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Trump threatens to use the Insurrection Act to ‘put an end’ to protests in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to quell persistent protests against the federal officers sent to Minneapolis to enforce his administration’s massive immigration crackdown.

The threat comes a day after a man was shot and wounded by an immigration officer who had been attacked with a shovel and broom handle. That shooting further heightened the fear and anger that has radiated across the city since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good in the head.

Federal officer shoots person in leg after being attacked during Minneapolis arrest, officials say

Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the rarely used federal law to deploy the U.S. military or federalize the National Guard for domestic law enforcement, over the objections of state governors.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump said in social media post.

Presidents have indeed invoked the Insurrection Act more than two dozen times, most recently in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush to end unrest in Los Angeles. In that instance, local authorities had asked for the assistance.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to Trump’s post by saying he would challenge any deployment in court. He’s already suing to try to stop the surge by the Department of Homeland Security, which says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December. ICE is a DHS agency.

Protests, tear gas, and another shooting

In Minneapolis, smoke filled the streets Wednesday night near the site of the latest shooting as federal officers wearing gas masks and helmets fired tear gas into a small crowd. Protesters responded by throwing rocks and shooting fireworks.

Demonstrations have become common in Minneapolis since Good was fatally shot on Jan. 7. Agents who have yanked people from their cars and homes have been confronted by angry bystanders demanding they leave.

“This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in and at the same time we are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to maintain order,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.

Frey said the federal force — five times the size of the city’s 600-officer police force — has “invaded” Minneapolis, and that residents are scared and angry.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a lawsuit on behalf of three people who said they were questioned or detained in recent days. The lawsuit says two are Somali and one is Hispanic; all three are U.S. citizens. The lawsuit seeks an end to what the ACLU describes as a practice of racial profiling and warrantless arrests. The government did not immediately comment.

Shooting followed chase

Homeland Security said in a statement that federal law enforcement officers on Wednesday stopped a driver from Venezuela who is in the U.S. illegally. The person drove off then crashed into a parked car before fleeing on foot, DHS said.

Officers caught up, then two other people arrived and the three started attacking the officer, according to DHS.

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” DHS said. The confrontation took place about 4.5 miles from where Good was killed.

Police chief Brian O’Hara said the shot man was being treated for a non-life-threatening injury. The two others are in custody, DHS said. O’Hara’s account of what happened largely echoed that of Homeland Security.

Earlier Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz described Minnesota said what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”

“Let’s be very, very clear: this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

Clashes in court as well

Earlier Wednesday, a judge gave the Trump administration time to respond to a request to suspend its immigration crackdown in Minnesota, while the Pentagon looked for military lawyers to join what has become a chaotic law enforcement effort in the state.

“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Attorney General Brian Carter said during the first hearing in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Local leaders say the government is violating free speech and other constitutional rights with the surge of law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez gave the U.S. Justice Department until Monday to file a response to a request for a restraining order.

Justice Department attorney Andrew Warden suggested the approach set by Menendez was appropriate.

The judge is also handling a separate lawsuit challenging the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers when they encounter protesters and observers. A decision could be released this week.

During a televised speech before Wednesday’s shooting, Gov. Tim Walz described Minnesota as being in chaos, saying what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”

“Let’s be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”

Military lawyers may join the surge

CNN, citing an email circulating in the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is asking the military branches to identify 40 lawyers known as judge advocate general officers or JAGs, and 25 of them will serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis.

Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson appeared to confirm the CNN report by posting it on X with a comment that the military “is proud to support” the Justice Department.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking more details.

It’s the latest step by the Trump administration to dispatch military and civilian attorneys to areas where federal immigration operations are taking place. The Pentagon last week sent 20 lawyers to Memphis, U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said.

Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and a former Navy JAG, said there’s concern that the assignments are taking lawyers away from the military justice system.

“There are not many JAGs but there are over one million members of the military, and they all need legal support,” he said.

An official says the agent who killed Good was injured

Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed Good, suffered internal bleeding to his torso during the encounter, a Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.

The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss Ross’ medical condition. The official did not provide details about the severity of the injuries, and the agency did not respond to questions about the extent of the bleeding, exactly how he suffered the injury, when it was diagnosed or his medical treatment.

There are many causes of internal bleeding, and they vary in severity from bruising to significant blood loss. Video from the scene showed Ross and other officers walking without obvious difficulty after Good was shot and her Honda Pilot crashed into other vehicles.

She was killed after three ICE officers surrounded her SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from her home.

Bystander video shows one officer ordering Good to open the door and grabbing the handle. As the vehicle begins to move forward, Ross, standing in front, raises his weapon and fires at least three shots at close range. He steps back as the SUV advances and turns.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said Ross was struck by the vehicle and that Good was using her SUV as a weapon — a self-defense claim that has been deeply criticized by Minnesota officials.

Chris Madel, an attorney for Ross, declined to comment on any injuries.

Good’s family, meanwhile, has hired a law firm, Romanucci & Blandin, that represented George Floyd’s family in a $27 million settlement with Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black, died after a white police officer pinned his neck to the ground in the street in May 2020.

The firm said it would conduct its own investigation and publicly share what it learns.

January 15, 2026
Trump’s promised manufacturing boom is a bust so far

Introducing the highest U.S. tariffs since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump made a clear promise in the spring: “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”

They haven’t.

Manufacturing employment has declined every month since what Trump dubbed “Liberation Day” in April, saying his widespread tariffs would begin to rebalance global trade in favor of American workers. U.S. factories employ 12.7 million people today, 72,000 fewer than when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement.

The trade measures that the president said would spur manufacturing have instead hampered it, according to most mainstream economists. That’s because roughly half of U.S. imports are “intermediate” goods that American companies use to make finished products, like aluminum that is shaped into soup cans or circuit boards that are inserted into computers.

So while tariffs have protected American manufacturers like steel mills from foreign competition, they have raised costs for many others. Auto and auto parts employment, for example, has dipped by about 20,000 jobs since April.

“2025 should have been a good year for manufacturing employment, and that didn’t happen. I think you really have to indict tariffs for that,” said economist Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana.

Small- and midsize businesses have found Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs especially vexing. Fifty-seven percent of midsize manufacturers and 40 percent of small producers said they had no certainty about their input costs in a November survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Only 23 percent of large manufacturers shared that complaint.

Smaller companies also were more than twice as likely to respond to tariffs by delaying investments in new plants and equipment, the survey found. One reason could be that taxes on imports raise the price of goods used in production much more than they do with typical consumer items, according to a study by the San Francisco Fed.

Industries producing more technologically complex goods such as aircraft and semiconductors also are paying an outsize price, according to Gary Winslett, director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. Makers of semiconductors, for example, shed more than 13,000 jobs since April.

“They’re the ones who need the imported inputs. Really advanced manufacturing is actually what’s getting hit the hardest,” he said.

Trump’s tariffs, however, are not the industrial sector’s only headache. Factory payrolls began their post-pandemic decline in early 2023, almost two years before Trump returned to the White House.

High interest rates and a shift in consumer spending patterns are hurting the nation’s manufacturers, economists said. Business loans are more than twice as expensive as they were four years ago, with banks charging their most creditworthy borrowers interest rates of 6.75 percent. That discourages businesses from expanding operations and hiring additional workers.

After bingeing during the height of the pandemic on durable goods, consumers have gradually redirected their spending to in-person services. Money that once went to makers of furniture, televisions and exercise machines now goes instead to restaurants and entertainment venues.

In Indiana, the spending switch can be glimpsed in the fortunes of the recreational vehicle industry, a local mainstay. RV shipments soared to a record 600,400 in 2021 as consumers trapped at home by the pandemic hit the road. But by 2024, the work-from-home era was over, and sales fell by nearly half. Thor Industries, the largest RV manufacturer, laid off several hundred workers last year, as demand flagged.

Once Trump returned to the White House, manufacturers responded by over-ordering imports to beat the anticipated tariffs. That’s left many producers with more inventory than they need, suggesting cuts lie ahead, according to Hicks.

“The manufacturing job losses that we see now are really just the beginning of what will be a pretty grim couple of quarters as manufacturing adjusts to a new lower level of demand,” he said.

Modest numbers of manufacturing jobs have been trimmed throughout the economy. In December, Westlake Corp., a Houston-based producer of industrial chemicals, said it would idle four production lines at facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi, putting 295 employees out of work. Speaking on an investor call, company executives blamed excess global capacity and weak demand for the move.

While the jobs that Trump promised have not materialized, factory output rose in 2025, reaching its highest mark in almost three years, according to Federal Reserve data, and administration officials said it is only a matter of time before the full benefits of the president’s plan are felt.

Trump’s tariffs and jawboning encourage CEOs to invest in new U.S. plants. Provisions in the president’s signature fiscal legislation permitting companies to quickly write off the full expense of new investments in equipment and research and development expenses will spur modern manufacturing, they said.

“It also encourages the build-out of high-precision manufacturing here at home, which will lead to high-paying construction and factory jobs,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a speech this month.

Companies are spending more than three times as much on constructing new factories as they did when Trump was first inaugurated, though less than during the Biden-era peak. The White House last fall hailed recent investment announcements by companies such as Stellantis and Whirlpool. Last month, T. RAD North America, a subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, announced plans for a new auto parts plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, which would employ 928 workers.

Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which backs Trump’s manufacturing policies, said the roughly 1 percent shrinkage in factory employment last year was less significant than the uptick in business investment.

“We saw a significant increase in capital expenditures, which is the earliest signal that reindustrialization is taking hold. Those investments take time to permit, build and staff before they show up in employment data,” he said.

The president’s hopes of increasing manufacturing employment defy decades of experience in the United States and other advanced economies. American factory jobs peaked at 19.5 million in the summer of 1979 and have been sliding ever since, largely because of the introduction of machinery that can do the job of several workers.

As two presidents sought to revive domestic production over the past decade, manufacturing employment rode a roller coaster. Factory jobs increased by 421,000 during Trump’s first term before sinking by more than 1 million during the pandemic. President Joe Biden used government subsidies to encourage hiring, especially for green energy projects, and manufacturing payrolls rose more than 100,000 above Trump’s highest mark.

But those gains evaporated by the end of 2024.

On Tuesday, the president addressed the Detroit Economic Club, touting “the strongest and fastest economic turnaround in our country’s history.” He boasted about growth, productivity, investment, incomes, inflation and the stock market.

“The Trump economic boom is officially begun,” the president said.

All that’s missing now are the jobs.

GRAPHIC

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/fa67e068-5b52-48f2-aaf1-1cf62d5ac320.pdf

January 15, 2026
Winter is about to return in Philly. Will snow join the party?

As it approaches halftime, the meteorological winter around here so far has been about as inconsistent as the Philadelphia Eagles’ offense, but it is about to get decidedly colder, if not snowier.

Temperatures on Thursday are due to hover around freezing with a brisk westerly wind gusting up to 30 mph (sympathies to all bikers and runners and those who are navigating those Center City wind tunnels), and then drop into the 20s after sunset with windchills in the teens.

Then, after a modest warmup Friday and Saturday, the forecast turns decidedly colder and potentially more intriguing, as computer models have been going back and forth on snow potential for the Philly region.

Philly’s coldest stretch of the winter so far to begin Sunday

Readings are expected to warm into the 40s on Saturday, but then drop off dramatically during the holiday weekend and may not reach freezing again until Thursday.

They may not get out of the 20s on Tuesday — when wind chills could fall to 0 in Philly — and Wednesday, with overnight lows in the teens.

This is called January.

Will the cold lock in a snow cover?

A few alarm bells went off Wednesday afternoon when the main U.S. computer model suggested potential major snowstorms along the coast all the way to the I-95 corridor on Sunday.

However, other computer guidance wasn’t buying it, nor were forecasters. The computer food fight continued Thursday.

The U.S. model, said Paul Pastelok, longtime seasonal forecast specialist with AccuWeather Inc., “goes wacky all the time.” Maybe not all the time, but a subsequent run of the European model kept the storm offshore.

“We’re kind of in a waiting game,” said Pastelok.

Opined the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly in its afternoon forecast discussion, the potential system has “high-end potential but also could end up being nothing.”

In other words, situation normal.

The winter so far in Philly and United States

Oddly, the raw stats for the first half of the meteorological winter — that’s the Dec. 1-Feb. 28 period — are not too far from normal for snowfall and temperature.

But that’s the result of quite a cold start to an eventful December, followed by a benign and uneventful January around here.

December temperatures finished at 3.6 degrees below normal at Philadelphia International Airport. And in the first two weeks of 2026, they were 3.6 degrees above normal. Snowfall in December was about an inch above average, but with a paltry 0.3 inches so far this month, the 4.8 total is very close to where it should be.

The early season coolness in Philly and much of the rest of the East was a surprise, said Owen Shieh, warning coordination meteorologist with NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center, in College Park, Md. The West, conversely, was quite warm.

The contrasts were the result of “pattern persistence,” said Tony Fracasso, a weather center meteorologist.

In the East, “This winter started quite strong,” he added, compared with recent winters. “It was not record cold,” but, “it sure felt cold for us.”

What’s ahead the rest of the winter of 2025-26

That likely will be the case early next week, and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center has chances favoring below normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation in the Jan. 22-28 period.

Pastelok said that upper-air patterns are aligning in such a way that favors importing cold air from northwestern Canada.

The Climate Center’s Laura Ciasto said she does not see a major invasion of the polar vortex in the next few weeks. The vortex circles the Arctic, imprisoning the planet’s coldest air. But on occasion, the winds weaken, the freezer opens, and the contents spill southward.

She said the vortex winds are slightly weaker than normal but are expected to strengthen.

It is possible that lobes of the vortex may stretch on occasion, resulting in short-lived periods of cold in the Northeast, said Judah Cohen, research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A period to watch would be the first week in February, when a significant disruption of the vortex is possible, Pastelok said.

A sudden stratospheric warming in the high atmosphere in the Arctic, which can lead to cold outbreaks in the contiguous United States “is not out of the question” late in the winter, Ciasto said.

Philadelphia’s peak snow season typically occurs in late January through mid-February.

Of the 10 biggest snowfalls in the city’s history, only three have occurred before Jan 22.

January 15, 2026
Lawmakers propose $2.5B agency to boost production of rare earths and other critical minerals

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China’s grip on the market for these materials that are crucial to high-tech products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, jet fighters and missiles.

It’s too early to tell how the bill, if passed, could align with the White House’s policy, but whatever the approach, the U.S. is in a crunch to drastically reduce its reliance on China, after Beijing used its dominance of the critical minerals market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in October, by which Beijing would continue to export critical minerals while the U.S. would ease its export controls of U.S. technology on China.

The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China, which processes more than 90% of the world’s critical minerals. To break Beijing’s chokehold, the U.S. government is taking equity stakes in a handful of critical mineral companies and in some cases guaranteeing the price of some commodities using an approach that seems more likely to come out of China’s playbook instead of a Republican administration.

The bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) and Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) introduced Thursday would favor a more market-based approach by setting up the independent body charged with building a stockpile of critical minerals and related products, stabilizing prices, and encouraging domestic and allied production to help ensure stable supply not only for the military but also the broader economy and manufacturers.

Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to make the U.S. economy more resilient against China’s dominance that she said has left the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. Young said creating the new reserve is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.”

Rep. Rob Wittman (R., Va.) introduced the House version of the bill.

New sense of urgency

When Trump imposed widespread tariffs last spring, Beijing fought back not only with tit-for-tat tariffs but severe restrictions on the export of critical minerals, forcing Washington to back down and eventually agree to the truce when the leaders met in South Korea.

On Monday, in his speech at SpaceX, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon has in the past five months alone “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close six critical minerals deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”

One of the deals involves a $150 million of preferred equity by the Pentagon in Atlantic Alumina Co. to save the country’s last alumina refinery and build its first large-scale gallium production facility in Louisiana.

Last year, the Pentagon announced it would buy $400 million of preferred stock in MP Materials, which owns the country’s only operational rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, California, and entered into a $1.4-billion joint partnership with ReElement Technologies Corp. to build up a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets.

On Wednesday, Trump announced in a proclamation that the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign-sourced critical minerals and directed his administration to negotiate better deals. He said possible remedies would include minimum import prices for certain critical minerals.

“Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson.

The drastic move by the U.S. government to take equity stakes has prompted some analysts to observe that Washington is pivoting to some form of state capitalism to compete with Beijing.

“Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, a senior fellow at the Washington-based research institute Center for European Policy Analysis. She suggested that the new model could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”

Companies across the industry are welcoming the intervention from Trump’s administration.

“He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It’s about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face by having to import so many of these fundamental building blocks of technology and national defense,” NioCorp’s Chief Communications Officer Jim Sims said. That company is trying to finish raising the money it needs to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.

Relying on allies for help

In addition to trying to boost domestic production, the Trump administration has sought to secure some of these crucial elements through allies. In October, Trump signed an $8.5 billion agreement with Australia to invest in mining there, and the president is now aggressively trying to take over Greenland in the hope of being able to one day extract rare earths from there.

On Monday, finance ministers from the G7 nations huddled in Washington over their vulnerability in the critical mineral supply chains.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led several rounds of trade negotiations with Beijing, urged attendees to increase their supply chain resiliency and thanked them for their willingness to work together “toward decisive action and lasting solutions,” according to a Treasury statement.

The bill introduced on Thursday by Shaheen and Young would encourage production with both domestic and allied producers.

Past efforts to bolster rare earths production

Congress in the past several years has pushed for legislation to protect the U.S. military and civilian industry from Beijing’s chokehold. The issue became a pressing concern every time China turned to its proven tactics of either restricting the supply or turned to dumping extra critical minerals on the market to depress prices and drive any potential competitors out of business.

The Biden administration sought to increase demand for critical minerals domestically by pushing for more electric vehicle and windmill production. But the Trump administration largely eliminated the incentives for those products and instead chose to focus on increasing critical minerals production directly.

Most of those past efforts were on a much more limited scale than what the government has done in the past year, and they were largely abandoned after China relented and eased access to critical minerals.

January 15, 2026
Public mistrust linked to drop in deceased donor organ donations and kidney transplants

WASHINGTON — Organ donations from the recently deceased dropped last year for the first time in over a decade, resulting in fewer kidney transplants, according to an analysis issued Wednesday that pointed to signs of public mistrust in the lifesaving system.

More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are on the list for an organ transplant. The vast majority of them need a kidney, and thousands die waiting every year.

The nonprofit Kidney Transplant Collaborative analyzed federal data and found 116 fewer kidney transplants were performed last year than in 2024. That small difference is a red flag because the analysis traced the decline to some rare but scary reports of patients prepared for organ retrieval despite showing signs of life.

Those planned retrievals were stopped and the U.S. is developing additional safeguards for the transplant system, which saves tens of thousands of lives each year. But it shook public confidence, prompting some people to remove their names from donor lists.

Andrew Howard, who leads the Kidney Transplant Collaborative, said last year’s dip in kidney transplants would have been larger except for a small increase — about 100 — in transplants from living donors, when a healthy person donates one of their kidneys to someone in need. The collaborative advocates for increased living donations, which make up a fraction of the roughly 28,000 yearly kidney transplants.

With the exception of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging, organ transplants have been rising year-to-year. Last year’s decline in deceased donors didn’t translate into fewer transplants overall: There were just over 49,000 compared with 48,150 in 2024. Transplants of hearts, livers and lungs continued to see gains, according to federal data. Howard said that was likely due to differences in how various organs are evaluated and allocated for transplant.

The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations wasn’t involved in Wednesday’s analysis but expressed alarm, calling on its members, hospitals and federal regulators “to unite in restoring public trust and strengthening this critical system.”

January 15, 2026
Moscow agrees with Trump that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal, the Kremlin says

Moscow agrees with President Donald Trump’s view that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal to end the almost four years of fighting since Russia invaded its neighbor, a Kremlin official said Thursday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Yes, we can agree with it, it’s indeed so.” His comments came after Trump said in published remarks Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an obstacle in U.S.-led peace talks.

That assessment is at odds with the sentiment of European officials, who have repeatedly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling in negotiations while his bigger army tries to push deeper into Ukraine and Russia relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities.

Kyiv and Moscow still appear publicly far apart on their terms for a peace deal.

“I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump was quoted as saying of the Russian president in an interview with Reuters. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” he said, naming Zelensky as obstructing a settlement.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who along with many European and NATO member nations has strongly backed Ukraine, pushed back on Trump’s reported comments.

“It is Russia who rejected the peace plan prepared by the U.S.,” not Zelensky, Tusk posted on X on Thursday. “The only Russian response (was) further missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. This is why the only solution is to strengthen pressure on Russia. And you all know it.”

Putin said Thursday that Moscow, like Ukraine, demands security guarantees as part of a prospective peace deal.

“We must proceed from the premise that security must be truly universal, and therefore equal and indivisible, and it cannot be ensured for some at the expense of the security of others,” Putin said after receiving credentials from foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin.

“In the absence of it, Russia will continue to consistently pursue the goals it has set,” Putin added.

Trump’s position appeared to deviate from recent comments by U.S. officials that the American president is running out of patience with Putin.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said last week that Trump is on board with a tough sanctions package intended to economically cripple Russia.

“This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk, continuing to kill the innocent,” Graham said in a statement.

Also, the United States accused Russia on Monday of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of its war at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Wednesday that “the Kremlin has been delaying the peace process for months in order to protract the war and achieve Russia’s original war aims through military means.”

A Russian drone struck a playground in the western city of Lviv overnight, according to the head of the regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi. The blast shattered over a hundred windows in the area, though nobody was injured, he said.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that no date has been agreed for U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff to make another visit to Moscow for further peace talks.

January 15, 2026
Dozens of people, including 20 players, were charged in a basketball gambling scandal targeting NCAA and Chinese games

More than two dozen people participated in a multiyear scheme to fix basketball games in the NCAA and the Chinese professional league, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia alleged Thursday — a conspiracy that affected dozens of games and involved tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and millions in fraudulent bets.

Twenty basketball players and six so-called fixers were charged in federal court in Philadelphia with crimes including bribery, conspiracy, and wire fraud, according to U.S. Attorney David Metcalf, who described the case as “historic.”

Metcalf said the fixers — professional gamblers or others with ties to the basketball world — would recruit players to underperform in forthcoming games, then bettors would wager against that player’s team. Players were bribed for their efforts, Metcalf said, while gamblers ultimately collected millions of dollars in illicit winnings.

“When criminals rig the outcome of games for the purpose to lose … we all lose,” said Metcalf, who spoke at a morning news conference alongside officials including Andrew Bailey, deputy director of the FBI, and Wayne Jacobs, the FBI’s top official in Philadelphia.

Players involved included Antonio Blakeney, a onetime Chicago Bulls player who later played for the Jiangsu Dragons in China, prosecutors said, as well as a number of Division 1 college players from programs including Tulane University, Nicholls State University, Northwestern State University, and North Philadelphia’s La Salle University.

Antonio Blakeney, who once played for the Chicago Bulls, has been charged with accepting bribes when he later played for a Chinese basketball team to influence its games.

In all, prosecutors said, the scheme involved 39 players on more than 17 Division 1 NCAA teams, with bettors wagering huge sums on at least 29 games. Some of the bets were placed at Rivers Casino in Philadelphia.

The allegations are similar in theme to those leveled last fall against NBA players including the Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier, who has also been federally charged with altering his performance to benefit gamblers.

One of the gamblers charged Thursday was Shane Hennen, a former Philadelphia resident and prolific high-stakes sports bettor who had already been charged alongside Rozier and was accused of participating in that scandal as well.

At that time, the charges against Hennen — and the earlier dismissal of Temple University guard Hysier Miller — were rumored to extend to a more far-reaching probe into the NCAA.

Metcalf said the new investigation was distinct from that case, which is being prosecuted in New York. In that matter, Metcalf said, Rozier and others were accused of providing confidential information to bettors — such as a player’s injury status — to help boost the odds of a wager succeeding.

In the newest case, Metcalf said, players were directly participating in the conspiracy — and benefiting from it, even as they sought to help their teams lose.

“There is a really important difference between wagering on predicted outcomes [based on] insider information, and wagering on determined outcomes — outcomes that you control,” Metcalf said. “The former is a crime against sports betting markets. The latter is a crime against the sport itself … and that’s what makes it different and, in my opinion, worse.”

An American scheme in China

In a unique twist, prosecutors said, the scheme targeting one of America’s most popular sports was launched in China.

According to the indictment, Hennen and another professional gambler, Marves Fairley, recruited Blakeney — then playing for the Jiangsu Dragons — to join their so-called point-shaving scheme in 2022.

Blakeney at the time was a top scorer in the Chinese Basketball Association. And, according to the indictment, Hennen and Fairley offered him bribes in exchange for deliberately underperforming and hurting his team’s chances of winning.

After he agreed, prosecutors said, Hennen and Fairley placed large bets at the Rivers Casino sportsbook in Fishtown, known as “BetRivers.” In one instance, prosecutors said, the men wagered $198,300 on the Guangdong Southern Tigers to beat the Dragons in a March 6, 2023, game.

Blakeney averaged 32 points a game that season, but scored just 11 in the contest, which the Dragons lost, 127-96.

Hennen was apparently pleased with his new investment. Later that spring, the indictment said, he sent a text to another schemer offering reassurance about a game involving Blakeney.

“Nothing gu[a]rantee[d] in this world,” Henner wrote, ”but death taxes and Chinese basketball.”

A spokesperson for Rivers Casino declined to comment on the case.

After the season, Fairley left $200,000 in cash in a Florida storage unit Blakeney controlled, the indictment said. In intercepted text messages, Hennen and Fairley also described “giving $20,000” to other players recruited by Blakeney to fix matches during his absence.

The Chinese betting ring then became a template, prosecutors alleged — one that the conspirators used to begin rigging games much closer to home.

Targeting NCAA games

In 2024, prosecutors said, Hennen and Fairley recruited college basketball trainers Jalen Smith and Roderick Winkler to help rig NCAA games. Prosecutors said the trainers’ status in the basketball world gave them access to, and credibility with, NCAA athletes.

The men then used that influence to recruit about 20 players from a variety of schools to participate in the point-shaving operation, prosecutors said.

Several players had ties to the Philadelphia region, including former Temple University forward Elijah Gray, who was approached while playing at Fordham; Micawber “Mac” Etienne, who was approached at DePaul but later played for La Salle; and Delaware State University point guard Camian Shell, who is alleged to have thrown games while at North Carolina A&T State University. C.J. Hines, a current player on Temple’s roster, was also charged with taking bribes in 2024, when he was playing at Alabama State, court documents show. A Temple spokesperson said Thursday that the university was “reviewing this new information” and noted that Hines has not played for the Owls due to ongoing eligibility questions.

The scheme worked much as in China, prosecutors contended: Hennen and Fairley would bribe players to throw games, then place bets on their opponents.

But the gamblers took a less visible role this time, the indictment said, generally sending brief texts to a number of people who could place high-stakes bets on their behalf.

“Queens ny -1 first half and money line,” Hennen texted a straw bettor, seeking to place a $20,000 bet that the Queens University Royals would cover the first-half spread by at least 1½ points in a March 1, 2024, game against Kennesaw State.

The men let Smith handle much of the dirty work, the indictment said. In one example, he texted with Kennesaw State players Simeon Cottle and Demond Robinson the day of a game.

“I need both of y’all on FaceTime with me twice today,” he wrote. “Just to make sure y’all good and really locked in … [This] money guaranteed, ima be at the game with the money.”

In some cases, Smith is alleged to have flown to Philadelphia to pay players their bribes. In other instances, the indictment said, Smith was intensely involved with pressuring players to underperform even while games were progressing.

In March 2024, for example, the indictment said, Smith texted DePaul’s Etienne that his teammates who were playing well needed to “chilllll [the f—] out.”

In another episode, the indictment said, he wrote to to Alabama State players Shawn Fulcher and Corey Hines, saying: “Lose by 6 full game no excuses,” then sent a photo of a large stack of cash.

When the players complained that they were struggling to throw the game because their opponent — the University of Southern Mississippi — was “so bad,” Smith sent an all-caps response, the indictment said.

“LET [the Southern Mississippi players] LAY IT UP,” he wrote.

Sports impacted by ‘monetization’

While Hennen is accused of orchestrating many of his crimes in Philadelphia, the indictment painted a more limited picture of his role with local teams.

In 2024, for example, Smith and Blakeney attempted to recruit players from La Salle to join the scheme for a game against St. Bonaventure, the indictment said. But prosecutors did not name any La Salle players as having done so, and they said all the bets Hennen and Fairley placed on the game were unsuccessful.

A spokesperson for La Salle said Thursday that the university would cooperate with all investigations into the matter, and that “neither the university, current student-athletes, or staff are subjects of the indictment.”

Metcalf said the “monetization” of college sports in recent years — and the proliferation of legalized sports gambling across the country — “furthered the enterprise in this case.”

And he said that although college athletes can now be legally paid for their name, image, and likeness, some of those who participated in this scheme were targeted because they did not feel they were making enough money in that new landscape.

Metcalf said many Americans are drawn to sports because they offer a venue for teams and players to participate in honest competition.

“This,” Metcalf said, “totally flies in the face of all of that.”

Staff writer Isabella DiAmore contributed to this article.

January 15, 2026
Native Americans are being swept up by ICE in Minneapolis, tribes say

For hours, Raelyn Duffy searched for any information that could lead to the whereabouts of her son, Jose Roberto “Beto” Ramirez, who that morning had been forcibly removed from his aunt’s car and detained by masked federal immigration officers in Robbinsdale, Minn.

Ramirez, 20, is Native American — and a U.S. citizen. But video of his arrest last Thursday shows that the officers were unmoved by his aunt’s panicked screams informing them of his legal status. They yanked Ramirez from the passenger’s seat, slammed him on the hood of another car, handcuffed him and took him away.

Friends identified Ramirez from a Facebook Live video of the arrest and alerted Duffy, who rushed home, grabbed her son’s birth certificate and called Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ramirez, a descendant of the Red Lake Nation, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribe in northern Minnesota, was held in custody for about 10 hours, his mother said in an interview. He is among several Native Americans who have allegedly been swept up in the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area that began late last month and has escalated since a U.S. citizen was fatally shot by an ICE agent last week.

Despite widespread protests over the killing of Renée Good, Trump administration officials say they are surging hundreds more immigration officers into the city and surrounding areas.

Tribal leaders and members who live in the greater Minneapolis area say Indigenous family members, friends and neighbors have been stopped, questioned, harassed and, in some cases, detained solely on the basis of their skin color or their names. Some immigration experts suggested ICE officers might have racially profiled them and mistaken them for being Hispanic.

Like Ramirez, four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe were detained by ICE officers soon after the Minneapolis operation began, according to tribal president Frank Star Comes Out. Tribal leaders for days unsuccessfully sought information about their status before learning that one man had been released, he said in a statement Tuesday.

The other three remain in custody at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, on the outskirts of Minneapolis, where ICE has detained people arrested in the enforcement operation, he said.

“Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe are United States citizens,” Star Comes Out said. “We are the first Americans. We are not undocumented immigrants, and we are not subject to unlawful immigration enforcement actions by ICE or Homeland Security.”

Star Comes Out did not identify the men; he said he is basing his accounts of their arrests on information offered by the tribal community. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify the men’s names or confirm their arrests.

The Whipple Building stands on the site of a military fort that, during the Dakota War of 1862 between Native American and white settlers, was used to imprison Indigenous people. Two Dakota leaders were executed at Fort Snelling in 1865.

“The irony is not lost on us,” Star Comes Out said in the statement. “Lakota citizens who are reported to be held at Fort Snelling … underscores why treaty obligations and federal accountability matter today, not just in history.”

The Department of Homeland Security disputed the tribe’s allegations, saying it has no record of its immigration officers detaining the tribe members.

“We have not uncovered any claims by individuals in our detention centers that they are members of the Oglala Sioux tribe,” a spokesperson said in response to questions from the Post.

In Ramirez’s case, Duffy said she heard from him only after he had been held for hours at the Whipple Building. Upon his release, Ramirez regained access to his phone and called her to tell her what had happened.

“The upper part of his back, back of his neck, you could just see all of it — scratches, or like marks from being hit,” Duffy said, describing injuries she said resulted from his arrest. “He was all marked up. His hands had cuts from the handcuffs.”

She added: “It’s racial profiling. It’s crazy.”

The DHS spokesperson did not respond to the Post’s question about Ramirez.

Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese, Yunpoví, a scholar of American Indian tribal law at Stanford Law School who was born in the Nambé Pueblo, a Tewa-speaking tribe in northern New Mexico, noted that Minnesota has 11 federally recognized tribes and suggested that Native Americans are “getting caught up in this search for Brown people who look a certain way.”

Some Democratic state lawmakers are speaking out. State Sen. Mary Kunesh and state Reps. Heather Keeler and Liish Kozlowski, members of the Native American Caucus, expressed concerns in recent days that “countless” Native American community members in Minnesota have reported “being harassed, stopped without cause, and interrogated for documentation.”

The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s leaders said they notified federal officials that detaining tribal members under federal immigration authority is not only unlawful but also violates binding treaties between the federal government and the tribe.

“These are sovereign nations,” Kunesh said in an interview. “Using members of the tribe as pawns in micromanaging or emotionally manipulating tribes is just abhorrent.”

Star Comes Out said that federal authorities said they would provide more information on the detained tribe members only if tribal leaders entered into an agreement with ICE that would empower the leaders to help make immigration arrests.

The Trump administration has pressured localities across the country into what are known as “287(g) agreements,” which deputize local law enforcement to assist in federal immigration enforcement. More than 1,300 jurisdictions across 40 states have entered the agreements, according to ICE. That is up from 135 at the end of fiscal 2024, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.

In a letter to several Trump administration officers, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Star Comes Out said the tribe would not entertain such an agreement.

“We will not enter an agreement that would authorize, or make it easier, for ICE or Homeland Security to come onto our tribal homeland to arrest or detain our tribal members,” he wrote.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, said the idea that DHS would leverage information on detainees to pressure tribes to enter 287(g) pacts raises “very real concerns.”

Asked about the allegations, the DHS spokesperson said: “ICE did NOT ask the tribe for any kind of agreement. We have simply asked for basic information on the individuals, such as names and date of birth so that we can run a proper check to provide them with the facts.”

Kozlowski, who is of Anishinaabe Ojibwe and Mexican American descent, said the situation highlights the imperative for Native Americans in Minnesota to remain outspoken and vigilant about defending their rights.

“Trump [is] saying: If you don’t come along with our agenda and enter into agreements and your places of business and lands don’t support us, then we will crush you,” Kozlowski said. “But the thing is that they’ve never been able to crush our spirits — ever.”

January 15, 2026
Two Pa. lawmakers were in a video critical of Trump. Now, they say, they are under federal investigation.

U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan of Chester County and Chris Deluzio of Allegheny County are among the Democrats who say they are being investigated by President Donald Trump’s administration for appearing in a video that calls on service members not to follow “illegal orders.”

Deluzio, a Navy veteran, said in a Thursday interview that the investigation is “part of a harassment or intimidation campaign against me and my colleagues.”

“The fact that you’ve got members of Congress, all who’ve served the country, being targeted in this way because we stated the law shouldn’t just worry but terrify the American people, and I’m not going to be intimidated or back down in the face of that,” he told The Inquirer.

The Democratic lawmakers who appeared in the Nov. 18 video were contacted late last year by the FBI for interviews. They say they have now been contacted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, a significant escalation in the investigation.

“The six of us are being targeted not because we said something untrue, but because we said something President Trump and Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth didn’t want anyone to hear,” Houlahan, a former Air Force officer, said in a statement Wednesday.

“This investigation is ridiculous on any day but especially so on a day the President is considering launching airstrikes against Iran in retaliation for their crackdown on free speech,” Houlahan said.

The four representatives and two senators, all of whom served in the military or intelligence agencies, said in the video that the Trump administration is “pitting uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

In response, Trump posted on social media two days later that the lawmakers were engaging in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” along with a string of hostile messages toward the lawmakers.

Houlahan said at the time she was disappointed in a lack of support from her GOP colleagues.

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), a former CIA analyst who appeared in the video, said Wednesday that representatives for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, had contacted her last week requesting an interview.

Houlahan told reporters that prosecutors want to “sit down” with all the lawmakers who were involved in the video.

U.S. Reps. Jason Crow (D., Colo.), a former paratrooper and Army Ranger, and Maggie Goodlander (D., N.H.), a former intelligence officer, also appeared in the video, as did U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a former Navy captain.

What does sedition actually mean? Here’s what to know about Trump’s accusation against Democratic lawmakers.

Sen. Mark Kelly sues the Pentagon

Kelly filed a lawsuit Monday against the Pentagon and Hegseth over the defense secretary’s attempts to punish Kelly in particular for his participation in the November video.

Kelly claims the Trump administration is violating his constitutional rights to free speech after Hegseth censured the Arizona senator. Hegseth said the Jan. 5 censure was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from Kelly’s retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.

“The First Amendment forbids the government and its officials from punishing disfavored expression or retaliating against protected speech,” Kelly’s lawsuit says. “That prohibition applies with particular force to legislators speaking on matters of public policy.”

Although all six lawmakers served in the military or intelligence agencies, only Kelly served long enough to formally retire from the military, which means the senator still falls under the Pentagon’s jurisdiction. The Pentagon opened its own investigation into Kelly in November after he appeared in the video.

Deluzio said that Trump and Hegseth’s pursuit of Kelly is about more than just the senator.

“They are trying to intimidate retired service members to signal to them that if you speak up and say something that the Trump administration or Pete Hegseth doesn’t like, that they’re going to target your retirement and your pension that you’ve earned after 20 years of service,” he said.

A 2016 video circulated last month of Hegseth citing the same military law the legislators refer to in their video: Don’t follow unlawful orders. As a member of Trump’s administration, Hegseth has pointed to other aspects of military law that emphasize following orders and that say orders should be presumed lawful.

When asked whether he also would sue the Trump administration over how officials have handled the lawmakers’ video, Deluzio said he was “not going to detail my legal strategy in all of this.”

“But I will just be crystal clear that I am not intimidated by what they’re trying to do,” he added.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.

January 15, 2026
Frantic families, unidentified bones: A week after alleged grave robber’s arrest, loved ones have questions without answers

A week after authorities arrested Jonathan Christian Gerlach on charges of stealing human remains from Mount Moriah Cemetery, the consequences of the case continue to unfold — from a small police department fielding frantic pleas from families to a coroner’s office now responsible for safeguarding more than 100 unidentified bones and body parts.

Since the arrest, the Yeadon Police Department has been inundated with calls and emails from relatives fearful that the graves of their loved ones were disturbed, Police Chief Henry Giammarco said. The remains recovered during the investigation — including skulls, bones, and other human fragments — were seized from Gerlach’s basement and from a separate storage unit, both in Ephrata, and are now in the custody of the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office.

Gerlach is accused of systematically removing skulls and bones from graves at Mount Moriah, a sprawling historic cemetery that spans Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough. The case has drawn national attention, prompting widespread media coverage and intensifying concern among families with relatives buried at the cemetery.

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As of Wednesday afternoon, Giammarco said, his department had received more than 200 calls and emails from people across Pennsylvania and from as far away as Montreal and Hawaii, many asking whether authorities could confirm whether specific graves had been disturbed or whether their loved ones’ remains were among those recovered.

Inside the coroner’s office, the remains have been cataloged and placed in secure storage, Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said. They will remain there until Gerlach’s criminal case is resolved.

Diamantoni said his office does not plan to attempt to identify the remains — a task he described as virtually impossible given their age, their condition, and the circumstances in which they were recovered.

When the bones were seized from Gerlach’s home and storage unit, Diamantoni said, they were not labeled or organized in any way that would indicate where they came from or whom they belonged to. In many cases, he said, remains from different individuals were mixed together, a condition known as commingling, “on a scale that I’ve never encountered.”

Compounding the challenge, some of the remains are believed to be hundreds of years old, Diamantoni said, and are in advanced states of decay. Even under ideal conditions, identifying such remains would be difficult. In this case, he said, it would be “a herculean task” to attempt to match the bones to specific burial sites — let alone to determine whose remains they were.

Even if that were somehow possible, Diamantoni said, identifying a living family member would present another nearly insurmountable hurdle, given the age of the remains.

Back in Yeadon, Giammarco said he has tried to provide as much clarity as possible to families reaching out in distress. While the investigation is ongoing, he said, authorities have identified thefts only from mausoleums and underground vaults — structures that are larger and deeper than standard graves and are constructed differently. He spent much of the weekend returning calls and responding to emails, he said, hoping to ease fears.

“If it would have been my family,” Giammarco said, “I would have wanted someone to contact me.”

Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse, whose office is prosecuting Gerlach, said Wednesday the investigation into the crimes was ongoing.

January 15, 2026