US Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on January 15, 2026. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Another House Democrat ripped President Donald Trump and his Justice Department for making clear that “they intend to withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files, while claiming to have fully complied with the law.”
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Friday that Attorney General Pam Bondi should be facing impeachment, pointing to the top Justice Department official’s handling of the Epstein files, efforts to force Minnesota to hand over its voter data, and arrest of journalists including former CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made the call in response to Bondi’s Friday morning announcement that Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort, and two others were arrested in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church earlier this month.
“Between this, Epstein, and her attempted extortion of MN voter files, Bondi should be up for impeachment too,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media, alluding to the ongoing effort to oust Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Following the arrests of Lemon and others, the Justice Department announced the release of more than 3 million pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—more than a month after the passage of a deadline established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed in November.
But the latest disclosure did not satisfy the lawmakers leading the push for full transparency. The Justice Department indicated Friday that it only released around half of the Epstein documents subject to review.
“Donald Trump and his Department of Justice have now made it clear that they intend to withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files, while claiming to have fully complied with the law. This is outrageous and incredibly concerning,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. “The Oversight Committee subpoena directs Pam Bondi to release all the files to the committee, while protecting survivors. They are in violation of the law.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who floated impeachment proceedings against Bondi last month, said in a statement that he will be “reviewing closely to see if they release what I’ve been pushing for: the FBI 302 victim interview statements, a draft indictment and prosecution memorandum prepared during the 2007 Florida investigation, and hundreds of thousands of emails and files from Epstein’s computers.”
“Failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public’s trust in our institutions,” said Khanna, the author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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SHORTAGES: A driver refuels others wait in a long line behind to fill up at a petrol station in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, January 27
By pressuring Mexico to halt oil shipments, Washington is escalating its blockade of Cuba into a direct bid for economic collapse and regime change, argues SEVIM DAGDELEN
THE United States is forcing an oil boycott against Cuba through pressure on Mexico — a targeted blow aimed at bringing the island to its knees economically and forcing a regime change.
The decision by the Mexican government to no longer ship oil to Cuba threatens to initiate a countdown to the island’s economic collapse.
Following the US attack on Venezuela, Washington had already prevented oil from that country from being exported to Cuba.
Mexico stepped in temporarily and supplied over 40 per cent of Cuba’s oil imports.
The oil stop and the siege of Cuba
As a consequence of the Mexican oil stop, which occurred under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the US sanctions regime against Cuba is turning into a siege aimed at the complete sabotage of power generation, all production, and tourism.
At its core, however, the siege by the US is aimed at a regime change in Cuba within weeks. It is about breaking the country’s sovereignty.
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Federal immigration agents in the city of Minneapolis are accused of having wrestled a 37-year-old intensive care nurse called Alex Pretti to the ground and then shooting him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where another American citizen, Renee Good, was allegedly fatally shot by federal agents weeks earlier.
The latest incident prompted angry protests from people in Minneapolis who want the immigration enforcement operation in their city to end. We spoke to Mark Shanahan, an associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, to address several key issues.
Why has sending in federal immigration agents caused such trouble in Minnesota?
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the national guard has been deployed to several US cities to quell what have generally been Donald Trump-inflated crises, with illegal migration among the most prominent. However, in December, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not have authority for such deployments.
So, since then we have seen federal agents with US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement taking the battle largely to minorities in cities with Democratic party leadership as part of the president’s violent attack on illegal immigration, a situation he has described as “the greatest invasion in history”.
Minneapolis is a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-led state. The governor is Tim Walz who ran for vice-president on the Kamala Harris ticket against Trump in the 2024 election. Walz has faced allegations, which he denies, of overlooking alleged widespread fraud in the financing of public safety net programmes, supposedly involving segments of the Somali-American community.
While most of these allegations have been refuted, they gave Trump reason to send in federal agents. This has ramped up tensions between state officials and the administration, causing brutal and unnecessary deaths in the community and pitting ordinary Minnesotans against federal government officials.
How does the situation in Minnesota reflect the second amendment right to bear arms?
It’s a reversal of virtually all of the second amendment debates that have been seen in recent years. The second amendment was introduced to the US constitution in 1791 through the Bill of Rights due to a deep mistrust of centralised military power and a desire to ensure that the newly formed federal government could not disarm the populace.
The founding fathers envisaged a “natural right of resistance and self-preservation”. Trump’s actions in sending in armed federal agents to conduct enforcement operations in various states appear to fulfil the founding fathers’ concerns.
The agents are trampling all over not only citizens’ second amendment right to bear arms (officials seemingly connected Pretti’s killing to him carrying a weapon) but also their first amendment right to freedom of assembly.
Federal officers detain a protester in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24. Craig Lassig
How have the fatal shootings affected Trump’s popularity?
Trump’s popularity is on the decline. His failure to deliver on the economic promises outlined in his election campaign, scatter-gun approach to international relations and the widening gulf between rhetoric and achievement have all damaged his standing in the polls.
In a CNN poll published on January 16, almost six in ten respondents described Trump’s first year back in office as a failure with the president focused on the wrong priorities.
And what support he does have is ebbing rapidly as federal immigration agents appear out of control, targeting many more documented citizens than illegal migrants, spreading fear and operating as if they are above the law.
With what looks like high levels of gaslighting coming from Homeland Security officials, voters are turning against the increasing autocracy of this administration, believing in the evidence widespread across the media rather than highly contentious statements from Trump’s lieutenants.
Is it unusual for former presidents to speak out the way Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have?
It certainly is. There is a longstanding tradition in the US of, and implicit agreement among, former presidents to avoid public criticism of the incumbent. Such reticence to speak is generally a sign of respect for the office and an acknowledgement of the unique and difficult challenges of the presidency.
But Trump 2.0 is no normal presidency. The 47th president’s style is both combative and retributive, and there seems to be an increasing feeling of it being out of step with the desires and best interest of the country he leads.
Trump’s march to autocracy creates crises where he regards himself as the hero the country needs to overcome its ills. His predecessors take a different view.
Whether it’s Obama calling out the assault on core American values or Clinton’s condemnation of the “horrible scenes” in Minneapolis as “unacceptable” and avoidable, Democrat past presidents have not held back. Notably, the only living previous Republican president, George W. Bush, has so far kept his own counsel.
What can be done to prevent further violence?
Most simply, Trump could end the deployment of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis and refrain from similar actions in the future. He is clearly looking for an off-ramp and sending his “border czar”, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis to direct operations could be the first step to de-escalation. But Trump abhors being called out as wrong and, at least beyond Minneapolis, is far more likely to double down on the immigration enforcement activities.
Realistically, the most likely de-escalator is Congress showing some teeth and refusing to fund further federal immigration enforcement activity. Democrats could force another government shutdown over the issue, and need just a handful of Republicans to flip in order to refuse to sanction a 2026 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.
At a public level, the greater the scrutiny of immigration enforcement agencies, the closer the fact-checking of official statements and the more cohesive the opposition to Trump’s deportation policy, the greater the chance of effectively opposing it.
It is midterm year – and the greater the public pressure, the more likely Republican legislators are to cleave away from the Trump line. While he currently controls the levers of power, that control remains fragile. Even Trump may soon realise that overt, violent, coercive autocracy is not a vote winner.
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Cuban soldiers during a demonstration honoring the 32 combatants killed in the US attack on Venezuela. Source: Miguel Díaz-Canel/Facebook
Yohandris Varona Torres, a Cuban combatant and survivor of the US attack on Venezuela, describes the events of January 3.
Cuba honored 32 soldiers who fell in combat with the US army on January 3 in Venezuela, carrying out security activities legally agreed upon with the Caracas government. Many of the Cubans killed were part of the personal security detail of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped after the attack and transferred to the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans attended the ceremonies commemorating the fallen in what the Cuban government described as a new attack against the Revolution.
But not all Cubans who fought against US forces died. Little by little, the testimonies of Cuban soldiers who survived a clearly uneven fight have been revealed.
The testimony of a surviving combatant
Among them is Yohandris Varona Torres, who gave an interview to Adelante, a Cuban media outlet. Varona had been in Venezuela for just over two months as a security guard until the day of the intervention, where, according to Venezuelan authorities, 100 people died and 100 more were injured.
“We fought there against the planes that were firing at us. Even though our weapons were smaller, we didn’t stop fighting; we confronted them. I am trained, and I know how to fight, but they were superior to us. At that moment, my only thought was to fight. We had to shoot, and I started doing so,” said Varona during the commemoration ceremony for the fallen combatants.
Regarding his personal experience during the attack, Varona stated that despite the narrative that the mainstream media tried to impose, the forces on the ground did confront US troops: “That night, I had gone on duty at midnight and was supposed to be there for six hours. The attack took place at approximately 2:00 a.m. It was dawn. Everything was dark. If a helicopter comes at you, the only thing you can do is shoot at it and defend yourself. That’s how it was. We were shooting until the very last moment.”
Varona also spoke about the huge technological gap between Venezuelan and US forces. The same argument had already been made by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who explained the difference in weaponry and military infrastructure between the troops defending Venezuelan soil and the US attackers.
In addition, Varona said that after the attack, there was dispersion, and that there was no timely support to collect their dead compatriots: “Our comrades are a glory for all of Cuba. They were my brothers. They were working with me. I saw them all fall, and I carried them all. There was no support from anyone for that, but nobody was left on the field. We preserved them in one of our dormitories. I cannot explain the pain. But at least no one was left in Venezuela. Here they are, in our homeland.”
In the face of threats of possible new aggression against Cuba, during his speech to the crowd honoring the dead, Díaz-Canel said that revolutionaries are willing to fight to the bitter end if a similar or worse attack were to occur against the island. In the same spirit, Yohandris Varona Torres declared: “I will always be at my country’s disposal to fight the enemy wherever necessary. That is what the Commander [Fidel Castro] taught us. And the deaths of my comrades cannot be in vain.”
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Protesters gather at Embarcadero Plaza for a protest in San Francisco, January 24, 2026, in response to a fatal shooting in Minneapolis
PROTESTERS took to the streets across the United States over the weekend after a man was “executed” in Minneapolis during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Footage aired across social media showed a group of officials from the Immigration Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency surrounding Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse on Saturday before shooting him after a brief struggle.
The footage showed Mr Pretti, a legal gun owner, was disarmed by Ice officials before being shot.
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and protesters clashed with federal officers, who wielded batons and deployed stun grenades.
The Minnesota National Guard was assisting local police at the direction of Governor Tim Walz, officials said.
Guard troops were sent to both the shooting site and a federal building where officers have squared off with demonstrators daily.
Information about what led up to the shooting was limited, police chief Brian O’Hara said.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation and fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when they tried to disarm him.
Bystander footage of the shooting that emerged soon after, show Mr Pretti with a phone in his hand but none show him with a weapon.
During a news conference DHS secretary Kristi Noem accused Mr Pretti of trying to “impede a law enforcement operation.” She questioned why he was armed but did not offer details about whether Pretti drew the weapon or brandished it at officers.
President Trump accused local politicians, including the Democratic governor and mayor, of “inciting insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York urged Democrats to “refuse to vote to fund Ice.”
The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) condemned the killing as a “continuation of the fascist invasion of Minneapolis and an increase in state-violence against our working class and people.
“We are calling for arrests of all federal agents involved in these tragedies and for Ice to be removed completely from Minnesota by building on the general strike.”
The CPUSA was referring to the general strike in Minneapolis on Friday which saw thousands of workers walking out on strike and more than 700 businesses closing to protest against the presence of Ice agents.
The Party of Socialism and Liberation said: “The people need to use our power to shut down business as usual and make it impossible for this reign of terror to continue.”
dizzy: I occasionally quote Morning Star articles in full without asking. Morning Star‘s copyright is recognised.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
SHORTAGES: A driver refuels others wait in a long line behind to fill up at a petrol station in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, January 27
