US politics live: Colombia backs down over deportations as ...

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics. We’ll be bringing you the latest updates as Donald Trump begins the second week of his second term in office.

On Sunday, the US and Colombia have pulled back from brink of a trade war after Colombia agreed to accept flights carrying migrants deported from the US.

Trump had threatened to impose trade tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after it initially refused to accept the flights.

In a statement late on Sunday, the White House said Colombia had agreed to accept the flights and that the threatened penalties would not go ahead.

Stay with us throughout the day for all the latest developments.

The sight of Donald Trump signing a flurry of executive orders with his black Sharpie in front of the Maga faithful after his inauguration inspired envy and concern in equal measure inside the UK government.

Cabinet ministers have been impressed by the new US president “cracking on” with bold – and often controversial – election promises. “We could do with a bit more of that here,” one told the Guardian.

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Yet the flood of announcements over Trump’s first week in power and the potential for the UK to be caught up in the global diplomatic and economic maelstrom – or worse still, a direct target of it – has also caused anxiety.

So the newly inaugurated president’s first public utterance about Keir Starmer since re-entering the White House – that the prime minister had “done a very good job” and they “get along well” despite their divergent political views – was met with some relief inside Downing Street.

Read the full piece from our political editor, Pippa Crerar, here:

Vice-president JD Vance has defended some of Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet nominations ahead of further confirmation hearings this week.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vance was asked about Pete Hegseth, the former soldier and Fox News host who was confirmed as defense secretary last week following a narrow vote in the Senate.

“I think Pete is a disrupter,” he said. “If you think about all of those bipartisan, massive votes [from past confirmations], we have to ask ourselves, what did they get us?

“They got us a country where we fought many wars over the last 40 years, but haven’t won a war about as long as I’ve been alive. They’ve got us a military with a major recruitment crisis, a procurement price crisis that’s totally dysfunctional, where we [have] terrible cost overruns. So we need a big change.”

Vance was also asked about Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has faced criticism for her views on Edward Snowden, previous meetings with now deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and comments on the Russia-Ukraine war.

He said Gabbard, also a former soldier, who will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, had an “impeccable character, impeccable record of service, and she also is a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services”.

Donald Trump has issued an executive order directing federal government to override California’s water management practices if they are found to be ineffective.

It comes two days after Trump visited Los Angeles to see the damage done by a series of wildfires that have burned more than 35,000 acres and killed at least 28 people.

Trump has falsely claimed that California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.

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Demand at the height of the fires caused some hydrants in LA to run dry, but local officials said that was because the system was not designed for such large fires, while Newsom has said no amount of water could have contained brush fires whipped by 100mph winds.

Trump’s order told federal agencies to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries”.

It also orders the White House budget office to see whether it can attach conditions to federal aid to the state to ensure cooperation.

Read the full story here:

All countries “should be on notice” that they face sanctions if they do not cooperate with US deportation efforts, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has said.

It comes after Colombia agreed to accept repatriated citizens having initially refused to take two planes of deportees.

“Colombia and all nations should be on notice - Congress is fully prepared to pass sanctions and other measures against those that do not fully cooperate or follow through on requirements to accept their citizens who are illegally in the United States,” Johnson wrote on X.

“President Trump is putting America first, just like he said he would. And Congress will implement policies that reinforce his agenda.”

US federal authorities have begun immigration raids in Chicago, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) statement confirmed on Sunday.

It comes after the White House border czar, Tom Homan, said officials were “reconsidering” the raids to ensure officers’ safety after details were leaked into the press.

Ice said its agents, along with the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP, and the US Marshals Service, had begun conducting “enhanced targeted operations” in Chicago “to enforce US immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities”.

Homan previously said Chicago would be “ground zero” for immigration enforcement actions.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration has directed Ice officials to increase daily arrests from a few hundred to 1,200 to 1,500.

More now on that news that Colombia has agreed to accept flights carrying migrants deported from the US, narrowly averting a trade war between the two countries.

In a statement late on Sunday, the White House said: “The government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on US military aircraft, without limitation or delay.”

The Colombian foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, said in his own statement that “we have overcome the impasse with the US government”, adding: “We will continue receiving Colombians who return as deportees.”

Trump had threatened to impose 25% tariffs “on all goods” exported from Colombia to the US, rising to 50% after a week, after Colombia refused to accept two military planes carrying deportees.

In response, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, announced retaliatory tariffs and said he would only take back citizens “with dignity”, such as on civilian planes.

Murillo’s statement did not specifically say that the agreement included military flights, but it did not contradict the White House announcement.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics. We’ll be bringing you the latest updates as Donald Trump begins the second week of his second term in office.

On Sunday, the US and Colombia have pulled back from brink of a trade war after Colombia agreed to accept flights carrying migrants deported from the US.

Trump had threatened to impose trade tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after it initially refused to accept the flights.

In a statement late on Sunday, the White House said Colombia had agreed to accept the flights and that the threatened penalties would not go ahead.

Stay with us throughout the day for all the latest developments.