President Donald Trump meandered through a list of his administration’s accomplishments before taking shots at the United Nations and doubling down on what he sees as a need for the U.S. to control Greenland while speaking at a White House press briefing Tuesday.
The rare, nearly two-hour appearance comes on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, and the day before he’s scheduled to deliver a key address to an audience of global elites and billionaires
at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
There, he’ll have a chance to confront the increasing pushback from NATO allies over his approach to Greenland and his latest retaliatory tariffs.
More details are also expected on Trump’s ballooning ambitions for the Board of Peace, the Trump-led group of world leaders originally intended to supervise the Gaza ceasefire plan, which he suggested Tuesday could soon broker peace during global conflicts and replace the U.N.
The White House previously said Trump’s remarks at Davos would focus on his affordability agenda for housing.
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“I have very firm instructions — anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth,” Trump said in an interview on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight.”
Iran on Tuesday warned Trump not to take any action against the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, days after the U.S. president called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign.
“Trump knows that if any hand of aggression is extended toward our leader, we not only cut that hand but also we will set fire to their world,” said Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces.
Trump has previously said he’s given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if the country is behind an assassination of him.
It’s a boy, Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, said Tuesday while announcing they’re expecting their fourth child in July.
The couple’s growing family already includes three young kids: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.
Vance, 41, and his wife, 40, said they were excited to share the news and that both mother and baby were doing well.
It’s exceptionally rare for the occupants of the highest leadership roles in the U.S. to have children while in office. One well-documented exception was President Grover Cleveland, whose wife, Frances Cleveland, gave birth to their second child in 1893 during his second term in office.
Lawyers for the California Republican Party filed an emergency application asking Justice Elena Kagan to temporarily reinstate the previous district lines while the party appeals a court decision that greenlighted the new map for this year’s elections, when control of Congress will be on the line.
In a divided decision last week, a federal three-judge panel in Sacramento turned away a complaint that accused California of violating the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters when drawing the new district lines, which voters approved in November.
Republicans currently hold nine of California’s 52 congressional seats.
The Supreme Court last month opened the way for Texas to use congressional district boundaries favorable to the GOP that were pushed by Trump. California’s revamped maps were a response to Trump’s maneuvers in Texas.
Student are protesting Monday against immigration enforcement in Minnesota in multiple locations.
Hundreds gathered Monday at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta in a demonstration organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Organizers oppose immigration enforcement, the U.S. removal of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela in an early January military raid and President Donald Trump’s push for the U.S. to take control of Greenland from Denmark.
“We’re here as part of a nationwide shutdown to demand that ICE stop terrorizing our communities. We demand justice for Renee Nicole Goode, as well as saying no war in Venezuela,” said Stephan Sellers, a senior at 51,000-student Kennesaw State and organizer with Students for Socialism and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
“Us students, working class people of this country, can’t even afford housing or education,” Sellers said “And so we say that we should fund our people’s needs, not war, not racist deportation.”
U.S. military forces boarded and took control of a seventh oil tanker connected with Venezuela on Tuesday as the Trump administration continues its efforts to take control of the oil in the South American country.
U.S. Southern Command said in a social media post that U.S. forces apprehended the Motor Vessel Sagitta “without incident” and that the tanker was “operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”
The military command did not say whether the U.S. Coast Guard took control of the tanker as has been the case in prior seizures.
▶ Read more about seized oil tanker
Rep. James Comer is rejecting an offer from former President Bill Clinton to have him and the committee’s top Democrat interview Clinton in New York about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Comer is threatening to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against both Bill and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday following months of clashes over having them deposed as part of the committee’s investigation into Epstein.
Comer said that Clinton’s offer would not allow for an official transcript of the interview and that it is “an indefensible demand that is insulting to the American people who demand answers about Epstein’s crimes.”
He is also insisting that Hillary Clinton appear for a sworn testimony before the committee.
Stocks sank on Wall Street after President Donald Trump threatened to hit eight European countries with new tariffs as tensions escalate over his attempts to assert American control over Greenland.
The S&P 500 fell 2.1% Tuesday, its biggest drop since October. Technology stocks were the biggest weights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8%. The Nasdaq composite slumped 2.4%. T
rump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from the eight European nations. European markets also fell, while gold prices surged. Long-term Treasury yields rose in the bond market.
▶ Read more about S&P 500 drop
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev met with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in Davos on Tuesday and told reporters afterwards that the meetings were going “constructively” and that “more and more people realize the correctness of Russia’s position.”
He didn’t elaborate and didn’t offer any details about what was discussed. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier on Tuesday told reporters that Dmitriev had plans to meet with unspecified U.S. delegates in Davos.
Asked about Dmitriev’s agenda, Peskov said that the envoy’s main focus is “trade, economic, and investment cooperation,” but “at the same time, Kirill Dmitriev is transmitting information to and from both sides regarding the peace process in Ukraine.”
Trump in his inaugural address last year and during the transition spoke of retaking the Panama Canal.
But Trump in recent months has been relatively quiet about the issue after claiming that China was “operating the Panama Canal” and “we’re taking back.”
Trump’s complaint is that the United States, the shipping lane’s biggest user, was “being severely overcharged and not treated fairly.”
Asked if the U.S. reclaiming the canal was still on the table, Trump demurred.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” the president responded.
Trump’s at-times rambling briefing included a split second of religious reflection.
A reporter asked Trump if he believed God was proud of him, after the president had last year said he believed he got into office because God put him there to save the world.
“I think God is very proud of the job I’ve done, and that includes for religion,” Trump replied. “We’re protecting a lot of people that are being killed. Christians, Jewish people, lots of people are being protected by me that wouldn’t be protected by another type of president.”
“I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy,” Trump responded, when asked near the end of his press conference about whether splintering was worth his pursuit of the Arctic territory that belongs to Denmark.
That was a notable shift from the text message from Trump to Norwegian prime minister on Monday that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of peace.”
Trump repeated his position that the U.S. needs to take control of the territory for the sake of U.S. national security.
The president left the briefing room after speaking and answering questions for nearly two hours.
French President Emmanuel Macron this week called for an emergency meeting in Paris with European leaders to address tensions with the U.S. over the Trump’s pursuit to acquire Greenland as well as tariffs.
Trump told reporters that he would not attend the meeting, in part because Macron would not be leading his country for much longer.
Earlier this week Trump shared private texts from Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on social media.
The president will use a key address in Davos on Wednesday to highlight his administration’s accomplishments, he told reporters.
“I think more than anything else, what I’m going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we’ve had in one year,” he said. “I didn’t think we could do it this fast.”
The White House had previously said the remarks, in a room likely to be occupied with global elites and billionaires, would focus on Trump’s affordability agenda, particularly on housing.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Trump said he thought other countries needed to hear advice from him on energy and immigration.
Trump repeated his criticism of plans by Britain to lease a military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago.
He said that he favored Britain ownership of the island, saying it’s in a “reasonably important area of the globe” though not in as critical a spot as Greenland.
“I think they should keep it,” Trump said of British ownership of the base, suggesting that maybe the United Kingdom needed the money.
“It might,” Trump said when asked about a reporter his envisioned Board of Peace should replace the United Nations. “The U.N. just hasn’t been very helpful. I’m a big fan of the potential, but it has never lived up to its potential.”
But Trump added, “I believe you got to let the U.N. continue, because the potential is so great.”
Trump said he likes French President Emmanuel Macron and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, even as both have had some negative feedback for him lately over his ratcheting up of aggression toward Greenland.
Asked about his relationship with the foreign leaders, Trump said they “get a little bit rough” when he’s not around but “when I’m around they treat me very nicely.”
While he called Macron “a friend of mine,” he also said both left-leaning leaders have “got to straighten out their countries.”
“I wish we didn’t need a Board of Peace,” Trump said. “You know, with all the wars I settled, the United Nations never helped me on one war.”
Trump’s Board of Peace was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing the Gaza ceasefire plan. But the Trump administration’s ambitions have ballooned into a more sprawling concept, with Trump extending invitations to dozens of nations and hinting it will soon broker global conflicts, like a pseudo-U.N. Security Council.
Trump often tells the same stories many times over, but on Tuesday he added a new one, as he talked about signing an executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums.
Amid listing off what he sees are his top accomplishments over the past year, Trump waxed nostalgic as he told a story of walking to Little League practice with his mother, reminding reporters he was “quite the baseball player.”
Querying his mother on bars over windows on a psychiatric hospital in Queens, which he said “loomed over the block,” Trump says she told him that “very sick” people lived there.
Creedmor Psychiatric Center is still operational but the property has fulfilled various roles through the decades.
A migrant shelter was operational there until last year, and in November, New York officials approved a development plan to include residences.
“It’s a joke,” Trump fumed about the prize to reporters. “They’ve lost such prestige.”
Trump in a message to European officials made public this week linked his aggressive stance on Greenland to last year’s decision not to award him the Nobel Peace Prize, telling Norway’s prime minister that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
Trump also waved aside comments from Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who issued a statement on Monday noting that the Norwegian government holds no sway over who is receives the Peace Prize.
“And don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots. OK?” Trump said. “It’s in Norway.”
Trump has spent a full hour at the briefing room podium with no signs of stopping.
First, he brandished photographs of people allegedly arrested in Minnesota. Later, he began rattling off his administration’s “wins” from a prepared packet. Throughout, it’s been a speech full of variety and plenty of tangents.
The president shared a laundry list of accomplishments, including executive orders he’s signed and his administration’s move to increase law enforcement in the nation’s capital.
He’s been especially focused on immigration and deporting alleged criminals. Foreign policy talk has been scarce so far, even as tensions with Europe have escalated over his aggression toward Greenland.
Federal prosecutors served six grand jury subpoenas Tuesday to Minnesota officials as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed or impeded federal law enforcement during a sweeping immigration operation in Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a person familiar with the matter said.
The subpoenas, which seek records, were sent to the offices of Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties, the person said.
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The subpoenas are related to an investigation into whether Minnesota officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement through public statements they made, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. They said then it was focused on the potential violation of a conspiracy statute.
▶ Read more about Justice Department subpoenas
The president claimed that the immigrants his administration has removed from the U.S. make the Hells Angels “look like the sweetest people on Earth,” only to then pause for an aside during Tuesday’s news briefing and compliment the infamous motorcycle gang.
“I like the Hells Angels,” Trump said. “They voted for me. They protected me, actually.”
A former leader of the Hells Angels, Chuck Zito, did join with Trump at a Manhattan courthouse last year. The president likes to discuss his general love of bikers. But it was unclear whether the outlaw motorcycle gang has ever been contracted to provide security for Trump.
The Hells Angels infamously provided security at a 1969 concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, an event that broke out in violence and led to multiple deaths.
“We slashed tremendous numbers from federal payroll,” Trump said during the press briefing, adding that millions of federal workers were terminated by the Trump administration.
Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said last September that there would be roughly 300,000 fewer federal workers on the payroll nationwide by the end of 2025. The government employs roughly 2.5 million workers, including military members.
Trump said the fired workers are “getting much better jobs and much higher pay.”
From the start of Trump’s second term one year ago, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by his then-adviser Elon Musk, instigated purges of federal agencies with the expressed mission of rooting out fraud, waste and abuse.
Thirty minutes into his time in the White House briefing room, Trump has yet to mention the foreign policy issues dominating much of the conversation around his recent moves including Venezuela, Iran or Greenland.
He’s been recently criticized by some of his base supporters for focusing too much on foreign issues and not enough on domestic matters, like food prices.
Later Tuesday, Trump heads to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum in Davos. The European leaders already in place have made it clear Trump’s assertions about taking over Greenland are tops on their agenda.
Trump used the podium to draw a line on deportations — saying his administration is focused on criminals, not others living in the U.S. illegally.
“We have a lot of heart for people, they came in illegally but they’re good people and they’re working now in farms and they’re working in luncheonettes and hotels,” the president said. “We’re looking to get the criminals out right now, the criminals.”
His comments come as immigration agents in Minnesota have been accused of searching and detaining multiple people who don’t fit that description.
Over the weekend, in one such incident, a U.S. citizen without a criminal record was detained at gunpoint without a warrant, his family told the AP. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the operation as a “targeted operation” seeking two convicted sex offenders.
The U.S. president gave a somewhat meandering defense of his declaration of an economic emergency to impose tariffs, saying the law is clear to him but he doesn’t know how the Supreme Court will rule in a pending case challenging the legality.
Trump said at a news briefing that the government can restrict trade by requiring licenses and that tariffs could be less severe. But Trump stressed, “I don’t know what the Supreme Court’s going to do.”
“If we lose that case, it’s possible we’re going to have to do the best we can in paying it back,” Trump said. “I don’t know how that’s going to be done very easily without hurting a lot of people.”
The president used emergency tariffs to negotiate trade frameworks and on Saturday threatened tariffs on eight European nations in hopes of forcing those countries to back U.S. ownership of Greenland.
There was a thud in the briefing room as Trump tossed the thick stack of papers he said contained the accomplishments of his first year back in the White House onto the floor.
Printed sheets spread out on the carpeting near reporters’ seats, after which Trump turned toward talking about inflation and shifting toward criticism of the Biden administration’s economic policies.
Just before Trump dropped the files onto the floor, there was the snap of a binder clip, which he said didn’t hurt him, but that he wouldn’t have shown if it had.
“I would have acted like nothing happened as my finger fell off,” Trump said.
The president is meandering through the first minutes of his press briefing with reporters. It’s been a low-energy speech so far.
Trump spent several minutes leafing through photographs and descriptions of people allegedly arrested in Minnesota, asking reporters at one point, “You’re not getting bored with this, right?”
He also referred to the packet of “wins” from his administration but didn’t immediately get into it, saying instead, “I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn’t be finished.”
As he continued to show mugshots of those he described as “rough” people arrested during federal agents immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, Trump also linked the fraud allegations in the state to its Somali community, which he has also done in the past.
“I’m going through this because I think we have plenty of time,” Trump said, alternating between discussing Minnesota and other issues, including his impending trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump’s administration has urged a judge to reject efforts by Minnesota and its largest cities to stop the surge, calling the lawsuit — filed soon after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration officer — “legally frivolous.”
Entering the briefing room with a thick stack of papers, Trump said that he had in his first year back in the White House had “done more than any other administration has done by far.”
“It’s been an amazing period of time,” Trump said, thumbing through the pages.
Trump addressed reporters alone at the podium, with Leavitt standing off to his right. He quickly launched into holding up photographs of people arrested Minnesota, with each saying “Minnesota worst of the worst.”
The president has entered the room to kick off a scheduled White House press briefing.
He’s expected to highlight his administration’s accomplishments on the anniversary of his 2025 inauguration. Journalists in the room were given a 31-page handout on that topic, listing what it said were “365 WINS IN 365 DAYS.”
Rep Robin Kelly, D-Illinois, last week introduced an impeachment resolution against Noem.
The effort is backed entirely by Democrats and represents nearly half of the party’s caucus in the House of Representatives.
“Our communities have seen ICE’s Gestapo-like tactics firsthand,” said Kelly in a statement. The Illinois Democrat argued that ICE had engaged in “Gestapo-like tactics” and that the department continued to “lie, obstruct Congress, and violate people’s civil rights.”
The resolution contends that Noem “violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and due process rights of American citizens by directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” among other grievances.
Former British lawmaker Rory Stewart says President Trump is “behaving like someone in celebrity wrestling” and engaged in “performative cruelty” in his efforts to strong-arm Denmark and European allies over Greenland.
Asked about the top theme of Davos this year, the Yale university academic said: “The central thing — which has cut like a knife through everything — is Trump’s threats against Greenland, because in a single moment he’s inverted everything. He’s broken rules on state sovereignty, he’s broken domestic law, but most importantly he’s gone after a NATO ally.”
“And he’s then responded to America’s closest allies in the world by threatening them with tariffs,” Stewart added. “He just says, I want it, and if you don’t give it to me, I’m going to punch you. And the problem for Europe is that we now face the classic problem of appeasement.”
President Donald Trump ’s pledges to provoke a sweeping tariff fight with Europe to get his way in taking control of Greenland has left many of America’s closest allies warning of a rupture with Washington that would shatter the NATO alliance that had once seemed unshakable.
The European Union’s top official on Tuesday called Trump’s planned new tariffs over Greenland a “mistake” and questioned Trump’s trustworthiness. French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU could retaliate against its long-standing ally by deploying one of its most powerful economic tools, known colloquially as a trade “bazooka.”
Trump prides himself on ratcheting up major maximum pressure to try and negotiate through a position of strength. He is slated to leave on Tuesday — the anniversary of his inauguration — for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a venue that could give him the chance to defuse tensions as quickly as he has sought to stir them up.
But European leaders — digging in and vowing to defend Denmark and its semiautonomous control over Greenland — may be seeking just as hard to meet an extraordinary moment with their own demonstration of fierce resolve.
▶ Read more about Greenland
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three accompanying destroyers have left the South China Sea and are heading west, a Navy official said.
The ships recently crossed through the Strait of Malacca, a key waterway connecting the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail ship movements.
While Navy and other defense officials stopped short of saying the carrier strike group was headed to the Middle East, its current heading and location in the Indian Ocean means its only days away from moving into the region.
It comes as tensions remain high between the United States and Iran over the crackdown on protests. President Donald Trump drew two red lines for the Islamic Republic — the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran conducting mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.
This would not be first time in recent years that a carrier strike group deployed to the Pacific only to be moved to the Middle East to address instability in the region. The Abraham Lincoln previous deployment in 2024 also saw the carrier rerouted to the Middle East. In June, the USS Nimitz strike group also was ordered to the region.
— Konstantin Toropin
Trump is expected to appear at Tuesday’s White House press briefing to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of his second term.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt teased the surprise in a post on X, saying, ’A very special guest will be joining me at the podium today.... TUNE IN.”
The rare appearance comes as the president has faced extraordinary pushback from America’s European allies over his planned tariffs over Greenland, tensions he’ll face in person this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
A super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced a $42 million investment to support Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, a seat widely viewed as pivotal for control of the chamber.
Republicans are eager to hold the seat to maintain their majority, even as President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Collins, saying she and other Republicans who backed a war powers resolution “should never be elected to office again.”
Despite Trump’s attacks on incumbents, Thune is working to keep the GOP majority intact. In a press release, the fund said the purchase marks “the first reservation of the cycle and the organization’s largest ever investment in Maine.”
A coalition of doctors’ groups and public health organizations are asking a judge to nullify the U.S. government’s recent decision to cut the number of vaccines recommended for every child.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other organizations sued the U.S. government in July in an attempt to overturn Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to stop recommending COVID-19 shots for most children and pregnant women.
The plaintiffs have since then asked a judge to undo Kennedy’s decision to fire and replace an advisory panel of vaccine experts. An amendment this week seeks to reverse Kennedy’s trimming of the childhood vaccine schedule.
With two weeks before a government shutdown deadline, House and Senate negotiators unveiled another multi-bill package — this time, to fund Defense Labor, Health, Transportation and Housing departments past Jan. 30, when current money expires.
The bills boost funding in most areas, and claw back some of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts.
“This latest funding package continues Congress’s forceful rejection of extreme cuts to federal programs,”said House Appropriations Committee Ranking Democratic Member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.
While much progress has been made toward funding government for the year, still up for debate is funding for the Department of Homeland Security as immigration enforcement operations roils the nation.
The negotiators largely agreed to hold ICE spending flat, since so much money, some $75 billion is already available through Trump’s big tax cuts bill. But the package does not include many of the restraints Democrats are seeking on immigration enforcement and deportation operations.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff says he believes the Board of Peace proposal has “overwhelming support,” even though some allies like France have balked at joining.
“Everybody believes this is the pathway to bringing people together and being egalitarian about the decisions,” he told The Associated Press in Davos. “The president wants to save lives, and this is going to be a very important platform.”
As for Ukraine, one of his other key dossiers, Witkoff said he hoped that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who earlier on Tuesday said he had no plans to travel to Davos, would be able to meet with Trump.
“It’s tough for him to travel, but I’m hopeful that he’ll get here and we’ll meet him — with him — on Thursday with the president.”
China has bought 12 million tons of U.S. soybeans as promised, the U.S. treasury secretary told Fox News on Tuesday after meeting with Chinese Vice President He Lifeng on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
“He told me that just this week they completed their soybean purchases, and we’re looking forward to next year’s 25 million tons,” Bessent said. “They did everything they said they were going to do.”
Beijing had paused purchasing U.S. soybeans last summer during Trump’s trade war but later agreed to resume buying from American farmers. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show China bought more than 8 million tons of U.S. soybeans by Jan. 8, and its daily reports indicated that China placed several more orders since then, ranging from 132,000 tons to more than 300,000 tons.
Mikie Sherrill, the four-term congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot who cast her November election in New Jersey as a victory over Trump’s vision for the country, was inaugurated on Tuesday as the state’s 57th governor.
Sherrill is just the second woman to lead the state of nearly 9.5 million people, succeeding two-term Democrat Phil Murphy. She swept to victory over her Trump-endorsed GOP rival in part by pinning blame for high costs on the president’s tariffs and promising to order a freeze on skyrocketing utility rates.
Her former congressional colleague Abigail Spanberger also took office as a governor, after a similar double-digit victory over her Republican opponent in Virginia. Democrats are hopeful the president will be a drag on GOP candidates in key races across the country.
Republican leader Mike Johnson delivered a historic speech to the British parliament early Tuesday, the first U.S. House speaker to address the body.
But his talk came as Trump is bitterly lashing out at America’s most trusted allies. The U.S. president posted overnight that the United Kingdom is acting with “GREAT STUPIDITY” in national security, as he intensifies his own claims to forcibly take Greenland in the Arctic.
Johnson said he spoke with Trump ahead of the visit, and insisted his mission was to celebrate the two countries, what “we’ve achieved together in the past, and importantly to face and overcome together the challenges of our present day.”
“I told the president that I felt that my mission here today was to encourage our friends and help to calm the waters, so to speak,” he said. “And I hope to do so.”
“It’s an honor to share with you, after the endorsement and encouragement from the president, the president of the United States, Trump, that today I will officially be announcing my candidacy for the U.S. Senate,” she said, according to audio of her speech, obtained by The Associated Press.
A reliable Trump vote, Letlow won a 2021 special election after her husband died of COVID complications shortly after winning the congressional seat. She didn’t mention Cassidy during her 18-minute speech Tuesday, instead emphasizing her support for the Republicans’ sweeping domestic policy and tax bill Trump signed.
“Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!” Trump posted on posted on Truth Social on Saturday, pitting the White House against the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has endorsed Cassidy as part of its tradition of backing incumbents.
Cassidy posted on X that Letlow had called him to say she was running. “She said she respected me and that I had done a good job. I will continue to do a good job when I win re-election.”
Letlow announced her decision during a Tuesday breakfast in Baton Rouge, according to three people with knowledge of the event who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly.
The development further complicates Cassidy’s difficult reelection path and effectively marks the final failure of his attempts to placate the president after voting to convict Trump on impeachment charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Cassidy, a physician who was an outspoken critic of Republican health care policies before entering politics himself, incensed Louisiana conservatives with his 2021 support for Trump’s conviction.
He later tried to return to the fold, casting himself as a member of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, and provided the decisive vote to advance Robert Kennedy Jr.’s controversial nomination as health secretary, despite expressing concerns about Kennedy’s views on vaccines.
The vice president is scheduled to speak at an industrial shipping facility in Toledo to promote Trump administration efforts to address inflation and other economic issues, especially the impact in the Midwest.
Vance and Trump are making an effort to travel throughout the U.S. to speak more to voters’ concerns about affordability ahead of pivotal midterm elections this November that could set control of Congress. They both visited Pennsylvania last month as part of a White House effort to speak to economic anxieties.
The U.S. Department of Justice is urging a federal judge to reject a move to stop the immigration enforcement surge that has roiled the Twin Cities area.
Its memo filed Monday evening calls the lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul “legally frivolous” and asked U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez to deny it. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the mayors of the two cities sued after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, provoking outrage and protests across the country.
The memo argues that Minnesota is safer because Operation Metro Surge has arrested more than 3,000 people in the country illegally, and that “Put simply, Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement.”
Menendez ruled separately Friday that federal officers in Minnesota can’t detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing agents arresting people.
The justices handed down decisions in three other cases Tuesday.
The court heard arguments two-and-a-half months ago in a challenge to the president’s authority to impose wide-ranging tariffs under an emergency powers law that, before last year, had never been used to levy tariffs.
The issue has arguably taken on more urgency as Trump threatens new tariffs on allies because of disagreements over Greenland.
The court took on the case on an expedited basis, raising the prospect of a quick decision. But the court is about to embark on a nearly monthlong break and the next scheduled day when decisions are possible is February 20.
A Palestinian baby girl died from hypothermia on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip, another casualty of grim humanitarian conditions in the territory as world leaders gather at a Swiss resort with Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan high on the agenda.
Shaza Abu Jarad’s family found the 3-month-old “freezing, and dead” on Tuesday morning in their tent in Gaza City, the baby’s father, Mohamed Abu Jarad, told The Associated Press by phone after a funeral.
He lives with his wife and their seven other children in a makeshift tent, one family among the hundreds of thousands sheltering in tent camps and war-battered buildings in the cold, wet winter. Their baby was the ninth child to die from severe cold this winter in Gaza, according to the strip’s health ministry. Israel disputes the ministry’s war casualties toll but has not provided its own.
With Republican control of Congress, even if Congress wanted to curtail Trump’s immigration operations — by threatening to shut down the government, for example — it would be difficult to stop the spend.
What Trump called the “big, beautiful bill” is essentially on autopilot through 2029, the year he’s scheduled to finish his term and leave office.
The legislation essentially doubled annual Homeland Security funding, adding $170 billion to be used over four years. Of that, ICE, which typically receives about $10 billion a year, was provided $30 billion for operations and $45 billion for detention facilities.
Congress will need to consider routine funding for Homeland Security by Jan. 30 or risk a partial shutdown in some operations.
The GOP’s version of the annual bill would provide about $92 billion for the agency, including $10 billion for ICE. A growing group of Democratic senators and the Congressional Progressive Caucus say they won’t support additional funds without significant changes.
Lawmakers are considering various restrictions on ICE operations, including limiting arrests around hospitals, courthouses, churches and other sensitive locations and ensuring that officers display proper identification and refrain from wearing face masks.
“I think ICE needs to be totally torn down,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., on CNN over the weekend. “People want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals,” he said, and not what he called this “goon squad.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has warned Democrats that “they need to get out of the way and allow federal law enforcement to do its duty.”
The US treasury secretary was asked at Davos about the emergency summit E.U. leaders are planning in response to U.S. plans for Greenland.
“I would say exactly what I said after Liberation Day last April, when the President imposed tariff levels on the whole world. I tell everyone sit back, take a deep breath. Do not retaliate. Do not retaliate. The President will be here tomorrow, and he will get his message across,” Bessent said.
Macron says Trump’s threats could push the EU to use the mechanism to block American companies from accessing European markets “for the very first time.”
“Can you imagine that?” Macron said Tuesday at Davos. “This is crazy.”
It’s not time for “new imperialism or new colonialism,” Macron said. “Let’s not accept a global order which will be decided by those who claim to have, I would say, the bigger voice or the bigger stick.”
Instead of trade disputes, allied countries should be focused on bringing peace to Ukraine and focus on the global challenges of “growth, peace, climate,” he said.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in response to a question from The Associated Press that his government has had good meetings with NATO and its allies and that all western countries should be united by “respect for national, territorial integrity (and) respect for international law.”
Nielsen pointed out that Greenland has been “a close ally of the United States to NATO many, many, many years” and is “willing to cooperate much more.”
Speaking earlier at parliament in Copenhagen, Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen also stressed that Denmark had been a “loyal and close ally” for many years, but “nevertheless, we are now being threatened by our closest ally.”
Fredriksen told party leaders during question time in parliament on Tuesday that “the worst may still be ahead of us.”
A stunning military intervention in Venezuela. Telling the New York Giants which coach to hire. Threats against Iran, Denmark, Greenland and Colombia. Posing ith someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize. Dangling the potential of deploying U.S. troops in Minneapolis. Flipping off a critic. Announcing an aggressive round of tariffs. Threatening political enemies. For President Donald Trump, this blizzard was just the first half of January.
If a president’s most valuable currency is time, Trump operates as if he has an almost limitless supply, commanding constant attention with little regard for consequences, leaning more toward virality than virility, with social media as his primary accelerant.
“The president exists loudly,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “The president will play with fire. I haven’t seen him yet play with live hand grenades, but I’ve seen him come damn close. That’s just the way he is, and it’s not going to change.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s attention-grabbing second term
A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.
Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, and the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Republicans in Congress is now fueling unprecedented immigration enforcement actions in cities like Minneapolis and beyond.
As the president marks the first year of his second term, the immigration enforcement and removal operation that has been a cornerstone of his domestic and foreign policy agenda is rapidly transforming into something else — a national law enforcement presence with billions upon billions of dollars in new spending from U.S. taxpayers.
The Department of Homeland Security announced in December that it had arrested and deported about 600,000 people and that 1.9 million others had “voluntarily self-deported” since January 2025.
▶ Read more about Trump’s ICE force
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says world leaders should “have an open mind” about Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland.
“Greenland is becoming more and more attractive for foreign conquest” and the president “believes that it must be part of the United States to prevent a conflict,” Bessent said during a conversation with Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo, Tuesday on the sidelines of Davos.
U.S. futures tumbled alongside global markets early Tuesday after Trump threatened to hit eight NATO members with new tariffs as tensions escalate over his attempts to assert American control over Greenland.
Futures for the S&P 500 sank 1.8% while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.6%, almost 600 points. The tech heavy Nasdaq slumped 1.8%.
Markets in Paris, Frankfurt and London all fell more than 1% and were on track for a second straight day of losses.
Silver and gold both rose to records again as investors sought safety amid heightened geopolitical tensions. Gold was up 3% at $4,733 an ounce while Silver jumped more than 7% to $95.30.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives predicts that tensions will ultimately calm down and that “just like over the last year the bark will be worse than the bite.”
▶ Read more about developments in financial markets
A startled British government on Tuesday defended its decision to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after Trump attacked the plan, which his administration had previously supported.
Trump said that relinquishing the remote Indian Ocean archipelago, home to a strategically important American naval and bomber base, was an act of stupidity that shows why he needs to take over Greenland.
The blast from Trump was a rebuff to efforts by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to calm tensions over Greenland and patch up a frayed trans-Atlantic relationship. Starmer on Monday called Trump’s statements about taking over Greenland “completely wrong,” but called for the rift to be “resolved through calm discussion.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on the Chagos Islands
While Europe is pushing back publicly against Trump over Greenland, the language appears softer behind the scenes.
Trump published a text message on Tuesday that he received from French President Emmanuel Macron, confirmed as genuine by Macron’s office.
Starting with “My friend,” Macron’s tone was more deferential than the criticism that France and some of its European partner nations are openly voicing against Trump’s push to wrest Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
Before broaching the Greenland dispute, Macron opted in his message to first talk about other issues where he and Trump seem to be roughly on the same page.
“We are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran,” the French leader wrote in English.
Then, he added: “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” immediately followed by: “Let us try to build great things.”
That was the only mention that Macron made of the semi-autonomous Danish territory that Trump covets in the two sections of message that Trump published. It wasn’t immediately clear from Trump’s post when he received the message.
▶ Read more about the messages
Trump plans to use a key address Wednesday to try to convince Americans he can make housing more affordable, but he’s picked a strange backdrop for the speech: a Swiss mountain town where ski chalets for vacations cost a cool $4.4 million.
On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump is flying to the World Economic Forum in Davos — an annual gathering of the global elite — where he may see many of the billionaires he has surrounded himself with during his first year back in the White House.
Trump had campaigned on lowering the cost of living. But in office, he has devoted more time to cavorting with the wealthy than talking directly to his working-class base.
Trump’s attention in his first year back has been less on pocketbook issues and more fixed on foreign policy with conflicts. He is now bent on acquiring Greenland to the chagrin of European allies — a headline likely to dominate his time in Davos, overshadowing his housing ideas.
▶ Read more about Trump at Davos
The European Union’s top official on Tuesday described Trump’s planned new tariffs over Greenland as “a mistake especially between long-standing allies” and called into question Trump’s trustworthiness, saying that he had agreed last year not to impose more tariffs on members of the bloc.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was responding to Trump’s announcement that starting February, a 10% import tax will be imposed on goods from eight European nations that have rallied around Denmark in the wake of his escalating calls for the United States to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.
“The European Union and the United States have agreed to a trade deal last July,” Von der Leyen said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And in politics as in business – a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something.”
She vowed that the EU’s response “will be unflinching, united and proportional.”
Trump has insisted the U.S. needs the territory for security reasons against possible threats from China and Russia.
▶ Read more about von der Leyen’s comments
