President Trump has purged several career officials from key positions at the Justice Department, a move critics say will pave the way to weaponize the agency against Trump’s enemies. The Washington Post reports at least 15 experienced career staffers across the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions were removed from their positions and reassigned — among them a senior counterintelligence attorney who played a key role in deciding to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence to retrieve classified documents. He’s reportedly been transferred to a newly created Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement.

The purges came as Trump asserted broad presidential authority in his first full day in office, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, who in 2022 became the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S. armed forces. She was fired as the White House ordered employees in any federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility — or DEI — offices to be placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately.”

A coalition of 22 Democratic-led states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court to block President Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. The District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco are also plaintiffs in the suit, which followed a similar lawsuit filed by the ACLU. This marks the beginning of what’s expected to be mounting litigation against Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday the order clearly violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Attorney General Rob Bonta: “It also violates the Immigration and Nationality Act and flouts more than 125 years, a century and a quarter, of long-standing, well-established precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court. The president has overstepped his authority by a mile, and we will hold him accountable.”

The Trump administration will allow federal immigration agents to conduct raids at schools, hospitals and houses of worship, ending a yearslong policy that banned ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from arresting people at these sites.
This all comes as Reuters reports nearly 1,600 Afghan refugees who had been cleared for resettlement in the U.S. have been left in immigration limbo after the Trump administration suspended refugee admissions. Among them are unaccompanied Afghan children hoping to reunite with their families in the U.S., and people who aided the U.S. occupation and now fear they’ll be killed or punished by the Taliban government.

In the occupied West Bank, at least 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens more injured Tuesday when Israeli forces, backed by helicopter gunships, launched a major offensive on the city of Jenin. Eyewitnesses described seeing bodies in the streets, with ambulances blocked from retrieving the dead and wounded. An estimated 2,000 Palestinian families have been displaced by the fighting. This comes after the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem documented more Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank, carried out with the “full cooperation” of Israeli soldiers. Video shared by B’Tselem appears to show settlers throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Palestinians in Sinjil, where six Palestinians were injured over the weekend. In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy as they escorted rioting settlers through the West Bank town of Sabastiya. B’Tselem says the settler attacks are meant to impose a “price tag” for the Gaza ceasefire deal.

Palestinian families erupted in celebration Monday as Israel released the first wave of captives from Israeli jails as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal. Of the first 90 Palestinians released, 69 are women and 21 children. Most had been detained without charge under Israel’s “administrative detention” law. Among them is journalist Rula Hassanein, an editor for the Ramallah-based Wattan Media Network. Hassanein reunited with her infant daughter, whom she last saw 10 months ago, when the baby was just 9 months old. Hassanein was tried by a military court at Israel’s notorious Ofer Prison and convicted of incitement after she shared social media posts sympathetic to Palestinians in Gaza. Speaking after her release, Hassanein told the news site Middle East Eye that she and other Palestinian women were deprived of food, clothing and medical care.

Rula Hassanein: “There were numerous violations against female prisoners as women. Honestly, it’s difficult to even describe them on air or even in private conversations. There was significant infringement of basic rights. Headscarves were removed, strip searches were conducted repeatedly, and there were sudden night inspections. There was repression beyond imagination, a purely oppressive situation.”

In Gaza, Israeli forces shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian child in the southern city of Rafah on Monday, in what witnesses called a blatant violation of the ceasefire deal. Video of the assault shows Israeli forces opening fire on another person attempting to retrieve the boy’s limp body. The U.N.’s humanitarian affairs office says more than 2,400 aid trucks have entered the besieged Palestinian territory since Israel lifted its blockade Sunday when the ceasefire deal took effect.

In Israel, a man with a knife stabbed and wounded four people on a Tel Aviv street Tuesday evening before he was shot dead by a civilian at the scene, in an attack police are investigating as politically motivated violence. Haaretz reports the attacker was a 29-year-old Moroccan citizen with a U.S. residency card who arrived in Israel three days ago. It was the second stabbing in Tel Aviv in just four days.

Israel’s military chief of staff will resign over what he said was his failure to prevent the October 7, 2023, attack. Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi becomes the most senior Israeli figure to resign over failures to prevent Hamas’s surprise attack on that day. Halevi led Israel’s military campaign that reduced much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure to rubble and massacred over 47,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, who believe another 10,000 bodies are trapped beneath the rubble.

President Trump’s choice to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations refused to say Tuesday whether the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination. New York Republican Congressmember Elise Stefanik made the comments during her confirmation hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she confirmed to Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen that she believes Israel has a “biblical” right of dominion over the occupied West Bank.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen: “I’m rarely surprised by answers in my office, but I did ask you whether you subscribe to the views of Finance Minister Smotrich, who I” —

Rep. Elise Stefanik: “Of who? I’m sorry. Finance” —

Sen. Chris Van Hollen: “Smotrich. This is the Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich and the former National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, who believe that Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank. And in that conversation, you told me that, yes, you share that view. Is that your view today?”

Rep. Elise Stefanik: “Yes.”

The tech giant Google provided the Israeli military with access to its latest artificial intelligence technology since nearly the beginning of its assault on Gaza. That’s according to The Washington Post, which obtained internal documents showing Google directly assisted Israeli military forces, despite the company’s efforts to publicly distance itself from Israel’s national security apparatus. Last year, Google fired dozens of employees with the group No Tech for Apartheid after they demanded Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military.

Panama has issued a letter to the U.N. Security Council expressing alarm over Trump’s threats to invade and retake the Panama Canal. This is Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino.

President José Raúl Mulino: “The day I traveled here, I stated my government’s position in a statement, rejecting in its entirety everything Mr. Trump said, firstly, because it was false, and, secondly, because the Panama Canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama. The Panama Canal was not a concession or a gift from the United States. The Panama Canal came into being in 1914 following a bilateral treaty in 1903 at the dawn of our independence with Colombia.”

President Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth is facing fresh claims of violent and threatening behavior and problems with alcohol abuse. Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, who was married to his brother, said in a sworn affidavit to Senate lawmakers that Hegseth made his second wife, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety. The affidavit alleged Samantha Hegseth once had to hide from Pete Hegseth in a closet and that she gave her friends a code word in case she needed help, and developed an escape plan. Danielle Hegseth also said she witnessed Pete Hegseth repeatedly scream “no means yes!” at a bar in 2013 — suggesting that men don’t need to obtain sexual consent from women. The affidavit was submitted in response to requests from Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who said the background check process for Hegseth “has been inadequate, and this sworn affidavit confirms that fact.” Both Pete and Samantha Hegseth have denied these allegations.

Leaders of the far-right groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were freed from prison Tuesday after President Trump granted “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons to over 1,500 people involved in the January 6 insurrection. Among those released was Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who had been serving a 22-year federal prison sentence after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Also released Tuesday was former Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who spoke to reporters after his 18-year prison sentence was commuted by Trump.

Stewart Rhodes: “I feel — I feel — I feel — yes, I feel vindicated and validated. Yes, absolutely. Of course, I haven’t gotten a pardon yet; I got commutation. But I’m applying for one. I’m pretty positive I’ll get one. When they review my case, they’ll understand that I was targeted for who I am, not for anything I did.”

Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, whose horned fur hat, face paint and six-foot spear made him one of the more recognizable insurrectionists on January 6, wrote on the social media site X, ”THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!! NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!” Chansley was among a group that broke into the Senate chamber and left a threatening note to then-Vice President Mike Pence reading, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”

Most Republican leaders have remained quiet on Trump’s pardons. Asked whether he supported or opposed the pardons, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.” Capitol Police officers, many of whom were wounded by the mob Trump incited on January 6, blasted Trump’s pardons and commutations. Former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell called it a “miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy.”

In labor news, unionized Costco employees have authorized a strike, set to begin on February 1 unless they reach a deal with the mega-retailer before their contract expires at the end of this month. The Teamsters said about 18,000 Costco workers are ready to walk off the job at 56 of the company’s warehouse stores across five states. Workers are demanding better wages, paid family leave, sick time and protections against surveillance.