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Terry Hodge would have a tough time caring for the 150 or so elderly women at Bethany Health Care Center without the dozens of immigrant nursing assistants, housekeepers, dietary aides and other staffers at the Framingham, Massachusetts, facility.
More than 40% of her employees were born abroad, hailing from 26 countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ghana, said Hodge, the center’s administrator. Among the certified nursing assistants, the figure is 84%.
They are workers whom Bethany “can’t afford to lose,” she said, noting they help residents get out of bed, escort them to the bathroom, dress and feed them, give them medication and talk to them.
“Our residents rely heavily on the care and companionship of the nursing staff and the housekeeping staff,” Hodge continued. “The immigrant workers are very crucial to the functioning of this facility and to the physical and mental health of the people they serve.”
That’s why President Donald Trump’s vow to deport millions of immigrants in the US and restrict the influx of new arrivals has so concerned Hodge and her workers — particularly those who are asylum seekers and beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status programs since Trump has tried to target these measures in the past.
“They are extremely anxious about what the future holds for them,” she said. “We, as a facility, are anxious about losing any staff.”
Two sisters, both undocumented immigrants, are speaking out against the Trump administration’s intention to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
“It’s just scary knowing that we’re here trying to do the right thing, and like, we’re going to school, we’re full-term students, we’re working jobs, and we’re not doing anything to harm like anybody or anything,” Anna Ibarra told CNN.
Anna and Brenda Ibarra, who attend college at Oklahoma State in Tulsa, say they moved to Tulsa with their family sometime in 2007. At the time, Brenda was 3, and Anna was just a year old.
“We want our voices to be heard. Immigrants are not here to commit crimes. If we were here to commit crimes, many of them would be in jail,” said Brenda Ibarra, 22. “But instead, they’re raiding workplaces. Immigrants are here to work and to better their lives, not do anything bad.”
Anna Ibarra, 20, said it’s scary that they want to do this in places such as businesses and schools.
“I think it’s just so unfair for the people that have been working so hard, and the people that are paying taxes and get nothing in return, and just their hard work is just going to go away because of just wanting to do these mass deportations,” she said.
If they get sent back to Mexico, Brenda Ibarra said they “would have a hard time finding ourselves there because our whole life has been here.”
“We’re not here to take anybody’s jobs,” Brenda Ibarra said. “We’re here to work, help the economy, and study. We’re not criminals; all we want to do is make a better life for ourselves in the place where we grew up.”
State and local leaders across the country are bracing for a tidal wave of aggressive immigration policies and possible mass deportations that President Donald Trump has vowed to enact in the hours and days following his inauguration Monday.
The immigration actions – which are already being challenged in court – could create fear and confusion in cities with robust immigrant populations as everyone from school bus drivers to restaurant managers and church pastors will be left to wonder what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes knocking.
Nationwide, state and city officials have been making preparations for the inevitable immigration crackdown. And while many have plans in place to support migrant communities – and in some cases thwart federal immigration enforcement – others have expressed enthusiastic support for Trump’s planned policies.
Read about how states are responding to the new immigration actions.
For many of America’s 170 million TikTok users, US President Donald Trump’s move to delay a legal ban of the popular social media platform was cause for celebration.
But in China, where TikTok’s parent company is based, the reception has been less positive, largely because Trump has suggested he could require the company to give up a 50% stake to avert its shutdown.
The future of TikTok should be “decided by companies” in line with Chinese law, China’s Foreign Ministry said Monday ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
The US should “earnestly listen to the voice of reason” and “provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment” for companies from all countries, spokesperson Mao Ning said when asked about the joint venture proposal.
On Chinese social media, where TikTok’s fate has appeared as one among many efforts from the US to stymy Beijing’s technical prowess, Trump’s suggestions were met with disdain.
Tens of millions of users on the social media platform Weibo flocked to hashtags related to the potential 50-50 ownership, with many decrying the US government’s “robbery.”
“Apple and Tesla should also give up 50% of their shares to Chinese companies then,” one comment with thousands of likes said.
“We need 50% control of Nvidia then!” said another commentator, referring to the US chipmaker.
World leaders have congratulated President Donald Trump on his inauguration, with many urging stronger alliances or continued cooperation between their countries and the United States, in carefully crafted social media posts and statements.
Trump’s return to the White House portends a seismic shakeup in international relations, with the new president immediately ordering the US’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and World Health Organization, as world leaders brace for new tariffs on goods and the impact of Trump’s “America first” agenda.
Some populist leaders celebrated Trump’s return, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who called the US president a “dear friend,” and Hungary’s Victor Orbán who declared, “now it’s our turn to shine.”
But not all the messages were congratulatory.
Some leaders expressed their anger at remarks Trump made during his Inauguration Day speech, or with the controversial raft of executive actions he signed almost immediately after entering the Oval Office.
Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino rejected Trump’s promise that the US would be “taking back” the Panama Canal. The vital waterway in Central America was built by the US but is now controlled by Panama.
Other regional neighbors were also critical of Trump.
Cuba condemned Trump’s decision to put the Communist-run island back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, with its president calling the move, “an act of arrogance and disregard for the truth.”
But outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a more conciliatory tone, despite Trump’s recent jibes about making Canada the 51st US state and indication that he will impose a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico on February 1.
With the stroke of a pen on Monday, President Donald Trump completely upended the Justice Department’s four-year effort to arrest, prosecute and punish the people who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It was the largest criminal probe in American history, those who heeded Trump’s call in 2021 to come to Washington and try to stop Congress from certifying his 2020 election defeat. More than 140 police officers were injured during the seven-hour siege, which also led to the deaths of four Trump supporters in the mob and five police officers.
The presidential proclamation Trump signed in the Oval Office said this action of mass clemency “ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people.”
Two brothers convicted for their roles in the attack on the US Capitol were the first of those pardoned to be released. Andrew Valentin and Matthew Valentin, who were each sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison, walked out of the DC Central Detention Facility on Monday night.
Here’s what to know about the pardons:
• Virtually all convicted pardoned: The proclamation Trump signed grants a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to virtually everyone who was convicted of January 6-related crimes.
• Commutations for leaders of extremist groups: Trump’s proclamation singled out 14 members of far-right extremist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who received commutations instead of pardons. This means they’ll be freed from federal prison but won’t have their civil rights restored, as happens with a full pardon, which paves the way for a recipient to get back their right to own a gun or their right to vote.
• Dismissing all pending prosecutions: Trump’s proclamation directed about 300 pending cases to be dismissed.
• Trump went further than anyone expected: During and after the 2024 campaign, Trump kept the door open to pardoning every defendant. But he also hedged at times. In recent weeks, Trump’s allies signaled that pardons would be restricted to nonviolent defendants. But there was no “case-by-case” review, as Trump aides promised.
• He justified them with lies: Trump justified the pardons with the same series of lies and false claims that he has used for years to whitewash the violence, deflect blame and rewrite history.
Read more about the mass pardons.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed actions that remove the US from the Paris climate agreement, freeze hiring in the federal government and require federal workers to return to the office.
Here are some of the actions Trump took on his first day in office:
President Donald Trump completed his incredible comeback by delivering his second inaugural address in the rotunda of the US Capitol.
Before closing with a pledge to bind the nation and unify Americans, he borrowed lines from his campaign speeches and he promised broad changes in US government, to guard against an invasion at the southern border and to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
We added context and fact-checks to a transcript of Trump’s second inaugural address.
In his first hours few hours in office, President Donald Trump implemented a series of executive actions that are expected to kickstart his promised transformation of the federal government.
Trump rescinded 78 Biden-era executive actions, many of which Joe Biden signed on the first day of his administration.
Among the Biden-era actions that Trump rescinded are:
- An executive order that required federal agencies to extend prohibitions on sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity
- An order that required executive branch appointees to sign an ethics pledge
- An order that allowed transgender people to serve in the US military
- An order that banned the renewal of private prison contracts
- Trump also reversed Biden’s actions that withdrew Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terror, applied sanctions on Jewish settlers in the West Bank and sought to reduce the risks of artificial intelligence.
Biden only recently removed Cuba from the terror list. The list of revoked orders Trump signed Monday did not specify individual reasons for reversing the Biden moves.
Biden applied the sanctions on certain Jewish settlers accused of fomenting violence in the West Bank in February 2024.
And his 2023 AI order aimed to monitor and regulate the risks of artificial intelligence.
Donald Trump on Monday restored the warp speed presidency.
Proclaiming a new American “Golden Age,” Trump consolidated power hours into his new term, wielding massive executive authority in seeking to obliterate large chunks of Joe Biden’s legacy and showing he plans to learn from his first-term failures to pull off a transformational presidency.
Trump pardoned hundreds of rioters from the January 6, 2021, attack with a single signature in his black Sharpie. He initiated his promised immigration purge and border security plan and ushered billionaire tech oligarchs into his inner political circle.
The new president set off simultaneous political alarms in multiple foreign capitals with off-the-cuff foreign policy making, instantly turning the US away from the internationalism embraced by every president apart from him since World War II.
In a freewheeling news conference back in the Oval Office, Trump demonstrated a capacity to drive his own message and move geopolitical chess pieces in public in a way that Biden lost when age caught up with him. The imagery was of a well-briefed new president eyeing big goals, confident that his first term gives him a heads-up on how to wield the levers of power and determined to make the most of a second chance.
But Trump also laced the pageantry of Inauguration Day with rally-style grievance politics and vast doses of untruths, twisted facts and an increasingly messianic sense of his own power, which was a foreboding omen for the rule of law. Several rambling and vindictive speeches in addition to his inaugural address suggested that, as in his first term, his biggest challenge in forging a meaningful legacy will lie in choosing presidential focus over stunt politics.
Read more about the impact of Trump’s first actions in office.
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, a couple of months after he became just the second person in history to win a nonconsecutive term in the White House.
Trump defeated Kamala Harris in November’s election, completing a historic political comeback four years after he lost to Joe Biden. Trump served as president from 2017-2021.
The inauguration ceremony took place inside the US Capitol Rotunda due to dangerously cold temperatures projected in the nation’s capital.
See the best photos from this historic day here.
The removal of the former US military chief’s portrait from the Pentagon as President Donald Trump returned to power sends a message of “intimidation to the military leadership,” a CNN military analyst said.
The portrait of Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s first term and has warned Trump is a fascist, was torn down from a Pentagon wall just 10 days after it was unveiled, CNN reported Monday.
Retired Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton told CNN’s Laura Coates the move was unprecedented and “almost Stalinist,” referring to former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who was known for cutting his enemies out of photographs.
The removal of the portrait was also a warning to military leaders that “their tenure could be very short lived if they displease the president,” Leighton said, adding that it will “impact morale.”
Earlier Monday, former President Joe Biden issued a preemptive pardon for Milley along with others, to which Trump reacted, saying, “Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley?”
After signing a slew of executive actions in front of thousands of supporters at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, on Monday, President Donald Trump signed more executive actions at the Oval Office.
Here are some of them:
- Pardons for January 6 defendants: Trump pardoned US Capitol rioters, saying the pardon would cover more than 1,500 people, which would appear to cover nearly everyone charged since the attack on January 6, 2021.
- Immigration: He signed a slate of immigration executive actions that will prompt an immigration crackdown, including trying to end the constitutional issue of birthright citizenship, designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, declaring a national emergency at the US southern border.
- TikTok: He signed an executive action that delays enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days.
- Withdrawal from WHO: Trump announced Monday he is withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization, a significant move cutting ties with the United Nation’s public health agency on his first day in office.
Read more about Trump’s Day 1 executive actions.
President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive actions in front of thousands of supporters at Capital One Arena in Washington DC on Monday.
He started by rescinding 78 Biden-era actions.
Here’s what else Trump signed at the arena:
- Regulatory freeze: The freeze will prevent bureaucrats from issuing any more regulations until the Trump officials take full control of the government.
- Hiring freeze: There will be a freeze on federal hiring, except the military and a number of other categories, until Trump officials are in full control.
- Full-time return to work: Federal workers will be required to return to full-time in-person work immediately.
- Cost of living: A directive to every federal agency and department to address the cost of living crisis.
- Withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement: This will formalize the US pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement again. Trump has done this in his first term, but Biden had joined the agreement again. Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations, explaining the withdrawal.
- Freedom of speech: The federal government was directed to restore freedom of speech and prevent government censorship of free speech. The First Amendment already guarantees free speech in the US.
- Ending weaponization of government: Trump’s directive to the federal government is meant to end weaponization of government against the political adversaries of the previous administration
The president then tossed the pens that he used to sign the executive actions into the crowd after he finished signing.
