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When Kevin Loftus became one of the Capitol rioters granted a sweeping pardon by new US President Donald Trump, he walked out of the Philadelphia prison where he was being held and drove overnight to Washington without even stopping to change his clothes.Loftus was making a beeline for the Washington prison that has become a focal point for the Trump supporters convicted of storming the Capitol building in Washington on January 6, 2021, and that still holds 15 of the rioters.The 56-year-old came, he told AFP early Tuesday, to “get everybody out.”Hours after being sworn in on Monday, Trump granted pardons to more than 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol — including those convicted of assaulting police officers.He described them as “hostages” and ordered that all pending criminal cases against Capitol riot defendants be dropped.Loftus, standing in the freezing cold of an unusually frigid morning in the US capital, told AFP about waiting Monday night for Trump to follow through on his promise to pardon the rioters. He described watching footage of Trump signing a raft of executive orders — except there was no volume on the TV in his cell. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Man, I hope our pardons are in there,'” he said. Trump signed the pardons in the evening, and Loftus was given the news several hours later. They said “‘You’re getting out of here. Pack your stuff,'” he related. “I’m like, woohoo!”He was freed by 2:00 am along with another inmate jailed over the Capitol attack, William Sarsfield III. Sarsfield’s wife had driven for more than 20 hours from Texas to pick them up — and when she did, they went straight to Washington.- ‘Camaraderie’ -Loftus had been sentenced to three years probation for his presence at the riot. Then, last year, he tried to fly to Russia to fight against Ukraine and was arrested, court documents showed. “I violated my probation… I was outside of my area,” he told AFP. Which sent him behind bars, until Trump’s intervention. Sarsfield, standing with Loftus outside the Washington prison where many of the Capitol rioters had been held on the chilly Tuesday morning, had been convicted of disturbing the peace on January 6. He described the “camaraderie” in prison between those who had been convicted of Capitol riot offenses, and said he was “very blessed” to be freed. Sarsfield, too, wanted to support those still behind bars in Washington, where supporters have been holding a nightly vigil for years.He was carrying jackets, gloves and hats for inmates that are getting out. Other supporters were also at the prison early Tuesday, along with journalists, waiting for any convicted rioters still inside to be freed. The Capitol assault followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race. He then encouraged the crowd to march on Congress.His pardons have divided public opinion, with supporters expressing jubilation, but many others — including Democrats and police officers who were at the Capitol that day — vehemently condemning them.A handful of Republican lawmakers expressed opposition, but most were silent, including Vice President JD Vance, who just a week ago said violent offenders should not be pardoned.Two prominent rioters were among those freed: Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the head of another such group, the Oath Keepers.Both Tarrio and Rhodes had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.Rhodes, too, showed up outside the Washington prison later Tuesday, after his release from a facility in Maryland.”I want my brothers out,” he told reporters. “This is a travesty.”At one point on Tuesday, two men did emerge from the Washington prison and the crowd surged towards them, shouting: “Freedom!” and “We love you!”But the pair rushed silently to a car and disappeared, with a policeman stationed at the prison entrance confirming they had nothing to do with the Capitol assault. That evening, however, with skies dark and temperatures dropping, the moment many had been waiting for finally came, when three Capitol riot detainees exited the prison.They were immediately embraced by their loved ones.

As part of his flurry of first-day actions, US President Donald Trump took aim at electric vehicles, a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s climate change agenda.Trump’s executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” on Monday included steps to ensure a “level” playing field for gasoline-powered motors and halt federal funding to build new EV charging stations.The executive order also appeared to presage other reversals, referencing the possible elimination of a federal tax credit for EV purchases and the renouncement of a US waiver that allows California to set stricter requirements on cars.During his inaugural address, Trump said the moves would “end” the “Green New Deal,” ridiculing Biden-backed incentives for EV sales.While Trump harshly criticized EVs during the presidential campaign, policy experts have been skeptical Trump will junk all the Biden-era EV programs, in part because significant federal funding has gone toward projects in Republican congressional districts, where thousands of jobs are expected to be created.Shares of EV makers like Rivian and EV charging companies such as EVgo fell sharply Tuesday. Tesla, which is led by close Trump ally Elon Musk, also fell.Kathy Harris, director for clean vehicles of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Trump’s policy a sop for “fat-cat oil executives,” noting that EVs are better for the environment and can save consumers money on gasoline.Many of Trump’s executive orders are expected to face legal challenges, a possible outcome for the EV measures.”This is not the end of this story,” Harris said. “If the administration tries to cut corners or ignore the law, they will end up in court.”The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which has previously endorsed the need for stable auto rules, reiterated its criticism of California’s car regulations in a statement that did not address other elements in Trump’s executive order.”The country should have a single, national standard to reduce carbon in transportation,” said the group’s president, John Bozzella. “We can’t have regulations that push the industry too far ahead of the customer.”- 90-day review -The new policy comes as automakers pause some EV investments due to slowing growth, even as sales of emission-free vehicles climb to new levels in the United States.In 2024, EV sales in the country reached 1.3 million, up 7.3 percent from the prior year, according to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, which pointed to a meaningful rise in EVs at different price levels.But GM, Ford and other automakers have scaled back some EV investments in recent months, pointing to slowing demand growth. A Ford executive warned in November that a glut of EVs across showrooms will lead to “incredible pressure” on prices in 2025.The broadside against EVs followed Trump’s targeting of the vehicles during the presidential campaign, when he claimed Democrat Kamala Harris wanted to force EVs on consumers.Harris said that she favored consumer choice. The Biden administration’s fuel economy rules required automakers to market fleets with sharply lower carbon dioxide emissions in a bid to address climate change, while laws such as the $400 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included a slew of lending and tax credit programs to boost EVs. Programs under the IRA and the 2021 infrastructure law are in various stages of implementation. Monday’s executive order directs officials implementing the IRA to undertake a 90-day review to ensure that spending does not unfairly favor EVs “by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable.”Policy experts see no meaningful chance that the new administration will try to claw back US funds that have already been spent. But whether Trump will seek to block other projects that are still moving through the pipeline is less clear. Nearly half of the $5 billion set aside for new EV chargers has been allocated to states under the infrastructure law, according to a memo from NRDC. The 2021 infrastructure law’s “embedded safeguards… should ensure continuity for infrastructure investments,” the NRDC said. “Of course, the incoming administration could try drastic measures, but those will face real-world and legal hurdles.”In November, the Energy Department advanced projects to provide Rivian a $6.6 billion federal loan to build an EV manufacturing facility in Stanton Springs North, Georgia, and a $7.5 billion loan to StarPlus Energy to finance lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing plants in Kokomo, Indiana, under a Stellantis-Samsung joint venture.Construction on the Georgia plant is expected to begin in 2026, according to Rivian.Neither Rivian nor Stellantis responded to AFP queries on the implications of the new Trump policy for their projects.

As he looks at the ruins of his home razed when deadly fires tore through the Los Angeles area, Sebastian Harrison knows it will never be the same again, because he was not insured.”I knew it was risky, but I had no choice,” he told AFP.Harrison is one of tens of thousands of Californians forced in recent years to live without a safety net, either because their insurance company dropped them, or because the premiums just got too high.Some of them are now counting the crippling cost, after enormous blazes ripped through America’s second largest city, killing more than two dozen people and levelling 12,000 structures, Harrison’s home among them.His own slice of what he called “paradise” stood on a mountainside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where Malibu runs into the badly hit Pacific Palisades neighborhood.The three-acre plot, which contained his home and a few other buildings, was always costly to insure, and in 2010 was already $8,000 a year.When the bill hit $40,000 in the aftermath of the pandemic, he decided he simply couldn’t afford it.”It’s not like I bought myself a fancy car instead of getting insurance,” the 59-year-old said.”It’s just that food for myself and my family was more important.”For Harrison, a former actor, the emotional strain of losing the home he had lived in for 14 years is magnified by the knowledge that without a handout from the state or the national government, he has lost everything — he even still has mortgage payments to make.”I’m very worried, because this property is everything I had,” he said.- Climate costs -Insuring property in California has become increasingly difficult.Well-intentioned legislation that prevents insurance companies from hiking prices unfairly has collided with growing risks from a changing climate in a part of the world that now regularly sees devastating wildfires near populated areas.Faced with burgeoning claims — more damage, and higher repair costs because of the soaring price of labor and materials — insurance companies turned tail and left the state en masse, dropping existing clients and refusing to write new policies.Even enormous names in the market, like State Farm and Allstate, have pulled back.Officials in state capital Sacramento have been worried for a while.Last year Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara introduced reforms aimed at encouraging companies to return, including allowing them more leeway to increase their premiums to better match their costs.But huge and inevitably very expensive fires erupting in what is supposed to be California’s rainy season — it hasn’t rained for eight months around Los Angeles — have reinforced the idea that the state is becoming uninsurable.”I don’t know now, because… my greatest fear was that we were going to have a catastrophe of this nature,” Lara told the San Francisco Chronicle at the weekend.Even the state-mandated insurer of last resort, a scheme designed to provide bare-bones coverage for those locked out of the private sector, could be struggling.The California FAIR Plan was created in 1968 and is underpinned by every insurance company that operates in the state, as a requirement of their license to operate.But the number of people now resorting to the scheme means its $200 million reserves are dwarfed by its liabilities. (A reinsurance sector helps to keep it liquid.)- ‘They’re going to drop me’ -With the enormous losses expected from the Palisades and Eaton fires set to test the insurance sector even further, California has issued an edict preventing companies from dropping customers or refusing to renew them in certain affected areas, for one year.That’s scant consolation for Gabrielle Gottlieb, whose house in Pacific Palisades survived the flames. “My insurer dropped a lot of friends of mine… and I’m concerned that they’re going to drop me as well eventually,” he told AFP.”They’re basically already putting it out there that ‘lots of luck after a year!'”Even in a best case scenario, home insurance looks set to be a lot more expensive in California, as state reforms filter through allowing increased prices in places more susceptible to wildfire.”Real estate and taxes are already very high in California,” said Robert Spoeri, a Pacific Palisades homeowner who was dropped by his insurer last year.”If the insurance gets even higher, who is going to want to live in this state?”

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he withdrew Secret Service protection to John Bolton, his former national security advisor and one of his most outspoken critics, because “you can’t have that for life.”Bolton, 76, who served in the White House during Trump’s first term and has been the target of an alleged Iranian assassination plot, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the president’s move.In remarks to reporters at the White House, Trump defended his decision and lashed out at his estranged former aide, calling him a “very dumb person” and a “stupid guy.””We’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?” the president said. “You can’t have that for life.””I thought he was a very dumb person but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger,” Trump added.The president also revoked Bolton’s security clearance, accusing him in an executive order of revealing “sensitive information drawn from his time in government” in a critical memoir he published in 2020.Bolton noted in a post on X that the Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for “attempting to hire a hit man to target me.””That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination,” he said.Bolton said that although he was a critic of former Democratic president Joe Biden’s national security policies, “he nonetheless made the decision to extend (Secret Service) protection to me in 2021.””The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call,” he added.The State Department has announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Bolton, who is also a former US ambassador to the United Nations.US officials have also accused Iran of seeking to assassinate Trump to avenge the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in 2020 in a US drone strike.

Bitter Arctic air plunged more than half the United States into a deep freeze Tuesday, including New Orleans, where the heaviest snow in decades brought dangerous conditions to the famously festive Gulf Coast city.Temperatures dropped more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius) below average across large swaths of the country, causing airports, schools and health clinics to shutter and major roadways to close due to ice and freezing rain.Over 170 million Americans were enduring an especially frigid Arctic front that has already impacted scores of communities, including the US capital Washington, where President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday was moved indoors due to the weather.”Dangerous cold weather for most of the country,” blared the latest National Weather Service (NWS) report on Tuesday. The agency has issued storm warnings across parts of eight states in the US Southeast and said the region could see record cold temperatures.Extreme cold was also threatening states in the Plains and the Upper Midwest, where life-threatening wind chills down to 50 degrees below zero were possible, according to the NWS.Across the US South — especially the Gulf Coast, which is far more accustomed to temperate or tropical weather than dangerously low temperatures — officials warned of frostbite and hypothermia.New Orleans, a city more often targeted by tropical hurricanes, was slammed with at least seven inches of snow Tuesday, the NWS said, soaring past the city’s record single-day snowfall that had held since 1948.West of New Orleans, the first-ever blizzard warning across several Louisiana counties was issued, including near Lafayette, where more than 10 inches of snow has fallen, according to The Weather Channel.Commercial flight operations for Tuesday were cancelled, the New Orleans airport announced, as local media quickly dubbed the rare winter storm a “snow-pocalypse.”Flights were also cancelled for the day in Houston, Texas, the two main airports there said, while to the east the airport in Florida’s state capital Tallahassee closed at 3:00 pm (2000 GMT).Eerie images emerged along the banks of the Mississippi River, where docked riverboats were cloaked in snow.Along Bourbon Street, the center of New Orleans’ iconic French Quarter nightlife hub, workers and tourists threw snowballs and frolicked in a rare winter wonderland.”Stay off the roads, stay safe, stay warm,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell posted on X.The extreme weather was fueled by an Arctic air mass that dipped deeply southward from Canada, combining with a moisture-laden low-pressure system. 

“Joker: Folie a Deux” was nominated for seven Razzies on Tuesday, leaving the sad clown atop the annual tongue-in-cheek list of the worst movies of the year.The flop musical follow-up to 2019’s billion-dollar-grossing “Joker” picked up unwanted nods such as worst picture and worst sequel.Joaquin Phoenix — who won best actor at the Oscars in the first “Joker” film — is nominated for worst actor, alongside Lady Gaga for worst actress.The film took in $200 million — around one-fifth of its predecessor’s box office, despite being far more expensive to make — and was savaged by critics.In a year of several high-profile expensive flops, the parody prizes awarded six nods to Francis Ford Coppola’s confusing epic “Megalopolis,” and Dakota Johnson’s much-mocked superhero spin-off “Madame Web.”Fawning presidential biopic “Reagan” and video game adaptation “Borderlands” equally incurred the wrath of Razzie voters with six.Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted,” a somewhat surreal original story for Pop-Tarts pastries, earned four.Voted for by some 1,200 members of an irreverent group that any film fan can join, the Razzies — or Golden Raspberries — were created as an antidote to the movie industry’s self-obsessed series of glitzy award shows.Nominations for this year’s Academy Awards will be announced Thursday.

Donald Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship could fundamentally reshape America, analysts said Tuesday, overturning a principle that has underpinned the country for more than 150 years.Moments after being sworn into office, the Republican president came out swinging, with a raft of executive orders aimed at slashing migration and changing how the US determines who is allowed to live here.Most eye-catchingly, Trump took aim at previsions guaranteed in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution that grant citizenship to anyone born on US soil.”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,” reads the document, which was ratified in 1868 as the postbellum US sought to knit itself back together.If implemented, the order Trump signed on Tuesday would prevent the federal government from issuing passports, citizenship certificates or other documents to children whose mothers are in the country illegally or temporarily, and whose fathers are not US citizens or permanent residents.Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at US political think tank the Niskanen Center, said the notion of birthright citizenship is a defining characteristic of the American experiment.The fact that everyone born here has a real stake in the country galvanizes a sense of cohesion that is absent in other systems, he said.”It has helped assimilation by giving people who are born here an immediate sense of belonging,” he told AFP.”I think what people oftentimes overlook is that it also places responsibilities on the children of immigrants to see themselves as Americans and to be patriotic.”That feeds into the fierce pride that many Americans feel in their flag, their national anthem and in institutions like the military.Making that precarious could have implications for social stability, said Guerra.The modern United States has not suffered from the pockets of separatism that beset other world powers, like Russia, where tranches of the population feel like they don’t belong.”The US has managed to completely avoid that, because our political identity has for centuries now been borne on the premise that, if you’re born in the US, you are an American,” said Guerra.- Supreme court -Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the 14th Amendment was “crystal clear,” and muddying the waters would have implications for people well beyond the babies born to illegal immigrants.”All you needed before was a birth certificate proving you were born here… now, you’d have to show extensive documentation of your ancestry and your parents’ citizenship,” he told AFP.”That makes everybody’s life harder.”Trump supporters who fret about changing demographics sometimes complain that new arrivals and their children take resources that would otherwise be available for the established population.But, says Guerra, the expansive approach to citizenship the US has historically taken has benefits to that very population — whose own birth rate is plunging — in terms of having enough working-age people to fund social security programs and to do the labor that a dynamic economy requires.The demographic edge the US enjoys is also crucial in times of war.Not “having a young population that can potentially serve in the military, in the events of conflict… could potentially endanger the United States,” he said.Trump’s executive order faced an immediate legal challenge, with 22 states — including California and New York — suing to prevent its implementation.The issue will almost certainly end up in the US Supreme Court.While some legal scholars think Trump’s efforts will come unstuck, a 6-3 conservative majority — three of whom were appointed by Trump — may have different ideas.”I don’t think it’s inconceivable (that it will be upheld), which is what I would have said in 2019,” Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia told The New York Times. “The ground is shifting.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called Tuesday for “cool heads” in the face of US President Donald Trump’s announcement of severe new restrictions on migration, among other policy changes.Sheinbaum said Mexico was preparing to repatriate people from other countries expelled by the United States, after Trump vowed to deport “millions and millions” of migrants.”It’s important to always keep a cool head and refer to signed agreements, beyond actual speeches,” she told her regular morning conference, a day after Trump announced he was sending troops to the border with Mexico to halt illegal migration and again threatened major tariffs on Mexican imports.On his first day back in office Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”His administration said it would also reinstate a “Remain in Mexico” policy that prevailed under Trump’s first presidency, under which people who apply to enter the United States from Mexico must remain there until their application has been decided.The White House also halted an asylum program for people fleeing authoritarian regimes in Central and South America, leaving thousands of people stranded on the Mexican side of the border.Sheinbaum said her government would provide humanitarian assistance to deported migrants from other countries before repatriating them.If migrants cannot enter the United States, “it is much better for them to return to their country of origin,” she said.Shelters have been set up for migrants in border cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo. But “there is not enough space” and the situation could become “critical,” warned Carlos Pena, the mayor of Reynosa, a city just south of Texas.Sheinbaum, a leftwinger who has reacted to months of threats from Trump with a mix of pragmatism and firmness, noted that several of the measures dated from Trump’s first mandate. She also downplayed his renewed threat to impose blanket 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada over what he called their failure to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking into the United States.Trump said he could enact the tariffs on February 1.Sheinbaum noted that a review of the trade pact between the United States, Mexico and Canada was already planned in 2026.

New US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met counterparts Tuesday from Japan, India and Australia on his first day in office, in a sign of solidarity in the face of China.Rubio’s meetings with the so-called Quad come as President Donald Trump vows to push back against China.But the gathering also marks a contrast to Trump’s frequent dismissal of US allies and partners.Rubio, a three-term senator who a day earlier was unanimously confirmed by his peers, opened his first full day on the job with a four-way meeting with Quad foreign ministers before moving into separate engagements with each.The Quad was envisioned by late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and expanded into a leaders’ summit by former president Joe Biden. China has repeatedly lashed out at the Quad, saying it is a US plot to encircle the rising Asian power. The Quad powers deny attempts at containment but have tried to offer a united front on areas from vaccines to disaster relief to countries in Asia that otherwise could find a greater allure in China.Rubio made no remarks to the press as he met his counterparts. But in a speech to employees as he entered the State Department, Rubio vowed both to defend US diplomats — often maligned by his Republican Party — while pursuing Trump’s belief in “America First.””I expect every nation on earth to advance their national interests. And in those instances — and I hope there will be many —  in which our national interests and theirs align, we look forward to working with them,” Rubio said.”We recognize that there will be those times unfortunately as humans interact with one another because of our nature that there will be conflict,” Rubio said.”We will seek to prevent them and avoid them, but never at the expense of our national security, never at the expense of our national interest and never at the expense of our core values as a nation and as a people,” he said.With Trump’s return, a slew of senior career diplomats quit their posts at the State Department. Trump’s allies have previously cast career diplomats as opponents of Trump’s agenda and vowed to replace them with political appointees.Addressing employees with his wife and four children by his side, Rubio said: “There will be changes.” “But the changes are not meant to be destructive, they’re not meant to be punitive,” he said.”But we need to move faster than we ever have because the world is changing faster than we ever have.”Trump has frequently described NATO allies as freeloaders who do not pay their fair share for defense.Biden, in closing remarks on foreign policy delivered last week at the State Department, pointed to his work on the Quad as part of a series of efforts to strengthen alliances.”We’ve reinvigorated people’s faith in the United States as a true, true partner,” Biden said.

A coalition of Democratic-leaning states launched legal actions Tuesday seeking to block Donald Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship in the United States.The two separate lawsuits involving a total of 22 states, including California and New York, come the day after Trump took office and quickly unveiled a phalanx of executive orders he hopes will reshape American immigration.Chief among them was an order eliminating the automatic granting of citizenship to anyone born on US soil, a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the country’s constitution.If implemented, the order would prevent the federal government from issuing passports, citizenship certificates or other documents to children whose mothers are in the country illegally or temporarily, and whose father is not a US citizen or permanent resident.”The President’s executive order attempting to rescind birthright citizenship is blatantly unconstitutional and quite frankly, un-American,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said as he announced the suit.”We are asking a court to immediately block this order from taking effect and ensure that the rights of American-born children impacted by this order remain in effect while litigation proceeds. “The President has overstepped his authority by a mile with this order, and we will hold him accountable.”The California-led suit, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts, was joined later Tuesday by one filed in Washington state, and comes alongside a similar suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other advocacy groups in New Hampshire.The 14th Amendment was adopted in the aftermath of the US Civil War, as part of an effort to ensure the rights of former slaves and their children.It says, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”Trump’s order, if it stands, will come into effect 30 days from when he signed it.The president acknowledged as he put pen to paper that it was likely to face legal challenges.”I think we have good grounds, but you could be right. I mean, we’ll find out,” he said, when asked about the likelihood of a legal effort to halt it.Trump also claimed — wrongly — that the United States is the only country in the world that grants birthright citizenship.In reality, dozens of others do, among them the neighboring countries of Canada and Mexico.