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Top Democrat defends State of the Union protests as House speaker says he nearly ejected Omar and Tlaib – live
Chuck Schumer says Trump is ‘not protecting Americans’
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats were right to remain seated when Trump called on the crowd to stand if they believed in protecting US citizens over undocumented immigrants, a line that Republicans are now using to call out Democrats.
“Bottom line is very simple, we agree we need to protect Americans. He’s not,” Schumer told CNN this morning. “By his reckless ICE agency in Minnesota, two Americans were killed. Americans are being pulled out of their cars and beaten. Americans’ houses, the doors are being knocked down without a warrant. And no other police department in America, run by Americans, has done what ICE has done.”
“So, yes, we want to protect Americans. He’s not doing it. And that’s why the American people are against what ICE is doing.”
Key events
Rubio begins talks with Caribbean leaders calling for ‘de-escalation and dialogue’ amid US oil embargo on Cuba
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, arrived in the Caribbean today to begin talks with regional leaders who are calling for “de-escalation and dialogue” to deal with the impact of recent US policies and a growing humanitarian crisis in Cuba that could destabilize their region.
It comes amid continued deadly US military strikes against alleged drug boats and the Trump administration’s oil blockade on Cuba. Trump is ratcheting up the pressure on Cuba in the wake of his dramatic ousting of Venezuelan president and key Cuban ally Nicolás Maduro last month.
Rubio addressed a closed-door meeting of Caricom, the Caribbean group that comprises 15 member states and five associated members, in Saint Kitts and Nevis, and would hold bilateral meetings with some regional leaders, Reuters reports.
The meeting’s host, Saint Kitts and Nevis PM Terrance Drew, said that Caricom should be a conduit for dialogue over Cuba’s future. “A destabilized Cuba will destabilize all of us,” he said.
Yesterday, ahead of Rubio’s arrival, my colleague Natricia Duncan reported that the Jamaican prime minister and the outgoing Caricom chair, Andrew Holness, appealed for a collective response to the crisis in Cuba, saying that he supports “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the US aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability”.
“We must address the situation in Cuba with clarity and courage,” Holness said. “Cuba is our Caribbean neighbour. Its doctors and teachers have served across our region,” he said.
Cubans are facing “severe economic hardship, energy shortages and growing humanitarian strain”, which could have consequences across the wider region, he said.
Humanitarian suffering serves no one. Apart from our fraternal care and solidarity with the Cuban people, it must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba. It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.
The Trump administration has been pressuring countries to stop participating in the Cuban medics program – which is a source of foreign currency for the Cuban government – chill relations with China and consider allowing US military hardware in their countries. Trump has also threatened tariff hikes against any nation sending energy supplies to Cuba and has urged the country’s leaders to reach a deal to avert a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Shrai Popat
Back at the Senate committee for health, labor and pensions’ grilling of Casey Means, Trump’s controversial nominee for US surgeon general …
In an exchange with the Democratic senator Andy Kim, Means pushed back on questions about her inactive medical license, stressing that it was “voluntarily placed on inactive status” because she is not currently seeing patients. She added that she has no plans to reactivate it, noting that the surgeon general does not provide individual clinical care.
Means then pivoted to her credentials, citing her medical degree from Stanford and her years of clinical and surgical training. “I owned my own medical practice, and I’ve seen thousands of patients, and I did over four years of surgical training – which is more than many of our past surgeon generals completed, who did medical specialities,” she said. “I have completed extremely thorough medical training, and I have the ability, through these experiences, to communicate excellent public health information.”
One complication: the surgeon general also oversees the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed service of more than 6,000 public‑health officers. That role requires “maintaining active and unrestricted licenses and certification”.
JD Vance says Trump still prefers diplomatic solution with Iran
The vice-president has said that Donald Trump still prefers a diplomatic solution with Iran but still has “other tools at his disposal” that he is willing to use – and that he hoped the Iranians took that seriously in their negotiations tomorrow.
Vance told Fox News this morning:
We have to get to a position where Iran can’t threaten the world with nuclear terrorism … We can’t let the craziest and worst regime in the world to have nuclear weapons. That is what the president is accomplishing. That’s what the president has set as our goal.
He’s going to try to accomplish that diplomatically but … the president has a number of other tools at his disposal to ensure this doesn’t happen. He’s shown a willingness to use them and I hope the Iranians take it seriously in their negotiations tomorrow because that’s certainly what the president prefers.
A last-ditch round of US-Iran negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program is expected to take place in Geneva tomorrow. As my colleague Hugo Lowell reported earlier this week, Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of his special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons.
In his Fox News interview, Vance sidestepped a question on whether any of what he said means that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has to go. It has been reported that if there is no deal, Trump has told advisers he is considering limited strikes to pressure Iran and, failing that, a far larger attack to force regime change.
“The president ultimately will make the decision about how to ensure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said. “We’re sitting down having another round of diplomatic talks with the Iranians trying to reach a reasonable settlement.”
House speaker calls allegations against Gonzales ‘detestable’ and says he’ll speak to him ‘hopefully today’
In comments pretty similar to what he said yesterday, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has said that he would meet with Tony Gonzales “hopefully today” but that he would let the “due process here to play out as always”.
CNN reported Johnson as saying this morning:
The allegations are alarming and detestable, and I’ve said to him publicly and privately, he’s got to address that directly and head-on with his constituents. There’s a primary there in less than a week, these things will play out. So we’re allowing that to happen.
He had also told CBS Evening News yesterday that the allegations against Gonzales were “detestable”, but “we’re trying to sort it out”, adding that he would let the “due process here to play out as always”.
My understanding is he’s denied a lot of this, and we’re trying to sort it out … Now, it has been reported that the office of congressional conduct is investigating this, and has been for some time. And what we do here is we allow all the facts to play out.
Johnson has faced resisted growing calls from within the GOP to pressure Gonzales, of Texas, to resign over allegations that he had an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
Gonzales has previously denied having the affair and said he is being blackmailed, but has not addressed newly released text messages in which he appeared to ask the former staffer for intimate photos and discuss sex acts. He refused to resign yesterday after several GOP lawmakers publicly called for him to go.
The speaker had endorsed Gonzales’ bid for re-election “before any of this came up”. Gonzales faces a tough primary contest on 3 March against Brandon Herrera, a gun rights influencer who almost beat him in 2024.
Trump’s surgeon general nominee grilled over stances on vaccines and autism
Shrai Popat
Casey Means, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for US surgeon general, is answering questions before lawmakers on the Senate committee for health, labor and pensions today. The surgeon general serves as the nation’s top doctor, responsible for disseminating the latest public health guidance.
Means, who has a medical degree but is not board-certified, and does not have an active medical license, declined to give a simple yes-or-no answer when the committee chair, Republican senator Bill Cassidy, pressed her on whether, if confirmed, she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with routine shots such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. She said:
I’m supportive of vaccination. I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they’re putting in their body and their children’s bodies.
When Cassidy asked whether she would state her position more clearly if confirmed, she replied: “I’m not an individual’s doctor, and every individual needs to talk to their doctor before putting a medication in their body.”
Her comments come as measles outbreaks continue across the country, with South Carolina experiencing the worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years amid declining childhood immunization rates.
In response, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, urged Americans to “take the vaccine, please” earlier this month. In an interview with CNN, Oz issued a rare plea from the Trump administration to insist upon inoculation.
Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses. But measles is one you should get your vaccine.
While Means insisted that anti-vaccine rhetoric “has never been a part” of her message and said she was “not here to complicate the issue on vaccines”, she repeatedly sidestepped direct questions from lawmakers about whether vaccines cause autism – a theory long discredited by the scientific community and frequently promoted by Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“The reality is that we have an autism crisis that’s increasing, and this is devastating to many families, and we do not know as a medical community what causes autism,” she said, while acknowledging that there is an overwhelming body of evidence refuting claims that vaccines cause the condition. “I also think that science is never settled, and I think that the effort to look at comprehensive, cumulative exposures into what is causing autism is important.”
For her part, late last night after the speech, the Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar shared a video clip of her yelling that Trump should be ashamed of himself and said: “Donald Trump killed two of my constituents. He is a liar and should be ashamed of himself.”
Omar was referring to the two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, whom federal agents killed in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement surge this year.
JD Vance called Democrats’ refusal to stand when Trump said they should stand for US citizens a “sad commentary” on the Democratic party.
Speaking to Fox News today, the vice-president said it was a “shame” that Democrats didn’t stand in what will surely serve as a moment crafted for Republicans to attack the left during the midterms.
“Something that I saw, that probably most TV viewers didn’t see, was really the cowardice, because there were a few Democrats who sort of politely clapped,” he said. “They didn’t want to stand up. I guess maybe they were worried about being primaried by the far-left fringe of their party. But they were all looking around … They were all looking around for cues from their colleagues because they didn’t have the courage to stand on their own.”
He said none of them had the “courage” to stand when the rest of their party wasn’t.
“They won’t even have the courage of their convictions,” he said. “They lean on the person to their left and their right rather than actually have some conviction. That is, unfortunately, what’s true about Democrats in Washington today.”
Chuck Schumer says Trump is ‘not protecting Americans’
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats were right to remain seated when Trump called on the crowd to stand if they believed in protecting US citizens over undocumented immigrants, a line that Republicans are now using to call out Democrats.
“Bottom line is very simple, we agree we need to protect Americans. He’s not,” Schumer told CNN this morning. “By his reckless ICE agency in Minnesota, two Americans were killed. Americans are being pulled out of their cars and beaten. Americans’ houses, the doors are being knocked down without a warrant. And no other police department in America, run by Americans, has done what ICE has done.”
“So, yes, we want to protect Americans. He’s not doing it. And that’s why the American people are against what ICE is doing.”
Alas, the supreme court rulings issued today were on smaller cases. We’ll continue to watch this week and beyond for these big rulings we’re waiting on, which carry consequences for voting rights and executive power.
Supreme court announcing decisions in number of cases
We are watching for potential rulings from the US supreme court this morning.
Some of the remaining cases we’re looking out for today could be:
Johnson says he came ‘this close’ to ejecting Omar and Tlaib from chamber during State of the Union
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he came “this close” to ejecting Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from the chamber during last night’s state of the union over their verbal protests to Trump’s remarks.
Trump told Democrats during the speech that they should be ashamed for not standing, Omar yelled back that he should be ashamed and repeatedly yelled “You have killed Americans!”
Johnson told Fox’s Sean Hannity that the retorts were “shameful”.
“I came this close to stopping them. We could have probably ejected them from the floor. I thought, let their actions speak for themselves,” he said. “If they’d gone a step further, I probably would have ejected them.”
But, he said, he thought they served as a nice “contrast” to Republicans, who were standing and celebrating and chanting throughout the speech.
“I think it was good for them to be there,” he said. “I think it’s good for the American people to see the shame that they brought upon their party and upon themselves.”
More journalists and media workers killed in 2025 than in previous 30 years of data collected
A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists shows more journalists and media workers were killed in 2025 than any previous year since the committee started collecting data more than 30 years ago.
The committee found 129 members of the press killed in 2025, two-thirds of them by Israel. Of those killed by Israel in 2025, more than 60% were Palestinians reporting from Gaza, the report said.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992,” the report said.
At least 104 of those counted in the report were killed in conflict, including in Ukraine, where four journalists were killed, and Sudan, where nine were killed.
The group has categorized 47 of those killings as targeted, the highest number of journalists killed deliberating for their work in the past decade. This rise in journalist deaths globally is “fueled by a persistent culture of impunity for attacks on the press,” citing few transparent investigations into these targeted killings.
The group said the rise in deaths comes alongside a near-record of journalists being jailed in 2025 as well.
“Journalists are being killed in record numbers at a time when access to information is more important than ever,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of CPJ. “Attacks on the media are a leading indicator of attacks on other freedoms, and much more needs to be done to prevent these killings and punish the perpetrators. We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news.”
