Politics
State Dept says Iran nuclear deal will not be an ‘escape hatch’ for Russian sanctions

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The State Division on Tuesday warned that any try by Russia to push sanction reduction because the UN appears to safe a nuclear take care of Iran will fail.
“The JCPOA isn’t going to be an escape hatch for the Russian Federation and the sanctions which have been imposed on it due to the struggle in Ukraine,” State Division press secretary Ned Value advised reporters.
WAR IN UKRAINE CONTINUES: LIVE UPDATES
Ukrainian Nationwide Guard, Armed Forces, particular operations items train as they simulate a disaster scenario in an city settlement, within the deserted metropolis of Pripyat close to the Chernobyl Nuclear Energy Plant, Ukraine, Feb. 4, 2022.
(AP Picture/Mykola Tymchenko, File)
Value’s feedback come after talks on reaching a nuclear take care of Iran have as soon as once more stalled, although this time over Russian calls for.
Russia, a member of the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA) together with the U.Ok., France, Germany, the European Union and China, threw a wrench within the near-yearlong negotiations after it referred to as for its personal sanction reduction to be included within the dealings.
The West hit Moscow with crippling sanctions following its lethal invasion of Ukraine three weeks in the past – a transfer that has already had devastating results on Russia’s financial system.
Russian negotiators final week stalled the nuclear deal by demanding sanction immunity for any future commerce with Iran.
IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS SCREECH TO A HALT AMID NEW RUSSIAN DEMANDS

Vladimir President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine solely eight months after TIME journal billed President Biden as able to tackle the Russian chief.
(Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Picture by way of AP)
Value on Tuesday stated talks had been ongoing however famous “we’re not there but.”
“Nothing is agreed till the whole lot is agreed,” he added.
It’s unclear if the U.S. has agreed to any of Russia’s calls for, however the State Division spokesman stated the U.S. wouldn’t sanction Russia “for enterprise or collaborating in nuclear initiatives which can be a part of the JCPOA.”
Russia supported the unique 2015 JCPOA settlement that held till 2019 when Tehran argued it was now not certain by the deal following the U.S.’s withdrawal in 2018.
Value argued Russia nonetheless helps the settlement and stated a nuclear Iran was not in Moscow’s “curiosity.”
“We hope to have the ability to full a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA in brief order,” the spokesman advised reporters. “We should always be capable to if negotiators, if the events, come collectively and negotiate in good religion and shut out these remaining excellent points.”

U.S. State Division spokesman Ned Value speaks throughout a information convention.
Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced his personal sanctions on the U.S. Tuesday and focused President Biden together with quite a few high administration officers.
The White Home dismissed the sanctions as trivial and famous none of these focused had banks in Russia or deliberate to make a journey to the nation any time within the close to future.
Value was not included on the record of officers sanctioned.

Politics
Dan Osborn is looking for 'working-class heroes' to shake up U.S. politics
Omaha, NE — Dan Osborn, a mechanic by trade, has been rebuilding a 1988 Pontiac Firebird in his garage. He plans to drop in a fuel-injected V-8 engine at some point, but these days Osborn, whose tattoos tend toward the nautical, is spending much of his time trying to convince working-class candidates to break into politics.
He looked at the car, covered in dust, upholstery torn.
“I’m working on it with my son,” he said. “It’ll get done one day.”
Osborn became a political surprise last year when he ran for the U.S. Senate as an independent in Nebraska and lost a close race to Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. If he had won, it could have narrowed the balance of power in Congress and complicated President Trump’s agenda.
His mechanic versus the well-monied career politician narrative inspired his new Working Class Heroes Fund, a political action committee that has raised about $500,000 in donations since November to train unions to recruit and support local and national candidates. They include an electrician running for the Wisconsin state legislature and a Marine combat veteran and mechanic challenging Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), whose vote was key in confirming Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
Dan Osborn, center, speaks at an election night watch party on Nov. 5.
(Bonnie Ryan / Associated Press)
“We want to give working-class people a seat at the table,” said Osborn, 49, who in 2021 led hundreds of his fellow union members on a 77-day strike against the Kellogg cereal plant in Omaha. “We’re about to have our first trillionaire in this country. I was blown away: $50 trillion since 1980 has migrated from 90% of Americans to the top half of 1%. The super-uber wealthy class is taking advantage and they’re doing it through our elected officials.”
Osborn’s appeal is an everyman’s plainspokenness tuned into the anger and disenchantment not only of the Midwest factory worker and farmer but of the Silicon Valley gig worker, the Hollywood tradesperson and the Las Vegas waitress: “I don’t call it economic populism. I call it paycheck populism,” he said. “That’s what makes sense to me. The economy is a huge thing. I can’t pin what that means. But I know what a paycheck is. I live week to week on it. And it’s not stretching as far.”
The test his movement faces — he may run against wealthy Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts in 2026 — is winning over disgruntled Democrats and making deeper inroads into Trump’s base. Osborn favors workers’ rights and higher corporate taxes but leans conservative on immigration and China. He won 20% of Trump voters in his Senate race.
Support for his brand of politician could rise as the president moves to cut social programs and splits widen in the Republican Party between tech billionaire backers like Elon Musk and those like Vice President JD Vance, who has emphasized the concerns of the working class.
Dan Osborn sits in his garage beside the 1988 Pontiac Firebird that he and his son, Liam, have worked on together over the past year.
(Rebecca S. Gratz / For The Times)
“Dan was able to break through,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “He can walk into a bar or a union hall in a Carhartt jacket because that’s who he is. He has a very authentic connection to Nebraskans. Voters want people like Dan to represent them, more teachers, union leaders and cops. He shook things up for both parties.”
Danny Begley met Osborn when he handed out sandwiches and firewood along picket lines during the Kellogg strike. A member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and an Omaha city councilman, Begley said Osborn “stood up to corporations and became a Rocky Balboa long shot against a powerful senator. He’s transformational. He’s not [programmed] to say what some think tank in Washington, D.C., says. He says what he believes in, and that matters in post-pandemic America.”
::
On a recent day, as a winter dusk settled over fields behind his house, Osborn sat in his living room, wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots. His wife, Megan, and their daughters — Georgia and Eve — were in the kitchen making salad and lasagna.
“It’s boyfriend night,” said Osborn, nodding toward the young man dating Georgia, a dancer who had recently returned home from Los Angeles. He listened to the chatter and recalled an evening not too many years ago when he and Megan were doing their taxes and discovered the consequences of his working a lot of Sunday double-shifts at Kellogg.
“I know what a paycheck is,” Dan Osborn says. “I live week to week on it. And it’s not stretching as far.”
(Rebecca S. Gratz / For The Times)
“I paid $30,000 in taxes that year, but then we found we owed another $10,000 because the overtime kicked us into a higher bracket,” said Osborn, who now works as a steamfitter at a mechanical firm. “Megan was sitting there crying in the kitchen. I was so mad, so angry at my government. How are you supposed to get ahead?”
A dog barked. Voices drifted in and out of the kitchen. Dinner was almost ready, and Eve, a high school junior, had to go upstairs soon to do homework. There was an empty place at the table for his son Liam, who was away at college studying aviation. Bread was cut and the scent of garlic and tomato lifted in the oven air.
The son of a railroad man and a seamstress, Osborn’s life is a portrait of a large swath of America: He played basketball in high school, bused tables and did a stint in the Navy, where he worked the flight deck on the USS Constellation (“she’s scrap metal now”). He joined the National Guard, enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, dropped out when Megan got pregnant, and went to work at Kellogg, where he carried a union card and wondered about what would come next.
While Osborn’s family grew, the nation’s politics shifted. Many Democrats embraced identity politics and Republicans fell in line with Donald Trump’s reinvention of the party with nationalist populism that spoke to working-class grievances against globalization and immigration. Osborn, like millions of others, including 300,000 independents in Nebraska, does not feel kinship with either camp, but his populist sentiments are not as extreme as those of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor who blames tech oligarchs for destroying America.
Osborn lost to Fischer by about seven percentage points, but his candidacy showed what a political outsider in a polarized nation could accomplish.
“It was rough early in the campaign with grassroots field operations,” said Evan Schmeits, who managed Osborn’s campaign last year. “We were independent. No party backing. We went into these forgotten rural areas. We were able to get a lot of Trump voters because we concentrated on economic issues. We did well in the suburbs too. We were bringing people together in this era of divisiveness.”
Fischer and Republicans paid little mind to Osborn in the early days of the campaign. That changed when polls showed a tightening race and Osborn raised more than $30 million, catching the attention not only of the working class but of organizations such as the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans seeking an equitable economy.
Hollywood also took notice. Producer Tom Ortenberg, whose company distibuted “The Apprentice” biopic about Trump, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played a fictional vice president in “Veep,” hosted fundraisers for him.
Fischer portrayed her rival as a politically naive disciple of Bernie Sanders, calling Osborn “a lifelong far-left Democrat now masquerading as a moderate ‘Independent.’”
Osborn countered with ads suggesting he was closer to Trump than liberals on a number of issues, although his calls for immigration reform were directed toward restricting U.S. corporations from recruiting and exploiting migrant labor at the expense of working-class Americans. “Companies are paying migrants low wages to enrich themselves,” he said.

Dan Osborn chats with patrons of a brewery in Beatrice, Neb., in July.
(Margery Beck / Associated Press)
In one ad, Osborn held a blowtorch and said: “I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, well, I’m pretty handy.” Republicans then attacked Osborn for leading the Kellogg strike, which they claimed led to the company’s announcement that the Omaha plant was set to close in 2026.
The strike was pivotal to Osborn’s political ascent, coming at a time when unions, including the United Auto Workers, were pushing harder against companies for higher wages and benefits. (Kellogg fired him after the strike, saying he was watching Netflix during work. He said the charge was trumped up and his dismissal was retaliation.) His pro-labor philosophy echoed Nebraska’s legacy of prairie populism, notably the founding of the People’s Party in the 1890s, which criticized Republicans and Democrats for failing to protect workers and farmers.
“It wasn’t until corporate greed came knocking at my doorstep that I really started to observe the world in a different way,” said Osborn, who studied up on labor history and worked with other union members to raise $200,000 in strike funds. “I enjoyed fighting for working-class people at a time when Kellogg’s had profited greatly after COVID while everyone was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day that whole year as essential workers, no time off.”
Widening class differences, he said, are reflected in Congress where many members, especially in the Senate, are rich. They wouldn’t relate, he said, to the fact that “debt collectors don’t care if you’re on strike.” Osborn, who mentioned during the campaign that he didn’t own a suit, alluded to the idea that Trump and the billionaires around him epitomize corporate America’s hold on politics.
“I don’t have a problem with the existence of billionaires,” he said. ”I have a problem with our elected officials being in that class. Somebody like me is going to approach a policy differently than Sen. Pete Ricketts, whose family founded TD Ameritrade and owns the Chicago Cubs. He’s not going to see the world like I do. The federal government should look more like its citizens.”
Osborn can sound like a factory man from a Bruce Springsteen song, a character whose youthful exuberance and restless sense of escape have been tempered by life’s hard awakenings. He made more than 200 campaign stops across the state last year. His stories of struggle resonated from farm fields to union halls: his dad riding the bus everyday to work, his mom hemming pants and cleaning houses to make extra money, and the way he felt before his Kellogg job when he temporarily relied on Medicaid after Megan became pregnant with Georgia.
“I didn’t like that,” said Osborn, who mowed yards and landscaped to support his wife and newborn. In a post on X during last year’s campaign, he wrote that he had to “kill my dream of hanging a diploma on the wall because my family needed health insurance, diapers, and food on the table.”
“I’m glad that program (Medicaid) was there,” he said in an interview, “or I would have started out life with huge medical debt.”
One of his favorite stories recalls the time actor Charlton Heston, who played Moses in the “Ten Commandments” and later was president of the National Rifle Assn., got him fired as a bus boy.
“I was in high school working in a restaurant in the old-money part of town,” he said. “Heston comes in by himself and starts reading a book. I knew him. My dad made me watch all his movies.” Heston didn’t want to talk, said Osborn, who found that rude. “I grabbed his glass and said, ‘Hey, Chuck, do you want your water regular or parted, like Moses.’”
Dan Osborn, second from right, helps serve lasagna as his family, including, from left, his daughters Georgia and Eve, Brad Walton, and his wife, Megan, sit down for dinner.
(Rebecca S. Gratz / For The Times)
Osborn, in the telling, smiled.
“I was putting dishes away later and the manager taps me on the shoulder,” he said. “He told me, ‘I gotta fire you because Charlton Heston wants you fired.’ I had to leave then and there. I got a job at Godfather’s Pizza.”
::
It was pushing toward 7 p.m. The moon shone over Osborn’s house and the workers on his street were home for the night. A bottle of wine was uncorked.
“Dinner,” someone yelled.
He sat at the table with Megan, his daughters and the boyfriend. They talked about school, homelessness, a vacation to Rome, the war in Ukraine, and how Megan felt uncomfortable when political ads attacking her husband flashed across the TV in the sports bar and grill she manages. Her way of seeing the world frames Osborn’s politics, that people are exhausted, overworked and often not heard, but most of them are good and only want what’s fair.
“There are so many amazing and gracious people out there,” she said.
The plates were cleared. Eve went to do her homework. Georgia and the boyfriend drove away. Osborn went to the garage. The big door was open to the cold sky. It was getting late. There would be no work on the car. The tools were stacked and put away neat.
Politics
IRS to slash thousands of workers off the payroll: report

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly cutting thousands of probationary workers as tax season ramps up, according to The Associated Press.
The announcement comes just days after the Trump administration instructed agencies to fire most probationary workers who have not secured civil service protection.
The layoffs could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of people, although the exact number has not yet been confirmed, the AP reported.
The Associated Press reported thousands of IRS employees will be fired.
TRUMP SIGNS ORDER INSTRUCTING DOGE TO MASSIVELY CUT FEDERAL WORKFORCE
In addition to the probationary cuts, President Donald Trump announced on Jan. 29 that federal employees would be fired if they did not return to in-person work by early February.
A buyout offer, which has been extended, has already been accepted by about 65,000 employees.
The Associated Press reported IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season, which began on Jan. 27, are not eligible for the buyout until after the taxpayer filing deadline, according to a letter sent recently to IRS employees.

The IRS said in January Americans have benefitted from increased funding. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
LAWMAKERS FROM STATE WITH MOST FEDERAL WORKERS PER CAPITA WARN AGAINST TRUMP BUYOUT BID
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is tasked with eliminating wasteful government spending and increasing efficiency, aims to cut $2 trillion from the federal government budget by eliminating programs and trimming the federal workforce.
In January, the IRS announced it was “working to continue the success of the 2023 and 2024 tax filing seasons made possible with additional resources.”
The Biden administration’s Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act devoted $80 billion to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, according to a September 2023 report from the House Oversight Committee.
The oversight committee claimed the funds were used to employ agents that specifically targeted middle-class Americans.

Former President Joe Biden provided $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The past two filing seasons saw levels of service at roughly 85% and wait times averaging less than 5 minutes on the main phone lines, according to a statement from the IRS in January. There was also a significant increase in the number of taxpayers served at Taxpayer Assistance Centers nationwide.
“This has been a historic period of improvement for the IRS, and people will see additional tools and features to help them with filing their taxes this tax season,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel wrote in the statement. “These taxpayer-focused improvements we’ve done so far are important, but they are just the beginning of what the IRS needs to do. More can be done with continued investment in the nation’s tax system.”
The IRS expects to receive more than 140 million tax returns, according to the AP.
The IRS and Department of Treasury did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, as of Saturday night.
Politics
L.A.'s Asian immigrant communities prep for raids, brace for deportations

Los Angeles County’s sizable Asian immigrant communities are bracing for disruption and heartache as rumors swirl of mass deportations to be carried out under sweeping new orders issued by the Trump administration.
At religious centers and job sites, community leaders are hosting “Know Your Rights” training sessions in Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi and other languages to educate immigrants about their constitutional rights should they be confronted by federal agents at home or in the workplace.
“Overwhelmingly, concern is what we hear,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the South Asian Network. Even Asians who were born in the U.S. or have gained legal status through other routes are worried about what’s ahead. “Brown-looking people are perceived as permanent foreigners,” Syed said. “As a consequence, they, too, may be wrapped up in a raid, only because they don’t look ‘American.’”
While an estimated 79% of undocumented residents in L.A. County are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16% of people in the county without legal authorization, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the U.S., Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadorans.
Asian organizers say the Trump administration’s policies deeming anyone in the country without authorization a criminal, subject to expedited deportation, will have profound reverberations in Los Angeles County. According to the Pew Research Center, the L.A. metropolitan area is home to the largest populations of Cambodians, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Thai and Vietnamese people in the U.S.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump signed a slew of executive orders aimed at dramatically reshaping U.S. immigration. Taken together, the orders sharply limit legal pathways for entering the U.S., bolster enforcement efforts to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border, and promote aggressive sweeps to round up and deport people living in the U.S. illegally. He has empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to deport more than 1 million immigrants who were granted legal entry to the U.S. during the Biden administration while they awaited hearings on their asylum pleas.
Recently, a group of about 100 Indian migrants were transported back to India on a U.S. military plane. And this week, news reports said 119 migrants, including some from Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, were transported by plane to Panama, where they will await deportation to their home countries. Media reports suggest the Indian government has agreed to repatriate 18,000 Indians living in the U.S.
Traditionally, many Asian immigrants living in L.A. came to the U.S. legally, using temporary work or tourist visas, then later obtained legal status or simply overstayed their visas. The motivation can vary, Syed said, but similar to Latino migrants, many Asian migrants want to live in the U.S. because it offers work and educational opportunities that they lack back home. Some are fleeing oppressive government regimes, repressive cultures or religious persecution.
Manjusha Kulkarni is executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of more than 40 community organizations. Kulkarni said Asian immigrants lacking legal status tend to work in low-wage service jobs, often in industries where Asian American communities, over generations, have established a strong presence. For instance, many undocumented Vietnamese work at nail salons; many Cambodians at doughnut shops; and many Indians in the hotel and motel industry. In Monterey Park, a common landing spot for Chinese migrants, employment agencies routinely connect workers with jobs at warehouses, restaurants and marijuana farms, with no work permit required.
In recent years, as it’s gotten harder to obtain work and tourist visas, rising numbers of Asian migrants have joined Central Americans in arduous treks across treacherous jungles to request asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The number of Chinese nationals authorities encountered at the southern and northern U.S. borders was 78,701 in fiscal year 2024, up from 27,756 in 2022, according to federal data. The number of Indian nationals encountered at the southern and northern U.S. borders was 90,415 in 2024, up from 63,927 in 2022.
Connie Chung Joe, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said she has been told of Asian immigrants canceling medical appointments because they are afraid of being seen as a public charge. Events for food distribution and COVID-19 vaccinations that usually attract hundreds of immigrants now attract 50.
“There’s a lot of general anxiety and fear of being seen, or what could happen if they go out,” she said.
One L.A. County resident, who did not want to be identified due to her family’s lack of legal status, said she and her family have become more cautious when leaving their home. Trump’s election, she said, “has really made us feel like we don’t have power.”
She said that she and her family arrived from Pakistan when she was 8 on a visa that eventually expired. She later became a DACA recipient, a status that allows her to live and work in the U.S., but her parents remain undocumented. The rumors of imminent raids have made her family reluctant to drive. That means fewer outings, and when they do drive, taking extra care not to do anything that might draw attention.
Amir Mertaban, executive director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, is preparing to welcome thousands of people at the mosque in preparation for Ramadan, which begins at the end of the month. Already, he said, the organization is holding training sessions, including for students who have asked him for guidance on how they should approach public protests if they are in the U.S. on visas, have temporary status or are undocumented.
Even the mosque has become a source of tension, Mertaban said, as Trump has given ICE the OK to raid places of worship.
“One part of the community is terrified, because they are expecting an ICE raid literally at any moment,” he said. “People are coming to a safe space where they can let their guard down and connect with a higher power. The last thing I need is the community to worry about whether they’re going to get deported, or whether law enforcement is going to raid the mosque.”
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