Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act – which allows the president to use the military domestically to suppress an invasion or rebellion – as protests against federal immigration agents continued in Minneapolis. In a social media post, Minnesota governor Tim Walz called on Trump to “turn the temperature down” but at a press conference this afternoon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Walz and the president had not spoken today. During a meeting with Trump this afternoon, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told the president ICE raids “are dangerous and putting more people at risk”.
Federal agents deployed teargas to disperse dozens of protesters outside the a federal building in Minneapolis that houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement today, and border patrol commander Gregory Bovino told Fox News that “recent arrests” were made outside the building.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming that it has used federal law enforcement to target Somali and Latino communities in Minnesota. The ACLU is suing on behalf of three US citizens from the North Star state, all of whom were arrested or accosted by federal immigration officers.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado met with Donald Trump at the White House and a bipartisan group of senators on Capitol Hill. After, she said that she had presented Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal.
An appeals court dismissed Mahmoud Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his initial detention, and opened up the path for his re-arrest. Khalil – a green card holder and Columbia graduate – was released from an immigration detention facility last year, after he was initially arrested for his role in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
At a press conference today, Karoline Leavitt said “the president was simply joking” when Trump said “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” during an interview with Reuters yesterday.
Trump has selected the members of an international “Board of Peace” designed to temporarily govern Gaza as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the president announced in a social media post. Reuters reports that the names are expected to be announced at Davos next week.
The justice department is undertaking an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information about tens of millions of Americans. The department has asked at least 43 states for their comprehensive information on voters, including the last four digits of their social security numbers, full dates of birth and addresses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The New York Post has shared an “exclusive photo” of Donald Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, with the president holding Machado’s Nobel peace prize medal.
Machado told reporters that she had presented the medal to Trump during her meeting with the president today and the president later posted on social media thanking her for the gift.
The photograph shows that Machado presented the medal in a gold frame, alongside text that read: “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”
In an appearance on CNN tonight, an attorney for Renee Nicole Good’s family said his office has sent a letter to the federal government demanding it preserve evidence related to her fatal shooting.
“Since we know that there isn’t going to be cooperation with the federal government, we need to make sure that when the time for litigation comes, we get the evidence that we need,” said attorney Antonio Romanucci, who previously represented George Floyd’s family, winning a $27 million settlement against the city of Minneapolis.
“I would love to have all the confidence in our government doing what they’re supposed to do,” he said. “But because we know that we’re getting stonewalled our level of confidence decreases.”
Romanucci also called the words Donald Trump and other federal officials used to describe Good in the wake of her shooting “slanderous” and described her as “a housewife. She is a mother, she’s a daughter, she’s a sister”.
Donald Trump says that his newly appointed “Board of Peace” overseeing Gaza will “secure a COMPREHENSIVE Demilitarization Agreement with Hamas, including the surrender of ALL weapons, and the dismantling of EVERY tunnel.”
Trump’s statement came in the form of a Truth Social post, responding to special envoy Steve Witkoff’s announcing a second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire yesterday. Witkoff said the second phase would begin the “full demilitarisation and reconstruction of Gaza, primarily the disarmament of all unauthorised personnel”.
The first phase of the ceasefire plan began on 10 October. Although Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is committed to demilitarising the Gaza Strip, no agreement has been reached on disarming Hamas.
As my colleagues Julian Borger and Lorenzo Tondo reported yesterday, “Two groups representing Israeli former hostages and their families had urged the US not to declare the start of the second phase of the ceasefire until the remains of the last hostage yet to be accounted for, Ran Gvili, had been returned by Hamas.”
In his social media post today, Trump wrote: “Hamas must IMMEDIATELY honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization.”
Some employees at CBS News have expressed concerns after the network cited two anonymous “US officials” who said the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis “suffered internal bleeding to the torso” after the incident.
My colleague Jeremy Barr reports:
CBS initially published the account about officer Jonathan Ross on X, formerly Twitter. About 30 minutes later, the network followed up with another post, containing a link to an article by two correspondents that similarly cited “two US officials briefed on his medical condition”.
The report, which was not extensively covered by other news organizations, drew an immediate response on social media from critics who questioned the network’s sourcing – and whether it aligned with the Trump administration’s preferred focus.
But there was also internal skepticism at the network about the report, according to emails viewed by the Guardian. It was met with “huge internal concern” by some, one CBS News staffer said. Others viewed the conversations as standard editorial discussions.
Here’s the full story:
The Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have arrested a man who allegedly stole body armor “out of an FBI vehicle in Minneapolis last night”, according to social media posts from attorney general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel.
“This criminal is a perfect example of what our brave federal law enforcement agents are up against every day as Minnesota leadership ENCOURAGES lawbreaking,” Bondi said, describing the suspect as a gang member.
“There will be more arrests. Again: any individual who attacks law enforcement or vandalizes federal property paid for by hardworking taxpayers will be found and arrested,” Patel said. The FBI had offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the arrest in a flyer that included photographs of a vandalized vehicle.
The Trump administration has sued California over a 2022 law banning new oil wells within 3,200 feet of hospitals, homes, schools and businesses open to the public.
The Justice Department lawsuit challenged the law under an executive order president Donald Trump signed last year to speed up fossil fuel production.
“This is yet another unconstitutional and radical policy from Gavin Newsom that threatens our country’s energy independence and makes energy more expensive for the American people,” attorney general Pam Bondi said.
California governor Gavin Newsom has said the law is an important public health protection.
Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump thanked the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for giving him her Nobel peace prize medal during her visit to the White House on Thursday.
According to Trump, Machado “presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” which he called, “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
However, while Machado told reporters that she did present Trump with her medal, the Norwegian Nobel Committee made it quite clear in a statement earlier on Thursday that she was free to hand over the medal, but that does not make anyone she gives it to a Nobel prize winner. “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” the committee said. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
“A medal can change owners,” the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo explained, “but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”
The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children has filed suit against his company, alleging explicit images were generated of her by his Grok AI tool.
My colleague Helena Horton reports:
St Clair, 27, who is estranged from Musk, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator. She and Musk are the parents of a son born in 2024.
She is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights lawyer who specialises in holding tech companies accountable and has previously represented women who were victims of sexual harassment and abuse.
Goldberg told the Guardian: “xAI is not a reasonably safe product and is a public nuisance. Nobody has born the brunt more than Ashley St Clair. Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing nonconsensual, abusive, and degrading images of her and publishing them on X.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations is investigating “every single organization or person responsible for paying or contributing in any way to the organization of these protests” as well as “the criminal actors at those protests” over immigration operations across the United States, FBI director Kash Patel said in an appearance on the right-wing television channel Real America’s Voice.
“These protests, whether it’s Minneapolis, or LA, or Portland or where have you, aren’t spontaneous. They don’t magically appear,” Patel said. “It is an organized, in my opinion, effort to criminally disrupt and cause chaos into our communities.”
The only supposed evidence that protests against immigration officers are inauthentic cited by Patel was his contention that “somebody has to pay for the signs” held by protesters, which he claimed appear to be mass-produced. “Every single person is holding the exact same sign on the exact same piece of wood and the exact same placard,” Patel said. But this claim, as we have reported in the past when it was made by the president, is just not borne out by even the most cursory examination of news images of protests, which instead show a wide variety of homemade placards carried by demonstrators in Minneapolis, Portland and across the nation.
Real America’s Voice is a partisan pro-Trump outlet that was originally created to broadcast Steve Bannon’s podcast. In addition to Bannon, its leading figure is Brian Glenn, a Trump supporting White House correspondent, best known for dating Marjorie Taylor Greene, and for asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy the provocative question of why he was not wearing a suit during his first visit to the Oval Office to meet Trump last year.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
