Trump’s Justice Department launches sweeping cuts targeting Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters is seen in Washington on Dec. 7, 2024. (AP file photo)
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Updated 01 February 2025
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Trump’s Justice Department launches sweeping cuts targeting Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents

  • Department reviews all who worked on Jan. 6 cases
  • FBI officials in major cities are ordered to quit
  • FBI agents group says hundreds could be affected

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration launched a sweeping round of cuts at the Justice Department on Friday that appeared to focus on FBI agents and others who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the US Capitol.
The shakeup, detailed in two memos seen by Reuters and by three sources familiar with the matter, is the Trump administration’s latest move to remake the US criminal justice system since he returned to the presidency last week. A group representing FBI agents issued a rare public warning of the potential for hundreds of firings at the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

The new administration already has fired more than a dozen prosecutors who pursued criminal charges against Trump in two cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that have been dismissed. It also has paused all civil rights and environmental litigation and ordered criminal investigations of state and local officials who interfere with his hard-line immigration initiatives.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove on Thursday told the top federal prosecutors in each state to compile a list of all prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the investigation of the Capitol riot, which was the largest Justice Department probe in modern US history, two sources briefed on the matter said.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
The FBI was ordered to provide by Tuesday a list of all employees who worked on a 2024 criminal case brought by the Justice Department against leaders of the Hamas militant group, according to a memo seen by Reuters. A source briefed on the matter also said the FBI was asked to provide a list of employees who worked on the two Trump cases brought by Smith.
That memo ordered eight FBI officials to resign or be fired, saying that their participation in the Jan. 6 cases represented part of what Trump has called the “weaponization” of government.
In a statement on Friday, the FBI Agents Association, a membership group of more than 14,000 active and former FBI agents, called the moves “outrageous.”
“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association added.
The staff cuts are hitting career FBI officials and prosecutors in nonpartisan roles who typically remain in their posts from administration to administration. The bureau has a history of political independence and is responsible for highly sensitive investigations involving counterterrorism, public corruption and cybersecurity.
In his first day back in the White House on Jan. 20, Trump granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged with storming the Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed top federal prosecutor in Washington, has since launched an inquiry into the use of a felony obstruction charge in prosecutions of people accused of taking part in the Jan. 6 attack.

Major cities targetted
At least five top FBI officials in major US cities — Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans and Las Vegas — were ordered to resign or be fired, one of the sources said. Another source said that a sixth senior FBI official, in Los Angeles, was given a similar order.
Another five top officials in FBI headquarters were ordered to leave or face termination earlier in the week, another source told Reuters.
FBI and Justice Department officials declined to comment on the various moves.
“What we are seeing is a raw, unfiltered exercise of presidential authority to purge the government of anyone who put the Constitution first, instead of adherence or loyalty to Donald Trump,” said Bradley Moss, an attorney who represents federal employees.
“At a time when we are facing a multitude of threats to the homeland ... it is deeply alarming that the Trump administration appears to be purging dozens of the most experienced agents who are our nation’s first line of defense,” Democratic US Senator Mark Warner said in a statement. Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, told a US Senate panel on Thursday during his confirmation hearing that he would protect the bureau’s 37,000 employees against “political retribution” if he were confirmed. The same day, the Justice Department said it was investigating the release by an upstate New York sheriff’s office of an immigrant living in the US illegally. This appears to be its first use of a new policy to criminally investigate state and local officials who do not comply with Trump’s directives.
Bove, in a separate Friday memo seen by Reuters, ordered the firings of all prosecutors who had been hired on a probationary basis to work on Jan. 6-related cases, noting that Trump characterized their work as “a grave national injustice.”
About 20 people were fired as a result of that order, according to a source familiar with the move.
Bove also accused the Biden administration of rushing to convert the status of probationary prosecutors to permanent status after Trump won the election in a bid to save their jobs.


Trump threatens funding cut to colleges allowing ‘illegal protests’

Updated 6 sec ago
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Trump threatens funding cut to colleges allowing ‘illegal protests’

  • The US government does not control either privately or publicly funded schools or colleges, although a president has a limited ability to encourage policy goals via federal funding disbursed through the US Department of Education

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he wanted to cut the federal funding of colleges that allow what he called “illegal protests” in a social media post that civil rights groups called an attack on the freedoms of speech and assembly.
The post on Tuesday appeared to repeat some of the ideas of executive orders he issued during his first term, in 2019, and on January 29, which described the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that swept college campuses last year as antisemitic.
“All federal funding will STOP for any College, School or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump wrote on social media. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!“
A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to questions about how the White House would define an illegal protest or how the government would imprison protesters. The US Constitution’s First Amendment protects the freedom of speech and assembly.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a non-profit group, said on Tuesday that Trump’s threat was “deeply chilling” and would make students “fear punishment for wholly protected political speech.”
“The president can’t force institutions to expel students,” the statement said.
The US government does not control either privately or publicly funded schools or colleges, although a president has a limited ability to encourage policy goals via federal funding disbursed through the US Department of Education.
Trump’s executive order in January restored a similar order he signed in 2019, instructing the Department of Education to investigate colleges that receive federal funding if they failed to protect Jewish students and staff from antisemitism.
Trump has also told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that he wants non-citizen protesters admitted to the US on student visas to be deported.
Protesters set up tent encampments on college campuses across the US and around the world last year as conflict raged in Gaza. Many of the protests centered on their school’s investments in companies that they said supported Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories.
Both some of those protests and some pro-Israel counter-protests involved incidents and allegations of antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias. Protest leaders, which include some Jewish students and faculty, say they are opposed to Israel, but reject allegations that their movement is antisemitic.

 


UN appeals for funds to help contain Uganda Ebola outbreak

Updated 05 March 2025
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UN appeals for funds to help contain Uganda Ebola outbreak

KAMPALA: The UN has launched an emergency appeal to raise $11.2 million to help fund Uganda’s response to an Ebola outbreak that has killed two people, after the country’s health budget was strained by US cuts to foreign aid.

Uganda declared the outbreak of the highly infectious and often fatal hemorrhagic disease in January in the capital Kampala after the death of a male nurse at the East African country’s sole national referral hospital.

A second Ebola patient, a four-year-old child, died last week, the World Health Organization said, citing the country’s Health Ministry.

Uganda’s 10 confirmed cases have been linked to Ebola’s Sudan strain which does not have an approved vaccine.

In a statement sent out on Tuesday, the UN said the funds would cover the Ebola response from March to May in seven high-risk districts.

“The goal is to rapidly contain the outbreak and address its impact on public health as well as associated social-economic life of affected people,” said Kasonde Mwinga, Uganda representative for the World Health Organization, a UN agency.

Uganda has traditionally relied heavily on the US for its health sector funding.

During the last Ebola outbreak in 2022-2023, the United States provided $34 million to fund case management, surveillance, diagnostics, laboratories, infection prevention and control among other activities, according to a US Embassy report.

But President Donald Trump’s administration imposed an aid freeze and US funding to Uganda’s health sector has been slashed, hitting the country’s public health budget, according to government officials.


‘Stranded’ NASA astronaut backs Musk in rescue row

Updated 04 March 2025
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‘Stranded’ NASA astronaut backs Musk in rescue row

  • Elon Musk recently clashed online with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who accused him of lying in a Fox News interview
  • Musk’s response to Mogensen included a slur for people with intellectual disabilities, sparking backlash from the space community

WASHINGTON: NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore, stranded on the International Space Station since June, said Tuesday he believes Elon Musk’s claim that the billionaire proposed an early rescue plan, but it was ultimately rejected by then-President Joe Biden.
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams were originally scheduled for an eight-day mission, but their return was complicated when the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing was deemed unsafe for the journey home.
Their prolonged stay has recently become a point of contention, with Musk and President Donald Trump accusing Biden’s administration of abandoning the pair to avoid making Musk look like a savior.
“I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says is absolutely factual,” said Wilmore, a former Navy test pilot. He admitted he wasn’t privy to the ins and outs of the drama, but added, “I believe him. I don’t know all those details.”
Musk recently clashed online with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who accused him of lying in a Fox News interview when he claimed the astronauts were abandoned for “political reasons.”
Mogensen pointed out that, since the Boeing Starliner was deemed unsafe for return with people aboard, NASA had planned for months to bring Wilmore and Williams back on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which arrived at the ISS in September with two spare seats.
No alternative plan has been publicly discussed, and Crew-9’s return has been delayed by SpaceX itself due to setbacks in preparing the Dragon spacecraft for Crew-10, now scheduled for launch on March 12.
Interrupting the standard crew rotation would also be a deviation from protocol, and extended astronaut stays are not unprecedented.
In 2023, Frank Rubio became the first NASA astronaut to spend over a year in space after a meteoroid damaged the Russian Soyuz spacecraft he rode up on.
Similarly, after the Columbia disaster in 2003, when a shuttle disintegrated during re-entry, NASA suspended flights for two years, forcing astronauts to rely on Soyuz and extend their missions.
Musk’s response to Mogensen included a slur for people with intellectual disabilities, sparking backlash from the space community. Former NASA astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly defended Mogensen and criticized the SpaceX founder.
“Obviously, we’ve heard some of these different things that have been said,” Wilmore commented. “We have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk, and obviously respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump. We appreciate them... and we’re thankful that they are in the positions they’re in.”
Wilmore’s remarks come just days after acting NASA administrator Janet Petro raised eyebrows by stating the agency aimed to put “America first,” echoing Trump’s political slogan.
“We’re going to be putting America first, we’re making America proud, we’re doing this for the US citizens,” she said before a private Moon lander touched down on Sunday — a notable shift from NASA’s longstanding stance that its space achievements were “for all mankind.”


Suspect in deadly German car-ramming gives no information on motive and is ordered held in custody

Updated 05 March 2025
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Suspect in deadly German car-ramming gives no information on motive and is ordered held in custody

  • The suspect gave no information in his appearance before a judge, “so that his motive for the act is still unclear”
  • A search of his apartment in nearby Ludwigshafen also turned up no clues as to a motive

MANNHEIM, Germany: The suspect in a car-ramming in the German city of Mannheim that killed two people gave no information about his motive Tuesday as he appeared before a judge who ordered him held pending a possible indictment, investigators said.
The 40-year-old German man was arrested shortly after the car-ramming Monday at around noon on a busy pedestrian street in downtown Mannheim in southwestern Germany. Eleven people were injured, five of them seriously, and the latter were still being treated in hospitals on Tuesday.
Mourners laid flowers in the city center to honor the victims.
Mannheim prosecutors and state police said a district court in the city ordered the man kept in custody pending possible formal charges on suspicion of two counts of murder, five of attempted murder and 11 of bodily harm.
The investigators said in a statement that the suspect gave no information in his appearance before a judge, “so that his motive for the act is still unclear.” A search of his apartment in nearby Ludwigshafen also turned up no clues as to a motive.
The investigation so far points to mental illness, the statement added. The suspect is believed to have acted alone. Prosecutors and police said that objects the man had in his car and his home — including a blank gun and written documents — were being evaluated.
The suspect tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the mouth before he was arrested, Tuesday’s statement said. He was initially taken to a hospital but subsequently handed over to police.
Officials said on Monday that they had no indication of an extremist or religious motivation.
Prosecutors have said the man, whose identity was not revealed in line with German privacy rules, has previous convictions.
He served a short prison sentence for assault more than 10 years ago and was convicted for drunken driving. He had also been investigated for a hate speech offense on Facebook in 2018, for which he was fined, prosecutors said without giving further details.
Cars have been used as deadly weapons in other acts of violence in recent months in Germany.
Last month, a 2-year-old girl and her mother died two days after they were injured in a car-ramming attack on a union demonstration in Munich. A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested. Prosecutors said he appeared to have an Islamic extremist motive.
In December, six people were killed and more than 200 injured when a car slammed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. The suspect is a 50-year-old doctor who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative For Germany party.


Smoke grenades tossed in Serbian parliament, lawmaker suffers stroke

Updated 04 March 2025
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Smoke grenades tossed in Serbian parliament, lawmaker suffers stroke

  • A live TV broadcast showed black and pink smoke billowing inside the parliament
  • Vucic later said authorities would hold all those deputies involved in the fracas to account, calling it “hooliganism“

BELGRADE: Serbian opposition lawmakers threw smoke grenades and used pepper spray inside parliament on Tuesday to protest against the government and to support demonstrating students, with one legislator suffering a stroke during the chaos.
Four months of student-led demonstrations, sparked by the deaths of 15 people when a railway station roof collapsed, have drawn in teachers, farmers and others to become the biggest threat yet to President Aleksandar Vucic’s decade-long rule, with many denouncing rampant corruption and incompetence in government.
At the legislative session, after the ruling coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) approved the agenda, some opposition politicians ran from their seats toward the parliamentary speaker and scuffled with security guards.
Others tossed smoke grenades and used pepper spray. A live TV broadcast showed black and pink smoke billowing inside the parliament, which has seen brawls before, in the decades since the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1990.
Vucic later said authorities would hold all those deputies involved in the fracas to account, calling it “hooliganism.”
Under Serbian law, parliamentary deputies enjoy immunity from prosecution but can lose it if they commit serious crimes.

POLITICIAN HURT
Speaker Ana Brnabic said three lawmakers were injured and one, Jasmina Obradovic of the SNS party, had suffered a stroke and was hospitalized.
Zlatibor Loncar, the Health Minister later said Obradovic was in a serious condition.
As the session continued, ruling coalition politicians debated while opposition lawmakers whistled and blew horns.
Opposition deputies also held signs reading “general strike” and “justice for those killed,” referring to those who died when the station roof collapsed in the city of Novi Sad last November.
Outside parliament hundreds of protesters stood in silence to honor those killed. Protest leaders called for a major rally in the capital Belgrade on March 15.
The ruling coalition says Western intelligence agencies are trying to destabilize Serbia and topple the government by backing the protests.
“We have a proposal ... to have a transitional government,” Radomir Lazovic of the opposition Green-Left Front told supporters in front of the parliament.
The opposition says a transitional government should secure conditions for free and fair elections, but Vucic and his allies have so far rejected that demand.
“This was a failed attempt of the ruling coalition to show it is in control ..., and (there’s) a potential for an escalation,” Radivoje Grujic, a Warsaw-based consultant told Reuters, commenting on the parliamentary session.
Parliament was due to adopt a law increasing funds for universities — one of the main demands of protesting students.
But other items put on the agenda by the ruling coalition including the one about noting the resignation of Prime Minister Milos Vucevic angered the opposition.
The session has been adjourned and is due to resume on Wednesday.