Tulsi Gabbard reportedly accused by whistleblower of suppressing intercepted call about Jared Kushner and Iran – live

Sensitive intelligence that a whistleblower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of mishandling concerned a report from the National Security Agency on an intercepted phone call last year between two members of foreign intelligence who were discussing Jared Kushner and Iran, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report.

“The allegations in the conversation about Kushner,” the Journal reports, “would be significant if verified, according to other U.S. officials familiar with its contents. While those officials agreed there was no corroborating evidence to support the allegations, they said that didn’t prove they lacked any merit.”

“The intercept also included what officials described as ‘gossip’ or speculation about Mr. Kushner that was not supported by other intelligence,” the Times reports. “Some senior officials said the information was demonstrably false. While the whistle-blower believed that information should be circulated, the N.S.A.’s general counsel, Ms. Gabbard and the intelligence community’s inspectors general disagreed.”

As our colleague Cate Brown reported last week, when Gabbard became aware of the intercepted call mentioning the president’s son-in-law, who has extensive business dealings in the Middle East and has continued to play a leading role in US diplomacy in the region as a private citizen, she stopped the NSA from sharing it with other agencies and took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj.

One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office, Bakaj said.

On 17 April, the whistleblower contacted the office of the inspector general alleging that Gabbard had blocked highly classified intelligence from routine dispatch, according to Bakaj, who has been briefed on details surrounding the highly sensitive phone call flagged by the NSA. The whistleblower filed a formal complaint about Gabbard’s actions on 21 May.

That timeline means that the discussion of Kushner and Iran took place before the Trump administration ended efforts to seek a negotiated solution to concerns over Iran’s nuclear program and conducted strikes on Iranian sites, in support of an Israeli bombing campaign, at the end of June.

Kushner has recently helped lead new negotiations between his father-in-law’s government and Iran and presented plans for the rebuilding of Gaza focused more on the territory’s potential as a real estate development than the national aspirations of the Palestinians displaced by Israel to a narrow strip of sand dunes.

Kushner also helped broker the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, drawing on his family’s close ties to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who stayed at the Kushners’ home in New Jersey when Jared was a teenager.

Asked by Weijia Jiang of CBS News on Thursday if he has “fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas,” Donald Trump said that he had not.

The president then went on to excuse the racist clip, which depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes, as a reference to the Lion King, an animated film which has no apes in it.

The video posted on Trump’s Truth Social account late at night spliced together part of a documentary that presented conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as fact, and a few seconds of the racist animation of the Obamas.

As Trump sought to downplay the abject racism his White House initially defended, before blaming on an unnamed staffer, he described the video as a “fairly long video, they had a little piece that had to do with the Lion King.” The entire video was, in fact, just over a minute.

In Trump’s telling that racist video was not a problem because it had already been widely seen online. “It’s been very well- it’s been shown all over the place, long before that as posted,” Trump claimed, apparently referring to the full-length animated clip the racist depiction of the Obamas was taken from, in which he was depicted as a lion.

“But that was … a very strong piece on voter fraud,” Trump added, of the video laying out baseless conspiracy theories, “and the piece that you’re talking about was all over the place, many times, I believe for years.”

Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, also dismissed concerns about the racist video on Wednesday, telling reporters in Azerbaijan that, because he was traveling, “the controversy had started and then died out before I even paid attention to it.”

Vance then repeated Trump’s own false claim that the video, which was up for 12 hours, was taken down as soon as the racist imagery was discovered. In fact, the White House press secretary initially defended the video and it remained on Trump’s account for hours until it was deleted after even Republican supporters of the president denounced it as a racist.

“You know, the president said a staffer posted a video, he hadn’t even watched the whole thing, when he watched the whole thing he took it down,” Vance said. “It’s not a real controversy.”

“Should he apologize for posting a video and then taking it down? No I don’t think so,” Vance said. “I think people post things on social media and if you post something and you don’t like it, you can take it down.”

A federal judge denied a request on Thursday from the Trump administration to pause her order keeping temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants in place, and said that she would not be intimidated by death threats she read aloud in court.

One message directed at judge Ana Reyes, a Uruguayan-born lawyer appointed by Joe Biden to the US district court for the District of Columbia in 2022, told her “the best way you can help America is to eat a bullet”. Another said: “I hope you lose your life by lunchtime”.

“It’s common these days for judges to receive these kinds of threats,” Reyes said, according to reporters who listened to the hearing at which she denied a government motion to stay her prior order barring the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, from removing temporary protected status from about 350,000 Haitians who are allowed to legally live and work in the US during unrest in their home country.

“Many of my colleagues have received worse threats,” Reyes said. “Tp those who would threaten judges… We will continue to do our jobs as best as we know how,” she added. “We will not be intimidated.”

Other messages attacked her sexual orientation and immigrant origins, Reyes said.

“People are entitled to their views,” she said. “I have absolutely no problem with anyone disagreeing with me. But I do feel compelled to clarify a couple of misconceptions.”

HwaJeong Kim, a member of the St Paul city council who has tracked ICE operations in the Twin Cities as a constitutional observer, said on Thursday that opponents of the federal crackdown are “deeply skeptical that this state-sponsored terror is over”, despite the claim that agents are being pulled back from Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued border czar.

Speaking in her role as the director of Minnesota Voice, a nonprofit focused on voting rights and civic engagement, Kim said in a statement:

Tom Homan can claim success all he wants, but we know this administration’s ‘drawdown’ is often just a pivot to a new phase of surveillance, intimidation, and family separation that keeps our neighbors living in constant fear. The deep scars left by these raids, including lives lost and families torn apart, won’t disappear just because the cameras are leaving. We are deeply skeptical that this state-sponsored terror is over and will remain vigilant to protect our communities. While the administration tries to wash its hands of the chaos it’s sowed, we will continue to mobilize our mutual aid network to provide life saving immigration lawyers, bail funds, mental health support, and money for basic needs like rent and groceries. Our resilience in the face of hatred will not change.

Just days after the Department of Homeland Security reportedly hired a 21-year-old with a history of white-nationalist posting to help run its social media accounts, the department’s official account on X picked a fight with the Bronx rapper Cardi B.

In response to a report that Cardi B joked at a recent show that she would jump and mace any ICE agents that might show up, the homeland security account referred to the rapper’s past statement that she drugged and robbed men when she worked as a stripper in the past.

“If we talking about drugs let’s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them,” Cardi B replied to the Trump administration department. “Why yall don’t wanna talk about the Epstein files?”

Kristi Noem’s outdoor news conference in Otay Mesa, California ended after about 20 minutes, with her remarks nearly drowned out by blaring sirens that might have been an attempt by the authorities to cover the chanting of protesters gathered outside.

Video posted on social media by a local news reporter who was present, Bianca Buono, showed that protesters outside the facility could be heard chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” shortly before Noem began her scheduled remarks.

As Noem spoke, a host for the rightwing, San Diego cable channel One America News noted, “multiple law enforcement vehicles” were “parked along the facility walls with their sirens blaring.”

While Noem’s words could be heard clearly enough on some of the television feeds that picked up her mic, another social media post from Buono showed that it was difficult for reporters at the event to hear what she was saying above the din.

In a bizarre news conference that just started, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has been speaking for about 14 minutes in Otay Mesa, California over the sound of extremely loud sirens, which have been blaring the entire time as she cites what she calls impressive statistics on border security and drug interdiction.

At one stage Noem claimed that a vault of drugs seized at the location she visited on Thursday contained “1.7 billion lethal doses of narcotics, of fentanyl and cocaine” interdicted by US Customs and Border Protection in the San Diego area. “That’s 1.7 billion lives that are saved because of the work that they do,” Noem said over the screaming sirens.

Barack Obama, the former US president, is among those alarmed by Donald Trump’s decision to end the regulation of climate-heating pollution from greenhouse gases.

“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules,” Obama wrote on social media. “Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change—all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”

• Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) open on Thursday. The legislation failed to clear the 60 vote threshold needed, and fell almost entirely along party lines in a 52-47 vote. This means that a department shutdown is all but inevitable, when the stopgap measure expires on Friday.

• The Trump administration repealed a landmark scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The 2009 endangerment finding found that greenhouse gases have a detrimental impact on public health and welfare. It has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources. Today, Donald Trump heralded the rollback as the “single largest deregulatory action in American history”. The move is already set to face legal challenges, while experts and lawmakers have warned that it will be catastrophic for the health and safety of the general public.

• Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, said the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota is ending. He touted the “success” in “arresting public safety threats” and the “unprecedented levels” of cooperation from local law enforcement – including access to county jails – as the reasons for the drawdown. This comes after the widely criticized immigration crackdown resulted in the fatal shootings of two American citizens and weeks of protests. Local officials, including governor Tim Walz, said that the repercussions will be longlasting, but the “long road to recovery starts now”.

• A US judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from reducing Senator Mark Kelly’s retired military rank and pension pay because he urged troops to reject unlawful orders. In his ruling, Richard Leon, a George W Bush appointee, wrote that defense secretary Pete Hegseth had “trampled” on Kelly’s first amendment rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees”.

In response to the Trump administration’s rescission of the endangerment finding – the landmark determination that greenhouse gases are detrimental to public health and welfare –several experts, officials and lawmakers have condemned the move.

“This EPA would rather spend its time in court working for the fossil fuel industry than protecting us from pollution and the escalating impacts of climate change,” said Gina McCarthy, former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, who now chairs America Is All In, a coalition of climate-concerned states and cities in the US.

Former secretary of state John Kerry called the new rule “un-American”.

“Repealing the Endangerment Finding takes Orwellian governance to new heights and invites enormous damage to people and property around the world,” said Kerry, who also served as Joe Biden’s climate envoy. “Ignoring warning signs will not stop the storm. It puts more Americans directly in its path.”

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said in a statement: “If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide – all while the EPA dismisses the overwhelming science that has protected public health for decades.”

Today, Trump described the endangerment finding as “the legal foundation for the green new scam”, which he claimed “the Obama and Biden administration used to destroy countless jobs”.

“This is all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook to replace facts with propaganda, to enrich a few while harming the rest of us,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has fully abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and the environment.”

Earlier today, Trump said that he hadn’t spoken with Howard Lutnick following the news that the commerce secretary admitted to visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012 with his wife and children – four years after the disgraced financier was convicted on state prostitution charges.

Lutnick had previously claimed he distanced himself from Epstein after 2005, but the latest batch of documents released by the justice department showed that the commerce secretary made arrangements to visit the island, and corresponded with Epstein in the years following.

A reminder that while a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown is looking extremely likely, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) benefitted from a $75 billion infusion last year – via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It’s a backstop that allows much of the agency’s work to continue should DHS close shop this weekend as lawmakers negotiate guardrails on immigration enforcement.

A US judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon from reducing Senator Mark Kelly’s retired military rank and pension pay because he urged troops to reject unlawful orders.

The preliminary ruling by Richard Leon, a George W Bush appointee, is the latest setback for Donald Trump in his campaign of vengeance against perceived political enemies, which has drawn opposition from judges across the ideological spectrum.

Kelly, a retired navy captain and former astronaut who represents Arizona in the US Senate, was one of six congressional Democrats who appeared in a November video that reminded service members of their duty to reject unlawful orders. In the clip, Kelly stated: “Our laws are clear: you can refuse illegal orders.”

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth issued a censure letter on 5 January, asserting that Kelly had “clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline” in violation of military rules that apply to active and retired personnel. Kelly filed his lawsuit against Hegseth’s attempt to reduce the military veteran’s rank and pension a week later.

In his ruling, Leon wrote that defense secretary Pete Hegseth had “trampled” on Kelly’s first amendment rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees”.

He admonished Hegseth for his handling of the issue, writing that “rather than trying to shrink the first amendment liberties of retired servicemembers, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our nation over the past 250 years”.

Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill to keep the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) open on Thursday. The legislation failed to clear the 60 vote threshold needed, and fell almost entirely along party lines in a 52-47 vote. Senator John Fetterman was the only Democratic lawmaker who voted for the bill.

This means that a department shutdown is all but inevitable, when the stopgap measure expires on Friday.

A reminder that the DHS appropriations bill that failed in the upper chamber today was the same legislation that Senate Democrats rejected just weeks ago, in favor of a short term measure to negotiate guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the wake of surge of agents in Minnesota and the fatal shooting of two US citizens in Minneapolis.

When it comes to the stalled negotiations on Capitol Hill to pass a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Trump said that Democrats’ demands – which include requiring federal immigration officers to no longer wear masks in the field – would make law enforcement “totally vulnerable”.

“They have some things that are really very hard to approve,” Trump said.

When asked what the administration’s message is to climate scientists and experts who say the rollback could have a catastrophic impact on people’s health, the president simply said: “I tell them, ‘don’t worry about it’… it has nothing to do with public health. This was all a scam, a giant scam.”

However, the endangerment finding is based on substantial research that determined the negative impact of greenhouse gases on public health and welfare.

As he announced the repeal of the endangerment finding, Lee Zeldin said that the determination was used by the Obama and Biden administrations to “steamroll into existence a left wing wishlist of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability”.

After Zeldin finished speaking, Trump said that his EPA administrator’s remarks were “long”.