tabloid’s publisher, American Media Inc., and a longtime friend of the president.

Court papers connected to ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea Tuesday say Pecker offered to help Trump squash negative stories during the 2016 campaign.

The Journal said Pecker shared details with prosecutors about payments Cohen says Trump directed to buy the silence of two women alleging affairs with him.

Trump’s account has shifted. He said recently he knew about payments “later on.”

MINNEAPOLIS — A man sprayed an unknown substance on U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and was tackled to the ground Tuesday during a town hall in Minneapolis, where tensions over federal immigration enforcement have come to a head after agents fatally shot an intensive care nurse and a mother of three this month.

The audience cheered as the man was pinned down and his arms were tied behind his back. In video of the incident, someone in the crowd can be heard saying, “Oh my God, he sprayed something on her.”

Just before that, Omar had called for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign or face impeachment. Calls are mounting on Capitol Hill for Noem to step down after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two people who protested deportations. Few Republicans have risen to her defense.

“ICE cannot be reformed,” Omar said, seconds before the attack.

Minneapolis police said officers saw the man use a syringe to spray an unknown liquid at Omar. They immediately arrested him and booked him at the county jail for third-degree assault, spokesperson Trevor Folke said. Forensic scientists responded to the scene.

Police identified the man as 55-year-old Anthony Kazmierczak. It was not immediately clear if Kazmierczak had an attorney. The county public defenders’ office could not immediately be reached.

Omar continued the town hall for about 25 more minutes after the man was ushered out by security, saying she would not be intimidated.

There was a strong, vinegar-like smell after the man pushed on the syringe, according to an Associated Press journalist who was there. Photos of the device, which fell to the ground when he was tackled, showed what appeared to be a light brown liquid inside. There was no immediate word from officials on what it was.

Minneapolis City Council member LaTrisha Vetaw said some of the substance came into contact with her and State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion as well. She called it a deeply unsettling experience.

No one in the crowd of about 100 people had a noticeable physical reaction to the substance.

Omar says she is OK and ‘a survivor’

Walking out afterward, Omar said she felt a little flustered but was not hurt. She was going to be screened by a medical team.

She later posted on the social platform X: “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday night.

President Trump has frequently criticized the congresswoman and has stepped up verbal attacks on her in recent months as he turned his focus on Minneapolis. During a Cabinet meeting in December, he called her “garbage.”

Hours earlier on Tuesday, the president criticized Omar as he spoke to a crowd in Iowa, saying his administration would only let in immigrants who “can show that they love our country.”

“They have to be proud, not like Ilhan Omar,” he said, drawing loud boos at the mention of her name.

He added: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster. So probably, it’s considered, I think — it’s not even a country.”

Omar is a U.S. citizen who fled her birthplace, Somalia, with her family at age 8 as a civil war tore apart the country.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 people of Somali descent — nearly a third of Somalis living in the U.S.

Officials condemn the attack

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz expressed gratitude that Omar was safe, adding in a post on X: “Our state has been shattered by political violence in the last year. The cruel, inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric by our nation’s leaders needs to stop immediately.”

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, also denounced the assault.

“I am deeply disturbed to learn that Rep. Ilhan Omar was attacked at a town hall today” Mace said. “Regardless of how vehemently I disagree with her rhetoric — and I do — no elected official should face physical attacks. This is not who we are.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, called the attack “unacceptable.” He said he was relieved that Omar “is OK” and thanked police for their quick response, concluding: “This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in our city.”

The city has been reeling from the fatal shootings of two residents by federal immigration agents this month during Trump’s massive immigration enforcement surge. Intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti was killed Saturday, less than three weeks after Renee Good was fatally shot behind the wheel of her vehicle.

Lawmakers face rising threats

The attack came days after a man was arrested in Utah for allegedly punching U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida, in the face during the Sundance Film Festival and saying Trump was going to deport him.

Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 in the aftermath of that year’s Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, before dipping slightly only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.

Lawmakers have discussed the impact on their ability to hold town halls and public events, with some even citing the threat environment in their decisions not to seek reelection.

Omar has faced the most particular concern, long targeted with harsh language and personal attacks by Trump and other Republicans.

Following the assault on Omar, U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that the agency was “working with our federal partners to see this man faces the most serious charges possible to deter this kind of violence in our society.”

It also released updated numbers detailing threats to members of Congress: 14,938 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against lawmakers, their families, staff and the Capitol Complex.”

That is a sharp increase from 2024, when the number of cases was 9,474, according to USCP. It is the third year in a row that the number of threats has increased.

Capitol Police have beefed up security measures across all fronts since Jan. 6, 2021, and the department has seen increased reporting after a new center was launched two years ago to process reports of threats.

Bargfeld and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press. Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Mike Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro and Michelle Price in Washington, and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed.

WASHINGTON — When Rep. John D. Dingell was new to Congress, Buddy Holly ruled the charts, Rosa Parks refused to budge from her seat on a segregated bus and Dwight D. Eisenhower occupied the White House.

And on Capitol Hill, congressional committee chairmen ruled like feudal lords over federal policy, pursuing pet causes and waging vendettas with near impunity.

In time, Dingell became one of the most fearsome.

Now Dingell, the longest-serving member of the House, and other veteran Democrats are poised to take charge of the most powerful committees when Congress convenes in January.

In the four decades that Democrats were the dominant party, chairmen’s foibles, however egregious, did not threaten the party’s grip on power. But with narrower margins of control and an electorate willing to switch allegiances, there is no such assumption these days.

The question now is whether the “old bulls” like Dingell know it, and if they know it, whether they can adjust.

“This majority is not the kind of majority that we used to have, and it remains to be seen whether they understand that,” said one senior Democratic staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Building an empire

For 14 years, Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, presided over the Energy and Commerce Committee. Under his forceful and often uncompromising leadership, the panel expanded into an empire that famously claimed jurisdiction over “everything that moves, burns or is sold” in the United States.

It was in part because of the reputation of longtime chairmen like Dingell that former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican insurgency that took control of Congress in 1995, imposed term limits for committee chairs, restricting them to three consecutive two-year terms.

But the Democrats have kept the tradition of assigning committee chairmanships by seniority. And that will elevate some of the most veteran — and oldest — members of Congress to committee leadership posts.

All but one of the new Senate chairmen are at least 60, and three are in their 80s. Three also have served for more than four decades.

The oldest is Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who is 89 and is about to retake the helm of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He sometimes tires, aides say, but he still has full command of his senses and the respect of his peers.

It is in the House, however, where the phenomenon has attracted more attention. That’s partly because Democrats have been shut out of power for 12 years, while their Senate colleagues have been in the minority for just four. And it’s partly because of the irascible personalities of some of the incoming chairmen, known collectively as the “old bulls.”

The three best-known are Dingell, Rep. John Conyers Jr. from a neighboring district in Michigan, and Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York. They are 80, 77, and 76 years old, respectively.

No green bananas

About two-thirds of the incoming House chairmen are older than 60.

“I don’t buy green bananas,” Rangel quipped recently, referring to his age.

Conyers, who served on the panels that considered the impeachment of Presidents Nixon and Clinton and who has mused about the possibility of impeaching the current president, is expected to take the helm of the Judiciary Committee.

Rangel, one of the most outspoken members of Congress, is set to lead the Ways and Means Committee, which sets tax policy.

On Capitol Hill, staffers trade stories about the old bulls and their infirmities, shaking their heads over Dingell’s hearing problems or Conyers’ “senior moments.” But the same staffers insist that the incoming chairmen are not only capable of taking the reins, but of handling them better than anyone else.

“There is a lot to the concept of seniority,” said Jeremy Mayer, who studies Congress at George Mason University in Virginia.

“Should the people who have been in Congress the longest have the most power? The simple answer is yes, because they have more experience and they can’t be steamrolled by the administration. Dingell, for instance, knows all the intricacies of the funding of at least seven federal agencies.”

Another argument in favor of seniority is that it limits intraparty fighting.

The party leadership elections this month illustrated how divisive competition for leadership posts can be. A rigid, impersonal system for naming chairmen is one way to keep the peace.

“Seniority has always been a way to prevent bloodshed,” Mayer said.

The downside is that it can foster autocratic behavior. In the past, Democratic leaders found the chairmen hard to control, in part because their positions did not depend on the party, and the chairmen tended to outlast the leadership.

Steven Smith, a social sciences professor who studies government and political parties at Washington University in St. Louis, says political parties have evolved since then.

“Before the 1980s, committee chairs pretty much went their own way. But since the 1980s, chairs are expected to look out for the party’s overall interest,” he said. “There will be some tension between committee chairs and party leaders on this.”

One potential point of tension is that many of today’s old bulls are old-fashioned liberals. Dingell introduces a proposal for nationalized healthcare in every session of Congress. Conyers has used his staff to pursue favorite concerns of left-wing bloggers, such as voting irregularities in the 2004 elections.

By contrast, the freshman class of Democrats includes a number of centrist or conservative Democrats, many of them uncomfortable with liberal positions on such issues as abortion, gun control and same-sex marriage.

Democratic leaders have already set their sights on 2008, with the goal of regaining the White House and expanding their margin of control in Congress.

“Democrats know that they won this election by appealing to the middle of the spectrum,” Smith said. “And they know that the first rule is to do no harm, to not alienate the folks who gave them the election.”

Doing that will require the incoming House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), herself a traditional liberal, to keep her chairmen focused on issues that promote the party’s broader agenda, not necessarily their own favorite issues.

“For some, it will take a little relearning,” said Smith. “They will have to make a choice: Do they want to start making a record for themselves and their party going into 2008? And what kind of record do they want it to be — a record of legislation, or a record of position-taking and rhetoric?”

Toeing the line

So far, the old bulls have stayed on message — mostly.

Conyers has stopped talking about impeaching President Bush.

Dingell has lauded the benefits of bipartisanship while promising tougher oversight of the administration.

And Rangel has remained coy about the fate of the tax cuts passed by Republicans in recent years, though he caused some heartburn when he brought up his desire to bring back the draft.

Democratic insiders say the old bulls won’t overreach. They say they know better than most what it’s like to gain and then lose a majority. And they haven’t been in a deep freeze for the last 12 years; rather, they’ve been strategizing with their colleagues about how to return to power.

Steve Elmendorf, who served as senior advisor to former Rep. Richard Gephardt, who led the Democrats in both the majority and the minority, says there are two big reasons why no one in the party even whispers about challenging the old bulls, no matter how old or intemperate.

“One, a lot of these chairman worked hard to help win. And when you win, the people who helped are going to move up,” Elmendorf said. “Two, they have a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge. They served in the majority, and they can hit the ground running.”

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Likely chairmen

Democratic veterans in line to run key House committees:

John Conyers Jr.

Committee: Judiciary

Age: 77

First elected: 1964

District: Detroit area

Highlights: Conyers is the only Judiciary Committee member to serve during the impeachment hearings of Presidents Nixon and Clinton. He recently dropped calls for an investigation into whether President Bush should be impeached.

Quote: “The American people sent a clear message that they do not want a rubber-stamp Congress that simply signs off the president’s agenda.”

—

John D. Dingell

Committee: Energy and Commerce

Age: 80

First elected: 1955

District: southeastern Michigan

Highlights: The longest-serving congressman, Dingell ran Energy and Commerce for 14 years, expanding its reach to include two-fifths of all House bills. He oversaw the breakup of AT&T; and cable deregulation.

Quote: “We’re not after anybody,” Dingell said of his new power to subpoena Bush administration officials, but added that they will be “invited to come forward.”

—

Charles B. Rangel

Committee: Ways and Means

Age: 76

First elected: 1970

District: northern Manhattan

Highlights: As a member of Ways and Means, Rangel has worked for targeted federal tax credits to benefit impoverished urban communities, including New York City’s Harlem, his political power base for four decades.

Quote: “Since it appeared there would be a Democratic majority, I can’t tell you the number of pharmaceutical companies and health plans that have come to me and said we can work together to put together a plan to cover the 47 million uninsured.”

TOKYO — There is in George Bush, as in many successful politicians, an element that is always on stage, an element of the eternal campaigner who responds with the instinctive gesture, sometimes incongruous and sometimes just right.

And so it was in Tokyo, notwithstanding the dreary mood of a rainy February afternoon, the solemnity of the state funeral of Emperor Hirohito and, on top of all that, the worrisome political problems posed by his troubled nomination of John Tower to be secretary of defense. Incongruity and the perfect touch, moments apart.

The funeral for the emperor who had reigned in wartime Japan was not a simple rite. It was a precisely staged ceremony of official mourning. The name of the man it memorialized brought back from fading memory the atrocities of World War II.

Arriving at the U.S. Embassy after this affair of state, the formally attired President flashed a thumbs-up sign–the simple gesture in incongruous contrast to the somber tenor of the occasion.

Moments later, he tossed aside a prepared address, delivered an off-the-cuff speech to a crowd of Americans at the embassy, and then spied a cluster of youngsters in the group. That gave him an idea.

Singling out the personal aide who accompanies him throughout his day, whether in Washington, Tokyo, or points in between, Bush said, “Tim McBride’s a good photographer.” With that, the President invited the children to hand McBride their cameras. They obliged, and he posed with each of them for pictures, McBride snapping away as the brief visit was stretched out by 15 minutes.

“It was like a campaign stop,” said the senior White House official who recounted the story, satisfied with his boss’ spontaneous, crowd-pleasing gesture.

Bush’s presidential campaign was marked in its final months by its careful control of each week’s agenda. No matter how Michael S. Dukakis would attack, Bush steadfastly kept to his script, making sure that the focus remained wherever he shined his light. Thus, Willie Horton and the American flag became the enduring symbols of the autumn.

In the opening days of the Bush Administration, however, the light has occasionally flickered. Its beam has been cast with less certainty, as outside events have distracted public attention from the President’s message. And nowhere has that become more evident than here in Tokyo.

Bush was invited to Japan to attend the Hirohito funeral. He took advantage of the ceremony to schedule individual meetings with nearly two dozen other leaders from countries large and small, squeezing 17 into a 30-hour period.

Much as Bush threw open the doors of the White House on the morning after his inauguration to a symbolic sampling of the American populace, he opened the Spanish-style residence of the U.S. ambassador to a representation of the world leadership–prime ministers and presidents and even a king (Baudouin I of Belgium).

One after another, they arrived in the same room in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur received Hirohito in September, 1945, a month after the end of World War II.

And with time running out, the President arranged a dinner Friday with one more visitor to Tokyo–meeting King Juan Carlos I of Spain, in a hotel restaurant.

But it was the Tower- mondai , as the Tower problem is called here, that riveted the attention of the White House staff and most of the 80 or so American reporters who accompanied Bush to Tokyo when they woke up Friday morning to the news that the Senate Armed Services Committee was about to reject the nomination.

Those who struggled to keep track of the funeral on large television screens in the White House press room at the Okura Hotel were swimming upstream: The tide Friday was swelled by a torrent of stories bearing Tokyo datelines and they were all about Tower.

And what about the President’s daylong effort to review the issues of the day with such foreign leaders as Presidents Richard von Weizsaecker of West Germany, Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan?

What about evolving East-West relations, Afghanistan and Iran, U.S. support for President Aquino? All became afterthoughts.

The White House took particular pains not to offend Japanese sensitivities on a day of mourning.

Tokyo had instructed dignitaries on proper funeral attire, down to the black handkerchief in the pocket of the rented morning coat Bush brought from Washington.

Communications went back and forth between Tokyo and Washington, for example, on one particular point of concern: Barbara Bush’s request to wear her trademark triple string of fake pearls.

(Mrs. Bush’s identification with fake pearls has become so well known that it came as a surprise to some aides when she made a quick shopping stop after the funeral and purchased real Japanese pearls–a double-strand bracelet, with a silver clasp. Mrs. Bush herself was surprised when the jeweler refused to take a personal check. So she cashed her check–about $200–with U.S. Embassy personnel and paid in cash.)

The Japanese said pearls would not be suitable at the funeral. But after a time, this difficult decision was reversed. It seems that the pearls–artificial or otherwise–would be permissible, because pearls are, in the Japanese view, “the tears of the oyster.”

Times staff writer Betty Cuniberti contributed to this story.

SAY THIS MUCH for President Bush: He is not deaf to the inner whispers of his intuition.

“I know there’s no evidence that shows the death penalty has a deterrent effect,” he reportedly said as Texas governor, “but I just feel in my gut it must be true.”

Six years and two wars into his presidency, the president still relies on his gut instincts. His recent fly-in to Baghdad was, he explained to U.S. troops, “to look Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki in the eyes — to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are.” The president’s snap assessment? “I believe he is.” He told Larry King in an interview last month: “If you make decisions based upon what you believe in your heart of hearts, you stay resolved.”

In flying by the seat of his pants, Bush has much company.

“Buried deep within each and every one of us, there is an instinctive, heart-felt awareness that provides — if we allow it to — the most reliable guide,” offered Prince Charles, whose decisions also have been relentlessly second-guessed for much of his adult life.

For those disposed to follow their inner guide, today’s pop psychology offers books on “intuitive healing,” “intuitive learning,” “intuitive managing,” “intuitive trading” and much more.

So, when hiring and firing, fearing and risking, investing and gambling, should we follow Bush’s example and tune down that analytical, linear, left-brained mind? Should we stop obsessing over logic and data and trust the force within?

Today’s psychological science documents a vast intuitive mind. More than we realize, our thinking, memory and attitudes operate on two levels — conscious and unconscious — with the larger part operating automatically. We know more than we know we know.

Studies show that as we gain expertise, even reasoned judgments can become automatic. Rather than wend their way through a decision tree, experienced car mechanics and physicians will often, after a quick listen and look, diagnose problems. Chess masters intuitively know the right move. And Japanese chicken sexers use complex pattern recognition to separate newborn pullets and cockerels with near perfect accuracy.

Moreover, we’re all experts when it comes to reading people’s emotions. Psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal report that after viewing mere “thin slices” of college professors’ teaching — three two-second clips — observers’ ratings of them correlate well with students’ end-of-semester ratings. To gain a sense of someone’s energy and warmth, six seconds will often do.

So, is our president smart to harness the powers of his intuition? Or should he, and we, be subjecting our hunches to scrutiny?

Intuition is important, but we often underestimate its perils. My geographical intuition tells me that Reno is east of Los Angeles and that Rome is south of New York. But I am wrong. “The first principle,” said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, “is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” In hundreds of experiments, people have greatly overestimated their eyewitness recollections, their interviewee assessments and their stock-picking talents. It’s humbling to realize how often we misjudge and mispredict reality and then display “belief perseverance” when facing disconfirming information.

We fear things that claim lives in bunches. Smoking kills 400,000 Americans a year, and carbon dioxide looks to be the biggest weapon of mass destruction, but terrorists frighten us more. We are told, but are unmoved by, statistics showing that the most dangerous part of air travel is the drive to the airport.

Intuition — automatic, effortless, unreasoned thinking — guides our lives. But intuition also errs, and false intuitions may go before a fall.

After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush felt that he had him sized up. “I looked the man in the eye,” Bush said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” But the president has since expressed frustration at Putin’s democracy-suffocating record. Bush also told Bob Woodward that intuition was a key to his decision to launch the Iraq war: “I’m a gut player. I rely on my instincts.” Bush still insists that he made the right decision, but most Americans now disagree.

The president, like all of us, should check his intuitions against the facts. He can welcome the creative whispers of the unseen mind, but only as the beginning of inquiry. Smart thinking often begins with hunches but continues as one examines assumptions, evaluates evidence, invites critique and tests conclusions. As Proverbs says: “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.”

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance during the attack by a man, who was then tackled to the ground.

Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar has been attacked by a man while hosting a town hall meeting in Minneapolis.

Omar was sprayed with an unknown substance by the man before he was tackled to the ground on Tuesday.

The Reuters news agency said that Omar was not injured in the attack, and authorities have not said what substance was sprayed or whether charges have been filed against the assailant.

The audience cheered as the man was pinned down and his arms were tied behind his back. In a video clip of the incident, someone in the crowd can be heard saying, “Oh my god, he sprayed something on her”, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Omar continued the town hall after the man was ushered out of the room.

Just before the attack, she had called for the abolishment of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign.

“ICE cannot be reformed,” Omar said.

Minneapolis police did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident and whether anyone was arrested.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow soon…

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to approve a law aimed at boosting transparency at the Charter Reform Commission, by requiring that members of that panel disclose any private talks they have with the city’s elected officials.

The vote comes about two months before the commission, which began its work in July, is scheduled to finish its deliberations and deliver a list of recommendations to the council.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who proposed the ordinance, said she has been trying since August to pass a measure requiring the disclosure of such private conversations, known as “ex parte” communications. That effort was greeted with “nearly six months of stonewalling,” she said.

“While this is an important victory for oversight and transparency, government accountability shouldn’t be this hard to secure,” she said.

The ordinance, which also applies to communications between commissioners and elected officials’ staff, is expected to go into effect in about a month. Meanwhile, the 13-member Charter Reform Commission approved its own policy a week ago requiring the disclosure of private conversations between its members and city elected officials.

Some government watchdogs say the disclosures are needed to prevent council members and other city elected officials from seeking to dictate the details of the recommendations that are ultimately issued by the commission. The volunteer citizens panel is currently looking at such ideas as increasing the size of the council and potentially changing the duties of citywide elected officials.

“If the public is going to trust the outcomes of our charter reform process, it has to be transparent and credible,” Commissioner Carla Fuentes, who pushed for the new disclosure policy at its Jan. 21 meeting.

The commission has not yet voted on a proposal to also require disclosure of communications with elected officials’ staff.

It is also looking at the idea of adopting ranked choice voting, where voters list all of the candidates in order of preference, and switching the city to a multi-year budget process.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield raised warnings about the council’s vote on Tuesday, saying charter reform is substantively different from the 2021 redistricting process. Council members should be engaging in conversations with its volunteer commissioners, to help them better understand how the city is run, Blumenfield said.

Those communications will ensure the commissioners make an informed decision what to recommend for the ballot later this year.

“I don’t want this message to be that it’s somehow bad for council members and mayor and elected officials to be engaging in this process,” he said. “To the contrary, I think we need to double down our engagement. We need to speak to those commissioners. They need to learn a lot more about how this city really works for this thing to be effective.”

The commission is scheduled to take up the motion to disclose staffer conversations at its next meeting on Feb. 7.

Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2021, when members of the citizens commission on redistricting were regularly contacted by council members’ aides. Those ex parte communications were not disclosed, he said.

“If it didn’t apply to staff, we would simply be reinforcing the power of the staff, which have from day one been the most problematic aspect of this commission,” said Quan, whose group focuses on government oversight.

He and a group of other transparency activists have proposed a total ban on ex parte communication, which hasn’t been considered by the current commission.

Before arriving at CBS News in October to become editor in chief, Bari Weiss had never been inside a television control room.

But on Tuesday, she presented her plan for taking the storied news division forward after a series of moves that has damaged its standing among viewers, failed to improve ratings, lowered internal morale and generated highly negative press coverage.

Weiss, addressing the staff gathered at the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, reached out to those who have not been impressed with what they have seen so far. “I’m not going to stand up here today and ask for your trust,” she said, according to a transcript provided by CBS News. “I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.”

The statement was an acknowledgment that the early days of Weiss’ tenure have not been smooth. Weiss has dealt with her own lack of familiarity with TV news procedures, the entrenched culture of a legacy media institution and suspicion that partisan politics are driving changes. The town hall-style meeting was an attempt at a reset.

Weiss fought the claims that her mandate at CBS News is to provide friendlier coverage to the Trump administration as parent company Paramount pursues an acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. She said she has never discussed CBS News coverage of the White House with Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison, to whom she reports.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison attends the premiere of “Ghosted” at AMC Lincoln Square in New York in April 2023.

(Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

“I’m here to do one thing,” Weiss said. “It’s not to be a mouthpiece for anybody. It’s simply to be a mouthpiece for fairness and the pursuit of truth.”

She told employees her business goal for CBS News is to expand its reach on digital platforms.

“We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are, so they are leaving us,” she said, adding that the network’s strategy until now has been “to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.”

Weiss said she wants to focus on expanding the most successful CBS News programs — “60 Minutes,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and true crime magazine “48 Hours” to other platforms, including podcasts, newsletters and live events. “We need to shift to a streaming mentality immediately,” she said, adding that “our competitors are not just the other broadcast networks.

The pronouncement — which could have been made five to 10 years ago — was welcomed by some CBS News employees who believe the operation has lagged in using its resources to expand beyond traditional TV. Overall, they were encouraged by Weiss’ remarks.

“She went a good way to bring people together,” said one attendee. “That was a good start.”

One question posed to Weiss, which is likely to loom over her tenure, is how much time does CBS News have to replace the substantial revenue still generated by traditional TV with digital enterprises. Ad rates for digital platforms are substantially lower than those for TV, which means greater dependence on subscriptions and other revenue sources.

Weiss did not provide any specifics on the level of investment for the new initiatives. “The emphasis going forward is going to be building things that people are ultimately willing to pay for,” she said.

Weiss said the network is recruiting “fresh young talent” that will focus on reporting first through social media, “but will appear everywhere else too.” She showed three recent hires based in London, Kyiv and New York who deliver their stories across different platforms using their iPhones.

Weiss also announced the hiring of 19 new contributors, several of whom have already appeared on the Free Press, the digital news site that CBS News parent Paramount acquired as part of the deal to bring her into the company.

The dependence on contributors, who are not employees but paid for their TV appearances, is commonly used on cable news networks that need to fill hours of programming.

Weiss has acknowledged to colleagues that she’s not familiar with the process of moving the assembly line of stories from the assignment stage, through the reporting and editing process and onto a schedule of programs, some of which run 365 days a year.

Her lack of experience was glaring in her handling of “60 Minutes,” the network’s most prestigious and profitable program. CBS News staffers were stunned when she decided to pull a segment on the abuses at an El Salvador prison used by the U.S. government to detain undocumented immigrants from Venezuela.

“CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil and the network’s chief national correspondent Matt Gutman.

(CBS News)

The story had been researched and reported for months by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and fully vetted by the standards department when Weiss yanked it one day before its originally scheduled Dec. 21 air date. Alfonsi called the move political and the conflict added to the narrative that Weiss is trying to placate the White House.

Weiss insisted Alfonsi’s story needed more reporting including an interview with an administration official, even though the White House had already declined requests to participate. The segment ran a month later with only minor additions to the reporting which executives inside the news division say was not worth the public drama created by Weiss’ editorial decision.

At the meeting, Weiss acknowledged she would have approached the matter differently but defended her intent.

“It’s always gonna be my prerogative as editor of this newsroom to say that I want more information, and to push to get more information,” she said. “Now, am I ever going to hold something again after it has been put out there with promos? I don’t want to make that exact same decision again, no I do not.”

Weiss added that Paramount management had no influence on her decision to hold Alfonsi’s story. “I wanna just say this as plainly and clearly as possible,” she said. “I was not pressured by David Ellison or anyone else.”

She said the journalism standards at the network have not changed since she arrived, but believed the division has been more welcoming to a wider range of viewpoints.

“I don’t think a year ago CBS News would’ve had [former National Rifle Assn. spokesperson] Dana Loesch, let’s say, on the morning show,” Weiss said. “I think that’s something to be proud of.”

Weiss praised the revamped “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” — with a new anchor she handpicked, even though critics have been harsh and the ratings have slipped. All three of the major network evening newscasts are down in January compared to a year ago, but CBS is off the most at around 20%.

Segments on the program, such as Dokoupil’s frothy tribute to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a brief item on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington that had President Trump calling it the fault of the Capitol police, were widely panned. But the attention has died down as the program has settled into being a straight-ahead newscast.

While the fiascoes involving “60 Minutes” or the first week of the “CBS Evening News” have been demoralizing, some journalists in the division are still hopeful Weiss can be a catalyst for change and want her to succeed.

But her rocky start will be tough to turn around according to Tom Bettag, a former network news producer who is now a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

“Weiss started off so miserably with ’60 Minutes’ and the Dokoupil launch, that you wonder if she can redeem herself,” Bettag said. “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Weiss isn’t the first executive to be put in charge of a TV news operation without any hands-on experience. It was not easy for the others, either.

Michael Gartner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor was appointed to oversee NBC News in the mid-1980s. During his turbulent five-year tenure, he struggled with talent egos as he tried to get costs under control. Walter Isaacson came from Time magazine to run CNN in 2001. He was gone after 18 months, expressing bewilderment over the public scrutiny of every network move.

Weiss’ previous management experience was running the Free Press, which has a staff of 60 compared to the sprawling CBS News operation with more than 1,200 employees around the world.

Weiss is also an anomaly as she comes to the job with an established point of view. Her journalism career was as an opinion writer before she launched the Free Press. The site gained a following for its criticism of the progressive left and purveyors of so-called “woke” policies.

Weiss has been vocal in telling CBS News employees that the public has less trust in legacy media, an assertion that is often pushed by Trump and his supporters. (She told the meeting that the network needs to target “independents … those who want to equip themselves with all the facts, who are curious to hear what’s going on, even if it offends their sensibilities.”)

Weiss carries that agenda while she tries to overcome the whispers of “she’s not one of us” at CBS News, which even loyal insiders believe leans too heavily on its storied history defined by 20th century journalism icons such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

“I think this place has allowed the ghosts of the past to walk these halls a little too much,” one CBS News journalist said. “They need to be acknowledged, but not obsessed over every day. The New York Yankees don’t sit around dwelling on Babe Ruth every day. They focus on winning.”

While “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News” are the editorial backbone of the division and are getting the bulk of Weiss’ attention, the division also has to chart a future course for “CBS Mornings,” a major revenue generator. Co-host Gayle King’s contract is up in May and last year there were leaks to an industry trade suggesting that Paramount wants her to return in another role and presumably a lower salary.

“CBS Mornings” is in third place behind ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today,” but still has a following and King is the most recognizable star in the news division. Morning show viewing is habitual and a change in the host chair could lead King’s fans to abandon the program. Once viewers leave, it’s hard to get them back, especially in today’s fragmented media environment where consumers have a seemingly endless array of alternatives.

At the town hall, Weiss gave a positive shout-out to King, who is angry over the press reports. “I’ve had people come and pet me like a puppy and say, ‘I’m sorry that you’re leaving CBS, I won’t watch those guys anymore,’” King said.

“I just want everyone here to know that she’s absolutely beloved,” Weiss said. “And we see her long into the future here at CBS.”

People close to the morning program who were not authorized to comment publicly believe King would return for another contract. But the network is already preparing for the future if King does depart.

Adriana Diaz and Kelly O’Grady were named co-hosts of “CBS Saturday Morning” and will be the principal fill-ins for King on the weekday program, clearly an attempt to get them familiar with the audience. “It’s a very explicit attempt to start building a bench,” said one insider.

Before the town hall meeting on Tuesday, many CBS News veterans were frustrated that Weiss had not addressed the entire division during the first three months of her tenure. King, who told colleagues she was impressed overall with the presentation, told Weiss they needed to meet sooner.

“For many people — they’ve never even heard your freakin’ voice,” King said. “So it’s good to hear, to see you’re a real person and this is what you want.”

Rwanda began the inter-state arbitration proceedings under the asylum partnership agreement in November.

Rwanda has taken legal action against the United Kingdom’s refusal to disburse payments under a now-scrapped, controversial agreement for Kigali to receive deported asylum seekers, according to a Rwandan official and UK media reports.

Rwanda launched arbitral proceedings against the UK through the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration on Tuesday. It is seeking 50 million pounds ($68.8m) in compensation after the UK failed to formally terminate the controversial agreement about two years ago, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

“Rwanda regrets that it has been necessary to pursue these claims in arbitration, but faced with the United Kingdom’s intransigence on these issues, it has been left with no other choice,” Michael Butera, chief technical adviser to the minister of justice, told the AFP news agency.

Butera added that Kigali had sought diplomatic engagement before resorting to legal action.

The programme to remove to East Africa some people who had arrived in the UK via small boats was agreed upon in a treaty between London and Kilgali. It was intended as a deterrent for those wanting to come to the UK in the same manner.

However, just four volunteers ultimately arrived in Rwanda.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped the deal – brokered by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in 2022 – when he took office in July 2024, declaring it “dead and buried”.

London had already paid Kigali 240 million pounds ($330.9m) before the agreement was abandoned, with a further 50 million pounds ($68.9m) due in April.

Starmer’s official spokesman told reporters on Tuesday, “We will robustly defend our position to protect British taxpayers.”

Last year, the UK suspended most financial aid to Rwanda for backing the M23 group’s offensive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kigali labelled the move “punitive”.

The agreement faced a string of legal challenges, culminating in a November 2023 ruling by the UK Supreme Court that it was illegal under international law.

Rwanda began the interstate arbitration proceedings under the asylum partnership agreement in November, according to the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s website, which lists the case status as pending.

Immigration has been an increasingly central political issue since the UK left the European Union in 2020, largely on a promise to “take back control” of the country’s borders.

Some 37,000 asylum seekers, including people fleeing Syria and Afghanistan, crossed the English Channel in 2024, and more than 40,000 in 2025 – the highest number since 2022, when nearly 46,000 people crossed. Dozens have died attempting the journey.

The UK government says it has removed 50,000 undocumented people living in the country.

In September, the UK and France implemented a “one-in-one-out” migrant deal aimed at returning asylum seekers to France while accepting those with UK family ties. However, the policy has faced criticism regarding its effectiveness. NGOs and charity groups have also described the scheme as a “cruel” move designed to restrict asylum rights.

SACRAMENTO — Amid a national uproar over the recent killing of a Minnesota man by immigration agents, the California Senate on Tuesday approved proposed legislation that would make it easier to sue law enforcement officials suspected of violating an individual’s constitutional rights.

Senate Bill 747 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) creates a pathway for residents to take legal action against federal agents for the excessive use of force, unlawful home searches, interfering with a right to protest and other violations.

The bill, which cleared a Senate committee earlier this year, passed 30-10, along Democrat and Republican party lines.

Other states, including New York and Connecticut, are weighing similar legislation following widespread anger over the actions during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns and raids.

Existing laws already allow lawsuits against state and local law enforcement officials. But it is much harder to bring claims against a federal officers. Wiener said his bill would rectify those impediments.

Several state law enforcement agencies oppose the legislation, arguing it will also be used to sue local officers.

Tuesday’s vote follows the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday by federal officials, who tackled him to the ground, appeared to remove his holstered handgun and then shot Pretti several times in the back. During the debate on the state Senate floor Tuesday, several Democratic lawmakers called Pretti’s death an execution or murder.

Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, was also shot and killed by agents earlier this month in Minnesota in what federal officials have alleged was an act of self defense when she drove her vehicle toward an officer — an assertion under dispute.

The deaths, as well as the government’s insistence that immigration agents don’t require judicial warrants to enter homes, have outraged Democrats leaders, who accuse federal officers of flouting laws as they seek to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants.

Wiener, speaking to reporters before Tuesday’s vote, said that his legislation would reform the law to ensure that federal officials are held accountable for wrongdoing.

“Under current law, if a local or state officer shoots your mom…or publicly executes an ICU nurse, you can sue,” said Wiener. “That’s longstanding civil rights law, but in the current law, it’s almost impossible to file that same lawsuit against the federal agent who does the exact same thing.”

During Tuesday’s debate on the senate floor, Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach) acknowledged the “chaos” in Minnesota, but criticized the bill as being about immigration politics. He urged his colleagues to focus on the state’s affordability crisis, rather than challenges to the federal government.

“We need to start focusing on California-specific issues like gas, gas prices,” said Strickland.

Strickland’s comments drew a rebuke from Sen. Susan Rubio, (D-West Covina) who said the bill wasn’t about immigration, but “about the egregious violation of people’s rights. and the murders that we are witnessing.”

“This is about equal justice under the law,” said Rubio, a one-time undocumented citizen.

Wiener’s bill now heads to the state Assembly. The senator, who is running to fill the seat by outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, told reporters that he didn’t know if Gov. Gavin Newsom supports his legislation or if he would sign it into law if it passes the full Legislature.

Wiener’s proposed law was put forth after George Retes Jr, a California security guard was detained following a July raid in Camarillo. Retes, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran, said he was held for three days without the ability to make a phone call or see an attorney.

Retes has accused Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin of spreading false information about him to justify his detention. The Homeland Security department said in a statement last year that Retes impeded its operation, which he denies.

Under U.S. Code Section 1983, a person can sue state and local officials who violate their constitutional rights. A state law also allows lawsuits against state and local officials for interfering with a person’s constitutional rights by force or threat.

When it comes to filing legal action against federal officials, lawsuits can be brought through the Bivens doctrine, which refers to the 1971 Supreme Court ruling in Bivens vs. Six Unknown Federal Agents that established that federal officials can be sued for monetary damages for constitutional violations.

But in recent decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly restricted the ability to sue under Bivens. Some Supreme Court justices have also argued that it’s up to Congress to pass a statute that would allow federal officers to be sued when they violate the Constitution.

Those opposed to Wiener’s law include the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which represents more than 85,000 public safety members. The group argues it would result in more lawsuits against local and state officials, essentially creating multiple paths for litigation.

Al-Maliki has been nominated by the largest Shia bloc in parliament as its candidate for PM.

President Donald Trump has threatened that the United States will end support for Iraq if Nouri al-Maliki, a former prime minister with ties to the US’s longstanding foe Iran, is reinstated to the post.

Trump, in his latest intervention in another country’s politics, said on Tuesday that Iraq would be making a “very bad choice” with al-Maliki, who just days previously was nominated by the Coordination Framework, the largest Shia bloc in parliament, as its candidate.

“Last time Maliki was in power, the Country descended into poverty and total chaos. That should not be allowed to happen again,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq,” he said.

“If we are not there to help, Iraq has ZERO chance of Success, Prosperity, or Freedom. MAKE IRAQ GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump’s comments are the starkest example yet of the Republican president’s campaign to curb Iran-linked groups’ influence in Iraq, which has long walked a tightrope between its two closest allies, Washington and Tehran.

In a letter, US representatives said that while the selection of the prime minister is an Iraqi decision, “the United States will make its own sovereign decisions regarding the next government in line with American interests”.

As part of Trump’s pressure campaign, Washington has also threatened senior Iraqi politicians with sanctions on the country should armed groups backed by Iran be included in the next government, the Reuters news agency reported last week.

Al-Maliki, 75, is a senior figure in the Shia Islamist Dawa Party. His tenure as prime minister from 2006 to 2014 was a period marked by a power struggle with Sunni and Kurdish rivals and growing tensions with the US.

He stepped down after ISIL (ISIS) seized large parts of the country in 2014, but has remained an influential political player, leading the State of Law coalition and maintaining close ties with Iran-backed factions.

The US wields key leverage over Iraq, as the country’s oil export revenue is largely held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York in an arrangement reached after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON — Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a Trump administration boat strike last October sued the federal government on Tuesday, calling the attack a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign.”

The lawsuit is thought to be the first wrongful death case arising from the three dozen strikes that the administration has launched since September on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The complaint will test the legal justification of the Trump administration attacks; government officials have defended them as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States but many legal experts say they amount to a brazen violation of the laws of armed conflict.

The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no military conflict between the United States and drug cartels that under the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.

“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command,” the lawsuit says.

The Defense Department said in an email that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Chad Joseph and the sister of Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who were among six people killed in an October 14 missile strike on a boat traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The men were not members of any drug cartel, the lawsuit says, but had instead been fishing in the waters off the Venezuelan coast and were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago.

The two had caught a ride home to Las Cuervas, a fishing community where they were from, on a small boat targeted in a strike announced on Truth Social by President Trump. All six people aboard the boat were killed.

“These killings were wrongful because they took place outside of armed conflict and in circumstances in which Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, and where there were means other than lethal force that could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any such threat,” the lawsuit says.

The death toll from the boat strikes is now up to at least 126 people, with the inclusion of those presumed dead after being lost at sea, the U.S. military confirmed Monday. The figure includes 116 people who were killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September, with 10 others believed dead because searchers did not locate them following a strike.

The lawsuit is the first to challenge the legality of the boat strikes in court, according to Jen Nessel, a spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of the families, along with the ACLU and others.

Nessel said in an email that the center also has a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the release of the legal justification for the strikes.

Tucker and Finley write for the Associated Press.

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as being responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ 2nd Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

Videos contradict early statements from administration

That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border advisor Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed too and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon, which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”

On Tuesday, Trump was asked whether he agreed with Miller’s comment describing Pretti as an “assassin” and answered “no.” But he added that protesters “can’t have guns” and said he wants the death investigated.

“You can’t walk in with guns, you just can’t,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before departing for a trip to Iowa.

Swift reactions from gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Assn., which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.

“I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN.

Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the 1st and 2nd amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.

Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for a “full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting.”

A different response from the past

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counterprotester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring a third in Kenosha, Wis., during the post-Floyd protests.

“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. “Alex Pretti’s firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it.”

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout “shows how tribal we’ve become.” Republicans spent years talking about the 2nd Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.

“The moment someone who’s thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance,” Winkler said.

Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti’s death.

Uncertain effects in an election year

The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.

Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were hesitant Monday to talk about the issue at all.

The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOP’s most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee in the fall. Asked Monday whether Pretti’s death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not offer any update on the bill’s prospects.

Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, including rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches and expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.

William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements after the Pretti shooting. Trump’s vacillating, he said, is “very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.”

Barrow and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. AP writers Josh Boak in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz met with President Donald Trump‘s border czar Tuesday to discuss the situation on the ground as immigration enforcement personnel operate in the state.

“Governor Walz met with Tom Homan this morning and reiterated Minnesota’s priorities: impartial investigations into the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, a swift, significant reduction in the number of federal forces in Minnesota, and an end to the campaign of retribution against Minnesota,” the governor’s office said in a statement to the media.

The two agreed to continue talks on the matter.

“The Governor and Homan agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals, which the President also agreed to yesterday. The Governor tasked the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as the primary liaison to Homan to ensure these goals are met.”

Homan was sent to the state by Trump after he recalled Immigrations and Customs Enforcement commander Greg Bovino. Trump said that Homan will manage ICE operations in the state and will report directly to him.

“He has not been involved in that area but knows and likes many of the people there,” Trump said of Homan on Monday. “Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me.”

Since ICE began Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in December, two people in the state were killed by federal immigration agents, causing a swell of protests throughout the state. Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were both shot by agents. Good was driving away, and Pretty was filming an agent with his cell phone.

Walz said he had a “productive call” with Trump on Monday.

“The President agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and to talk to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, as would ordinarily be the case,” Walz posted on X.

The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.

But an edited — and realistic — image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s account posted the original image from Levy Armstrong’s arrest before the official White House account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis

However, the White House’s use of artificial intelligence has troubled misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or AI-edited images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust.

In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White House officials doubled down on the post, with Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the “memes will continue.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking the criticism.

David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University, says calling the altered image a meme “certainly seems like an attempt to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated media.” He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems “much more ambiguous” than the cartoonish images the administration has shared in the past.

Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders. AI-enhanced or AI-edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House uses to engage the segment of Trump’s base that spends a lot of time online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm.

“People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it as a meme,” he said. “Your grandparents may see it and not understand the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or grandkids about it.”

All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral, said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White House’s social media team.

The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they are shared by credible sources, “crystallizes an idea of what’s happening, instead of showing what is actually happening,” said Michael A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media literacy researcher.

“The government should be a place where you can trust the information, where you can say it’s accurate, because they have a responsibility to do so,” he said. “By sharing this kind of content, and creating this kind of content … it is eroding the trust — even though I’m always kind of skeptical of the term trust — but the trust we should have in our federal government to give us accurate, verified information. It’s a real loss, and it really worries me a lot.”

Spikes said he already sees the “institutional crises” around distrust in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from official channels inflames those issues.

Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the “Utopias” podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for “trustable information.” “AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence,” he said.

Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, such as policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to “algorithmically privilege” extreme and conspiratorial content — which AI generation tools can create with ease — “we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.”

An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, protests and interactions with citizens has already been proliferating on social media. After Good was shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.

Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are likely coming from accounts that are “engagement farming,” or looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular keywords and search terms such as ICE. But he also said the videos are getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be watching them as “fan fiction,” or engaging in “wishful thinking,” hoping that they’re seeing real pushback against the organizations and their officers.

Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers can’t tell if what they’re watching is fake, and questions whether they would know “what’s real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes are a lot higher.”

Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the “best-case scenario” would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying enough attention to register the use of AI.

This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will only become more commonplace.

Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a solution. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has developed such a system, but Carrasco doesn’t think that will become extensively adopted for at least another year.

“It’s going to be an issue forever now,” he said. I don’t think people understand how bad this is.”

Huamani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.

DES MOINES, Iowa — President Trump is headed to Iowa on Tuesday as part of the White House’s midterm year pivot toward affordability, even as his administration remains mired in the fallout in Minneapolis over a second fatal shooting by federal immigration officers this month.

While in Iowa, the Republican president will make a stop at a local business and then deliver a speech on affordability, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The remarks will be at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.

The trip is expected to also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said last week. It’s part of the White House’s strategy to have Trump travel out of Washington once a week ahead of the midterm elections to focus on affordability issues facing everyday Americans — an effort that keeps getting diverted by crisis.

The latest comes as the Trump administration is grappling with the weekend shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse killed by federal agents in the neighboring state of Minnesota. Pretti had participated in protests following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Even as some top administration officials moved quickly to malign Pretti, the White House said Monday that Trump was waiting until an investigation into the shooting was complete.

Trump calls Pretti killing ‘sad situation’

As Trump left the White House on Tuesday to head to Iowa, he was repeatedly questioned by reporters about Pretti’s killing. Trump disputed language used by his own deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who on social media described Pretti as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President JD Vance shared the post.

Trump, when asked Tuesday if he believed Pretti was an assassin, said, “No.”

When asked if he thought Pretti’s killing was justified, Trump called it “a very sad situation” and said a “big investigation” was underway.

“I’m going to be watching over it, and I want a very honorable and honest investigation. I have to see it myself,” he said.

He also said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was quick to cast Pretti as a violent instigator, would not be resigning.

Republicans want to switch the subject to affordability

Trump was last in Iowa ahead of the July 4 holiday to kick off the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary, which morphed largely into a celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after Congress had approved it.

Republicans are hoping that Trump’s visit to the state on Tuesday draws focus back to that tax bill, which will be a key part of their pitch as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.

“I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress we’ve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement in advance of his trip. “Now we’ve got to keep that momentum going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowa’s energy producers, and bring down costs for working families.”

Trump’s affordability tour has taken him to Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as the White House tries to marshal the president’s political power to appeal to voters in key swing states.

But Trump’s penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus off cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to combat it. In Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the term affordability as a “hoax” to hurt him. At that event, Trump also griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.

Competitive races in Iowa

Although it was a swing state just a little more than a decade ago, Iowa in recent years has been reliably Republican in national and statewide elections. Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024 against Democrat Kamala Harris.

Still, two of Iowa’s four congressional districts have been among the most competitive in the country and are expected to be again in this year’s midterm elections. Trump already has endorsed Republican Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who landed three of Iowa’s four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term, see a prime opportunity to unseat Iowa incumbents.

This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids. The political shake-ups have rippled throughout the state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seeking new offices for governor and for U.S. senator, respectively.

Democrats hope Rob Sand, the lone Democrat in statewide office who is running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13 million in cash on hand.

Kim and Fingerhut write for the Associated Press. Kim reported from Washington. AP writer Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has reiterated comments made over the weekend that her country “does not take orders from any external actor,” saying the government answers only to the Venezuelan people.

Her remarks Monday followed recent statements by U.S. officials about Venezuela’s political and economic direction after the Jan. 3 U.S. military operation that captured former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Rodríguez spoke during a public consultation on a partial reform of Venezuela’s Organic Hydrocarbons Law, according to local newspaper Últimas Noticias. She was responding to comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who suggested Washington could influence decisions by the Venezuelan executive branch and the timing of possible elections.

“The U.S. Treasury secretary has made statements that are inappropriate and offensive, and I have to respond to them,” Rodríguez said. “The people of Venezuela do not accept orders from any external actor. The people of Venezuela have a government and that government obeys the people.”

Her comments came shortly after Bessent said leaders of Venezuela’s executive branch would follow orders from President Donald Trump‘s administration.

“We have left members of the [Venezuelan] government in their positions and they will take charge of administering the country,” he said in an interview with the YouTube channel Derecha Diario TV. Bessent also suggested that other leaders could be placed “under custody,” without naming names, “for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”

Bessent added that “Everyone says, ‘What if Venezuelan leaders return to their old habits?’ I think when they see the videos of the president being expelled from Caracas and in a cell in New York, they will follow U.S. orders.”

On Sunday, Rodriguez delivered a similar message during a meeting with oil workers in the eastern state of Anzoátegui, where she openly criticized foreign interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

“Enough of Washington giving orders to politicians in Venezuela. Let Venezuelan politics resolve our differences and internal conflicts,” she said, according to footage broadcast by state television network Venezolana de Televisión.

In her latest remarks, Rodríguez said Venezuela does not rule out relations with the United States as long as they are based on mutual respect.

“We are not afraid of respectful relations with the United States, but they must respect international law, Venezuela’s dignity and its history,” she said.

At an event Monday with business leaders and officials from the energy sector, Rodríguez also outlined the government’s projections for the oil industry — the country’s main source of revenue.

She said the government expects a 55% increase in oil investment by 2026 as part of a strategy to revive crude production, according to financial outlet Ámbito Financiero.

Investment in the sector totaled nearly $900 million last year and is projected to reach $1.4 billion in 2026. The plan is supported by a legal reform that has already passed a first reading in parliament.

The initiative seeks to loosen regulatory conditions and expand participation by domestic and foreign private companies. A central pillar of the reform using productive participation contracts, enabled under the so-called Anti-Blockade Law, which the executive branch describes as a successful model.

Rodríguez said these contracts have helped attract capital and boost production despite international sanctions, adding that 29 such agreements are in place.

“We have to move from being the country with the largest reserves on the planet to being a giant producer,” she said, defending a framework that keeps state ownership of resources while incorporating new management models.

During the hydrocarbons law consultation, Chevron Venezuela President Mariano Vela highlighted the company’s long-standing presence in the country, noting that Chevron has been a key partner in Venezuela’s oil industry for more than 100 years.

He thanked Chevron’s Venezuelan workers, joint venture employees and state oil company PDVSA for their long-term commitment to building “an even brighter future for the Venezuelan people.”

“We are prepared to continue contributing our operational expertise with technological innovation, hard work and the goal of creating a more competitive oil and gas sector,” Vela said.

President Donald Trump has announced an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without dealing with “unnecessary, dupicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements.

The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, claimed that local governments have failed to adequately process permits and were slowing down residents who are desperate to rebuild in the Palisades and Altadena.

“American families and small businesses affected by the wildfires have been forced to continue living in a nightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise as they remain displaced from their homes, often without a source of income, while state and local governments delay or prevent reconstruction by approving only a fraction of the permits needed to rebuild,” Trump wrote in the executive order, which he signed Friday.

The order called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “preempt” state and local permitting authorities.

Instead of going through the usual approval process, residents using federal emergency funds to rebuild would need to self-certify to federal authorities that they have complied with local health and safety standards.

The order comes as the city and county approach 3,000 permits issued for rebuilding. A December review by The Times found that the permitting process in Altadena and Pacific Palisades was moving at a moderate rate compared to other major fires in California. As of Dec. 14, the county had issued rebuilding permits for about 16% of the homes destroyed in the Eaton fire and the city had issued just under 14% for those destroyed in the Palisades fire.

While Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately provide comment, the executive order drew intense pushback from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

A spokesperson for Newsom, Tara Gallegos, called Trump a “clueless idiot” for believing the federal government could issue local rebuilding permits.

“With 1625+ home permits issued, hundreds of homes under construction, and permitting timelines at least 2x faster than before the fires, an executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, citing the number of permits issued solely by the city of Los Angeles.

Newsom said that the federal government needed to release funding, not take over control of the permitting process. The governor said that what communities really lack is money, not permits.

“Please actually help us. We are begging you,” Newsom wrote.

Instead of descending into the permitting process, Newsom called on the president to send a recovery package to congress to help families rebuild, citing a letter from a bipartisan delegation of California legislators that called for federal funding.

“As the recovery process continues, additional federal support is needed, and our entire delegation looks forward to working cooperatively with your administration to ensure the communities of Southern California receive their fair share of federal disaster assistance,” wrote the California legislators on Jan 7.

Some in the Palisades agreed that money was a bigger issue than permitting.

“When I talk to people it seems to have more to do with their insurance payout or whether they have enough money to complete construction,” said Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition.

Zar called the executive order “interesting” and said that it was fair of the president to call the recovery pace slow and unacceptable.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that oil shipments to Cuba have been suspended, reflecting a decision made by Petróleos Mexicanos within the framework of its contractual relationship with the island.

During her morning news conference at the National Palace, Sheinbaum was asked about press reports indicating that Pemex had canceled a crude shipment bound for Cuba scheduled for January.

The president did not deny the suspension, but stressed that it is up to the state-owned company to decide when and how shipments are carried out.

“It is a sovereign decision, and it is made at the time deemed necessary,” she said when questioned about the published information.

Sheinbaum said decisions related to energy supplies to Cuba are part of Pemex’s operational and contractual assessments. She emphasized that Mexico’s policy toward the island is neither new nor exclusive to her administration.

She noted that previous governments maintained different types of energy ties with Cuba, even amid political disagreements.

“From the first blockade of Cuba, Mexico was the only country that voted against it, and since then it has maintained communication and different types of relations with the island,” she said.

The president also framed the bilateral relationship within a historical tradition of Mexican foreign policy, which has maintained ties with Cuba since the early years of the economic embargo imposed by the United States.

“Beyond positions toward whichever Cuban government is in power, the relationship is with the peoples, and that is a fundamental principle of Mexican foreign policy,” Sheinbaum said.

In that context, Sheinbaum said the economic blockade has generated supply problems on the island and that Mexico has maintained a policy of solidarity with the Cuban people over time.

She added that any future decision on resuming shipments will be communicated in a timely manner by the relevant authorities.

Asked whether Mexico could play an intermediary role between Cuba and the United States in the event of bilateral tensions, the president said such initiatives can only move forward if both parties request them, and reiterated that Mexico will continue to promote dialogue and the peaceful resolution of international differences.

Mexico consolidated its position in 2025 as Cuba’s main oil supplier, covering approximately 44% of the island’s crude imports and displacing Venezuela, with an average of more than 12,000 barrels per day.

With Venezuela’s exit as a key supplier following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3 by U.S. military forces, Mexico assumed a central role in supplying the island’s energy needs.

As a result, in Cuba the decision by Mexico could have a significant impact on its already fragile energy situation, by reducing one of the external sources that had helped ease the island’s fuel deficit.

The measure could translate into increased blackouts, transportation restrictions and disruptions to key sectors such as industry and services, in a context marked by a shortage of foreign currency and difficulties accessing alternative suppliers on the international market due to the blockade that has affected the island for decades.

United States President Donald Trump’s $5bn lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase resurfaces his accusations of debanking – the act of removing a person or organisation’s access to financial services.

The complaint, filed in a Florida court on Thursday, alleges that the bank singled him out for political reasons and closed several of his accounts following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was perpetrated by his supporters.

“JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company. We regret having to do so, but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so,” the bank said in a statement.

While the lawsuit was filed in his personal capacity, the concept of debanking has long been in the crosshairs of the Trump White House.

Late last year, the White House launched a high-profile effort targeting the nation’s largest financial institutions, accusing them of closing accounts based on political bias. Within days, Trump signed an executive order restricting banks from denying accounts on those grounds.

Trump has long framed “debanking” as a systemic effort targeting conservatives. But evidence for this claim is limited.

A Reuters news agency review of more than 8,000 complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found only 35 related to political or religious reasons, let alone targeting Christians or conservatives specifically.

The push by banks centres on the use of “reputational risk” as a standard that allows them to weigh the social or political fallout of doing business with a client.

Critics say this practice makes banks arbiters of morality – freezing, withholding, or closing accounts based not on financial considerations but on social and geopolitical concerns. This approach has pulled financial institutions into the middle of cultural and geopolitical debates.

While often cast as a partisan issue, data show that Trump’s core base, evangelical Christians, are not the ones typically targeted by debanking efforts.

A report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), a research organisation that looks at the experience of the US Muslim community, found that 27 percent of Muslim Americans and 14 percent of Jewish Americans have faced trouble banking, compared with negligible rates among Christian denominations, especially with Trump’s core base, evangelicals, at 8 percent.

Overall, 93 percent of Muslim Americans reported experiencing trouble with banking access. In one situation involving Citibank, the New York Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused the financial institution of not opening the account of a Muslim woman because of her husband, whom she wanted to nominate as a beneficiary and who is a Palestinian Muslim. CAIR did not release the name of the woman at the centre of the complaint.

“It [debanking] is a huge barrier for actually Muslims fulfilling philanthropic goals,” Erum Ikramullah, a senior research project manager at the ISPU, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s a huge barrier for the actual Muslim-based, Muslim-led organisations who are managing relief both domestically and overseas.”

Between October 2023 and May 2024, at least 30 US nonprofits providing humanitarian aid to Gaza have had accounts closed.

“Muslim Americans and Armenian Americans have faced de-banking on account of their last names,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts who founded the CFPB in 2013, said in a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year.

But Trump continues to allege that groups like Christians and conservatives are the ones discriminated against.

Among them include the National Committee for Religious Freedom, led by former Republican Senator and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Brownback alleges that Chase closed his account on religious grounds, a claim the bank denies.

Regardless, the push to take on the problem of debanking is a rare spot of bipartisanship in Washington, with Trump and Warren both agreeing that banks should change their ways.

Industry turmoil

A US banking regulator said last month that the nine largest US banks put restrictions on industries that it deems risky, but this has been a long-term issue for several industries.

Operation Choke Point, under the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama, targeted exploitative industries like payday lenders and arms dealers. The initiative pushed banks to consider entire categories of businesses – and the individuals who worked in them – as reputationally risky, even when that view lagged cultural sentiment.

In response, Frank Keating, the then-CEO of the American Banking Association, slammed the move in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, saying that the “Justice Department [is] telling bankers to behave like policemen and judges”.

Ultimately, that scrutiny affected people working in several industries over the last decade, most particularly in adult entertainment, cannabis, and cryptocurrency.

Within months of the new guidance from the Obama administration, hundreds of adult performers lost access to banking services from Chase Bank. The ability to keep a bank account persisted for adult performers. In 2022, adult performer Alana Evans penned an op-ed for The Daily Beast describing how Wells Fargo closed her account.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, found that 63 percent of adult workers have lost access to a bank account because of their work in the legal industry, and nearly 50 percent have been rejected for a loan because of the nature of the profession.

“I think that when I talk to a lot of people about this issue, or when I’ve talked to even legislators about this, they really can’t believe it, because it’s never been anything that they’ve encountered personally. The idea that a bank could shut off your account because they disagreed with the type of work you do is sort of inconceivable to most people,” Mike Stabile, the director of public policy for the Free Speech Coalition, told Al Jazeera.

The cannabis business has faced similar problems. Over the last decade, both laws and public sentiment around marijuana use have drastically changed. Now, more people use marijuana daily than drink alcohol, and recreational use is legal in 24 states as well as Washington, DC.

Yet, legitimate businesses that cater to this growing market share and those who work for them have been subject to debanking.

Kyle Sherman, the CEO and founder of Flowhub, a cannabis payment processing company, testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee last year that his employees are routinely discriminated against in consumer banking. He alleged that one of his employees was denied a mortgage because of what he does for a living, as well as others who have had their personal accounts closed.

While state laws have shifted on marijuana’s stance, federal laws have not kept up, making it harder for banks to navigate the reputational risk.

Trump recently eased pressure on the marijuana industry by reclassifying the substance as Schedule III, which means it is less harmful, but it does not change the legality of sale and interstate commerce on the federal level.

“In some of the states that have recently gone legal with recreational and medical cannabis, the individual entrepreneurs [there] were previously considered outlaws. It is hard for a banker to get over the perception that yesterday, you were an illegal activity, and today, you’re a legal activity,” said Terry Mendez, the CEO of Safe Harbor Financial, a financial services company for the cannabis industry.

There has been a bigger about-face with regard to the cryptocurrency industry. At first, crypto was seen as a safe haven for illicit transactions because the underlying technology allowed for anonymous transfers, making it difficult for banks to determine which transactions were legitimate and legal and which ones were not.

As the industry began to move into the mainstream, the challenges were amplified. Exchanges and startups faced debanking or sudden account closures, and even major platforms like Coinbase struggled to maintain reliable banking partners.

“Historically, banks were kind of more naturally averse to crypto companies, going back to like 2018, to 2020, 2021. Crypto companies would often, when registering for accounts with banks, say that they were software development companies to try and avoid the mention of crypto because of fear of not being able to open a bank account, which, of course, then means it’s harder to make a payroll. It’s hard to take in funds from investors; you can’t pay vendors,” Sid Powell, the CEO of the asset management firm Maple Finance, told Al Jazeera.

That was not helped by the collapse of FTX, the notorious cryptocurrency exchange, pushing banks to pull back from working with the crypto industry.

Sentiment is shifting now. Under Trump, who has embraced crypto, financial regulators last year withdrew guidance that suggested that banks should be careful when working with the crypto industry. Powell says the executive order could help crypto avoid debanking in the future.

“It [the executive order] kind of signals to the FDIC and the OCC that they should act in a more balanced way when it comes to crypto companies and crypto startups, instead of taking a more hostile approach, or the approach of kind of lumping everyone in with the worst of the industry, which tended to happen post-FTX,” Powell added.

Powell was referring to the The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an independent agency created by Congress to maintain stability in the nation’s financial system, and The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks.

Trump’s personal gripes

Trump has also accused banks of not doing business with him, the primary driver of his interest in the debanking issue.

Banks can generally refuse to create accounts for potential customers who could be deemed as high risk.

“The president’s companies have filed [for] bankruptcy repeatedly. There have been years of reporting about financial institutions’ concerns with suspicious financial activity, and the president was found civilly liable for inflating the value of his assets that served as collateral for loans from financial institutions,” Graham Steele, an academic fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera.

Reuters reported last year that banks gauged Trump as a financial risk due to his plethora of legal challenges after his first term, including the suit brought by E Jean Caroll, which found Trump liable for sexual abuse. He has declared bankruptcy six times.

He also defaulted on loans totalling hundreds of millions of dollars several times, including a loan to Deutsche Bank. In 2024, a New York court ruled that the president fraudulently inflated his financial worth by more than $2bn.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the president is an inherently political figure, a financial institution could reasonably rely on any of these concerns, grounded in financial and legal risks, not ‘political’ beliefs, as a basis for declining to do business with a customer,” Steele said.

That did not stop the president from pointing fingers at banking giants, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

“I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that includes a place called Bank of America,” Trump told the executive during a Q&A session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year.

The Trump family also sued Capital One last March. The lawsuit alleged that it debanked The Trump Organisation after Trump incited an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after spreading misinformation alleging that he won the 2020 presidential election even though he had lost by a significant margin.

Trump debanks ‘liberal’ causes

Trump’s rhetoric on debanking is among his latest attempts to punish entities for political bias, while actively pushing actions that punish those who have viewpoints that oppose his own.

Trump has argued that debanking disproportionately targets conservatives and conservative-leaning businesses like firearms manufacturers. His pressure has moved the needle at Citibank. In June, it lifted its ban on banking services to gun sellers and manufacturers, a policy it put in place in 2018 after the shooting in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

In March, his administration announced it would shut down a set of climate grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – known as the “green bank” – a $20bn programme created through the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act signed by his predecessor, President Joe Biden, in 2022 to channel financing for climate projects into underinvested regions.

Environment and Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin justified the decision by citing “misconduct, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud”, allegations he offered without evidence, and forced Citibank, which was holding the fund’s money for nonprofit distribution, to return the funds to the EPA.

The decision faced legal hurdles. But earlier this month, a US court of appeals allowed the Trump administration to continue axing the programme. The 2-1 ruling was decided by two judges appointed by Trump.

Last year, the White House also pressured companies seeking federal contracts to abandon diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, which it has long portrayed, without evidence, as undermining merit-based hiring.

Citigroup, historically one of the most vocal supporters of DEI in the financial services sector, scrapped its programme. Citibank holds multiple federal contracts with agencies including the Department of Defense and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo followed suit in February, scaling back their initiatives as well, as did many other companies.

As part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, the White House has also pressured banks to cut financial services to immigrants. The administration is doing so by trying to cancel the social security numbers of migrants who have legal status in the US, which would essentially cut them off from access to basic financial services, including bank accounts and credit cards, The New York Times reported.

At the time, Leland Dudek, then the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner and a Trump administration appointee, said the move to cut access would end their “financial lives”.

“There’s a real telling disconnect. They are saying, on the one hand, we wanna put a thumb on the scale and ensure that conservative groups are included in the financial system, while actively working to push out liberal coded groups by either freezing them out of the bank accounts when they get government grants, or trying to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against the payment platform that serves liberal groups,” Steele said.

Steele questioned if taking on political bias would actually help communities that do not align with the Trump administration’s stated values and conservative viewpoints.

“I think one of the other concerns here is that a lot of this depends on how the executive order is going to be enforced,” Steele said.

MINNEAPOLIS — The chief federal judge in Minnesota says the Trump administration has failed to comply with orders to hold hearings for detained immigrants and ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear before him Friday to explain why he should not be held in contempt.

In an order dated Monday, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, must appear personally in court. Schiltz took the administration to task over its handling of bond hearings for immigrants it has detained.

“This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result,” the judge wrote.

The order comes a day after President Trump ordered border advisor Tom Homan to take over his administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota following the second death this month of a person at the hands of an immigration law enforcement officer.

Trump said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that he had “great calls” with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Monday, mirroring comments he made immediately after the calls.

The White House had tried to blame Democratic leaders for the protests of federal officers conducting immigration raids. But after the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday and videos suggesting he was not an active threat, the administration tapped Homan to take charge of the Minnesota operation from Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.

Schiltz’s order also follows a federal court hearing Monday on a request by the state and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul for a judge to order a halt to the immigration law enforcement surge. The judge said she would prioritize the ruling but did not give a timeline for a decision.

Schiltz wrote that he recognizes ordering the head of a federal agency to appear personally is extraordinary. “But the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed,” he said.

“Respondents have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, though, the violations continue.”

The Associated Press left messages Tuesday with ICE and a DHS Department of Homeland Security spokesperson seeking a response.

The order lists the petitioner by first name and last initials: Juan T.R. It says the court granted a petition on Jan. 14 to provide him with a bond hearing within seven days. On Jan. 23, his lawyers told the court the petitioner was still detained. Court documents show the petitioner is a citizen of Ecuador who came to the United States around 1999.

The order says Schiltz will cancel Lyons’ appearance if the petitioner is released from custody.

Catalini and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J.

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.