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Stress-Testing the Courts

A protester is arrested by federal agents during a demonstration in Minneapolis.

Adam Gray/AP

By Evan McMorris-Santoro, Jasmine Wright and Emily Kennard

February 5, 2026 06:01 AM

Today’s notice: What hasn’t changed in Minneapolis. Republicans can’t decide if it’s the Department of Defense or War. Iran talks are back on. And: Trump’s immigration surge stretches the courts to their limit. If you don’t subscribe yet, you can sign up here — it’s free!

THE LATEST

Has enough changed in Minneapolis? The message from Donald Trump yesterday on immigration was “a softer touch.” But the reality remains something else.

Just ask the locals: “ICE vehicles are constantly, constantly haunting and taunting schools, thereby pulling up on their space, like through their drive-through, or their delivery gates, sitting outside or sitting across the street, just sort of watching what’s happening,” Mary Kunesh, a Minnesota state senator whose district includes the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights, told NOTUS’ Adora Brown. It’s the same town where a 5-year-old was infamously detained after returning home from preschool with his dad, who was also detained.

Two other school districts have now sued, trying to end what they say has become a disruptive and scary part of kids’ lives. (“ICE is not going to schools to arrest children—we are protecting children,” a DHS spox said. “If a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety. But this has not happened.”)

Things remain extremely abnormal in Minneapolis. Masked federal agents this week threatened reporters with pepper spray and confronted protesters with their guns drawn. Tom Homan has repeatedly promised a different approach; yesterday he announced that he would remove as many as 700 agents from the city. But the reality doesn’t seem to have changed much on the ground.

“The continued presence of 2,000 federal agents in a city that only has 600 police officers is still not de-escalation,” Mayor Jacob Frey told CNN yesterday.

What to watch for: The negotiations over a DHS funding bill are going about as well as you’d expect in Congress at the moment. The president has a choice to make: either engage in the talks and truly pull back from Minneapolis-style enforcement, or push Republicans to dig in and fight any significant tactical changes.

Open tabs: Gabbard’s office investigated voting machines in Puerto Rico (Reuters); CIA ends publication of popular World Factbook reference tool (ABC); Republicans Make a Costly Push to Try to Save Cornyn in Texas (NYT); WaPo staff laid off while in Milan still hope to find beauty in the Olympics (CBC)

From the White House

Iran talks are back on, a White House official confirmed to Jasmine. Multiple Arab- and Muslim-allied countries leaned on the Trump administration to not back out of discussions, this official said.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are part of the U.S. team meeting with Iranian officials Friday morning in Oman.

On the U.S. agenda: “To reach a deal, ballistic missile program, nuclear program and support for proxies must be discussed,” Marco Rubio said. He added: “I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out.” Iran has already signaled it’s only open to discussing the nuclear program.

Trump, the saber-rattler-in-chief, told NBC that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, should be “very worried” as more U.S. military assets are stationed in the Middle East.

From the Hill

Congress seems to be just as in the dark on what comes next regarding Iran as everybody else, NOTUS’ Hamed Ahmadi reports.

“I’m trying to figure out what the strategy is,” Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Service Committee, said this week. “We have military forces in place, significant forces. I don’t think it’s quite clear yet what we’re trying to do.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been briefed on any of the intel,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said yesterday.

From the campaign trail

Department of Whatever: NOTUS’ Alex Roarty pored over a ton of early-cycle Republican advertising and found a lot of confusion over how to refer to the federal agency housed in the Pentagon.

For example, Army veteran Laurie Buckhout, running in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, referred to it as the Department of Defense but also touted being “appointed to the Department of War by President Trump” in the same ad.

THE BIG ONE

Is the judiciary willing to go there? One burnt-out federal prosecutor, Julie T. Le, who asked a federal judge to be held in contempt so she could “get 24 hours of sleep,” was fired yesterday, NOTUS’ Amelia Benavides-Colón reports.

Her complaints about ICE circumventing court orders revealed a lot about how Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda is stress-testing the judiciary.

District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote that he counted “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases,” and threatened last week to hold acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in contempt. Ultimately, he didn’t.

The incident “shows you how reluctant courts are to use this tool, especially against the federal government and its officials,” Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told Emily.

“If you’re going to issue an order holding executive branch officers in contempt, you have to be very careful to do that in a way that will both force compliance and that will survive being reviewed by a very skeptical Supreme Court,” David Noll, a law professor at Rutgers, said.

It’s a finger-pointing game for now. The administration claims it’s complying — but also says these judges aren’t following the law.

“If rogue judges followed the law in adjudicating cases and respected the Government’s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ habeas caseload or concern over DHS following orders,” a DOJ spox wrote in a statement to NOTUS.

NEW ON NOTUS

Palantir regrets: Several Democrats vocal in their opposition to Trump’s immigration-enforcement push are heavily invested in one of the major tech firms under contract to build the infrastructure to support it, NOTUS’ Samuel Larreal reports. “Palantir, I wish I could get my money back,” Rep. Cleo Fields, whose public disclosures show purchases of up to $765,000 worth of the firm’s stock last year, told Sam.

Tim Scott finds his breaking point: “I found [Jerome Powell] to be inept at doing his job, but ineptness or being incompetent is not a criminal act,” Scott, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, said during an interview on Fox Business yesterday, his first substantial comments on the DOJ’s controversial criminal probe into the Fed chair.

Thom Tillis, a critical swing vote on the Banking Committee, said this week that he would not be “budging one inch” on his blockade of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee for Powell’s replacement, until the investigation into Powell is resolved.

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