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Kash Patel, President Donald 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 receives a full Senate confirmation vote.

Patel could be one of Trump's most controversial remaining nominees, accused of being blindly loyal to Trump following a book he published in 2023. The book, titled Government Gangsters, labels several elected officials that oppose Trump as enemies of the US and members of the "deep state". He vowed revenge.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement after meeing 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".

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump has revoked the security protection detail assigned to Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state during Trump's first administration.

In November, Trump had said Pompeo, who had been a loyal ally in Trump's first administration, would not be offered a role in his new one.

Trump also revoked the security detail of top aide Brian Hook as well as former national security advisor John Bolton.

All three led policy decision regarding Iran when Trump was last in the White House, and US authorities under the Biden administration had granted them security detail over potential threats from Iran.

Last year, authorities alleged that Iran plotted to murder Bolton and Trump, charges Iran denies.

Why the president can't just change interest ratespublished at 00:31 Greenwich Mean Time 24 January

00:31 GMT 24 January

Vishala Sri-Pathma
Business reporter

Image source, Reuters

Setting interest rates is the job of the Federal Reserve which has full independence from the White House. The central rate that the Bank sets trickles across the economy to impact the rates on everything from mortgages to credit cards.

The Fed last cut rates by a quarter percentage point at its December policy meeting to between 4.25% and 4.5%.

Trump has at times implied that the Fed will lower rates further because inflation is likely to be lower on his watch, despite economists suggesting that some of his proposed policies may in fact speed up inflation.

“I think I know interest rates much better than they do, and I think I know it certainly much better than the one who’s primarily in charge of making that decision,” Trump said in an apparent reference to the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office today.

One of the ways the president does directly influence the Fed – and therefore potentially impact its actions - is by nominating members to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

The seven board members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve 14-year terms. Meanwhile, the chair and vice chair serve four year terms. These are the key people that meet several times a year to decide whether to raise, slash or keep rates where they are.

Trump will have the opportunity to nominate a new chair in 2026, and he may be more inclined to choose someone he expects to align with his thinking.

Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order mandating that government-issued IDs - such as drivers licenses and passports - only use "biological classifications" of male or female.

This will exclude individuals who have different gender identities.

Sometimes those individuals will use the sex marker "X" on government documents, as opposed to checking "F" for female or "M" for male.

That executive order may mark the end of the use of "X," at least in official government capacity.

Now, two sources familiar confirm to the BBC's US partner, CBS, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to employees of the State Department instructing them to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker”.

The BBC earlier asked the State Department to confirm the freeze, but a spokesperson said the department "does not comment on leaked internal documents".

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reaffirmed the US’s commitment to Nato, amid fears the military alliance could be weakened under the new administration.

In comments earlier today, Trump questioned the value of spending on Nato, saying that while the US was protecting other members, they were not protecting the United States. He also said Nato allies should pay more.

But the State Department has now revealed that Rubio “reinforced the US commitment to Nato” in a call with its secretary general Mark Rutte yesterday.

Rubio - now the top US diplomat - also stressed Nato's “continued importance” to international security, and the two discussed the need for a "peaceful solution” to end Russia's war on Ukraine, according to a readout of the call.

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The Department of Justice says it will "vigorously defend" Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship, after it was temporarily blocked in a federal court earlier today.

A District Court judge in Seattle said the order was "blatantly unconstitutional" and stopped it from going into force pending further legal proceedings. As we reported earlier, Trump told reporters his administration would appeal the ruling.

A DoJ spokesperson now says the department looks forward to "presenting a full merits argument to the Court and to the American people".

The executive order, they say, "correctly interprets" the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

• For context: Under a long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment, nearly anyone born inside the US is automatically given citizenship. Trump hopes to end that rule for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or temporarily.

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed to reporters that President Trump signed an executive order sending 1,500 additional troops to the US-Mexico border.

Leavitt says the goal is "securing the southern border and deporting illegal immigrants from this country".

Earlier today, Leavitt told conservative media outlet Newsmax that officials have already "arrested nearly 500" undocumented people inside the US, adding "they will be sent home".

"Those flights are already underway this morning," she said.

Speaking with reporters at the White House, Leavitt says: "President Trump is sending a very strong message to people around this world - if you are thinking about breaking the laws of the United States of America, you will be returned home, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted. Do not come."

We reported earlier that senior officials expect the 1,500 troops to be deployed to California and Texas in the next 24 to 48 hours.

The president’s crypto and artificial intelligence adviser David Sacks, who is a venture capitalist close to Trump ally Elon Musk, joined the president in the Oval Office today for the signing of an executive order, "Strengthening American Leadership In Financial Technology".

Trump has said his administration will evaluate possibly creating a national stockpile of digital assets like bitcoin, but the order falls short of immediately creating a bitcoin reserve.

Some in the industry had hoped that with a crypto supporter in office, they would quickly see the stockpile built up.

Trump was highly critical of crypto in his first term in office but then championed the technology during his election campaign. He became the first presidential candidate to accept donations in digital currencies.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both launched their own cryptocurrencies just days before their return to the White House.

Image source, Getty

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The Senate confirmed John Ratcliffe as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday, putting him atop the spy agency that he has vowed to make more aggressive.

The vote was 74 to 25, including several Democrats who joined Republicans in confirming Ratcliffe.

"I will unapologetically empower the most talented, hardest working and most courageous risk-takers and innovators to protect the American people and advance America’s interest, and I will not tolerate anything or anyone that distracts from our mission,” he said during his confirmation hearing.

Earlier this week, Marco Rubio was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, where he served for more than a decade. The bipartisanship may prove fleeting, though, as Democrats unify in opposing other Trump nominees, such as Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host and Army veteran tapped for secretary of defense.

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Among the orders Trump signed this afternoon is one supporting full federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe, a group of about 55,000 Native Americans who mostly live in one North Carolina county.

The Lumbee have a puzzling and somewhat unknown heritage. Colonial settlers in the early 1700s were surprised to find a large tribe speaking a dialect of English derived from British vernacular. And genetic testing has shown that members share DNA with white people and black people as well as Native Americans.

The Lumbee are named for the Lumber River which flows through Robeson county in southern North Carolina. Federal recognition of the tribe has been a bipartisan issue, with both Republicans and Democrats advocating for it, although some other Native tribes have been opposed. They have argued that a such a move would dilute Native heritage and further research is needed into Lumbee history.

Robeson County has swung toward Republicans in recent years. Donald Trump held a rally there in 2020, and the county gave him nearly 2/3 of its votes in November's election.

Federal recognition of a Native tribe brings with it legal rights and government benefits such as health care and housing grants.

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Tulsi Gabbard will have her Senate confirmation hearing to be the Director of National Intelligence next week.

Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress who then aligned herself with Robert F. Kennedy Jr and later Donald Trump, will answer questions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on 30 January, seeking to show she is qualified to oversee America's spy agencies.

Democratic senators are expected to raise concerns about her previous comments about Russia and her meeting with Syria's Bashar al-Assad. You can read more about that here.

After the hearing, the committee is expected to vote on whether to send her nomination to the full Senate for consideration.

We're going back to a comment Trump made earlier today when Bank of American CEO Brian Moynihan asked him a question during his virtual appearance in Davos. He said the major bank does not serve conservative customers.

"I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives," Trump told the bank's CEO Brian Moynihan in a response to a question from him. "Because what you are doing is wrong."

Moynihan appeared to be taken off-guard in the moment and did not address the claim directly.

His bank, however, has since issued a statement to Bloomberg, saying: "We serve more than 70 million clients, we welcome conservatives and have no political litmus test."

Trump has also made similar claims towards JPMorgan Chase & Co, another major US bank.

JPMorgan responded by saying: "We have never and would never close an account for political reasons, full stop."

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Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

During the question-and-answer session with President Trump a little earlier, I asked several questions.

He answered one, about what he meant earlier this week when he said that Biden received "bad advice" and didn't pardon himself when he pardoned members of the congressional committee that looked into the 6 January 2021 riot at the Capitol.

Trump gave a long answer, calling certain committee members "crooked as hell" and accusing them of destroying evidence that proved he was "right" about the events of that day, which he has called "peaceful".

In particular, Trump mentioned California Democrat Adam Schiff, as well as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans on the committee who have become outspoken critics of Trump's.

"They're crooked politicians, and they should be punished," he said. "They destroyed every document... because it proved that I was totally innocent."

He provided no proof that the January 6 committee destroyed evidence. The committee's findings blamed Trump for the violent riot, where his supporters attempted to overturn the results of Trump's 2020 election loss. In a series of primetime hearings, the committee broadcast recorded depositions with many of the president's former advisers and family members about his actions that day.

House Republicans on Wednesday announced a new committee dedicated to investigating the riot.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Just a short while ago, I was one of about 20 journalists, photographers and TV crew who crowded into the Oval Office of the White House - watching Trump sign executive orders and, seemingly with relish, dive into questions from reporters.

I had been in the Oval Office only once before, for a meeting between Joe Biden and then-Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

On that day last year, the two men made brief remarks and then the press were ushered out swiftly by staffers shouting "thank you press!", barely able to yell out our own questions as we were forced out the door.

This was an altogether different experience. After signing the orders, Trump took a wide range of questions on everything from tariffs and AI to Ukraine and the border.

He looked directly at each reporter as he answered, scanning the room for the next question and focusing on those who shouted the loudest.

At no point was he interrupted or "cut off" by staff - another stark difference with the Biden White House.

Only when he said "thank you" and turned away did the session end and press staffers step in to move us all out.

Ana Faguy

It's been a busy couple of hours here in Washington.

Trump signed a flurry of new executive orders in the Oval Office just now while and then handled a rapid round of questions from reporters - and that follows dozens of executive actions Trump has signed since he was sworn in on Monday.

The orders addressed a big mix of issues, with Trump pardoning 23 anti-abortion protestors, declassifying files on the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, and recognising the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.

Then came the questions, which touched on interest rates, tariffs and the war in Ukraine.

"It would be nice to end that war, it's a ridiculous war," Trump said referring to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Trump previously promised to end the war on day one of his new administration. The war is ongoing.

After signing the orders, Trump fielded a battery of questions from reporters in the Oval Office.

He responded to a question about why his proposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada are "much tougher" than what he's suggested for China by saying: "China is already paying a lot of tariffs, because of me."

Trump says China has paid "hundreds of billions of dollars" now but before him hadn't paid "10 cents".

He then says "China is sending us tremendous amounts of bad drugs" like fentanyl, adding that "most of it comes through Mexico" and takes at least "300,000 lives a year".

As Trump signed the executive orders, he made comments to an aide and to reporters in the Oval Office.

• Strengthening American leadership in digital financial technology: "[It's] going to make a lot of money for the country"

• Federal Recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina: "I love the Lumbee Tribe. They were with me all the way. They were great"
• Pardons for 23 anti-abortion protesters: "They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign"
• Declassification of records concerning the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK Jr: "A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades"

Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office after signing orders.

He was just asked the Ukraine war, and what China can do on the conflict.

"They have a lot of power over Russia," Trump says of China.

China supplies energy to Russia, he says, adding "from what I hear Putin would like to meet me".

"it would be nice to end that war, it's a ridiculous war," Trump says.

He adds that Zelensky said he'd like to make a deal.

Image source, Getty Images

Trump has just ordered the documents related to three of the most consequential assassinations in US history - the killings of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr - to be declassified.

"A lot of people are waiting for this, for long, for, for decades," Trump said. "Everything will be revealed."

The president asked for the pen he used to sign the order to be given to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is RFK's son, JFK's nephew and Trump's nominee for health secretary.

President John F Kennedy was killed in 1963, while his brother Robert F Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in 1968, two months after King, America's most famous civil rights leader, was murdered in Memphis.

Many of the documents related to the investigations have been released in the years since, although thousands still remain redacted, particularly related to JFK.