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A rioter who was pardoned by Donald Trump for the felony he was convicted of in the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 has pleaded guilty to a harassment charge over threats to kill the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries.

“The tax law that congressional Republicans and US President Donald Trump enacted last summer has proved to be a massive boon for Amazon, slashing the corporate behemoth’s 2025 tax bill even as its profits surged and it moved ahead with mass layoffs that have cost 30,000 workers their jobs since October.

Elon Musk’s “Vegas Loop,” a network of underground tunnels to ferry passengers in Teslas, was under fresh scrutiny this week from Nevada lawmakers who raised concern about alleged workplace safety and environmental violations.

“Women are on the upswing to power,” Jeffrey Epstein wrote in October 2017 to a friend. “Their methods I might not agree with but I recognize the weapons are limited.”

Christy Ratliff is sitting in a folding chair in a public school gym in Grundy, Virginia, waiting for her number to be called. She arrived at 4 a.m. on this October Saturday to secure her position in line to have eight teeth pulled. Genetic gum disease, she explains, has left most of them rotten or broken. She hooks a finger to pull down her lip and show me gruesome damage—the kind most dentists see only in textbooks.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260206200450/https://www.staradvertiser.com/2026/02/06/breaking-news/dhs-shutdown-looms-as-senate-immigration-talks-sputter/

Ohio voting advocates say the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has no authority to investigate voter fraud after the department’s visit to Ponitz Career Tech High School in Dayton to investigate alleged voter fraud Monday

State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss “preparations” for this year’s midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” in violation of the Constitution.

A growing number of Los Angeles-area politicians are calling on Olympics chief Casey Wasserman to step down after recently released files included a series of flirty emails between him and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell from 2003.

Federal immigration agents flooding U.S. streets are using a new surveillance tool kit whose increasing use on observers and bystanders is alarming civil liberties advocates, lawmakers and activists.

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For months, the Trump administration has justified its dramatic midnight raid on a Chicago apartment complex by saying that it had intelligence that the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building. But officials have provided no evidence to back up the claim.

Fridley and Duluth schools, along with the state teachers union, are suing the Trump administration to keep federal immigration agents off school property.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued the ruling Thursday, blocking the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration from sharing taxpayer data with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Judge Talwani said the DHS’ claim that noncitizens lack Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures is ripe for abuse.

The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.

A US court has ordered Uber to pay $8.5m (£6.2m) to a woman who said she was raped by a man driving for the ride-share company in a legal ruling that could influence the outcome of thousands of other cases against the company.

Noam Chomsky’s life and work cannot be understood without taking into account his militarily-funded linguistics research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)…

“Hosting the Games is already accelerating policing, displacement, inequality, and exploitation in some of our city’s lowest-income communities — and, now, it’s being coordinated hand-in-glove with Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security,” says Chris Tyler, SAJE’s communications director. “At this point, these intersecting harms will not be reduced in any meaningful way unless we cancel.”

Millions of reports of AI-enabled abuse haven’t stopped xAI, Grok’s parent company, from rolling out new and more powerful AI tools. On Sunday, xAI introduced a new version of its AI generative video model on X, Grok Imagine 1.0.

Archived copies of the article: * archive.today * ghostarchive.org

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries released a list of policies to impose “guardrails” on DHS on Wednesday night, including by restricting immigration agents from wearing masks and requiring them to display an ID and use body cameras. The Democrats also demanded agents be banned from entering private property without judicial warrants, along with requiring agents to verify that someone is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention, among other things.

*The popular squishy toy exploded after Caleb Chabolla put it in the microwave, Loyola Medicine said.*

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260206123429/https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-immigration-customs-enforcement-private-prisons-geo-group-corecivic

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El Paso County leaders, immigration lawyers and advocacy groups say ICE officials are leaving people to languish in harsh conditions in hopes that they will choose to self-deport, even if some have temporary legal status or may be eligible for asylum.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260206122932/https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/02/04/pursued-by-federal-agents-suburban-ice-observers-remain-resolved

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U.S. District Judge James Hanlon said it’s likely that Juan Espinoza Martinez, 37, is entitled to a bond hearing that could lead to his release. Espinoza Martinez has been in federal custody since his arrest on murder-for-hire charges in early October, records show.

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This is what Polymarket posted

*As Nashville’s utility company struggled to recover from a catastrophic ice storm and its Democratic mayor ordered a review, some conservatives attacked diversity training.*

*At least two cases confirmed at detention center for children and their parents in Texas*

*Destruction of world’s largest humanitarian programme was done without formal authority or official oversight, former USAID employees claim*

*Brody King, competing against wrestler MJF in the ring at the Vegas match, has been outspoken against ICE and organized campaigns to raise money supporting immigrant communities.*

Daily tasks, like grocery shopping, have come to a standstill for Thi Dua Vang and her husband, A Pao Giang.

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THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE has quietly signed a $210 million deal to buy advanced cluster shells from one of Israel’s state-owned arms companies, marking unusually large new commitments to a class of weapons and an Israeli defense establishment both widely condemned for their indiscriminate killing of civilians.

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In 2025, as immigrant arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement soared, so did the demand for health care providers to staff hastily constructed detention centers.

They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost.

A U.S. senator sent a cryptic letter to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, conveying alarm about the agency’s operations.

When family members arrived on the scene in Eagle County, Colorado, their loved ones had already been disappeared by federal agents. But what they found inside the vehicles was disturbing: a customized ace of spades playing card — popularly known as a “death card” — that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

What happened to freedom of expression?? I’m sorry, but I hope the crowds let their feelings be known, good, bad or indifferent.

Dramatic cuts to the Washington Post are being met with outrage as employees and the broader journalism community try to understand how such a storied institution could unravel so quickly.

“The U.S. withdrawal exacerbated an already bad situation,” said Sherine Ibrahim, a former head of the Afghanistan office of the International Rescue Committee, which received three-quarters of its funding from the U.S. government. “No other donor has stepped in and no one will in those proportions.”

There is a shift happening in the labor force that favors men in general, and white men in particular. And Black women—who historically have found more job security and upward mobility in federal employment—are now seeing those federal jobs slip away in record numbers.

Casey Wasserman, who is leading preparations for the 2028 Summer Games, has expressed “regret” after messages he exchanged with Ghislaine Maxwell decades ago surfaced.

On the night of Jan. 7 this year, three 250-pound bombs smashed into an apartment block in the Al Tuffah neighbourhood of northern Gaza. Footage of the aftermath shows walls collapsed, rubble piled up and blackened household items scattered across the scene.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260205123043/https://www.npr.org/2026/02/05/nx-s1-5699413/poll-trump-ice-immigration-economy-approval

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Months before two fatal shootings in Minneapolis by Border Patrol agents, Gregory Bovino, who until last week was overseeing the agency’s immigration enforcement operations, pushed back against internal efforts to temper his aggressive approach, according to an email that was obtained by NBC News.

The bills aim to end ICE 287(g) agreements in Maryland, which at least eight counties have, including Washington County. The measure passed 99 to 40 in the House of Delegates and by 32-12 in the Senate.

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Renee Good’s brothers on Tuesday told Democrats they were disheartened that so little had changed since their sister, a 37-year-old mother of three, was killed by federal immigration agents.

New files released by the Justice Department show Jeffrey Epstein joking about being in a “pariahs club” and discussing the fate of powerful men who had been accused of wrongdoing.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260205123326/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/trump-attempted-assassination-florida-life-sentence

The Justice Department is requiring all US attorneys to rapidly assign prosecutors for “emergency jump teams” supporting districts handling alleged assaults or obstruction of law enforcement, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Virginia’s then-Governor Glenn Youngkin rushed to assist President Trump’s deportation agenda last year, ordering the state agencies under his control to join ICE’s 287(g) program, which gave them the power to make civil immigration arrests. He also pushed local sheriffs and police chiefs to join the program and help round up immigrants.

NEW YORK (AP) — The federal agency for protecting workers’ civil rights revealed Wednesday that it is investigating sportswear giant Nike for allegedly discriminating against white employees through its diversity policies.

Americans are exceptionally anxious about their political system, according to new international polling from Gallup, a situation that sets the country apart from other rich and powerful nations.

The Supreme Court is allowing California to use its new congressional map for this year’s midterm election, clearing the way for the state’s gerrymandered districts as Democrats and Republicans continue their fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Trump administration said it was drawing down the number of immigration enforcement officers deployed in Minnesota, following weeks of unrest in Minneapolis where 2 people have been killed in altercations with US immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents.

In the guidance released Tuesday evening, the education agency said students, teachers or school districts participating in “inappropriate political activism” could face the following consequences:

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260204202122/https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5698189/rep-rosa-delauro-talks-about-whats-ahead-as-congress-negotiates-dhs-funding

A new tranche of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein revealed several communications with William J Burns, a career diplomat who would go on to become the central intelligence director under Joe Biden.

The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.

The Trump administration will withdraw 700 federal immigration agents from Minnesota “effective immediately,” border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday.

The Washington Post is expected to announce mass layoffs Wednesday morning, dealing a significant blow to a storied media company and a newsroom that has reached a breaking point.