President Donald Trump claimed that the territory once held by the Islamic State across swaths of Iraq and Syria has been “100 percent destroyed,” and that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, is dead. While the Trump administration declared that ISIS was totally destroyed in February of last year, the terror group's members and their families are still being held in prisons in northern Syria, and experts warn that instability in the region could create a vacuum for violence to take hold again. On Feb. 3, the U.N. reported that ISIS was planning for its fighters to break out of these detention facilities and mount new attacks following their loss of territory last year. Trump recognized the parents of aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was kidnapped and killed by ISIS in Syria in 2015. The president said that when Al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. raid in October of 2019, Special Forces named the mission “Task Force 8-14” in honor of Mueller’s birthday.
President Donald Trump delivered his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, Feb. 4. The speech came the day before he is expected to be acquitted of articles of impeachment in the Senate and a day after voting in the 2020 presidential nomination process kicked off in Iowa.
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