NEWS

The Laken Riley Act is likely to be the first bill President Donald Trump signs into law in his second term in office. A teen fatally shot a female student and wounded another at a Nashville high school. President Trump announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to build artificial intelligence infrastructure.

🙋🏼‍♀️ I’m Nicole Fallert, Daily Briefing author. If you just turned on your space heater, read this.

Bipartisan Laken Riley Act heads to Trump’s desk

The passage of the Laken Riley Act, a bill targeting crime committed by immigrants, marks a shift for Democrats on immigration after their bruising defeat in the 2024 elections.

What’s the bill? The bill would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to detain people who are in the United States without legal status who are arrested, charged with or accused of certain crimes including burglary, theft, larceny and shoplifting, or assaulting a law enforcement officer.

• Democrats were divided. In a passionate debate ahead of the House vote Wednesday, several Democrats argued that the legislation violates civil rights by detaining people who are simply accused of a crime.
• Emphasis on the word “accused”: “If someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y. “That is what is in this bill, a fundamental suspension of a core American value.”
• But the bill got enough bipartisan support. House Republicans have been pushing the legislation since last year, after Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant in Georgia in February 2024.

Armed student opened fire in Nashville high school cafeteria

A female student was killed and another student was injured Wednesday in a shooting in a Nashville high school cafeteria. The shooting at Antioch High School jarred the community nearly two years after another school massacre sparked a debate for gun reform in Tennessee. Despite a special legislative session on gun control and mental health held in August 2023, Tennessee lawmakers have not passed any meaningful gun reform. Read more

More news to know now

What’s the weather today? Check your local forecast here.

LA County’s Hughes wildfire rages

A fast-moving blaze, dubbed the Hughes Fire, is forcing evacuations of neighborhoods, schools and even jails as firefighters battle to fight the brush fire that spread across nearly 9,500 acres of bone-dry Los Angeles County in a region already scorched for weeks. Residents near the Castaic area were ordered to evacuate or warned to be ready to leave quickly ahead of the Hughes Fire. Here’s what to know if you’re in the affected area.

Behemoth data centers are coming

“Immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI. And this will include the construction of colossal data centers.”

~President Trump announcing his new $500 billion AI venture, called Stargate, on Tuesday. The initiative will build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle have committed investments for the project, which will build twenty data centers of half a million square feet each.

Today’s talkers

The Oscar nominations are finally here

Oscar nominations will be announced Thursday morning during a difficult moment for Hollywood. After ongoing wildfires destroyed homes and lives for those behind the scenes and on screen, the ceremony to announce the nominees for the industry’s top accolade was delayed until Thursday. Now the nominations will proceed and we’ll finally learn if “The Brutalist” will place in a raft of categories, if “Emilia Pérez” truly has taken awards season by storm or if the “Wicked” witches will rule Oz 

and Hollywood. Here are all our predictions.

Photo of the day: What flavor Oreos does Post Malone eat?

Limited Edition Post Malone Oreo Cookies feature a first-of-a-kind swirled creme, two different flavored cookies and embossments that represent Malone’s music career.

Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at USA TODAY, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at [email protected].