President Donald Trump attempted to quell growing bipartisan backlash to his immigration crackdown on Monday following a second fatal shooting by a federal agent in Minneapolis in just over two weeks.

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The President announced on Truth Social that he was dispatching his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis, where he will manage Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the city.

He added that Homan, who is considered a proponent of targeted immigration enforcement over the kind of sweeping street grabs that have been a flashpoint for violence in Minneapolis, “has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there.”

Read more: Support for Abolishing ICE Is Surging Among Republicans

Separately, Trump said he had a “very good” call with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and they were now on a “similar wavelength” regarding immigration enforcement in the city. Walz’s office said in its readout of the same call that Trump had expressed an openness to reducing the number of federal agents deployed.

The apparent shift in tone from Trump comes as he faces mounting pressure over a spate of violence linked to his Administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed by a Border Patrol agent as he took part in a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. His death came just over two weeks after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, also by a federal immigration agent. 

A city on fire

Minneapolis was already convulsed by protests over Good’s killing in the days before Pretti’s death. Minutes later, the scene of his shooting became a battleground between protesters and federal agents as the city exploded in anger again.

By Saturday evening, the shooting had developed into a political crisis for Trump. In Washington, D.C., Senate Democrats who had previously been reluctant to block funding for ICE now threatened a partial government shutdown rather than pass another spending bill that would give the agency $10 billion more in funding. Several Republicans were calling for an investigation into the shooting.

The anger was fueled not just by the shooting itself, but by the Trump Administration’s handling of its aftermath. Trump and his top officials quickly tried to pin the blame on Pretti, labelling him an instigator and suggesting he had attacked the agents who killed him, despite multiple videos clearly showing otherwise.  

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go — What is that all about?” Trump posted soon after the shooting. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in its initial statement on the killing that Pretti “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun,” and “violently resisted,” suggesting that he wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”  

At a press conference in the hours after the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Pretti wanted “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” 

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino claimed that Pretti had approached agents with a handgun, had “violently resisted, and intended to “massacre law enforcement.” 

In several social media posts, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller described Pretti as an “assassin” and a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President J.D. Vance reposted Miller’s characterization of Pretti as an “assassin” on X.

But multiple videos of the incident, released by witnesses to the shooting in the hours after, clearly contradicted those accounts.

They show Pretti holding a phone, not a gun, when an agent approaches him and other protesters and squirts pepper spray in their faces. When Pretti moves to help another protester who has been sprayed, he is tackled and pulled to the ground, where he is struck repeatedly. 

Soon after, one shot rings out, then several more in quick succession. 

In total, at least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds—including several after Pretti is lying motionless on the floor. 

The backlash 

The reaction to Pretti’s killing was more forceful than the one that followed Renee Good’s— compounded by it. On Saturday, responding to a wave of anger from his party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would oppose a government spending bill that includes $64.4 billion in funding for DHS, of which $10 billionis earmarked for ICE.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, who represents New York, said on Saturday evening. He added that “because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.”

Before the weekend, Schumer and other Senate Democrats had signaled that they had wanted to avoid a shutdown and the bill looked likely to pass in the Senate. But Pretti’s killing at the hands of a Border Patrol agent, after being pepper-sprayed and shot several times on the ground, prompted a wave of anger in the party.  

The shooting prompted rare statements of condemnation from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Obama, whom Trump succeeded in 2017, called Pretti’s killing a “heartbreaking tragedy.” In a statement with his wife Michelle posted on X on Sunday, he said Trump and officials in his Administration “seem eager to escalate the situation” instead of “trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed.”

Several Republicans, too, broke ranks with their party to call for an investigation into the shooting, among them Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

Cassidy, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, described the events in Minneapolis as “incredibly disturbing” and said the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake” following the shooting. 

Ricketts, who is a staunch supporter of Trump, called for a “prioritized, transparent investigation into this incident,” describing the shooting as “horrifying”.

Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent letters to the heads of ICE, Border Patrol, and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Monday, inviting them to a hearing on Feb. 12. The Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, New York Rep. Andrew Garbarino, requested a similar hearing over the weekend.

Walking back 

By Sunday, Trump appeared to have realized that Minneapolis represented a political crisis. Successive polls have shown his approval rating on immigration plummeting. A YouGov poll taken after the killing of Pretti showed support for abolishing ICE at record highs—with more supporting abolition than opposing it—and nearly 20% of Republicans in favor of shuttering the agency.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he declined to give his backing to the officer who killed Pretti, and said his Administration was “reviewing everything” to do with the incident. 

He also suggested for the first time that he might be looking for a way out of Minneapolis. 

“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said, without offering a timeline.

On Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt distanced Trump from Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem’s description of Pretti, saying she had “not heard the president characterize” Pretti as a domestic terrorist.

Trump and Walz had been heavily critical of each other in recent weeks.

“What’s the plan, Donald Trump? What is the plan?” Walz said during a news conference on Sunday. “What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state? If fear, violence and chaos is what you wanted from us, then you clearly underestimated the people of this state and nation.”

But on Monday, his office said in a statement that the two had a “productive call” in which Trump agreed to “look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.”

Trump said: “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”

President Trump announced on Monday that he was dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis that evening, amid a bipartisan outcry over the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and signs that the Administration may be open to pulling back federal law enforcement efforts in the city.

Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, will report directly to Trump, according to Trump’s announcement on Truth Social. 

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In another post, Trump said he has directed Homan to give Minnesota Governor Tim Walz a call, and the Administration is looking for “any and all Criminals” that the state has in possession.

“The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I!” Trump wrote. The tone of Trump’s second post suggested a thawing in his relationship with Walz, after weeks of the two men publicly criticizing each other.

In a similarly reconciliatory tone, Walz said in a statement that he and Trump would look into reducing the number of agents in Minnesota and work with the state in a “more coordinated fashion” during a “productive conversation.” Trump also agreed to talk to DHS to allow the state authority to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting of Pretti.

Read more: How a Partial Government Shutdown Over ICE Would Impact Immigration Enforcement

The White House tells TIME in a statement that Homan would be managing ICE operations on the ground in Minnesota and coordinating with others on ongoing fraud investigations. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during the press briefing that Homan will be the “main point of contact on the ground in Minneapolis,” while Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino will remain in charge of Customs and Border Protection.

The news comes as Trump has been less quick to defend the agents involved in the Pretti shooting than high-ranking Administration officials. In an interview on Sunday with the Wall Street Journal, Trump declined to say whether the federal agents who shot Pretti acted appropriately, only saying the administration is investigating the matter. 

“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump said. 

The Administration is scrambling to contain the fallout from Minneapolis, where Pretti’s death was the second high-profile killing by federal agents in just over two weeks, and comes amid other confrontations that have drawn outrage. On Wednesday, two ICE agents were pictured aiming a canister of pepper at a protester’s face while he was pinned down. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the incident “should alarm every American.”

Tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets over the weekend to protest against the federal agents’ presence in the Twin Cities, as the legality of the deployment of federal agents is contested in court. On Monday, a federal judge is hearing arguments on whether the immigration operation in Minnesota violates the Constitution. The judge will then deliberate whether the operation should be halted, at least temporarily.   

Up through Pretti’s death this weekend, Bovino was and seen as the face of the immigration operations in Minnesota. On Sunday, Bovino doubled down on his defense of officers who shot Pretti, telling CNN that the officers are the victims of the incident, and that Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm, was not entitled to the Second Amendment rights.

“Those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers and, most especially, when you mean to do that beforehand,” he says.

ICE’s detention of five-year-old preschooler Liam Ramos in the Minneapolis area on Tuesday has sparked questions about the legality of federal immigration agents detaining children—and what happens when they do.

Ramos, one of four students in the Columbia Heights Public School District who have recently been detained amid the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown in the area, is far from the only child who has been taken into ICE custody in the past year. An analysis of ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project showed at least 3,800 children have been detained by the agency under the second Trump Administration, over 500 of whom were under the age of five.

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Read more: Why Democrats Fought the ICE Funding Bill—and Why It Passed Anyway

So what happens after an immigrant child gets detained by ICE? TIME spoke to a former ICE official and a legal expert to better understand the policies underlying the deportation operations in Minneapolis and nationwide. 

Can ICE agents legally detain children without a warrant?

According to the ICE website, officers and agents are allowed to briefly detain or arrest anyone if they have any “reasonable suspicion” that the people who they approached are immigrants who came to the country illegally. The officers often do not need a judicial warrant to make an arrest. 

In September, the Supreme Court allowed ICE to stop people because of their race, the language that they speak, the way they dress, the location they are in, or the line of work they are in, pausing a lower court ruling that had barred such actions.

What is a detained immigrant parent allowed to do to take care of their children? 

In July, DHS issued a Detained Parents Directive, which ensures that detained parents are able to identify a caretaker for their children while they are in detainment. The directive also said parents in detention facilities cannot be deported if they need to participate in family court, child welfare, or guardianship proceedings. 

In practice, however, identifying another caretaker for the children of detained parents can be difficult. Parents who are subject to detainment can choose to take the children with them if they can’t find an alternative caretaker. 

“One of the issues that’s been coming up repeatedly is that they are not considering parents who are undocumented, or other relatives who are undocumented, to be a placement for these children,” says Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs for the Equality Division at the ACLU. “So, you are seeing more kids go into detention, even though there are plenty of other options for them.”

Why were Liam Ramos’ family transferred to Texas?

When parents decide to take their children with them to a detention facility, ICE needs to transfer the family to South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilly, Texas, the only facility in the United States that can house immigrant families who are waiting for their deportation proceedings. 

Currently, the facility can hold up to 2,600 individuals, and it is split between family units and single adult females. The family detention facility operated under several prior Administrations as well, until the Biden Administration ended it. Now, the new Trump Administration has restarted it, the former official says. 

According to a court-mandated agreement known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, children are not allowed to be held in detention facilities for more than 20 days, although Mehta alleges that the government has been violating the Flores Settlement “left and right.”

“There’s been thousands of kids that have been held beyond 20 days, some of them held for several months, which is a violation of the law,” Mehta adds. 

How often do ICE agents arrest and detain children under the age of 18 without their parents? 

Very rarely do ICE agents arrest immigrant children alone, according to the former ICE official who worked under the Biden Administration. A child without a parent or legal guardian is classified as an unaccompanied minor, and must, by law, be transferred by ICE to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the Department of Health and Human Services. The ORR will help unaccompanied children find their family members. 

In reality, the government has been trying to prevent lawyers from going to see kids by both canceling different contracts and creating other types of hurdles, Mehta says. 

“As kids are in prolonged detention, it’s going to be even harder for them to find lawyers. and even harder for them to get representation,” she says. 

More than a year after his historic prosecutions of Donald Trump were rendered moot by the 2024 presidential election, former Special Counsel Jack Smith defended his indictments as he was grilled by House Republicans in a heated House Judiciary Committee hearing.

“My fear is that we have seen the rule of law functioning in our country for so long that many of us come to take it for granted,” Smith said in his first public testimony since his investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents were dropped.

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The public hearing came as Trump, who repeatedly called Smith a “sick person,” said in a Truth Social post that Smith “destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy” and called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into Smith and “some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses.”

“A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through,” Trump wrote.

Read more: Trump Has Vowed to Prosecute His Political Foes. Here’s Who Could Be Next

Smith offered a strong pushback against House Republicans in his testimony, rebuking Trump’s rhetoric against him and his colleagues, saying many of the narratives spread about his team were “false and misleading.” 

“President Trump has sought to seek revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff, simply for having worked on these cases. To vilify and seek retribution against these people is wrong,” Smith said during his testimony. 

Asked if Smith believed the Department of Justice under Trump would find ways to indict him as retribution, Smith predicted it would do “everything in their power because they’ve been ordered to by the president.”

Smith made clear he still believed that both of his investigations into Trump were just. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans zeroed in on the scope of Smith’s investigations, including his use of collecting cell phone records of members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, which Smith said is a “normal practice” in a conspiracy investigation. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat of the committee, offered his praises to Smith and said he “did everything right.”

“You acted based solely on the facts, the opposite of Donald Trump who now is purported to take over the Department of Justice,” Raskin said, adding that Trump now “acts openly, purely on political vendetta.” 

Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas directly addressed four former Capitol police officers in attendance for the hearing, telling them that Trump was not to be blamed for the violence on January 6. One of the former officers, Michael Fanone—who was beaten during the insurrection—responded to Nehls by flipping him off and telling the lawmaker to go “f— yourself.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and the Judiciary Chairman also sought to discredit the testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified two years ago that Trump did not move quickly to stop the violence at the Capitol on January 6 even as he was made aware of it, and that Trump tried to take control of the wheel of the SUV that he was being driven in that day so he could go to the Capitol.

Thursday’s hearing was the second time Smith sat in for a congressional deposition. In December, Smith testified in a closed-door meeting before the committee. House Republicans later released the transcript of the hearing on New Year’s Eve. In it, Smith similarly defended his investigation and made clear he still believed that Trump is guilty of the charges.

Smith was appointed as special prosecutor by former Attorney General Merrick Garland during the Biden administration to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents, as well as his effort to overturn the 2020 election. Both cases resulted in criminal indictments against Trump, but the cases were later dropped.
Republicans have accused Smith of running partisan investigations in an attempt to stop Trump from getting reelected. In a letter to Smith sent in October, Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said the investigations “undermined the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

The House Oversight Committee voted to recommend holding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt for refusing to testify in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

The committee on Wednesday advanced a pair of resolutions to hold the Clintons in contempt after they did not appear for depositions earlier this month. Nine Democrats voted with Republicans to advance the resolution to hold Bill Clinton in contempt, while three Democrats joined Republicans to support holding Hillary Clinton in contempt. 

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The nine Democrats who voted in favor of the Bill Clinton resolution are Reps. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, Stephen Lynch and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Emily Randall of Washington, Lateefah Simon of California, Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, and Rashida Tlaib of Michican. Lee, Stansbury and Tlaib also voted for the Hillary Clinton resolution. 

Read more: Less Than 1% of the Epstein Files Have Been Released, DOJ Says

A full House vote for contempt could have serious legal consequences for the Clintons, as the Department of Justice could decide to prosecute the couple. The Clintons could be subject to up to $100,000 fines and one year in jail if convicted.

During the hearing, Lee, a progressive Democrat, also introduced an amendment to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt for not complying with the law that required the Department of Justice to release the full Epstein files by a Dec. 19 deadline. Comer disagreed during the hearing and said Bondi “is complying.” The amendment failed along party lines. 

In a statement following the votes, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said on X that “no one is above the law” and that the Clintons “must be held accountable.”

“These bipartisan subpoenas for the Clintons were approved unanimously and issued more than five months ago as part of the Committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.”

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Garcia continued to criticize Republicans after the votes for failing to hold Bondi accountable, saying in a post on X that they are only interested in “pursuing political enemies and bending the knee to Trump than getting justice for survivors.”

During the hearing, Comer also announced that disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is set to testify in Congress on Feb. 9, although she is also expected to plead the Fifth Amendment. 

“I hope she changes her mind, because I want to hear from her,” Comer said. 

Deputy Chief of Staff for former President Clinton Angel Ureña said in a statement that the former president had offered to meet Comer and Garcia in New York for an on-the-record interview “at a mutually convenient date and time,” and that the scope of the interview would only be limited to the Epstein investigation. Comer rejected the offer of an interview on Tuesday, setting the stage for Wednesday’s vote.

In his much anticipated speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, railed against wind farms, and criticized what he claimed was an imbalance in trade between the United States and the rest of the world.

He also delved into a range of domestic political issues, airing grievances against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, and former President Joe Biden.

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Here are some of the key claims that Trump made in his speech.

Read more: Newsom Tells World Leaders to Stand Up to Trump: ‘It’s Just Pathetic’

The U.S. gave Greenland back

What Trump said: “After the war, which we won, without us, you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese. After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? How ungrateful are they now?”

“So we want a piece of ice for world protection. And they won’t give it.”

The facts: The U.S. never owned Greenland. In 1941, during the Second World War, the U.S. and Denmark signed an agreement granting the U.S. the right to establish military bases on the island to defend it from Nazi Germany, while recognizing the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over the territory. The island is, however, covered with a large amount of ice.

The U.S. pays for NATO

What Trump said: “We pay for NATO. We paid for many years, until I came along, in my opinion, 100% of NATO, because they weren’t paying their bills. ”

The facts: This is an inaccurate claim that Trump has been repeating since his first presidency. NATO figures show that in 2025, the United States paid for roughly 16% of its budget. In the same year, 31 of the 32 NATO members are estimated to have contributed 2% of their GDP to NATO.

China has no wind farms

What Trump said: “China makes almost all of the wind mills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China… They make them. They sell them for a fortune…But they don’t use them themselves.”

The facts: China’s installations of windmills in 2024 made up 70% of the global total, and the cumulative electricity capacity was more than 520 GW, accounting for almost 50% of the total global wind power installed capacity, according to a report from the Global Wind Energy Council.

Europe’s energy prices are higher

What Trump said: “Germany now generates 22% less electricity than it did in 2017… and the electricity prices are “64% higher.”

“The United Kingdom produces just 1/3 of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999.”

The facts: Germany generated a total of 406.9 TWh of electricity in 2025, a 25% decrease from 2017, when it generated 546.9 TWh, according to reports from the Fraunhofer Institute. Electricity prices, however, have increased by 35%, according to the statistics from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. As for the United Kingdom, the country generated a total of 285 TWh of electricity in 2024, 25% less than it produced in 2000, according to data from the UK government.

The 2020 election was stolen

What Trump said: “It’s a war that should have never started and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 US presidential election weren’t rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. ”

The facts: There is no evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. Following the election, Republicans at the federal and state levels launched multiple investigations into the results of the 2020 election and found no rampant voter fraud. Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, baselessly claimed that Dominion Voting Systems manipulated its results in favor of former President Joe Biden. Dominion sued Giuliani for defamation, and Giuliani reached a confidential settlement in 2025. He was also disbarred in New York and Washington, D.C. for repeating false statements regarding the 2020 elections.

European leaders are bracing for an all-out trade war with the U.S. once again after President Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on imports from from countries that oppose his demand to take control of Greenland.

The potential tariff would put the U.S.-EU trade deal struck last summer in jeopardy. The agreement includes $750 billion worth of energy purchases from the U.S., $600 billion in EU investment, and billions of dollars in reduced tariffs on imports from European countries.

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Read more: Trump Says No Need ‘To Think Purely of Peace’ in Letter to Norway About Nobel Prize Loss, Greenland Ambitions

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned during her speech at the World Economic Forum that the EU’s response to the tariff threats will be “unflinching, united and proportional.”

“In politics as in business—a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something,” von der Leyen said. 

Trump, however, remains adamant on taking over the Arctic island. In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump said he had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte regarding Greenland and told him that “there can be no going back.”

Here are five ways the European allies could respond to Trump’s threat to acquire the island:

Retaliatory tariff

The EU could respond by imposing a reciprocal tariff on a range of U.S. goods. 

During the trade negotiations last year, Brussels came up with a list of 4,800 types of U.S. exports to impose tariffs on, ranging from whiskey and soybeans to planes and cars, totaling $108 billion. The list will go into effect on Feb. 7 unless the European Parliament votes to freeze it.

Since Trump revived his interest in Greenland, the proposal to let the EU Parliament pass the tariffs has gained momentum. On Tuesday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France supports the European Parliament’s push to suspend the trade deal between the U.S. and EU.

Still, the European Commission Spokesperson Olof Gill said the current priority is still to engage and avoid the imposition of tariffs.

“This will ultimately harm consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” Gill said. 

Trade “bazooka”

Another measure that the EU could take is activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument, also known as the “trade bazooka.”

The policy, which was adopted in late 2023, aims to deter foreign countries from blackmailing European countries through economic pressure. The “trade bazooka” is much more expansive than reciprocal tariffs, because it can not only impose additional tariffs, but also restrict imports and exports through quotas and licenses, limit access to direct investment in the EU’s financial markets, or suspend intellectual property rights.

“Since the EU is America’s largest commercial partner, this would cause substantial damage to the U.S. economy, most likely generating a US recession and a global downturn, as well as raising costs on many everyday staples,” said Dan Hamilton, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center.

This is, however, the EU’s last resort for countermeasures for multiple reasons. For one thing, it would take up to 10 months for the European Commission to investigate and determine whether there is any coercion and retaliation from the concerned country. It would also need a supermajority of 27 Parliament members to back the measure after the investigation, which could take a maximum of 10 weeks to deliberate. The bazooka has also never been used before, and some European countries, like Germany, are still looking for ways to deescalate. 

“We simply want to try to resolve this problem together, and the American government knows that we could also retaliate,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday.

Dumping U.S. assets

European countries hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds and stocks. The EU could dump a huge amount of its assets to drive up the cost of borrowing and sink the U.S. financial market, adding more uncertainties to retirement account investments, running a business, and buying a home. But selling U.S. assets on a large scale is much harder to execute than it seems. 

Most of the U.S. assets owned by the European countries are owned by private entities and not the government, according to FT. Even if European governments can compel a sale of U.S. assets from their public wealth funds, it would also be hard to find a buyer who could absorb even a fraction of what the European countries own. 

More importantly, an abrupt sale of the U.S. assets would sink the value of the dollar and drive up the euro, which could quickly upend European countries’ own economies. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brushed off this idea on Tuesday in Davos as a “false narrative” that “defies any logic.” 

“I am sure that the European governments will continue holding it and as I said, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath,” Bessent said. 

The Supreme Court

Like many Americans, European leaders are also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to deliberate on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, with a ruling expected as soon as this week. 

The White House argued that a national security law dating back to the 1970s—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—gives the President the authority to declare an emergency and slap down tariffs on his own. 

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a 7-4 decision that none of the emergency powers granted the President under the IEEPA  law “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties or the power to tax.”

But regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Trump administration is determined to keep the tariffs. In an interview with the New York Times last Thursday, the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration plans to begin replacing them almost immediately with other levies if the high court strikes down Trump’s tariffs.

Defending Greenland by force

Despite Trump’s suggestion of seizing Greenland by force, a military option remains unlikely. Still, Denmark, a NATO ally, has been boosting its military presence in the Arctic island in response to Trump’s brinkmanship. 

Denmark’s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, announced that Denmark would increase military activity in and around Greenland, citing an increasingly unpredictable security environment. Several European NATO allies confirmed that they were also sending personnel to the island.

Asked on Monday whether he would use force to seize Greenland, Trump told NBC News “no comment.”

In the hours after the killing of Minneapolis mother Renee Good earlier this month, teachers at Roosevelt High School, some three miles away, were holding a meeting to discuss the impact it might have on the students. It was at that moment that federal agents arrived.  

“Most of the staff got up and ran outside, and we came out to a very confusing, loud scene, a bunch of trucks, a bunch of agents out there, and a lot of community members,” a teacher at the school tells TIME. 

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The agents had been pursuing a woman who was not affiliated with the school in a pickup truck when the car chase ended up in front of the school property. In the chaos that followed, federal agents pepper-sprayed protesters and detained a school staffer. 

Read more: Judge Imposes Sweeping Restrictions on the Tactics ICE Can Use Against Protesters in Minnesota

Just a week later, ICE agents detained a parent at another school’s bus stop in a suburban area of Minneapolis, according to a statement from Robbinsdale Area Schools superintendent.

Those incidents, two among many similar cases across the country, highlight how schools have not escaped the pitched battles that have erupted across the country as a result of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. 

More than 3,000 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection have descended on Minneapolis and St. Paul in recent weeks as part of an immigration enforcement surge. Protests against that surge, and against the shooting of 37-year-old Good, have spilled over into local businesses and schools. 

In response, the Minneapolis Public Schools are now offering online learning options through Feb. 12, and said it is committed to “maintaining a safe and welcoming learning environment for all of our students.”

“Nobody’s sure how to handle school,” the teacher at Roosevelt, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak publicly, says.  

Teaching in a crisis

The teacher described a scene of chaos and confusion when federal agents came to the school that day. 

There were about 10 or 12 students present, according to the teacher. Some staff members had herded them back into the school, and some students ran into the public library across the street before the federal agents drove away. 

The teacher said that immediately after they saw what was happening, many people, including the assistant principal, started calling the local police, but they never arrived. 

“This encounter lasted for about 35 minutes. The police had received many calls that this was happening, and they did not come to the school, they did not come to the school anytime,” the teacher says. 

The school security staff member was released later that day. 

“I think local officials, local law enforcement, either don’t feel like they have the authority or don’t know what to do when federal law enforcement is in town,” the teacher added. 

TIME has reached out to the mayor’s office and the Minneapolis Police Department for comment. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told local TV station KARE in a statement that it was pursuing a U.S. citizen who was “actively trying to impede operations,” adding, “At no point was a school, students, or staff targeted, and agents would not have been near this location if not for the dangerous actions of this individual.”

‘It’s very scary’

The incident at Roosevelt High School prompted students and parents to organize to protect each other’s safety, according to the teacher. 

“Many parents of white students or students or parents who are not as impacted by these ICE raids, have been very mobilized to patrol around the school, to help arrange rides to and from school for students who don’t feel safe taking the bus,” the teacher says, adding that families who have been impacted by the ICE raids have been connecting with teachers and staff members to ask for various support, from school materials to rent and grocery deliveries. 

But inside the school, the teachers face a challenge of maintaining a sense of normalcy while acknowledging what’s happening outside the classroom. 

“I think teachers are trying to balance, how much content do they teach? How much do we talk about what’s going on? How much do we allow space for kids just to focus on school work, but also being empathetic to many students who are fearing for the safety of their families, fearing for their own safety, having worries about rent or food insecurity,” the teacher says. 

Many students are choosing to stay home. The teacher says that about a fourth of his class is participating in online learning. 

While the teachers can be flexible with how to post assignments and give lessons, there is no guidance on how to teach during a crisis. 

“When our school shut down for COVID, it was kind of like, oh, there’s this unknowable thing, and we’re listening to government guidance. When the government is the one doing this to you, it’s very scary. It’s very isolating,” he says.