Trump declares pardons issued by Biden ‘void’ and issues new threat to Jan 6 investigators: Live

The president said yesterday as he returned to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One that he and Vladimir Putin will discuss “dividing up certain assets” in Ukraine as part of peace talks this week that will include “land [and] power plants”.

Trump and his Russian counterpart are due to talk by phone on Tuesday.

“A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” the American said.

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

You can follow all the latest updates on the U.S.-led peace talks live with Tom Watling below.

The U.S. military launched ari strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Saturday night for targeting Red Sea shipping routes.

The attacks are understood to have killed at least 31 people, most of them women and children, at the start of a campaign expected to last many days.

Trump’sadministration revealed over the weekend that it has deported hundreds of people from the U.S. after invoking a wartime law to speed up the deportations of individuals connected to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

The announcement was made in the face of a court order from a federal judge temporarily blocking the administration’s ability to use the law, the Alien Enemies Act 1798, and ordered any planes flying migrants out of the country to turn around.

Here’s Katie Hawkinson and Kelly Rissman with the full story.

Elsewhere on the president’s social media platform, he has been expressing sympathy over those impacted by terrible storms over the weekend and blaming Democrats for allowing “monsters” from Central America to enter the U.S. and engage in violent crime.

Characteristically, he has also had plenty to say about his latest golfing exploits and has been paying tribute to a celebrity you might not have thought about in years ( if ever), in this case veteran crooner Paul Anka.

Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to declared that presidential pardons issued by his predecessor Joe Biden are “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” on the grounds that the Democrat allegedly signed off on them using an autopen, rather than his real signature.

Whether or not that claim is accurate, Trump goes on to insist, without evidence, that Biden was not even aware of the pardons and further issues a threat against the members of the House select committee that investigated the events of January 6 2021, warning them that they are no longer shielded from investigation and should expect to be pursued.

“Those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level,” the president writes.

He also trolled Biden with a meme in which the 46th president’s official portrait is replaced by an image of an autopen mimicking his signature.

Here’s James Liddell’s earlier reporting on the allegations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s push to target and cancel the visas of individual students living in America for participation in protests against the government of Israel.

Rubio deflected questions from CBS’s Margaret Brennan about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal US permanent resident (green card holder) who was arrested and immediately targeted for deportation last weekend after the Trump administration canceled his visa and arrested him with plainclothes officers at Columbia.

Khalil was a leader in the student protests that developed around campus but was also outspoken against antisemitism.

His arrest has outraged Democrats and civil rights advocates; Khalil is not charged with a crime and did not enter the US illegally. His removal has been temporarily blocked by a judge.

A Hmong American woman who is a mother of five has been deported from the Milwaukee area to Laos, a country she has never set foot in, according to a new report.

Ma Yang, 37, is being held in a rooming house in Laos, surrounded by military guards, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. She does not speak the language, knows no one, and says the military is holding all of her documents.

“The United States sent me back to die,” Yang told the outlet. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”

“How do I rent, or buy, or anything, with no papers?” she added. “I’m a nobody right now.”

Read more from Katie Hawkinson:

Carolyn Thompson, Heather Hollingsworth, and Makiya Seminera write:

As an infant, Connor Phillips was born three months premature with cerebral palsy. The science that saved his life was the inspiration that led to his role studying brain processes as a research fellow at the National Institute of Health.

He had hopes of continuing his work at NIH through a partnership with Brown University, where he was invited to interview for a program that would lead to a doctorate in neuroscience. But training programs at the NIH have been suspended, a casualty of funding cuts by the Trump administration.

He is applying to other programs — and hoping policies putting strains on science might be reversed.

“You don’t take these jobs that pay worse and have insane hours and are really stressful unless you care about helping others and taking our love for science and translating that into something that can improve people’s lives,” Phillips said.

When Wylie joined the Postal Service in December, they had two very contradictory thoughts about the coming return of Donald Trump.

They knew, as a nonbinary transgender person, that the next four years would be hell. Trump, after all, had made attacking what he called “transgender insanity” a central part of his 2024 campaign and his first administration. But Wylie didn’t want to hide who they are, either.

Instead, working with the public each day would be a quiet way of resisting the demonization from the White House, while also keeping an ear to the ground in case the public mood grew too violent.

“I wanted to be out in the streets, be where people can see me, and also see the day-to-day on the streets so that if anything starts changing I perhaps have time to respond,” said Wylie, who asked not to use their full name for their safety.