In today’s newsletter: Hillary Clinton faces Oversight Committee questioning over her ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Cuban officials say an infiltration in their waters by a U.S.-registered speedboat was for “terrorist purposes.” And Elon Musk’s AI power plant ruffles a Mississippi city.
Here’s what to know today.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will face Oversight Committee questioning over Epstein ties
House Oversight Committee members will question former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today as part of their investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The video interviews will take place at Clinton’s house in Chappaqua, New York. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, will meet with the committee tomorrow for a similar deposition.
The interviews comes after months of back and forth between the former first couple and the committee, which threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt for failing to comply with an August subpoena.
Undated photographs of Bill Clinton with Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell were released in December as part of a tranche of documents made public by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The couple has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and have not been accused of any crimes in connection with him. Hillary Clinton has accused the committee of using her and her husband to try to distract from President Donald Trump’s ties to the financier.
New reporting shows the Justice Department hasn’t released some files related to a woman who made an allegation against Trump and said she was a sexual assault victim of Epstein. Those files are also not included in the unredacted collection available for members of Congress to view at the Department of Justice.
Asked about the missing documents, a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement: “As we have always said, all documents responsive were produced, those not fall within one of the following categories: duplicates, privileged, part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
More about Hillary Clinton’s upcoming deposition here.
More politics news:
- Vice President JD Vance announced a pause on federal Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota. The decision comes a day after Trump announced that Vance would be taking charge of the administration’s “anti-fraud” efforts.
- Aliyah Rahman, a Minnesota woman whom Rep. Ilhan Omar took as her guest to the State of the Union address, needed hospital treatment after she was arrested during the speech, Rahman and Omar said.
- FBI Director Kash Patel fired at least six FBI agents tied to the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
- A DHS official told state election chiefs there won’t be ICE agents present at polling places this year.
- What to know about Trump’s new investment account program for children.
Cuba says four killed after U.S. boat violates territorial waters
Cuban officials said a Florida-registered speedboat violated their territorial waters yesterday. The boat “was carrying 10 armed individuals who, according to preliminary statements from those detained, intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes,” Cuba’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said the people on the boat were Cuban residents of the United States.
Cuban troops killed four people in the confrontation, and a commander of the Cuban border guard was injured, as were six people on the U.S. boat, the statement said.
The statement said that the people on the boat initiated the firefight, which took place one nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel off Cuba’s north coast.
The injured were evacuated and received medical assistance, the statement said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. would carry out an independent investigation into the incident before responding, though he said no U.S. personnel were involved.
Read more about the confrontation here.
Elon Musk’s makeshift AI power plant generates sound and fury in Mississippi
Eddie Gossett awoke one morning last summer to what sounded like an airport runway suddenly opening on his rural Mississippi road. Just down the road from Gossett’s house, 27 methane gas turbines had arrived on trailers on behalf of the richest person in the world. Without warning, these temporary turbines began running day and night, locals say, to power Elon Musk’s AI ambitions.
Musk’s xAI purchased the long-dormant power plant in Southaven last year and plans to spend tens of billions in the area, including on a new data center in the city — the largest private investment in state history, according to Mississippi’s governor.
Tech giants like Microsoft, OpenAI and Google are investing billions in AI investments across the country to build up the computing and electric power the technology demands. This requires vast land and resources, and, for communities like Southaven, a tradeoff between economic benefits and the environmental costs.
The technology may reshape industries and unlock scientific discoveries, but also poses a potential threat to the future of work in many industries.
More about how the plant has disrupted Southaven.
U.S. and Iran hold new talks as Trump raises pressure for nuclear deal
A third round of indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over their long-running nuclear dispute opened in Geneva today, as Trump pressures Tehran with the threat of military action.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump declared that Iran was working to develop missiles that could “soon” reach the U.S. — his clearest case yet for a possible attack after overseeing a sweeping military buildup in the region. “The principle is very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Vice President J.D. Vance said at a news conference Wednesday.
Iran has consistently denied seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, and has warned of an intense response to even a limited attack by the U.S. or Israel.
And a Defense Intelligence Agency report released last year said Iran “has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a militarily-viable ICBM by 2035 should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
Iran’s proposals for today’s negotiations have not been made public, but it has emphasized it expects the lifting of sanctions in return for possible concessions on its nuclear program.On the eve of the talks, the Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions over the country’s oil exports and ballistic missile production.The talks come as the U.S. carries out an intensive military buildup in the Middle East, its biggest in decades, while the president weighs options for possible attacks.
Read more about U.S.-Iran talks.
Read All About It
- Nancy Guthrie’s home will be returned back to her family as the search stretches into a fourth week.
- Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military purges have run far deeper than previously thought — potentially threatening the country’s military effectiveness.
- A Hong Kong court overturned pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai’s fraud conviction. But the 78-year-old media tycoon and longtime critic of China’s ruling Communist Party remains in prison under a 20-year sentence he received this month in a separate national security case.
- Team USA women’s hockey players say they don’t want their Olympic gold medal win to be overshadowed by Trump’s joke about inviting them to the White House.
- Heart disease and stroke rates are projected to rise significantly in women in the next 25 years.
- Singer D4vd is the target of a grand jury investigation into the death of a teenage girl whose dismembered remains were found last year in the trunk of his car, according to court documents.
Staff Pick: Tech companies are making their robots cute to win over humans
As AI-powered robots increasingly enter households and public spaces, tech developers are racing to figure out how to make these machines appealing to humans, including by making them look cute and cartoonish.
I spoke to robot developers and researchers to find out why they’re betting on certain design choices — such as round shapes, wide eyes and cute noises — to foster human acceptance.
One researcher who focuses on human-robot interaction told me that this plays into humans’ natural tendency to assign meaning to things, as evidenced by case studies of people naming and decorating their Roomba vacuum cleaners, or otherwise getting attached to household objects.
— Angela Yang, reporter
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