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A curated guide to major news and developments over the weekend. Here’s today’s news:
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR – CEASEFIRE
Israel reopened Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt this morning for a limited number of people. Only a few people will be permitted to travel in either direction, and no goods will be permitted to enter Gaza through this crossing. An Egyptian official said 50 Palestinians would cross the border in each direction on the first day. Samy Magdy and Josef Federman report for AP News.
Israeli airstrikes killed more than 30 people in Gaza on Saturday, in attacks on houses, tents, and a police station, according to Palestinian health officials. Several children were among those killed, according to a Gaza health ministry official and the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Israeli military said it was responding to a breach of the ceasefire the previous day, in which troops had identified eight armed men emerging from a tunnel in Rafah. Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim report for the New York Times; Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell report for Reuters.
The U.S. State Department announced on Friday that it was planning to send Israel more than $6.5 billion of weapons, bypassing a congressional review process. The State Department is supposed to wait for approval from the top two members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before announcing the aid. It is the third time that the Trump administration has circumvented this part of the congressional process to send weapons to Israel. Edward Wong report for the New York Times.
IRAN
Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman said in a private briefing on Friday in Washington that if President Trump does not follow through on his threats against Iran, the regime will end up stronger, four sources told Axios. Saudi Arabia’s public posture, however, has been very cautious around potential U.S. strikes in Iran. Last week, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia would not allow the United States to use its airspace for an attack on Iran. Barak Ravid and Zachary Basau report.
“Contrary to the artificially manufactured media war narrative, the formation of a framework for negotiations [with the U.S.] is progressing,” the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Ali Larijani, said on Saturday. Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey have been talking to U.S. and Iranian officials and coordinating their efforts, sources said. Larijani met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Saturday to discuss de-escalating tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said. The Trump administration has told Iran through multiple channels that it is open to negotiation, a senior U.S.official told Axios. Barak Ravid reports for Axios; Reuters reports.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
A Russian drone yesterday killed 12 miners who had just finished their shift in a coal mine in east-central Ukraine, officials said. The strikes underscore the limitations of a partial truce that Russia appeared to agree to at Trump’s request last week. Kim Barker reports for the New York Times.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday that U.S.-led trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia will go ahead in Abu Dhabi on Feb. 4 and 5. Reuters reports.
SUDANESE CIVIL WAR
A covert drone base in Egypt is being used to launch strikes against targets in Sudan, according to satellite images, flight records, and videos reviewed by the New York Times and interviews with officials. The drones are targeting the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. Egypt has largely been a diplomatic player in Sudan, but the drone activity suggests it has entered the conflict alongside Sudan’s military. Declan Walsh, Malachy Browne, Eric Schmitt, and Nick Cumming-Bruce report.
OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The number of Belarusian balloons carrying bundles of cigarettes into NATO airspace has rapidly increased, including two major incursions into Lithuania and Poland last week. Officials and experts are concerned that it represents an escalation of a Russian hybrid warfare campaign against NATO and the EU. On Tuesday night, Lithuanian authorities detected 42 balloon flights from Belarus, prompting Vilnius airport to halt flight operations multiple times. The next night, balloons from Belarus encroached on Polish airspace in the country’s east, the Polish military reported. Aaron Wiener, Mary Ilyushina, and Ellen Francis report for the Washington Post.
Pakistani authorities said yesterday that Pakistani security forces killed 145 alleged Indian-backed militants in Balochistan during counterterrorism raids launched after coordinated suicide and gun attacks killed 33 people on Saturday. Abdul Sattar and Munir Ahmed report for AP News.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels removed critical telecommunications belonging to the U.N., the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, Julien Harneis, said on Saturday, warning that the further restrictions on its work would fuel a worsening humanitarian crisis. “This equipment is part of the minimum infrastructure needed by the United Nations to be present and to implement programmes,” said Harneis. Two U.N. officials told Reuters that the World Food Programme had stopped operations in northern Yemen due to operational challenges, and that 365 employees of the U.N. agency would have their contracts terminated at the end of March. Olivia Le Poidevin reports.
TECH DEVELOPMENTS
Indonesia yesterday lifted a ban on Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, according to a statement from Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs. The statement said that the ministry had received a letter from X Corp “outlining concrete steps for service improvement and the prevention of misuse.” Indonesia was one of several Southeast Asian countries that banned access to Grok last month after it flooded X with millions of sexually explicit images. Jin Yu Young reports for the New York Times.
U.S. CARIBBEAN AND PACIFIC OPERATIONS
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum yesterday announced that she plans to send humanitarian aid to Cuba this week. Trump had previously told reporters that Mexico would not send oil to Cuba, following an executive order imposing tariffs on countries that continue to do so. Sheinbaum said that she did not discuss Cuban affairs in her telephone call with Trump last week, adding that her government seeks to “diplomatically solve everything related to the oil shipments [to Cuba] for humanitarian reasons.” AP News reports; Sarah Morland and Adriana Barrera report for Reuters.
U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Representatives linked to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal and UAE national security adviser, secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial. Eric Trump signed the agreement with a UAE investment firm four days before Trump’s inauguration last year. Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhaus, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick report for the Wall Street Journal.
MINNESOTA
Two independent journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, were arrested last week and charged in connection with a protest outside a church in St Paul, Minnesota, last month. Lemon and Fort were livestreaming as dozens of anti-ICE protestors rushed into Cities Church on January 18, interrupting a church service. Both journalists were released from custody after appearing in federal court on Friday. The Justice Department first attempted to charge Lemon the week before, but a magistrate rejected the charges, saying there was insufficient evidence. Brian Stelter, Kara Scannell, Hannah Rabinowitz, Nick Watt, and Nicki Brown report for CNN.
Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was detained by federal agents while wearing a Spider-Man backpack, is back home in Minnesota, a statement from his school district said yesterday. A federal judge ordered the release of the boy and his father from detention on Saturday, condemning the Trump administration for pursuing daily deportation quotas “even if it requires traumatizing children.” Anushka Patil reports for the New York Times.
The Justice Department is conducting a civil rights investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti, who was shot by federal immigration agents in Minnesota last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Friday. “I don’t want the takeaway to be that there’s some massive civil rights investigation that’s happening. This is what I would describe as a standard investigation by the FBI. … That investigation, to the extent it needs to involve lawyers at the Civil Rights Division, it will involve those,” Blanche said. Aaron Pellish reports for POLITICO.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison will testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on March 4. This is the latest development in the panel’s investigation into welfare fraud in Minnesota. Hailey Fuchs reports for POLITICO.
OTHER U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS
Federal agents were told last Wednesday that they have a broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal ICE memo reviewed by the New York Times. The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people that they suspect are undocumented, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out to arrest a specific person. Hamed Aleaziz and Charlie Savage report.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) on Saturday ordered city police to begin formally documenting instances of aggressive and potentially illegal federal immigration enforcement actions. Emily Cochrane reports for the New York Times.
The Trump administration is buying and seeking to convert large industrial warehouses across at least eight states into a nationwide mass-detention network capable of holding up to 80,000 migrants to accelerate deportations. The Homeland Security Department bought two warehouses this month, one in Williamsport, Maryland, for $102 million and another in Surprise, Arizona, for $70 million, deed records show. Local leaders in Maryland say DHS only notified them two days before the purchase. Rep. April McClain Delaney (D-MD) said last week, “Planning a detention facility behind closed doors is not governance – it is intimidation.” Jonathan O’Connell and Douglas MacMillan report for the Washington Post.
Federal judges across the United States are increasingly ordering the release of immigrant detainees after finding the Trump administration’s mandatory-detention policy violates longstanding legal interpretations requiring bond hearings. Miriam Jordan and Devlin Barrett report for the New York Times.
U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
An appeals court judge dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint against Chief U.S District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C, finding that the Justice Department had failed to show that Boasberg exhibited bias against the Trump administration. The decision dated 19 Dec. was made public on Saturday. Salvador Rizzo reports for the Washington Post.
The Justice Department looked into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump in connection with Jeffrey Epstein but did not find credible information to warrant further investigation, Blanche said yesterday, following the DOJ’s release of 3 million pages of the Epstein files. Using a proprietary search tool, the New York Times identified more than 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and other related words in the latest batch of documents. None of the files includes any direct communication between Trump and Epstein. Steve Eder, Michael C. Bender, and David Enrich report.
The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is now expected to last into the week, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R‑LA) saying yesterday that he believes the House can pass a funding package and end the shutdown by Tuesday. The Senate passed a compromise spending bill on Friday that funds most of the government and temporarily extends DHS funding. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told Johnson that the Democrats will not provide the votes needed to fast‑track the bill. Meredith Lee Hill and Nicholas Wu report for POLITICO; Jordain Carney and Katherine Tully-McManus report for POLITICO; Avery Lotz reports for Axios.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS
Trump said yesterday that he will close Washington’s Kennedy Center in July for two years for construction. Trump’s announcement on social media follows a wave of cancellations by leading performers since the president replaced the previous leadership and added his name to the building. Trump made no mention in his post of the recent cancellations. Michlle L. Price and Lisa Mascaro report for AP News.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION
A federal judge on Saturday denied a request by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to temporarily block a surge of federal immigration agents. “There is evidence that ICE and CBP agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions,” the judge said. However, she found that the state officials’ arguments that the state was being punished or treated unfairly by the federal government were insufficient to justify blocking the surge altogether. Josh Gerstein, Kyle Cheney, and Gregory Svirnovskiy report for POLITICO.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for over 5,000 Ethiopians, giving the legal challenge more time to be heard. Nate Raymond reports for Reuters.
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