Trump news today: Trump celebrates return to Facebook as Elaine Chao condemns his racist attacks

A federal grand jury is hearing from former Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli as federal prosecutors investigate attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election under a probe directed by special counsel Jack Smith.

“Yep,” Mr Cuccinelli told CNN when asked if was there to testify to the grand jury. He told reporters he didn’t know what he would be testifying about.

Mr Cuccunilli was among Trump-era officials who also testified to the House select committee that investigated the attack on the US Capitol.

The new House Oversight Committee under Republican control of the chamber has scheduled a transcribed interview with Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives, according to Politico.

Republican congressman and Oversight chair James Comer had requested an interview, scheduled for 2pm on 31 January, in a letter that also pushed for documents and communications between the archives agency and the White House, Justice Department and attorneys for Joe Biden regarding classified files discovered at the president’s affiliated think tank in Washington.

The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has denied the same committee’s initial request for suspicious activity reports for Hunter Biden and other Biden family associates and their related companies, according to CNN. The cabinet agency has asked the committee for a more specific request.

US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez led a group of more than 70 Democratic lawmakers demanding Joe Biden reverse a Trump-era policy that has blocked people seeking asylum from the US-Mexico border under a public health order.

“While we applaud the creation of new legal pathways for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans modeled off the existing parole programs for Venezuelans, it is disappointing that these pathways come at the expense of the legal right to seek asylum at the southern border,” they added, noting that the right to seek asylum is “enshrined in domestic and international law”.

“Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42, we encourage your administration to stand by your commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees,” the lawmakers wrote to Mr Biden.

The Title 42 order “circumvents domestic law and international law,” they wrote, pointing to human rights groups’ research finding thousands of violent attacks against people seeking asylum who were automatically expelled to the Mexico side of the border.

A recently announced Biden administration plan expands the Trump-era order while capping entry to migrants from four impacted countries. Up to 30,000 migrants would be accepted under a “parole” programme if they have a financial sponsor in the US.

The lawmakers said the creation of legal pathways for those migrants is a positive development, but said that the policies “cannot displace existing asylum laws”. Requirements for passports, financial support and air travel would leave behind those most vulnerable, they said.

Last month, border authorities wrestled reported an average of roughly 7,000 daily encounters with migrants at the US-Mexico border, a figure that has reportedly dipped in recent weeks.

The US Supreme Court has put a temporary hold on the termination of Title 42 as courts review a lawsuit filed by Republican officials in 19 states to keep the policy in place.

Donald Trump erupted after news that DirecTV dropped right-wing cable network Newsmax from its programming, a move that the former president – who has relied on favourable coverage across networks like Newsmax and One America News Network to advance his agenda – called “disgusting”.

He blamed “the Radical Left” for taking over “the mind and soul” of DirecTV’s parent AT&T.

The distributor also dropped One American News from its lineup last year.

“This is a big blow to the Republican Party, and to America itself,” Trump said on his Truth Social account.

“For DIRECTV to drop very popular NEWSMAX, without explanation, will not be accepted,” he said. “I, for one, will be dropping all association with AT&T and DIRECTV, and I have plenty. This is just one of many reasons why we must WIN IN 2024!!!””

Newsmax still offers a free feed on its website and programming on YouTube. It is also carried by Roku and other cable carriers.

But over the last few years, Newsmax began asking providers to change the model that includes annual license fees, with some smaller carriers also refusing to carry the network under such terms.

DirecTV said it had hoped to “continue to offer the network” but the channel’s demands for carriage fee increases would have led to “significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,” according to a statement.

Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida – who had served as the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and sought to oust Mitch McConnell from Senate leadership after the GOP’s midterm performance – is running for re-election.

“Our work is not done yet and that is why I am running for re-election,” he said a statement on his campaign website. “We must rescue our great country from the destruction the Democrats have caused and keep working to make Florida the best state to live, work and raise a family.”

The statement from the senator – among lawmakers who voted to reject 2020 election results – suggests he’s still promoting his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America”, a controversial GOP agenda that drew widespread condemnation for his improbable tax plans and attacks on LGBT+ people and immigration, among other so-called culture war issues.

California US Rep Adam Schiff has announced his candidacy for US Senate, joining a field of Democrats to replace Dianne Feinstein.

Mr Schiff, a frequent target of ridicule and outrage from the former president and Republican officials, led the House impeachment of the former president in 2020, chaired the House intelligence committee, and served on the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol.

That committee ultimately voted to refer Trump to the Justice Department for criminal charges after a months-long investigation finding that he fuelled the mob in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently announced he has blocked Mr Schiff from serving on the House intelligence committee.

“We’re in the fight of our lives for the future of our country,” Mr Schiff said in a statement on Thursday.

“Our democracy is under assault from MAGA extremists, who care only about gaining power and keeping it,” he said. “And our economy is simply not working for millions of Americans, who are working harder than ever just to get by.”

He said that “the fight for our democracy and working families is part of the same struggle” and warned that democracy’s failure to serve Americans fuels antidemocratic agendas.

“They’ll look for alternatives, like a dangerous demagogue who promises that he alone can fix it,” he said, a referencing to the former president’s infamous claim from 2016.

In a post on his Truth Social account on Thursday morning, the former president appeared to hit out at the White House announcement of US Abrams tank support to Ukraine to combat Russia’s nearly year-long assault.

“FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES,” he wrote. “Get this crazy war ended, NOW. So easy to do!”

Trump has not offered any specifics about his diplomatic demands, or what concessions Ukraine would be forced to enter under his terms, but he has repeatedly called for Ukraine and Russian to enter cease-fire negotiations, even suggesting at one point last year that he could be involved.

“Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW,” he said in a post last year. “Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake. I will head up group???”

On Tuesday, Trump was photographed meeting Chaya Raichik, the right-wing Twitter personality celebrated by conservatives and reviled by the left for her Twitter account known as “LibsofTikTok”, a channel devoted to singling out people perceived as members of the LGBT+ community.

The account has been blamed for encouraging abuse against Americans with zero public significance, allegedly leading to suicides, reports of bomb threats at children’s hospitals and targets of Ms Raichik’s posts going into hiding over fears of violent threats.

For months, Donald Trump has unleashed a string of thinly veiled racist comments about his former transportation secretary, the wife of his party’s Senate leader, to relative silence from other GOP officials.

Days after his latest abuse, Elaine Chao issued a rare rebuke against the former president amid rising reports of anti-Asian hate and shocking acts of violence impacting Asian American communities.

“When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name. Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation,” she said in a statement. “He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”

“Donald Trump is an appalling human being – and that is why I want to hear what he has to say. Keeping him off social media doesn’t shut him up or make him disappear. He’s probably the worst thing to have hit the civilised world since the Second World War. But… he matters. We know that.

“…. There’s still a chance he could be president of the United States in about two years’ time. So, yes, I would like to know exactly what is on his mind.”

Sean O’Grady writes for The Independent: