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Netanyahu to push Trump on Iran missiles in White House talks
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push Donald Trump on Wednesday to take a tougher stance in nuclear talks with Iran, after rushing to Washington to stiffen the US president’s resolve, AFP reported.
Trump said on the eve of the hastily arranged White House meeting – set to begin at 11am – that he was weighing sending a second US “armada” to the Middle East to pressure Tehran to reach a nuclear deal.
But Netanyahu, making his sixth visit to the United States since Trump took office, will also be urging the US leader to take a harder line on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Tehran, which resumed talks with Washington last week in Oman, warned Monday of “destructive influences” on diplomacy ahead of the Israeli premier’s visit.
On Wednesday, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would “not yield to excessive demands” on its nuclear program, though he said the country is not seeking an atomic weapon.
Netanyahu had been expected to come to Washington for a 19 February meeting of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza, but reportedly brought forward his visit as the US-Iran talks proceeded.
Trump is also due to meet with special envoy to the UK Mark Burnett later today, while attorney general Pam Bondi is set to face questions from lawmakers over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
In other developments:
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Federal prosecutors reportedly tried, and failed, to convince a grand jury to indict six Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday over a social media video they recorded to remind service members in the military and intelligence community that they are not required to follow illegal orders.
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Donald Trump’s sudden turn against a new, publicly owned bridge being constructed to connect Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario came right after a Republican donor who owns a private, rival bridge met with Trump’s commerce secretary, the New York Times reports.
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Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, and the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, have taken on the daunting task of trying to explain to Trump that the reasons he cited for threatening to block the opening of the new bridge are entirely untrue. Carney told Trump that Canada paid for the bridge and the US shares ownership.
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In an appearance on the rightwing channel Real America’s Voice, a Republican congressman from Missouri, Mark Alford, said “we are still investigating” the lyrics of a song performed in Spanish by the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
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As the US supreme court prepares to rule on whether Trump does have the power to impose tariffs on foreign imports, to address a self-declared economic emergency, the president confirmed in an interview that he sets tariff rates based, in part, on his own feelings about the leaders of other nations.
Key events
El Paso airport closed to ‘address cartel drone incursion’, says transportation secretary Sean Duffy
Transportation secretary Sean Duffy said the El Paso airport closure was to “address a cartel drone incursion”.
“The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region,” Duffy said on social media. “The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming.”
Federal government did not notify me or other local officials about airport closure, says representative Veronica Escobar
Veronica Escobar, the Democratic US representative who represents the El Paso international airport and surrounding area, said in a press briefing this morning that the federal government had not notified her or any other local officials about the abrupt closure of the airport.
“What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that the FAA did not notify anyone locally,” she said, including the airport itself, the city manager or the mayor. “So everyone locally on the ground was in the dark, and the impact, obviously, it is highly consequential.”
The closure wouldn’t just impact commercial travel, but medical and emergency services and training activity at a nearby military base, she said.
“I am saying unequivocally, this was an FAA decision, and it was done without any local consultation and without any local communication,” she said. “That is not the way that the federal government should operate. Any impact of this magnitude needs to be communicated with clarity and with advance notice.”
Federal Aviation Administration says it will close airspace around El Paso airport for 10 days
The Federal Aviation Administration said late Tuesday it would close the airspace around the international airport in El Paso, Texas, a major city on the US-Mexico border, for 10 days, in a move that surprised local officials and stranded travelers overnight. The agency cited “special security reasons”.
But this morning, the FAA announced that the closure had been lifted. No detailed explanation was formally given for the original 10-day closure, and no further details were provided by the FAA this morning.
“The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted,” the agency wrote on social media. “There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.”
Closing an airport for 10 days, especially without any weather or emergency underpinnings, would be a highly unusual move. Lawmakers are sure to ask more questions about the initial plans to close the airport.
US jobs market added 130,000 jobs in January 2026, with unemployment rate of 4.3%
There’s an updated jobs report out this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after it was delayed a few days because of the previous government shutdown.
In January, the US jobs market added 130,000 jobs, a surge after some slower months but still below the jobs added in January 2025, a year ago. The unemployment rate was 4.3% in January.
Though January’s numbers were higher than expected, Tuesday’s report also revised 2025 total new job numbers downward. Last year, the total new jobs was 181,000, down from initial reporting of 584,000 jobs – the weakest year for job growth since the pandemic.
More from labor reporter Michael Sainato:
On Tuesday, White House adviser Peter Navarro warned against high expectations for the monthly jobs number, claiming that new jobs will be in the 50,000 range.
“We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like,” Navarro told Fox News.
Job figures during the Biden administration were actually inflated because “we were letting in 2 million illegal aliens”, but “all of the jobs that we were creating in Biden years were going to illegals”, he said.
A new poll out this morning shows Americans’ views on immigration enforcement cratering, a sign of potential trouble for Republicans in the midterms.
An NBC News/Minnesota Star Tribune/KARE11 poll conducted online after the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti found about three in four people wanted some changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though the extent of what changes they support differed.
Nearly 30% of Americans said ICE should be abolished outright, though the same percentage said it should continue in its current form, NBC News reported. 43% said the agency should be reformed.
For Minnesota respondents to the poll, across political ideologies, more than 60% disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, with 57% of respondents in the state saying they strongly disapprove. High amounts of independents and suburban voters also disapproved, a warning sign for Republicans who would need those voters to win in November, the Star Tribune reported. 66% said the tactics used by immigration agents had gone too far. Of all Minnesota respondents, 43% want ICE reformed and 26% want it abolished.
Dani Anguiano
A Washington DC grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers who were denounced by Donald Trump after they made a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders.
Federal prosecutors had sought an indictment against the Democrats who participated in the video, including Elissa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, who all have military and intelligence backgrounds.
Slotkin, a former CIA officer, organized the video in which the lawmakers said officers can resist unlawful commands. Trump was outraged by the clip, and described it “seditious behavior by traitors” that was “punishable by death”.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, formally censured Kelly, a retired Nasa astronaut and decorated navy captain, over the incident and attempted to reduce his rank and pension. Kelly filed a lawsuit against Hegseth last month arguing the video he and other Democrats made was protected free speech, and that the secretary had undertaken an “unconstitutional crusade” against him.
In response to news of the failed indictment, Kelly described it as an “outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies”.
Jason Wilson
As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks, a senior state department official, Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies, and promoting far-right parties abroad.
Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate speech laws, and boasted online of sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation on US big tech platforms.
Rogers is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, a top-10 state department role that was created in 1999 to strengthen relationships between the US and foreign publics, as opposed to foreign governments and diplomats.
Rogers, however, appears to be concerned with winning over a particular slice of foreign public opinion.
Her recent posts on Twitter/X have included a characterization of migrants in Germany as “barbarian rapist hordes”, a comment on Sweden apparently linking sexual violence to immigration policy (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”), and the recitation of the view that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production”.
The Guardian emailed Rogers a detailed request for comment on this reporting.
US jobs reported due out at 8.30am EST as White House looks to manage expectations
Julia Kollewe
The eagerly-awaited US jobs report is out today, and the White House has been trying to moderate expectations.
Peter Navarro, senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to Donald Trump, was speaking on Fox News last night.
We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like. When we were letting in 2 million illegal aliens a day we had to produce 200,000 [jobs] a month for steady stay.
Now 50,000 a month is going to be more like what we need. Wall Street, when this stuff comes out, they can’t rain on our parade, they just have to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals.
When asked whether the number would be weak, he rowed back and said no, but stressed that investors need to expect smaller numbers in future.
This comes after a warning from National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett on Monday. “One shouldn’t panic,” he told CNBC on Monday. “You should expect slightly smaller job numbers.”
The data release, delayed from last week, is expected to show the economy created 70,000 jobs in January, after 50,000 in December.
For more on this, see our business live blog here:
Bondi to face questions on Epstein files in House testimony
Attorney general Pam Bondi will appear before a House of Representatives panel on Wednesday, where lawmakers are expected to press her on the Justice Department’s handling of files involving the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee comes as lawmakers, including some Republicans, have expressed frustration with the amount of Epstein material the department has redacted and withheld despite a federal law requiring the release of nearly all files.
The Justice Department released what it called a final tranche of more than three million pages of documents late last month, drawing renewed attention to wealthy and powerful individuals who maintained ties with Epstein even after his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
But lawmakers have complained that redactions in the files appear to go beyond the limited exemptions allowed for in a law Congress passed nearly unanimously in November.
The department has also declined to publish a large volume of material, citing legal privileges.
Netanyahu to push Trump on Iran missiles in White House talks
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will push Donald Trump on Wednesday to take a tougher stance in nuclear talks with Iran, after rushing to Washington to stiffen the US president’s resolve, AFP reported.
Trump said on the eve of the hastily arranged White House meeting – set to begin at 11am – that he was weighing sending a second US “armada” to the Middle East to pressure Tehran to reach a nuclear deal.
But Netanyahu, making his sixth visit to the United States since Trump took office, will also be urging the US leader to take a harder line on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Tehran, which resumed talks with Washington last week in Oman, warned Monday of “destructive influences” on diplomacy ahead of the Israeli premier’s visit.
On Wednesday, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would “not yield to excessive demands” on its nuclear program, though he said the country is not seeking an atomic weapon.
Netanyahu had been expected to come to Washington for a 19 February meeting of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza, but reportedly brought forward his visit as the US-Iran talks proceeded.
Trump is also due to meet with special envoy to the UK Mark Burnett later today, while attorney general Pam Bondi is set to face questions from lawmakers over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
In other developments:
-
Federal prosecutors reportedly tried, and failed, to convince a grand jury to indict six Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday over a social media video they recorded to remind service members in the military and intelligence community that they are not required to follow illegal orders.
-
Donald Trump’s sudden turn against a new, publicly owned bridge being constructed to connect Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario came right after a Republican donor who owns a private, rival bridge met with Trump’s commerce secretary, the New York Times reports.
-
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, and the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, have taken on the daunting task of trying to explain to Trump that the reasons he cited for threatening to block the opening of the new bridge are entirely untrue. Carney told Trump that Canada paid for the bridge and the US shares ownership.
-
In an appearance on the rightwing channel Real America’s Voice, a Republican congressman from Missouri, Mark Alford, said “we are still investigating” the lyrics of a song performed in Spanish by the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny during his Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
-
As the US supreme court prepares to rule on whether Trump does have the power to impose tariffs on foreign imports, to address a self-declared economic emergency, the president confirmed in an interview that he sets tariff rates based, in part, on his own feelings about the leaders of other nations.
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