Jack Smith Says Trump Was Guilty “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith doubled down Thursday on his decision to bring criminal charges against President Donald Trump.

“To be clear, I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said during his opening statement at a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that resident was a Democrat or a Republican,” he said.

Smith continued to assert that Trump had “willfully” broken the law.

“Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power,” he said.

“After leaving office in January 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club, and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom.”

In December, Smith testified for eight hours in a closed-door hearing before the committee. He has long sought to testify in a public hearing, but was rebuffed by Republicans in favor of one behind closed doors.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners—a commercially and critically successful African American vampire film—has set an all-time Oscars record with 16 total nominations. These include best picture, Michael B. Jordan for best leading actor, Wunmi Mosaku for best supporting actress, and Delroy Lindo for best supporting actor.

The film follows hustling twin brothers who simultaneously fight back against Jim Crow racism and vampires who are attracted to the blues music coming from their juke joint. The box office hit is defined by Coogler’s respect for African American music and culture.

“There’s a firm argument to be made that this art form, the Delta blues, is our country’s most important contribution to global popular culture. You know, I think it’s probably [Black people’s] most important artistic contribution to the world,” Coogler told Democracy Now! last spring. “And it was such a profound discovery, that this music made by people who were, you know, for all intents and purposes, living under a backbreaking form of American apartheid, you know, denied their humanity on a daily basis, would create something so artistically excellent that it would affect global culture from that time forward.”

Sinners’s 16 nominations eclipse the record of 14 that All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016) all shared. Its costume designer, Ruth E. Carter, also becomes the most nominated Black woman in Oscars history after being named in five categories. Other best picture nominees, such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s audacious One Battle After Another, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, and Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, will offer Coogler some stiff competition.

Win or lose, Coogler has made history and continues to produce a robust catalog of Black blockbusters—from Black Panther to Fruitvale Station to Creed to Sinners—that will be appreciated for years to come.

View the full 2026 Oscar nominations here.

Donald Trump’s support has plummeted, with a new poll showing that he is underwater with all of the groups responsible for his 2024 election victory.

The poll from The New York Times and Siena University has Trump with a 56 percent disapproval rating, and when that is broken down by age and race, the results look similar to 2020, just before Trump’s election loss that year.

Overall, 49 percent of voters say that the country is worse off than it was last year, with 32 percent saying it was better. About 56 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s management of the federal government, 58 percent disapprove of his immigration policies, and 66 percent disapprove of his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. About 44 percent of people who have turned against the president cite economic issues, and 58 percent of all of the poll’s respondents disapprove of his handling of the economy.

Clearly, Americans don’t like Trump’s policies. Reports from across the country, most recently Minneapolis, show Border Patrol and ICE agents engaging in violence against not only suspected undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens protesting against them. Despite a new law requiring full disclosure of the government’s unclassified Epstein archives, only about a small amount has been released, with much of what has been published fully redacted. And the public isn’t seeing any benefits from the president’s incoherent economic policies.

With the midterm elections only months away, Trump and the Republican Party seem headed for massive losses. That’s probably why Trump keeps “joking” about canceling elections; if ICE keeps making the headlines for horrific actions, the president keeps flip-flopping on tariffs, and the administration continues to stall on the Epstein files, it’s safe to say that Trump is in trouble come November.

America’s latest and greatest threat, according to the White House, is the American people.

A leaked security threats assessment obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein from the Department of Homeland Security reveals the department’s intention to shift the definition of domestic terrorism toward a new subset of individuals acting on “class-based or economic grievances.”

As Klippenstein points out in his Substack Wednesday, that could refer to any American, from an “angry MAGA Midwesterner” to a “Mamdani-supporting urban dweller.”

The report itself, which is marked for “official use” and has not yet been made publicly available, identifies extremism emerging from the American public as the country’s gravest threat.

“Of threat actors with ideological motivations, domestic violent extremists in recent years have been the most active plotters,” the report reads, according to screenshots shared by Klippenstein. “They are motivated to conduct attacks by a wide range of factors, including anti-government sentiment, racial and ethnic grievances, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic beliefs, and class-based or economic grievances.”

Part of the rise, according to DHS, has been fanned by the “ongoing Israel-HAMAS conflict and a resurgence in English-language terrorist media.”

The report appears to be a blatant slap in the face to the Constitution, which enshrined the public’s right to freedom of speech and protest within the folds of the First Amendment. And by all means, the American public has a lot to be incensed over when it comes to the federal government.

In Minnesota, thousands have participated in mass protests after ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen. DHS was quick to brand her a “domestic terrorist.”

Since Good’s death, federal officers have participated in myriad forms of overreach, including ripping people from their homes and families, pulling over school buses, attacking teachers and students at a Minneapolis high school, and even clashing with local law enforcement.

In an attempt to defend their own city from the state-sponsored violence, some Minneapolis residents have opted to openly carry their firearms through the city, brandishing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Locals have formed neighborhood watches to follow ICE vehicles, banging pots and pans and screaming to alert others when agents enter their residential neighborhoods. But DHS’s latest definition could place an even more severe target on those resisting the government’s violent agenda.

The Department of Homeland Security is complaining that Minneapolis and St. Paul residents aren’t letting their masked, heavily armed agents pee in peace.

“Today, Border Patrol agents who were in Minneapolis–St. Paul as part of a targeted enforcement operation were repeatedly harassed and blocked by hostile crowds while simply trying to take bathroom breaks,” DHS wrote Wednesday on X. “At each gas station where the agents stopped to use the restroom, groups of agitators appeared, yelled at them, stalked them, and even tried to prevent law enforcement vehicles from leaving, creating unsafe conditions.”

The treatment that DHS is whining about here can be corroborated by footage captured by independent journalist Amanda Moore. Minneapolis residents can be seen surrounding Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino and his masked deputies at a gas station, loudly rebuking them.

“ICE does not belong on this property at all, we do not support ICE,” one man said as the agents backed away. “Get off our property. Bye, bye, bye.”

That DHS post reads so indignantly you’d think they forgot about shooting and killing Renee Good in cold blood two weeks ago. People around the country were already horrified by the raids, aggression, and brutality shown by Border Patrol. Why would the city they’re currently occupying—after killing one of their own—respond positively to their presence?

ICE reportedly gave itself permission to violate the Fourth Amendment in order to accelerate President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign, according to a new whistleblower disclosure.

In a secret memo distributed in May 2025, ICE Director Todd Lyons gave ICE agents permission to forcibly enter homes without obtaining a judicial warrant. The memo told officers they could rely on a Warrant of Removal—an administrative warrant rather than a judicial one—to enter the residence of any target using “a necessary and reasonable amount of force.”

The memo noted that administrative warrants alone have not historically been used to make arrests at subjects’ homes, but the DHS Office of General Counsel apparently determined that the U.S. Constitution and other immigration laws “do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.”

For years, government officials, immigration advocates, and legal aid workers have instructed immigrants not to open their doors to officials unless the agents produce a judicial warrant, in alignment with U.S. Supreme Court decisions that uphold the U.S. Constitution’s protection against unlawful search and seizure. Congress has specifically outlined the Fourth Amendment as a constraint on federal immigration forces, who require “a judicial (as opposed to an administrative) warrant” to enter homes.

Rather than being distributed to all DHS employees, the memo was distributed to certain DHS officials who were instructed to verbally pass down permission to start breaking down doors, according to the whistleblower disclosure. Those who reviewed the memo were not permitted to take notes—which seems like a pretty damning sign of its dubious legal basis.

ICE instructors were reportedly told to teach new recruits that all they needed was a warrant of removal—in direct violation of Basic Immigration Enforcement Training materials, which state that “a warrant of removal/deportation does NOT alone authorize a 4th amendment search of any kind.” One instructor reportedly resigned rather than pass on the new guidance.

For months, the world has watched as Trump’s extrajudicial militia has made numerous warrantless arrests, and more recently started kicking down doors as part of its door-to-door campaign in Minnesota.

Somehow, ICE has also deployed even crueler tactics to pursue targets into their home: earlier this week, masked federal agents used a five-year-old boy as bait to try to lure his relative out of their home. They ended up detaining the boy and his father, and shipping them off to Texas for deportation.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, revealed the U.S. “master plan” for Gaza at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday.

“People ask us what our Plan B is—we do not have a plan B. We have a plan, we signed an agreement, we are all committed to making that agreement work,” Kushner said. “There’s a master plan. We’ll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle East, they build cities like this ... you know, two, three million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.”

Kushner’s plan for a “New Gaza” includes a focus on tourism, with luxury hotels as well as a new seaport and airport. That seems to clash with existing realities, such as Israel having blocked such developments for the last two decades. Gaza didn’t have an airport even before the genocide, as Israel bombed the only airport in 2006. And despite a ceasefire having passed last year, Israel has killed at least 400 Palestinians in Gaza since then, and bombing campaigns continue.

While Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to join Trump’s “Board of Peace” with reservations, he didn’t go to Davos. Switzerland is a signatory to the International Criminal Court, and would be obligated to arrest Netanyahu for war crimes committed in Gaza. Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended the conference, but didn’t bother to show up to the presentation.

The ambitious plan has many obstacles and hurdles in its place, especially considering the “Board of Peace” doesn’t have any buy-in from European powers yet. Only 20 of the 60 countries the U.S. invited to join the Board of Peace sent representatives to the presentation, including Argentina, Hungary, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. And the board doesn’t have any Palestinians on it, essentially making it a body that decides their fate without them having any visible presence.

“Just calm down for 30 days,” Kushner said in his presentation. “The war is over. Let’s work together.” So far, that goal seems like a pipe dream.

President Trump announced his “Board of Peace” on Thursday, but his invitations were snubbed by the U.S.’s traditional European allies, with right-wing, autocratic leaders like Argentina’s Javier Milei, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Saudi Arabia’s Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud joining instead.

France and Germany outright declined the invitation, while the United Kingdom cited the presumed involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin as their dealbreaker.

“We do also have concerns about Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said to the BBC on Thursday.

Sweden, Slovenia, Norway, and Belgium have also all denied Trump’s invitation to the board.

“Belgium has NOT signed the Charter of the Board of Peace,” Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prévot wrote Thursday on X, after the White House announced that they had joined. “We wish for a common and coordinated European response. As many European countries, we have reservations to the proposal.”

Countries that have agreed to join the board instead include Argentina, Belarus, Egypt, Jordan, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

The “Board of Peace” idea emerged from the Gaza “ceasefire”—an agreement that has been broken countless times, as at least 11 Palestinians, including two children and three journalists, were killed in Israeli attacks the day before Trump’s announcement.

Trump sees this board as a potential rival to the United Nations, a “peacekeeping” group of countries that are all loyal to him. He is selling permanent membership on the board for $1 billion. If an individual or a country doesn’t buy permanent membership, they only have a three-year window to stay on the board.

Executive members include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management CEO Mark Rowan, World Bank president Ajay Banga, and Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gabriel Jr.

This entire “Board of Peace” concept feels haphazard and strange, especially given the presence of autocrats like Orban and Milei—and our current antagonistic relationship with Greenland and NATO.

Donald Trump isn’t en route to an amenable acquisition of Greenland—but he doesn’t seem to be aware of that.

Mere hours after the president declared to the world Wednesday that he had discussed a “framework” for obtaining Greenland with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the man on the other end of the line revealed that no such deal had been discussed.

The cold water did not wake Trump up from his dream of northern expansion, however. In an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo early Thursday morning, Trump insisted that the “details” of the monumental land grab were still being “negotiated.”

“What are we talking about? An acquisition of Greenland? Are you going to pay for it?” asked Bartiromo.

“We’re talking about it—it’s really being negotiated now, the details of it, but essentially it’s total access,” Trump said. “There’s no end, no time limit.”

The president then said that “it’s possible” the U.S. could acquire Greenland, and claimed that his wildly aggressive negotiating tactics had added to America’s military access to the icy island, despite myriad existing treaties that already give the U.S. unfettered access to Greenland as a military base.

Greenland is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark and has repeatedly rejected Trump’s attempts to stake a claim to their land.

Rutte told Fox News Wednesday evening that he had not discussed the issue of whether or not Greenland will remain under the Danish flag during his meeting with Trump.

“What I don’t hear is Greenland—is it still under the Kingdom of Denmark in this framework deal?” asked host Bret Baier.

“That issue did not come up any more in my conversations tonight with the president,” Rutte said. “He’s very much focused on what do we need to do to make sure that that huge Arctic region—where change is taking place at the moment, where the Chinese and the Russians are more and more active—how we can protect it.”

The vast majority of the American public opposes Trump’s attempts to obtain Greenland. A YouGov survey published Tuesday found that 72 percent of polled voters do not support a military takeover of Greenland. Even Republicans were far less likely to support the measure, with 52 percent opposed compared to 22 percent in favor.

Federal immigration agents reportedly used a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota to lure his family members out of their home in order to detain and deport them. Then they sent him away.

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was returning home from school Tuesday with his father when masked immigration agents approached them in their driveway.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed Thursday that officers were only targeting Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, Liam’s father, who “fled on foot—abandoning his child.”

However: “Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” said Zena Stenvik, a Columbia Heights Public School superintendent who recounted the story to MPR News.

“Instead the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

Stenvik said that the Ramos family had an “active asylum case” and no deportation order. “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” she said.

“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik said.

Family members said they didn’t know where the child was for nearly 24 hours.

Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said that based on his experience, he believed Liam and his father were sent out of state. “I’m exploring whether we file a habeas corpus petition to get him out; we’d have to actually file that down in Texas now,” he told MPR News.

Prokosch confirmed that the family had been following the legal asylum process. “Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just … cruelty,” he said.

According to Columbia Heights school district officials, three other students have been detained by federal agents in recent weeks, including a 10-year-old who was detained with her mother on her way to school, another student who was taken on the way to school, and a 17-year-old who was detained when ICE agents stormed into their home.

In December, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wouldn’t deny that the Trump administration was illegally deporting people with ongoing asylum cases. ICE attorneys at immigration hearings are increasingly asking immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases, and the Trump administration has instructed judges to grant quick dismissals. At the same time, the Trump administration has purged dozens of immigration judges and sought to recruit so-called “deportation judges” to help ramp up the government’s soft ethnic cleansing.

This story has been updated.