Reuters World News - ICE drawdown, AI, Guthrie and nuclear treaty expires

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

The Trump administration pulls 700 ICE agents out of Minnesota. A software sell-off over AI fears raises questions about the risk to the job market. Savannah Guthrie releases an emotional video plea for her mother’s safe return. And the New START U.S.-Russia nuclear pact expires, risking an arms race.  Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Thursday, February 5th. Today, Trump pulls 700 ice agents out of Minnesota. We look at how much of a risk AI is to the jobs market. Savannah Guthrie makes an emotional plea for her mother's return. And the U.S.-Russia Nuclear Pact expires at a tricky time. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to. to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. I have announced effective immediately. We will draw down 700 people affected today. U.S. borders are Tom Homan in Minneapolis, announcing a reduction in ice and border patrol agents in Minnesota.

The move will still leave some 2,000 agents in the area. Hohman says the drawdown comes alongside greater cooperation from local authorities. One of the demands Homan had made is for local authorities to let ICE into prisons. Our reporter Maria Svitzkova in Minneapolis says that's been agreed to. We don't know the exact extent of this cooperation, but we know that ICE wants to access jails, and specifically immigrants who are being released from jails. And he claimed that access was given to get to the people in custody before the in the streets. Minnesota says its state-run prison system already gives ICE everything the law

requires. The Department of Corrections notifies ICE any time it takes in someone convicted of a felony who isn't a U.S. citizen. And when ICE sends a detainer request, asking the prison to hold on to someone so federal agents have time to pick them up, Minnesota says it complies. But that cooperation looks different at the local level. County Sheriff's run the jails, and only a small fraction of Minnesota's counties have formal agreements with ICE. Some sheriffs argue that letting federal agents inside their jails can make immigrant communities less willing to report crimes. The Supreme Court has ruled that California can use a new congressional map. The decision gives Democrats five more potential seats, offsetting the five

red seats added by Texas's new map, also approved by the Supreme Court. last year. It's a major victory for the Democrats as they look to win back control of the House in the November midterms. To markets now and the big tech sell-off we saw this week, here's MorningBid host Mike Dolan with the latest. Yeah, tech sector volatility is continuing right through the night and into Thursday's trading despite an astonishing plan by Alphabet to more than double its capital expenditure in 2026, which is more than 50% above what people had expected it to do. It's is still down ahead of the bell. So the whole AI story has raised the question this week. Is it good for the stock market or does it disrupt as many companies as it benefits? Thanks, Mike. And you can

listen to MorningBid wherever you get your podcasts. That AI-fueled stock sell-off is once again raising questions over whether this transformative technology poses an existential threat to the jobs market. And some of the latest figures from Europe are looking into just that. Mark John is our European economics editor. So I think we have to say that so far, any impact is really showing up more in smaller surveys rather than the actual official unemployment numbers. But that said, there is increasing evidence of slowing down the hiring because they believe there will be some kind of productivity payoff from AI-driven automation. And last week, we had to be a lot of the head of the Federal Reserve in the US, Jerome Powell, who said that there could be a link

between the rise of AI use and what they've seen as a lower highing rate among recent college graduates in the US. We've also seen a number of companies that have actually cited AI adoption or future AI adoption as one of the reasons behind some big layoffs recently, for example, Amazon, Lufthansa and so on. What I think a number of experts questioning at the moment is to what extent AI really is one of those factors or is it in some cases being used almost as a pretext to shed staff

after the kind of the over-hiring that we saw sometimes during the COVID pandemic. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced it will move ahead with widespread layoffs. In a call with staff, the Post's executive editor said that one-third of employees would be let go. That includes lots of sports reporters and foreign

correspondence. Bezos bought the paper back in 2013, but has struggled to make it profitable. In a statement, the Post's union wrote that if Bezos would no longer invest in the paper, then, quote, the Post deserves a steward that will. We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen. An emotional appeal from today's show host Savannah Guthrie and her siblings to anyone who might be holding their missing 84-year-old mother. Nancy Guthrie is presumed abducted and Savannah pleads for an open line of communication with her possible abductors.

The video appeal coincided with a flurry of intense police activity at her Arizona home where yellow crime scene tape was seen for the first time this week. The man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a Florida golf course in September of 2024 has been sentenced to life in prison. 59-year-old Ryan Ralph was convicted last fall after prosecutors showed he'd spent weeks tracking Trump's movements. He was caught by Secret Service after waiting nearly 10 hours in the bushes with a rifle. It was the second assassination attempt against Trump during the 2024 campaign.

The first two months earlier in Pennsylvania, when Trump was grazed by a bullet during a rally. Ralph represented himself at the trial and offered little defense. When the verdict was read, he tried to stab himself with a pen and had to be restrained. The last nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the United States has expired. The expiration of the New Start Treaty leaves the world's two biggest nuclear powers without any limits for the first time in more than half a century. Putin has proposed extending the treaty's limits, but Russian officials say Washington hasn't responded.

Trump has given mixed signals, saying he wants China included in any new agreement. Reporter Mark Trevelyan is our lead writer on the Russia desk. Ever since 1969, when the Soviet Union and the United States first embarked on these conversations, there has always been either a treaty in place to limit strategic nuclear weapons, or a process of negotiation underway. And right now, none of those two things is in place. So it leaves a vacuum in which the risk, according to ours control experts, is that each side will basically have to proceed on the basis of worst-case assumptions

about what the other is doing. And that can lead us into an inexorable build-up with each side adding more and more warheads on the assumption the other is doing the same. And Mark says that China is also a key factor in what happens next. Some people have argued that Trump was right not to go for an extension of the limits in the treaty because that would have tied the Americans' hands. Those people are arguing that Trump should free the United States right now from the Newstart limit in order to respond to a big and rapid buildup of China's nuclear arsenal. China is now

at an estimated 600 warheads. The Pentagon thinks it could get to a thousand warheads within a relatively short period of time. That's still thousands less than Russia and the United States, but it's catching up. And so the argument is that the United States is facing an imminent future where it will have to deal with not one but two nuclear rivals, and therefore it should, according to the proponents of this argument, it should increase its nuclear arsenal. And for today's recommended read,

we look at how a team working for US spy chief Tulsi Gabbard led an investigation into Puerto Rico's voting machines last spring. Sources say the goal was to investigate claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines there, but the probe did not produce any clear evidence of Venezuelan interference. Gabbard's office has confirmed the investigation but denied the Venezuela link. There's a link to that story in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player.

If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.