Closing summary
As attention in Washington turns to the tragic loss of life near Reagan National airport, we are wrapping up this politics live blog, but will return to chronicle new developments on Friday. Here is an overview of the day:
Donald Trump pre-empted the federal investigation by experts into the air disaster by speculating, in line with the prevailing views on Fox News, that somehow a push for diversity had lowered standards in the nation’s air traffic controller ranks. His comments, at a news conference that reminded many of his deeply partisan 2020 Covid briefings, prompted outrage from the Congressional Black caucus and other Democrats.
Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, was accused of being happy to lie for Trump at his senate confirmation hearing.
Robert F Kennedy won’t commit to keeping abortion pill mifepristone on market. Kennedy, pressed to answer whether he would keep the abortion pill on the market, refused to say that he would.
At least five senior FBI leaders who were promoted by the bureau’s former director, Christopher Wray, have been notified they are being demoted or reassigned.
Tulsi Gabbard, in her opening remarks at her confirmation hearing for national intelligence chief, said that she has “no love for Assad, Gaddafi, or any dictator, I just hate al-Qaida”. Gabbard was pushing back against criticism for her 2017 meeting with the then Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, during a visit to Damascus, Syria, that will become a focal point of questioning during the hearing.
Brendan Carr, the new, pro-Trump chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into corporate sponsorship of public media. Carr warned the heads of NPR and PBS that his findings could be used by Republicans in Congress to end all funding for the networks.
Trump administration froze $45m of aid, most of it for Gaza, none of it for condoms. A United Nations agency that promotes sexual and reproductive health confirmed to the Guardian that it did have state department funding for its in work Gaza and the West Bank frozen by the Trump administration, but none of that funding was for condoms.
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US funding freeze imperils health of millions of vulnerable women and girls
The peals of laughter coming from rightwing precincts of the internet and cable news this week, after the White House claimed that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” had stopped payment on a $50m shipment of condoms to Gaza – which appears to be untrue – echo a little hollow when the real costs of the blanket funding freeze for humanitarian assistance come into focus.
Eddie Wright, a spokesperson for the United Nations Population Fund, known by its old acronym, UNFPA, has shared with the Guardian some examples of the terrible impact the US funding freeze will have on millions of “vulnerable women and girls in some of the world’s most difficult settings”.
The US government contributed nearly half of the UN agency’s funding for humanitarian aid in 2024. In response to the funding freeze, Wright says, “UNFPA has currently issued a moratorium on all spending and payments related to active awards, which will have immediate and widespread effects across regions, both programmatically and operationally.”
Here are some examples provided by Wright of the impact of that US funding being frozen this week, apparently because someone in the administration mistakenly guessed that the funds were being used to send condoms to Gaza:
In Afghanistan, over 9 million beneficiaries will not receive services and over 1,700 female health workers will no longer be employed.
In Gaza, 50,000 pregnant women will lose critical care as UNFPA’s mobile health teams are forced to halt operations. These teams provide care through home and shelter visits, especially in the hardest-hit northern areas.
In Bangladesh, nearly 600,000 beneficiaries will be at risk of losing sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention and response services.
In Ukraine, around 400,000 women and girls will be affected by cuts to psychosocial support, gender-based violence prevention and response services, safe spaces, and economic empowerment programs provided by 45 mobile teams and 21 safe spaces.
In Pakistan, 1.7 million people (including 1.2 million Afghan refugees) will lose the life-saving sexual and reproductive health services provided by 62 health facilities.
In Yemen, more than 220,000 people displaced by conflict or natural disasters will lose access to lifesaving emergency relief deliveries of essential items.
In Sudan and its surrounding countries, thousands of displaced people will lose emergency sexual and reproductive health services and gender-based violence prevention and response services.
According to Wright: “We are currently seeking a humanitarian waiver so that our life-saving assistance can continue, and look forward to engaging with the new US administration to support vulnerable women and girls in some of the world’s most difficult settings.”
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Trump's FCC chair says his investigation of NPR and PBS could end funding
Brendan Carr, the new, pro-Trump chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has opened an investigation into corporate sponsorship of public media and warned the heads of NPR and PBS that his findings could be used by Republicans in Congress to end all funding for the networks.
“I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials,” Carr wrote on Wednesday in a letter to the presidents of both broadcasters obtained by the New York Times. “In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements.”
As NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, reports the FCC does not have direct oversight of the networks, but it does regulate the roughly 1,500 public broadcasting stations across the country, which hold licenses granted by the FCC for use of public airwaves for radio and television.
Katherine Maher, the president of NPR and former chief executive of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement that the use of corporate underwriting spots, in place of ads, “complies with federal regulations, including the FCC guidelines on underwriting messages for noncommercial educational broadcasters”.
Two Democrats on bipartisan commission issued statements condemning the investigations. “This appears to be yet another Administration effort to weaponize the power of the FCC” commissioner Anna M Gomez wrote. “The FCC has no business intimidating and silencing broadcast media.”
“Public television and radio stations play a significant role in our media ecosystem” commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who was initially nominated by Trump in 2018, added. “Any attempt to intimidate these local media outlets is a threat to the free flow of information and the marketplace of ideas. The announcement of this investigation gives me serious concern.”
Proposals to defund public media have already been introduced by Republicans in the House and Senate.
Defunding the public broadcasters, which provide high-quality, nonpartisan news reporting, has been on the wishlist of the American right for decades.
In 2012, for instance, Mitt Romney promised, during a debate with Barack Obama, to end the federal subsidy for public broadcasting even though, as he told the PBS moderator Jim Lehrer, “I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like you too.”
Critics point out that Republicans appear to vastly overestimate how much Americans actually spend on public broadcasting. A 2021 study from scholars at the University of Pennsylvania found that while Germans pay $142.42 each for a year of public media, Norwegians pay $110.73, Britons pay $81.30, Spaniards pay $58.25, Americans pay just $3.16.
A poll conducted for CNN in 2011 showed that, after years of conservative complaints about taxpayer dollars funding public broadcasting, most Americans thought NPR and PBS got a much larger share of the federal budget than they actually do.
That survey, which asked respondents to estimate what share of the federal budget was spent on certain government programs, found that just 27% of Americans knew that the money for PBS and NPR was less than 1% of government spending. Almost half of respondents guessed that the share was between 1% and 5% of the federal budget, and nearly a third of those surveyed said the funding for PBS and NPR was in excess of 5% of all federal spending.
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The Senate voted 79-18 to confirm North Dakota billionaire Doug Burgum as interior secretary.
More than half of Senate Democrats joined all 53 Republicans in voting for Burgum, who served two terms as governor of the oil-rich state and ran for president in 2023, bbefore dropping out and endorsing Trump.
Burgum, 68, is a software industry entrepreneur who grew up in a small North Dakota farming community.
Trump wants Burgum to be the first interior secretary on the National Security Council, and named him chair of a new National Energy Council tasked with achieving American “energy dominance”.
Records obtained by the Associated Press reveal that Burgum “eagerly assisted” the oil industry while in elected office, “even as the governor was profiting from the lease of family land to oil companies”.
Trump administration froze $45m of aid, most of it for Gaza, none of it for condoms
As speculation continued over what, exactly, Donald Trump was talking about when he claimed, on Wednesday, to have blocked a $50m grant “to buy condoms to Hamas”, a United Nations agency that promotes sexual and reproductive health has confirmed to the Guardian that it did have $45m in state department funding for its in work Gaza and the West Bank frozen by the Trump administration.
After reporting from the Guardian revealed that not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) in the past year went to Gaza, and the administration declined to provide evidence for the claim, Trump supporters have engaged in a desperate scramble to prove that Trump, and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, were not lying about the planned funding.
One straw grasped at by Trump supporters was the theory that someone in the administration had come across funding for reproductive health in a province of Mozambique named Gaza, and gotten confused.
Another, discovered by a Trump supporter scouring a public database of US government spending on Thursday, identified a $45m grant to the United Nations Population Fund, known by its old acronym, UNFPA, made in September to support its work, including in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Eddie Wright, a spokesperson for the UN agency, confirmed that the grant was frozen in emails from USAid to various UNFPA offices since 26 January, all of which were backdated to 24 January. But Wright stressed that none of the funding was used to provide condoms in Gaza.
According to Wright “approximately 70%” of the $45m “was earmarked for Gaza and the rest for West Bank”.
The agency did provide $100,000 worth of male condoms to Gaza last year, Wright said, “but none of it was funded by the United States”.
So what was the money for? Wright says that it was used to equip “six maternity units for normal deliveries; 3 units for C-Sections; Caravans/prefabs for 40 safe spaces”, where survivors of sexual violence can receive medical referrals and counselling.
The grant was also intended to “support the expansion of mental health and psychosocial support services, as well as the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse”.
In addition, Wright explained, the US funds were intended to pay for “life-saving medicine and supplies to prevent maternal mortality, as well as 500,000 dignity kits with key hygiene and sanitation items; 30,000 Mama and Baby kits with essentials for new mothers and newborns, and menstrual health supplies”.
The agency is currently hoping to receive a humanitarian waiver from the state department to unfreeze the funds, “to enable us to continue our lifesaving work”.
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Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, told the Fox congressional correspondent Chad Pergram that she has “not made a final decision” on whether to vote for Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F Kennedy Jr but plans to watch video highlights of the confirmation hearings to inform her decisions. “I need to get the clips of both hearings of the parts that I missed” Collins said.
Given the great length of the hearings, many supporters and opponents of Trump’s cabinet picks are doing the same. But reactions to the clips on social media are a political Rorschach test.
To take one example, video of a fiery exchange between Kennedy and Bernie Sanders during a tense Senate health committee hearing on Thursday has been widely seen online, but with sharply different assessments of who won out.
“In many ways, President Trump and Mr Kennedy have asked some of the right questions,” Sanders began. “Problem is their answer will only make a bad situation worse.”
The senator then pressed Kennedy to promise that, as health secretary, he would fight to guarantee health care to every American.
“I’m going to make America healthier than other countries in the world right now — we’re the sickest” Kennedy said, before Sanders cut in to repeat his question.
Kennedy then pivoted, and addressing the senator as “Bernie”, accused him of “corruption” for supposedly “accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry”. Before Kennedy had even finished the prepared attack, his supporters in the room applauded.
Sanders, however, replied that the charge was false. “Oh no, no, no”, he said. “I ran for president, like you. I got millions and millions of contributions. They did not come from the executives; not one nickel of PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry. They came from workers”. Sanders supporters in the room clapped.
“In 2020,” Kennedy insisted, “you were the single largest receiver of pharmaceutical money”.
“Because I had small contributions from workers” employed by drug companies, Sanders interjected.
“Bernie, you were the single largest receiver of pharmaceutical dollars” Kennedy insisted.
“No, from workers in the industry” Sanders explained.
Video of the exchange, captioned, “RFK Jr. calls out Bernie Sanders direct to his face!” was enthusiastically shared by Kennedy supporter Elon Musk on his social media platform, racking up over 10 million views.
Supporters of Sanders on the same platform pointed out that he was correct that taking small-dollar donations from workers employed by drug companies was not the same as taking money “from the pharmaceutical industry”, but their comments were far less seen on the platform controlled by Musk.
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The Congressional Black Caucus has denounced Donald Trump’s “racist” attempt to blame diversity for the midair collision between a US military helicopter and an American Airlines jet approaching Reagan National airport near Washington DC on Wednesday.
After expressing sympathy for the victims, and confidence in the ability of federal investigators to determine the cause of the accident, a statement from the caucus strongly criticized Trump’s response:
However, the opportunity to fully focus our sympathies on those who are in mourning and who may not have even retrieved their dearly departed was marred by a truly disgusting and disgraceful display of racist political prognostication. President Trump, without evidence or regard for the gravity and solemnity of this incident in which American lives were lost, held a press conference to falsely blame the diversity initiatives of past administrations for the cause of this incident. Not only are the President’s claims untrue, they also speak to the Republican Party’s desire to divide us as a country.
To be clear, diversity, equity, and inclusion are American values. Diversity policies work to benefit all Americans who have traditionally been kept out of opportunities, including white women, veterans, and aging Americans, not just the Black and minority communities that Trump and Republicans want to scapegoat and villainize for political gain. We are not going back!
Caucus chair Congresswoman Yvette D Clarke, a Democrat from Brooklyn, shared video of Trump’s remarks on Bluesky, with the comment: “While families grieve and our nation mourns the 67 victims of last night’s heartbreaking crash, Donald Trump and his cronies are already abusing this tragedy to further their racist, repugnant agenda”.
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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump just insisted that Egypt and Jordan, which have refused to cooperate with his proposal to “just clean out” the entire population of the besieged Gaza Strip, by resettling Palestinians in their countries, will eventually agree.
Asked if there is “anything you can do to make” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan accept that population transfer, Trump replied: “They will do it. They will do it.”
“What makes you say that?” the reporter asked.
“They’re going to do it, OK?” Trump replied. “We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it.”
Trump did not elaborate on what kind of pressure he plans to exert, but the recent freeze of US foreign aid made exceptions for military assistance to Israel – whose longstanding major arms packages from the US have expanded further since the Gaza war – and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Jordan, which also has a peace deal with Israel, and controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem until they were seized by Israeli forces in 1967, is also a major recipient of US aid.
Trump’s first impeachment was over his demand that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “do us a favor” in return for military assistance.
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Donald Trump has said the US will put a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, Reuters reports.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, reportedly said he would decide probably by tonight whether or not those tariffs would apply to oil.
Trump has previously pledged to sign an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on all products coming in to the US from Mexico and Canada, two of the country’s biggest trading partners.
Joining Democratic congressional leaders at the press conference, Altadena resident Jackie Jacobs described the moment she realized it was time to evacuate.
The 88-year-old said she received a message telling her and her husband to “get out” and they did just that, carrying with them only the clothes that they were wearing.
The Eaton fire tore through Altadena,a historically Black town in the San Gabriel Valley, claiming nearly every house on their street, including their home.
“Everything now is in ashes,” she said. The houses on their block were only identifiable by their chimneys.
Officials say nearly 9,500 structures have been burned and at least 17 people lost their lives in the fire, which is 99% contained. A new study published by UCLA found that Black residents in Altadena were 1.3 times more likely to have experienced destruction or major damage than non-Black households.
Jacob’s husband, David, said the couple is staying in an Airbnb. They have had friends and family urge them to move back to Alabama. But they want to stay in their beloved Altadena.
“We’re just asking God to guide us,” he said.
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Hearings conclude today for Trump's nominees
The Senate judiciary committee has concluded the confirmation hearing of Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI.
That concludes today’s Senate confirmation hearings, which also saw Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard face questions over their nominations.
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Democrat alleges Patel is happy to 'lie' for Trump in tense questioning
Hours into Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to be FBI director, we are getting into his witness testimony before a grand jury in the Trump classified documents case – and it has become awkward for Patel.
During the documents investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury about whether Donald Trump declassified the documents he had retained at his Mar-a-Lago club, after he publicly represented that Trump was authorized to have those documents because he had declassified them before leaving office.
Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, the Guardian reported at the time. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.
Under oath and under close questioning from Senator Cory Booker, Patel clarified that while he had heard and witnessed Trump issue a declassification order for some documents, he did not actually know whether they applied to the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Booker is seizing on this to say Patel is happy to “lie” on behalf of Trump in public to support him, which he said was disqualifying. “He is refusing the transparency he claims to adhere to,” Booker adds.
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House Democratic leaders on Thursday came to Altadena to survey the damage from the Eaton fire that burned through historically Black neighborhoods, vowing to fight for more federal aid without conditions.
“There’s no Democratic way or Republican way to respond to a crisis in an extreme weather event like these horrific wildfires, there is an American way,” House leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said at a press conference after touring the devastation. “We want to make sure that Congress and the American people stand with the people of this amazing community.”
Donald Trump and Republicans have threatened to impose conditions on federal disaster aid for Los Angeles to rebuild after the wildfires, though on a visit to the region last week he told residents and officials: “We have to work together to get this really worked out.”
Led by congresswoman Judy Chu, who represents the fire victims of Altadena, Jeffries toured the area with House Democratic whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar of California.
House Democratic leaders are in Altadena today to tour the devastation from the fire.
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) January 30, 2025
“We cannot condition any assistance to the people of Altadena, the people of Pasadena, the people of Los Angeles County, the people of California,” Jeffries said. pic.twitter.com/Me1IJbS0em
“There is enough Fema money to last us up until March but we will need supplemental money, as has happened in every major disaster in this country,” Chu said, adding that it is unprecedented for Congress to attach partisan conditions to federal disaster aid.
Chu and Jeffries also warned that the Trump administration’s now-paused freeze on federal grant and loan funding threatened to impact communities like Altadena as they recover from disaster.
Jeffries added: “California has sent more money to the federal government year after year after year than they ever get back in return. The people of California are simply asking for some of those tax dollars to come back to the state to help the people in need.”
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Several senior FBI leaders demoted or reassigned – report
At least five senior FBI leaders who were promoted by the bureau’s former director, Christopher Wray, have been notified they are being demoted or reassigned, CNN reports.
The senior officials are at the executive assistant director level and include those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, the outlet writes, citing sources.
The report comes after the firing of more than a dozen federal prosecutors at the justice department, across the street from the FBI headquarters, earlier this week.
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Transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons have been placed in isolation, told they will be transferred to men’s prisons and advised they will lose access to gender-affirming medical treatments in response to Donald Trump’s executive order “defending women from gender ideology extremism”, according to civil rights advocates and people behind bars.
The executive order on “gender ideology” was announced on Trump’s first day in office, and is part of a flurry of executive actions targeting trans rights and LGBTQ+ education.
Staff at Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell, a US women’s prison in Texas that houses people with special medical needs, took actions within days of the order, according to attorneys and one resident. Officers went to trans women’s cells one by one and ordered them out, according to one incarcerated resident, a trans man housed with the women.
“The officers yelled at these women: ‘Come right now, leave your things. You don’t have time to pack,’” the man said in Spanish. “The officials were degrading them and saying disgusting things, like: ‘We don’t have to call you women anymore. Where you’re going, you’re going to be a man.’”
As one trans woman was trying to pack her bra, an official laughed at her and said: “You won’t need that where you’re going,” he recalled. “The women were screaming and crying, saying: ‘Where are you taking us?’ It was so humiliating.”
LGBTQ+-rights lawyers say the moves will have major consequences for the health and safety of trans people in federal custody, and blatantly violate federal laws and a range of constitutional protections.
Read the full story here:
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Democrats on the Senate budget committee boycotted Thursday’s vote to advance Russell Vought’s nomination to head the office of management and budget.
Calling Vought a threat to democracy, Senate Democrats on the committee said they refused to “vote for someone so clearly unfit for office”.
Senate Democrats had urged a delay on Vought’s confirmation hearings after the office Donald Trump nominated him to lead ordered a freeze on federal grant funding.
Issued on Monday by the acting director of the office of management and budget and rescinded on Wednesday, the order would have potentially impacted critical programs that receive federal aid, including Head Start and Meals on Wheels.
But Republican lawmakers have plowed ahead with Vought’s confirmation, and Republican members of the Senate budget committee held the vote anyway on Thursday without any Democrats present.
Vought’s confirmation will move to the full Senate after the 11-0 committee vote.
'Leading not lying': ex-transportation secretary Buttigieg slams Trump
Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, has condemned Donald Trump’s “despicable” comments during a Thursday press conference on the deadly mid-air collision near Washington DC.
Trump, at a White House briefing, took aim at Buttigieg and claimed Democrats were responsible for declining standards in air traffic control and that the disaster “could have been” caused by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Federal Aviation Administration.
“He was a disaster,” Trump said of Buttigieg. “He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit.”
Trump also said Buttigieg, who is gay, ran the transportation department into the ground “with his diversity”.
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg said on X.
We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.
He said one of Trump’s first acts as president was to “fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe,” adding:
Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.
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“Look at them, I want you to look at them if you have the courage,” Democratic senator Adam Schiff declared, asking Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, to look at Capitol police officers in the room during his Senate confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Patel decried violence against law enforcement that occurred at the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.
Schiff questioned him about his comments on an episode of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast apparently claiming partial credit for producing Justice for All, a recording of January 6 defendants singing the national anthem from prison.
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“There have been, as I understand it, dozens of studies done all over the world that make it very clear that vaccines do not cause autism,” said Senator Bernie Sanders during Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Senate confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The evidence is there, that’s it – vaccines do not cause autism. Do you agree with that?” asked Sanders. “I asked you a simple question, Bobby.”
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“Everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” said Kash Patel in response to a question from Vermont senator Peter Welch about whether the nominee to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed that former joint chiefs of staff chair Mark Milley should be tried for treason.
The Trump administration has stripped Milley – who clashed with Trump during his first term and rejected his attempts to overturn the 2020 election – of his security detail.
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The day so far
Some of Donald Trump’s most controversial picks for his cabinet and key administration roles are facing Senate confirmation hearings today. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top health agency, attending a second straight day of bruising hearings on Capitol Hill. Appearing before the Senate health committee, Kennedy dodged direct questions about whether he still believes vaccines cause autism and whether Covid-19 vaccines saved the lives of millions. He pledged to hire “pro-life” deputies in his office, if he is confirmed. Kennedy faced tough questions from Democrats before the Senate finance committee on Wednesday.
Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), insisted he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries. Patel, appearing before the Senate judiciary committee, said he did not agree with shortening sentences for people who assault law enforcement, a week after Trump’s sweeping pardons for people charged in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, faced sharp criticism over past comments sympathetic to Russia, her meeting with Syria’s now-deposed leader, Bashar al-Assad, and her past support for government leaker Edward Snowden. Appearing before the Senate intelligence committee, Gabbard said Snowden had broke the law but refused to answer whether the whistleblower was a traitor.
Trump said there were no survivors in the midair collision of an American Airlines jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter near Washington DC. At a briefing in the White House, Trump questioned the role of the helicopter pilot and air traffic control, as well as faulted Joe Biden as he injected politics into his crash response.
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Mass deportation – at least in theory – is apparently popular among the American people.
So over and over again, Trump and his allies have loudly touted their plans to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, initially focusing on those with criminal records. In doing so, they’ve redirected the US public’s attention toward their “shock and awe” tactics that led to thousands of arrests across the country in less than a week.
But as all eyes turn to these high-profile enforcement efforts, the new administration from its very first moments has also been relentlessly, if more quietly, targeting people trying to come to the US legally, systematically dismantling safety nets meant to protect the world’s most vulnerable individuals and families, who are already suffering because of it.
Donald Trump is still historically unpopular compared with other new US presidents, a new poll showed.
“At 47%, President Donald Trump’s initial job approval rating for his second term is similar to the inaugural 45% reading during his first term, again placing him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953,” wrote Megan Brenan, a senior editor for Gallup, which carried out the poll.
“Trump remains the only elected president with sub-50% initial approval ratings, and his latest disapproval rating (48%) is three percentage points higher than in 2017.”
John F Kennedy remains the most popular modern president at the start of his term, according to Gallup polling. In the first month of his presidency, in 1961, the Democrat enjoyed 72% approval and just 6% disapproval.
Dwight Eisenhower (1953) and Barack Obama (2009) enjoyed the next-highest approval ratings, at 68%. Jimmy Carter, who died last month aged 100, scored 66% approval in February 1977, at the start of his single term in office.
Robert F Kennedy Jr was asked if he would rescind a Biden administration rule requiring physicians who receive federal funding to perform gender-affirming care.
“Yes, I will,” Kennedy said in response to a question by Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri. “That rule is anti-science.”
Kennedy added:
Do you really want somebody performing surgery on you who is morally opposed to that surgery? It doesn’t make any sense.
Kennedy said that “we need to embrace diversity in this country” and not “force people to do things that are against their conscience”.
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Trump, without evidence, appears to blame DEI for plane crash
Donald Trump continued to turn what might have been a sombre briefing into a baseless rant against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs despite no evidence of a link with Wednesday night’s plane crash.
The president was backed to the hilt by his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, who said “we can only accept the best and the brightest” in positions affecting passenger safety, and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who echoed: “The era of DEI is gone at the defense department and we need the best and brightest.”
Then came Vice-President JD Vance, who claimed “we want to hire the best people” who are “actually competent enough to do the job”.
Trump returned to the lectern to claim that “very powerful tests” for competence in air traffic control were “terminated” by Joe Biden.
CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked: “Aren’t you getting ahead of the investigation?” Trump replied: “No, I don’t think so at all … I don’t think that’s a smart question. I’m surprised, coming from you.”
Another reporter asked why Trump believes DEI is responsible. He said: “Because I have common sense and unfortunately a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level.”
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RFK Jr says he would hire 'pro-life' people in his office
Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said that he and Robert F Kennedy Jr had some “serious conversations about the importance of life”.
“You assured me that your deputies were going to be pro life. Is that still the case?” Scott asked Kennedy. Kennedy replied:
I will implement President Trump’s policies. I serve at his pleasure, but I share President Trump’s [belief] that every abortion is a tragedy.
Pressed on whether he will hire deputies within his Department of Health and Human Services who will be pro-life, Kennedy said: “I am.”
Tulsi Gabbard is avoiding answering a question on whether or not Edward Snowden should be considered a traitor to the United States.
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor: yes or no?” she is asked by successive senators.
Edward Snowden broke the law. He released information about the United States. If I may just finish my thought, senator … In this role that I’ve been nominated for, confirmed as director of national intelligence, I will be responsible for protecting our nation’s secrets, and I have more immediate steps that I would take to prevent another Snowden.
That has not satisfied senator Michael Bennet from Colorado, a Democrat. “This is when the rubber hits the road,” he said.
This is not a moment for social media. It’s not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … This is when you need to answer questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for.
He continues:
Obviously we didn’t select this nominee. But can’t we do better than somebody who doesn’t believe in [Fisa law] 702? Can we believe that somebody who can’t answer whether Snowden was a traitor five times today, who made excuses for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? The first time that I’m aware of any American official has done that, I’m questioning her judgment. That’s the issue that’s at stake here.
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Kash Patel, the nominee to be the FBI director, evades a hypothetical from Senator Chris Coons about whether he would open an investigation into a political opponent if requested by Donald Trump, or would stop a legitimate investigation into a Trump ally.
Patel says he will simply obey the law.
The questions touch on issues that came up during Trump’s first term: when the president asked then FBI director Jim Comey to end the investigation into his national security adviser. Comey declined – and was later fired by Trump.
But Patel also told Coons that the FBI would not engage in retribution against Trump’s political opponents, backpedaling from his past claims that even former FBI director Chris Wray should be prosecuted in part for his role in allowing the criminal investigation of Trump for his mishandling of classified documents. Patel said the FBI ‘will not go backwards”.
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Kash Patel, the nominee to be the FBI director, attempts to distance himself from verbatim quotes being read back at him by Senator Amy Klobuchar that don’t portray Patel as a nonpartisan official.
Klobuchar ticks through various remarks he has made on a number of podcasts, including that he would shut down the FBI headquarters and turn it into a museum of the so-called “deep state’.
Patel said her quotations were a “grotesque” mischaracterization, and at other times claimed not to remember the remarks being read back to him.
“I am quoting his own words,” Klobuchar said.
Patel says the FBI works for the justice department, and adds that the justice department reports to the White House.
Democratic senator Chris Coons notes that Trump’s attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, gave a different response in her hearing: that the justice department reports to the constitution and the American people. It’s a notable difference.
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Wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Donald Trump entered the White House briefing room at 11.21am, accompanied by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, both new to their jobs.
“I’d like to request a moment of silence for the victims and their families, please,” Trump said.
After the pause, and in softer, graver tones than usual, he resumed: “I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation.”
Trump provided a description of the incident, noting: “Sadly, there are no survivors.” He described it as “a tragedy of terrible proportions” that has “really shaken a lot of people”.
The president added: “We are all heartbroken, we are all searching for answers. That icy, icy Potomac … cold water.”
Trump said “we have very strong opinions and ideas” about how the accident happened then reverted to taking political swipes at Barack Obama and Joe Biden over air traffic controller standards. “The word “talented”. You have to be naturally talented geniuses.”
In a harsher tone than before, he then complained about diversity and inclusion in FAA programs and described former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as a “disaster” who has a “good line in bullshit”.
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Kash Patel, the nominee to be the FBI director, is indignant at Democrats raising the list of deep-state actors that he considered to be Donald Trump’s political opponents.
Democrats have referred to the list, which appears as an appendix in his book Government Gangsters, as an enemies list.
“It’s not an enemies list,” Patel said. “It’s a total mischaracterization.”
But the list does effectively name anyone and everyone who Patel has viewed as disloyal to Trump’s agenda.
It includes people like the FBI agents who led the Russia investigation, and former attorney generals, FBI directors and CIA directors – but only those Trump has personally clashed with and has mused at various times about wanting to investigate.
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Donald Trump is delivering remarks from the White House briefing room on last night’s midair collision at Reagan National airport near Washington DC.
“The work has now shifted to a recovery mission. Sadly, there are no survivors,” Trump said.
This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions.
He said authorities have “some pretty good ideas” about what led to the crash.
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RFK Jr won't commit to keeping abortion pill mifepristone on market
Robert F Kennedy Jr was pressed to answer whether he would keep the abortion pill mifepristone on the market.
Tammy Baldwin, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, noted that more than 100 peer-reviewed studies for the medication have confirmed that 99% of patients who took the pill had no complications.
Kennedy refused to commit to keeping mifepristone on the market and available to women, and said he would not get ahead of Donald Trump on the issue.
“President Trump has not chosen a policy,” Kennedy said. “I will implement his policy.”
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Tulsi Gabbard has said that if she is nominated she won’t advocate for a pardon for Edward Snowden.
In response to a question by Senator Susan Collins, Gabbard said:
If confirmed as the director of national intelligence, my responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets, and would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden. So the answer is no.
”I would work to make sure that we don’t have any disclosures or vigilantes taking it upon themselves [to disclose intelligence],” she continued, pointing to “legal routes” for whistleblowers to raise complaints.
She also denied reports in the New York Times that she had met with a senior member of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, calling it an “absurd accusation”.
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RFK Jr avoids saying Covid vaccines were successful as Bernie Sanders grills him
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator of Vermont, asked Robert F Kennedy Jr if he agreed that Covid-19 vaccines were successful in saving millions of lives.
Kennedy refused to be pinned down, saying there is no good surveillance system.
“If you show me science that shows that,” Kennedy said. Sanders replied:
You’re applying for the job – clearly you should know this. And the scientific community has established that Covid vaccines saved millions of lives and you’re casting doubt.
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Tulsi Gabbard: 'no love for Assad, Gaddafi, or any dictator'
Tulsi Gabbard, in her opening remarks at her confirmation hearing for national intelligence chief, said that she has “no love for Assad, Gaddafi, or any dictator, I just hate al-Qaida”.
Gabbard was pushing back against criticism for her 2017 meeting with the then Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad during a visit to Damascus, Syria, that will become a focal point of questioning during the hearing.
”I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists, minimizing them to so called rebels,” she said, indicating the former national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Gabbard has come under attack for her public remarks saying that Syria did not use chemical weapons against civilians and that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, and for her defense of Edward Snowden.
If confirmed, Gabbard has said that she will “check my own personal views at the door”.
In her opening remarks, she attacked Biden-era intelligence officials for leading to a crisis of confidence in the US intelligence community. Gabbard said she was “committed to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed and reported without bias, prejudice or political influence”.
Gabbard said her military service and work in Congress on the homeland security, foreign affairs and armed services committee means that “I know first-hand how essential accurate, unbiased, timely intelligence is to the president, to Congress, to our war fighters. I also know the heavy costs of intelligence failures and abuses.”
Gabbard also attacked those who raised concerns about her ties to the Science of Identity Foundation, which some critics have said is a cult.
“Unfortunately, they’re once again using the religious bigotry card, but this time, trying to foment religious bigotry against Hindus and Hinduism,” she said.
If anyone is sincerely interested in knowing more about my own personal spiritual path, Hinduism, I welcome you to go to my account on X, where I’ll share more on this topic.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr, in his opening statement on Thursday before the Senate health committee, said he was “humbled” to be Donald Trump’s nominee to see the Department of Health and Human Services.
The overall health of Americans is in “grievous condition”, Kennedy said, noting that more than 70% of adults and a third of children are overweight or obese.
The United States has worse health than any other developed nation. We spend more on healthcare, sometimes double, sometimes triple, as other nations.
Kennedy said that if he is confirmed, he will do “everything in my power to put the health of America on track.”
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Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to be the next FBI director, distances himself from criticism relating to the January 6 Capitol attack under questioning from Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee.
Patel says he has always rejected violence against law enforcement officers, including on January 6, and that he did not agree with any commutations for people who attacked police.
“I have repeatedly, often publicly and privately, said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement,” Patel said.
But he sidestepped entirely Durbin’s question about whether he thought Donald Trump made the country safer by pardoning 1,600 January 6 rioters, including many who were convicted of assault against law enforcement.
And he distanced himself from his involvement in the jailhouse recording of the so-called “January 6 choir” singing the national anthem that was repeatedly played at Trump rallies during the election campaign.
Multiple members of the choir had been in custody specifically for violently attacking police during the riot.
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I’m in a crowded White House press briefing room where Donald Trump is expected to hold a briefing at 11am about last night’s plane crash at Reagan Washington National airport.
A presidential seal has been added to the briefing room lectern and there are two flags on the podium.
Joe Biden made only one appearance here during his four years in office, whereas Trump regularly held briefings during the Covid-19 pandemic, most notoriously when he speculated on the merits of bleach as a cure.
It’s the first test of Trump’s second term in the role of consoler-in-chief, one that Ronald Reagan played after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Bill Clinton often performed with aplomb and Biden delivered with characteristic empathy. What could go wrong?
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Bernie Sanders, the independent senator of Vermont, congratulated Robert F Kennedy Jr for the phrase “Make America healthy again”.
Speaking at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing in front of the Senate health committee, Sanders asked if the nominee would work to lower the cost of prescription drugs and guarantee family leave if confirmed.
“I’m not quite sure how we can move to making America healthy again unless we have the guts to take on the insurance companies and drug companies and guarantee healthcare for all people,” Sanders said.
How do you have a healthy country when women are forced to go back [to work after having babies]? That’s not making America healthy again.
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Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, notes that Kash Patel has complained that he was hamstrung by bad-faith actors at every position he has held – including in the first Trump White House, at the justice department and at the defense department.
Durbin says that this is conspiratorial thinking and that he “does not meet the standard” to lead the FBI.
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Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and the vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said that he “continues to have significant concerns about [Tulsi] Gabbard’s qualifications”.
Warner, one of Gabbard’s most vocal critics, has said that Gabbard’s public questioning of Syria’s use of chemical weapons and her position that Russia was provoked into launching its invasion of Ukraine “raises serious questions about your judgment”.
“It also leads me to question whether you can develop the trust necessary to give our allies confidence that they can share their most sensitive intelligence,” he said.
Make no mistake about if they stop sharing that intelligence, the United States will be less safe.
He said that intelligence sharing between the United States and Australia helped prevent a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert.
Warner also attacked Gabbard for her support of the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked files from the intelligence agency and then fled to Russia, where he has remained a fugitive since 2013.
Her support for Snowden gave him “serious concerns about confirming” Gabbard.
He also attacked her for her opposition FISA Section 702, a law that gives the US sweeping powers to collect intelligence of non-Americans outside the United States.
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Republican chair of Senate committee has 'some reservations' on RFK Jr vaccine positions
Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate health committee, opened the confirming hearing of Robert F Kennedy Jr by saying that he had “some reservations” on Kennedy’s past positions on vaccines.
Cassidy spoke about his experience as a doctor, and told a story about a patient he treated who needed an emergency liver transplant.
“I thought $50 of vaccines could have prevented this all. And that was an inflection point in my career,” Cassidy said.
He said vaccines “save lives. I know they’re a crucial part of keeping our nation healthy.”.
He noted that Kennedy has an “tremendous” following, and that there are people who trust him more than their own doctors.
“The question is, what will you do with that trust?”
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Tom Cotton, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee and a vocal supporter of Tulsi Gabbard, begins by telling a packed room that the nomination has “generated a bit more interest and attention than do most nominees before this committee”.
But I want to stress Miss Gabbard has been and will be treated with the exact same respect, consideration and professionalism that were extended to every nominee, no more, no less, no better, no worse.
Cotton said that Gabbard had undergone five FBI background checks and that he had spent two hours reviewing the report, which comes to 300 pages. “It’s clean as a whistle,” he said.
He also defended Gabbard’s military record and loyalty to the US, saying he was “dismayed” by attacks against Gabbard, saying that Hillary Clinton had “smeared” her by calling her an “asset of a foreign nation”.
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RFK Jr's second day of confirmation hearings begins
Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Senate confirmation hearing to become America’s top health official has also started at the health committee.
The independent senator Bernie Sanders, who on Wednesday confronted Kennedy over anti-vaccine merchandise sold by his former organization Children’s Health Defense, is expected to continue probing the nominee’s controversial vaccine statements that have drawn fierce opposition from the medical community.
Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has sparked unprecedented pushback, with more than 15,000 medical professionals and 75 Nobel laureates mobilizing against his confirmation.
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Tulsi Gabbard hearing begins for intelligence chief
Tulsi Gabbard has arrived at the Dirksen Senate building for a confirmation hearing as director of national intelligence that is expected to be one of the most contested of the early Trump administration.
She was accompanied by her family, as well as supporters including the recently confirmed attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Supporters began to chant “USA! USA! USA!” before the hearing began.
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Top Democrat expresses doubt on Patel's 'experience' and 'judgment' to lead FBI
Richard Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said he does not believe that Kash Patel has the “experience”, “temperament” or “judgment” to lead the FBI.
“After meeting with Mr Patel and reviewing his record, I do not believe you meet the standard,” Durbin said.
Durbin described Patel as “someone who’s left behind a trail of grievances throughout his life, lashing out at anyone who disrespects him or doesn’t agree with him.”
He noted that Donald Trump had fired his first FBI director, James Comey, and forced out his second FBI director, Christopher Wray.
“With Mr Patel, however, obviously, the president has found a loyalist,” Durbin said.
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Trump to speak after fatal mid-air collision near Washington DC
Donald Trump will appear in the White House briefing room at 11am ET to speak about Wednesday’s deadly midair collision near Washington DC.
The bodies of 28 people have been retrieved from the Potomac River and no survivors are expected to be found following a midair collision of an American Airlines jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan National airport.
You can follow our updates on the plane crash on our live blog.
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Tulsi Gabbard faces Senate intelligence committee for confirmation hearing
Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence, will begin her confirmation hearing with the Senate intelligence committee at 10am ET.
Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said he supported Gabbard’s nomination even before his committee began the hearing.
“I support Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination,” Cotton told Fox News.
I’ve been working with her to move towards confirmation, and I look forward to working with her for four years.
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Chuck Grassley, the Senate judiciary committee chair, began the confirmation hearing for Kash Patel by recognizing the victims of Wednesday night’s plane crash in Washington DC.
Grassley then said that the FBI has the “lowest rating in a century”.
“There’s no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, lack of transparency and weaponization of law enforcement,” he said.
Nevertheless, the FBI remains an “important, even indispensable” institution for law and order in the country, he said.
Addressing Patel, he said the job of FBI director is to restore the public trust and return the institution to its core mission of “fighting crime”.
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Kash Patel, nominated by Donald Trump to be the next FBI director, has entered the Senate judiciary room to begin his confirmation hearing.
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Analysis: RFK Jr testimony offers 'through the looking glass' moment for Democrats
Robert F Kennedy Jr’s testimony was a “through the looking glass” moment for some senators, as lawmakers questioned one of the nation’s most influential vaccine critics for a job as the top US health official.
The hearing was a testament to how quickly Republicans have integrated “Make America Healthy Again” rhetoric into their own, lauding Kennedy, who was called a “predator” only hours earlier in a letter by his own cousin, as the correct man to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
That letter alone, which described how Kennedy put baby chicks and mice into a blender for the birds of prey he keeps as pets, might have been disqualifying in earlier political eras.
But as the Trump administration dominates headlines with nominees, executive orders and new laws, Kennedy’s hearing on Wednesday was one more spectacle where thunderous Democrats attempted to hold a mirror to the nominee, only for him to step right through.
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RFK Jr to face Senate health committee on second day of hearings
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the Senate health committee from 10am ET.
Kennedy’s appearance in front of the health committee comes a day after a bruising performance in a heated three-and-a-half-hour hearing before the finance committee.
During the combative confirming hearing on Wednesday, Democrats confronted one of the US’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, who will possibly be handed the reins of America’s public health system.
The Senate finance committee’s ranking member, Ron Wyden, challenged the 71-year-old Kennedy over seemingly contradictory statements, reading quotes from podcasts in which Kennedy had claimed “no vaccine is safe and effective” while testifying under oath that he supports vaccines. He read another quote from 2020 how Kennedy claimed he regretted vaccinating his children.
“All of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?”
The Colorado senator Michael Bennet accused Kennedy of “peddling half-truths” throughout his career, demanding yes or no answers about past controversial statements. When asked if he had called Lyme disease a “highly likely” military bioweapon, Kennedy said, “I probably did say that,” although he disputed other claims.
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“A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of his pick to be the next FBI director, Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”
If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.
Kashyap “Kash” Patel is the son of Indian immigrants. His parents, of Gujarati ancestry, moved to the US in the 1970s after his father, Pramod, fled the oppressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Pramod became a financial officer for an aviation company.
Patel was born and raised in Garden City, a well-to-do village on Long Island, New York, living in a home that included his father’s eight siblings. In his memoir, he writes of an extended family setting off for Disney World every year in a 15-car convoy and watching the New York Islanders play ice hockey. His official biography on the Pentagon website notes: “Kash is a life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”
Raised Hindu, he was one of the few students of colour at Garden City high school. His senior yearbook quotation, taken from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, was: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”
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Kash Patel, nominated by Donald Trump to be the next FBI director, is expected to face scrutiny on Thursday about whether his loyalty to the president would end the independence of the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency from White House political pressure.
The Senate confirmation hearing comes at a fraught moment for the FBI as its parent agency, the justice department, has been roiled by the demotion of scores of top officials and prosecutors deemed to be insufficiently trustworthy to carry out Trump’s agenda.
The greatest challenge for FBI directors in the Trump era has been the delicate balance of retaining the confidence of Trump while resisting overtures to make public proclamations that are untrue or to open politically motivated lines of inquiry that personally benefit the president.
Patel is unlikely to have such difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.
That so-called list of enemies also stretches to senior FBI officials in Washington, whom Trump has criticized for allowing agents to obtain a search warrant to search his Mar-a-Lago club for classified documents after he left office and Trump ignored a grand-jury subpoena for their return.
Patel’s dramatic views to reshape the FBI added to broader concerns about his fitness for the role after he was accused of lying about obtaining proper clearances that nearly botched a high-stakes hostage rescue operation by Seal Team Six during the first Trump administration in 2020.
Kash Patel to face Senate confirmation hearing for FBI director
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, faces what could be a contentious confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday.
Patel is expected to face scrutiny over his close relationship with Trump, which allowed him to become the frontrunner for the position, and his overall competence to lead the FBI at a time when it has weathered sustained attacks not just from Trump but Patel himself.
The Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET.
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Here’s some more reaction to Donald Trump’s executive order instructing the military to prepare to house 30,000 immigrants at the US naval base in Cuba.
“Guantánamo is a stain on our nation’s honor,” Jerry Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York, said.
For years, I have advocated for its closure, condemning the abuses and glaring lack of accountability that persist there. This massive expansion into a mass detention camp is morally indefensible & raises significant civil liberties concerns.
This is horrific,” Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said.
We cannot allow this level of dehumanization to become normalized. We need to shut down Guantánamo once and for all.
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Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.
Known primarily for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, Trump ordered the preparation of a “migrant facility” that he said would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Here’s our explainer on the detention facility in the US-run military enclave.
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Rights groups condemn Trump Guantánamo Bay order as 'disastrous' and 'indefensible'
Rights groups were swift to condemn Donald Trump’s announcement that he would order the construction of a migrant detention facility in Guantánamo Bay.
Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”.
It argued that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.
The American Civil Liberties Union said building a huge detention facility at Guantánamo would be a “disastrous mistake”.
Sending scores of immigrants to an inaccessible military base in Cuba could enable the government to deprive them of basic human rights, far from lawyers, the press, and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, that appears to be the point.
The International Refugee Assistance Project said Wednesday’s announcement marked “yet another grave and indefensible act by the Trump administration”.
In a statement it said that Guantánamo is “notorious for torture and other egregious, illegal US government action” and that “even during the Biden administration, when only dozens of people were held there typically, rights violations were rampant.”
If that’s what conditions at Guantánamo were like under Biden, what will it be like when Trump requires the military to detain tens of thousands?
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As part of his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, Donald Trump has announced that the US will hold migrants at the notorious Guantánamo military detention facility in Cuba.
The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.
A relatively small number of migrants have been detained at the facility – the New York Times reported that just 37 migrants were held there from 2020 to 2023 – but that could increase dramatically following Trump’s announcement.
On Wednesday, Trump said the facility would hold up to 30,000 immigrants. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately,” he said.
But a US official told CNN that the facilities at Guantanamo Bay are far from prepared to house up to 30,000 migrants. “There’s no way there’s 30,000 beds any more,” the US official said, adding that in order to care for that number of people, the US would have to bring “a lot of military staff” in.
Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the platform’s decision to suspend his accounts in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
The majority of the settlement – $22m – will go toward a fund to pay for Trump’s presidential library, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rest will pay for legal fees and go to other plaintiffs listed in the case.
Following the January 6 attack, Facebook gave Trump the maximum penalty under its rules, suspending his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely.
At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg justified the decision by saying: “We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
Trump responded: “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”
Read the full story here:
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Trump’s abrupt decision to pause all US foreign aid programmes could exacerbate violence in Latin America, driving more migration from a region already struggling with the rise of organised crime, experts have warned.
The US disbursed $1.5bn (£1.2bn) in humanitarian, military, environmental, and economic aid to South American countries in the 2023 financial year, but Trump has suspended almost all US foreign aid for at least 90 days to review whether it is “aligned” with the interests of his administration.
Already, at least three humanitarian organisations have suspended support operations for more than 41,000 people displaced by a recent outbreak of guerrilla violence in Colombia.
Another programme aimed at finding jobs to integrate hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants into Colombian society was also paralysed. In Brazil, two organisations working to assist Venezuelans fleeing Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship shut down their operations and a programme aimed at tackling the commercial sexual exploitation of children was ordered to stop.
“Organized gang violence has been a tragic burden for the region, as well as non-state armed groups,” said Marcia Wong, former deputy assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
“Without assistance, vacuums can develop – allowing exploitation and violence.”
Read the full story here:
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RFK and Gabbard to face confirmation hearings
Some of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks are set to appear before Senate committees as part of their confirmation process today.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the health committee from 10am EST (3pm GMT).
Kennedy appeared before the finance committee on Wednesday and, during a three-and-a-half-hour hearing, was grilled over past comments about the efficacy of vaccines as well as his grasp of the workings of the US healthcare system.
Also appearing at 10am ET, this time before the intelligence committee, will be Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
A Democratic congresswoman until 2021, Gabbard gradually moved away from her old party and last year endorsed Trump, joining him on the campaign trail at several rallies.
Gabbard has faced opposition for comments on topics including Edward Snowden, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Syrian civil war.
In January 2017, she revealed she had travelled to Syria to meet its now-deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A few months later, she said she was “skeptical” about whether the regime had been behind chemical weapons attacks that targeted civilians during the war.
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Here’s the full text of that post from the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, condemning Donald Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
“In an act of brutality, the new US government announces that it will imprison thousands of migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied #Cuba territory, and forcibly expel them, placing them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he wrote on X.
The country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said the base was in “illegally occupied #Cuba territory outside the jurisdiction of US courts” and showed “contempt for the human condition and international law”.
En acto de brutalidad, nuevo gobierno de EEUU anuncia encarcelamiento en Base Naval en Guantánamo, ubicada en territorio de #Cuba ilegalmente ocupado, de miles de migrantes que expulsa forzosamente, a los que ubicará junto a las conocidas cárceles de tortura y detención ilegal.
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 29, 2025
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What has Trump announced about Guantánamo Bay?
As part of his plans to reduce illegal immigration to the US, Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a new detention facility capable of holding 30,000 people at Guantánamo Bay.
He said the centre would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
Guantánamo Bay is best-known as the site of a US naval base on a coastal strip of land in southeastern Cuba that was leased by the US under a treaty in 1903.
A military prison set up on the base in the wake of the September 11 attacks has since been used to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both tried to close the prison but were stopped by Congress.
An existing facility, separate from the prison, is already used by the US to detain migrants intercepted at sea, although it does not appear in public government records and details have only recently surfaced.
As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.
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Trump plan to open migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay an ‘act of brutality’, Cuban president says
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest news from US politics.
First up, the Cuban president has described Donald Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as an “act of brutality”.
Writing on X, Miguel Díaz-Canel said the move would place people deported from the US “next to well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention”.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order instructing officials to prepare a facility capable of holding 30,000 people at the naval base, which over the past two decades has been used primarily to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Trump said the new facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Stay with us for more on that announcement and all the day’s developments.
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