Image source, Getty Images

Kash Patel, president Trump's pick to lead the FBI, is scheduled to have a hearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on 30 January.

A majority vote from the committee is required before Patel can receive a full Senate confirmation vote.

Patel is considered one of Donald Trump's most controversial remaining nominees. He is accused of being blindly loyal to Trump following a book he published in 2023.

Titled Government Gangsters, the book labels several elected officials that have opposed Trump as enemies of the US and members of the "deep state". In the book, he vowed revenge.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement after meeting with Patel on Thursday that he was "still concerned" about Patel's "ability to put past grievances aside and focus the FBI on its core mission of keeping Americans safe".

More on recent immigration arrests: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 538 people and lodged 373 detainers, the agency said in an update on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described those arrested as "illegal immigrant criminals", adding that they include four members of a Venezuelan prison gang, individuals convicted of sex crimes against minors, and a "suspected terrorist".

"The largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway," Leavitt said in an X post.

"Promises made. Promises kept," she added.

Immigration advocates had worried when Trump returned to power, with promises of stopping illegal immigration, that could mean harsh realities for undocumented immigrants and immigrants broadly.

They warned that during raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) other people, including citizens, could get caught in the crossfire.

Meanwhile, Trump's border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly warned that undocumented people caught up in raids of criminals who are without documentation will be deported too.

Earlier today, we heard about one of those raids in Newark in New Jersey.

The Mayor of Newark Ras Baraka said in a statement this evening that ICE agents raided a local establishment in the city and detained undocumented residents and US citizens "without producing a warrant".

One of those individuals was a US military veteran, the mayor said.

"Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorised," Baraka said.

Trump says he is keen on reconnecting with Kim Jong Un - the feeling may be mutual.

A former North Korean diplomat who had defected told the BBC last year that Trump's return to the White House would be “a once-in-a-thousand-year opportunity” for Pyongyang.

Ri Il Kyu was working in Cuba when he fled with his family to South Korea in November 2023.

He said that North Korea still views Trump as someone it can negotiate with over its nuclear weapons programme, despite talks between him and Kim breaking down in 2019.

But Ri said Pyongyang would not negotiate in good faith. Agreeing to freeze its nuclear programme “would be a ploy, 100% deception”, he said, adding that this was therefore a “dangerous approach” which would “only lead to the strengthening of North Korea”.

You can read more from our Seoul correspondent Jean Mackenzie's interview with Ri in his first interview with an international broadcaster.

Threat of tariffs is a negotiating tacticpublished at 03:43 Greenwich Mean Time 24 January

03:43 GMT 24 January

Peter Hoskins
Business reporter, Singapore

Trump has said he thinks a trade deal between the US and China could be reached, in a change of tone from his comments on the campaign trail.

Since returning to the White House, he has threatened to hit China with 10% tariffs because of the large amounts of the opioid fentanyl that he says is being sent from China to the US through Mexico and Canada.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said that an agreement was possible and “we have one very big power over China, and that's tariffs, and they don't want them, and I'd rather not have to use it, but it's a tremendous power over China."

His comments highlight how the US President appears to be using the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tactic.

The world’s two biggest economies have been sparring on a number of geopolitical and economic issues, and the sources of tension between them range from the sovereignty of Taiwan and the ownership of the social media platform TikTok.

Image source, Getty Images

Earlier in his interview with Fox News, Trump also said he plans to reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"I got along with him," Trump said of Kim.

"He’s not a religious zealot. He happens to be a smart guy."

The two last met in 2019, at the Demilitarised Zone between North Korea and South Korea.

During Trump's first term in office, he met Kim three times - he was also the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea.

The second part of Trump's interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity has wrapped up. During this segment the US President reiterated his support for pro-oil and gas policies and to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.

He also said Russia's war with Ukraine should "end immediately" - he threatened to impose "massive tariffs" on Moscow if Putin doesn't stop the war, but did not propose other plans.

On foreign relations, Trump noted that tariffs' are the US' "one big power" over China, a country he described as having big ambitions.

Trump tells Hannity Russia's war with Ukraine should "end immediately" and says Putin should never have started it.

He adds that if the war had started while he was in office he would have "made a deal" with the Russian president, suggesting this would have averted the conflict.

Trump says he will impose "massive tariffs" on Russia if Putin doesn't stop the war.

The US president has previously said he would negotiate a settlement to the conflict, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, in a single day.

Image source, Getty Images

Asked about his relationship with China's President Xi Jinping, Trump described a recent conversation they shared as "good" and "friendly".

He said the two leaders had a "very good relationship" prior to Covid.

"They are a very ambitious country, he is an ambitious man... He was like my friend, we had a very good relationship," Trump said.

Still, he justified his decision to slap tariffs on Beijing as "China gets a lot of its money from America and they use that money to build up their military".

"We have one very big power over China, and that's tariffs, and they don't want them," he said. “And I’d rather not have to use it. But it’s a tremendous power over China.”

Earlier this week, Trump said he is considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods as soon as 1 February.

Hannity's first questions to Trump are about energy. He brings up Trump's promise to "drill, baby, drill".

Trump says energy will "lead the way" to the US becoming "a wealthy country again".

He goes on to criticise green energy generators such as windmills, which he says are less consistent than natural gas, and fields of solar panels, which he describes as "ridiculous".

Fox News is airing the second part of its interview with Donald Trump - the first sit-down interview of his second term.

We'll bring you all the key lines here. Stay with us.

Fox News will soon be airing the second part of its pre-taped interview with Trump, which it has billed as the president’s first sit-down interview of his new term.

In the first part, which aired last night, Trump told host Sean Hannity the social media platform TikTok is “going to stay around”, after he granted it a 75-day extension to comply with a law banning the app if it isn’t sold.

He also noted that Joe Biden did not pre-emptively pardon himself before leaving office, and the 6 January convicts were "treated like the worst criminals in history".

Trump also defended not releasing all government files relating to JFK’s assassination, as he promised to do in his first term. As we reported earlier, he has now ordered those files to be declassified.

We’ll bring you the key lines from the second part of the interview as we get them. It starts at 21:00 EST (02:00 GMT).

Also among Trump's executive orders on Thursday was one that seeks to declassify files relating to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history - former US President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert F Kennedy and pivotal civil rights figure Martin Luther King Jr.

The order gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general 15 days to come up with a plan to declassify the JFK files that are not currently open to the public, and 45 days to do the same with the others.

"A lot of people are waiting for this, for long, for, for decades," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after signing the order. "Everything will be revealed."

JKF was killed in 1963. His brother RFK was assassinated while running for president in 1968, just two months after King, America's most famous civil rights leader, was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee.

As we mentioned earlier, Donald Trump was back in front of the cameras in the Oval Office on Thursday to sign another flurry of executive orders.

After pardoning more than 1,500 people convicted over their roles in the Capitol riots of 6 January 2021, Trump signed further pardons, this time for anti-abortion activists.

He signed pardons for 23 people who had been convicted for blocking access to abortion clinics.

“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said as he signed pardons for those he described as “peaceful pro-life protesters.”

Image source, EPA

We can bring you more now on Thursday's top stories.

A judge ordered an immediate temporary block to one of Donald Trump's executive orders which sought to deny birthright citizenship to children of undocumented migrants.

Four states - Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon - had asked the district court to block the order while the federal court considers the states' legal challenge.

“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” the judge said.

It means the executive order will be put on hold for 14 days pending further legal proceedings.

For context: Birthright citizenship, where anyone born on US soil is automatically granted citizenship, was not originally part of the US constitution, but was added in 1868 after the Civil War ended to address citizenship of freed, American-born former slaves.

Following the ruling, Trump told reporters that he "obviously" intended to appeal.

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump has been back in the Oval Office for nearly four days, signing a flurry of executive orders and issuing a slew of presidential pardons.

Here’s a quick catch-up of everything that happened today so far:

• A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order to curtail birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional” - Trump vowed to appeal the ruling

• Meanwhile, the president declassified files relating to the deaths of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, saying “everything will be revealed”

• Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who he said “should not have been prosecuted”, as he signed another round of executive orders in the Oval Office

• While threatening “trillions of dollars” in tariffs on foreign imports, Trump said Canada could become a US state to avoid them, to audible gasps at the World Economic Forum in Davos

• The Senate confirmed John Ratcliffe as CIA director with the support of several Democrats, in a rare bipartisan moment

Stay with us as our teams in Washington DC, Singapore and London bring you the latest developments from Trump's first week back in the White House.