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New questions are being asked about a US Strike in the Caribbean. Minnesota is pushing back against immigration authorities and I'll share some tips from pros about how to declutter your life. That's some of what we'll get to on the Seven from the Washington Post, I'm Hannah Jewell. It's Tuesday, January 13th. Let's get you caught up with today's seven stories. Number one, the U.S. used a secretive military aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in a September boat strike. Officials confirmed this new detail to the Post yesterday. It concerns the Trump administration's first deadly strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. Eleven people were killed in that attack, including two who survived the initial attack but died in a controversial follow on strike. The use of the plane has added to questions about the legality of that attack, according to legal experts. Feigning civilian status and then carrying out an offensive attack with explicit intent to kill or wound the target is a war crime. The Trump administration has claimed that its lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the waters around Latin America are lawful because President Donald Trump has determined the US Is in an armed conflict with drug cartels. That contention is widely disputed by legal experts. The Trump administration's investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sparked backlash that's number two. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell. The probe is tied to the renovation of the central bank's headquarters along the National Mall. The potential prosecution of the leader of the nation's central bank is a possibly unprecedented move. Economists and legal experts say it could threaten the rule of law and undermine economic stability. In a sign that the probe could backfire against Trump, at least three key Senate Republicans yesterday spoke out against the investigation. In a post on X, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he would oppose any nomination for Powell's successor until the legal matter is resolved. His concerns were echoed to varying degrees by Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Kevin Kramer of North Dakota. Number three, Minnesota, sued federal immigration authorities yesterday. The Trump administration's immigration crackdown in cities across the US has been under heightened scrutiny since an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis last week. Good was a 37 year old mother of three. The incident has raised tensions and sparked protests in the Twin Cities and across the country, even as the Trump administration has warned that hundreds more agents are heading to Minneapolis. In a lawsuit filed yesterday, Minnesota officials claimed that the Trump administration's unprecedented surge of immigration agents is politically motivated and violates the U.S. constitution. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, a Democrat, spoke at a news conference yesterday.
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If the goal was immigration enforcement, if the goal were simply to look for people that are undocumented, Minneapolis and St. Paul would not be the place where you would go. There are countless more people that are undocumented in Florida and Texas and Utah. Why are they in these much smaller cities in the middle of the Midwest? The answer is very clear. It is politics. Florida and Texas and Utah are Republican states.
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Minnesota's lawsuit asks a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop or limit the Department of Homeland Security's deployments. Number four the Supreme Court will hear arguments today on state bans of trans athletes in women's sports. Justices will decide whether two such bans in Idaho and West Virginia violate the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. It will also weigh whether West Virginia's ban violates Title 9. That's a civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Their ruling is expected in the summer. It could determine what happens with similar laws in more than half the country. There are about 300,000 transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S. according to one estimate. The West Virginia case concerns a 15 year old who is the only transgender student athlete in her state. US carbon emissions increased in 2025, reversing a downward trend. That's number five. After two years of declines in the amount of greenhouse gases the US pumped into the atmosphere, emissions rose an estimated 2.4% during 2025. That's according to a new analysis. The rise came even before the Trump administration's pro fossil fuel policies have fully taken hold. There are a few culprits. Coal plants churned out more electricity, power hungry data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations drove up demand, and colder winter temperatures meant more furnaces working overtime. The report's authors noted that Trump has taken steps to stop publishing key data about the nation's emissions. Number six we made a quiz to help you decide whether your kids are too sick for school since the coronavirus pandemic, public health and school officials say that parents have been more likely to skip the school bus at the first sign of sniffles, especially in winter. But now school leaders are stressing the benefits of routine attendance and reminding parents that missed days can have consequences for a child's education and development. So our reporters made a quiz combining insight from pediatric experts with guidance from local school leaders. It covers fevers, different types of coughs, rashes and more. An online quiz is not a substitute for medical care, obviously, but we hope it will help parents decide when they should send kids to school and when to keep them at home and at number seven. We asked professional organizers for their tough love advice for your clutter problems Our relationship to our stuff is complicated. If you look around your house, you might see some items you're holding onto even though you don't use, need or even want them. But maybe the thought of getting rid of them brings up guilt, shame, overwhelm and other big feelings. So we asked professional organizers how to cope. One tip they gave is to narrow your definition of special. One organizer said, if everything is special, then nothing is, so choose the best and let the rest go. Another tip is to never put a bag down. When you walk into the house with a bag from the store, immediately empty it and put the items where they should go. The rest of the organizer's 16 tips are really worth looking through today. You can find them in our newsletter. Find that in our show Notes Happy Decluttering. Alright, you're all caught up. For your next lesson, check out the latest episode of Post Reports. It dives deeper into the protests unfolding in Iran and whether they might succeed in bringing down the government. Find Post Reports wherever you listen to podcasts and don't forget to leave the show a nice rating or review. I'm Hannah Jewell. I'll meet you back here tomorrow.