Republican lawmakers are poised to grill former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday at a congressional hearing that’s expected to focus fresh attention on two criminal investigations that shadowed Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.
Smith testified behind closed doors last month but returns to the House Judiciary Committee for a public hearing likely to divide along starkly partisan lines between Republican lawmakers looking to undermine the former Justice Department official and Democrats hoping to elicit new and damaging testimony about Trump’s conduct.
Smith will tell lawmakers that he stands behind his decision as special counsel to bring charges against Trump in separate cases accusing the Republican of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith will say, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith will say.
The hearing is unfolding against the backdrop of an ongoing Trump administration retribution campaign targeting the investigators who scrutinized the Republican president. The Justice Department has fired lawyers and other employees who worked with Smith, and an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees said last summer that it had opened an investigation into him.
“In my opinion, these people are the best of public servants, our country owes them a debt of gratitude, and we are all less safe because many of these experienced and dedicated law enforcement professionals have been fired,” Smith said of the terminated members of his team.
Smith was appointed in 2022 by Biden’s Justice Department to oversee investigations into Trump. Both investigations produced indictments against Trump, but the cases were abandoned by Smith and his team after Trump won back the White House because of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
The hearing will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who told reporters on Wednesday that he regards Smith’s investigations as the “culmination of that whole effort to stop President Trump from getting to the White House.”
“Tomorrow he’ll be there in a public setting so the country can see that this was no different than all the other lawfare weaponization of government going after President Trump,” Jordan said, advancing a frequent talking point from Trump, who pleaded not guilty in both cases and denied wrongdoing.
At the private deposition last month, Smith vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigation was motivated by politics or was meant to derail Trump’s presidential candidacy. He said the evidence placed Trump’s actions squarely at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to undo the election he lost to Biden as well as the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.
“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”
Smith is also expected to face questions about his team’s analysis of phone records belonging to more than half a dozen Republican members of Congress who were in touch with the president on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. The records contained data about the participants on the calls and how long they lasted but not their contents.
It is unlikely that Smith will share new information Thursday about his classified documents investigation. A report his team prepared on its findings remains sealed by order of a Trump-appointed judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, and Trump’s lawyers this week asked the court to permanently block its release.
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Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Alanna Durkin Richer | The Associated Press
President Donald Trump said Thursday that proposed tariffs against European allies are off the table after what he described as a tentative agreement with NATO tied to Greenland and Arctic security.
Trump said there is now a “concept of a deal” following talks in Switzerland, easing trade tensions that flared after European countries pushed back on his interest in acquiring Greenland.
“I think it’s going to be a very good deal for the United States — also for them,” Trump said to CNBC.
The announcement came after the president said the United States would not use military force to take Greenland from Denmark. Instead, Trump said the focus has shifted to cooperation with allies on security concerns in the Arctic region.
“We’re going to work together on something having to do with the Arctic as a whole, but also Greenland — and it has to do with the security, great security, strong security, and other things,” Trump said.
NBC10 Boston political commentator Sue O’Connell weighs in on Greenland.
Earlier Thursday, the European Union said it would pause adoption of a U.S. trade deal reached last summer in response to Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs on a handful of EU countries opposed to U.S. ownership of Greenland.
“We took that off, because it looks like we have, pretty much, a concept of a deal,” he said. “It’s a little bit complex, but we’ll explain it down the line.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Alan Leventhal told NBC10 Boston he agrees with the president on security concerns in the Arctic, particularly as ice caps continue to melt.
“Minerals and resources on the seabed in the Arctic Ocean are going to open up,” Leventhal said.
However, he warned that pressuring allies could risk a broader trade conflict and send the wrong signal to adversaries like Russia and China as it pertains to taking over territory by force.
“I think the best path is to work with the Danes and the Greenlanders to achieve whatever we want on Greenland, short of owning Greenland,” Leventhal said.
Trump said the agreement would “last forever,” though he did not provide details. He also said owning Greenland would give the United States a greater incentive to defend it through his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
President Trump said in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, that he will promote homeownership in the U.S. by pushing for lower mortgage rates, restricting institutional investors from hoarding residential real estate and capping credit card costs.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Mr. Trump described homeownership as “a symbol of health and vigor,” while touting his executive order this week aimed at deterring Wall Street firms from competing with Americans for homes.
Yet he stopped short of providing details of how such a ban would work, and housing experts said such measures fail to address some of the key drivers behind rising home prices.
“It’s just not fair”
In his speech at the annual gathering of world leaders, policymakers and business figures, Mr. Trump blamed institutional investors for driving up home prices for Americans by purchasing hundreds of thousands of properties for investment purposes. x
“Homes are built for people, not for corporations,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s just not fair to the public. They are not able to buy a house.”
His proposed ban would restrict future purchases of single-family homes by major housing investors, such as hedge funds and real estate investment trusts, but would not force them to sell properties they already own. The plan would require approval by Congress before taking effect.
But Jina Yoon, chief alternative investment strategist at LPL Financial, noted that the proposal only applies to existing houses and excludes newly built homes, potentially allowing some firms to continue scooping up properties.
“This allows institutional investors to shift their capital to build-to-rent projects, which could actually accelerate more rental community development owned and managed by large institutional investors,” she said in an email. “And there are many more structural factors that drive home prices and affordability issues than the share of homes owned by institutional investors, such as chronic supply shortages, zoning constraints, income and mortgage costs.”
Across the U.S., big investors account for roughly 1% of total single-family housing stock, according to an August analysis by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Yet research from the Government Accountability Office shows that even modest levels of institutional investment in the local housing markets can drive up home prices, especially in communities with high concentrations of investor-owned properties.
Shamus Roller, executive director of the nonprofit National Housing Law Project, said the plans released so far by the Trump administration to address home affordability fail to account for the complexities of the housing market.
“Given how big an issue this is across the country, it deserves more attention and thought than what has been provided,” he told CBS News.
Specifically, Roller highlighted the shortage of available homes for sale, saying that new U.S. tariffs on imported homebuilding materials have raised costs and that the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has led to worker shortages among construction companies.
Analysts with Oxford Economics said that Mr. Trump’s fixes could, in fact, boost demand for homes, but appear to do little to boost supplies, which they say is essential to addressing the affordability problem.
“A persistent shortage of housing units is a key driver of elevated housing costs,” Nancy Vanden Houten, U.S. lead economist with Oxford, said in a report.
Falling mortgage rates
Mr. Trump on Wednesday said his policies for easing home prices are already bearing fruit, pointing to mortgage rates this month falling to a three-year low after he directed the federal government to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage securities.
The president also said he could take other steps to reduce the cost of home loans, but added that he doesn’t plan to do so because he wants to protect existing homeowners.
“If I wanted to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast people would buy houses,” he said.
The recent drop in mortgage rates to just over 6% has spurred more home buying and refinancing activity, according to Freddie Mac.
Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that the government buying $200 billion in mortgage securities would drive home loan costs down by 0.15%.
“While any decline in mortgage rates is helpful for affordability, the standalone impact of this move on our numbers is small,” analysts with the investment bank said in a report.
A dip in mortgage rates also risks pushing up home prices as more buyers enter the market, according to housing experts.
Credit card interest rate cap
President Trump said another administration plan for help struggling Americans regain their financial footing — capping credit card interest rates at 10% for one year — would also boost housing affordability.
“This will help millions of Americans save for a home,” said Mr. Trump, who has said that surging credit card debt impedes many Americans in saving for a down payment.
The banking industry has opposed the cap, saying it would limit consumers’ access to credit and steer them toward riskier lending products.
This week, guest host Zach Weissmueller is joined by Freddy Guevara, a Venezuelan opposition leader who was imprisoned by the regime of Nicolás Maduro and now lives in exile.
Guevara first entered politics as a student activist opposing Hugo Chávez, later becoming the youngest elected city council member in Venezuelan history before winning a seat in the National Assembly. After the government stripped the assembly of power and escalated repression, Guevara spent three years as a political refugee in the Chilean Embassy in Caracas and was later imprisoned by the Maduro regime. He has lived in exile since 2021 and is now a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he studies democratic transitions and political repression.
Weissmueller and Guevara discuss how authoritarianism operated under Nicolás Maduro, including political imprisonment, surveillance, and the foreign alliances that helped sustain his oppressive regime. They examine Maduro’s capture, why many Venezuelans support U.S. intervention, and what a democratic transition would require after decades of dictatorship. Guevara challenges common assumptions in the West about sovereignty and regime change and makes the case that Venezuelans themselves have driven the push to remove Maduro – while explaining how Venezuela’s collapse was not simply the result of corruption but a predictable consequence of socialism in practice.
The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by championing “free minds and free markets.”
Saying they were spurred by the shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, an Alameda County Board of Supervisors committee has passed two proposals to establish a Bay Area regional response in the event that federal immigration agents launch a new operation locally.
“We have to move very quickly,” Alameda County District 5 Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas told Bay Area News Group before the Board of Supervisors meeting on Thursday before the Together For All Committee vote. “Since the Minneapolis killing – more than ever – it is incredibly dangerous for people to enter the immigration system.”
During a surge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good in the head while she was driving away. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was posthumously labeled as a “domestic terrorist” by Vice President JD Vance and Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem, whose defense of Ross’ actions ignited furor among Minnesota residents who have taken to the streets in protest.
The incident evoked memories of last October when Border Patrol agents launched an operation in the Bay Area that led to a protest at the entrance to Coast Guard Island. During the standoff, a U-Haul truck driven by Bella Thompson reversed and accelerated toward officers. Thompson was shot by federal officers before she could strike them and was charged with one count of assault of a federal officer. She was released on bail in November and remanded to her parents in Southern California while attending a mental health program pending trial.
In the lead-up to the October incident, Bas said she had drafted a proposal to strengthen the county’s response to immigration enforcement operations. The first of these proposals calls for a coordinated regional response to federal immigration raids, following the example set by Santa Clara County, with public outreach plans and staff trainings on how to protect residents accessing the county’s social services, courts and health care facilities.
The second proposal establishes that ICE and other immigration authorities are banned from county-owned buildings. In addition, the proposal demands that federal immigration officers identify themselves and clarify they are not county employees.
“We’re working to make sure that our communities are informed, prepared and coordinated in protecting the critical health programs and social services as well as constitutional rights that we should all be afforded,” Bas said at Thursday’s committee meeting.
Bas and District 2 Supervisor Elisa Marquez, the vice chair of the ACT All Committee, met with District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson, Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez, Public Defender Brendan Woods, Probation Chief Brian Ford and General Services Agency Director Kimberley Gassaway to discuss how each of their respective agencies would implement the proposed policies.
Sanchez noted that ICE agents’ policies are unorthodox among law enforcement professionals.
“Any professional law enforcement agency understands and knows the need to be clearly marked and identified as a law enforcement officer. It is a safety issue,” Sanchez said. “The sheriff’s office has very clear directives on how we do or do not communicate with ICE. I’ve made it very clear that we do not accept civil detainers at our facility at the jail, we only accept criminal warrants for people.”
Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods said he had appealed to the county since last summer about creating policies that would protect the county’s vulnerable communities against ICE. He made specific reference to ICE agents “snatching” people off the street and putting them into vans, and expressed concern about due process and judicial fairness in immigration courts after President Donald Trump fired more than 100 judges and replaced them with Trump-approved successors.
“We are in a state of emergency. In my 55 years on this earth, I cannot recall more dangerous time in our nation’s history,” said Woods. “Our civil liberties are being trampled on a daily basis. Every day we hear new stories of immigration officers descending on our communities with weapons and masks and unmarked vehicles. They snatch people off the street, they break car windows, they pepper spray peaceful protesters.”
The proposals will now head to the full Board of Supervisors for final approval.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright says Trump wants Greenland for long-term national security – CBS News
Watch CBS News
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright spoke with CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe about why President Trump wants to acquire Greenland.
It’s been one year since President Trump took the oath of office and became the United States’ 47th president. CBS News executive director of elections and surveys Anthony Salvanto has new polling on how Americans feel a year into Trump’s second term.
Donald Trump was reelected to the presidency in 2024 after pledging to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history.” In the first year of his second term, he followed through on his promise, weaponizing the agencies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and deploying thousands of federal troops into major U.S. cities like an occupying army.
Earlier this month, the death of Renee Good at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross brought overly aggressive federal law enforcement into public view. As a result, more Americans than ever now think we should get rid of it.
“More Americans now support the abolishment of ICE, in a major change since July and in Donald Trump’s first presidency,” Forbes‘ Mike Stunson wrote last week, “as the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a federal officer has led to a wave of backlash against the agency.”
Stunson cited a January 2026 poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov, which found that 46 percent of respondents support abolishing ICE, with 43 percent opposed. The same poll found 50 percent felt Good’s shooting was “not justified,” while only 30 percent said it was justified.
A separate poll by Civiqs found 43 percent of respondents support ending ICE, with 49 percent opposed. Notably, though, this represents a dramatic shift since only a few months ago. In September 2024, only 19 percent supported, and 66 percent opposed, abolishing the agency.
It was also the highest number in favor of abolition, and the lowest number against, since Civiqs began asking the question in July 2018, when the #AbolishICE movement began in earnest. (At that time, respondents favored keeping the agency intact by a 2–to–1 margin.)
And an Associated Press/NORC poll shows 61 percent of Americans now oppose Trump’s handling of immigration; as recently as March 2025, respondents were evenly split.
The reason for the shift is clear: Americans are suddenly confronted with the reality of what ICE is doing, and they don’t like what they see.
“Trump has deployed 3,000 federal officers and agents to Minneapolis this month, the largest operation in DHS history,” Nick Miroff wrote last week in The Atlantic. “Many of the ICE officers and Border Patrol agents are outfitted in tactical gear and wear body armor and masks, and they’re using the technological tools that the department acquired to protect the country’s borders: surveillance drones, facial-recognition apps, phone-cracking software. Powered by billions of dollars in new funding, they are making immigration arrests and grabbing protesters who try to stop them.”
In August 2025, ICE announced a major recruitment push, offering perks like a $90,000 salary and a signing bonus of as much as $50,000. DHS recently announced that in just four months, ICE more than doubled its ranks, from 10,000 to 22,000.
Those numbers may not be accurate: NOTUS‘ Jackie Llanos writes that according to the government’s official employment statistics, since Trump took office in January 2025, ICE “has hired 7,114 employees” but 1,746 have left in the same period, “placing the net growth of employees at 5,368.”
Still, a 50 percent increase in one year is substantial. And such a quick expansion doesn’t come without tradeoffs: “ICE reduced training requirements to meet hiring targets,” Military.com reports, “though the agency has not been transparent about the criteria used to determine which recruits qualified for abbreviated training pipelines or how those changes were evaluated internally.”
For example, NBC News’ Julia Ainsley reports that due to a technical glitch, about 200 recruits with no law enforcement experience were placed in a fast-tracked training process for experienced officers.
The results are plain to see: ICE officers assaulting U.S. citizens, smashing windows and dragging them from their cars, going door-to-door without a warrant or even reasonable suspicion. In October, ProPublicareported ICE had arrested at least 170 Americans—in many cases using considerable force—including some who were detained for multiple days without being allowed to contact their families or an attorney.
Ross was apparently even recording Good with his cellphone when he pulled his weapon and shot her. Soon after her death, media outlets released the footage; the shooting is not depicted, but afterward, someone can be heard saying, “Fucking bitch.”
Social media is full of videos of ICE raids gone wrong, but the government has also saturated the internet with footage of its own.
“During President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE’s public affairs arm has rapidly transformed into an influencer-style media machine, churning out flashy videos of tactical operations and immigration raids,” The Washington Postreported last month. Citing internal chat logs, the Post added that this team “coordinate[s] with the White House” to generate “brash content showing immigrants being chased, grabbed and detained” with “video edits that might help legitimize the administration’s aggressive stance.”
“In President Trump’s second term, content is governing and governing is content,” added NPR.
This may explain why Ross was filming Good when he drew his gun and shot her: to create content for social media.
And much of that content is distasteful: Last month, on its official X account, Trump’s DHS “publicly announce[d] its dream to somehow eliminate 100 million people, the majority of whom would need to be citizens to hit that number, whose ancestry is seen as ‘third world,’” writesReason‘s Brian Doherty.
And in recent months, the DHS and ICE have posted recruitment ads with white nationalist imagery—including an Instagram post two days after Good’s death that used a song popular with neo-Nazis.
It’s clear the more that Americans are exposed to ICE and its methods and tactics, the less they think the agency should continue to exist. And this is not an extreme position: Both ICE and the DHS are quite new, established in the early 2000s.
And it’s not like either was without controversy, even in the aftermath of 9/11. “There were fears at the time of DHS’s founding, including on the political right, that the government was creating an authoritarian monster,” The Atlantic‘s Miroff added. “The United States had never had the kind of all-encompassing domestic-security apparatus common in autocracies, whose interior departments function as political police. DHS skeptics worried that civil liberties would be vulnerable to abuse if the government began assembling national databases and an expanded federal police force.”
And yet, that’s exactly what happened. “ICE has routinely shown itself to be an overreaching and unaccountable agency,” Fiona Harrigan wrote in the December 2024 issue of Reason. “Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that ICE has scanned the driver’s license photos of one in three American adults and could access the driver’s license data of three in four American adults.”
“ICE’s current powers and central deportation mission are neither appropriately sized nor easily reformed,” Harrigan added. “It would be much better for the government to extend an olive branch to nonviolent undocumented immigrants, reassign ICE’s useful functions elsewhere, and let the agency go once and for all.”
“Leaving immigration restrictions more to the states would bring us closer to the Constitution’s original meaning,” agrees George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. “We may not be able to fully restore the original meaning of the Constitution on this score. But abolishing ICE and shifting more law enforcement resources to state and local governments would bring us closer to it. It would also simultaneously curtail ICE abuses and reduce crime.”
The U.S. went nearly its entire existence without ICE; it could do so again. And the more that Americans become familiar with the agency and see what it does, the more they seem to agree.
Organizers say the day’s aim is to “call for an immediate end to ICE operations” in the state.
“As leaders in their community, clergy are bearing witness to the constitutional and human rights violations happening on a daily basis in our state and communities as a result of DHS operations,” wrote a spokesperson with the St. Paul-based nonprofit Isaiah.
The Day of Truth and Freedom will also include a march and rally in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, starting at 2 p.m.
Several Twin Cities businesses and co-ops will also close Friday in solidarity, and organizers say several unions are also on board, including the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, Unite Here Local 17, SEIU Local 26, and the transit union ATU.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
NOTE: The original airdate of the video attached to this article is Jan. 13, 2026.
The federal government has long been able to get involved in D.C.’s governance, but legal experts said over the past year, those powers have been used more visibly and frequently since Inauguration Day.
Only one year into President Donald Trump’s second term, the relationship between Washington, D.C. and the federal government has been tested in new ways, as a series of legal challenges have put fresh attention on the limits of home rule and who ultimately controls policing, public safety and governance in the nation’s capital.
The tension seen between the White House and the Wilson Building has centered on the federal government’s ability to step into local affairs. The federal government has long been able to get involved in D.C.’s governance, but legal experts said over the past year, those powers have been used more visibly and frequently since Inauguration Day.
The Trump administration has argued that its actions fall within a long-standing federal authority over the District, noting that limits on home rule were established decades ago and not created during the current term.
Supporters say the federal involvement was driven by public safety and security concerns, while critics argue the frequency and visibility of those actions raise new questions about precedent and local control.
2025 federal law enforcement surge
One flashpoint that received national attention was in August when the president announced a public safety emergency in D.C., which allowed the White House to take temporary control over D.C.’s police force.
Julius Hobson, a longtime D.C. political analyst, said that moment made the city’s limited autonomy clear.
“The home rule charter says the president could do that for 30 days, but it didn’t say anything about renewing. And he could have done that, but it started off really bad. Fortunately, the police chief and the U.S. attorney were able to negotiate some of that out and to get them out of the day to day,” Hobson said.
Home rule is fragile, he said, and that became apparent during those actions.
“It underscores the very limits of home rule that were always there, and most people didn’t realize or come to grips with the fact that home rule really is limited,” Hobson said.
Another decision that saw legal challenges was the increased presence of D.C. National Guard troops. In Washington, the president and secretary of defense have authority over the guard, the city does not.
Meryl Chertoff, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, said the presence of the guard during the president’s crime emergency and beyond has been one of the most notable changes residents have seen.
“The most obvious, visually, to people living in the District is the presence of federal law enforcement agents and the National Guard,” she said. “Because of D.C.’s limited home rule and particular provisions in the D.C. charter, it has been somewhat difficult to challenge the legal basis for having those National Guard troops in D.C., if they are federalized troops.”
Legal challenges by the D.C. attorney general and others have focused not just on the guard’s presence but, according to Chertoff, also on how they have been deployed.
“One of the things that has been particularly disturbing has been the presence, not of D.C. National Guard doing federal missions, but the presence of National Guard troops from other jurisdictions — from West Virginia, Ohio, and places like that — that have been sent into the District,” Chertoff said.
She said D.C.’s status as a federal city, not a state, makes these deployments harder to challenge.
Congress steps in the way
It wasn’t only the executive actions that got attention. There were also moves by Congress, which Chertoff said she’s watching closely.
“My biggest concern in terms of what we are seeing now is actually not coming from the executive branch, but it’s coming from the Hill,” she said.
The House has been debating roughly a dozen bills that, if approved, would give Congress greater control over aspects of D.C.’s governance, and that is a dynamic Chertoff described as part of the broader legal challenges to home rule that have been seen.
While some bills have passed the House, none have been passed by the Senate.
With the court challenges, both Hobson and Chertoff said D.C.’s unique status limits how far lawsuits can go.
“The courts have been somewhat constrained by this peculiar position that D.C. is in, that it is the federal district and that there are limitations on what the courts have done. But more, there’s been a problem for the mayor. Unlike states where there is a governor standing between the mayor and the federal government, there is no layer between D.C. and the federal government,” Chertoff said.
Hobson believes the actions taken last year could also shape what future presidents decide to do.
“It sets a political and legal precedent with regard to the District of Columbia that future presidents can do the same thing anytime they want,” he said.
Chertoff said home rule ultimately determines how much control D.C. residents have over everyday decisions.
“Home rule in the District means that D.C. residents get to have the same say as the people in any other state over local matters — the matters that affect their lives every day, whether that’s transportation, policing (or) schools,” she said. “When the federal government comes in and bigfoots, that takes that control — that people across the rest of the United States have over their day to day lives — on questions like education, on questions of do you feel safe walking the streets of your own city?”
Chertoff warned that federal intervention can shift that balance.
“In the last year, home rule is very shaky. It’s always been on shaky ground, but it’s on greater shaky ground than ever before,” he said.
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On the eve of Davos, the annual gathering of world leaders and Loro-clad business titans where the future of the free world is plotted out, President Donald Trump lobbed a grenade: an angry text, sent to Norway’s prime minister, that ratcheted up tensions between the United States and Europe, while revealing the calculus that’s driving his hostile campaign to acquire Greenland.
In the text, Trump rejected an overture from Norway’s Jonas Gahr Store to “de-escalate” his demands that Greenland be sold to the United States or taken by force. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote in the text, which was first reported by PBS News.
“That’s rhetoric that we’ve never seen from a US president before,” Ambassador Mike Carpenter, a senior director for Europe on the Biden administration’s National Security Council, told Vanity Fair. “He’s essentially saying, if you read between the lines, ‘you didn’t give me the Nobel Peace Prize, so I’m going to use coercive force to take territory from one of your neighbors.’”
The text was so striking that some on social media doubted its authenticity. But it is real. A European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me the text was forwarded to their ambassador in Washington. The text is one of those Donald Trump era shockers that unites the right and left in slack-jawed horror. Even before it was first reported, the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board had published a piece decrying the Greenland campaign as “reckless” and “nonsensical.”
“This is the fucking Mad King tweeting and it’s just remarkable how many senior people in this administration have no fucking balls, no fucking spine, and are peddling this crap like it’s rational,” said one incensed former NSC official I spoke with Monday morning, who declined to be named in order to speak candidly. “Truly, those names need to be kept on a sheet of paper and remembered in the future, what they said and did at this moment.”
What of Trump’s case for why the United States needs Greenland? “The world sees this as the Mad King pontificating,” the anonymous official reiterated. “And it’s only a certain narrow circle of Americans, somehow, that is trying to gaslight themselves into believing that it’s true. It’s crazy.”
John Bolton and Donald Trump on February 12, 2019.
Some 1,500 active-duty soldiers have been placed on standby for possible deployment to Minneapolis, a defense official confirmed to CBS News, as tensions in the city have mounted after a woman was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
Deploying the soldiers, from the 11th Airborne Division at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, is one option for which the military is planning in case President Trump decides to use active-duty military personnel to respond to the ongoing demonstrations, the official said. No decision has been made on whether to deploy the soldiers.
Asked about the preparations, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “The Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.”
ABC News was first to report that the soldiers were on standby.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also mobilized the state’s National Guard on Saturday, although guard members had not yet been deployed to city streets, CBS News Minnesota reported. Walz had issued a warning order earlier this month to prepare guard members for mobilization, after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7.
“We are doing the work to keep people safe in our city, and, specifically, it is our local police officers, it is the state of Minnesota and our governor,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday. “We are doing everything possible to keep the peace, notwithstanding this occupying force that has quite literally invaded our city.”
In addition to the recent surge of immigration agents, Mr. Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a law dating back to the 1790s that would allow him to send federal troops into Minneapolis. The president said he would invoke the act if Minnesota politicians “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.”
That move could catalyze a major escalation in the tensions between Minnesota officials and the federal government, which had already sent thousands of federal law enforcement agents to the state in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act before, during his first term and previously during his current one, but he has never actually used it.
The Minneapolis Police Department said Saturday that demonstrators had remained peaceful and lawful in the presence of federal immigration agents, CBS Minnesota reported.
“Today, when crowds blocked roadways, vehicles were used to block roadways, MPD deployed resources and made public announcements for people move to the sidewalk or out of the area. This occurred several times. In general, crowds were responsive to those directives,” the department said in a statement, urging community members involved in the protests to continue to demonstrate peacefully.
Since the U.S. ousted Maduro, the former vice president has been working to meet the Trump administration’s demands — while at times publicly denouncing what the U.S. has done — and all the while working to consolidate her control over the regime and country. Per Bloomberg:
[Rodríguez] has seamlessly moved into the role of acting president. She has chaired meetings with senior officials, greeted international envoys, welcomed the press at Miraflores Palace and met privately with diplomats. But beneath the continuity, the bedrock of Chavismo — Venezuela’s brand of socialism — is beginning to shift as Rodríguez quickly moves to consolidate authority and unite the fractured ruling coalition. There are some subtle changes. Rodríguez’s days start earlier, her public remarks are far more concise and the marathon speeches that defined Maduro’s rule are gone. Public officials are now allowed back on X.
Other moves are far more consequential, including a reshaping of the cabinet and security apparatus and the release of dozens of political prisoners. Decisions on senior personnel are being received positively by the Trump administration, according to one person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing sensitive deliberations.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have repeatedly said that Rodríguez has been doing what the administration tells her. Trump has called her a “terrific person” and last week told Reuters that she “has been very good to deal with.” He also said that he thinks she’s “eventually” going to come to the White House, and that “I’ll go to their country too.”
The regime has also moved to reopen the U.S. embassy in Caracas and has already hosted a U.S. delegation. At the same time, Rodríguez and other regime officials have been trying to have it all ways, signaling willing partnership and shared opportunity with Trump and the U.S., while also insisting they are just as anti-imperialist as they ever were.
On Thursday, Rodríguez met in Caracas with CIA director John Ratcliffe, the most senior Trump administration official to visit the country since the invasion. His high-profile visit was reportedly intended to further signal the administration’s support for Rodríguez as the country’s interim leader. (Ahead of the Maduro operation, a CIA assessment indicated that Rodríguez would be the best choice to take over and maintain stability in the country.)
Here’s what Freddy Guevara, the former vice president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, who has been living in exile for the past four years, recently told Reveal about Rodríguez and her grip on power:
I know her and I know her brother. I was involved, as I said, in negotiation processes and they were both in there. And I have to tell you that they are not moderate at all, they are super radical, and they believe they are smarter than everyone. I am sure that what they’re trying to do is to convince Trump or the Trump administration to allow them to have kind of a Saudi Arabia or China in Latin America. Which means international investments, but no political freedom for example. I think that’s her plan A.
I think their plan B is to outsmart Trump and figure it out, how to survive and buy time, make small concessions enough to not get them out of power.
A new review of studies has found that taking Tylenol during pregnancy doesn’t increase the risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities — adding to the growing body of research refuting claims made by the Trump administration.President Donald Trump last year promoted unproven ties between the painkiller and autism, telling pregnant women: “Don’t take Tylenol.”Related video above — Stop Overpaying for Meds: Smart Ways to Cut Prescription CostsThe latest research review, published Friday in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women’s Health, looked at 43 studies and concluded that the most rigorous ones, such as those that compare siblings, provide strong evidence that taking the drug commonly known as paracetamol outside of the U.S. does not cause autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities.It’s “safe to use in pregnancy,” said lead author Dr. Asma Khalil. “It remains … the first line of treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant woman has pain or fever.”While some studies have raised the possibility of a link between autism risk and using Tylenol, also known as acetaminophen, during pregnancy, more haven’t found a connection.A review published last year in BMJ said existing evidence doesn’t clearly link the drug’s use during pregnancy with autism or ADHD in offspring. A study published the previous year in the Journal of the American Medical Association also found it wasn’t associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability in an analysis looking at siblings.But the White House has focused on research supporting a link.One of the papers cited on its web page, published in BMC Environmental Health last year, analyzed results from 46 previous studies and found that they supported evidence of an association between Tylenol exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders. Researchers noted that the drug is still important for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, but said steps should be taken to limit its use.Some health experts have raised concerns about that review and the way Trump administration officials portrayed it, pointing out that only a fraction of the studies focus on autism and that an association doesn’t prove cause and effect. Khalil, a fetal medicine specialist at St. George’s Hospital, London, said that review included some studies that were small and some that were prone to bias.The senior author of that review was Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who noted in the paper that he served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in a case involving potential links between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders. Baccarelli did not respond to an email seeking comment on his study.Overall, Khalil said, research cited in the public debate showing small associations between acetaminophen and autism is vulnerable to confounding factors. For example, a pregnant woman might take Tylenol for fevers, and fever during pregnancy may raise the risk for autism. Research can also be affected by “recall bias,” such as when the mother of an autistic child doesn’t accurately remember how much of the drug she used during pregnancy after the fact, Khalil said.When researchers prioritize the most rigorous study approaches – such as comparing siblings to account for the influence of things like genetics – “the association is not seen,” she said.Genetics are the biggest risk factor for autism, experts say. Other risks include the age of the child’s father, preterm birth and whether the mother had health problems during pregnancy.In a commentary published with the latest review, a group of researchers who weren’t involved — from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Children’s Hospital Colorado and elsewhere —cautioned that discouraging the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy could lead to inadequate pain or fever control. And that may hurt the baby as well as the mother. Untreated fever and infection in a pregnant woman poses “well-established risks to fetal survival and neurodevelopment,” they said.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A new review of studies has found that taking Tylenol during pregnancy doesn’t increase the risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities — adding to the growing body of research refuting claims made by the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump last year promoted unproven ties between the painkiller and autism, telling pregnant women: “Don’t take Tylenol.”
Related video above — Stop Overpaying for Meds: Smart Ways to Cut Prescription Costs
The latest research review, published Friday in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology & Women’s Health, looked at 43 studies and concluded that the most rigorous ones, such as those that compare siblings, provide strong evidence that taking the drug commonly known as paracetamol outside of the U.S. does not cause autism, ADHD or intellectual disabilities.
It’s “safe to use in pregnancy,” said lead author Dr. Asma Khalil. “It remains … the first line of treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant woman has pain or fever.”
While some studies have raised the possibility of a link between autism risk and using Tylenol, also known as acetaminophen, during pregnancy, more haven’t found a connection.
A review published last year in BMJ said existing evidence doesn’t clearly link the drug’s use during pregnancy with autism or ADHD in offspring. A study published the previous year in the Journal of the American Medical Association also found it wasn’t associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability in an analysis looking at siblings.
But the White House has focused on research supporting a link.
One of the papers cited on its web page, published in BMC Environmental Health last year, analyzed results from 46 previous studies and found that they supported evidence of an association between Tylenol exposure during pregnancy and increased incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders. Researchers noted that the drug is still important for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, but said steps should be taken to limit its use.
Some health experts have raised concerns about that review and the way Trump administration officials portrayed it, pointing out that only a fraction of the studies focus on autism and that an association doesn’t prove cause and effect. Khalil, a fetal medicine specialist at St. George’s Hospital, London, said that review included some studies that were small and some that were prone to bias.
The senior author of that review was Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who noted in the paper that he served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in a case involving potential links between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental disorders. Baccarelli did not respond to an email seeking comment on his study.
Overall, Khalil said, research cited in the public debate showing small associations between acetaminophen and autism is vulnerable to confounding factors. For example, a pregnant woman might take Tylenol for fevers, and fever during pregnancy may raise the risk for autism. Research can also be affected by “recall bias,” such as when the mother of an autistic child doesn’t accurately remember how much of the drug she used during pregnancy after the fact, Khalil said.
When researchers prioritize the most rigorous study approaches – such as comparing siblings to account for the influence of things like genetics – “the association is not seen,” she said.
Genetics are the biggest risk factor for autism, experts say. Other risks include the age of the child’s father, preterm birth and whether the mother had health problems during pregnancy.
In a commentary published with the latest review, a group of researchers who weren’t involved — from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Children’s Hospital Colorado and elsewhere —cautioned that discouraging the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy could lead to inadequate pain or fever control. And that may hurt the baby as well as the mother. Untreated fever and infection in a pregnant woman poses “well-established risks to fetal survival and neurodevelopment,” they said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed President Trump for the deaths and injuries of protestors during recent demonstrations that shook the Middle Eastern country.
“We hold the American president guilty for the casualties, damages and accusations he has levelled against the Iranian nation,” he said, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. Khamenei was speaking to a crowd of supporters during an address marking a religious holiday.
Khamenei also described the protests as an “American conspiracy” and accused the United States of trying to “put Iran back under military, political and economic domination.” He also called Mr. Trump a “criminal,” Reuters said.
“The latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the U.S. president personally became involved,” Khamenei said, according to Reuters.
People gather during protest on January 8, 2026 in Tehran, Iran.
Anonymous / Getty Images
The demonstrations raged for more than two weeks before authorities began a brutal crackdown. Iran’s Internet was shut down late last week, and information from within the country is still hard to come by. Two sources inside the Islamic Republic, including one inside Iran who was able to call out of the country on Tuesday, told CBS News that at least 12,000 and possibly as many as 20,000 people are feared to have been killed. Thousands of others were arrested and are now facing possible death sentences for taking part in the demonstrations.
Mr. Trump told “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil on Tuesday that there would be “very strong actions” against the Iranian regime if it hanged accused protestors. He said in the Oval Office on Wednesday that “we have been told that the killing in Iran is stopping, it has stopped, it’s stopping.”
“They’ve said the killing has stopped and the executions won’t take place,” he said, citing “very important sources on the other side” but not giving any specifications. “There were supposed to be a lot of executions today and that the executions won’t take place. And we’re going to find out.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump even took the unusual step on Friday of thanking the Iranian government for not following through on executions of what he said were meant to be hundreds of political prisoners.
“Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,” he told reporters while leaving the White House to spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, adding that he “greatly respected” the move.
Mr. Trump repeatedly expressed his support for the protestors and told Iranians that “help is on its way.” The Trump administration says the president has a range of options at his disposal, from conventional military strikes to cyber warfare.
Late last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill that would have required two-person operating crews on New York City subways, despite heavy pressure from transit unions. While the veto looked like a win for fiscal sanity, two-person train crews—and needlessly expensive transit systems—are likely here for the foreseeable future.
The bill, which would have mandated both a driver and a conductor on each train, cleared the state Legislature somewhat unexpectedly last year. It was pushed by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) to permanently codify more union jobs into state law.
Most NYC subway lines already operate with two-person crews under the current labor contract between the TWU and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Hochul’s veto stopped two-person crews from spreading systemwide, and it theoretically left the door open for the topic to be renegotiated in future labor talks, rather than being cemented into state law.
NYC’s two-person system is a global outlier. An analysis from New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management found that just 6 percentof the world’s commuter rail lines use two-person crews, with most operating safely with a single driver for decades.
Although unions insist two-person crews are essential for safety, evidence suggests otherwise. The Manhattan Institute’s Adam Lehodey has documented that London, which uses one-person crews, operates one of the safest rail networks in the world. Research from the Association of American Railroads, which compared one-person trains in Europe to America’s multiperson freight train system, similarly found no evidence of a safety impact.
But, as TWU President John Samuelsen told The New York Times, “It doesn’t really matter to us what the data shows,” adding that a driver and a conductor make trips “visibly safer.”
The fight over crew size extends beyond New York. Under President Joe Biden, the Federal Railroad Administration enacted a rule mandating two-person crews for freight trains nationwide. While one might expect this rule to be repealed in a Republican administration, the GOP’s continued bear hug with organized labor has muddied the waters.
President Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FRA Administrator David Fink both voiced support for the Biden-era two-person crew rule during their confirmation hearings. During his time in the Senate, Vice President J.D. Vance co-sponsored—along with numerous other Republicans, including Sen. John Hawley (R–Mo.) and then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.)—the Railway Safety Act, which would have legislatively mandated two-person freight crews.
The contradiction is especially stark in rail policy, as Trump recently fired numerous Surface Transportation Board members, presumably in an effort to greenlight railroad mergers—the type of pro-railroad stance that collides with the administration’s pro-union crew-size priors.
Beyond failing to improve safety, two-person crews are substantially more expensive. Switching to one-person crews would save the MTA $442 million a year. That money could fund real safety improvements, such as the installation of platform doors, which provide a physical barrier between passengers and the train until the train has come to a complete stop. After platform doors were installed in Seoul, South Korea, annual subway deaths dropped from 70 to two.
If anything, Hochul’s veto merely gives new NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani more flexibility in future labor negotiations between the TWU and the MTA. Based on the mayor’s track record, it’s unlikely he’ll be a voice for one-person crews.
Given likely political support from both City Hall and the White House, two-person crews appear entrenched—and riders will keep paying for them.
BOSTON, Mass. — For months, Karian had tried to make it on her own in New York.
After the birth of her second daughter, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, major depressive disorder and anxiety. A single mother who had moved from Boston to New York about 13 years ago, she often spent days at a time on the couch, unable to do more than handle the basics for her daughters.
“I wasn’t taking care of myself,” she said softly on a recent afternoon. “I was not really present.” The Hechinger Report is not publishing her last name to protect her privacy.
Karian’s mother urged her to move back home to the Boston area and offered to house her and her daughters temporarily. She started working the night shift at a fast food restaurant to save up for her own place while her mother and sister watched her children.
But in a city where fast food wages aren’t enough to pay the rent, her efforts felt futile. And then, a month after moving in with her family, her mother’s landlord told her the apartment was overcrowded and she had to leave. Karian and her girls, then 7 years old and 8 months old, moved into a homeless shelter, where her depression and anxiety worsened.
“I tried my best, but it’s not their home,” said Karian, now 31.
Karian’s children had joined the growing ranks of very young children experiencing homelessness. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of homeless infants and toddlers increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The most recent estimates found that in 2023 nearly 450,000 infants and toddlers in the United States were in families that lacked a stable place to live. That was a 23 percent increase compared to 2021, according to a report released last year by the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection in partnership with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.
The numbers could be even higher, experts worry, because “hidden homeless” children — those who are doubled up in homes with family or friends or living in a hotel — may not be captured in tallies until they start school.
High prices for diapers and formula, the exorbitant cost of child care, the rising cost of living, and rising maternal mental health challenges all contribute to the growing rate of homelessness among very young children, experts say. In 2024, one-third of infants and toddlers were in families that struggled to make ends meet, according to the nonprofit infant and toddler advocacy organization Zero to Three.
“We’re talking about families who have generationally been disadvantaged by circumstance,” said Kate Barrand, president and CEO of Horizons for Homeless Children, a nonprofit that supports homeless families with young children in Massachusetts. “The cost of housing has escalated dramatically. The cost of any kind of program to put a child in, should you have a job, is escalating,” she added. “There are a lot of things that make it really hard for families.”
Children work on an activity in a Horizons classroom. Teachers at Horizons are trained to work with children who have experienced trauma and instability. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
Housing instability is dire for anyone, but particularly for young children, whose brains are rapidly growing and developing. Studies show that young children who are homeless often lag behind their peers in language development and literacy and struggle to learn self-regulation skills, like being able to calm themselves when feeling angry or sad or transition calmly to new activities. They also may experience long-term health and learning challenges.
Early childhood programs could provide a critical source of stability and developmental support for these children. But SchoolHouse Connection found only a fraction of homeless children are enrolled in early learning programs, and the percentage who are has decreased over the past few years.
“It’s not just incredibly tragic and sad that infants and toddlers are experiencing homelessness,” said Rahil Briggs, national director of the nonprofit Zero to Three’s HealthySteps program, which works with pediatricians to support the health of babies and toddlers. The first few years are also a “disproportionately important” time in a child’s life, she added, because of the brain development that’s happening.
Karian and her daughters faced new difficulties after they moved into a shelter.
They shared an apartment with another family. If the other family was using the shared common space, Karian tried to give them privacy, which meant keeping her children in the bedroom the three of them shared.
Her older daughter had to change schools, and left without getting to say goodbye to many of her friends. At her new school, her grades dropped. The baby developed a skin condition and there was a bedbug infestation at the shelter. Karian didn’t want to put her on the floor for tummy time. She was desperate to find a home.
“We were in a place where we couldn’t really make noise. I couldn’t really let them be kids,” she said.
The rise in housing insecurity among young children has created more demand for programs created specifically to meet the unique needs of children who are experiencing instability and trauma. Many of these programs offer support to parents as well, through what is called a “two-generation” approach to support and services.
In 2021, in response to ballooning child homelessness rates, Horizons opened the Edgerley Family Horizons Center, an early learning program that serves children from 2 months to 5 years old. While some families find Horizons on their own, many are referred by shelters around the Boston area. The need is great: Edgerley serves more than 250 children, with a waitlist of 200 more. Karian’s younger child was one of those who got a spot soon after the program opened.
Inside Horizons’ large, light-filled building on the corner of a busy street in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, every detail is tailored to the needs of children who have experienced instability. Walls are painted in soothing blues and greens. Each classroom has three teachers to maintain a low child-to-staff ratio. Many of the teachers are bilingual. All educators are trained in how to build relationships with families and gently support children who have experienced trauma.
In response to growing need, in 2021 the Horizons opened the Edgerley Family Horizons Center, an early learning program that serves homeless children from 2 months to 5 years old. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
The starting salary for teachers is $54,200 a year, far more than the national median for childcare workers of $32,050 and the Massachusetts median of about $39,000. That has encouraged more teachers to stay on at the center and provide a sense of security to the children there, said Horizons CEO Barrand.
In the infant room, teacher Herb Hickey, who has worked at Horizons for 13 years, frequently sees infants who are hyperaware, struggle to fall asleep, can’t be soothed easily or cling desperately to whichever adult they attach to first. The goal for the infant teachers, he said, is to be a trusted, responsive adult who can be relied on.
Every day, the teachers in the infant room sing the same songs to the babies. “When they hear our voices constantly, they know they’re in a safe space,” Hickey said. “This is calm.”
Teachers also follow the same familiar routines. The rooms are decorated simply, organized and filled with natural light. Teachers constantly scan the infants for signs of distress.
“We have to be even more responsive,” Hickey said. “When the child starts crying, we don’t have the convenience to say, ‘I know you’re hungry, I’ll get to you.’” He said teachers want even the tiniest babies to learn that “we’re not going to leave you crying.’”
Small nooks throughout the early learning center allow children to retreat into a comfortable setting when they need time to calm big emotions. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Other needs arise with Horizons’ youngest children: Infants and toddlers living in homeless shelters often lag in gross motor skills. Many spend time on beds rather than on playmats on the floor, or they are kept in car seats or in strollers to keep them safe or from wandering off. That means they’re missing out on all the skills that come from active movement.
Even the arrangement of toys at the center has a purpose. Staff want children to know they can depend on toys being in the same location every day. For many children, those are some of the only items they can play with. Families entering a shelter environment can usually only bring a few bags, with no room for toys or books. A toddler who recently entered a shelter where Horizons runs a playroom came in holding a small empty chip bag, recalled Tara Spalding, Horizons’ chief of advancement and playspace. When a shelter staff member threw it away, the boy was inconsolable. “This is the only toy my child has,” staff recalled the mother saying.
“This just shows the sheer poverty,” said Spalding.
As infant and toddler homelessness has increased, other cities and states have tried to provide more support to affected families and get a better sense of their needs. In Oklahoma, experts say, low wages, a lack of housing and eviction laws that favor landlords have led to rising homelessness rates. State officials are trying to gather better data about homeless families to determine the best use of resources, said Susan Agel, chair of Oklahoma’s Homeless Children and Youth Steering Committee. Their efforts are hampered, however, by the fact that many homeless families fear that their children will be taken away by child protective services because they are homeless.
In 2024, to fill that gap in data, the state launched a residency questionnaire given to every K-12 student that includes new questions about homelessness, including if there are younger children in the home who are not students and may not otherwise be counted in homeless populations. Officials say it isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s a start to get a sense of the severity of family homelessness. “We can’t devise a system for dealing with a problem if we don’t know what the problem is,” said Agel.
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, city officials have ramped up efforts to coordinate city agencies to respond to an increase in homelessness among infants and toddlers.
“In general, the families we see more often have younger children. The school offers so much support, and there’s limited daycare access” to get similar support for infants and toddlers, said Tommy Fuston, Community Services and Housing Navigator at Minnehaha County’s Department of Human Services. “If a family has younger children, they’re going to struggle more.”
Each week, officials from the city, the Sioux Falls School District, local early childhood programs and shelters hold a “care meeting” to make sure any homeless families, or families at risk of homelessness, are quickly connected to the right resources and receive follow-up. “We don’t have unlimited resources, but I think it maximizes the resources that we do have,” Fuston said. “We’ve tried to create a village of supportive services to wrap around these folks.” The city relies extensively on private and faith-based donations to help. All shelters in town are privately funded, for example.
A preschool child paints in a classroom at Horizons. Families enrolled in the program receive child care for their children as well as classes and support for parents. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report
Karian heard about the child care center run by Horizons from a social worker soon after she and her daughters moved into their Boston-area shelter. In the infant room, her youngest daughter quickly settled into a routine, something Karian said didn’t happen when the baby was watched at night by family members. When staff identified speech and developmental delays, they helped connect Karian to an early intervention program where her daughter could receive therapy. Now 4 years old and in pre-K at Horizons, “she’s thriving,” Karian said. “She’s getting that nourishment.”
Karian also received support. Each family at Horizons is assigned a coach to help parents set personal goals and connect with resources. The organization offers classes in computing, financial management and English, all within the early learning building.
Two months after setting goals with a family coach, Karian earned her GED, with the help of the child care assistance. A few months later, she graduated from a culinary training program. She now works a steady job as a cafeteria manager for a local school district, where she earns a salary with benefits.
After a year in the shelter, her family was approved for subsidized housing and moved into their own apartment. Horizons allows families to stay in its programs for at least two years after they secure housing to make sure they are stable.
Now, Karian has her sights set on eventually opening a restaurant. She also has big dreams for her daughters, something that once seemed out of reach. She wants them to have ambition to “work towards something big,” she said. “I want them to have a dream and be able to achieve it.”
Experts say there are larger policy changes that could help families like Karian’s: increasing the minimum wage, expanding child care options like Head Start, which saves a portion of seats for homeless children, and offering more affordable housing to low-income families, to start.
Providing more federal money to the programs that help poor families pay for child care could also help. Those programs require states to prioritize homeless children and give them the first opportunity to access that money.
While important, experts argue, these solutions shouldn’t need to exist in the first place.
“We should be able to come to an agreement as a society that we should prioritize keeping families with infants and toddlers in their homes,” said Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three. “Babies shouldn’t be homeless.”
Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.
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Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin wrote to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday, telling her he was outraged at “repeated targeting and racial profiling” of American citizens by her agents carrying out “citizen checks.”
In a letter exclusively shared with Newsweek, the Democrat told Noem that statements she and U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino had made that U.S. citizens needed to prove their identity were false.
“To state the obvious, we are not a ‘papers, please’ country,” Durbin wrote. “American citizens generally do not have ‘immigration documents’, and to require them to carry such documents to avoid being violently stopped or interrogated by federal immigration agents is absurd and unconstitutional. There is no requirement in the law for U.S. citizens to carry identification to avoid arbitrary arrest and detention.”
Why It Matters
The letter came after Noem spoke to reporters on Thursday, saying that ICE agents may ask U.S. citizens for proof of citizenship during enforcement operations that have seen protesters clash with federal officers and citizens temporarily detained. Some video has shown citizens reacting angrily to such requests, saying they do not need to prove who they are, with concerns around Fourth Amendment protections.
What To Know
“If we are on a target, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and having them validate their identity,” Noem said Thursday, after questions over why some Americans were being asked for proof of citizenship.
Durbin, who has been outspoken over the Trump administration’s actions over the past year already, said he was deeply concerned at Bovino’s comments.
“The founders included explicit protections from unreasonable searches and seizures in the U.S. Constitution to prevent the types of arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests of U.S. citizens that are currently occurring in American cities,” Durbin told Noem, adding that current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had affirmed these protections recently.
“Unfortunately, these caveats have not prevented an escalating number of arbitrary stops, arrests, and detentions of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents,” the senator added.
He went on to outline multiple incidents in Minnesota alone in the past few weeks, which have seen U.S. citizens detained by federal agents, who at times have been seen using aggressive tactics to do so. Tensions have been especially high in the Twin Cities following the death of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by an ICE agent on January 7.
“The Department’s cavalier attitude towards the law continues to lead to frequent abuses against American citizens,” Durbin wrote.
The senator also said that agents had approached multiple non-white people in Minneapolis, and elsewhere, and asked where they were born and for their identification, with at least one person told “we are doing a citizen check.”
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), immigrants in the U.S. are required to carry proof of their status. The rule has not been strictly enforced through fines for several years, but under the Trump administration, there have been a few instances of people being fined for not carrying documentation.
When the rules were tightened, some experts did warn that if one group had to carry documentation, then all people in the U.S. would be affected, even if not legally required to carry proof of nationality.
The Trump administration, including Noem and Bovino, has insisted agents are working within the law to enforce immigration laws and deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrant criminals. DHS has also made it clear that it will seek to prosecute anyone who attacks or impedes federal agents in this work.
What People Are Saying
Durbin, in his letter to Noem: “Terrifying experiences like these undoubtedly will become more commonplace for American citizens unless the Department abides by the law and reins in its reckless immigration enforcement operations.
“Please immediately issue a correction to the Department’s false statement that U.S. citizens must carry proof of citizenship and immediately instruct your employees that unconstitutional “citizen checks” are not permitted and must immediately cease.”
Mubashir, a Minnesota community member, to members of Congress Friday: “At no time did any officer ask me whether I was a citizen or if I had any immigration status. They did not ask for any identifying information, nor did they ask about my ties to the community, how long I had lived in the Twin Cities, my family in Minnesota, or anything else about my circumstances.”
Bovino, on X December 11: “One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A Real ID is not an immigration document.”
Michael McAuliffe, former federal prosecutor and ex-elected state attorney, to Newsweek Thursday: “Standing near someone who may be illegally in the country is not a crime, and is not––alone––grounds to require someone to identify themselves. If one adds to the scenario any facts that might support a suspicion that a person is helping the suspect, or obstructing the agent’s attempts to evaluate the suspect’s status, it could change what the officer can do in terms of seeking identification, requiring someone to move, or detaining the person.”
What Happens Next
As protests and enforcement efforts continue across the U.S., Durbin has called for Noem to respond with information on the questions DHS officials are legally allowed to ask people to determine citizenship, what documents were shared with agents giving the impression they were allowed to carry out “citizen checks,” and what criteria agents are using to determine if there is a reason to believe a person is not legally in the U.S.
A new investigative report by 404 Media says ICE agents have a new high-tech way to zero in on neighborhoods to raid. The report says it’s an app called Elite, powered by Palantir. Joseph Cox, an investigative journalist at 404 Media, discusses his reporting on CBS News.
