Today's Top Stories from NBC News

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026

In today's newsletter: Minnesota residents, leaders and protesters express their fears as thousands of federal officers flood the state. Iranians try to circumvent a government crackdown on Starlink satellite internet. And Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues his AI company over sexualized deepfakes.

Here's what to know today.

The best of NBC News.
Fewer ad interruptions.
All in one place.

Ad-free articles, podcasts and full episodes of NBC News Shows
Ad-free live news, streaming on NBC News NOW
Subscriber-only video briefings and newsletter

LEARN MORE

▼ The Lead

'It feels like an invasion': Minnesotans stunned as federal officers flood their state

(Kerem Yucel / AFP via Getty Images)

As 3,000 federal officers swarm Minnesota, residents say the weight of it all is inescapable. Officers in unmarked cars idle on neighborhood streets. Honks and whistles sound when they are near. And occasionally, the smell of chemical agents wafts by.

The sustained scale and aggression demonstrated by law enforcement appears to be at a level beyond immigration operations in other blue cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, all of which are larger than Minneapolis in area and population.

Videos filmed by residents of violent arrests are proliferating on social media. Some footage provided to NBC News by activists shows officers smashing car windows or spraying chemicals point blank into the faces of residents.

"It feels like an invasion," said one protester who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. The woman, a restaurant owner, said she temporarily closed her business to protect her immigrant employees. "It feels very much like a Nazi Germany situation to me. It needs to stop, and people need to know what's going on."

Here's what others told us.

More on Minnesota:

A class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union accuses ICE of racially profiling three individuals in a Minneapolis immigration operation.

Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military in response to rising tensions between protesters and federal personnel in Minneapolis.

As Iran's national internet blackout stretches to its second week, the satellite internet service Starlink has become a crucial lifeline for many citizens to connect with the outside world — and one that the regime appears to be trying to shut down.

The government has deployed "jamming" devices to slow down traffic, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of a nonprofit that works to get Iranians online.

Ahmadian is one of many activists trying to circumvent the Islamic Republic's attempts to halt communication. His group and others have worked for several years to smuggle Starlink terminals into the country, with a thriving black market for them.

But until this week, many terminals hadn't worked, Ahmadian said, as they usually require a paid subscription that often doesn't accept Iranian money. That changed when SpaceX suddenly waived the subscription fee for people in Iran, he said.

Read the full story here.

Related news:

The Defense Department is preparing to send additional U.S. forces and assets, including a carrier strike group, to the Middle East, a U.S. official said.

Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sues xAI over sexual deepfakes

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sued Musk's xAI artificial intelligence company over nonconsensual sexual images generated by Grok AI.

St. Clair had notified xAI that users were creating illicit deepfake photos of her "as a child stripped down to a string bikini" and "as an adult in sexually explicit poses" and requested that the Grok service be prevented from creating the nonconsensual images, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit alleges that even though Grok confirmed her "images will not be used or altered without explicit consent" in the future, xAI continued to allow users to generate the explicit content and instead retaliated by demonetizing her X account.

Read the full story here.

▼ Read All About It

Exclusive: Democratic lawmakers asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that Trump Mobile's "T1" phone is made in the USA.

Federal prosecutors charged 26 people accused of rigging college basketball games in America and pro contests in China.

Three people with guns robbed a Manhattan Pokémon store, taking off with around $100,000 in merchandise.

Skeletal remains that washed up on a Washington beach have been identified as those of a former Oregon mayor who vanished 20 years ago.

A federal judge dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit that sought access to California's voter files, including Social Security and driver's license information.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal. So far, he's kept it.

▼ Staff Pick

Fans hoping to attend World Cup already feel priced out

Taylor Swift concerts and Super Bowls are wildly expensive. In America, we think c'est la vie and move on. So when the World Cup's astronomical ticket prices were revealed, I didn't blink. Americans seem to pay a premium for entertainment. Other countries' biggest soccer fans zigzag the globe every four years, so why should this summer be different?

But then, arguably the planet's keenest soccer supporters made an eye-popping statement. Fans of one of the tournament's favorites England, given special access to face-value World Cup final seats (should the side advance that far), declined to immediately buy every ticket! Same story for the quarter-final and semi-final rounds, too.

FIFA now says over 500 million ticket requests have been made, but a question remains. In a country still developing its soccer appetite, how do you best inspire American kids when their parents can't afford to take them to games? Part of what makes the World Cup special is the colorful, zany diehard fans. The tournament risks shutting out some of the people who make it thrilling in the stadium and on TV. So while we might have the biggest World Cup that could make FIFA the most possible money, will it be missing the secret sauce: passion?

— Jesse Kirsch, correspondent

▼ NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified

If your January reset includes trying new wellness trends, our editors broke down vibration plates and red light therapy to see what's actually worth your time. We also looked into mouth taping and what experts say about the buzzy sleep practice. Consider this a reality check before you add anything new to your routine.