Upset with tariff response
Ice fishers forced onto boats
Premier responds to critics 
Bolsters Arctic security 
Balmy in B.C. and Alberta 
Police arrest protesters 
Appeals court affirms Trump 
Mayor's race kicks off
Canada Post's $1B loan
Canadian Tire must pay up
NFL launches challenge
Vees defeat Americans 5-3
Ugly first dooms Warriors
Rockets author comeback
Guthrie: 'We will pay,'
Brad Arnold dies at 47
Lil Jon's son found dead
- Police arrest protesters
Minneapolis 4:02pm - 2,852 views - Appeals court affirms Trump Washington 2:57pm - 5,609 views
- Mayor's race kicks off Los Angeles Feb 6 - 5,308 views
- Bodies found near mine Mexico Feb 6 - 14,360 views
- Trump must restore funding New York Feb 6 - 15,383 views
- Still on missing mom search Arizona Feb 6 - 8,503 views
- Trump's racist post removed United States Feb 6 - 14,410 views
- RFK Jr. testimony concerns United States Feb 6 - 15,612 views
World News
Police arrest protesters at Minneapolis federal building on 1-month anniversary of woman's death
Police arrest protesters
Renee Good was killed on Jan. 7 as she was driving away from immigration officers in a Minneapolis neighborhood. Her death and that of another Minneapolis resident, Alex Pretti, just weeks later have stoked outrage nationwide over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
Scores of protesters gathered across the street from the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building around midday, throwing bottles and sex toys at a line of police guarding the property. The Hennepin County Sheriff's office said that the arrests began after the crowd started throwing chunks of ice and some property was damaged. A deputy was hit in the head, and a squad vehicle's windshield was smashed, the sheriff's office said on its Facebook page.
Police declared the gathering unlawful and ordered protesters to leave. Many complied, the Star Tribune reported, but about 100 remained in a standoff with deputies, state troopers and state conservation officers.
The sheriff's office later told television station KSTP that at least 42 arrests were made. No one from the sheriff's office responded to email, voicemail and text messages from The Associated Press on Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile on Saturday, hundreds gathered on a snow-covered field in a Minneapolis park to honor Good and Pretti. Event organizers echoed recent criticisms of the immigration crackdown across Minnesota, characterizing it as a federal occupation.
A Lakota spiritual leader, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, led a ceremony at the front of the crowd filled with people holding signs and American flags. Others shared music and poetry to honor the two people who have become central figures in the polarizing immigration debate in recent weeks.
A federal immigration officer shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in her car in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Three agents surrounded her Honda Pilot SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from Good's home. Bystander video show an officer approaching the SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle.
The vehicle began to pull forward, and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulled his weapon and immediately fired at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moved toward him. The Trump administration called Good as a domestic terrorist who tried to run over an officer with her vehicle. State and local officials have rejected that characterization.
Pretti was killed on Jan. 24 during a scuffle with immigration officers on the street. Bystander video shows a half-dozen officers took Pretti to the ground. One spotted Pretti's gun, which he was licensed to carry, and shouted “He's got a gun.” Two officers then opened fire.
The Trump administration's border czar, Tom Homan, on Wednesday announced the administration would pull 700 immigration officers from Minnesota — roughly a quarter of the officers deployed to the state — after state and local officials agreed over the past week to cooperate by turning over arrested immigrants. Homan did not say when the administration would end its crackdown in the state, however.
Good's wife, Becca Good, issued a statement Saturday saying that the immigration effort is hurting people in Minneapolis and no one knows their names.
“You know my wife’s name and you know Alex’s name, but there are many others in this city being harmed that you don’t know — their families are hurting just like mine, even if they don’t look like mine,” Becca Good said in the statement. “They are neighbors, friends, co-workers, classmates. And we must also know their names. Because this shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
Appeals court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond
Appeals court affirms Trump
President Donald Trump's administration can continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and countering a slew of recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security's decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, circuit judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States."
Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.
"That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under" the law “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were both Mexican nationals who had both lived in the United States for over 10 years and weren't flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing almost 30 years of precedent under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
Friday's ruling also bucks a November district court decision in California, which granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday's decision.
The elected congress members who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to argue that the federal government was overriding the lawmaking process with DHS' new immigration detention policy that denies detained immigrants bond.
“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber stamp its proposed legislation by executive fiat, I dissent,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas' opinion echoed widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges around the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn."
“We will continue vindicating President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.
Los Angeles mayor's race kicks off amid homelessness, raids and fallout from deadly 2025 wildfire
Mayor's race kicks off
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is heading into a challenging reelection bid as she continues to suffer fallout from last year’s devastating wildfire and ongoing criticism of City Hall on issues from street paving to homelessness.
The deadline is Saturday for candidates to enter the contest ahead of the June 2 primary election. Bass — a first-term Democrat and the first Black woman to hold the post — already is facing challenges from tech entrepreneur and nonprofit founder Adam Miller; reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who lost his home to the deadly Palisades Fire; and community organizer Rae Huang.
The race is unfolding at an unsettled time for the city of nearly 4 million.
Complaints about the cost of living — whether for rent, taxes or groceries — are a constant refrain. Dirty, pocked streets and sidewalks abound. Hollywood jobs have been decamping for years for more affordable locales.
Ongoing Trump administration immigration raids have shaken the city. Despite studies showing a slight decline in the homeless population, encampments remain commonplace. And recovery from the Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed much of the tony seaside neighborhood in January 2025, continues at a pace that some say is too slow.
In an upbeat speech this month laying out her vision for the city's future, Bass talked of the upcoming 2028 Olympics in the city and plans to spruce up busy thoroughfares.
“Even in this difficult chapter in our history, great events, moments of unity, are possible,” Bass said. “And they are coming.”
Los Angeles-based Democratic consultant Bill Carrick sees the race as wide-open. Under California's primary rules, all candidates appear on the same ballot and the top two finishers advance to the November general election — a system that can lead to unpredictable outcomes.
Voters are “kind of unhappy with city government, and I think the Palisades Fire certainly contributed enormously with that feeling,” Carrick said.
The mayor, who was on a trip to Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the fire began raging through the Palisades neighborhood, has been on the defensive for her actions during and after the blaze.
The Los Angeles Times has published a series of reports, based on public records requests, showing that drafts of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report included deletions and revisions intended to soften the failures of city and department officials.
This week Bass’ office forcefully denied allegations in a Times story, based on anonymous, secondhand sources, that she pushed for changes in the report before publication to shield City Hall from potential legal action. She told reporters that the account was “completely fabricated.”
Officials have said the deadly blaze was ignited by remnants of a Jan. 1 fire that continued to smolder underground. In October, a 29-year-old man was arrested and charged with sparking the earlier fire. The LAFD has faced scrutiny over whether it properly extinguished the New Year’s Day blaze.
On his website, Pratt said he “watched my home burn because the system failed us.”
“We don’t need more government programs,” Pratt added. “We need common sense, accountability, and a mayor that shows up for everyone.”
Miller, running as an outsider with the ability to invest in his own campaign, poses a new challenge for Bass, who defeated billionaire Rick Caruso in her 2022 election. Miller founded Cornerstone OnDemand, a global education company, and later cofounded the Better Angels nonprofit to address homelessness.
“Los Angeles has extraordinary potential but too often City Hall hasn’t been there for the people who call it home,” Miller said in a statement.
Bodies found in area in Mexico where search is on for 10 missing workers from Canadian mine
Bodies found near mine
Mexican authorities on Friday announced the discovery of bodies and remains in the northwestern state of Sinaloa in an area of an ongoing search for 10 missing workers from a Canadian gold and silver mine.
The statement from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office did not specify how many bodies or sets of remains were found, but said that one of the bodies had the “characteristics of one of the people reported as missing.”
The office also reported the arrests of four people believed to be tied to the workers’ disappearances.
The Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office said the remains were found in the community of El Verde, in the municipality of Concordia, where the mine is located.
In the same area, the Navy reported the dismantling of 10 camps that had been used by cartel members.
The mountainous region is one of various points in the state where a turf war has played out for more than a year between two rival factions of the Sinaloa cartel.
On Jan. 28, mining company Vancouver-based Vizsla Silver reported the abduction of 10 people from its facilities. It said it had alerted authorities and its crisis management and security response teams were involved in the search.
The company did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment late Friday.
The federal government increased the number of troops deployed to the state and launched an operation to find the workers.
Mines have been the target of organized crime on other occasions in Mexico, as cartels see opportunities to extort or even sell valuable ore themselves.
Judge orders Trump administration to restore funding for rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey
Trump must restore funding
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore funding to a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey on Friday, ruling just as construction was set to shut down on the massive infrastructure project.
The decision came months after the Trump administration announced it was halting $16 billion in support for the project, citing the then-government shutdown and what a top federal budget official said were concerns about unconstitutional spending around diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan approved a request by New York and New Jersey for a temporary restraining order barring the administration from withholding the funds while the states seek a preliminary injunction that would keep the money flowing while their lawsuit plays out in court.
“The Court is also persuaded that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have adequately shown that the public interest would be harmed by a delay in a critical infrastructure project.”
The White House and U.S. Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday night.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling “a critical victory for workers and commuters in New York and New Jersey.”
“I am grateful the court acted quickly to block this senseless funding freeze, which threatened to derail a project our entire region depends on,” James said in a statement. “The Hudson Tunnel Project is one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, and we will keep fighting to ensure construction can continue without unnecessary federal interference.”
The panel overseeing the project, the Gateway Development Commission, had said work would stop late Friday afternoon because of the federal funding freeze, resulting in the immediate loss of about 1,000 jobs as well as thousands of additional jobs in the future.
It was not immediately clear when work would resume. The commission said in a statement Friday night that "We are hopeful this means funding disbursements will resume soon, and we can restart site operations and get our workers back on the job.”
The new tunnel is meant to ease strain on an existing, over 110-year-old tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey for Amtrak and commuter trains, where delays can lead to backups up and down the East Coast.
New York and New Jersey sued over the funding pause this week, as did the Gateway Development Commission, moving to restore the Trump administration's support.
The suspension was seen as way for the Trump administration to put pressure on Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House was blaming for a government shutdown last year. The shutdown was resolved a few weeks later.
Speaking to the media on Air Force One on Friday night, Trump was asked about reports that he would unfreeze funding for the tunnel project if Schumer would agree to a plan to rename Penn Station in New York and Dulles International Airport in Virginia after Trump.
“Chuck Schumer suggested that to me, about changing the name of Penn Station to Trump Station. Dulles Airport is really separate,” Trump responded.
Schumer responded on social media: “Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it. Only one man can restart the project and he can restart it with the snap of his fingers.”
At a hearing in the states' lawsuit earlier Friday in Manhattan, Shankar Duraiswamy, of the New Jersey attorney general’s office, told the judge that the states need “urgent relief” because of the harm and costs that will occur if the project is stopped.
“There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen,” he said, referring to the New Jersey city and claiming that abandoning the sites, even temporarily, “would pose a substantial safety and public health threat.”
Duraiswamy said the problem with shutting down now is that even a short stoppage would cause longer delays because workers will be laid off and go off to other jobs and it’ll be hard to quickly remobilize if funding becomes available. And, he added, “any long-term suspension of funding could torpedo the project.”
Tara Schwartz, an assistant U.S. attorney arguing for the government, disagreed with the “parade of horribles” described by attorneys for the states.
She noted that the states had not even made clear how long the sites could be maintained by the Gateway Development Commission. So the judge asked Duraiswamy, and he said they could maintain the sites for a few weeks and possibly a few months, but that the states would continue to suffer irreparable harm because trains would continue to run late because they rely on an outdated tunnel.
___
Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.
Sheriff searching for Savannah Guthrie’s missing mom calls lack of video a disappointing setback
Still on missing mom search
The sheriff investigating the apparent abduction of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother said Friday he was frustrated that a camera at Nancy Guthrie's home wasn’t able to capture images of anyone the day she went missing.
Investigators have found that the home’s doorbell camera was disconnected early Sunday and that software data recorded movement at the home minutes later. But Nancy Guthrie did not have an active subscription, so none of the footage was able to be recovered.
“It is concerning, it’s actually almost disappointing because you’ve got your hopes up,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told The Associated Press in an interview at the department’s headquarters. “OK, they got an image. ‘Well, we do, but we don’t.’”
The frantic search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie has entered a sixth day. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out, Nanos said at a news conference Thursday.
Authorities think she was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson over the weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, Nanos has said.
President Donald Trump, speaking on Air Force One, said the investigation into Guthrie’s disappearance was going “very well.”
“We have some clues that I think are very strong,” Trump said, while en route to his Florida estate. “We have some things that may be coming out reasonably soon.”
Investigators return to scene
Investigators were back in Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood on Friday.
The county sheriff's department posted on social media that they were restricting access to the road in front of the home to give investigators space. They directed media organizations staked out there to move.
The Catalina Foothills Association, a neighborhood group, told residents in a letter that authorities were resuming searches in the area immediately.
"I know we all stand together in our collective disbelief and sadness and greatly appreciate your willingness to speak with law enforcement, share camera images and allow searches of your properties,” the president of the association said in the letter.
The sheriff said Thursday that investigators have not given up on trying to retrieve footage from the home.
“I wish technology was as easy as we believe it is, that here’s a picture, here’s your bad guy. But it’s not,” Nanos told the AP. “There are pieces of information that come to us from these tech groups that say ‘this is what we have and we can’t get anymore.’”
TV station receives new note
The sheriff said he had no new information about purported ransom letters sent to some media outlets, saying that the FBI is handling that side of the investigation.
Tucson TV station KOLD said on Friday it received a new message, via email, tied to the Guthrie case. The station said it couldn’t disclose its contents. The FBI said it was aware of a new message and was reviewing its authenticity.
KOLD was one of the media outlets that received a ransom message earlier in the week.
Health concerns mount
Concern about Nancy Guthrie's condition is growing because authorities say she needs daily medicine that’s vital to her health. She was said to have a pacemaker and dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.
“Her conditions, I would imagine, are worsening day by day" Nanos said. "She requires medication. And I have no way of knowing whether they’re getting that medication to her.”
The sheriff acknowledged that investigators are not sharing everything they know about what happened.
“That’s not how we do police investigations. There has to be some control of your case,” Nanos said, noting that authorities have shared more as the case proceeded.
Pleas from family
Savannah Guthrie, the longtime host of NBC’s morning show “Today,” and her two siblings released an emotional video message Wednesday to her mother’s kidnapper, saying they were ready to talk but wanted proof their mom was alive. Camron Guthrie repeated the family’s plea in a video posted Thursday.
“Whoever is out there holding our mother, we want to hear from you. We haven’t heard anything directly,” he said.
It’s unclear if all of the ransom notes were identical. Heith Janke, the FBI chief in Phoenix, said details included a demand for money with a deadline that passed Thursday evening and a second deadline for Monday if the first one wasn’t met. At least one note mentioned a floodlight at Guthrie’s home and an Apple watch, Janke said.
The kidnapping captured the attention of Americans, including Trump, who said he was directing federal authorities to help with the investigation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that federal authorities are assisting Arizona officials, but she declined to offer details.
“It breaks my heart for Savannah and for her family,” Bondi said.
Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Moriah Balingit in Washington, Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, Julie Walker in New York and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.
Trump's racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it
Trump's racist post removed
President Donald Trump’s social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as racist.
The Republican president’s Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist -- including by Republicans -- the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.
The post was part of a flurry of social media activity on Trump's Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term finding no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as the 2020 presidential votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas' smiling faces imposed on them.
This is vile racism, period.
— Jason Kenney ???? (@jkenney) February 6, 2026
By posting this Donald Trump is promoting racism, and confirming that he is mentally unstable.
Time for Republicans in Congress to find their spines and stand up to the madness. pic.twitter.com/DJlEYTYbX9
‘An internet meme’
Those frames were taken from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said by text, referring to Disney's 1994 feature film, which does not feature the range of jungle primates featured in the original video. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
By noon, the post had been taken down with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.
Trump did not comment on the video in the post, which comes in the first week of Black History Month and days after a presidential proclamation that cited “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness and their enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”
Condemnation across the political spectrum
While it was still up, Trump's post drew condemnation from across the political and ideological spectrum.
The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father's words: “Yes. I'm Black. I'm proud of it. I'm Black and beautiful.” She praised Black Americans as “diverse, innovative, industrious, inventive” and added, “We are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”
The U.S. Senate's lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans' midterm campaign arm, said on social media.
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement, “Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable.”
Johnson asserted that Trump is trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” Johnson said. "You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.
A long history of racism
There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false and racist ways. The practice dates back to 18th century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories in which white people drew connections between Africans and monkeys to justify the enslavement of Black people in Europe and North America, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as an uncivilized threat to white people.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s, once argued that white parents were concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primate on T-shirts and other merchandise.
Trump, for his part, has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler said to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.
During his first White House term, Trump referred to a swath of developing nations that are majority Black as “shithole countries.” He initially denied using the slur but admitted in December 2025 that he did say it.
When Obama was in the White House, Trump advanced the false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and was constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to many conservative voters, repeatedly demanded that Obama produce birth records and prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.
Obama eventually released his Hawaii records. Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But he immediately said, falsely, that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started those birtherism attacks on Obama.
Newly obtained emails undermine RFK Jr.'s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip before measles outbreak
RFK Jr. testimony concerns
Over two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated the same answer.
He said the closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines.”
Documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporaneous accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.
The documents have prompted concerns from at least one U.S. senator that the lawyer and activist now leading America’s health policy lied to Congress over the visit. Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.
The revelations, which come as measles outbreaks erupt across the U.S., build on previous criticism that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine record makes him unfit to serve as health secretary, a role in which he has worked to radically reshape immunization policy and public perceptions of vaccines.
The newly disclosed documents also reveal previously unknown details of the trip, including that a U.S. Embassy employee helped Kennedy’s team connect with Samoan officials. Kennedy, then running his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, did not publicly discuss the trip at the time, but he has since said his “purpose” for going there was not related to vaccines and "I ended up having conversations with people, some of whom I never intended to meet.” Besides meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister at the time, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines were not safe. Kennedy has said he went there to introduce a medical data system.
The U.S. State Department turned over the emails — many of which are heavily redacted — as a result of an open records lawsuit brought with the assistance of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
These disclosures come at a time when Kennedy, as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his power and enormous public influence to overhaul federal immunization guidance and raise suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines, including the measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in multiple U.S. states have rolled back decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease, putting the country on the verge of losing its elimination status. The latest figures show more than 875 people in South Carolina have been infected.
'Nothing to do with vaccines'
Kennedy addressed questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.
“My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said under questioning by Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts in his Jan. 30, 2025, hearing.
“Did the trip have nothing to do with vaccines as you told my colleagues in Senate Finance yesterday?” Markey asked later.
“Nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy replied.
One of the senators who questioned Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, responded to the records by saying, “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.”
“Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only underscores the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his allies will be held responsible.”
Taylor Harvey, a spokesman for Wyden and other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, said it is a crime to make a false statement to Congress and “casual, false denials to Congress will not be swept under the rug.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions sent by email and text message.
Kennedy has said his visit did not influence people’s decisions on whether to get themselves or their children immunized.
“I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate,” he told the 2023 documentary “Shot in the Arm.” “I didn’t, you know, go there for any reason to do with that.”
A halted vaccine program
Anti-vaccine activists in the United States became interested in Samoa in July 2018, when two babies died after being injected with a tainted measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine that had been improperly prepared. The government halted the vaccine program for 10 months, until the following April. Vaccination rates plummeted.
The records show that during the time when no vaccines were being administered, Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, was trying to connect Kennedy with Samoa’s prime minister. A January 2019 email from the group’s then-president, Lyn Redwood, to Samoan activist Edwin Tamasese asked him to “please share this letter with the Honorable Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi for Robert Kennedy, Jr.”
About two months later, Tamasese wrote back to Redwood, with a cc: to Kennedy and others.
“Hope all is well, organizing logistics with the PMs office and wanted to confirm how many people are coming? Also just wanted to confirm costs etc for the visit and how this will be handled,” he wrote.
Tamasese immediately forwarded the chain of messages to the personal and government email accounts of Benjamin Harding, at the time an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Apia, Samoa.
“just sent this. expecting an answer tomorrow as I think it is Sunday there. your letter looks good,” Tamasese told Harding.
While the U.S. Embassy in the past has acknowledged that an unnamed staffer attended an event with Kennedy and anti-vaccine activists while he was in Samoa, the records show that Harding wasn’t a passive attendee: He helped arrange Kennedy’s visit and connected Kennedy’s delegation with Samoan government officials.
In a May 23, 2019, email to Harding’s personal email address, a staffer for the Samoan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wrote: “Hi Benj, Currently awaiting the official bio-notes for Mr Kennedy and Dr Graven to convey to the Hon. Prime Minister and Hon. Minister of Health for their reference. Please note, that this needs to be sent with our official letter when requesting an appointment.”
Harding forwarded the ministry’s request to Dr. Michael Graven, then the chief information officer at Children’s Health Defense.
Harding did not respond to messages seeking comment sent to several listed email addresses, social media accounts, a phone number listed to his parents and a general mailbox at a company he lists as a current workplace on his LinkedIn profile.
Embassy staffers got a tip about Harding’s involvement in the trip from Sheldon Yett, then the representative for Pacific island countries at UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.
“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” Yett wrote in a May 22, 2019, email to an embassy staffer based in New Zealand. “The staff member in question seems to have had a role in facilitating this.”
Two days later, a top embassy staff member in Apia wrote to Scott Brown, then the Republican U.S. president's ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, alerting him to Kennedy’s trip and Harding’s involvement.
“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view),” the embassy official, Antone Greubel, wrote. “It turns out our very own Benjamin Harding played some role in a personal capacity to bring him here.” Greubel wrote that he told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement with this travel,” though the rest of the sentence is redacted.
Yett did not respond to questions, though he said in an email, “that was a very grim time in Samoa.”
Brown, who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, declined to comment. Greubel referred questions to a press office at the State Department. A State Department spokesperson would not answer questions about the records, saying that as a general practice they do not comment on personnel matters.
Harding left the embassy in July 2020, though he remains in Samoa, according to his LinkedIn account.
Kennedy ultimately visited in June 2019. While there, he and his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, were photographed greeting the prime minister during an Independence Day celebration. He also met with government health officials as well as a group of figures who have cast doubt on vaccines, including Tamasese.
The Guardian and the AP could find no record of Kennedy publicly discussing the purpose of his trip until after measles struck. In 2021, he wrote that he went there to discuss “the introduction of a medical informatics system” to track drug safety. He said Samoan officials “were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national respite from vaccines.”
Since then, he has said his reason for going to Samoa was not related to vaccines.
Redwood, the former Children’s Health Defense president who made early outreach to Samoa, is now an employee at HHS, reportedly working on vaccine safety.
During the measles outbreak, Kennedy wrote a four-page letter to Samoa’s prime minister suggesting without evidence that the measles infections were due to a defective vaccine and floating other unfounded theories.
Norwegian crown princess issues apology to those 'disappointed' by her Epstein contacts
Royal Epstein contacts
Norway’s crown princess issued an apology on Friday to those she has “disappointed” following days of scrutiny of her contacts with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and said she was sorry for the situation she had put the royal family in.
Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s communications and contacts with Epstein have put her in the spotlight in recent days, adding to the embarrassment to the royals just as her son went to trial this week for multiple offences including charges of rape.
The Epstein files contained several hundred mentions of the crown princess, who said in 2019 that she regretted having had contact with Epstein, Norwegian media reported.
The documents, which include email exchanges, showed that Mette-Marit borrowed an Epstein-owned property in Palm Beach, Florida, for several days in 2013. Broadcaster NRK reported that the stay was arranged through a mutual friend, which was later confirmed by the royal household.
The royal palace said Friday that Mette-Marit wants to talk about what happened and explain herself in more detail, but is unable to at present. It added that she is in a very difficult situation and “hopes for understanding that she needs time to gather her thoughts.”
It also issued a statement from the crown princess herself, her second in a week, in which she reiterated her deep regret for her past friendship with Epstein.
“It is important for me to apologize to all of you whom I have disappointed,” she said. “Some of the content of the messages between Epstein and me does not represent the person I want to be. I also apologize for the situation I have put the Royal Family in, especially the King and Queen.”
Mette-Marit said in a statement issued shortly after the latest Epstein files were released that she “must take responsibility for not having investigated Epstein’s background more thoroughly, and for not realizing sooner what kind of person he was.” She added: “I showed poor judgment and regret having had any contact with Epstein at all. It is simply embarrassing.”
Iran and US set for talks in Oman over nuclear program after Tehran shaken by nationwide protests
U.S., Iran prepare to meet
The two countries have returned to Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, months after rounds of meetings turned to ash following Israel's launch of a 12-day war against Iran back in June. The U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites during that war, likely destroying many of the centrifuges that spun uranium to near weapons-grade purity. Israel's attacks decimated Iran's air defenses and targeted its ballistic missile arsenal as well.
U.S. officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio believe Iran's theocracy is now at its weakest point since its 1979 Islamic Revolution after nationwide protests last month represented the greatest challenge to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's rule. Khamenei's forces responded with a bloody crackdown that killed thousands and reportedly saw tens of thousands arrested — and spurred new military threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to target the country.
With the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships in the region along with more fighter jets, the U.S. now likely has the military firepower to launch an attack if it wanted. But whether attacks could be enough to force Iran to change its ways — or potentially topple its government — remains far from a sure thing.
Meanwhile, Gulf Arab nations fear an attack could spark a regional war dragging them in as well. That threat is real — already, U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone near the Lincoln and Iran attempted to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
“President Trump seeks to corner Iran into reaching a negotiated solution, strong-arming its leaders into making concessions on the nuclear deal,” said Alissa Pavia, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The Iranians, on the other hand, are weakened after years of proxy warfare, economic crisis, and internal unrest. Trump is aware of this vulnerability and is hoping to use it to extract concessions and make inroads toward a renewed nuclear agreement.”
Few details on talks ahead of meeting
The scope, nature and participants in the talks remain unclear, just hours before they were due to begin in Muscat, the Omani capital nestled in the Hajar Mountains. Officials at Oman's borders on Thursday showed particular concern over anyone carrying cameras into the sultanate before the negotiations.
On the Iranian side, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived at night along with multiple Iranian diplomats, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. Ahead of the meeting, a top adviser to Khamenei appeared to offer the theocracy's support to the 63-year-old career diplomat.
Araghchi “is a skilled, strategic and trustworthy negotiator at the highest levels of decision-making and military intelligence,” Ali Shamkhani wrote on X. “Soldiers of the nation in the armed forces & generals of diplomacy, acting under the order of the Leader, will safeguard the nation’s interests.”
On the U.S. side, it appeared that talks would be led by U.S. Mideast special envoy Steve Witkoff, a 68-year-old billionaire New York real estate mogul and longtime friend to Trump. Traveling with Witkoff on his Mideast trip so far is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who in recent weeks has shared proposals for the Gaza Strip and took part in trilateral talks with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi earlier on the trip.
The two men had traveled from Abu Dhabi to Qatar on Thursday night for meetings with officials there, the Qatari-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera reported. Qatar, which shares an offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf with Iran, also hosts a major U.S. military installation that Iran attacked back in the June war.
Nuclear program on the table at the least
It remains unclear just what terms Iran will be willing to negotiate at the talks. Tehran has maintained that these talks only will be on its nuclear program. However, Al Jazeera reported that diplomats from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar offered Iran a proposal in which Tehran would halt enrichment for three years, send its highly enriched uranium out of the country and pledge “not initiate the use of ballistic missiles.”
Russia had signaled it would take the uranium, but Shamkhani in an interview earlier this week had said ending the program or shipping out the uranium were nonstarters for the country. Meanwhile, the talks would not include any pledge by Iran over its self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a network of militias in the region allied to Tehran as a deterrent to both Israel and the U.S. However, Israeli attacks on the militias during its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip decimated the network.
Rubio, America's top diplomat, said talks needed to include all those issues.
“I think in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things, and that includes the range of their ballistic missiles,” Rubio told journalists Wednesday. “That includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region. That includes the nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people.”
He added: “I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out.” ___
The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Trump administration launches TrumpRx website for discounted drugs
TrumpRx website launches
The Trump administration on Thursday launched TrumpRx, a website it says will help patients buy prescription drugs directly at a discounted rate at a time when health care and the cost of living are growing concerns for Americans.
“You’re going to save a fortune,” President Donald Trump said at the site’s unveiling. “And this is also so good for overall health care.”
The government-hosted website is not a platform for buying medications. Instead, it's set up as a facilitator, pointing Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites, where they can make purchases. It also provides coupons to use at pharmacies. The site launches with over 40 medications, including weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy.
The site is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to show it's tackling the challenges of high costs. Affordability has emerged as a political vulnerability for Trump and his Republican allies going into November's midterm elections, as Americans remain worried about the cost of housing, groceries, utilities and other staples of middle-class identity.
Trump stressed that the lower prices were made possible by his pressuring of pharmaceutical companies on prices, saying he demanded that they charge the same costs in the U.S. as in other nations. He said prescription drug costs will increase in foreign countries as a result.
“We're tired of subsidizing the world,” Trump said at the evening event on the White House campus that lasted roughly 20 minutes.
The administration is touting substantial discounts, though it's unclear just how much impact the changes will have for family budgets. The site includes the disclaimer that prices “may be even lower” for people with insurance, as it lists the “out-of-pocket price.” Also, some consumers might be able to use available generics that cost less than brand-name medications.
Still, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hyped the website as being transformative. He said the lower prices for Ozempic and Wegovy would cause the country to collectively lose 100 million pounds this year. He suggested that lower prices for the fertility drug Gonal-F would trigger pregnancies nationwide.
“We’re going to have a lot of Trump babies with these costs,” Oz said.
The president first teased TrumpRx in September while announcing the first of his more than 15 deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations. He said in December the website would provide “massive discounts to all consumers" — though it's unclear whether the prices available on drugmakers' websites will routinely be any lower than what many consumers could get through their insurance coverage.
The website's Thursday release came after it faced multiple delays, for reasons the administration hasn't publicly shared. Last fall, Oz told Trump the site would share prices for consumers before the end of the year. An expected launch in late January was also pushed back.
The president has spent the past several months seeking to spotlight his efforts to lower drug prices for Americans. He’s done that through deals with major pharmaceutical companies, including some of the biggest drugmakers like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck, which have agreed to lower prices of their Medicaid drugs to so-called “most favored nations” pricing. As part of the deals, many of the companies' new drugs are also to be launched at discounted rates for consumer markets through TrumpRx.
Many of the details of Trump's deals with manufacturers remain unclear, and drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on many factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.
Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.
Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help
Readiness varies by income
Sandra Mosqueda watched with an amused smile as her 2-year-old son, Atreus, began sweeping the floor with a miniature mop.
Atreus is part of the inaugural class of infants and toddlers receiving free preschool in a citywide program in San Antonio, Texas. It's something his mother doesn’t take for granted. As a child, she herself wasn't able to start preschool this young. In the case of her two older boys — now in first grade and kindergarten — the free preschool set them up for success in elementary school.
The first five years of a child’s life are among the most critical for their development. Those years lay a foundation and prepare them for kindergarten, often setting them up for success throughout school and beyond. But immense disparities exist in whether parents across the country report their child as ready for kindergarten, new data from the National Survey for Children’s Health shows.
Nationally, nearly two-thirds of children were reported in the survey as on track for kindergarten, regardless of their families’ income. However, the gap in kindergarten readiness is substantial when comparing reports from the poorest families and the wealthiest — approximately a 20% difference.
Administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal survey offers a glimpse into school readiness by collecting responses annually from thousands of parents and guardians on their children’s early learning, social-emotional development, self-regulation, motor development and health. The latest results were released in December.
Low-income children often have less access to experiences that boost school readiness, such as high-quality early learning opportunities. That isn’t to say those kids haven’t made gains. Over the past few years, the survey’s portion of on-track children from families earning less than the federal poverty line — just under $32,000 for a family of four in 2024 — has trended upward nationwide by a few percentage points.
Some city and state programs are working to boost that improvement by expanding preschool opportunities for children from low-income families. The mission is even more urgent as parents juggle soaring child care costs and a widening affordability gap.
San Antonio’s program, called Pre-K 4 SA, is a prime example. It’s designed to serve low-income and working-class families throughout the city, offering 2,000 preschool seats for 3- and 4-year-olds — 80% of them free to families who qualify. The program, which opened in 2013, is funded through the city’s sales tax and expanded last year to include four infant and toddler classrooms in its new South Education Center. The preschools also offer an unusually broad mix of services, in recognition that poverty raises a complex blend of obstacles to kindergarten readiness.
Citywide early childhood programs have also emerged in recent years in Denver, New York, Boston, and Chicago, among others.
Students who have completed Pre-K 4 SA have scored higher than the state average on third grade math and reading, according to the Urban Education Institute at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Those outcomes contribute to what Sarah Baray, CEO of Pre-K 4 SA, views as a key success of the program: Children with the greatest needs receive the same quality education as kids from wealthier families.
“The quality is so high that even families who could afford to go anywhere try to get into our schools,” Baray said.
High-quality education as a solution for all families, regardless of income
Many experts agree that one of the best ways to boost school readiness is to ensure programs meet high-quality standards, such as smaller class sizes and child-to-staff ratios.
Pre-K 4 SA has implemented a “whole child” approach that develops a range of skills, including socioemotional learning. Baray said the program prepares children “not just (for) academic success, but life success.”
Kids in Deziree Arce’s class learn to count and recognize shapes just like other preschoolers. But the children also receive guidance from Arce on social-emotional skills to test out all day, whether it’s consoling a crying classmate or resolving a conflict on who sits where at their classroom table.
“When I see kids that come from, like, where I came from, I’m giving them something that I never got,” said Arce, who grew up in a low-income family and has taught at Pre-K 4 SA for nine years.
Pre-K 4 SA also intentionally incorporates opportunities for children to refine their motor skills. For lunch, the children in Arce’s class pinched turkey burgers — provided by a local food bank — with tongs out of aluminum trays and onto their plates. Exploding ketchup packets were met with celebration, as some students opened them by themselves for the first time.
Outdoor play is another critical component to improving motor skills. Students spend an hour outside every day unless weather conditions are severe. In an era of much screen time and time indoors, Pre-K 4 SA students are encouraged to engage in “risky play." That could mean racing tricycles around the perimeter of the playground, climbing up the slide or spraying water from a pump. Those experiences teach students their physical limits early, said Pre-K 4 SA Chief of Schools Tonda Brown.
Finding solutions to get families off the waitlist
A major challenge for San Antonio’s program, as well as in citywide efforts around the country, is meeting the demand.
More than 1,600 families were on Pre-K 4 SA’s waitlist this school year, Baray said. To help wait-listed families, the program’s enrollment team connects them with other local options, such as school district-run preschools or private centers partnered with Pre-K 4 SA.
Other cities distribute the demand across a wide variety of high-quality preschool programs by offering financial assistance to families.
Denver Preschool Program offers tuition credits to all families with 4-year-olds. Selected families can then put that money toward any licensed public or private preschool participating in the sales tax-funded program, said Priscilla Hopkins, executive director of Denver Public Schools’ early education office. About 80% of DPP’s providers were rated four- or five-star in Colorado’s quality rating system, according to the program’s 2024 impact report.
The level of financial support given to a family is determined by income. In 2024, nearly 1,800 4-year-olds who received DPP’s tuition support were in the lowest income tier — up to 135% of the federal poverty line. More than $21 million in tuition credits were dispersed in the 2023-2024 school year, according to program leaders.
However, in large swathes of the country, especially rural areas, private preschools are the only high-quality option but often come with a hefty price tag and little financial assistance. That leaves low-income families with fewer preschool options than their wealthier peers, said Kelly Purtell, a human development and family science professor at Ohio State University.
“There’s all sorts of challenges that then really limit what preschools are even kind of on the table for them,” Purtell said.
Helping families outside the classroom, too
Reliable transportation can be another obstacle for low-income families, especially for parents who work outside normal business hours, Purtell said.
Pre-K 4 SA’s South Education Center offers free bus transportation to fill that gap.
As children boarded the bus at a designated pickup spot near Southside Lions Park, cheerful bus monitors greeted them and strapped each one into their seat with a safety harness. Their bus driver offered each child a cartoon sticker for their school-provided backpacks.
The stress of poverty can hinder a parent’s ability to give their child enriching experiences key to school readiness, which is why services that promote family stability are important, said Katie Paschall, a researcher at Child Trends. At Pre-K 4 SA, that means healthy cooking classes, mobile vaccination clinics and even “family cafes” where parents can get help from staff to apply for jobs. By eliminating those at-home issues, parents can focus more on setting their children up for a better future.
In Mosqueda’s case, having her kids in preschool allowed her to return to school after Atreus' birth halted her studies to become a respiratory therapist. She completed a dental assistant degree and got a job at a nearby dental office. No one has cheered on Mosqueda more than her boys — her oldest son proudly took videos of his mom at her graduation last year.
“It’s showing them you can still do anything, no matter what comes in your way, and having the help to do it makes it possible,” she said.
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