{"id":449415,"date":"2026-02-04T23:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T23:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449415\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T23:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T23:39:07","slug":"democracy-dies-in-darkness-notus-news-of-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449415\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Dies in Darkness – NOTUS \u2014 News of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for February 4, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s free!<\/p>\n

The Latest<\/p>\n

The Washington Post laid off a third of its newsroom, killing its sports section and making deep cuts<\/a> in both local and international coverage. Former Post reporter Ashley Parker called it \u201cmurder<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Post owner Jeff Bezos was in Washington over the weekend and in Florida on Monday to welcome Pete Hegseth to his rocket factory<\/a>. Neither he nor Post publisher Will Lewis participated in today\u2019s announcement. <\/p>\n

The Supreme Court let Gavin Newsom keep his map. Republicans had asked the court to reject a new, voter-approved map that could give Democrats five additional seats in Congress. Without comment, the court declined to get involved<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DHS is pulling 700 agents out of Minnesota. Noting that 2,000 federal agents will remain in the state, border czar Tom Homan said it\u2019s not a surrender<\/a>. Noting that 2,000 federal agents will remain in the state, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said it\u2019s not much of a de-escalation<\/a>, either.<\/p>\n

A DHS attorney told a Minnesota judge that her job \u201csucks\u201d and asked to be held in contempt so she \u201ccould get 24 hours of sleep.\u201d She has been reassigned<\/a>. The Hill<\/p>\n

Congress has 10 9 days to agree on immigration-enforcement reforms, and as NOTUS\u2019 Em Luetkemeyer and Daniella Diaz put it<\/a>: \u201cTalks are tense, they are nowhere close to a deal and it doesn\u2019t seem right now that they can achieve one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Roger Wicker said he\u2019s \u2018all for immigration enforcement\u2019 but doesn\u2019t want DHS<\/a> to turn a Mississippi warehouse into an ICE detention facility.<\/p>\n

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott doesn\u2019t think Jerome Powell is a criminal and expects the Trump administration\u2019s investigation into him to be resolved soon<\/a>. Thom Tillis has said that\u2019s got to happen before he\u2019ll let Kevin Warsh\u2019s nomination out of committee.<\/p>\n

The Administration<\/p>\n

Trump said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be \u2018very worried.\u2019 The president said<\/a> Iran \u201cis a mess right now\u201d because the United States \u201cwiped out their nuclear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian and U.S. officials expect to meet tomorrow. Marco Rubio said<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we\u2019re going to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating Nike for discriminating<\/a> against white people.<\/p>\n

Steve Bannon said ICE will \u2018surround the polls come November\u2019 to block Democrats\u2019 plans<\/a> to \u201csteal the country again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Other News<\/p>\n

Zohran Mamdani is going to endorse Kathy Hochul\u2019s reelection. As Politico reports<\/a>, it may kill any hope for the governor\u2019s long-shot challenger from the left, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado.<\/p>\n

The man who attempted to kill Trump on his Florida golf course was sentenced<\/a> to life in prison plus seven years.<\/p>\n

Nobody Knows<\/p>\n

JD Vance told Megyn Kelly that it was \u2018so perceptive\u2019 of the president to tell Kaitlan Collins that she should smile more<\/a>: \u201cEven if you\u2019re asking a tough question, even if you take your job very seriously, like, why does it always have to be so antagonistic?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you for reading! Today\u2019s newsletter was produced by Matt Berman and Andrew Burton. If you liked it, please forward it to a friend. If someone shared it with you, please subscribe<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s free! Got a tip or comments to share? Email us at finalnotus@notus.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for February 4, 2026. You can get it in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-449415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}