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January 29, 2025

2 entries on this date.

Trump signed memo directing Pentagon and DHS to expand Guantánamo Bay to house up to 30,000 migrant detainees

On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to full capacity, stating the facility would hold up to 30,000 detained immigrants. The site in Cuba falls outside ordinary U.S. federal court jurisdiction, raising legal uncertainty about detainees' access to habeas corpus review. Administration officials described intended detainees as "high-priority criminal aliens," though subsequent transfers included low-risk detainees with no serious criminal records.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Senate his 2019 Samoa trip was unrelated to vaccines; colleague emails described it as a vaccine mission

During his January 29, 2025 Senate confirmation hearings for HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified that his 2019 trip to Samoa "had nothing to do with vaccines." FOIA-released State Department emails, reported in June 2026, show that his then-colleague Dr. Michael Graven—chief information officer of Kennedy's anti-vaccine nonprofit Children's Health Defense—explicitly described the trip as a "mission" to study vaccine discontinuance outcomes and stated that Kennedy personally asked him to join. Two Democratic senators and a House member had previously stated that earlier documentary evidence showed Kennedy lied to the Senate.