Tulsi Gabbard oversaw an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines last spring, Reuters reports, citing Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the events.
A team working for the director of national intelligence, alongside the FBI, was tasked with investigating claims that Venezuela hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico – a claim it was not able to substantiate, Reuters’ sources said. Gabbard’s office confirmed the investigation but denied a link to Venezuela.
The news comes just more than a week after Gabbard appeared at an FBI raid of an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia.
As my colleague Hugo Lowell reported:
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week.
Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid.
Donald Trump, who has repeatedly and falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged, escalated his rhetoric around election security this week when he suggested on a conservative podcast that Republican state officials “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.
A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk must be deposed in a case over the government’s defunding of the US Agency for International Development. It’s the latest twist in a lawsuit brought last year by dozens of current and former USAID staff against the actions of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The plaintiffs allege that Musk led the effort to slash funding at the aid agency and used authority outside of his role as a “special government employee”. According to Wednesday’s filing by US District Judge Theodore Chuang, plaintiffs allege that “Musk personally made many of these decisions” and “his own statements on social media during the relevant time period provide evidentiary support for that conclusion”.
Under the Doge cuts, USAID went from a global workforce of more than 10,000 employees to around 600, and more 83% of the agency’s programs were abruptly terminated worldwide.
In November, the Justice Department filed a motion requesting that Musk be precluded from any depositions in the case. It also requested that Peter Marocco, a Donald Trump ally who was tasked with overseeing USAID as it was eviscerated by Doge, and Jeremy Lewin, a former Doge team lead who went on to temporarily become the chief operating officer for USAID, also be precluded from depositions.
The Justice Department referred to the “apex doctrine” for its argument, which precludes depositions of high-ranking government officials.
In Chuang’s ruling on Wednesday, he said it’s unclear whether Musk, Marocco and Lewin were ever high-ranking government officials, and even if they were, they are no longer in their Doge and USAID positions. Chuang also said these three individuals were reportedly making decisions about the fate of USAID and the Justice Department hasn’t offered lower-ranking officials who could be deposed in their place.
Tulsi Gabbard oversaw an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines last spring, Reuters reports, citing Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the events.
A team working for the director of national intelligence, alongside the FBI, was tasked with investigating claims that Venezuela hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico – a claim it was not able to substantiate, Reuters’ sources said. Gabbard’s office confirmed the investigation but denied a link to Venezuela.
The news comes just more than a week after Gabbard appeared at an FBI raid of an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia.
As my colleague Hugo Lowell reported:
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week.
Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid.
Donald Trump, who has repeatedly and falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged, escalated his rhetoric around election security this week when he suggested on a conservative podcast that Republican state officials “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.
Donald Trump said “I can’t talk about that” when asked whether his administration had previous contact with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez before the US military captured president Nicolás Maduro.
The president did say “so far she’s done a great job”.
When asked about US relations with Cuba shortly after, Trump said, “We are talking with Cuba.”
Asked by NBC News’ Tom Llamas if there was any possibility he would still be in power after the conclusion of his second term, Trump said ruling out an unconstitutional third term would “make life so much less exciting”.
Trump touted a strong bench of conservative candidates and promoted the idea of a Vance and Rubio presidential ticket in 2028 – though declined the parlor game question of who would top it.
“Well, I don’t want to get into this. We have three years to go. I don’t want to, you know, I have two people that are doing a great job. I don’t want to have an argument with, or I don’t want to use the word ‘fight’– it wouldn’t be a fight,” Trump said. “But look, JD is fantastic, and Marco is fantastic.”
Pressed on how Vance and Rubio differ, Trump mused that it was Llamas’s most “interesting” question of the lengthy and wide-ranging interview.
“I would say one is slightly more diplomatic than the other,” Trump said, though did not specify which. “I think they’re both of very high intelligence.”
“They’re both very capable,” he added. “I do think this: The combination of JD and Marco would be very hard to be beaten, I think. But you never know in politics, right?”
Trump said on Wednesday that his pick to lead the Fed, Kevin Warsh, wouldn’t have received the job had he indicated he would have raised interest rates.
Pressed by host Tom Llamas whether the Fed was an “independent body”, Trump replied: “I mean, in theory, it’s an independent body. But I think, you know, I’m a smart guy. I know the economy better than almost everybody.”
Historically the Federal Reserve has operated as independent, as a way to insulate monetary policy decisions from short-term political pressure.
Chad Davis, a Minneapolis photographer who is documenting his city’s response to the deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents to his city, photographed an unusual street scene on Wednesday.
On one snow-covered front lawn in south Minneapolis, the part of the city where Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal officers in recent weeks, Davis came across a large display in the form of a giant paper bag like those used by the fast-casual chain Cava stuffed with huge, replica $50 bills. On the bag were the words: “Homan” and “$50k To Go”, a reference to reporting that the person overseeing the federal immigration surge in the city, Tom Homan, accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent in return for political favors. At the bottom of the bag is the slogan: “ICE GTFO of MN.”
Trump again defended his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, as calls grow for her ouster after federal immigration agents shot and killed two people in Minneapolis last month.
“She was in charge of the border,” he said. “The border’s closed.”
Several top congressional Democrats have called for her to resign or to face impeachment.
Donald Trump said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should be “very worried” about a US military buildup in the Middle East after a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations in Tehran last month.
He also warned Iran not to try to restart their nuclear program. “You do that, we’re going to do bad things to you,” he said in an interview with NBC News that aired on Wednesday.
His remarks come as the US and Iran salvaged talks scheduled for Friday after the US initially rejected Iran’s request to move them from Turkey to Oman.
“That country’s a mess right now because of us,” Trump said of Iran. “We went in, we wiped out their nuclear if I didn’t take out the nuclear, think of it. If we didn’t take out that nuclear, we wouldn’t have peace in the Middle East.”
Trump has previously said the country needs “new leadership”.
More than 60% of voters think the Trump administration has not given an honest account of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
A majority of voters also believe the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem should be removed from her position, and 80% think there should be an independent investigation into Pretti’s shooting.
The poll’s findings fall largely along partisan lines, with 93% of Democrats saying they did not believe the Trump administration’s account and 60% of Republicans saying that they did.
Adults across the world were far more likely to name the economy as the greatest problem facing their countries than other issues like safety, food and shelter, the environment, healthcare or immigration, according to a new Gallup poll.
The poll found that 23% of adults across 107 countries named the economy as their country’s most important problem – while 10% listed work.
Among high-income nations like the United States, younger people were more likely to cite economic concerns than their older peers. About one-third of adults under the age of 35 raised concerns about affordability in the poll, compared with only 13% of those 55 and older.
The CIA has shuttered its longtime favorite reference manual, the World Factbook.
In an announcement on its website, titled “Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell”, the CIA said: “The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe” but gave no reason for its closure.
The Factbook was first published in 1962 as a classified manual for staff, with an unclassified version first released in 1971. In 1997, the World Factbook went online at CIA.gov, where it received millions of views each year from researchers, pop science aficionados and others seeking information on other countries.
Immigration agents have arrested more than 4,000 people since Operation Metro Surge began in Minnesota, according to White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
Leavitt called those arrested “dangerous criminal illegal aliens” and said that “Democrats opened our borders and allowed vicious criminals, including murderers, rapists, gang members and terrorists to invade our communities”, adding that “President Trump is reversing that horrific damage”.
She did not include specific data on the number of those arrested who have been convicted or deported.
The Trump administration has classified immigrants across the country as “vicious”, labeling them as gang members or other criminals in order to justify their arrest – or as in the case of two people in Portland, Oregon, last month, their shooting.
Highly public cases of those detained so far in Minnesota have included five-year-old Liam Ramos and 10-year-old Elizabeth Caisaguano.
Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who has represented Georgia’s 11th congressional district since 2015, will not seek re-election when his term ends next year. Loudermilk serves as the chair of a House judiciary subcommittee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“I believe it is time to contribute to my community, state and nation in other ways,” Loudermilk said in a statement. “I have learned throughout my life that doing what is right is not always easy, convenient or popular. My wife and I have prayed diligently and discussed this extensively; and, while this is not an easy decision, we believe it is the right one. While serving my constituents in Congress ranks among my greatest honors, being a husband, a father and a grandfather holds even greater importance to me; and at this time, I wish to spend more dedicated time with my family.”
Senator Ron Wyden has sent a classified letter to the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, according to a press release and unclassified letter shared by Wyden’s office.
“I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today, in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Wyden wrote in the unclassified letter to Ratcliffe.
Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, is the longest-serving member of the Senate select committee on intelligence.
Virginia will no longer deputize state police to enforce immigration laws, after an executive order that the state’s governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed today. Former governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, had signed an executive order last year directing state police and corrections officers to assist with federal immigration enforcement.
“This doesn’t preclude any sort of coordination or taskforce-related work; it doesn’t preclude any federal agency coming with a judicial warrant and requesting assistance,” Spanberger said. “But taking Virginia law enforcement, state agency personnel, and basically giving them over to ICE is something that ends today.”
Here’s more of our past reporting on federal efforts to recruit local police for immigration enforcement purposes:
The White House says the findings of a major Human Rights Watch report released today, finding that “the rules-based international order is being crushed” under “relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump”, are untrue.
“Human Rights Watch suffers from an organization-wide case of Trump Derangement Syndrome – they have been attacking the president before he even took office,” said spokesperson Anna Kelly. “President Trump has done more for human rights than this Soros-funded, left-wing group ever could by ending eight wars, saving countless lives, protecting religious freedom, ending Biden’s weaponization of government, and more.”
In an introductory essay to the 529-page World Report, Human Rights Watch executive director Philippe Bolopion wrote: “To be fair, the downward spiral predated Trump’s reelection. The democratic wave that began over 50 years ago has given way to what scholars term a ‘democratic recession.’ Democracy is now back to 1985 levels according to some metrics, with 72 percent of the world’s population now living under autocracy. Russia and China are less free today than 20 years ago. And so is the United States.”
Bolopion called 2025 “a tipping point”, adding: “In just 12 months, the Trump administration has carried out a broad assault on key pillars of US democracy and the global rules-based order, which the US, despite inconsistencies, was, with other states, instrumental in helping to establish.”
Here’s more coverage on the report:
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