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| Good morning. It’s Thursday, Jan. 29, and we hope never to find ourselves facing 3-year-old Jude across a billiards table — watch his amazing trick shots here. Now let’s get to the news. | |
 | President Donald Trump is facing blowback for plans to “de-escalate” in Minnesota. | | |
 | The federal government is on track to partially shut down at the end of Friday. | - Why? Democrats are blocking a bill to fund Homeland Security until Republicans agree to new measures to restrict ICE’s actions. We broke down potential shutdown impacts here.
- More ICE resistance: A deployment of ICE agents to Italy for the Winter Olympics has angered locals, including Milan’s mayor. He told The Post that “ICE’s image is terrible.”
- Yesterday: Bruce Springsteen released an anti-ICE protest song — listen here.
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 | The FBI executed a warrant seeking ballots from Fulton County’s 2020 election. | | | An FBI official approaches a Fulton County elections facility in Union City, Georgia, yesterday. (Arvin Temkar/AP) | - The details: The warrant authorized agents to seize physical ballots, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count and voter rolls from 2020.
- Why it matters: The search is a major escalation of Trump’s efforts to challenge the narrative of his 2020 defeat. The Georgia county is key to right-wing conspiracy theories.
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 | The U.S. Embassy in Denmark removed 44 flags honoring fallen Danish soldiers. | | | Danish flags were placed back in front of the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen yesterday after being removed on Tuesday. (Emil Nicolai Helms/AFP/Getty Images) | |
 | The Kennedy Center’s programming head quit days after his hiring was announced. | - On Jan. 16: The D.C. arts institution named Kevin Couch as its senior vice president of artistic programming. Less than two weeks later, he resigned without explanation.
- Earlier this week: Composer Philip Glass joined a growing list of artists who have canceled events at the Kennedy Center after Trump moved to add his name to the building.
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 | A powerful nor’easter is forecast to hit the East Coast this weekend. | | | The nor’easter will rapidly intensify into a bomb cyclone. Data source: ECMWF/AIFS. (Ben Noll/The Washington Post) | - What to expect: Blizzard conditions, damaging winds, coastal flooding and extreme cold. Some of the heaviest snow will fall in the Carolinas — find a region-by-region forecast here.
- It won’t be as widespread as last week’s storm: But it is set to hit a populated stretch of the Eastern Seaboard and impact areas from the Southeast to the coastal Mid-Atlantic.
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 | “Karate Kid” and “Clueless” were added to the National Film Registry. | | | The 1984 coming-of-age drama “The Karate Kid” starred Ralph Macchio. (Columbia Pictures) | - Every year: The Library of Congress adds more movies to the registry. They must be at least 10 years old and have “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance.”
- New additions: This year’s class also includes “The Truman Show,” “Inception ”and “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” See the list of all 25 movies here.
Before you go … America loves hot sauce:
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Jamie Ross and 
