https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2407jrn83o
A former Florida police chief said he received a call from Donald Trump in 2006 in which the now-president told him "everyone" knows about Jeffrey Epstein’s behaviour, according to an FBI document released by the justice department.

The document is a written record of a 2019 FBI interview with the former Palm Beach police chief, who alleges Trump called him after the department launched an investigation into Epstein and said: "Thank goodness you're stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this."

The officer's name is redacted, but the document identifies the interview subject as the Palm Beach police chief at the time of its Epstein investigation. That was Michael Reiter, who told the Miami Herald that he received the call from Trump.

The president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and has said he did not know about his crimes. The alleged call, however, is likely to raise further questions about what Trump knew and when.

Asked by reporters in 2019 - when Epstein was arrested by federal agents for sex trafficking - if he had "any suspicions" about the disgraced financier, Trump said: "No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven't spoken to him in many, many years."

According to the FBI summary of the interview, which was released in the latest tranche of Epstein files, Reiter said Trump told him in a July 2006 call that he had thrown Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and "people in New York knew he was disgusting".

Reiter also claims Trump told him Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein's "operative", and "she is evil and to focus on her".

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in luring underage girls for Epstein.

Reiter also told the FBI that Trump said he was around Epstein when he was with teenagers and that he "got the hell out of there".

https://ictnews.org/news/five-native-americans-detained-by-ice-during-ongoing-raids-in-minneapolis/

At least five Native American men have been detained and an unknown number questioned by immigration officers across the Minneapolis area in the midst of what a top official called the “largest immigration raid ever.”

After 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived in Minneapolis early this week, Indigenous residents on the city’s southside have witnessed agents question and even detain community members. Blocks away from a local Native American housing community, a 37-year-old mother was shot by ICE agents Wednesday, sparking nationwide protests.

“I think some of them [ICE] don’t even know what they’re doing or where they’re at,” said Little Crow Belcourt, White Earth Ojibwe and the director of the Indigenous Peoples Movement. “They’re just pulling people over at random, if you’re Brown. Some of our Native (American) people get mistaken for our relatives south of the border.”

Minneapolis’ southside, particularly around Franklin Avenue East, has historically been an area for Indigenous people to gather and live. South Side Housing was first taken over by the Indigenous community in 1975, when it became Little Earth, and since then the area has become the center for the Indigenous community. Community members often call Little Earth an urban reservation, Belcourt said.

On Tuesday, ICE agents attempted to enter Little Earth Housing Project property. Little Earth is the first Native American community housing project in the United States. Property managers told ICT they informed ICE that they were not welcome and turned agents away.

American workers are staring down a terrible labor market. It’s so bad that job postings are at their lowest level since the depths of the pandemic.

The demand for new hires “continues to wane,” said CNN. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that there were just 6.54 million job openings in December.

- The “lowest level since September 2020.” That leaves “slim pickings” for U.S. workers looking to find a new job, said NerdWallet’s Elizabeth Renter, per the network.

“The hiring recession isn’t going to end anytime soon,” said Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in a commentary.

- Layoffs in January were the highest since the 2009 financial crisis plunged the U.S. economy into the “steepest downturn since the Great Depression,” said CNBC.

American companies announced more than 108,000 layoffs for the month, more than double from a year ago. That signals that employers are “less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026,” said workplace expert Andy Challenger in an analysis.

Workers are feeling negative, too.

- Consumer confidence is at its “lowest level since 2014,” said The Associated Press.

Republicans have an “economy problem,” said Karl Rove at The Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump is not helping himself with a “triumphal tone” that suggests the economy is “booming.” That makes struggling Americans “feel unseen and abandoned.”

The job numbers are a “warning sign for Trump’s economy,” said Politico. The president’s approval ratings have been “battered by affordability, inflation and labor market anxieties,” and these are intensified by fears that AI-driven “future growth could leave workers behind.”

https://theweek.com/business/economy/us-hiring-recession-jobs

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/05/minnesota-prosecutor-ice-sidelining-priorities-00766733

The top federal prosecutor in Minnesota says his short-staffed office has been abandoning “pressing and important priorities” to manage the flood of immigration cases stemming from Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s mass deportation push in the Twin Cities.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, in a little-noticed filing last week with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, said his office is buckling under the crushing weight of hundreds of emergency lawsuits filed by immigrants arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent weeks. He said 427 had been filed in January alone, and that the pace is expected to continue into February.

“To respond to this wave of habeas petitions, this Office has been forced to shift its already limited resources from other pressing and important priorities,” Rosen said in a declaration to the court. “The MN-USAO has cancelled all [civil enforcement] work and any other affirmative priorities and is operating in a reactive mode.”

In a filing accompanying Rosen’s statement, Justice Department attorneys emphasized that the “crushing burden” caused by immigration cases had led U.S. attorneys offices to “shift resources away from other critical priorities, including criminal matters.”

Rosen, a Trump appointee confirmed by the Senate in October 2025, said his team of attorneys handling civil litigation is “down 50%” — a reference to a wave of resignations and departures at the start of Operation Metro Surge — and that those who remain “are appearing daily for hearings on contempt motions.”

Oh goody, another empty deadline! How much does that make for Trump now - 6?!?

> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/07/volodymyr-zelenskyy-us-june-deadline-ukraine-russia-peace-deal