Hakeem Jeffries invites family of Jesse Jackson and Epstein survivor to Trump’s State of the Union address – as it happened

Hakeem Jeffries invites family of Jesse Jackson and Epstein survivor to Trump’s State of the Union address – as it happened

We’re wrapping up our live coverage for the day. We’ll be back on Tuesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:

Donald Trump’s decision to order airstrikes against Iran will hinge in part on the judgment of Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, about whether Tehran is stalling over a deal to relinquish its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the matter. The president has not made a final determination on any strikes, as the administration prepares for Iran to send its latest proposal this week, ahead of what officials have described as a last-ditch round of negotiations scheduled for Thursday in Geneva. More here.
Trump has declared that he can use tariffs in a “much more powerful and obnoxious way”, as the UK and the EU said they were seeking urgent clarity on the US trade deals they struck last summer. Trump threatened to escalate his global tariff war on Monday, after a supreme court ruling last week that he had overstepped his legal authority to impose his “liberation day” measures last year. More here.
The 21-year-old man who was shot and killed after having entered Trump’s Florida resort on Sunday – while carrying a shotgun – came from a North Carolina family of the president’s supporters and had reportedly become increasingly fixated on the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. The focus of the FBI’s investigation into the intrusion attributed to Austin Tucker Martin is tightening on his movements and motives. More here.
The US military launched a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean, which killed three men – its third such attack over the course of a week. The Southern Command identified the three men killed as “male narco-terrorists” and clarified that no US military forces were harmed in the strike. More here.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, announced that he is inviting the family of Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil- and human-rights trailblazer who died last week, to the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Several other lawmakers have announced they’re inviting survivors of sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein.