Summary
Thank you for following the Guardian’s US politics live blog today. Here are some of the standout moments of the day
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The US Department of justice’s civil rights division will not be involved in the shooting death of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, CBS News reports.
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A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from freezing access by five Democratic-led states to more than $10 billion of federal funds for child care and family assistance based on what it said were concerns about fraud, the Associated Press reports.
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In Minneapolis, local faith leaders held a vigil in honor of Renee Good, the woman who was fatally shot by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
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Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has expressed concern after his family’s bodyguard was arrested recently on federal drug-trafficking charges.
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Asked if the FBI should be sharing evidence with state officials in Minnesota (on Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer), Trump said of officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota: “Well, normally I would but they’re crooked officials.”
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Donald Trump promised oil giants “total safety, total security” in Venezuela in a bid to persuade them to invest $100bn in the country’s infrastructure after US forces toppled Nicolás Maduro from power.
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The attorney general of Minnesota and the county prosecutor covering Minneapolis have just called on the public to send in their own evidence from the fatal shooting of a resident by an immigration officer on Wednesday.
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The Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has urged federal authorities to not “hide from the facts” of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good. Frey noted that the Trump administration has already branded Good as a “domestic terrorist”.
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Three Democratic senators urged Apple and Google to remove Elon Musk’s apps X and Grok from their app stores yesterday evening following use of xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence tool to flood X with sexualized nonconsensual images of real people.
Key events
As concerns about affordability continue, Donald Trump has said–without a plan for how this would actually happen–that credit card interest rates will be capped at 10% beginning on 20 January.
In a Friday evening post on Truth social Trump said, “We will no longer let the American Public be “ripped off” by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration. AFFORDABILITY!”
Last February, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would do this very thing. But Congress has yet to move on the bill.
The US Department of Justice’s civil rights division will not be involved in the shooting death of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, CBS News reports.
According to CBS, several attorneys from the division’s criminal arm offered to fly to Minnesota, as lawyers for the agency have for other high-profile shootings committed by law enforcement, but were told not to by the division’s head, Harmeet Dhillon.
A federal judge temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s administration from freezing access by five Democratic-led states to more than $10bn of federal funds for childcare and family assistance based on what it said were concerns about fraud, the Associated Press reports.
The US district judge Arun Subramanian, an appointee Joe Biden, said he issued a temporary restraining order on Friday for the reasons stated in a legal filing by California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, which filed the lawsuit.
The states sued the Trump administration late on Thursday, two days after the US Department of Health and Human Services announced the freeze.
Funds that were frozen include more than $7bn from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash to low-income families with children. The funds also included $2.4bn from the Child Care and Development Fund, which helps make childcare more affordable, and about $870m in social services grants for children.
Read more of the Guardian’s coverage about the Trump administration’s initial stripping of the funds here.
The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, is firing back at Donald Trump over his claims that he won Minnesota in the past three presidential elections. In response to a question about whether or not he was in favor of the FBI sharing information about the shooting death of Renee Good with state officials, Trump said: “Normally, I would, but they’re crooked officials,”, in reference to legislators including Tim Walz, whom he called a “stupid person”.
In response, the Minnesota-based Democrat shot back on X:
You lying piece of shit. I chaired the Minnesota DFL for all three of your runs here. I watched you lose. Three times. Minnesota never bought your con. And now, as Chair of the DNC, I’m looking forward to ending Trumpism for good in 2028 — not with lies, but with votes. Again.
In Minneapolis, local faith leaders held a vigil in honor of Renee Good, the woman who was fatally shot by an ICE agent on Wednesday. Rabbi Heather Renetzky told the crowd:
We are grieving an individual loss of life, the holy soul of Renee Nicole Good, a woman, like all of us, made in the image of God, a sacred human. We are grieving the gaping abyss between what our country is and what our country should be.
Elsewhere in US politics, Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has expressed concern after his family’s bodyguard was arrested recently on federal drug-trafficking charges.
Justin Salsburey, 43, and his wife, 38-year-old Ruthann Rankin, were each charged on 30 December with conspiracy and possession with the intent to distribute large amounts of narcotics through the US mail.
Salsburey was employed by a private security firm contracted by Ramaswamy’s family to provide protective services, campaign spokesperson Connie Luck told the Guardian. She said the family had been “alarmed to hear this disturbing news”.
“Upon being informed of this matter in recent days, the outside security firm immediately removed the individual from the security detail,” Luck said.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke Inc whose run for governor has been endorsed by Donald Trump, faces a Republican primary in May. The general election is set for early November.
More on that here:
Trump promises oil companies ‘total safety’ in Venezuela as he urges them to invest billions
Lauren Aratani
Donald Trump promised oil giants “total safety, total security” in Venezuela in a bid to persuade them to invest $100bn in the country’s infrastructure after US forces toppled Nicolás Maduro from power.
At a roundtable press conference at the White House this afternoon with more than a dozen oil executives, including leaders from Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips, the US president doubled down on claims that Maduro’s arrest presents American oil companies with an unprecedented opportunity for extraction.
Many of the executives expressed support for the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela last weekend – and hinted that they stood ready to invest.
Analysts have expressed skepticism that oil firms will invest vast sums as rapidly as Trump has suggested they will. Earlier this week, the president suggested production in Venezuela could be boosted within 18 months.
Notably, Trump said the investment will be coming from the oil companies, not the federal government. Earlier in the week, he had suggested that the US taxpayer might fund their investments.
“The plan is for them to spend, meaning our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100bn of their money, not the government’s money,” Trump said. “They don’t need government money, but they need government protection and government security.”
Trump warned the assembled executives that, if they aren’t interested in rebuilding efforts: “I got 25 people that aren’t here today that are willing to take your place.”
While he offered them “total safety”, the president also suggested some of the oil firms present did not need the US government’s help. “These are people that drill oil in some pretty rough places,” he said. “I could say a couple of those places make Venezuela look like a picnic.”
Asked why he had to “own” Greenland when the US already has military bases there, Trump said:
Because when we own it, we defend it. You don’t defend leases in the same way. We have to own it.
He later added:
You don’t defend ownership, you don’t defend leases. And we’ll have to defend Greenland. If we don’t do it, China or Russia will.
He added that he gets on very well with Russia and China, although he is “very disappointed” with Vladimir Putin.
“We’re not going to allow Russia or China to occupy Greenland, and that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t own it,” he said.
Trump tells Iran: ‘You’d better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting too’
Responding to a completely unrelated question, Trump elaborated on his threats to the Iranian regime. He said “God bless” the protesters and that he hoped that they would be safe, before adding:
And again, I tell the Iranian leaders: You’d better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting too.
Asked if the FBI should be sharing evidence with state officials in Minnesota (on Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer), Trump said of officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota: “Well, normally I would but they’re crooked officials.”
He went on to repeat his usual attacks on the state’s Democratic governor Tim Walz and its Somali community.
Responding to a follow-up question on his upcoming meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado next week, Trump said “she might be involved in some aspect” of running the country.
As my colleague William Christou reported earlier, Trump already threatened today to intervene in Iran if its government kills demonstrators, prompting warnings from senior Iranian officials that any American interference would cross a “red line”.
In a post on Truth Social earlier, Trump said that if Iran were to shoot and kill protesters, the US would “come to their rescue”. He added: “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go,” without explaining what that might mean in practice.
The protests in Iran, the largest since the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022, are in their sixth day, having been triggered by an unprecedented decline in the value of the national currency on Sunday.
Here’s William’s full report:
Trump says US will ‘hit Iran very hard where it hurts’ if regime cracks down on protesters
Donald Trump said that Iran was in “big trouble” and that his administration is “watching the situation very carefully”.
He went on to tell reporters at the White House:
If they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved. We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts.
He clarified that he didn’t mean boots on the ground, but repeated the US would be “hitting them very, very hard where it hurts”.
‘Whether they like it or not’: Trump gives ominous warning on possible occupation of Greenland
Donald Trump offered an ominous warning in his ongoing campaign to acquire Greenland. During his meeting with oil and gas executives today, the president said “we are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not”.
His justification? “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor,” Trump said.
“So we’re going to be doing something with Greenland, either the nice way or the more difficult way.”
Trump repeated his frequent refrain that he “saved” Nato, while insisting that he still supports the alliance.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have a Nato right now,” the president said. “But we’re not going to allow Russia or China to occupy Greenland, and that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t.”
When asked why federal officials are not working with local authorities on the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, Trump said that Minnesota officials were “crooked”.
He went on to call Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor, “incompetent”.
“I mean, he’s a stupid person,” Trump said.
This comes as the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said that the FBI took control of the ongoing investigation, denying BCA access to case materials.
Trump confirms meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader Machado next week
At a meeting with oil and gas executives today, Donald Trump said that he plans to meet with the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado, next week.
“She’s going to come in and pay her regards to our country,” Trump said. “And she’s coming in sometime next week, I think Tuesday or Wednesday.”
The president added that the relationship with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, was “very good” at the moment.
