It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, January 30, 2026
Argentina declares emergency over Patagonia wildfires
Argentina's government has declared an emergency over wildfires raging for weeks in four provinces in the remote southern Patagonia region - Copyright AFP/File Martín Levicoy
Argentina’s government on Thursday declared an emergency in Patagonia, where wildfires have ripped through vast tracts of forest since the start of the Southern Hemisphere summer.
The biggest blazes are in southern Chubut province, where at least 45,000 hectares of forest — an area roughly the size of San Francisco — have gone up in smoke since mid-January.
Hundreds of firefighters are trying to prevent the flames reaching populated areas.
President Javier Milei’s spokesman Manuel Adorni said a state of emergency would take effect in Chubut, Rio Negro, Neuquen and La Pampa provinces of Patagonia on Friday.
The measure is expected to facilitate cooperation between provincial and national firefighters.
Los Alerces National Park, a vast reserve of pristine forest and glacial lakes, has been among the worst-affected areas.
In the past few days, colder weather and drizzle have provided some respite for firefighters, the deputy director of the federal emergencies agency, Ignacio Cabello, told El Chubut FM radio.
“Today, the weather conditions helped,” Manuel, a volunteer firefighter in the Chubut town of Cholila, which is threatened by flames, confirmed.
“We are ensuring that the fire doesn’t continue to expand,” the man, who did not wish to give his surname, told AFP.
Another major fire near the small Andean town of Epuyen was said by provincial authorities to be “85% contained.”
The fires have been fanned by high temperatures and strong winds at the height of summer.
ICE LIES
Indication That Alex Pretti Was Known to Federal Agents Raises New Questions Over Protester ‘Database’ The Department of Homeland Security has denied it has a database of protesters or legal observers, but the agency sent a memo to agents asking them to collect data on dissenters in Minneapolis.
A MInneapolis resident films a federal agent in the city on January 24, 2026. (Photo by Arthur Maiorella/Anadolu via Getty Images)
About a week before Alex Pretti was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, he had another encounter with federal officers who objected to him observing an immigration raid, and his name was known to them—raising new questions about the “database” that Trump administration officials and agents on the ground have threatened dissenters with recently.
CNN reported Tuesday that Pretti, the Minneapolis nurse who was fatally shot by Border Patrol agents while acting as a legal observer and trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by one officer, was known to federal officers before his killing last weekend. About a week earlier, he had been tackled by a group of agents who broke his rib when he was protesting the detention of a community member.
The outlet reported that earlier this month, the US Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deployed in the Minneapolis area that provided a form called “intel collection non-arrests,” urging them to fill in personal data about protesters and people the department labeled as “agitators.”
“Capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” the DHS guidance read.
It was not clear whether Pretti’s information was gathered on one of the forms or if the Border Patrol agents last Saturday knew who he was when they fatally shot him after throwing him to the ground on a Minneapolis street.
But the news that he had had a previous encounter and that officers in Minneapolis knew his name came amid numerous reports of federal agents behaving aggressively toward nonviolent protesters, and as top officials in the Trump administration as well as officers on the ground have issued threats to demonstrators and legal observers that DHS would be collecting information about them.
After a video taken by a Maine resident went viral last week, showing a federal immigration agent telling her that she would be considered a “domestic terrorist” by the Trump administration and included in a “nice little database” for filming him, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that such a database exists.
“There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS,” McLaughlin told CNN when asked about the video taken in Maine. “We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults, and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”
Her response didn’t explain why the agent in the video threatened a woman who was merely filming him, an activity that is broadly protected by the First Amendment.
Despite McLaughlin’s denial, President Donald Trump’s own border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News earlier this month that he aimed to “create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”
The White House has frequently claimed that there’s been a “more than 1,000% rise” in assaults against federal immigration agents, but an analysis of federal court records by Colorado Public Radio showed in September that the reports of attacks on officers appeared exaggerated, with the increase closer to 25% from the previous year.
In Pretti’s first encounter with federal agents, he told the source who spoke to CNN that he had stopped his car and began blowing a whistle and shouting when he saw ICE officers chasing a family on foot.
The agents then tackled him and leaned on his back, breaking his rib.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source, who spoke anonymously with CNN out of fear of retribution.
DHS told CNN it had “no record” of the initial encounter with Pretti.
Journalist Jasper Nathaniel said the revelation about Pretti’s earlier encounter showed that it is “completely urgent to identify his killers and investigate whether they had access to the database” that officials have alluded to.
Questions about how the alleged database has been used in Minneapolis and elsewhere were raised as another viral clip taken by a legal observer in the city showed an ICE agent telling him, “You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”
In Maine, legal observers have reported that ICE agents have shown up at their homes to confront them about filming and monitoring immigration enforcement.
One observer, Liz Eisele McLellan, told the Portland Press Herald that one agent said to her: “This is a warning. We know you live right here.”
From Amazon to Home Depot and Beyond, Mass Layoffs Continue to Punish Working Class Under Trump
“When taking into account predicted downward revisions, the data says we’re losing jobs,” said one economic analyst.
Amazon employees work to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days, at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images)
Although President Donald Trump has given himself glowing marks for his economic record, the US job market has continued showing signs of weakness amid recent layoffs from some major employers.
The Associated Press on Thursday published a roundup of corporate layoffs that have been announced in recent months, highlighted by Amazon, which announced it was cutting an additional 16,000 jobs on Wednesday; United Parcel Service, which on Tuesday revealed plans to slash 30,000 jobs; and chemical maker Dow, which on Thursday said it would be reducing its workforce by 3,000
And as reported by CNBC, retailer Home Depot announced on Wednesday that it was eliminating 800 positions as it struggles with slower sales that company executives blame on a dampened housing market caused by high interest rates.
The latest layoffs are not merely anecdotal data, but symbolic of a labor market that has been stuck in a rut for several months. As noted by economic analyst Steve Rattner in a Thursday social media post, average monthly employment growth has been “slightly above zero” ever since Trump first announced his market-shaking tariffs in April.
“When taking into account predicted downward revisions,” Rattner added, “the data says we’re losing jobs.”
This week’s announced Amazon layoffs drew the ire of Americans for Tax Fairness, which pointed out that the Jeff Bezos-founded online retail giant has been the beneficiary of several big-ticket tax breaks for more the last several years.
“We’ve given Amazon $9.5 BILLION in tax breaks over the last 7 years,” the group explained. “And for what? Their CEO made $263 million from 2018-2024. Since 2013, they’ve spent $857 million on stock buybacks and $161 million on lobbying. And they just announced they’re laying off 16,000 workers.”
The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, is reportedly bracing for layoffs of its own.
A Thursday report from Semafor revealed that the Post‘s White House reporters wrote a letter to Bezos imploring him to back off a plan to make substantial cuts throughout the paper’s staff.
“The effort from the Washington Post’s White House reporters comes as staffers are scrambling to preserve their jobs, with layoffs set to hit the newsroom hard in the coming weeks,” Semafor reported. “Unconfirmed rumors have circulated in recent days about the scope of the cuts, which are expected to be as high as 300.”
UN Chief Guterres Warns of ‘Imminent Financial Collapse’ as Trump Pulls Funding
As the world’s largest economy, the US provided nearly a quarter of the UN’s funding. That is, until earlier this month, when Trump stripped hundreds of millions of dollars from dozens of treaties.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres holds a press briefing outlining his priorities for 2026 at the United Nations headquarters in New York, United States, on January 29, 2026. (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Weeks after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from dozens of United Nations organizations, the UN’s chief warns that the UN is at risk of an “imminent financial collapse.”
“The crisis is deepening, threatening program delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28, according to a Friday report from Reuters.
While he did not reference the United States explicitly, Guterres called out the fact that “decisions not to honor assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced,” which almost certainly referenced Trump’s pullout from at least 66 international treaties earlier this month, including 31 within the UN system.
With the stroke of a pen, Trump reneged on the US commitment to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which it has been part of for more than 30 years. He also took the US out of the UN International Law Commission, the UN Democracy Fund, UN Oceans, UN Women, and dozens of other global bodies, deeming them “contrary to the interests of the United States.”
As the world’s largest economy, the US was the largest source of funding for the UN, providing 22% of its regular and peacekeeping budgets as of 2025—about $820 million per year.
The largest single financial cut as a result of the US pullout was the termination of dozens of grants worth approximately $377 million for the UN Population Fund, which focuses on family planning and preventing maternal mortality and sexual violence in developing nations. The organization is estimated to have prevented 39,000 maternal deaths and 18 million unwanted pregnancies in 2024, according to an annual report.
Warning that cash could run out by July, Guterres said, “Either all member states honor their obligations to pay in full and on time–or member states must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse.”
‘MAHA-Washing’: Trump EPA Set to Reapprove Dicamba Despite Pesticide’s Harms “The fact that we’re here again after two failed attempts to fix this broken pesticide shows that Lee Zeldin and his army of industry lobbyists are utterly incapable of protecting the public,” said one expert.
Brad Rose looks at rows of soybean plants that show signs of having been affected by dicamba, which he doesn’t use on his crops, in Mississippi County, Arkansas on August 9, 2017. (Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images)
The US Environmental Protection Agency plans to reapprove dicamba despite the pesticide’s proven health and environmental risks, the Washington Post reported Friday—a move that would seemingly fly in the face of the Trump administration’s pledge to “Make American Healthy Again.”
According to a draft statement obtained by the Post, the EPA called the reapproval “the most protective dicamba registration in agency history,” while noting “several measures” to head off “ecological risks.”
Two EPA officials told the Post‘s Amudalat Ajasa on condition of anonymity that the agency would move to reapprove dicamba next week.
It would be the third time the EPA approved the pesticide. On both prior occasions, federal courts blocked the approvals, citing underestimation of the risk of chemical drift that could harm neighboring farms.
“The fact that we’re here again after two failed attempts to fix this broken pesticide shows that Lee Zeldin and his army of industry lobbyists are utterly incapable of protecting the public,” Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) senior scientist Nathan Donley told the Post, referring to the EPA administrator.
One judge ruled in 2024 that since widespread dicamba drift damaged millions of acres of nontolerant crops, some farmers felt “coerced” to purchase expensive, dicamba-resistant seeds to safeguard their own fields, creating a “near-monopoly” for companies selling the products.
In 2021, the Biden administration published an EPA report revealing that during Trump’s first term, senior officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, before reapproving the dangerous chemical.
A separate EPA report described the widespread harm to farmers and the environment caused by dicamba during the 2020 growing season.
Writing for the New Lede this week, Donley warned that “much like the greenwashing you see at the grocery store, with terms like ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ advertising chemical-laden products on store shelves, Zeldin’s MAHA-washing paints the same rosy picture to distract from decisions that harm public health.”
“We all stand to lose if this pesticide gets the green light,” he added.
‘Totalitarian Nonsense’: Journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort Among 4 Arrested Over Anti-ICE Church Protest
“I don’t care what your political beliefs or leanings are, what journalism outlet you represent,” said one fellow journalist, “this absolutely cannot stand.”
Television anchor Don Lemon, formerly of CNN, arrives at the 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award Gala at the Hilton Midtown in New York City on December 6, 2022. Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were among four people taken into custody by federal law enforcement agents on Friday, arrests that critics say represent a serious—and unconstitutional—escalation against the free press by a Justice Department under the control of President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, both of whom have repeatedly targeted reporters for doing their jobs.
The former CNN anchor had been accused of misconduct by Trump following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that took place inside a Minneapolis church on Jan. 18. While organizers and participants of that protest—aimed at the pastor of the congregation who is also a federal immigration enforcement official—chanted and disrupted the service, Lemon later interviewed the pastor and covered the events as they took place.
Along with Lemon, independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort was named as among those detained in a public statement by Bondi, as well as local political candidates Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy.
In a video posted to social media on Friday morning, Fort reported that federal agents were at her door with signed documents they said authorized her arrest.
According to the Associated Press: Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles, where had been covering the Grammy Awards, his attorney Abbe Lowell said.
It is unclear what charge or charges Lemon is facing in the Jan. 18 protest. The arrest came after a magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge the journalist.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, has said he has no affiliation to the organization that went into the church and that he was there as a journalist chronicling protesters.
Fellow journalists and free-press advocates swiftly came to defense of the journalists arrested and condemned the Trump DOJ over the arrest.
Seth Stern, chief advocacy officer for the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), said the US government’s “arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are naked attacks on freedom of the press. Two federal courts flatly rejected prosecuting Lemon because the evidence for these vindictive and unconstitutional charges was insufficient, and Lemon has every right to document news and inform the public. Instead of accepting that humiliating defeat, the government has now doubled down.”
The arrests, Stern continued, “under bogus legal theories for obviously constitutionally protected reporting, are clear warning shots aimed at other journalists. The unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them. Fort’s arrest is meant to instill the same fear in local independent journalists as big names like Lemon.”
“Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public. This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.” —Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
“They arrested Don Lemon. This is horrifying,” said Jemele Hill, a staff writer with The Atlantic. “I don’t care what your political beliefs or leanings are, what journalism outlet you represent, this absolutely cannot stand.”
Jim Acosta, Lemon’s colleague when they both worked at CNN, also condemned the arrest and declared: “The First Amendment is under attack in America!”
“Don Lemon’s arrest is an egregious violation of the 1st amendment,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, in a statement. “Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public. This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.”
Prior to Lemon’s arrest, a magistrate judge who reviewed the case against the journalist ruled it as insufficient to justify an arrest warrant. But that didn’t stop the Justice Department from pursuing the case further.
The New York Timesreports: Mr. Lemon is scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday morning. Now that he has been arrested, he is likely to challenge the prosecution’s case by arguing that he was not protesting, but rather covering the event as a journalist.
“Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it and talk to the people involved, including the pastor, members of the church and members of the organization,” Mr. Lemon said in a recent video. “That’s it. That’s called journalism.”
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell, Lemon’s attorney, said in his statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
His attorney said Lemon “will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
Victor Ray, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, said, “I’m not a huge Don Lemon fan, but this is totalitarian nonsense meant to threaten anyone who reports on the regime’s horrors.”
FPF’s Stern said the targeting of journalists is even more reason for the others in the profession to stand firmly against the Trump administration’s growing authoritarianism and intimidation tactics.
“The answer to this outrageous attack is not fear or self-censorship. It’s an even stronger commitment to journalism, the truth, and the First Amendment,” he said. “If the Trump administration thinks it can bully journalists into submission, it is wrong. We’ve recently seen that even in the Trump era, public pressure still can work. It’s time to do it again. News outlets across the political spectrum need to loudly defend Lemon’s and Fort’s rights. Journalists are not making themselves the story, Trump is.”
In a joint statement, the leaders of the Not Above the Law coalition, condemned the arrests and blamed Trump directly the DOJ’s assault on press freedom.
“A president who censors and targets journalists attacks every American’s constitutional rights,” the statement declared. “These charges must be dropped, and Congress must hold the Trump administration accountable for its systematic attacks on press freedom. A free press is non-negotiable for a functioning democracy.”
ICE Expected to Flood Ohio Next Week and Round Up Haitians Stripped of Legal Status By Trump
Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder said it sounds like ICE is “gearing up for a pogrom in Springfield, Ohio.” Department of Homeland Security police officers block the entrance of the Bishop Whipple Federal Building while protesters oppose ICE detentions, almost a week after Alex Pretti was killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 30, 2026. (Photo by Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
The Trump administration is expected to flood Ohio with immigration agents next week to target thousands of Haitian migrants after they are stripped of their legal status.
One of the main targets will be the town of Springfield, where President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance infamously concocted the tale that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of white residents to stoke xenophobia during the 2024 election, which unleashed an onslaught of racist threats and intimidation upon the community.
Earlier this week, the Springfield News-Sun received a message sent to staff at the Springfield City School District saying that school officials were expecting a federal immigration enforcement operation to begin in the town sometime after February 3, when Haitian residents’ temporary protected status (TPS) expires, and last at least 30 days.
Given that history and the escalating brutality with which US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has carried out its recent surges in Minnesota and Maine, Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder said he was “getting the impression that ICE is gearing up for a pogrom in Springfield, Ohio.”
“Any day now, a swarm of armed state police dressed for war could descend” on the town, wrote columnist Marilou Johanek in the Ohio Capital Journal. “The small town of Springfield in Clark County is awaiting an invasion of unaccountable thugs who conceal their faces and identities, drive in unmarked vehicles with blackened windows, stomp on the Bill of Rights, and viciously brutalize human beings based on race and accent.”
The 15,000 Haitians living in Springfield are among around 30,000 in Ohio and more than 500,000 across the US who are expected to lose TPS on Tuesday after it was abruptly revoked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year. The expiration could be halted by US District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes, who is expected to issue a decision on February 2.
If not, “they could potentially be arrested, detained, or put in removal proceedings unless they have already applied for some other form of relief they have in addition to TPS, or that they are applying for in addition to TPS,” explained Emily Brown, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law’s Immigration Clinic Director to the Journal.
While the Trump administration has often emphasized its supposed targeting of those in the US unlawfully, editor-in-chief David DeWitt at the Journal emphasizes that “Haitians are currently in the United States legally,” under TPS, which grants temporary legal status to those in danger from armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions in their home countries.
The Haitians living in the US are at risk of being deported back to what has been described as “the most dangerous country in the world,” in the midst of a gang war that killed over 8,100 people between January and November 2025, according to the United Nations.
“They are not here illegally,” DeWitt wrote on social media. “Trump is revoking their legal status on February 3, and then, according to reports, immediately sending ICE in to Springfield and Columbus, Ohio, to target them.”
As part of a crusade to end migration from impoverished “Third World” countries, Trump has ramped up his use of racist invective against Haiti in recent months, proudly referring to it as a “shithole country” at a rally in December after denying having described it that way back in 2018.
Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, told the Journal that rumors of the coming surge have struck terror into the hearts of many in the community.
“The folks are fearful,” Dorsainvil, who came to the United States from Haiti in 2020, said. “They came here just to work and send their kids to school and be here peacefully. All of a sudden, they find themselves in another scenario where they’re not accepted… They are panicked, and the worst thing is that they can’t even plan their lives for three months down the road.”
One TPS holder, 41-year-old Pushon Jacques, told the News-Sun that the potential loss of his status “has a big impact.” He said: “I won’t be able to work, I will not be able to provide for my family. It’s a bad situation to be in.”
While the administration has emphasized “self-deportation” as a way to avoid being on the business end of an ICE jackboot, Jacques said: “The situation in Haiti—especially the political situation—has made Haiti unlivable... There is no place in Haiti that is safe right now.”
Local reports say residents are already preparing for their town to come under siege, and despite the White House’s portrayal of Haitians as loathed outsiders, many others in the community have come out to support them.
Churches are running immersive role-playing sessions to train community members on what to do if ICE agents attempt to storm their doors, and residents have constructed phone chains to alert vulnerable community members when agents are spotted.
The Springfield City Council, meanwhile, has passed a resolution urging federal agents to comply with city policies that prohibit police from wearing masks and require them to carry identification, though the city has no authority to enforce them.
“Springfield is a good place,” Jacques said. “I like the environment and the people, because Springfield has a lot of good people... I have never felt any racism, and I feel appreciated.”
Despite attacks from the leaders of his party, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has defended his state’s Haitian community, telling the statehouse bureau, “I don’t think it’s in our interest in this country for all the Haitians who are working, who are sometimes working two jobs, supporting their family, supporting the economy, I think it’s a mistake to tell these individuals you can no longer work and have to leave the country.”
According to a spokesperson for DeWine, there has been no formal communication between federal authorities and the governor about ICE’s plans for the state. However, DeWine said, “If ICE does in fact come in, comes in with a big operation, obviously we have to work this thing through and make sure people don’t get hurt.”
The ACLU of Ohio said it will be monitoring the situation in Springfield closely for unconstitutional actions.
“This despicable surge in lawless ICE officers descending upon Springfield will ignite swells of fear within the Haitian community, terrorize our Black and Brown neighbors, and cause considerable damage to citizens and non-citizens alike,” said ACLU Ohio executive director J. Bennett Guess.
“Following the government’s senseless, brutal killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, it is clear that ICE poses a grave threat to all who call Ohio home,” he continued. “The ACLU of Ohio urges state and local elected officials to do everything in their power to protect the 30,000 Haitians living in Central Ohio. We call on the US Congress to reject a DHS budget that allows these lawless agencies to continue putting our communities in danger.”
‘I just got hit’: CNN reporter struck by pepper ball live on air during chaotic protest
A chaotic scene unfolded Friday live on CNN as anti-ICE protests escalated in downtown Los Angeles, where reporter Veronica Miracle visibly struggled on camera.
During a live report from the demonstration, Miracle broke into a coughing fit after she and others in the area were hit with pepper spray.
“OK, I just got hit. Hold on. Hold on…I can’t breathe!” she said, gasping as she continued her report on “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
“Take your time, take your time…let’s make sure Veronica’s OK,” CNN anchor Erin Burnett said.
Miracle, whose leg appeared to be struck by a projectile that left a white mark on her jeans, described the scene Friday as something she had never seen before in her years covering protests in the area.
“We just all got pepper-sprayed, and so I’m just still recovering from that,” the CNN correspondent said. “There’s so much of the pepper spray still in the air, and so many people around us coughing and gagging, including us.”
“I’ve never seen this before,” she added. The protest began earlier in the day at City Hall and grew increasingly intense as demonstrators made it onto ICE property, according to the live report.
Despite the intense scene, Miracle continued to report live as demonstrators, many of whom wore gas masks, continued in Los Angeles and other major cities across the U.S.
From Business Closures to Student Walkouts, Communities Across US Demand: ‘ICE Out!’
“It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!”
Children held signs in front of a house as protesters marched in Minneapolis against Immigration and Customs Enforcement on January 10, 2026. (Photo by Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Communities across the United States are protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement and showing solidarity with its victims on Friday and into the weekend with small business closures, school walkouts, rallies, and other expressions of dissent as President Donald Trump’s army of masked goons continues to terrorize American cities.
A map and schedule of actions nationwide—spurred by the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the detention of young children, and other horrors—can be viewed here.
Many of Friday’s actions were organized by student groups in Minnesota—a flashpoint of Trump’s assault on immigrant families and those protesting ICE abuses—and backed by organizations across the country, from the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign to the Boston Education Justice Alliance.
“The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country—to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN,” organizers said. “On Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work, and no shopping.”
“The entire country is shocked and outraged at the brutal killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. by federal agents,” they continued. “Every day, ICE, Border Patrol, and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear. It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!”
High school students are among those set to participate in Friday’s mass demonstrations. The Sacramento Bee reported that students “planning a district-wide walkout Friday morning, joining a nationwide student effort to protest immigration enforcement following fatal shootings in Minneapolis.”
“This is a peaceful walkout demonstration to show that the students in California’s capital do not stand with ICE,” Michael Heffron, a student organizer, told the local newspaper. “It’s also to show solidarity to those in Minnesota—the protesters who have been killed, those who have been injured for standing up for their own civil rights.”
Additionally, hundreds of businesses nationwide, including in Maine and Minnesota, are closing their doors Friday—or donating their proceeds for the day to groups that support immigrant communities—as part of the protest against ICE as federal agents continue their lawless rampage.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said he is “not at all” pulling back ICE activities in Minnesota, even after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Friday’s actions come amid a high-stakes fight over ICE reforms on Capitol Hill. On Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked an appropriations bill that included $10 billion for ICE, and the Democratic leadership reached a deal with the Trump White House to extend Department of Homeland Security funding at current levels—with no reforms—for two weeks while negotiations move forward.
Britt Jacovich, a spokesperson for MoveOn Civic Action, condemned the agreement, saying in a statement that “Leader Schumer should ask the Minnesotans who are watching their neighbors get killed in cold blood if a deal with no plan to stop ICE is enough right now.”
Friday’s protests will be followed by more demonstrations on Saturday under the banner, “ICE Out of Everywhere.”
“We are responding to people’s outrage. We’ve seen the Overton window shifting,” said Gloriann Sahay, a national coordinator with 50501, which organized Saturday’s actions. “We’re seeing people from typically non-political spectrums get involved in this conversation and say: ‘This doesn’t feel like America.’”
'Nothing but green lights': Leaked memo shows ICE expanding warrantless arrest powers
Federal officers carrying out U.S. immigration enforcement near Rockville, Maryland, U.S., REUTERS/Leah Millis
Federal immigration agents have quietly been granted sweeping new authority to arrest people without warrants, according to a leaked Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. The internal memo, issued this week amid escalating tensions over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, significantly lowers the standard ICE agents must meet to justify a warrantless arrest. Rather than determining whether someone is unlikely to appear for future immigration hearings, agents are now instructed to consider whether a person might simply leave the scene.
“The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person,” the Times reported Friday.
The memo – signed Wednesday by Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, and circulated to all ICE personnel – cites a federal statute allowing warrantless arrests when a person is “likely to escape.” Lyons criticized ICE’s prior interpretation as “unreasoned” and “incorrect.”
“An alien is ‘likely to escape’ if an immigration officer determines he or she is unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained,” Lyons wrote in the memo, according to the Times.
Former senior ICE officials warned that the change effectively guts the standard warrant requirement.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, called the new definition “an extremely broad interpretation of the term ‘escape.’”
“It would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” she told the publication.
Scott Shuchart, a former Biden-era ICE policy, said the memo “bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval.” But Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted that the guidance “is not new.”
“This is simply a reminder to officers,” she wrote in a statement to the Times to keep “detailed records on their arrests.”
Trump rages at protesters in late-night defense of Kristi Noem: ‘They should be in jail'
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a House Republican members conference meeting in Trump National Doral resort, in Miami, Florida, U.S. January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
President Donald Trump late Friday issued a vigorous defense of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while accusing protesters and Democrats of “criminal acts” and declaring they “should all be in jail.”
In a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform, the president claimed that “Radical Left Lunatics, Insurrectionists, Agitators, and Thugs,” were targeting Noem “because she is a woman, and has done a really GREAT JOB!"
“The Border disaster that I inherited is fixed, the violent criminals that were allowed into our Country through Sleepy Joe’s ‘sick’ Open Border Policy, are largely gone, or being strongly sought for purposes of removal, and the Murder Rate in the USA just reached the lowest level in history, 125 years!” Trump wrote Friday.
He then unleashed his vengeance on Democrats and the protests that have unfolded in Minnesota and major cities across the nation.
“Republicans, don’t let these Crooked Democrats, who are stealing Billions of Dollars from Minnesota, and other Cities and States from all over the Country, push you around,” Trump said in the post. “They are using this aggressive protest SCAM to obfuscate, camouflage, and hide their CRIMINAL ACTS of theft and insurrection. They should all be in jail.”
Trump concluded that he “was elected on Strong Borders, and Law and Order, among many other things,” before thanking Noem.
He ended by writing, “Remember, ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!”
Minutes later, Trump posted again to praise border czar Tom Homan, whom he made responsible this week for the crackdown in Minnesota.
“Border Czar (Plus!) Tom Homan is doing a FANTASTIC JOB. He is one of a kind. Thank you Tom!!!” Trump told his followers.
Video shows ICE agents trying to force entry into Ecuador's consulate in Minneapolis
Ecuador lodged a complaint after claiming that at least one U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent tried to force his way into the country's diplomatically protected consulate in Minneapolis.
According to Reuters, Ecuador's Foreign Ministry sent a "note of protest" to the U.S. Embassy, insisting that future incidents "not be repeated."
Ecuador's protest described Monday's incident as an "attempted incursion into the Ecuadorean Consulate in Minneapolis by ICE agents."
In a videoobtained by BN, consulate staffers could be seen blocking an ICE agent.
"This is a consulate, you cannot enter here," one of the staff members says in the video.
