Trump officials announce ‘largest operation in DHS history’ as 800 border agents flood into city alongside ICE
Federal officers in Minneapolis used teargas and eye irritant against activists on Tuesday as the Department of Homeland Security announced it was carrying out “its largest operation in DHS history”, deploying hundreds of border agents on top of the thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents already in the city.
A DHS official told CBS News that there were currently 800 Customs and Border Protection agents and 2,000 ICE officials in the Minneapolis area as tensions have risen in recent days.
Groups say EEOC demand for names and personal details echoes dark history and threatens safety and civil rights
Several faculty groups have denounced the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information about Jewish professors, staff and students at the University of Pennsylvania – including personal emails, phone numbers and home addresses – as government abuse with “ominous historical overtones”.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses. But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers.
Study from research firm finds that US greenhouse gas emissions grew faster than economic activity last year
In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released on Tuesday.
The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of datacenters and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by Donald Trump’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say.
Experts say obscuring plane’s military identity would constitute a war crime
The US aircraft that carried out the first airstrike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean was reportedly disguised as a civilian plane – a possible war crime.
The New York Times reported that the aircraft had been painted to obscure its military identity, and its munitions were hidden inside its fuselage rather than visible under its wings.
Dr Ezekiel J Emanuel, a former Obamacare adviser, has deceptively simple advice for living a healthy life
Being healthy shouldn’t feel this complicated. Yet every week brings a new wellness fixation, from “fibermaxxing” to “zone 2 training”, creatine and cortisol-hacking.
Between prescriptive plans, complex science and often contradictory advice, it can seem like being healthy is a full-time job – or a hopeless cause.
Attacking Jerome Powell distracts from Republicans’ thin legislative record and policies that continue to squeeze American household incomes
The US government’s authoritarian and vexatious attack on Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, should be seen in the light of America’s affordability crisis, which Donald Trump once dismissed, but is now scrambling to claim as his cause. The cost of living is eroding his support ahead of the congressional midterms. By launching a legal assault on the Fed, Mr Trump is trying to shift blame for borrowing costs.
Yet despite controlling the presidency, Senate and the House, Republicans have passed little beyond a large tax-cutting bill that benefits the rich. They have not legislated on housing supply, childcare, healthcare costs or wages. Indeed most of their actions are worsening affordability, notably deferring action even though millions face a sharp rise in their health insurance bills. Mr Trump’s sudden enthusiasm for credit card caps and housing interventions is pure opportunism.
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Defense secretary says AI tool will join military systems later this month as it comes under fire for sexual imagery
Pete Hegseth announced on Monday that the US military will begin integrating Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks.
Speaking at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas on Monday evening, the US defense secretary said that the integration of Grok into military systems would go live later this month. “Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said.
Ballot initiative, opposed by the ultra-wealthy, would levy one-time 5% tax on individuals worth more than $1bn
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, renewed his pledge this week to fight a controversial plan to tax billionaires in the state. The proposed ballot measure, which could go to voters in November, has gained public attention recently amid heavy criticism and threats from tech moguls to leave the state.
In interviews with Politico and the New York Times published on Monday, Newsom described his office’s efforts to kill the proposed billionaire tax and told the Times he would “do what I have to do to protect the state”. As a direct-to-voters ballot initiative, Newsom would not have the power to veto the tax if the proposal passed.
Cartoonist – who was dropped from US papers in 2023 after calling Black people a ‘hate group’ – had prostate cancer
Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the satirical comic strip Dilbert and conservative commentator, has died aged 68 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
On Tuesday, Adams’s ex-wife Shelly Miles revealed his death in a tearful livestream of his YouTube channel Real Coffee with Scott Adams.
Donald Trump may not be unafraid to use military force against Iran, according to the White House, but the reality is the US president has few to no options that could obviously help that country’s protest movement, never mind the fact that the history of US intervention in the region has hardly been a success.
Emboldened by the seizure of the erstwhile Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, after an operation that took months of planning, Trump talked up military intervention against the Iranian regime with no military pre-positioning having taken place. In fact, there has been a drawdown in the last few months, reducing military options further.
A study has shown the devastating impact of arts funding cuts on institutions across America and many within the industry are concerned for what’s next
From Times Square to the Washington Monument, America saw in the new year with a bigger bang than usual, celebrating the fact that 2026 marks the nation’s 250th birthday. Yet as the US looks back, precious repositories of the nation’s history are facing an uncertain future.
Museum attendances are down. Budgets are precarious. Cuts in federal funding are taking their toll. And Donald Trump’s culture wars are spreading fear, intimidation and self-censorship among some directors and donors.
Star overtook Scarlett Johansson after success of third Avatar – her films have now made more than $15.46bn worldwide
Zoe Saldaña has become the highest-grossing actor of all time.
The 47-year-old Oscar winner has overtaken Scarlett Johansson after the success of Avatar: Fire and Ash added more than $1.2bn to her total. Saldaña’s films have now made more than $15.46bn worldwide, according to the Numbers.
Island’s PM tells media event with Danish counterpart ‘we choose Denmark’ and will not be owned or governed by US
Greenland’s prime minister has said “we choose Denmark” before high-stakes talks at the White House as Donald Trump seeks to take control of the Arctic territory.
Amid rising tensions over the US president’s push, Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Tuesday told a joint press conference with his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, that the island would not be owned or governed by Washington.
Donald Trump has told Iranians to keep protesting and said help was on the way, in the clearest sign yet that the US president may be preparing for military action against Tehran.
“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, a day after the White House press secretary said airstrikes were among “many, many options” the US president was considering.
US president uses winding speech trailed to be on affordability to attack immigrants
Donald Trump is heading to Detroit, Michigan today, where he’ll tour a Ford factory in Dearborn.
The president will deliver remarks to the Detroit Economic Club at 2pm ET, to continue his “affordability” tour, where he’s expected to tout the administration’s commitment to revitalising manufacturing and keeping costs down.
Actor denies allegations of abuse centering on two preteen boys in video statement: ‘I’m going to confront these lies’
The actor and director Timothy Busfield surrendered on Tuesday to New Mexico authorities, four days after they obtained a warrant to arrest him on child sexual abuse allegations, according to officials.
The Albuquerque police department spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos confirmed Busfield turned himself over to officers after it was widely reported that the agency was working with US marshals to search for the Emmy winner.
The US president invokes the usual suspects – drugs, organised crime, illegal migration – but this is simply a grab for resources and power
In the early hours of 3 January, Caracas and other cities in Venezuela were bombed and the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, was kidnapped along with his wife by US military personnel. In addition to the 100 deaths recorded so far as a result of the attack, approximately 100 more were caused by US attacks on small boats in the previous months, under the pretext of combattingdrug trafficking. Although it seems clear that the real intention of Donald Trump’s administration was to seize Venezuela’s wealth, the initial argument to justify the military deployment in the Caribbean was that it was to fight the illegal drugs trade and stop the flow of migrants that the Venezuelan government was allegedlycausing by emptying prisons of criminals and sending them to the US.
As a criminology professor who has studied Venezuelan drug trafficking for 20 years, I find this far-fetched. To understand this, we have to consider Venezuela’s historical role in drug trafficking. As a typical Andean country neighbouring the world’s main coca producers, Venezuela has always played a significant role as a cocaine corridor. Since the turn of the century, its involvement in international drug trafficking has increased significantly as a result of growing European demand for cocaine, the effects of 2000’s Plan Colombia, which displaced illegal operations to border regions and neighbouring countries, and the breakdown of technical cooperation with Washington.
Andrés Antillano is a social psychologist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela
US president is suing for defamation over documentary that joined two parts of speech he made on 6 January 2021
President Trump is expected to come under pressure to make rare disclosures about his properties and business interests as part of his $10bn lawsuit against the BBC, the Guardian understands.
Trump is suing the BBC for defamation over a Panorama documentary that spliced together two parts of the president’s address to a rally on 6 January 2021. The BBC has already apologised and said the edit was misleading, but has denied it defamed Trump.
Less than two weeks into the year, the US is stoking mayhem at home and abroad – with midterms coming in the autumn
Have we ever seen a year in recent memory begin with as much deliberate turmoil as 2026 has? Less than two weeks into 2026, we have witnessed Donald Trump deploy US forces to depose and abduct the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, along with Cilia Flores, his wife and close political adviser. The US president then informed the world that the United States would “run” Venezuela for the time being, which he later explained could potentially last for several years.
Trump has also threatened – and then seemingly made peace with – the president of Colombia; seized at least five oil tankers in the Caribbean (actions that UN experts label illegal armed aggression); promised US military strikes targeting cartels in Mexico against the wishes of Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum; and frightened the people of Cuba with the prospect that Marco Rubio could be their next president.
Global central banks have issued an extraordinary joint statement offering “full solidarity” to the US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, in the face of the latest threat to his independence from Donald Trump’s White House.
“The independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability,” the statement said.
If enacted, Utah and Oklahoma measures would restrict litigation against oil companies over role in climate crisis
US lawmakers in two red states are attempting to shield the fossil fuel industry from climate liability.
In Oklahoma, a newly introduced bill would bar most civil lawsuits against oil companies over their role in the climate crisis, unless plaintiffs allege violations of specific environmental or labor laws. A similar proposal in Utah would block lawsuits over climate-warming emissions, unless a court finds the defendant violated a statute or permit.
The inquiry into the Federal Reserve chair sends a message to anyone standing in Trump’s way – including the supreme court
News that Donald Trump’s justice department has launched an investigation of Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, is the latest example of the president’s governing philosophy: do what I want, or I will crush you. The desire to make Powell’s life miserable is also a warning sign to anyone who thinks that they have an independent source of authority.
What is happening to Powell is a test, not just for him and the Fed, but for any other person or institution that dares to stand up to the president.
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty
A ruling against two athletes in West Virginia and Idaho could have far-reaching implications for civil rights
The US supreme court on Tuesday appeared poised to uphold laws banning transgender girls and women from competing in female sports in two conservative states, in a landmark legal battle that could carry profound implications for trans rights across US society.
During oral arguments on two cases of trans students who sued over Republican-supported laws in West Virginia and Idaho that barred them from girls sports, one member of the court’s conservative majority after another voiced skepticism about the students’ cases.
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