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Paul addressed federal officials’ claims that Pretti posed a threat to ICE officers.... I saw no evidence of him assaulting the police,” Paul said. “The president’s advisor, Stephen Miller, called Pretti an assassin. That’s a lot of people–not telling the truth,” Pelley added. Paul shook his head at Miller’s statement and added, “It sounds like terrible judgment. I mean, terrible conclusions, incorrect conclusions, stating things that no one else believes.

@60Minutes “I saw a man that was retreating,” GOP Sen. Rand Paul says of the video he saw of Alex Pretti, shot and killed by federal immigration officers. He has scheduled a Congressional hearing on the matter.

The death of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis man killed by federal agents, has been ruled a homicide, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said. Pretti was shot Jan. 24 during a chaotic encounter with federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. Citing government records, ProPublica identified Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez as the two officers who fired at Pretti. The news outlet reports that Ochoa has been a Border Patrol agent since 2018, while Guituerrez had been with CBP since 2014.

Two Memphis City Council members think the snow from Winter Storm Fern is man-made. Council members Pearl Walker and Yolanda Cooper Sutton both publicly said the snow was artificial in differing Facebook posts and comments this week. Claims of fake snow have been rampant on social media during the storm, especially TikTok. Cooper Sutton posted a video showing who she says is her husband attempting to melt a chunk of snow with a lighter. ... In the video, Cooper Sutton says, “This is not melting. This is fire. OMG. What is falling from the sky hitting the ground? Oh my...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Sunday he will vote to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress so long as the lower chamber also votes on holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt. “I will vote yes on contempt against them and anybody else, as long as Pam Bondi is part of it,” Raskin told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Last month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced resolutions to hold the Clintons in contempt over their refusal to appear for depositions after being subpoenaed...

@RepThomasMassie Within hours of the Epstein file release, a superPAC funded by Israel-first billionaires Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson, who himself appears in Epstein’s black book, bought another $800,000 of TV ads against me. I’ll still win, but if I lose, it was worth it.

Donald Trump said in 2016 to the Republican National Convention, “We must abandon the failed policy of nation-building and regime change.” Earlier this month, after the current administration launched a war against Venezuela and ousted—one might say changed the regime of—President Nicolás Maduro, Trump said, “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” U.S.-led regime change in Venezuela seemed to fly in the face of Trump’s prior warnings against regime change wars. But the president’s defenders said this was a different kind of military operation, unlike the Iraq,...

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) compared Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to fictional villains on Friday, calling them both a “sycophant” as tensions rise over the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. “A sycophant is more than just a ‘yes-man,’” Tillis wrote in a lengthy post on social platform X. “It refers to someone who acts excessively servile toward someone important in order to gain an advantage.” He added, “They aren’t just being nice, they are using excessive flattery, often insincerely, to get what they want, whether that’s a promotion, social status or favor.”...

@RandPaul The Somali fraud exposed a broken system. Instead of reform, Washington spent $5B more. If Republicans can’t cut a fraction of the deficit, they aren’t serious about debt. See how your senator voted:

Sen. Thom Tillis said Friday that he will oppose President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair until the criminal probe of the current Chair Jerome Powell is “fully” resolved. “Protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve from political interference or legal intimidation is non-negotiable,” the North Carolina Republican said in a statement on X. Tillis, who is set to retire, vowed earlier this month to oppose any new nominee for the Fed until the Department of Justice’s controversial investigation of Powell is completed. Tillis is a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee,...

Gold and silver prices plunged on Friday, as President Donald Trump’s nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared to relieve concerns about the central bank’s independence. By 7:12 a.m. ET, spot silver was down 10.6% to settle at around $103.81 an ounce, paring back earlier losses. In the early hours of the morning, the metal had plummeted as much as 16% and dipped below the $100 milestone.

Thom Tillis has always said that he hates the camera. Then he announced his retirement last year. Now, the moderate Republican from North Carolina cannot stop making headlines. In a fiery floor speech earlier this year, Tillis said he was leaving the Senate to remove himself from any “boundaries I should have in expressing my concern and creating complications for my campaign” and Senate Republicans maintaining the majority. His retirement, which he announced last June, allows him to “speak truth” to President Donald Trump about White House policies and advice from Trump’s staff, he said earlier this month. But, the...

@RandPaul 🧵If H.R. 260 becomes law, $631M meant for Afghanistan reconstruction will be clawed back to the Treasury. After twenty years of war and failure, not another dollar should ever reach the Taliban. H.R. 260 finally ends Washington’s blind commitment to relocate Afghans without adequate safeguards. We’ve already seen the cost. One National Guardsman is dead at the hands of a terrorist who entered through resettlement. We must put security first. No country or NGO that props up the Taliban should ever receive U.S. tax dollars. This amendment makes that principle law. America must not bankroll those who side with...

With the clock ticking down to a potential government shutdown this Friday, Senate Republicans are reportedly considering a move that could leave the southern border wide open to invasion.A group of Republican senators is now openly discussing whether to split the Homeland Security appropriations bill away from a six-bill funding package in order to avert a partial government shutdown that would impact the Pentagon and several other major federal departments, according to The Hill.The six-bill package includes funding for the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Transportation, State, and financial services-related agencies.DHS, the very agency responsible for...

Seven Republican senators on Thursday voted against advancing a six-bill funding package to keep the government open past Friday, citing concerns about the ballooning federal deficit and what they saw as the failure of the so-called appropriations minibus to significantly cut spending Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) voted against a motion to advance the bill, even though it had the strong support of Senate GOP leaders.The package, which was blocked on a 45-55 vote, would have failed regardless of how the Republicans...

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has sent letters to the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to testify before his committee amid growing public controversy over immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis and other communities. Paul informed the leaders of President Trump’s immigration agencies in a tersely worded letter that “Congress has an obligation to conduct oversight” of what he called the “exceptional amount of funding” the Republican Congress has allocated to secure the borders and enforce immigration laws. “Congress has an obligation to conduct...

Alex Pretti’s death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile...

Most in the GOP are silent or backing the Trump administration, but a conspicuous few are speaking out. A small but growing number of Republicans are raising public concerns about the killing Saturday of a 37-year-old Minnesota man by federal agents.Hours after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, one House GOP chair called for the top ICE leader and other Trump administration officials to publicly answer lawmakers’ questions. GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina called for independent probes into the shooting, with Cassidy arguing the integrity...

Donald Trump’s strangely artificial Board of Peace event in Davos on Thursday looked like a Hollywood rendering of an international summit. Everything was too slick, faintly uncanny. Like an AI-generated image, it was photo-real yet failed the most basic human glance test. Too perfect. No wabi-sabi. The first tell was visual: the set, complete with a crisp new institutional logo: a globe on a shield, flanked by olive branches. It carried the unmistakable whiff of Grok or ChatGPT, but the strangeness went deeper than design. The speeches themselves were weirdly messianic and utopian. The most peculiar part was the show-within-a-show:...

A funny thing happened this week that you wouldn’t think possible from reading the common narrative of President Trump as a Frankenstein’s monster unchained to do whatever he wants: He backed down from his demands to own Greenland. And he did so after financial markets, European allies and the U.S. Congress raised objections. The “authoritarian” Trump narrative was wrong again. This isn’t to dismiss Mr. Trump’s often wild demands and threats. They have consequences in lost trust among allies and doubts about American reliability. These costs are hard to quantify, but they are real and may show up in a...