First Thing: Border patrol chief praised federal agent who shot US citizen in Chicago | US news

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Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year.

Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. But the case was dismissed after video evidence emerged showing that an agent had steered his vehicle into Martinez’s car.

Evidence from the dismissed criminal case was released this week after a US district judge, Georgia Alexakis, lifted a protective order.

• What did Bovino say to the shooter? Text messages showed Bovino sending encouragement to border patrol agent Charles Exum, who shot Martinez, after the shooting. “In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” Bovino wrote to Exum on 4 October, hours after Martinez was shot, in an email urging him to put off his retirement.

• How are the administration’s actions going down? An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll found 49% of American adults strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of border security and immigration, compared with 34% who strongly disapproved in a similar poll last April.

Pam Bondi goes on attack during questioning by House judiciary committee over handling of Epstein files

Attorney general Pam Bondi came out swinging at Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday, as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Democrats questioned Bondi as the justice department has come under intense scrutiny both for releasing the names of survivors, and redacting – without explanation – the names of people who may have committed crimes.

Bondi avoided answering and, when pressed by representative Pramila Jayapal, declined to turn around and apologize to Epstein victims who were in the hearing room behind her.

• What did Bondi say in the combative hearing? Among other lawmakers, she sparred heavily with Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, saying: “You’re a washed-up loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer.”

House backs bid to block Canada tariffs in rebuke of Trump

The House voted Wednesday to slap back Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare if largely symbolic rebuke of the White House agenda as Republicans joined Democrats over the objections of GOP leadership.

The tally, 219-211, was among the first times the House, controlled by Republicans, has confronted the president over a signature policy.

The resolution seeks to end the national emergency Trump declared to impose the tariffs, though actually undoing the policy would require support from Trump himself, which is highly unlikely. The resolution next goes to the Senate.

In other news …

• James Van Der Beek, the Dawson’s Creek actor, has died aged 48. In November 2024, he revealed a diagnosis of bowel cancer.

• Canadian police identified the suspect who carried out a school massacre as an 18-year old woman with a history of mental health problems.

• A man who took part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol was found guilty on Tuesday of multiple child sexual abuse charges in Florida. He had been pardoned by Donald Trump.

• French police appealed for victims and witnesses in the case of a 79-year-old former teacher, accused of raping and sexually assaulting 89 children since the 1960s.

• Texas officials were left confused yesterday when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airspace over El Paso to be shut down for 10 days, then abruptly lifted it hours later.

Stat of the day: US jobs report beats forecasts with 130,000 increase in January

Total nonfarm payroll employment in the US rose by 130,000 in January, after months of fatigue in the labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% last month, from 4.4% in December. It was stronger than the 70,000 jobs economists had expected.

The Filter Recommends: A reading journal won’t make you smarter, but it will make you more mindful

“For a while, flipping the pages of a novel has felt more like an item on my to-do list and less like a way to unwind,” writes Lauren Gould. So she turned to a book journal to change that dynamic. “I’ve found the journal to be a structured, scrapbook-y way to keep track of my goals – and a way to transform reading into a more mindful and intentional experience.”

Don’t miss this: The rise of vice-signalling – how hatred poisoned politics

Vice-signalling, a professor of linguistics tells writes Zoe Williams, is a typical strategy of the hard and far right “to constantly violate taboos, and in this way escalate the dynamics of the whole conversation, while getting immediate media attention, usually front page”. It works for political insurgents because it breaks down establishment barriers to entry.

Climate check: Point of no return – a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, according to a paper published in the journal One Earth, which analyzed recent scientific findings on climate feedback loops and 16 tipping elements. Continued global heating would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth”, scientists said.

“Comedians are always singling me out. Barely a show goes by when they don’t make a comment on the person with the biggest laugh,” writes Jane Howard. She tries to hold her breath to suppress the laughter. “But it is also the part of myself I love the most” – “so overwhelming that all I can do is give over to it.”

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