A Minnesota federal magistrate judge refused to sign a complaint charging independent journalist Don Lemon in connection with a protest inside a church in St. Paul on Sunday, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told CBS News.
"The attorney general is enraged at the magistrate's decision," said a source familiar with the matter. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been in Minnesota for two days, as the Justice Department has sought to surge prosecutorial and law enforcement resources there.
A different source stressed that the process is not over, and the Justice Department could find other avenues to charge Lemon.
The magistrate judge who declined to approve charges for Lemon was Douglas Micko, sources told CBS News. Micko previously worked as a federal public defender.
Lemon's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Thursday that the magistrate's actions "confirm the nature of Don's First Amendment protected work this weekend in Minnesota as a reporter."
Minnesota magistrate judge rejects charges against Don Lemon over anti-ICE church protest, blocks some charges for 2 protesters
Trump's Greenland deal has some saying TACO again. What does it mean?
President Donald Trump has suddenly stepped back from threats to annex Greenland while in Europe.
For weeks, Trump has declined to rule out using military force for a U.S. takeover of the icy island, which is a self-governing territory of NATO member Denmark. He has emphasized the U.S. needs control of the island for national security.
But at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, Trump said, "I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland."
Later that day, he announced he reached a "framework of a future deal" with NATO on Greenland and would not be imposing the 10% tariffs on eight European countries he had previously threatened.
The whiplash on tariffs calls back to the early months of his return to office, when the status of tariffs on imports from countries, ranging from our biggest trade partners to an uninhabited island, was dizzying. It garnered the nickname "TACO trade," which some social media users quickly brought back this week.
What does it mean?
The US-Israeli Agenda in Iran
The U.S. is moving additional military assets into the Middle East amid speculation Trump could green light an attack on Iran at any moment. More than a dozen F-15 fighter jets have been deployed along with the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. The sense that an overt war is imminent has abated and the protests, riots, and bloodshed in the streets of Iran that took place earlier this month have, for now, ended, yet the incendiary situation remains liable to develop into wider conflict.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that if Iran sought to assassinate him, “the whole country’s going to get blown up.” “I have very firm instructions,” he continued. “Anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that any attempt to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.”
Drop Site News’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to Dr. Foad Izadi, professor of American studies and international relations at University of Tehran, on Wednesday. They discussed the origins of the protests, the narrative war, how Iran might respond to another military attack by the U.S. and more.
“The U.S. wants to repeat the Libya experience, disintegrate Iran, take out the oil-rich southern part, and then the rest of the country would fall apart. This is the ultimate plan they have,” said Izadi. “I don’t think they have given up. I think Trump has basically given the Iran portfolio to Netanyahu. He decides what to do. And then basically Trump implements whatever Netanyahu has decided to do. And Trump is going to be in office for another three years. So I don’t think they are done with Iran.”
Israeli fire strikes journalists and children on one of Gaza's deadliest days since ceasefire
Israeli forces on Wednesday killed at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza, including two 13-year-old boys, three journalists and a woman, hospitals said, on one of the war-battered enclave ‘s deadliest days since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took effect in October.
The United States is trying to push the deal forward and implement its challenging second phase.
mong the dead were three Palestinian journalists who were killed while filming near a displacement camp in central Gaza, a camp official said. Israel’s military said it had spotted suspects who were operating a drone that posed a threat to its troops.
The two boys were killed in separate incidents. In one, a 13-year-old, his father and a 22-year old man were hit by Israeli drones on the eastern side of the Bureij refugee camp, according to officials from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah, which received the bodies.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the three had crossed into Israeli-controlled areas.
he other 13-year-old was shot by troops in the eastern town of Bani Suheila, Nasser Hospital said after receiving the body. In a video circulated online, the father of Moatsem al-Sharafy is seen weeping over it.
Trump Claims Russia Accepted His ‘Board of Peace’ Invitation
US President Donald Trump told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Russian President Vladimir Putin had accepted an invitation to join an US-led “Peace Council” to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.
The council, which is intended to provide international oversight of the levelled Palestinian territory in the wake of a US-brokered ceasefire, has been snubbed by many European leaders over concerns that it could undermine the role of the United Nations.
As per AFP, Trump said of Putin that “he was invited, he’s accepted. Many people have accepted.”
Although the Kremlin received Trump’s invitation on Jan. 19, it has not yet confirmed its acceptance. “The Russian foreign ministry has been charged with studying the documents that were sent to us and to consult on the topic with our strategic partners,” Putin told a televised cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
ICE detains five-year-old Minnesota boy as he came home, say school officials
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old Minnesota boy on Tuesday as he returned home from school and transported him and his father to a Texas detention center, according to school officials.
Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said.
Liam and his father had just arrived home when they were detained, according to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent, who said she drove to the home when she learned of the detentions.
When she arrived, Stenvik said the father’s car was still running and the father and son had already been apprehended. An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front 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 five-year-old as bait”, the superintendent said in a statement.
Trump agrees to ‘framework’ deal on Greenland, retreats on European tariffs
President Trump said Wednesday that he’s reached the framework of a deal with NATO on the future of Greenland and will not impose tariffs he previously threatened on European countries.
“Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post from Davos, Switzerland.
“Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning The Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland. Further information will be made available as discussions progress,” he continued.
When asked by reporters in Davos about the deal, Trump described it as “infinite.”
“It’s the ultimate long-term deal, and I think it puts everyone in a pretty good position especially as it pertains to security and minerals and everything else,” the president said.
Who Is Jack Smith? The special counsel named in historic Trump investigations.
Jack Smith, the former U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel who brought two now-dropped criminal cases against President Donald Trump, will publicly testify to the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 22.
Pictured here, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered remarks on a recently unsealed indictment against then-former President Trump at the Justice Department on June 9, 2023 in Washington, D.C. At the time, Trump was indicted in the special counsel's classified documents probe.
Smith gave private testimony to the committee in December 2025 where he defended his investigations into Trump, saying that the basis for the prosecutions "rests entirely with President Trump and his actions."
Smith was appointed independent special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to oversee two criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump's alleged role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
How to prepare for the winter storm set to hit half the U.S. this weekend
A major winter storm is set to sweep the nation this weekend, bringing snow, sleet, ice and sub-zero wind chills from the southern Plains to the Northeast.
While it's still too early to predict snowfall totals for areas east of the Mississippi River, heavy snow is expected in Memphis, Nashville, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City.
Further west, 8 to 14 inches of snow are expected in Oklahoma City, 6 to 12 inches in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 5 to 10 inches in Amarillo, Texas.
Simultaneously, a long-duration extreme cold event is likely to move in during and after the storm. Those who lose power might endure several days of below-freezing temperatures.
In the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, wind chills of 40 to 50 below zero are possible. In Texas and along the Gulf Coast, temperatures could feel like they are in the single digits, down to 10 below zero.
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