Top Democrat calls firing of FBI officials 'deeply alarming'
Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice-chair of the Senate intel committee, called the Trump administration’s decision to fire top FBI officials “deeply alarming”.
“At a time when we are facing a multitude of threats to the homeland – from terrorism and espionage to drug trafficking and Salt Typhoon – it is deeply alarming that the Trump administration appears to be purging dozens of the most experienced agents who are our nation’s first line of defense,” Warren said in a statement.
At least six senior FBI officials were told to to retire, resign or be fired by Monday. Agents who worked on the investigation of the 6 January Capitol riot could also be fired as soon as today, CBS reported citing sources.
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The Illinois governor JB Pritzker has directed the state’s hiring authority, the department of central management services, to reject any 6 January rioters who apply for state government jobs, NBC News first reported.
In a memo to the authority, Pritzker wrote that the state’s personnel code “requires the rejection of candidates for State employment who have engaged in infamous or disgraceful conduct” and that “any participation in the January 6 insurrection” should qualify as such conduct.
“These rioters were accused or convicted of a combination of felonies and misdemeanors, including but not limited to: violence against law enforcement officers, threats against Members of Congress, destruction of federal property, and many other crimes,” the memo reads. “These crimes attacks threatened public safety as Members of Congress, staff, and other workers who were forced to hide from the violence for hours. I am committed to building a State workforce that upholds our shared values and delivers results for the people of Illinois. Our State workforce must reflect the values of Illinois and demonstrate honesty, integrity, and loyalty to serving the taxpayers. No one who attempts to overthrow a government should serve in government.”
Ed Martin, interim US attorney, has fired more than two dozen federal prosecutors who worked on 6 January riot cases, the Washington Post reported, citing sources.
The prosecutors received an email notifying them they were being terminated at 5pm on Friday, according to the Post. The memo also directed them to retain all documents related to “personnel decisions regarding attorneys hired to support” 6 January casework.
The US will reportedly start moving migrants to Guantánamo Bay in 30 days
House border czar Tom Homan told the Washington Post that they will “hopefully” start moving migrants to Guantánamo in 30 days.
“Hopefully within 30 days we’ll start moving people there,” Homan said.
Trump initially said Guantánamo would hold 30,000 migrants but Homan said they would start with a small number at first.
Top Democrat calls firing of FBI officials 'deeply alarming'
Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice-chair of the Senate intel committee, called the Trump administration’s decision to fire top FBI officials “deeply alarming”.
“At a time when we are facing a multitude of threats to the homeland – from terrorism and espionage to drug trafficking and Salt Typhoon – it is deeply alarming that the Trump administration appears to be purging dozens of the most experienced agents who are our nation’s first line of defense,” Warren said in a statement.
At least six senior FBI officials were told to to retire, resign or be fired by Monday. Agents who worked on the investigation of the 6 January Capitol riot could also be fired as soon as today, CBS reported citing sources.
The US Census Bureau website is also down as of 5.31pm ET.
Federal Aviation Administration website goes dark
As of 5.27pm ET, the FAA website was not accessible. The link, FAA.gov, directed to a blank page that said: “This site can’t be reached.” The site went dark after the Trump administration said they would put a pause on most government websites by 5pm today.
We haven’t seen any federal websites that have gone dark as of yet, though Reuters is reporting the US Census website is down for some. We are still able to access it for the moment.
Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis
Gabrielle Canon
On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered the US agriculture department to remove its websites documenting or referencing the climate crisis.
By Friday, the landing pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.”
In a directive issued by the United States Department of Agriculture’s office of communications, officials instructed website managers across the agency to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change”, according to Politico. It also included a Friday deadline to list the mentions in a spreadsheet for further review. As of publication, the USDA’s Climate Hubs – helpful sites that connect producers to local programs and research – are still live.
The move is just one in a dizzying flurry of orders issued in the first two weeks of the Trump administration as it attempts to drastically reshape the federal government and halt key investments made to blunt the effects of global heating.
Trump repealed environmental protections put in place by Joe Biden, declared a misguided energy emergency to hasten already-booming fossil fuel extraction, and withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
The administration also added confusion and chaos within federal agencies by halting hiring and pausing projects, along with issuing a widespread buyout offer that would guarantee federal workers pay and benefits through September 2025 if they resign within the next week.
It’s unclear what the agencies will do with the websites or the policies and studies once detailed on them; links to the landing pages are still live, even if the information on each page has been blocked.
Read more:
A government memo sent on Wednesday directed agencies to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and email signatures by Friday 5pm ET.
Some changes that were implemented:
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The office of personnel management directed staff to remove pronouns from email signatures and shutter employee resource groups.
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The Bureau of Prisons renamed a website titled “inmate gender” to “inmate sex” and no longer included a list of trans inmates.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down health information including a fact sheet about HIV and trans people; lessons on how to create a supportive environment in schools for trans and non-binary students; and information about National Transgender HIV Testing Day and contraception.
Trump administration planning to pause most federal government websites - report
CBS News is reporting that most federal government websites are expected to go dark at 5pm ET.
We’ll update as we get more details.
The justice department announced that John Harold Rogers, a former senior adviser to the Federal Reserve, was arrested for allegedly conspiring to steal trade secrets and share them with China, according to Reuters.
Rogers was an adviser in the division of international finance between 2010 and 2021. He allegedly shared economic data and sensitive information about interest-rate discussions with Chinese co-conspirators while pretending to teach in China.
Trump official claims large number of federal employees have taken buyout offer
A large number of federal employees have taken the Trump administration’s offer of a financial buyout to resign.
Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he didn’t have an exact number of federal employees who had taken the financial payout to resign from their posts, but that initial briefings indicate it’s a significant number of workers, according to Reuters.
Trump offered about 2 million federal employees buyouts in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
Trump says 'something substantial' with tariffs coming to EU and details products affected
Hi there, Johana Bhuiyan taking over.
We have a few more details from Donald Trump on the tariffs he plans to impose on Canada, Mexico and China. The US president told reporters that he plans to place tariff on products like chips, oil and gas and that the tariffs on oil and gas should be expected by 18 February.
Earlier, he said he planned to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico, 25% tariff on Canada, and 10% tariff on China. Now, he has said he will decrease the tariffs on Canadian oil to 10%, according to Reuters.
He also said he plans on “doing something substantial” with tariffs on the European Union.
His earlier announcement of tariffs sparked a stock market sell-off, as Wall Street fears a coming trade war. Trump said he wasn’t worried about the stock market disruptions and acknowledged that tariffs may result in “short-term” disruptions and that the costs are sometimes passed down to consumers, according to Reuters.
Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during Donald Trump’s first term, according to new guidance issued on Friday by the education department.
In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by the former education secretary Betsy DeVos.
The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.
Colleges have already been returning to DeVos’s 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision in effect ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.
A statement from the education department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls”.
State department workers ordered to remove pronouns from email signatures by end of day
Joseph Gedeon
US state department employees must scrub gender pronouns from their email signatures by Friday evening, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian.
The directive came from former ambassador Tibor P Nagy, now the acting under-secretary for management, writing to staff that the department was also launching a comprehensive review to eliminate what he called “gender ideology” from government communications and programs.
“The Department of State is reviewing all agency programs, contracts and grants that promote or incubate gender ideology,” Nagy wrote in the email. “All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5pm today.”
Trump administration to fire FBI agents involved in investigations of Trump – reports
The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials by firing FBI agents who had been engaged in investigations into Donald Trump, according to multiple reports.
Officials acting at the direction of the administration have spent the last week working to identify individual employees who participated in politically sensitive investigations for possible termination, Associated Press reports.
It is not yet clear how many agents will be affected. At least six senior FBI agents have been ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, CNN reports. According to Reuters, the senior FBI officials are based in major cities including Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans and Las Vegas.
The FBI Agents Association has called the reported planned firings “outrageous actions by acting officials [that] are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents”.
Donald Trump will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday.
The US president invited the Israeli prime minister earlier this week to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House, in a major concession to a US ally who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes.
A letter from the US leader said it would be his “honor” to host Netanyahu as his first foreign leader during his second term to “discuss how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries”.
“There will be a single working meeting 4 February and more details will soon be forthcoming,” Reuters reports, citing a US official.
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