RFK SHOWDOWN ON HILL

Trump has vowed to deport millions of people living illegally in the U.S., but the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget only has enough funds to detain about 41,000 people.

ICE detains migrants at its processing centers and privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and jails. It has no facilities geared toward detention of families, who account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.

During Trump’s first term, he authorized the use of military bases to detain migrant children. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families caught illegally crossing the border.

U.S. military bases have been used repeatedly since the 1970s to accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

While the U.S. naval base in Cuba is best-known for the suspects brought in after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it also has a separate facility used for decades to hold migrants.

The Migrant Operations Center holds those detained at sea, many from Haiti and Cuba.

The nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project said in a report last year that the migrants are held in “prison-like” conditions. It said migrants there were “trapped in a punitive system” indefinitely, with no accountability for the officials running it.

The U.S. has leased Guantanamo from Cuba for more than a century. Cuba opposes the lease and typically rejects the nominal U.S. rent payments.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel deemed the decision as “an act of brutality” in a message on his X account, and he described the based as one “located in illegally occupied #Cuba territory.”

The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez also lambasted the announcement.

“The US government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture and indefinite detention centers, shows contempt for the human condition and international law,” Rodriguez said on X.

The Defense Department’s intelligence agency has paused observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and other cultural or historical annual events in response to President Donald Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace.

The instructions were published Tuesday in a Defense Intelligence Agency memo obtained by The Associated Press and affect 11 annual events, including Black History Month, which begins Saturday, and National Hispanic Heritage Month.

The memo’s authenticity was confirmed by a U.S. official who said the pause was initiated by the DIA and appears not to be policy across the Defense Department. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Caren Añez, a 41-year-old single mother who requested Temporary Protected Status in 2023 and received it in 2024, after arriving in the U.S. on a tourist visa, said she is very concerned about the latest decision by the Trump administration to revoke deportation protections.

“I’m scared even though I’m here legally and I arrived legally,” said Añez. “I am distraught, seeing how else I can stay here legally.”

Añez said she left Venezuela because she feared being arrested for working as an independent news reporter for a Venezuelan site. She now works as office manager in Texas and said returning home is not an option.

“I cannot enter Venezuela because my life is in danger,” she said.

More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2013, when its economy unraveled and President Nicolas Maduro took office. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the pandemic, migrants increasingly set their sights on the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday that the Trump administration has revoked a decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation, putting some at risk of being removed from the country in about two months.

Noem signed a notice reversing a move by her predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the waning days of the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status. The change is effective immediately and comes amid a slew of actions as the Trump administration works to make good on promises to crack down on illegal immigration and carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history.

“Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months they were going to extend this protection to people that are on Temporary Protected Status, which meant that they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months,” Noem told “Fox and Friends.”

“We stopped that,” Noem said.

While signing his first immigration law, Trump said that some of the people being sent back to their home countries couldn’t be counted on to stay there.

“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re gonna send ’em out to Guantanamo,” Trump said. He said that he would soon sign an executive order directing federal officials to get facilities in Cuba ready to receive migrant criminals.

The move would immediately “double” U.S. detention lockup capacities, he said. Guantanamo, he added, is “a tough place to get out of.”

▶ Read more about Trump’s plan to send migrants to Guantanamo Bay

A former U.S. official who worked on streamlining the federal workforce during former President Bill Clinton’s administration is seeing flaws in President Donald Trump’s federal buyout plan.

Elaine Kamarck, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says buyouts tend to be taken by younger, more talented, employees who have an easier time moving around in the job market. She says that’s particularly troubling for information technology, because the private IT sector pays much better than the government, and there’s a risk of the government losing the most talented people in that field.

During the Clinton administration, Kamarck helped lead a reduction in about 426,000 federal jobs. She says they did it through the lens of restructuring government and with thorough reviews.

She also notes that it’s possible too many employees in general will opt to take buyouts under the Trump plan. If too many people leave, that could result in programs not being run effectively.

The Republican-controlled Senate has confirmed Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s a key role to help President Donald Trump fulfill his pledge to roll back major environmental regulations, including those aimed at slowing climate change and encouraging use of electric vehicles.

The vote was 56-42 in Zeldin’s favor.

Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York, is a longtime Trump ally. He has pledged to be a good steward of the environment and support career staff at EPA, but has declined to commit to specific policies. Trump led efforts to dismantle more than 100 environmental protections during his first term and has promised to do so again.

Democrats are taking a closer look at Russ Vought in the aftermath of the Office of Management and Budget executive orders.

Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee sent a letter to acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Matthew J. Vaeth demanding to know if Vought is currently on the White House payroll.

Is Vought currently serving as “an employee, advisor, or consultant to OMB or any other part of the Executive Office of the President?” Merkley asked. “Is he working out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building?”

Vought is expected to advance toward Senate confirmation in a committee vote this week.

President Donald Trump has launched his second bid to oust all transgender troops from the military, and once again the issue will head to the courts to be decided. (AP Video: Mike Pesoli)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has met with his Canadian counterpart ahead of a looming weekend threat from President Donald Trump to impose massive tariffs on imports from Canada.

Rubio and Foreign Minister Melanie Joly held talks at the State Department on Wednesday amid concerns and counterthreats from Canadian officials over the potential 25% tariffs that could be announced on Saturday.

Neither Rubio nor Joly spoke as they posed for photographs before their meeting and they ignored questions from journalists.

Trump insists the tariffs, which could also apply to imports from Mexico, are necessary to convince the countries to crack down on illegal immigration and the smuggling of Fentanyl precursors.

Rubio this weekend will embark on his first foreign trip as secretary of state, traveling to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic beginning on Saturday.

In the confusion surrounding the temporary freeze on federal grants and loans that the Trump administration imposed on Monday and rescinded on Wednesday, many students were asking online about the impact to the FAFSA form used to apply for financial aid.

But the form apparently remained available. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators said Wednesday it had not received complaints about FAFSA availability from administrators at any schools.

The U.S. Department of Education said the pause would not have applied to direct assistance to Americans such as federal student loans.

▶ Read more on the impact on student loans

Speaking at a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, which is focused on detaining and potentially deporting people in the country illegally if they’re accused of theft and other violent crimes, Trump proclaimed: “We’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”

The U.S. military base in Cuba has been used to house detainees from the U.S. war on terrorism.

▶ Read more on Trump’s announcement

“I’m not going to have any response or comment whatsoever on what the president said,” Powell told reporters at a Wednesday news conference. “It’s not appropriate to do so.”

Powell said he’s had no contact with Trump.

The Fed has wanted to base its choices on short-term rates based on jobs data, inflation and other economic factors, rather than political pressures. The political independence has meant Powell has not publicly engaged much with Trump’s desire to shape its policies.

The Fed said Wednesday after its top official met that its short-term rates would be unchanged.

Trump is relying on the relatively obscure federal agency to reshape government.

The Office of Personnel Management was created in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and is the equivalent of the government’s human resources department. It helps manage the civil service, including pay schedules, health insurance and pension programs.

The agency has offered millions of federal workers eight months of salary if they voluntarily choose to leave their jobs by Feb. 6.

The unconventional plan shows both Trump’s desire to bring the bureaucracy under control and the downsizing tendencies of Elon Musk, who’s leading the president’s Department of Government Efficiency.

▶ Read more about the Office of Personnel Management

It’s the president’s first move to toughen the country’s immigration laws.

The bill is named after the Georgia nursing student who was killed by a person in the U.S. illegally while out on a run — a case that served as a rallying cry in his bid to return to the White House.

Welcoming lawmakers and Riley’s family in the White House East Room, Trump said “it’s so sad we have to be doing it,” but added, “her name will live forever in the laws of our country.”

The legislation requires the detention of people in the U.S. illegally who are accused of theft and violent crimes. The bill won bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

“It’s a landmark law that we’re doing today,” Trump said.

Kennedy wrongly claimed at his confirmation hearing that the National Institutes of Health ignores any potential causes of Alzheimer’s disease other than a sticky gunk called amyloid.

“The NIH shut down studies of any other hypothesis,” Kennedy said.

Scientists don’t know exactly how the mind-robbing disease forms. There’s disagreement over just how big a role amyloid plays but two drugs that showed modest slowing of the worsening of Alzheimer’s — Leqembi and Kisunla — work by targeting that sticky amyloid plaque.

But the NIH’s $3.8 billion budget for Alzheimer’s and similar dementias includes researching a range of other factors that may underlie how Alzheimer’s develops, who’s most vulnerable and potential treatments.

Among them: Another abnormal brain protein called tau — drugs that target it are now in testing. NIH also funds research into the potential role of viruses, inflammation, brain stimulation, exercise and sleep. One recent NIH-funded clinical trial showed hearing aids can help reduce cognitive decline in certain people.

Two unions sued Wednesday asking a court to block Trump’s executive order rolling back “Schedule F,” a regulation that protects the rights of government workers.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees say Trump’s order illegally exceeded his authority.

“This scheme seeks to put politics over professionalism, contrary to the laws and values that have defined our career civil service for more than a century,” the lawsuit states.

The AFGE labor union and others also filed a lawsuit last week over Trump’s creation of a Department of Government Efficiency.

The president’s order calls on the Justice Department to “aggressively prosecute terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews.”

Perhaps most notable is the order’s focus on reports of antisemitism on many college campuses during protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that prompted Israel’s war in Gaza.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump said in statement issued by the White House.

“I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

“I will divest, I will sell all of my interests, my business interests, all of my assets, everything,’’ Lutnick said in a confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. ”I made the decision I’ve made enough money in my life.’’

Lutnick, head of the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has complicated business dealings. His financial disclosure statement showed he had positions in more than 800 businesses and other private organizations.

Lutnick was introduced by Vice President JD Vance, who called him “just a good dude.’’

Lutnick has emerged as an outspoken supporter of Trump’s hardline trade policies.

▶ Read more about Howard Lutnick’s nomination

Reading from podcast transcripts and his own writings, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet quizzes Kennedy about prior statements relating to COVID-19, Lyme disease, exposure to insecticides causing transgenderism and abortion.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island clarified the circumstances during which most abortions later in pregnancy take place after Kennedy said he agreed with Trump in opposing “l ate-term abortions.”

“It is a childbirth gone wrong,” Whitehouse said. “The family has painted the room. It has bought the crib, maybe even decided on the baby’s name and has gone to the hospital to welcome the new baby into the family…and then things went wrong.”

“And the question became who lives and who dies,” he added. “The mom’s life is often at risk.”

Trump has previously spread misinformation about abortions later in pregnancy, which are exceedingly rare and often the result of serious complications.

The crowd at the Senate hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been overwhelmingly supportive of him, groaning when Democrats grilled him and applauding when Republicans praised him.

As the hearing concluded and Kennedy exited, most spectators stood and applauded, cheering in support of President Trump’s nominee.

Trump nominated Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which acts as a nerve center for funding allocations and spending decisions across the executive branch. The OMB issued a memo late Monday to freeze federal grants and loans that’s caused widespread confusion and concern.

“Donald Trump just rescinded his horrible OMB freeze. He should now rescind Russell Vought’s nomination for OMB,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

“We believe they’ll come back and try to do this in other ways,” Schumer said without elaborating on other measures the administration may take. “Russell Vought sat in my office and said he was going to do it.”

Kennedy mentioned the number of ingredients in U.S. foods and suggested ultraprocessed foods are contributing to chronic disease.

“We need to fix our food supply and that’s number 1,” he said.

Ultraprocessed foods have been linked to a host of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and more.

But those studies have shown associations, not causes, and experts say more research is needed to confirm exactly how these foods can lead to poor health outcomes.

Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota challenged Kennedy’s unsupported suggestions that rising rates of school shootings could be related to increased prescribing of antidepressants.

Kennedy responded that “I don’t think anyone can answer that question.” And called for more research.

Antidepressants and other prescription drugs are subject to multiple, large clinical trials that evaluate safety and efficacy before they are approved. Additionally, the FDA has multiple systems for monitoring emerging side effects with drugs after they’re on the market.

“These statements you’ve made linking antidepressants to school shootings reinforce the stigma that people who experience mental health face every single day,” said Smith, who added that she benefited from antidepressants as “a young woman.”

A two-sentence memo from the Office of Management Budget canceled a previous memo issued two days before that had directed federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.”

The move comes amid opposition from Democrats and advocates and lawsuits that have already been filed to oppose the original order.

In a response to Wyoming Sen. Todd Young’s question about public skepticism of health care institutions, the HHS nominee said the reason people don’t trust health agencies is that they “haven’t been trustworthy”

He pledged to rebuild that trust through “radical transparency.”

Some legal clinics that help prepare returns have stopped accepting cases altogether.

The possibility of a suspension of federal aid is “deeply concerning,” said Beverly Winstead, director of the University of Maryland’s Low Income Taxpayer Clinic.

“We fear that our ability to protect taxpayer rights may be compromised if a funding freeze is applied to the LITC or extended beyond the February 10 deadline,” Winstead said.

At the Erie County Bar Association’ s Volunteer Lawyers Project in Buffalo New York, Executive Director Gretchen Gonzalez said it will be catastrophic for her organization if the feds permanently freeze the program’s 15 grants — including 3 that come from the federal government.

Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, told Kennedy that “God has a divine purpose for you” and that he looked forward to working with him to help “make America healthy again.”

The line drew some cheers and applause from those in the hearing room, reflecting how Kennedy has drawn enthusiastic support from many Christians skeptical of health authorities.

Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan pressed Kennedy about his commitment to studying drugs and other medical products in Native Americans to make sure they work.

Kennedy pointed to work by his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, on native issues, including the Indian Health Service.

As part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on government diversity initiatives, the FDA recently removed a long-awaited guidance designed to enhance drug testing in minority groups.

Under questioning from Lujan, Kennedy said he would make sure the guidance is implemented.

For decades, medical products have been tested primarily in white patients, leaving gaps in understanding about how they perform in other racial and ethnic groups.

“I’ve never seen any major politician flip on that issue quite as quickly as you did when Trump asked you to be HHS secretary,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Kennedy repeatedly leaned on the phrase, “I have always believed abortion is a tragedy.”

Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal Wednesday, asking the state’s mid-level appeals court to overturn his conviction last May on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case, involving an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 Republican campaign, was the only one of his criminal cases to go to trial.

A notice of appeal starts the appeals process in New York. Trump’s lawyers will have an opportunity to expand on their grievances in subsequent court filings.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office will have a chance to respond in court papers. A message seeking comment was left with the office Wednesday.

▶ Read more about Trump’s hush money case

The Massachusetts Democrat interrogated Kennedy about whether he’ll keep making money as a private lawyer off his work related to health care and drug companies.

It got heated. “You’re making me sound like a shill,” Kennedy said.

A particularly intense back-and-forth came when Warren asked Kennedy, who has profited from an arrangement with a law firm that specializes in suing drug companies, to commit to not earning money from such lawsuits while secretary and for four years afterward.

Kennedy said he would comply with all ethics rules but wouldn’t directly answer whether he’d forego the income after leaving office.

“Are you supportive of these onesies?” Sen. Bernie Sanders sternly asked Kennedy.

It was a moment that drew a bit of laughter during an otherwise tense series of questions from Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

Sanders was pressing Kennedy on his evolving stances on childhood vaccines and a onesie the Children’s Health Defense, a group Kennedy chaired from 2015 and 2023, was selling for $26 and printed with anti-vaccine slogans.

Kennedy pointed out that he’s since resigned from the organization’s board in December and said he supports vaccines.

Kennedy has said “COVID shots are a crime against humanity” while leading his anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense nonprofit.

He’s often said he wants “safe” vaccines, while also using slanted information, cherry-picked facts and conspiracy theories to sow distrust of vaccines.

Kennedy said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” told FOX News he still believes in the debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism, and urged people in 2021 to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.

“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy said.

“And now the FDA has revoked it,” he said.

The FDA recently banned the color additive known as Red 3 because of evidence that it causes cancer in male laboratory rats.

The agency took the long-awaited action because of a federal statute known as the Delaney Clause, which prohibits additives that cause cancer in animals or people.

However, the evidence shows that the way the dye causes cancer in rats doesn’t occur in humans.

Refugee resettlement agencies are scrambling after the Trump administration halted their federally funded work. It’s unclear how they’ll continue supporting refugees already in the United States.

Religious organizations shoulder the bulk of U.S. refugee resettlement work.

“President Trump has said he will defend persecuted Christians,” said Matthew Soerens of World Relief, an evangelical resettlement agency. “And the U.S. refugee resettlement program is one of the primary ways that the U.S. government protects Christians and others fleeing persecution.”

The federal refugee program, a form of legal migration to the U.S., assists those who’ve escaped war, natural disaster or persecution.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who was vocal in criticizing vaccine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, framed his comments to Kennedy around unity.

He brought up a conversation he had with Kennedy when the former Democrat was considering joining forces with Trump. The senator called it an answer to his prayers.

“We need to heal and unify this divided nation,” Johnson said. “Can’t we come together as a nation and do this?”

Trump, during his campaign, had said his “Salute to America 250” celebration would be “the most spectacular birthday party.”

The order is also expected to revive plans to create a “National Garden of American Heroes” with statues memorializing 250 historical figures. It will commission artists for the first 100.

During his first term, Trump had curated a list of who was to be included — Davy Crockett, Billy Graham, Whitney Houston, Harriet Tubman and Antonin Scalia, among others — but no site was selected and the garden was never funded by Congress.

The longstanding federal law ensures any person who presents at an emergency room in the U.S. is offered stabilizing treatment.

Sen. Cortez Masto asked how Kennedy would enforce that law when it came to pregnant women living in abortion ban states who need the procedure to save their health or life.

Kennedy struggled to answer, finally saying: “I don’t think we have a law enforcement branch at HHS.”

HHS does, in fact, enforce the law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act and can levy hefty fines for emergency rooms that don’t comply with it.

Democrats kicked off Day 2 of protesting Trump’s decision to halt federal assistance programs with a news conference highlighting the “avalanche” of calls they’re receiving from constituents and local leaders in their state about the decision.

As part of their response, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer confirmed that protesting certain Trump Cabinet nominees was on the table for his members if the administration did not backtrack on its decision.

Sen. Patty Murray, a top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, also indicated that Trump’s move could affect Democrats’ willingness to come to the table and negotiate with Republicans ahead of the March deadline to fund the government.

While questioning Kennedy, Lankford said Biden’s Food and Drug Administration eliminated requirements that doctors report side effects with the drug in virtually all cases, “unless she dies.”

Mifepristone was first approved in 2000 under a highly restrictive set of regulations that required doctors to report all negative reactions with the drug. That’s different than almost any other medication, where only serious injury and death are required to be reported by doctors.

In 2016, the FDA determined mifepristone was safe enough to be subject to the same safety regime as other drugs. The FDA continues to get reports of both serious and non-serious side effects from the drug’s manufacturer, which is required to regularly submit them to regulators.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada urged Kennedy to recognize that a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act would require emergency rooms to provide emergency abortions when a woman’s health or life is at stake — a position taken by the Biden administration.

“You will be enforcing EMTALA laws, and it’s important you understand their impact and don’t play politics with the patient presenting at the ER based on a position this administration has taken,” she said.