President Donald Trump officially filed a $10bn lawsuit against the BBC on Monday after airing its 2024 “Panorama” documentary that distorted his 6 January 2021 speech.
The lawsuit was filed in the southern district of Florida. It includes one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law, and the president is asking for $5bn in damages for each count.
Our US politics live coverage is coming to a close. We’ll be back on Tuesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021, requesting up to $10bn in damages. The US president alleged the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively” edited his 6 January speech before the insurrection, in an episode of Panorama just over a year ago. More here.
Celebrities and lawmakers from both of the US’s major political parties are condemning Donald Trump after the president blamed the death of Rob Reiner on what he described as the acclaimed Hollywood director’s dislike of him. After the apparent killings of Reiner, 78, and his 68-year-old wife, Michele, who were found dead at their home Sunday in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Trump took to social media to call the director “tortured and struggling”. Trump also claimed Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”. More here.
Donald Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” – classifying the synthetic opioid not only a lethal drug, but as a potential chemical weapon. The order also directs the Pentagon and justice department to take additional steps to combat production and distribution of the drug. The designation comes amid the administration’s use of escalating and increasingly militaristic tactics to combat drug smuggling. More here.
The United States has offered to provide Nato-style security guarantees for Kyiv as US and European negotiators report progress in talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but a deal on territorial concessions remained elusive. Envoys sent by Donald Trump made the unprecedented offer at talks on Monday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Berlin. US officials have warned that such a deal would not be on the table forever. European leaders stressed the outcome of the talks would affect their own countries’ security for decades to come, write Andrew Roth, Deborah Cole and Shaun Walker. More here.
Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, is once again facing criticism for rushing to social media to tout his agency’s work on tracking down a person of interest in a shooting prematurely. After a shooter killed two and injured nine at Brown University on Saturday, Patel, a lawyer and rightwing commentator before his job in the administration, posted on X that his agency had helped detain a “person of interest in a hotel room” in Coventry, Rhode Island, acting off a lead from the Providence police. More here.
The Pentagon announced this evening that the US military conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing eight men in the eastern Pacific.
A video posted on Twitter/X shows the strike by the US southern command, stating that at the direction of defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters.”
The statement continues: “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking. A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third.”
The United States has offered to provide Nato-style security guarantees for Kyiv as US and European negotiators report progress in talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but a deal on territorial concessions remained elusive.
Envoys sent by Donald Trump made the unprecedented offer at talks on Monday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Berlin.
US officials have warned that such a deal would not be on the table forever. European leaders stressed the outcome of the talks would affect their own countries’ security for decades to come, write Andrew Roth, Deborah Cole and Shaun Walker.
Zelenskyy said after the talks he would ask the US to hit Russia with sanctions and provide Ukraine with more arms, including long-range weapons, if Moscow rejected the proposals being discussed between Kyiv, Washington and European leaders.
“I think America will apply sanctions pressure and give us more weapons if he [Putin] rejects everything,” Zelenskyy told reporters. Kyiv supported the idea of a ceasefire, in particular for energy strikes, during the Christmas period, he added.
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Politico reports that new dates have been set for the depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, which were originally scheduled for this week on Capitol Hill as part of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Their appearances are now slated for 13 and 14 January, according to a letter sent to an attorney for the Clintons from the House oversight and government reform committee chair James Comer.
The move comes in advance of Friday, the deadline set for the Trump administration to release its full files on Epstein.
“If your clients do not comply with these new dates, the Committee will move immediately to contempt proceedings,” said Comer, who is leading the congressional investigation into Epstein, according to the letter obtained by Politico.
Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC was filed in a personal capacity and names the BBC and BBC studios productions as defendants. He is being represented by attorneys Alejandro Brito, Edward Paltzik and Daniel Epstein.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told Fox News: “The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election. The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”
The BBC has apologized for splicing two clips of a speech Trump made before the Capitol riots in January 2021, but has disagreed about a defamation claim. Last month, BBC’s chair Samir Shah told staff the broadcaster was “determined to fight” Trump’s claims that the programme defamed him.
President Donald Trump officially filed a $10bn lawsuit against the BBC on Monday after airing its 2024 “Panorama” documentary that distorted his 6 January 2021 speech.
The lawsuit was filed in the southern district of Florida. It includes one count of defamation and one count of violating a Florida trade practices law, and the president is asking for $5bn in damages for each count.
Bloomberg News reports that the Food and Drug Administration has no plans to put a “black box” warning on Covid-19 vaccines, which is the agency’s most serious warning.
FDA commissioner Marty Makary confirmed the news on Bloomberg TV after CNN reported last week that the FDA was preparing to change the safety information related to the shots. Makary said: “We have no plans to put that on the Covid vaccine.”
Placing this warning on Covid-19 vaccines, which saved an estimated 20 million lives around the world, would further health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign against vaccines in general. Earlier this year, he canceled $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines, ending 22 federal contracts, including one with Moderna for its bird flu vaccine for humans.
The department of justice arrested four people in connection with an alleged plot to bomb several locations of two US companies on New Year’s Eve in southern California, according to a post by attorney general Pam Bondi.
Bondi said that members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which she described as an “anti-government” and “anti-capitalist group”, was planning to conduct “a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve”.
“The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles,” Bondi added.
The criminal complaint reads: “The co-conspirators then took numerous steps toward executing the bombing plot, including acquiring bomb-making materials and traveling to a remote location in the Mojave Desert to construct and detonate test explosive devices on December 12, 2025.”
The group members were arrested by the FBI “before they completed assembling a functional explosive device”, according to the filing.
A motive is still unclear, but officials said the individuals are members of an offshoot of a group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front, which calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty, and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism”, according to the complaint.
The Trump administration argued in a court filing today that construction of the White House ballroom must continue for national security reasons, the AP reports.
The filing comes after a lawsuit brought last Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The suit asks a federal judge to pause the construction until it undergoes independent reviews and receives congressional approval.
The Trump administration included a declaration from the deputy director of the US Secret Service in the filing, stating that more work on the site of the former White House East Wing is needed to meet the agency’s “safety and security requirements.”
Attorneys with the US Department of Justice have reportedly said they felt pressured to accuse the University of California of discriminating against Jewish students and faculty, at the urging of the Trump administration, in what one lawyer described as a “hit job”.
Nine attorneys, some of whom requested anonymity, shared insider accounts with the Los Angeles Times of the federal government’s investigation into California’s research university system. The attorneys said they felt pushed to conclude the UC had violated the law before they had determined the facts. All of the attorneys eventually resigned.
“The political appointees essentially determined the outcome almost before the investigation had even started,” Jen Swedish, a former DoJ lawyer who worked on the case against the University of California, Los Angeles, told the newspaper.
The investigation was centered on allegations of antisemitism that emerged during pro-Palestinian protests at UC campuses, amid a wave of student activism and demonstrations against the war in Gaza that unfolded at universities nationwide.
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Gavin Newsom, the California governor, announced the appointment of two prominent scientists who left the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in recent months over conflicts with the Trump administration to state positions.
Dr Susan Monarez, the former director of the CDC, will lead California’s new public health initiative, the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange (PHNIX).
In August, Monarez was fired by the Trump administration less than a month into the top job at the CDC after refusing to step down. Monarez had clashed with Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.
Newsom also hired former CDC chief medical officer Dr Debra Houry, who resigned after a decade at the agency after Monarez’s dismissal.
Both Monarez and Houry testified before Congress in September to voice their concerns about secretary Kennedy’s vaccine agenda and the sweeping changes he was making to the country’s public health system.
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“Vile”. “Nonsense”. “Dreadful”. These are just some of the words prominent lawmakers and public figures are using as more reactions pile in after Donald Trump’s controversial social media post about the death of director and actor Rob Reiner.
New York governor Kathy Hochul said that Reiner’s loved ones “deserve our condolences, not this insulting filth from Donald Trump.”
Maryland representative Jamie Raskin called Trump’s post “a product of Deranged Trump Syndrome” that “teaches nothing but cruelty and nonsense.” The comment comes after the president suggested Reiner’s death was due to “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.
Presenter and former newspaper editor, Piers Morgan, called the remarks on Truth Social a “dreadful thing to say about a man who just got murdered by his troubled son.”
“Delete it, Mr President @realDonaldTrump,” Morgan posted on X.
Meanwhile, Washington representative Pramila Jayapal, posted on social media: “What a vile and self-obsessed post. The American people deserve so much better.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie also reacted to Trump’s attack, calling it “completely shocking and not the least bit surprising at the very same time.”
Celebrities and lawmakers from both of the US’s major political parties are condemning Donald Trump after the president blamed the death of Rob Reiner on what he described as the acclaimed Hollywood director’s dislike of him.
“What a disgusting and vile statement,” actor Patrick Schwarzenegger wrote on X.
Similarly, television host Whoopi Goldberg, who described Reiner as her friend and “quite an amazing man,” condemned Trump.
Referencing Trump’s own attacks on critics of the far-right political activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead in September. That killing prompted reprisals from the White House against those who cited Kirk’s history of hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, women and other marginalized groups. And Goldberg said: “I don’t understand the man in the White House. He spoke at length about Charlie Kirk and about caring, and then this is what he puts out. Have you no shame? No shame at all? Can you get any lower? I don’t think so.”
Meanwhile, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X: “This is a sick man.”
Echoing Newsom, US House member Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Florida Democrat, said: “What a despicable piece of garbage.”
US senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, similarly said of Trump: “He’s just lost it. Now saying Rob and Michele Reiner caused their own murder because they didn’t support him. So sick.”
US House member Zoe Lofgren, another California Democrat, called Trump’s comments “a new low for this petty, hateful man”. Lofgren added: “His party needs to condemn this.”
Similarly, US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote: “This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”
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Asked by a reporter if he stands by his statement on Rob Reiner’s death after a number of Republicans have denounced it, Trump doesn’t offer any sympathy, doubles down on his dislike for Reiner AND refers to himself in the third person.
Well, I wasn’t a fan of his at all, he was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.
He knew it was false, in fact it was the exact opposite, but he said that I was a friend of Russia, controlled by Russia, the Russia hoax, he was one of the people behind it.
I think he hurt himself career-wise, he became like a deranged person, Trump derangement syndrome.
So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.
Per my earlier post, Trump confirms that he’s considering an executive order to reclassify marijuana “because a lot of people want to see it … because it leads to a tremendous amount of research that can’t be done unless you reclassify it.”
“We are looking at that very strongly,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump says he’s suing the BBC for “putting words in my mouth” and that he’ll be filing the suit “probably this afternoon or tomorrow morning”.
He suggests the BBC used AI to put words in his mouth. But the broadcaster is not accused of changing the words Trump said; rather it is accused of editing a speech that Trump made on 6 January 2021 in such a way that made it appear clearer that he encouraged the US Capitol attack.
Below is a side-by-side comparison of the original and edited footage in question, which shows how the BBC selectively edited the speech.
An edition of Panorama, broadcast a week before the 2024 US election, spliced together clips of the speech, suggesting that Trump told the crowd: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.’ The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart.
Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general; and the head of BBC News resigned over the affair, and the broadcaster issued an apology.
“America’s adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the United States at least in part because they want to kill Americans,” he says.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
