← The NewsWorthy
The NewsWorthy
Lawmakers Assaulted, TikTok Censorship? & KPop Demon Hunters Toys - Wednesday, January 28, 2026
00:14:02
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Today is Wednesday, January 28th. We're talking about two members of Congress who say they were violently confronted over immigration. A government watchdog's version of the shooting of Alex Preddy that tells things differently than some top officials and how the immigration crackdown in the US has started to stir opposition overseas. Plus what new data on the US Population shows which Amazon experiment seems to have officially failed and how different kinds of toys are now featuring K pop demon hunters. Those stories and even more news coming up. Welcome to the Newsworthy. All the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. Thanks so much for being here. Let's do this. As tensions over immigration enforcement rise all around the country, multiple members of Congress have seemingly become targets. Yesterday it was Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. She was born in Somalia but is from Minnesota and was speaking at a town hall there when the incident happened. Omar had just said we must abolish ICE for good when a man sitting directly in front of her stood up and sprayed her with a syringe full of strong smelling liquid. He then said something before a security officer tackled him to the ground, handcuffed him and removed him from the room. As of this morning, it's still not clear what he said or what exactly he sprayed, but Omar did not appear hurt and she continued the town hall. The whole thing came just days after Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost said he was punched in the face as part of a racist assault at Sundance Film Festival. Frost says the man told him President Trump was going to deport him before yelling a racist slur. Frost says he's ok. The suspect has been arrested. An initial review of the shooting that killed Alex Preddy came out this week, and several news outlets say they were able to review it. It comes from U.S. customs and Border Patrol's internal watchdog office. It's actually the first official written assessment of this shooting, and it contradicts what some officials in the Trump administration have said about it. Remember, Preddy was the second American citizen to be killed at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis this month, and the preliminary assessment of his death does not mention Preddy attacking officers or threatening them with a weapon before the shooting happened. This review was based on body camera footage and documentation from the Customs and Border Protection Agency. The body cam footage has not been made public, but the way the report explains the confrontation seems to be similar to what the public has seen in bystander videos. The report says the whole thing started when two women were blowing whistles while officers were conducting an immigration enforcement operation and that one officer pushed them both away. Then it says one of the women ran to Preddy. So the report says the officer tried to move that woman and Preddy out of the road. And when they didn't move, he used pepper spray on both of them. Then when officers tried to take Preddy into custody, it says he resisted. During that struggle, an agent yelled, he's got a gun. About five seconds later, two officers shot Preddy. And after that, an agent said he actually had taken Preddy's gun away already. The report was just meant to provide an initial outline of what happened for Congress to see, but it did not come up with a conclusion or judgment. Remember, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Preddy's actions as domestic terrorism, saying he was attacking officers. And White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller described Preddy as a would be assassin. Now that the preliminary report from Border Protection's watchdog office has come out pretty more lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are criticizing Noem and Miller for their quick characterization of the incident. Well, Noem met with President Trump for nearly two hours yesterday. He made it clear he had no plans to ask her to step down and told reporters she's doing a very good job. Trump also said he was looking to de escalate in Minnesota, but not pull back his immigration crackdown. When asked about his decision to replace Border Patrol Commander Greg Bevino in Minnesota, he told Fox News Bavino is a quote out there kind of guy and that maybe it wasn't good here. Trump instead sent in border czar Tom Homan, who started meeting with local officials yesterday. News reports cite sources who say they spoke about a possible deal to transfer more immigrants from the state's prisons and jails over to the federal government. And Democratic officials like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry still requested the ICE agents go home. At this point, reports say no one made any specific promises, but that everyone seemed eager to turn down the heat. A US Border Patrol agent was involved in a separate shooting in Arizona yesterday. Authorities say the man who was shot was a human trafficking suspect who escaped from a halfway house related to an earlier smuggling conviction. They say the suspect fired on a federal government helicopter near the Mexican border and then got into a shootout with the agent. The suspect ended up being seriously hurt. An investigation is now underway. More than a year after wildfires tore through Southern California, President Trump is moving to take over the recovery efforts. In what's being called an unprecedented decision, the president issued an executive order to take away the local authority to issue permits for rebuilding homes and businesses destroyed in the fires. The order says that authority will now fall to the federal government. Trump says local governments have only approved a fraction of the permits needed to rebuild and that this should help get things moving. But the order is expected to be challenged by state and local officials. California governor Gavin Newsom In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass criticized the order, already saying permits are not the problem and that the real issue is not enough federal funding. They called on President Trump to instead provide FEMA funding. They've been asking for speed up FEMA reimbursements and so on. About 16,000 homes, businesses and other buildings were destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, data shows. At this point, owners have applied for permits to rebuild about 30% of them. So far, only about 15% of them have actually gotten the permits needed to move ahead, Yale University is expanding its financial aid program to cover more middle class families. Starting in the fall, the Ivy League school is offering free tuition to students from households earning up to $200,000 a year. Tuition at Yale next year is more than $72,000, but the full cost, including room and board fees and books, will be about $98,000 a year. So now students whose families make up to $100,000 won't have to pay anything. Of course, they all have to be admitted first. Yale's new policy essentially matches the deal Harvard started offering last year, which followed similar announcements by mit, Princeton and others. More news is still coming up, but first a quick break to talk about our sponsor. There are a lot of decisions to make as a parent, but one that's been super simple for me two years ago and is still true today in 2026 is giving my son Haya's children's vitamins. While other products seem to prioritize candy like appeal, Haya looked at what modern kids are actually eating or not eating and formulated around those specific nutritional gaps, working alongside pediatricians and nutrition scientists. And still my son loves taking his Chaiya vitamins and probiotics. He loves the taste, the colors and just the routine of it. And I love that. Haya earned Clean Label Project's Highest Purity Award certification and puts every batch of product through third party testing for heavy metals and contaminants in GMP compliant labs. Oh, and if getting your kids to eat vegetables feels like an impossible daily battle, Haya's New Kids Daily Greens plus Superfoods is a total game changer. It's basically chocolate milk stuffed with veggies. It's a greens powder that's packed with over 55 whole food sourced ingredients. Just mix one scoop with milk or any non dairy beverage and watch them actually enjoy something that's secretly fueling their growing bodies. We've worked out a special deal with Haya for their best selling children's vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order to claim this deal you must go to hygahealth.com Newsworthy this deal is not available on their regular website. Go to H I Y-A H-E-A-L-T-Com Newsworthy to get your kids the full body nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults. Now back to the news. New data shows American population growth has slowed way down. Of course, the biggest reason for that is the big drop in immigration, but the birth rate has continued to drop too. Overall, the Census Bureau says the country's population grew by just about 1.8 million people during the 12 months ending last June. That's about half the growth rate of just one year earlier, and it's one of the slowest growth rates in American history. Only once has the US Population increased by a smaller amount, and that was in 2021, when the pandemic closed borders and caused a spike in deaths. By the way, not every state is feeling the same slowdown. The data shows the fastest growing state was South Carolina, followed by Idaho, North Carolina and Texas. The fastest shrinking state was Vermont, followed by Hawaii, West Virginia and New Mexico. There are now plans to send ICE agents to this year's Winter Olympics in in Italy, the Homeland Security Department says ICE will be there to evaluate risks from transnational criminal organizations, and they won't actually be doing any kind of immigration enforcement. Still, at least some Italian officials are not happy about this, especially after recent violence in Minneapolis, for example, Milan's mayor specifically said ICE agents aren't welcome in his city because of their tactics, and an online petition asking Italy to block them at the border got more than 30,000 signatures in just a few hours. Italy's interior minister met with the US ambassador to Italy to talk about this issue yesterday, and they say authorities will keep talking about American security in the coming weeks. In the days since TikTok's ownership change became official, it's been dealing with a series of setbacks. For starters, we told you about widespread tech problems over the weekend, things like slow load times and timeout requests when posting videos. Well, they've lingered into the week, and now many users, including some celebrities and popular creators, are raising concerns about the app allegedly censoring videos, including ones critical of President Trump, Ice or Jeffrey Epstein. They explain by saying their videos have not gotten the kind of engagement they're used to, or that videos have been put in a review process. And California governor Gavin Newsom says he's launching a review to see if there's any censoring that might be violating state law. The company blames a power outage at a data center and says it's not changing or rejecting content because of politics. Still, the timing did not bode well for a lot of users since it happened just after TikTok finalized its high profile deal to bring on U S based leadership that President Trump has supported, and now downloads of competitor apps have seen a boost. Speaking of TikTok, the company reached an agreement to settle a landmark lawsuit on social media addiction. Exact terms of the settlement weren't made public. Still, the trial will continue against Meta and YouTube over allegations their platforms can be addictive and harmful to children, and all three companies, as well as Snap are still defendants in more than a dozen other cases. Here's a shift in how Amazon plans to sell you groceries Amazon is shutting down all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, ending a years long experiment with high tech brick and mortar retail. The company says it will close 57Amazon Fresh stores and 15Amazon Go locations. Some of those locations will be converted into Whole Foods Markets, which Amazon already owns, and Amazon says it plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores in the coming years. Amazon Fresh, which targeted more price conscious shoppers than Whole Foods, never really caught on despite smart carts and lower prices. And Amazon Go, the cashierless stores we've told you about before, where you can just walk out without checking out, also failed to resonate on a larger scale. Amazon is still all in on groceries, though just not in the way it had once imagined. The company seems to be doubling down on online same day delivery and it will also keep experimenting, including plans for a big box store in a Chicago suburb and more small Whole Foods daily shop locations. Demon Hunters is about to be more visible than ever. Rivals Hasbro and Mattel have both started promoting new toy lines including dolls, action figures, roleplay items and games, all based on the hit Netflix movie. Even some of the toymaker's staples like American Girl, Monopoly, Polly Pocket, Nerf and Furby are coming out with K Pop Demon Hunter versions of their toys. Typically, merchandise is released around the same time as a movie, but the success of this one seemed to catch executives off guard so there wasn't a line of officially licensed merch out at first. Of course, that has changed now that K Pop Demon Hunters has become Netflix's most popular movie ever, hitting more than half a billion views. The new toys will start rolling out this summer, about a year after the movie's release. That's it for the main news today. So now we now it's time for Work Wednesday, when we break down one interesting career or work related news story every Wednesday and looks like thousands of people could soon get layoff notices from UPS. The delivery giant has plans to cut 30,000 more jobs on top of the 48,000 that were cut last year. UPS says it's shrinking its workforce as part of a multi year turnaround strategy that includes winding down its Amazon partnership and closing buildings. Plus, the company says it's planning to add more automation. Of course, UPS is not alone there. A recent World Economic Forum survey found about 41% of companies worldwide expected to reduce their workforces in the next five years because of the rise in artificial intelligence. And for various reasons. Citi T Mobile and Pinterest have already cut jobs this year. More than 100 other companies, from Amazon to Nike to Verizon, have also filed notices about job cuts to come soon. But there is some hope for people about to be looking for work since some companies have also talked about adding new roles. One economist told Business Insider this year could actually be a little bit easier for job searching, since employers won't be dealing with the uncertainty of what a new administration could bring. But of course, it depends on the field and what happens in the months to come. Thank you so much for listening today and for sharing the show with others. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest news. Until then, have a great day.