The decision to keep Brian Cole Jr., who allegedly placed explosives outside the Democratic and Republican National Committee buildings on January 5, 2021, was made two days after a hearing in which prosecutors argued that Cole would pose a danger to others if he were released and allowed to live with his family.

Judge Matthew Sharbaugh wrote that: “The sudden and abrupt motivation behind Mr. Cole’s alleged actions presents concerns about how quickly the same abrupt and impulsive conduct might recur.”

He continued: “More, Mr. Cole reportedly told the FBI that he assembled the IEDs ‘in the hours before he drove to Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021.’”

Cole has yet to enter a plea to the charges. No trial date has been set.

Sharbaugh said the speed at which Cole was able to allegedly assemble the bombs “suggest he can prepare dangerous explosive devices in short order, over a matter of hours, not necessarily days or weeks.”

“Given the precipitousness with which Mr. Cole reportedly acted, and the speed with which he was able to construct the so-called ‘pipe bombs,’ the Court lacks confidence that even the most rigorous set of release conditions can reasonably guard against the risk of future danger,” the judge wrote.

Sharbaugh added too that he shared concerns with prosecutors about how Cole allegedly deleted evidence and continued to purchase alleged bomb making parts after Cole allegedly placed the two bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee buildings.

Cole’s attorney argued he should be released into his grandmother’s custody.

Cole’s grandmother took the stand herself, promising to “make any adjustments that I need to make” to keep him out of trouble, adding that she had already placed cameras around the exterior of her home inside a gated community.

His defense attorney also stressed that Cole has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, two factors that should be considered for both his mindset in committing the alleged crimes and for his ability to navigate being in jail.

Further complicating the matter is that the Justice Department has secured an indictment against Cole that had not yet been accepted by a judge. Sharbaugh explained during the hearing that a grand jury in the local Superior Court in Washington, rather than the federal court, had handed up an indictment against Cole, and that he was watching a separate case with a similar issue move through the appeals process to determine what to do in Cole’s case.

A person familiar with the matter said that prosecutors used a superior court grand jury only because the federal grand juries were not meeting at the time.

Before his visit to Trump International Golf Club, the president made a detour to Arc Stone & Tile, a stone importer near Mar-a-Lago that bills itself as an Italian marble specialist, where he planned to buy marble and onyx, according to a White House official.

The purchase, which the official said would be made at Trump’s personal expense, represents the latest sign of the president’s close involvement in a project that would dramatically alter the White House’s footprint — and put Trump’s permanent stamp on the nation’s most famous address.

The planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which has ballooned in size and cost since Trump first announced it last summer, has also embroiled the administration in a running court battle.

Trump initially estimated that the construction would cost $200 million and promised that it wouldn’t affect the existing White House structure. Yet a few months later, he opted to bulldoze the entire East Wing with little advance notice, making way for an expanded ballroom that he now estimates will cost up to $400 million in personal expenses and private donations.

“We’re donating a $400 million ballroom,” Trump said in December. “I think I’ll do it for less, but it’s 400. I should do it for less, I will do it for less. But just in case, I say 400.”

Since returning to office, Trump has overseen a range of major changes to the White House, including paving over the Rose Garden, redoing the Palm Room and redecorating the Oval Office. He’s often favored pricey white marble and gold accents, imitating the style found throughout his Mar-a-Lago club, where he’s been spending the past two weeks for the holidays.

But the ballroom is, by far, Trump’s biggest and most disruptive project to date.

The sudden demolition of the iconic East Wing in October prompted public outcry and immediate legal challenges over the administration’s effort to bypass planning commissions that have traditionally reviewed proposed additions to the White House and other government buildings. A judge has since ruled that Trump officials must begin “consultation processes” with the two planning commissions.

Yet Trump has brushed off criticism of his unilateral reshaping of the White House, as well as the extensive time and energy he’s personally devoted to it. The administration is now seeking to rapidly win those official approvals, laying out a timeline that could allow for ballroom construction to begin as early as this spring and finish by mid-2028, prior to the end of Trump’s term.

Trump officials are expected to hold a public information meeting in front of the National Capital Planning Commission on January 8, and then meet with the Commission of Fine Arts the week after that. Those sessions could then clear the way for final presentations to the two boards within the next couple of months.

That’s a far more aggressive timeline compared with past White House projects, which have taken several years to break ground. Planning for a new perimeter fence on the White House grounds that began in 2014, for example, was not formally approved until three years later. It then took until 2019 for construction on it to begin.

But Trump, who has held regular White House meetings to discuss minute details of the project and insisted on personally selecting materials, has sought to clear away procedural obstacles. He appointed Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, to run the National Capital Planning Commission, and bypassed initial reviews that typically take place prior to breaking any ground.

The president in the meantime has excitedly shared progress updates and queried allies and foreign leaders about the designs, showing off renderings that envision a massive gold-and-white ballroom that may ultimately dwarf the rest of the White House.

“I’m doing a magnificent, big, beautiful ballroom that the country’s wanted, the White House has wanted for 150 years,” Trump said last month alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting on Middle East issues. “It’s a massive job.”

At least eight people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.

The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

Trump post sparks quick Iranian response

Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”

“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.

Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.

“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”

Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured, though a missile did hit a structure there.

As of Friday, no major changes had been made to U.S. troop levels in the Middle East or their preparations following Trump’s social media posts, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.

In a letter late Friday to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the U.N. Security Council, Iran’s envoy asked the world body to condemn the rhetoric and reaffirm the country’s “inherent right to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security, and to protect its people against any foreign interference.”

“The United States of America bears full responsibility for any consequences arising from these unlawful threats and any ensuing escalation,” said Amir Saeid Iravani, Iranian ambassador to the U.N.

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”

US signals support for protesters

Trump’s online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran’s 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”

But such White House support still carries a risk.

“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei recently cited a list of Tehran’s longtime grievances regarding U.S. intervention, including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and the strikes in June.

Protests continue Friday

Protests continued Friday in various cities in the country, even as life largely continued unaffected in the capital, Tehran. Demonstrations have reached over 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. It said the death toll in the demonstrations rose to eight with the death of a demonstrator in Marvdasht in Iran’s Fars province.

Demonstrators took to the streets in Zahedan in Iran’s restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place Friday, sparking marches.

Videos purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran in Iran’s Lorestan province.

Footage also showed Khodayari’s father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government’s claims that he served.

Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.

The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith gave about two investigations of Trump. The document shows how Smith during the course of a daylong deposition repeatedly defended the basis for pursuing indictments against Trump and vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

“So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the presidential election,” he added.

The Dec. 17 deposition was conducted privately despite Smith’s request to testify publicly. The release of the transcript and video of the interview, so far Smith’s only appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving his special counsel position last January, adds to the public understanding of the decision-making behind two of the most consequential Justice Department investigations in recent history.

Trump was indicted on charges of conspiring to undo the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and of willfully retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both cases were abandoned after Trump’s 2024 election win, with Smith citing Justice Department policy against the indictment of a sitting president.

Smith repeatedly made clear his belief that the evidence gathered against Trump was strong enough to sustain a conviction. Part of the strength of the Jan. 6 case, Smith said, was the extent to which it relied on the testimony of Trump allies and supporters who cooperated with the investigation.

“We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former congressman, who was going to be an elector for President Trump, who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal,” Smith said. “Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.”

Accounts from Republicans willing to stand up against the falsehood that the election had been stolen “even though it could mean trouble for them” created what Smith described as the “most powerful” evidence against Trump.

When it came to the Capitol riot itself, Smith said, the evidence showed that Trump “caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.”

Asked whether there was evidence that Trump had instructed supporters to riot at the Capitol, Smith said that Trump in the weeks leading to the insurrection got “people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true.”

“He made false statements to state legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to Jan. 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol,” Smith said.

“Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own vice president,” he added. “And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.”

Some of the deposition focused on Republican anger at revelations that the Smith team had obtained, and analyzed, phone records of GOP lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on Jan. 6. Smith defended the maneuver as lawful and by-the-book, and suggested that outrage over the tactic should be directed at Trump and not his team of prosecutors.

“Well, I think who should be accountable for this is Donald Trump. These records are people, in the case of the senators, Donald Trump directed his co-conspirators to call these people to further delay the proceedings. He chose to do that,” Smith said. “If Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for Democratic senators.”

The communications between Trump and Republican supporters in Congress were an important component of the case, Smith said. He cited an interview his office did with Mark Meadows in which Trump’s former chief of staff referenced that Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had been in touch with the White House on the afternoon of the riot.

“And what I recall was Meadows stating that ‘I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,’ and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was,” Smith said.

Smith was also asked whether his team evaluated former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive claim that Trump that grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after a rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021.

Smith told lawmakers that investigators interviewed the officer who was in the car, “who said that President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol,” but the officer’s version of events “was not the same as what Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard from somebody secondhand.”

Mamdani, a Democrat, was sworn in as the first Muslim leader of America’s biggest city, placing his hand on a Quran as he took his oath.

“This is truly the honor and the privilege of a lifetime,” Mamdani said in a brief speech.

The private ceremony, administered by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a political ally, took place at the old City Hall station, one of the city’s original subway stops that is known for its stunning arched ceilings.

In Mamdani’s first remarks as mayor, he said the old subway station was a “testament to the importance of public transit to the vitality, the health and the legacy of our city” as he announced the appointment of his new Department of Transportation commissioner, Mike Flynn.

The new mayor then closed: “Thank you all so much, now I will see you later,” he said with a smile before heading up a flight of stairs.

Mamdani will be sworn in again, in grander style, in a public ceremony at City Hall at 1 p.m. by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the mayor’s political heroes. That will be followed by what his office is billing as a public block party on a stretch of Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes,” famous for its ticker-tape parades.

Mamdani now begins one of the most unrelenting jobs in American politics as one of the country’s most-watched politicians.

In addition to being the city’s first Muslim mayor, Mamdani is also its first of South Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. At 34, Mamdani is also the city’s youngest mayor in generations.

In a campaign that helped make “affordability” a buzzword across the political spectrum, the democratic socialist promised to bring transformative change with policies intended to lower the cost of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities. His platform included free child care, free buses, a rent freeze for about 1 million households, and a pilot of city-run grocery stores.

But he will also have to face other responsibilities: handling trash and snow and rats, while getting blamed for subway delays and potholes.

Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, an academic and author. His family moved to New York City when he was 7, with Mamdani growing up in a post-9/11 city where Muslims didn’t always feel welcome. He became an American citizen in 2018.

He worked on political campaigns for Democratic candidates in the city before he sought public office himself, winning a state Assembly seat in 2020 to represent a section of Queens.

Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, will depart their one-bedroom, rent stabilized apartment in the outer-borough to take up residence in the stately mayoral residence in Manhattan.

Mamdani inherits a city on the upswing, after years of slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Violent crime has dropped to pre-pandemic lows. Tourists are back. Unemployment, which soared during the pandemic years, is also back to pre-COVID levels.

Yet deep concerns remain about high prices and rising rents in the city.

He’ll also have to deal with Republican President Donald Trump.

During the mayoral race, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the city if Mamdani won and mused about sending National Guard troops to the city.

But Trump surprised supporters and foes alike by inviting the Democrat to the White House for what ended up being a cordial meeting in November.

“I want him to do a great job and will help him do a great job,” Trump said.

Still, tensions between the two leaders are almost certain to resurface, given their deep policy disagreements, particularly over immigration.

Mamdani also faces skepticism and opposition from some members of the city’s Jewish community over his criticisms of Israel’s government.

The new mayor and his team have spent the weeks since his election victory preparing for the transition, surrounding Mamdani with seasoned hands who have worked inside or alongside city government.

That included persuading the city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to remain in her position — a move that helped calm fears in the business community that the administration might be planning radical changes in policing strategy.

The president argued that blocking both measures was necessary to save taxpayer dollars.

“Enough is enough. My Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies. Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts and restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the Nation,” Trump said in a message to Congress, explaining his veto of one of the bills, H.R. 131, which aims to lower the payments certain communities in Colorado make for the construction of a water pipeline.

The other bill vetoed, H.R. 504, would expand the land reserved for the Miccosukee Tribe in Florida and instruct the Department of Interior to work with the tribe to mitigate flooding in the added area.

Congress can override the president’s veto by passing the bill again with a two-thirds majority in both chambers.

Trump’s veto of H.R. 131 in particular drew criticism with one lawmaker accusing the president of retaliation.

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said in a post on X, “This isn’t governing. It’s a revenge tour. It’s unacceptable.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

The senator’s claim comes as Trump has sparred with Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis over the governor’s refusal to release Tina Peters, a former election official and prominent 2020 election denier, from state prison. Earlier this month, Trump granted Peters a full federal pardon, which does not erase her state charges. Polis has said it’s a matter for the courts to decide.

In a Wednesday morning Truth Social post, Trump reiterated his calls for Peters to be freed, while again lashing out at Colorado’s governor and “the disgusting ‘Republican’ (RINO!) DA, who did this to her.”

The administration previously announced that it will close a critical research center in the state, with the White House implying that it was taking aim at the institution because of Polis.

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, an ally of Trump who sponsored H.R. 131, said in a post on X, “This isn’t over.”

CNN has reached out to Boebert’s office for additional comment.

This isn’t the first time Boebert has been at odds with the president. She recently disagreed with Trump’s strong resistance to releasing files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump eventually signed the bipartisan bill to release the files, hundreds of thousands of which the Justice Department made public earlier this month with heavy redactions.

Trump initially seemed to confirm a strike in what appeared to be an impromptu radio interview Friday, and when questioned Monday by reporters about “an explosion in Venezuela,” he said the U.S. struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.”

“There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump said as he met in Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It’s the implementation area. There’s where they implement. And that is no longer around.”

It is part of an escalating effort to target what the Trump administration says are boats smuggling drugs bound for the United States. It moves closer to shore strikes that so far have been carried out by the military in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. military said it conducted another strike on Monday against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people. The attacks have killed at least 107 people in 30 strikes since early September, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.

Trump declined to say if the U.S. military or the CIA carried out the strike on the dock or where it occurred. He did not confirm it happened in Venezuela.

“I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was. But you know it was along the shore,” Trump said.

Trump first referenced the strike on Friday, when he called radio host John Catsimatidis during a program on WABC radio and discussed the U.S. strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats.

“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”

Trump did not offer any additional details in the interview.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or one of the U.S. military’s social media accounts has in the past typically announced every boat strike in a post on X, but there has been no post of any strike on a facility.

The Pentagon on Monday referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a message seeking more details. The press office of Venezuela’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement.

Trump for months has suggested he may conduct land strikes in South America, in Venezuela or possibly another country, and in recent weeks has been saying the U.S. would move beyond striking boats and would strike on land “soon.”

In October, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. The agency did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday.

Along with the strikes, the U.S. has sent warships, built up military forces in the region, seized two oil tankers and pursued a third.

The Trump administration has said it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and seeking to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from power.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published this month that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro ‘cries uncle.’”

Trump had previously insisted that Tehran’s nuclear capabilities were “completely and fully obliterated” by U.S. strikes on key nuclear enrichment sites in June. But with Netanyahu by his side, Trump raised the possibility that suspected activity could be taking place outside those sites. Israeli officials, meanwhile, have been quoted in local media expressing concern about Iran rebuilding its supply of long-range missiles capable of striking Israel.

“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again,” Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “And if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down. We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that’s not happening.”

Trump’s warning to Iran comes as his administration has committed significant resources to targeting drug trafficking in South America and the president looks to create fresh momentum for the U.S.-brokered Israel-Hamas ceasefire. The Gaza deal is in danger of stalling before reaching its complicated second phase that would involve naming an international governing body and rebuilding the devastated Palestinian territory.

At a news conference with Netanyahu after their meeting, Trump suggested that he could order another U.S. strike.

“If it’s confirmed, they know the consequences, and the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time,” Trump said.

Iran has insisted that it is no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program. The two leaders discussed the possibility of taking new military action against Tehran just months after June’s 12-day war.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s warning.

Gaza ceasefire progress has slowed

Trump, with Netanyahu by his side, said he wants to get to the second phase of the Gaza deal “as quickly as we can.”

“But there has to be a disarming of Hamas,” Trump added.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that Trump championed has mostly held, but progress has slowed recently. Both sides accuse each other of violations, and divisions have emerged among the U.S., Israel and Arab countries about the path forward.

The truce’s first phase began in October, days after the two-year anniversary of the initial Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people. All but one of the 251 hostages taken then have been released, alive or dead.

The Israeli leader, who also met separately with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has signaled he is in no rush to move forward with the next phase as long as the remains of Ran Gvili are still in Gaza.

Gvili’s parents met with Netanyahu as well as Rubio, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in Florida on Monday.

“They’re waiting for their son to come home,” Trump said of the family of the young police officer known affectionately as “Rani.”

Next phase is complex

The path to implementing Trump’s peace plan is certainly complicated.

If successful, the second phase would see the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision by a group chaired by Trump and known as the Board of Peace. The Palestinians would form a “technocratic, apolitical” committee to run daily affairs in Gaza, under Board of Peace supervision.

It further calls for normalized relations between Israel and the Arab world and a possible pathway to Palestinian independence. Then there are thorny logistical and humanitarian questions, including rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza, disarming Hamas and creating a security apparatus called the International Stabilization Force.

Much remains unsettled

Two main challenges have complicated moving to the second phase, according to an official who was briefed on those meetings. Israeli officials have been taking a lot of time to vet and approve members of the Palestinian technocratic committee from a list given to them by the mediators, and Israel continues its military strikes.

Trump’s plan also calls for the stabilization force, proposed as a multinational body, to maintain security. But it, too, has yet to be formed. Whether details will be forthcoming after Monday’s meeting is unclear.

A Western diplomat said there is a “huge gulf” between the U.S.-Israeli understanding of the force’s mandate and that of other major countries in the region, as well as European governments.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that haven’t been made public.

The U.S. and Israel want the force to have a “commanding role” in security duties, including disarming Hamas and other militant groups. But countries being courted to contribute troops fear that mandate will make it an “occupation force,” the diplomat said.

Hamas has said it is ready to discuss “freezing or storing” its arsenal of weapons but insists it has a right to armed resistance as long as Israel occupies Palestinian territory. One U.S. official said a potential plan might be to offer cash incentives in exchange for weapons, echoing a “buyback” program Witkoff has previously floated.

Trump makes case once again for Netanyahu pardon

The two leaders, who have a long and close relationship, heaped praise on each other. Trump also tweaked the Israeli leader, who at moments during the war has raised Trump’s ire, for being “very difficult on occasion.”

Netanyahu said Trump during the lunch was formally told that his country’s education ministry will award him the Israel Prize, breaking the long-held convention of bestowing the honor on an Israeli citizen or resident.

“President Trump has broken so many conventions to the surprise of people,” Netanyahu said. He added, “So we decided to break a convention too, or create a new one.”

Trump also renewed his call on Israeli President Isaac Herzog to grant Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a corruption trial, a pardon.

Netanyahu is the only sitting prime minister in Israeli history to stand trial, after being charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases accusing him of exchanging favors with wealthy political supporters.

Trump has previously written to Herzog to urge a pardon and advocated for one during his October speech before the Knesset. He said Monday that Herzog has told him “it’s on its way” without offering further details.

“He’s a wartime prime minister who’s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?” Trump said.

Herzog’s office said in a statement that the Israeli president and Trump have not spoken since the pardon request was submitted, but that Herzog has spoken with a Trump representative about the U.S. president’s letter advocating for Netanyahu’s pardon.

“During that conversation, an explanation was provided regarding the stage of the process in which the request currently stands, and that any decision on the matter will be made in accordance with the established procedures,” the Israeli president’s office said.

The president’s statements came after the leaders met for talks following what Trump said was an “excellent,” two-and-a-half-hour phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine launched the war nearly four years ago. Trump insisted he believed Putin still wants peace, even as Russia launched another round of attacks on Ukraine while Zelenskyy flew to the United States for the latest round of negotiations.

“Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed,” Trump said during a late afternoon news conference as he stood with Zelenskyy after their meeting. He repeatedly praised his counterpart as “brave.”

Trump and Zelenskyy both acknowledged thorny issues remain, including whether Russia can keep Ukrainian territory it controls, as well as security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure it’s not invaded again in the future. After their discussion, they called a wide group of European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland.

Zelenskyy said Trump had agreed to host European leaders again, possibly at the White House, sometime in January. Trump said the meeting could be in Washington or “someplace.”

Zelenskyy thanked Trump for his work. “Ukraine is ready for peace,” he said.

Trump and Putin will speak again

Trump said he’d follow the meeting with another call to Putin. Earlier Sunday, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said the Trump-Putin call was initiated by the U.S. side and was “friendly, benevolent and businesslike.” Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again “promptly” after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy.

But Ushakov added that a “bold, responsible, political decision is needed from Kyiv” on the fiercely contested Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and other matters in dispute for there to be a “complete cessation” of hostilities.

Both leaders identified deciding the future of the Donbas region as a major sticking point.

Trump said the parties were inching closer to agreement. “That’s a very tough issue but one that I think will get resolved,” he said.

Zelenskyy said: “Our attitude is very clear. That’s why President Trump said this is a very tough question and, of course, we have with Russia different positions on it.”

Trump said, however, that he still believes Putin is “very serious” about ending the war, even as Russia continued striking targets in Ukraine as Zelenskyy traveled to the U.S. Trump said, “I believe Ukraine has made some very strong attacks also.”

He held out the possibility that negotiations could still fall apart.

“In a few weeks, we will know one way or the other, I think,” Trump said. “We could have something where one item that you’re not thinking about is a big item, breaks it up. Look, it’s been a very difficult negotiation. Very detailed.”

Trump and Zelenskyy’s sit-down underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is “about 90% ready” — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin this month.

During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.

‘Intensive’ weeks ahead

Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “certain substantive details” and cautioned “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the weeks ahead may also be intensive.”

The U.S. president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day. Indeed, on Sunday, Trump referred multiple times to the complexity of the negotiations.

After hosting Zelenskyy at the White House in October, Trump demanded that both Russia and Ukraine halt fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Putin wants Russian gains kept, and more

Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.

The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it wouldn’t accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a “legitimate target.”

Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.

Ushakov told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of Donetsk -– one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarized zone under a prospective peace plan.

Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took into account Russian demands had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, arguing that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.

Zelenskyy told journalists that the two leaders will discuss security guarantees for Ukraine during Sunday’s talks, and that the 20-point plan under discussion “is about 90% ready.”

An “economic agreement” also will be discussed, Zelenskyy said, but added that he was unable to confirm “whether anything will be finalized by the end.”

The Ukrainian side will also raise “territorial issues”, he said. Moscow has insisted that Ukraine relinquish the remaining territory it still holds in the Donbas — an ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk — the two areas that make up the Donbas.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine “would like the Europeans to be involved,” but doubted whether it would be possible at short notice.

“We must, without doubt, find some format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the U.S. are present, but Europe is represented as well,” he said.

The announced meeting is the latest development in an extensive U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year Russia-Ukraine war, but efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.

Zelenskyy’s comments came after he said Thursday that he had a “good conversation” with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with U.S. representatives since Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev recently met with U.S. envoys in Florida.

“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” he said.

Trump is engaged in a diplomatic push to end Russia’s all-out war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Though Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that there had been “slow but steady progress” in the peace talks, Russia has given no indication that it will agree to any kind of withdrawal from land it has seized.

On the ground, two people were killed and six more wounded Friday when a guided aerial bomb hit a busy road and set cars aflame in Ukraine’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.

One person was killed and three others were wounded when a guided aerial bomb hit a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, while six people were wounded in a missile strike on the city of Uman, local officials said Friday.

Russian drone attacks on the city of Mykolaiv and its suburbs overnight into Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure were damaged by drones in the city of Odesa on the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said that it struck a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

Ukraine’s General Staff said that its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.

“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” it wrote on Telegram.

Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said that a firefighter was wounded when extinguishing the fire.

Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple the Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Ukrainian officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”

Vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the president and first lady Melania Trump participated in the tradition of talking to youngsters dialing into the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which playfully tracks Santa’s progress around the globe.

“We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa’s a very good person,” Trump said while speaking to kids ages 4 and 10 in Oklahoma. “We want to make sure that he’s not infiltrated, that we’re not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”

He didn’t elaborate.

Trump has often marked Christmases past with criticisms of his political enemies, including in 2024, when he posted, “Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics.” During his first term, Trump wrote online early on Dec. 24, 2017, targeting a top FBI official he believed was biased against him, as well as the news media.

Shortly after wrapping up Wednesday’s Christmas Eve calls, in fact, he returned to that theme, posting: “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.”

But Trump was in a jovial mood while talking with the kids. He even said at one point that he “could do this all day long” but likely would have to get back to more pressing matters like efforts to quell the fighting in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

When an 8-year-old from North Carolina, asked if Santa would be mad if no one leaves cookies out for him, Trump said he didn’t think so, “But I think he’ll be very disappointed.”

“You know, Santa’s — he tends to be a little bit on the cherubic side. You know what cherubic means? A little on the heavy side,” Trump joked. “I think Santa would like some cookies.”

The president and first lady Melania Trump sat side-by-side and took about a dozen calls between them. At one point, while his wife was on the phone and Trump was waiting to be connected to another call, he noted how little attention she was paying to him: “She’s able to focus totally, without listening.”

Asked by an 8-year-old girl in Kansas what she’d like Santa to bring, the answer came back, “Uh, not coal.”

“You mean clean, beautiful coal?” Trump replied, evoking a favored campaign slogan he’s long used when promising to revive domestic coal production.

“I had to do that, I’m sorry,” the president added, laughing and even causing the first lady, who was on a separate call, to turn toward him and grin.

“Coal is clean and beautiful. Please remember that, at all costs,” Trump said. “But you don’t want clean, beautiful coal, right?”

The Christmas Eve announcement came hours after a dozen U.S. senators called on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine its failure to meet the deadline. The group, 11 Democrats and a Republican, told Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume in a letter that victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.

The Justice Department said in a social media post that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI “have uncovered over a million more documents” that could be related to the Epstein case — a stunning 11th hour development after department officials suggested months ago that they had undertaken a comprehensive review that accounted for the vast universe of Epstein-related materials.

In March, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that a “truckload of evidence” had been delivered to her after she ordered the Justice Department to “deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office” — a directive she said she made after learning from an unidentified source that the FBI in New York was “in possession of thousands of pages of documents.”

In July, the FBI and Justice Department indicated in an unsigned memo that they had undertaken an “exhaustive review” and had determined that no additional evidence should be released — an extraordinary about face from the Trump administration, which for months had pledged maximum transparency. The memo did not raise the possibility that additional evidence existed that officials were unaware of or had not reviewed.

Wednesday’s post did not say when the Justice Department was informed of the newly uncovered files.

In a letter last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors already had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, though many were copies of material already turned over by the FBI.

The Justice Department said its lawyers are “working around the clock” to review the documents and remove victims names and other identifying information as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and Maxwell.

“We will release the documents as soon as possible,” the department said. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks.”

The announcement came amid increasing scrutiny on the Justice Department’s staggered release of Epstein-related records, including from Epstein victims and members of Congress.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, one of the chief authors of the law mandating the document release, posted Wednesday on X: “DOJ did break the law by making illegal redactions and by missing the deadline.” Another architect of the law, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said he and Massie will “continue to keep the pressure on” and noted that the Justice Department was releasing more documents after lawmakers threatened contempt.

The White House on Wednesday defended the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein records.

“President Trump has assembled the greatest cabinet in American history, which includes Attorney General Bondi and her team — like Deputy Attorney General Blanche — who are doing a great job implementing the President’s agenda,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

After releasing an initial wave of records on Friday, the Justice Department posted more batches to its website over the weekend and on Tuesday. The Justice Department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

Records that have been released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context. Records that hadn’t been seen before include transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.

Other records made public in recent days include a note from a federal prosecutor from January 2020 that said Trump had flown on the financier’s private plane more often than had been previously known and emails between Maxwell and someone who signs off with the initial “A.” They contain other references that suggest the writer was Britain’s former Prince Andrew. In one, “A” writes: “How’s LA? Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”

The senators’ call Wednesday for an inspector general audit comes days after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the disclosure and deadline requirements. In a statement, he called the staggered, heavily redacted release “a blatant cover-up.”

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., in leading the call for an inspector general audit. Others signing the letter were Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota., Adam Schiff of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both of New Jersey, Gary Peters of Michigan, Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

“Given the (Trump) Administration’s historic hostility to releasing the files, politicization of the Epstein case more broadly, and failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a neutral assessment of its compliance with the statutory disclosure requirements is essential,” the senators wrote. Full transparency, they said, “is essential in identifying members of our society who enabled and participated in Epstein’s crimes.”

Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.

“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro as he took a break from his Florida holiday vacation to announce plans for the Navy to build a new, large warship.

Trump levied his latest threat as the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade U.S. sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a U.S. judicial seizure order.

“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.

It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that U.S. officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.

The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, seized a sanctioned tanker called Skipper on Dec. 10, also part of the shadow fleet of tankers that the U.S. says operates on the fringes of the law to move sanctioned cargo. That ship was registered in Panama.

Trump, after that first seizure, said the U.S. would carry out a “blockade” of Venezuela. Trump has repeatedly said that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.

Last week, Trump demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from U.S. oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Coast Guard, said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends” that the targeting of tankers is intended to send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone, and that we will stand up for our people.”

Russian diplomats evacuate families from Caracas

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

The official told The Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.

“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.

The scene on a Venezuelan beach near a refinery

While U.S. forces targeted the vessels in international waters over the weekend, a tanker that’s considered part of the shadow fleet was spotted moving between Venezuelan refineries, including one about three hours west of the capital, Caracas.

The tanker remained at the refinery in El Palito through Sunday, when families went to the town’s beach to relax with children now on break from school.

Music played on loudspeakers as people swam and surfed with the tanker in the background. Families and groups of teenagers enjoyed themselves, but Manuel Salazar, who has parked cars at the beach for more than three decades, noticed differences from years past, when the country’s oil-dependent economy was in better shape and the energy industry produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.

“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” Salazar, 68, said. “Now, look, one.”

The tanker in El Palito has been identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent watchdog promoting government accountability, to be part of the shadow fleet.

Area residents on Sunday recalled when tankers would sound their horns at midnight New Year’s Eve, while some would even send up fireworks to celebrate the holiday.

“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said of Venezuelan families spending the holiday at the beach next to the refinery. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”

Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Monday gave initial approval to a measure that would criminalize a broad range of activities that could be linked to the seizure of oil tankers.

Lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello, who introduced the bill, said people could be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years for promoting, requesting, supporting, financing or participating in “acts of piracy, blockades or other international illegal acts against” commercial entities operating with the South American country.

The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond.

At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September. The strikes have faced scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.

The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

The gaps go further.

The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

“There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

Jennifer Freeman, an attorney representing Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, on Saturday said her client feels vindicated after the document release. Farmer sought for years documents backing up her claim that Epstein and Maxwell were in possession of child sexual abuse images.

“It’s a triumph and a tragedy,” she said. “It looks like the government did absolutely nothing. Horrible things have happened and if they investigated in even the smallest way, they could have stopped him.”

Pharmaceutical companies Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi will now rein in Medicaid drug prices to match what they charged in other developed countries.

As part of the deal, new drugs made by those companies will also be charged at the so-called “most-favored-nation” pricing across the country on any newly launched medications for all, including commercial and cash pay markets as well as Medicare and Medicaid.

Drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on a number of factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.

Patients in Medicaid, the state and federally funded program for people with low incomes, already pay a nominal co-payment of a few dollars to fill their prescriptions, but lower prices could help state budgets that fund the programs.

Lower drug prices also will help patients who have no insurance coverage and little leverage to negotiate better deals on what they pay. But even steep discounts of 50% found through the administration’s website could still leave patients paying hundreds of dollars a month for some prescriptions.

William Padula, a pharmaceutical and health economics professor at USC, said Medicaid already has the most favorable drug rates which in some cases will be close to what the “most-favored-nation” price is so it remains to be seen what other impacts it could have, such as more research and development.

“It can’t be bad. I don’t see much downside but it’s hard to judge what the upside is,” Padula said.

And while it is significant that Trump was able to get big drugmakers to the table to negotiate lower prices, it will take years to gage how effective this initiative is in terms of more people obtaining more of the medicines they need.

“It’s good for their stock and it’s good for their future” research and development, Padula said of the pharmaceutical companies. “It’s clearly influential but will all this add up to a major effect? Nothing really matters here unless our health gets better as a country.”

Trump administration officials said the drugmakers will also sell pharmacy-ready medicines on the TrumpRx platform, which is set to launch in January and will allow people to buy drugs directly from manufacturers.

Companies such as Merck, GSK and Bristol Myers Squibb also agreed to donate significant supplies of active pharmaceutical ingredients to a national reserve and to formulate and distribute them into medications such as antibiotics, rescue inhalers and blood thinners as needed in an emergency.

The New Jersey-based Bristol Myers Squibb further announced that it will be giving for free to the Medicaid program its signature blood thinner prescribed to reduce the risk of blood clots and stroke. Known as Eliquis, it is the company’s top prescribed drug as well as being one of Medicaid’s most widely-used medicines.

Padula said the donations — which encompass some of the world’s most critical medicines — are a significant step toward health equity and an acknowledgement that the drugmakers can afford to seek profits elsewhere in their operations. Eliquis already has been one of the most profitable drugs ever made.

“It’s a thoughtful health equity move that they can afford given that it’s been such a blockbuster,” Padula said of the Eliquis donation.

Other major drugmakers including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly struck similar deals with the Trump administration earlier this year.

Though individual terms were not disclosed, the administration has now negotiated lower drug prices with 14 companies since Trump publicly sent letters to executives at 17 pharmaceutical companies about the issue, noting that U.S. prices for brand-name drugs can be up to three times higher than averages elsewhere.

Trump said he effectively threatened the pharmaceutical companies with 10% tariffs to get them to “do the right thing.”

The feuding threatened to eclipse efforts to memorialize Charlie Kirk, the organization’s charismatic founder who was assassinated in September, even as participants insisted they were honoring the legacy of a unifying figure within the Republican Party.

First up was Ben Shapiro, who described Tucker Carlson and others as grifters and charlatans, guilty of misleading their audiences with falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Shapiro sharply criticized Carlson, a former Fox News host, for interviewing outspoken antisemite Nick Fuentes on his podcast, calling it “an act of moral imbecility.”

Barely an hour later, Carlson took the same stage and mocked Shapiro’s attempt to “deplatform and denounce” people who disagree with him.

“I watched it,” he said. “I laughed.”

The raw bitterness on the opening night of the four-day conference reflected deep divisions over the meaning of “America First” and next steps for the “Make America Great Again” movement defined more by the force of Trump’s personality than loyalty to a particular ideological project.

It could also foreshadow more schisms within an increasingly fractious Republican Party, something that Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow and Turning Point’s new leader, warned about in her opening remarks.

Since the assassination, she said, “we’ve seen fractures, we’ve seen bridges being burned that shouldn’t be burnt.”

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with shooting and killing Kirk while he spoke at Utah Valley University in September, appeared in court last week. Robinson has not entered a plea. Authorities say he told his romantic partner that he killed Kirk because he “had enough of his hatred.”

Conservatives jockey to steer the MAGA movement

The last time Turning Point held its AmericaFest conference, weeks after Trump’s comeback victory, the mood was ebullient as Republicans prepared for a new era of total control in Washington. The organization is known for highly produced events that feel more like rock concerts or megachurch services than political rallies, complete with pyrotechnics and floor-shaking bass.

Now the party faces challenging midterm elections, with Trump constitutionally prohibited from running again and his more ideologically motivated acolytes positioning themselves for after he leaves office. Meanwhile, conservatives have been roiled by conflicts over antisemitism in its ranks, which Trump has declined to mediate.

Shapiro said too many of his fellow conservatives are failing their audiences by winking at conspiratorial claims and claiming they’re “just asking questions.”

He also continued his criticism of Carlson for his friendly interview with Fuentes, whose followers, known as “groypers,” see themselves as working to preserve a white, Christian identity in America.

Shapiro said Charlie Kirk “knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll, and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility, and that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.”

In response, Carlson said Shapiro’s position would be antithetical to Kirk, who was killed while debating students on a college campus.

“To hear calls for deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I’m like, what?” Carlson said. “This is hilarious.”

Carlson denied being antisemitic, saying it is immoral to hate people for how they were born. He then downplayed the problem of anti-Jewish hate by claiming it’s less pervasive than bias against white men.

“That is racism that is precisely as bad as antisemitism, but it is much more widespread and has been so far much more damaging,” he said.

Carlson dismissed the idea of a civil war in the Trump coalition as “totally fake,” saying a narrative of tension is ginned up by people who hope to prevent Vice President JD Vance from becoming Republicans’ next leader.

All the turmoil, he said, is about “who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene.”

Erika Kirk confronts conspiracies

Turning Point has also faced turmoil over conspiracy theories spread by Candace Owens, a former employee who hosts a top-rated podcast. Owens has alleged without evidence that Israeli spies were involved in Kirk’s death and that he was betrayed by people close to him. Authorities say Robinson acted alone.

Asked about Owens and others spreading conspiracy theories during a CBS News town hall, Erika Kirk responded with one word: “Stop.” She said Owens is making money off her family’s tragedy, adding that conspiracy peddlers risk tainting the jury pool and allowing her husband’s killer to get away with it.

Last weekend, with the Turning Point conference looming, Kirk and Owens agreed to a temporary détente until a private meeting. It didn’t last long.

After the meeting Monday, Owens said on her show that she and Kirk spoke for four-and-a-half hours but she still doubted that Robinson acted alone.

Owens also responded to criticism from Shapiro, who is Jewish, by doubling down on her claim that Israel was involved in Kirk’s assassination.

“Ben only cares about Israel’s interests,” she wrote on X. “So Israel is involved.”

Shapiro’s critiques of Owens and Carlson reflect a deepening fissure within the Republican Party over Israel and its war in Gaza, with some younger conservatives questioning whether unflinching support for the country is in line with Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Carlson criticized Israel’s military operations and said it was immoral to kill innocent children, adding, “I don’t care if it’s in Minneapolis or Gaza City.”

Turning Point draws thousands

There are still three more days to go for the Turning Point conference, which has drawn thousands of people. Vance is scheduled to speak Sunday, as is Donald Trump Jr.

There are more appearances expected from media personalities, administration officials, Christian rock bands and pastors. Attendees will have the chance to take selfies with popular figures and participate in discussions about political organizing, religion and conservative critiques of American culture.

On Thursday, right-wing podcasters and YouTube hosts taped their shows from the hallways as fans watched. Anti-abortion groups and Christian colleges recruited new members and students. Recruiters for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol were on hand, along with an armored tactical vehicle they drove into the exhibition hall.

Many dressed in red, white and blue or wore “Make America Great Again” hats. Some stopped for selfies in front of a sign saying, “we are all Charlie Kirk.”

“I just felt like I had an obligation to be here,” said Daren Struiksma, 20, of Harrisburg, South Dakota.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.

Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Kica Matos, National Immigration Law Center president, said in response to the decision that the administration is “shamelessly exploiting a national tragedy as cover to eliminate legal pathways for immigrants from non-white majority countries.”

“This is a moment for elected officials and the American public to speak up on behalf of the tens of thousands of people from majority Black and brown countries, who will now be left in limbo as the legality of this move undoubtedly works its way through the courts,” she said in a statement.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.

Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.

While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.

The additions, first seen publicly Wednesday, mark Trump’s latest effort to remake the White House in his own image, while flouting the protocols of how presidents treat their predecessors and doubling down on his determination to reshape how U.S. history is told.

“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement describing the installation in the colonnade that runs from the West Wing to the residence. “As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself.”

Indeed, the Trumpian flourishes include the president’s typical bombastic language and haphazard capitalization. They also highlight Trump’s fraught relationships with his more recent predecessors.

An introductory plaque tells passersby that the exhibit was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.”

Besides the Walk of Fame and its new plaques, Trump has adorned the Oval Office in gold and razed the East Wing in preparation for a massive ballroom. Separately, his administration has pushed for an examination of how Smithsonian exhibits present the nation’s history, and he is playing a strong hand in how the federal government will recognize the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

Here’s a look at how Trump’s colonnade exhibit tells the presidential story.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden is still the only president in the display not to be recognized with a gilded portrait. Instead, Trump chose an autopen, reflecting his mockery of Biden’s age and assertions that Biden was not up to the job.

Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election and dropped out of the 2024 election before their pending rematch, is introduced as “Sleepy Joe” and “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

Two plaques blast Biden for inflation and his energy and immigration policy, among other things. The text also blames Biden for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and asserts falsely that Biden was elected fraudulently.

Biden’s post-White House office had no comment on his plaque.

Barack Obama

The 44th president is described as “a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History.”

The plaque calls Obama’s signature domestic achievement “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable Care Act.”

And it notes that Trump nixed other major Obama achievements: “the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal … and ”the one-side Paris Climate Accords.”

An aide to Obama also declined comment.

George W. Bush

George W. Bush, who notably did not speak to Trump when they were last together at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, appears to win approval for creating the Department of Homeland Security and leading the nation after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But the plaque decries that Bush “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”

An aide to Bush didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Bill Clinton

The 42nd president, once a friend of Trump’s, gets faint praise for major crime legislation, an overhaul of the social safety net and balanced budgets.

But his plaque notes Clinton secured those achievements with a Republican Congress, the help of the 1990s “tech boom” and “despite the scandals that plagued his Presidency.”

Clinton’s recognition describes the North American Free Trade Agreement, another of his major achievements, as “bad for the United States” and something Trump would “terminate” during his first presidency. (Trump actually renegotiated some terms with Mexico and Canada but did not scrap the fundamental deal.)

His plaque ends with the line: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”

An aide to Clinton did not return a message seeking comment.

Other notable plaques

The broadsides dissipate the further back into history the plaques go.

Republican George H.W. Bush, who died during Trump’s first term, is recognized for his lengthy resume before becoming president, along with legislation including the Clean Air Act and Americans With Disabilities Act — despite Trump’s administration relaxing enforcement of both. The elder Bush’s plaque does not note that he, not Clinton, first pushed the major trade law that became NAFTA.

Lyndon Johnson’s plaque credits the Texas Democrat for securing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 (seminal laws that Trump’s administration interprets differently than previous administrations). It correctly notes that discontent over Vietnam led to LBJ not seeking reelection in 1968.

Democrat John F. Kennedy, the uncle of Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is credited as a World War II “war hero” who later used “stirring rhetoric” as president in opposition to communism.

Republican Richard Nixon’s plaque states plainly that the Watergate scandal led to his resignation.

While Trump spared most deceased presidents of harsh criticism, he jabbed at one of his regular targets, the media — this time across multiple centuries: Andrew Jackson’s plaque says the seventh president was “unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously and unfairly as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future, be.”

Donald Trump

With two presidencies, Trump gets two displays. Each is full of praise and superlatives — “the Greatest Economy in the History of the World.” He calls his 2016 Electoral College margin of 304-227 a “landslide.”

Trump’s second-term plaque notes his popular vote victory — something he did not achieve in 2016 — and concludes with “THE BEST IS YET TO COME.”

Meanwhile, the introductory plaque presumes Trump’s addition will be a White House fixture once he is no longer president: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”

Higgins also becomes the first Democrat in almost 30 years to lead the city of 487,000 people. She replaces Republican Francis Suarez, who has served as the city’s mayor since 2017. Higgins previously served as a Miami-Dade County commissioner, representing much of the city of Miami.

Trump endorsed Emilio Gonzalez during the campaign, touting his 2024 win in Miami-Dade County as a testament to his appeal among Hispanic voters. Higgins, 61, won the election by about 19 percentage points.

Higgins’ parents joined her on stage at Miami Dade College in downtown Miami as she took her oath of office. She thanked them, saying they raised her with values. “Get up everyday, work hard and do what’s right,” she said.

Higgins also thanked Suarez for his service to the city, noting that he “elevated the city’s profile worldwide.”

She made a career switch when she was in her 40s, after working as a mechanical engineer. She joined the Peace Corps and then became a diplomat before returning to Miami and serving as a county commissioner.

“That is why I am here. To serve. To show up every day and to make your lives better,” she said. “While a government cannot love, it can act lovingly. And we will act lovingly by listening to what the people of this city ask for.”

She noted that she will work to make housing affordable.

“My job now is to deliver on your choices,” Higgins said, speaking in both English and Spanish. “A city defined not by what we say but by what we do.”

Census figures show that more than 55% of Miami’s population is foreign born, with 45% coming from Cuba.

The sweeping proposals — the most significant moves this administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children — include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference on Thursday. “Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures.”

Thursday’s announcements would imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.

The proposals run counter to the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations. And advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration’s claims about gender-affirming care and said Thursday’s moves would put lives at risk.

“The multitude of efforts we are seeing from federal legislators to strip transgender and nonbinary youth of the health care they need is deeply troubling,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, of The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LBGTQ+ youth.

Proposed rules would threaten youth gender-affirming care in states where it remains legal

Medicaid programs in slightly less than half of states currently cover gender-affirming care. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care. The Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban means most other state laws are likely to remain in place.

The proposals announced by Kennedy and his deputies are not final or legally binding. The federal government must go through a lengthy rulemaking process, including periods of public comment and document rewrites, before the restrictions become permanent. They are also likely to face legal challenges.

But the proposed rules will likely further intimidate health care providers from offering gender-affirming care to children and many hospitals have already ceased such care in anticipation of federal action.

Some patients will still be able to receive care via private clinics specializing in transgender medicine, which often don’t participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

But nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the federal government’s largest health plans that cover seniors, people with disabilities and low-income Americans. Losing access to those payments would imperil most U.S. hospitals and medical providers.

The same funding restrictions would apply to a smaller health program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, when it comes to care for people under the age of 19, according to a federal notice posted Thursday morning.

“This sets a very dangerous precedent for all areas of health care, if the government can cherry-pick one area of medicine to use to withhold necessary funding from entire groups of people,” said Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and board member for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

WPATH developed standards of care for transgender patients globally, including creating guardrails backed by medical evidence and noting the importance of including patients and their families in decision-making.

Kennedy also announced Thursday that the HHS Office of Civil Rights will propose a rule excluding gender dysphoria from the definition of a disability. Gender dysphoria is a formal medical diagnosis that describes the distress felt when someone’s gender expression does not match their gender identity.

In a related move, the Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to a dozen companies that market chest-binding vests and other equipment used by people with gender dysphoria. Manufacturers include GenderBender LLC of Carson, California and TomboyX of Seattle. The FDA letters state that chest binders can only be legally marketed for FDA-approved medical uses, such as recovery after mastectomy surgery.

Moves contradict advice from medical organizations and transgender advocates

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Thursday called transgender treatments “a Band-Aid on a much deeper pathology,” and suggested children with gender dysphoria are “confused, lost and need help.”

Polling shows many Americans agree with the administration’s view of the issue. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted in May found that about half of U.S. adults approved of how Trump was handling transgender issues.

Chloe Cole, a conservative activist known for speaking about her gender-transition reversal, spoke at the news conference to express appreciation. She said cries for help from her and others in her situation, “have finally been heard.”

But the approach contradicts the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, which has urged states not to restrict care for gender dysphoria. The American Academy of Pediatrics called on HHS to reverse course Thursday, saying “children and families will bear the consequences.”

“These rules are a baseless intrusion into the patient-physician relationship. Patients, their families, and their physicians—not politicians or government officials —should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, AAP president. “The government’s actions today make that task harder, if not impossible, for families of gender-diverse and transgender youth.”

Actions build on a larger effort to restrict transgender rights

The announcements build on a wave of actions President Donald Trump, his administration and Republicans in Congress have taken to target the rights of transgender people nationwide.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that declared the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. He also has signed orders aimed at cutting off federal support for gender transitions for people under age 19 and barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

On Wednesday, a bill that would open transgender health care providers to prison time if they treat people under the age of 18 passed the U.S. House and heads to the Senate. Another bill under consideration in the House on Thursday aims to ban Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care for children.

Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth are first evaluated by a team of professionals. Some may try a social transition, involving changing a hairstyle or pronouns. Some may later also receive hormone-blocking drugs that delay puberty, followed by testosterone or estrogen to bring about the desired physical changes in patients. Surgery is rare for minors.

The switch would move marijuana away from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. Cannabis would instead be a Schedule III substance, like ketamine and some anabolic steroids.

Reclassification by the Drug Enforcement Administration would not make it legal for recreational use by adults nationwide, but it could change how the drug is regulated and reduce a hefty tax burden on the cannabis industry.

The Republican president said he had received a deluge of phone calls supporting the move and its potential to help patients. “We have people begging for me to do this. People that are in great pain,” he said.

Similarly, the Justice Department under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, proposed reclassifying marijuana to a Schedule III substance. Unlike Biden, Trump did not have open encouragement from across his party for the move. Some Republicans have spoken out in opposition to any changes and urged Trump to maintain current standards.

Such a switch typically requires an arduous process, including a public comment period that has drawn tens of thousands of reactions from across the U.S. The DEA was still in the review process when Trump took office in January. Trump’s order is expected to speed the process along, though it was not immediately clear how long it might take.

Medical marijuana is now allowed by 40 states and Washington, D.C., and many states have also legalized it for recreational use. But U.S. laws have remained stricter, potentially leaving people subject to federal prosecution.

Polling from Gallup shows more Americans back a less restrictive approach: Support for marijuana legalization has grown from just 36% in 2005 to 64% this year. Yet that’s down slightly from a couple of years ago, primarily because of declining support among Republicans, Gallup said.

Trump’s order also calls for expanded research and access to CBD, a legal and increasingly popular hemp-derived product whose benefits are debated by experts.

A new Medicare pilot program would allow older adults to access legal hemp-derived CBD at no cost, if recommended by a doctor, said Dr. Mehmet Oz, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Still, the marijuana changes are not universally welcomed. More than 20 Republican senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter this year urging the president to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug.

Led by North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, the group argued that marijuana continues to be dangerous and that a shift would “undermine your strong efforts to Make America Great Again.” They argued, too, that marijuana negatively affects users’ physical and mental health, as well as road and workplace safety.

“The only winners from rescheduling will be bad actors such as Communist China, while Americans will be left paying the bill,” the letter said, referring to China’s place in the cannabis market.

Trump has not previously committed to another, bigger step: decriminalizing marijuana. He once said as a candidate that it should remain a state-by-state issue.

In the early days of the second Trump administration, the Justice Department showed little interest in discussing marijuana rescheduling, which had encountered strong resistance from inside the DEA under Biden, according to a former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in an effort to avoid retaliation.

He has made his crusade against other drugs, especially fentanyl, a feature of his second term, ordering U.S. military attacks on Venezuelan and other boats the administration insists are ferrying drugs.

He signed another executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Jack Riley, a former deputy administrator of the DEA, backed the focus on the drug war as a national security priority, but said marijuana rescheduling sends a conflicting message.

“He’s blowing up boats in Latin America that he says are full of fentanyl and cocaine but on the other hand loosening the restrictions that will allow wider exposure to a first-level drug,” said Riley, who was in the running to lead the DEA upon Trump’s return to the White House. “That is clearly a contradiction.”

Medical marijuana has become a part of the health care environment in many states.

Currently, 30,000 licensed health care practitioners are authorized to recommend its use for more than 6 million patients for at least 15 medical conditions, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found.

The Food and Drug Administration has found credible scientific support for its use to treat anorexia-related medical conditions, nausea, vomiting and pain. Older adults, in particular, are using it for chronic pain, which afflicts 1 in 3 from that age group.

The remarks came as the nation is preparing to settle down to celebrate the holidays, yet Trump was focused more on divisions within the country than a sense of unity. His speech was a rehash of his recent messaging that has so far been unable to calm public anxiety about the cost of groceries, housing, utilities and other basic goods.

Trump has promised an economic boom, yet inflation has stayed elevated and the job market has weakened sharply in the wake of his import taxes. Trump suggested that his tariffs — which are partly responsible for boosting consumer prices — would fund a new “warrior dividend” for 1.45 million military members, a payment that could ease some of the financial strains for many households. The amount of $1,776 was a reference to next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“The checks are already on the way,” he said of the expenditure, which would total roughly $2.6 billion.

Presidential addresses to the nation carried on network television are traditionally less partisan than rally speeches, but Trump gave a condensed version of his usual political remarks.

Flanked by two Christmas trees with a portrait of George Washington behind him in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room, Trump sought to pin any worries about the economy on his predecessor, Joe Biden.

“Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump said. “We’re poised for an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Trump seeking to stop the slump in his approval ratings

His holiday wishes came at a crucial time as he tries to rebuild his steadily eroding popularity. Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.

In 2026, Trump and his party face a referendum on their leadership as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.

The White House remarks were a chance for Trump to try to regain some momentum after Republican losses in this year’s elections raised questions about the durability of his coalition. He openly leaned into the politics despite television networks’ past reluctance to broadcast presidential addresses loaded with campaign-style rhetoric.

For example, in September 2022, networks declined to give the Biden White House a prime-time slot for a speech the then-president gave about democracy because it was viewed as too political.

Trump spoke at a rapid-fire clip with a tone that bordered at times on anger. He responded to the public frustration this year over the economy by making even bolder promises on growth next year, saying that mortgage rates would be coming down and that he “would announce some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.”

Trump brought charts with him to make the case that the economy is on an upward trajectory. He made claims about incomes growing, inflation easing and investment dollars pouring into the country as foreign leaders, he claimed, have assured him that “we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” a statement he has frequently repeated at public events.

If the argument seemed familiar, that’s because it has echoes of the case that Biden made about the U.S. economy with little success. He, too, in the face of inflation pointed to the enviable rate of U.S. economic growth compared to other nations.

The public sees the economy differently from Trump

The hard math internalized by the public paints a more complicated picture of an economy that has some stability but few reasons to inspire much public confidence.

The stock market is up, gasoline prices are down and tech companies are placing large bets on the development of artificial intelligence.

But inflation that had been descending after spiking to a four-decade high in 2022 under Biden has reaccelerated after Trump announced his tariffs in April.

The consumer price index is increasing at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April.

The affordability squeeze is also coming from a softening job market. Monthly job gains have averaged a paltry 17,000 since April’s “Liberation Day,” when Trump announced import taxes that he later suspended and then readjusted several months later.

The unemployment rate has climbed from 4% in January to 4.6%.

Trump said that investment commitments for new factories will boost manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.

While emphasizing the economy, he also faces challenges on other policy fronts.

Trump’s mass deportations of immigrants have proved unpopular even as he is viewed favorably for halting crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico. The public has generally been unmoved by his globe-trotting efforts to end conflicts and his attacks on suspected drug boats near Venezuela.

Trump sought to blame Democrats for the likely increase in health insurance premiums as the subsidies tied to the 2010 Affordable Care Act are expiring. Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans have sought to address that issue, but Trump has pushed back and suggested instead that payments should go directly to the buyers of health insurance instead of the companies. The president has yet to commit to a specific legislative fix.

After his speech ended and the video was no longer being broadcast, Trump turned to his gathered aides and asked them how his address to the nation went. The aides assured him it was great.

Trump then indicated that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had told him he needed to address the nation. After some back and forth, he asked Wiles how he had done.

“I told you 20 minutes and you were 20 minutes on the dot,” Wiles said. as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.

The White House remarks were a chance for Trump to try to regain some momentum after Republican losses in this year’s elections raised questions about the durability of his coalition. He openly leaned into the politics despite television networks’ past reluctance to broadcast presidential addresses loaded with campaign-style rhetoric.

For example, in September 2022, networks declined to give the Biden White House a prime-time slot for a speech the then-president gave about democracy because it was viewed as too political.

Trump spoke at a rapid-fire clip with a tone that bordered at times on anger. He responded to the public frustration this year over the economy by making even bolder promises on growth next year, saying that mortgage rates would be coming down and that he “would announce some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.”

Trump brought charts with him to make the case that the economy is on an upward trajectory. He made claims about incomes growing, inflation easing and investment dollars pouring into the country as foreign leaders, he claimed, have assured him that “we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” a statement he has frequently repeated at public events.

If the argument seemed familiar, that’s because it has echoes of the case that Biden made about the U.S. economy with little success. He, too, in the face of inflation pointed to the enviable rate of U.S. economic growth compared to other nations.

The public sees the economy differently from Trump

The hard math internalized by the public paints a more complicated picture of an economy that has some stability but few reasons to inspire much public confidence.

The stock market is up, gasoline prices are down and tech companies are placing large bets on the development of artificial intelligence.

But inflation that had been descending after spiking to a four-decade high in 2022 under Biden has reaccelerated after Trump announced his tariffs in April.

The consumer price index is increasing at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April.

The affordability squeeze is also coming from a softening job market. Monthly job gains have averaged a paltry 17,000 since April’s “Liberation Day,” when Trump announced import taxes that he later suspended and then readjusted several months later.

The unemployment rate has climbed from 4% in January to 4.6%.

Trump said that investment commitments for new factories will boost manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.

While emphasizing the economy, he also faces challenges on other policy fronts.

Trump’s mass deportations of immigrants have proved unpopular even as he is viewed favorably for halting crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico. The public has generally been unmoved by his globe-trotting efforts to end conflicts and his attacks on suspected drug boats near Venezuela.

Trump sought to blame Democrats for the likely increase in health insurance premiums as the subsidies tied to the 2010 Affordable Care Act are expiring. Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans have sought to address that issue, but Trump has pushed back and suggested instead that payments should go directly to the buyers of health insurance instead of the companies. The president has yet to commit to a specific legislative fix.

After his speech ended and the video was no longer being broadcast, Trump turned to his gathered aides and asked them how his address to the nation went. The aides assured him it was great.

The White House offered few details about what the Republican president intends to emphasize in the 9 p.m. EST speech. Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.

Asked on Tuesday by reporters about his planned remarks, Trump indicated that he planned to reiterate that he believes he inherited high inflation from his predecessor, Joe Biden.

“Well I think the message this evening is: We inherited a mess,” Trump said. “And we’ve done a great job. We continue to. And our country is going to be stronger than before.”

That message is similar to what Biden delivered after beating Trump in the 2020 election, with the Democrat stressing that he inherited from Trump the economic and public health challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2026, Trump and his party face a referendum on their leadership as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.

The White House remarks are a chance for Trump to try to regain some momentum after Republican losses in this year’s elections raised questions about the durability of his coalition.

Trump’s mass deportations of immigrants have proved unpopular even as he is viewed favorably for halting crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico. The public has generally been unmoved by his income tax cuts and globe-trotting efforts to end conflicts, attack suspected drug boats near Venezuela and attract investment dollars into the United States.

Trump has said that he thinks more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Administration officials say investment commitments for new factories will reverse the recent decline in manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.

“It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump said in a Tuesday social media post announcing the speech.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would discuss his achievements this year and his plans for the remainder of his second term.

Trump has been omnipresent on social media and television this year with his impromptu news conferences and speeches. But addresses to the nation often can be relatively sober affairs, as was Trump’s June address describing the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran.

The president has eschewed the messaging discipline that’s common among most politicians, an authenticity that appeals to some voters and repels others.

In a speech in Pennsylvania last week, he said his tariffs might mean that American children should have fewer dolls and pencils, while confirming a previously denied story from his first term in 2018 that he did not want immigrants from “shithole” countries.

On Monday, Trump on his social media site blamed Rob Reiner’s vocal objections to the president for the killing of the actor-director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

A report released on Tuesday showed a jobs market that looks increasingly fragile, even if the overall economy still appears to be stable.

Employers were adding on average 122,750 jobs a month during the first four months of this year. But since Trump announced his broad tariffs in April, monthly job gains have averaged a paltry 17,000 as the unemployment rate has climbed from 4% in January to 4.6%.

Trump’s team has blamed Democratic lawmakers for shutting down the government for the job losses reported Tuesday during October.

The meeting was held at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware before the remains of the deceased were transferred to their families. Trump was joining the families and top administration and military officials to watch the so-called dignified transfer of the remains.

The solemn dignified transfer ritual honors U.S. service members killed in action. Trump, who traveled to Dover several times in his first term, once described it as “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.

The two guardsmen killed in Syria on Saturday were Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, according to the U.S. Army. Both were members of the 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, and have been hailed as heroes by the Iowa National Guard.

Torres-Tovar’s and Howard’s families were at Dover for the return of their remains, alongside Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, members of Iowa’s congressional delegation and leaders of the Iowa National Guard. Their remains will be taken to Iowa after the transfer.

A U.S. civilian working as an interpreter, identified Tuesday as Ayad Mansoor Sakat, of Macomb, Michigan, was also killed. Three other members of the Iowa National Guard were injured in the attack. The Pentagon has not identified them.

They were among hundreds of U.S. troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the Islamic State group.

The process of returning service member remains

There is no formal role for a president at a dignified transfer other than to watch in silence, with all thoughts about what happened in the past and what is happening at Dover kept to himself for the moment. There is no speaking by any of the dignitaries who attend, with the only words coming from the military officials who direct the highly choreographed transfers.

Trump arrived without first lady Melania Trump, who had been scheduled to accompany him, according to the president’s public schedule. Her office declined to elaborate, with spokesperson Nick Clemens saying the first lady “was not able to attend today.”

During the process at Dover, transfer cases draped with the American flag that hold the soldiers’ remains are carried from the belly of a hulking C-17 military aircraft to a waiting vehicle under the watchful eyes of grieving family members. The vehicle then transports the remains to the mortuary facility at the base, where the fallen are prepared for burial at their final resting places.

Iowa National Guard members hailed as heroes

Howard’s stepfather, Jeffrey Bunn, has said Howard “loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out.” He said Howard had wanted to be a soldier since he was a boy.

In a social media post, Bunn, who is chief of the Tama, Iowa, police department, said Howard was a loving husband and an “amazing man of faith.” He said Howard’s brother, a staff sergeant in the Iowa National Guard, would escort “Nate” back to Iowa.

Torres-Tovar was remembered as a “very positive” family-oriented person who always put others first, according to fellow Guard members who were deployed with him and issued a statement to the local TV broadcast station WOI.

Dina Qiryaqoz, the daughter of the civilian interpreter who was killed, said Wednesday in a statement that her father worked for the U.S. Army during the invasion of Iraq from 2003 to 2007. Sakat is survived by his wife and four adult children.

The interpreter was from Bakhdida, Iraq, a small Catholic village southeast of Mosul, and the family immigrated to the U.S. in 2007 on a special visa, Qiryaqoz said. At the time of his death, Sakat was employed as an independent contractor for Virginia-based Valiant Integrated Services.

Sakat’s family was still struggling to believe that he is gone. “He was a devoted father and husband, a courageous interpreter and a man who believed deeply in the mission he served,” Qiryaqoz said.

Trump’s reaction to the attack in Syria

Trump told reporters over the weekend that he was mourning the deaths. He vowed retaliation. The most recent instance of U.S. service members killed in action was in January 2024, when three American troops died in a drone attack in Jordan.

Saturday’s deadly attack followed a rapprochement between the U.S. and Syria, bringing the former pariah state into a U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group.

Trump has forged a relationship with interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the onetime leader of an Islamic insurgent group who led the ouster of former President Bashar Assad.

Trump, who met with al-Sharaa last month at the White House, said Monday that the attack had nothing to do with the Syrian leader, who Trump said was “devastated by what happened.”

During his first term, Trump visited Dover in 2017 to honor a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, in 2019 for two Army officers whose helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, and in 2020 for two Army soldiers killed in Afghanistan when a person dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire.

The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year’s end. The action sets the stage for a renewed intraparty clash over health care in January, something Republican leaders had been working to avoid, just weeks before another government funding deadline at the end of that month.

The moderate Republicans were able to force the issue by signing a petition, led by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, to vote on a bill that would extend the subsides for three years.

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed on Wednesday morning, pushing it to the magic number of 218. A vote on the subsidy bill could come as soon as January under House rules.

“Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “I have not lost control of the House” and he noted that Republicans have a razor-thin majority that allows a small number of members to employ procedures that would not usually be successful in getting around leadership.

“These are not normal times,” said Johnson, R-La.

Origins of a Republican revolt

The revolt against GOP leadership came after days of talks centered on the health care subsidies.

Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party’s conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed ACA program, which is widely known as “Obamacare.”

House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday a 100-plus-page health care package without the subsidies. Instead, the measure focuses on long-sought GOP proposals designed to expand insurance coverage options for small businesses and the self-employed.

Fitzpatrick and Lawler tried to add a temporary extension of the subsidies to the bill, but were denied.

“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments,” Fitzpatrick said. “House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments.”

“As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said.

Lawler, in a social media post, similarly said that “the failure of leadership” to permit a vote had left him with “no choice” but to sign the petition.

Jeffries, for several weeks, had called on Republicans to sign his discharge petition. He particularly challenged Republicans in competitive congressional districts to join the effort if they really wanted to prevent premium increases for their constituents.

“Mike Johnson needs to bring the bill to the floor today,” Jeffries said. “Our position from the very beginning was that we are standing on the right side of the American people who want to see the Affordable Care Act tax credits extended, and we’re appreciative that we now have the bipartisan coalition to get that done.”

The GOP holds a 220-213 majority in the House, which means defections from just a sliver of the conference can upend leadership’s plans. Johnson has been able to negotiate that challenge largely by making accommodations to the more conservative wing of his conference. This time, it was the moderates who revolted.

The defectors largely represent districts that Democrats have targeted in their bid to retake the majority, with Democrats promising to make health insurance costs a central issue in next year’s midterms.

Lawmakers turn to discharge petitions to show support for an action and potentially force a vote on the House floor, but they are rarely successful. This year has proven an exception. The vote requiring the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files occurred after Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The signature effort was backed by all House Democrats and four Republicans.

It was a long battle to get 218 signatures, but once the magic number was reached, lawmakers in both chambers voted overwhelmingly for the bill.

Path ahead is uncertain

Even if the Democrats’ subsidy bill were to pass the House, which is far from assured, it would face an arduous climb in the Republican-led Senate.

Republicans last week voted down a three-year extension of the subsidies and proposed an alternative that also failed. But in an encouraging sign for Democrats, four Republican senators crossed party lines to support their proposal.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., argued against the Democratic extension as “an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare’s spiraling health care costs.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he viewed the House developments Wednesday as a positive for generating a compromise that both parties could support.

“If we’re not talking, we’re not making progress. This continues the discussion,” Tillis said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said that the 218th signature for the Democrats’ bill showed that the demand from the American people for an extension is undeniable, but “the damage has now been done, no matter what happens.”

“Because at this point, Republicans have made it impossible to prevent many Americans from paying more on their monthly premiums on January 1st. And Republicans can’t even say they tried to stop it,” Schumer said.

The Trump administration included five more countries as well as people traveling on documents issued by the Palestinian Authority to the list of countries facing a full ban on travel to the U.S. and imposed new limits on 15 other countries.

The move is part of ongoing efforts by the administration to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration, in what critics say unfairly prevents travel for people from a broad range of countries. The administration suggested it would expand the restrictions after the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.

People who already have visas, are lawful permanent residents of the U.S. or have certain visa categories such as diplomats or athletes, or whose entry into the country is believed to serve the U.S. interest, are all exempt from the restrictions. The proclamation said the changes go into effect on Jan. 1.

In June, President Donald Trump announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from coming to the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions. The decision resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term.

At the time the ban included Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

On Tuesday, the Republican administration announced it was expanding the list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the U.S. to Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria. The administration also fully restricted travel on people with Palestinian Authority-issued travel documents, the latest U.S. travel restriction against Palestinians. South Sudan was also facing significant travel restrictions already.

An additional 15 countries are also being added to the list of countries facing partial restrictions: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Ivory Coast, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The restrictions apply to both people seeking to travel to the U.S. as visitors or to emigrate there.

The Trump administration said in its announcement that many of the countries from which it was restricting travel had “widespread corruption, fraudulent or unreliable civil documents and criminal records” that made it difficult to vet their citizens for travel to the U.S.

It also said some countries had high rates of people overstaying their visas, refused to take back their citizens whom the U.S. wished to deport or had a “general lack of stability and government control,” which made vetting difficult. It also cited immigration enforcement, foreign policy and national security concerns for the move.

The Afghan man accused of shooting the two National Guard troops near the White House has pleaded not guilty to murder and assault charges. In the aftermath of that incident, the administration announced a flurry of immigration restrictions, including further restrictions on people from those initial 19 countries who were already in the U.S.

The news of the expanding travel ban is likely to face fierce opposition from critics who have argued that the administration is using national security concerns to collectively keep out people from a wide range of countries.

“This expanded ban is not about national security but instead is another shameful attempt to demonize people simply for where they are from,” said Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president of U.S. Legal Programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Advocates for Afghans who supported the United States’ two-decade long war in Afghanistan also raised alarms Tuesday, saying the updated travel ban no longer contains an exception for Afghans who qualify for the Special Immigrant Visa. That’s a visa category specifically for Afghans who closely assisted the U.S. war effort at great risk to themselves.

No One Left Behind, a longtime agency advocating for the Special Immigrant Visa program, said it was “deeply concerned” about the change. The organization said it appreciated the president’s commitment to national security but allowing Afghans who’d served the U.S. to enter the U.S. — after extensive vetting — also contributes to the country’s security.

“Though intended to allow for review of inconsistent vetting processes, this policy change inadvertently restricts those who are among the most rigorously vetted in our history: the wartime allies targeted by the terrorists this proclamation seeks to address,” the organization said in a statement.

Countries that were newly placed on the list of banned or restricted countries said late Tuesday that they were evaluating the news. The government of the island nation of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea said it was treating the issue with the “utmost seriousness and urgency” and was reaching out to U.S. officials to clarify what the restrictions mean and address any problems.

Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Ronald Saunders, said the “matter is quite serious” and he’ll be seeking more information from U.S. officials regarding the new restrictions.

The Trump administration also upgraded restrictions on some countries — Laos and Sierra Leone — that previously were on the partially restricted list and in one case — Turkmenistan — said the country had improved enough to warrant easing some restrictions on travelers from that country. Everything else from the previous travel restrictions announced in June remains in place, the administration said.

The new restrictions on Palestinians come months after the administration imposed limits that make it nearly impossible for anyone holding a Palestinian Authority passport from receiving travel documents to visit the U.S. for business, work, pleasure or educational purposes. The announcement Tuesday goes further, banning people with Palestinian Authority passports from emigrating to the U.S.

In justifying its decision Tuesday, the administration said several “U.S.-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have murdered American citizens.” The administration also said the recent war in those areas had “likely resulted in compromised vetting and screening abilities.”

Trump’s escalation comes after U.S. forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, an unusual move that followed a buildup of military forces in the region. In a post on social media Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to continue the military buildup until the country gave the U.S. oil, land and assets, though it was not clear why he felt the U.S. had a claim.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

Pentagon officials referred all questions about the post to the White House.

Venezuela’s government released a statement Tuesday accusing Trump of “violating international law, free trade, and the principle of free navigation” with “a reckless and grave threat” against the South American country.

“On his social media, he assumes that Venezuela’s oil, land, and mineral wealth are his property,” the statement said of Trump’s post. “Consequently, he demands that Venezuela immediately hand over all its riches. The President of the United States intends to impose, in an utterly irrational manner, a supposed naval blockade on Venezuela with the aim of stealing the wealth that belongs to our nation.”

Maduro’s government, according to the statement, plans to denounce the situation before the United Nations.

The U.S. buildup has been accompanied by a series of military strikes on boats in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The campaign, which has drawn bipartisan scrutiny among U.S. lawmakers, has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels.

Trump has for weeks said that the U.S. will move its campaign beyond the water and start strikes on land.

The Trump administration has defended the strikes as a success, saying they have prevented drugs from reaching American shores, and pushed back on concerns that they are stretching the bounds of lawful warfare.

The Trump administration has said the campaign is about stopping drugs headed to the U.S., but Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared to confirm in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday that the campaign is part of a push to oust Maduro.

Wiles said Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”

Tuesday night’s announcement seemed to have a similar aim.

Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenue as a lifeblood of its economy.

Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.

The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, has been locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions. It sells most of its exports at a steep discount in the black market in China.

Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said about 850,000 barrels of the 1 million daily production is exported. Of that, he said, 80% goes to China, 15% to 17% goes to the U.S. through Chevron Corp., and the remainder goes to Cuba.

In October, Trump appeared to confirm reports that Maduro has offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in recent months to try to stave off mounting pressure from the United States.

“He’s offered everything,” Trump said at the time. “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to f—- around with the United States.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the U.S. planned to enact what Trump called a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

But the U.S. Navy has 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier and several amphibious assault ships, in the region.

Those ships carry a wide complement of aircraft, including helicopters and V-22 Ospreys. Additionally, the Navy has been operating a handful of P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the region.

All told, those assets provide the military a significant ability to monitor marine traffic coming in and out of the country.

Trump in his post said that the “Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” but it wasn’t clear what he was referring to.

The foreign terrorist organization designation has been historically reserved for non-state actors that do not have sovereign immunities conferred by either treaties or United Nations membership.

In November, the Trump administration announced it was designating the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The term Cartel de los Soles originally referred to Venezuelan military officers involved in drug-running, but it is not a cartel per se.

Governments that U.S. administrations seek to sanction for financing, otherwise fomenting or tolerating extremist violence are usually designated “state sponsors of terrorism.”

Venezuela is not on that list.

In rare cases, the U.S. has designated an element of a foreign government as an “FTO.” The Trump administration in its first term did so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian government, which had already been designated a state sponsor of terrorism.

The first woman to ever hold her current post, Wiles pushed back on what she described as a “hit piece” that lacked context. But neither she, nor other West Wing officials who came to her defense, disputed any details in the profile — a wide-ranging narrative that included Wiles’ assessments of the teetotaling Trump as having “an alcoholic’s personality,” Vice President JD Vance as a calculating “conspiracy theorist” and Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. as “quirky Bobby.”

On Epstein, Wiles told the magazine that she underestimated the scandal involving the disgraced financier, but she sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public’s expectations. She said at one point that Trump’s tariffs had been more painful than expected. She conceded some mistakes in Trump’s mass deportation program and suggested that the president’s retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies has gone beyond what she initially wanted.

But Wiles, who managed Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign, broadly defended the president’s aggressive second term agenda, including affirming that Trump wants to keep bombing alleged drug boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela until that country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, “cries uncle.”

Wiles pushed back but without any denials

After the comments were published, Wiles disparaged it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote in a social media post. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”

Wiles did not deny the comments that were attributed to her.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also rose to Wiles’ defense, writing on the X platform that, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”

White House budget chief Russell Vought added his praise as well, posting on social media that Trump’s West Wing through two presidencies has “never worked this well or been more oriented towards accomplishing what he wants to.”

In her interviews, Wiles praised Vought while describing him as “right-wing absolute zealot.”

The chief of staff criticizes the attorney general

Trump tapped Wiles after she managed his 2024 campaign. She is known for shunning the spotlight, so it is rare for her to speak as extensively and openly as she did about the president to the magazine, which published its lengthy interview with her — and other members of the White House staff and the Cabinet. Wiles has been speaking to Vanity Fair since just before Trump took office last January.

Asked about Epstein, Wiles said she hadn’t tracked the public focus on “whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls.”

She said she has read the Epstein file and that Trump is “not in the file doing anything awful.” He and Epstein were friends before they had a falling out.

The Justice Department is facing a Friday deadline to release everything it has on Epstein after Trump, who had objected to the release, signed legislation requiring that the papers be made public.

Wiles criticized Bondi’s handling of the case, going back to earlier in the year when she distributed binders to a group of social media influencers that included no new information about Epstein. That led to even more calls from Trump’s base for the files to be released.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

An insider’s look at the president with ‘an alcoholic’s personality’

Wiles, over the series of interviews, described the president behind the scenes very much as he presents himself in public: an intense figure who thinks in broad strokes yet is often not concerned with the details of process and policy. She added, though, that he has not been as angry or temperamental as is often suggested, even as she affirmed his ruthlessness and determination to achieve retribution against those he considers his political enemies.

Trump, she said, has “an alcoholic’s personality,” even though the president does not drink. But the personality trait is something she recognizes from her father, the famous sports broadcaster Pat Summerall.

“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” she said, adding that Trump has “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

On Venezuela, Wiles said Trump wants to keep the pressure on Maduro.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” Her comment, though, seemed to contradict the administration’s position that the strikes are about stopping drugs and saving American lives, not regime change.

She said the administration is “very sure we know who we’re blowing up.”

The continued strikes and mounting death toll have drawn scrutiny from Congress, which has pushed back and opened investigations.

Trump’s vengeance comes with a purpose, Wiles says

Wiles described much of her job as channeling Trump’s energy, whims and desired policy outcomes — including managing his desire for vengeance against his political opponents, anyone he blames for his 2020 electoral defeat and those who pursued criminal cases against him after his first term.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” Wiles said early in his administration, telling Vanity Fair that she does try to tamp down Trump’s penchant for retribution.

Later in 2025, she pushed back. “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” she said, arguing he was operating on a different principle: ”‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”

Asked about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, Wiles allowed: “Well, that might be the one retribution.”

Hegseth said that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees would have an opportunity this week to review the video, but did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it, even as a defense policy bill demands that it be released to Congress.

“Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door briefing with senators.

President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials overseeing national security were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the swift escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela, but it left lawmakers questioning the broader goals of the campaign.

Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, briefed the House and the Senate amid congressional investigations into the military strike in September that killed two survivors. Overall, they defended the campaign as a success that had prevented drugs from reaching American shores.

Rubio told reporters the campaign is a “counter drug mission” that is “focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere , undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”

But, lawmakers have been focusing on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sift through the rationale for the broader U.S. military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela. On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said late Monday it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark about Trump’s goals when it comes to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or committing U.S. forces directly to the South American nation.

The closed-door sessions come as the U.S. is building up warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office. Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.

It’s all raising sharp questions that Hegseth and the others will be pressed to answer. The administration’s go-it-alone approach without Congress, experts say, has led to problematic military actions, none more so than the strike that killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been partially destroyed in an initial attack.

“If it’s not a war against Venezuela, then we’re using armed force against civilians who are just committing crimes,” said John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor who helped craft the President George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments and justification for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Then this question, this worry, becomes really pronounced. You know, you’re shooting civilians. There’s no military purpose for it.”

Yet for the first several months, Congress has received little more than a trickle of information about why or how the U.S. military was conducting a campaign that has destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people. At times, lawmakers have learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.

Congress is now demanding — including with language included in an annual military policy bill — that the Pentagon release video of that initial operation to lawmakers.

The demand for release of video footage

For some, the footage has become a case sample that demonstrates the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.

“The American public ought to see it. I think shooting unarmed people floundering in the water, clinging to wreckage, is not who we are as a people,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has been an outspoken critic of the campaign. He added that, ”You can’t say you’re at war and say, ‘We’re not going to give any kind of due process to anybody and blow up people without any kind of proof.’”

Hegseth told lawmakers last week that he was still deciding whether to release the footage.

Still, there are also many prominent Republicans who back the campaign. Sen. Jim Risch, the GOP chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week called the attacks “absolutely, totally, and 100% legal under U.S. law and international law” and claimed that many American lives had been saved by making sure the drugs didn’t reach the U.S.

But as lawmakers have dug into the details of the Sept. 2 strike, inconsistencies have emerged in the Trump administration’s explanation of the attack, which the Pentagon initially tried to dismiss as a “completely false” narrative.

The shifting rationale for the strike

Trump has argued that the strike that killed survivors was justified because the people were trying to overturn the boat. Several GOP lawmakers have also put forward that argument, saying that it showed the two survivors were trying to stay in the fight, rather than surrender.

However, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the second strike as he commanded the special forces soldiers conducting it, acknowledged in private briefings on Capitol Hill last week that although the two people had tried to overturn the boat, they were unlikely to succeed. That’s according to several people who either were in the briefings or had knowledge of them and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.

The two people had climbed on top of the overturned boat, had not made any radio or cellphone calls for backup and were waving, Bradley told the lawmakers. The Navy admiral consulted with a military attorney, then ordered the second strike because it was believed that drugs were in the hull of the boat and the mission was to make sure they were destroyed.

Were the survivors ‘shipwrecked’?

Experts say the strike seems to run counter to the Pentagon’s own manual on the laws of war, which states that “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

“The boat was damaged, the boat was overturned, and the boat had no power,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. “I really don’t care if there was another boat coming to rescue them. They’re shipwrecked.”

The argument at the heart of Trump’s campaign — that drugs bound for the U.S. are the equivalent of an attack on American lives — has resulted in lawmakers trying to parse whether laws were violated and, more broadly, what Trump’s goals are with Venezuela.

Besides the briefings from Hegseth and Rubio on Tuesday, Bradley is also expected to appear for classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on Wednesday.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he wants to “really understand what action, what intelligence they were acting on and whether or not they follow the laws of war, the laws of the sea.”

The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”

The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.

BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.

The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”

“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”

The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.

Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the U.S. given that the documentary was not shown in the country.

The lawsuit alleges that people in the U.S. can watch the BBC’s original content, including the “Panorama” series, which included the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.

The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.

The statement, even for Trump, was a shocking comment that came as police were still investigating the deaths of the beloved director and his wife as an apparent homicide. The couple were found dead at their home Sunday in Los Angeles. Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds and the couple’s son Nick Reiner, was in police custody early Monday.

Trump has a long track record of inflammatory remarks, but his comments in a social media post were a drastic departure from the role presidents typically play in offering a message of consolation or tribute to the death of a public figure. His message drew criticism even from conservatives and his supporters and laid bare Trump’s unwillingness to rise above political grievance in moments of crisis.

Trump, in a post on his social media network, said that Reiner and his wife were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

He said Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has bucked much of his party’s lockstep agreement with the president, criticized Trump for the comment.

“Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered,” Massie wrote in a post on X. “I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican whom Trump branded a “traitor” for disagreeing with him, responded to Trump’s message by saying, “This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”

Reiner was one of the most active Democrats in the film industry, regularly campaigning on behalf of liberal causes and hosting fundraisers. He was a vocal critic of Trump, calling him in a 2017 interview with Variety “mentally unfit” to be president and “the single-most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States.”

The White House, which amplified the president’s post, did not respond to a message about the criticism it was receiving and calls for Trump to take it down.

The unsympathetic message was the latest example of Trump’s unsparing prism through which he views those he perceives as enemies.

He made retribution against political enemies a prime focus of his campaign for the White House last year. And he has in the past made light of violence when it’s befallen those on the other side of the political aisle.

When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by an intruder looking for the former House speaker at the family’s San Francisco home in 2022 and beaten over the head with a hammer, Trump later mocked the attack.

That’s in despite of his comments after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year. Trump said Kirk’s killing was “the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree.”

His administration then sought consequences for people who were critical of Kirk or even celebrated his killing.

Jenna Ellis, who was one of Trump’s lawyers and worked on his efforts in 2020 to overturn the results of the presidential election, pointed out Trump’s double standard and called his post “NOT the appropriate response.”

“The Right uniformly condemned political and celebratory responses to Charlie Kirk’s death. This is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency,” Ellis said in a post on X.

When Trump spoke at Kirk’s memorial service, he used his remarks to underline how he views his adversaries.

“I hate my opponent,” the president said.

Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a Republican alternative late Friday, a last-minute sprint as his party refuses to extend the enhanced tax subsidies for those who buy policies through the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, which are expiring at the end of the year. Those subsidies help lower the cost of coverage.

Johnson, R-La., huddled behind closed doors in the morning — as he did days earlier this week — working to assemble the package for consideration as the House focuses the final days of its 2025 work on health care.

“House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the package. He said it would be voted on next week.

Time is running out for Congress to act. Democrats engineered the longest federal government shutdown ever this fall in a failed effort to force Republicans to the negotiating table on health care. But after promising votes, the Senate failed this week to advance both a Republican health care plan and the Democratic-offered bill to extend the tax credits for three years.

Now, with just days to go, Congress is about to wrap up its work with no consensus solution in sight.

What Republicans are proposing

The House Republicans offered a 100-plus page package that focuses on long-sought GOP proposals to enhance access to employer-sponsored health insurance plans and clamp down on so-called pharmacy benefit managers.

Republicans propose expanding access to what’s referred to as association health plans, which would allow more small businesses and self-employed individuals to band together and purchase health coverage.

Proponents say such plans increase the leverage businesses have to negotiate a lower rate. But critics say the plans provide skimpier coverage than what is required under the Affordable Care Act.

The Republicans’ proposal would also require more data from pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, as a way to help control drug costs. Critics say PBMs have padded their bottom line and made it more difficult for independent pharmacists to survive.

Additionally, the GOP plan includes mention of cost-sharing reductions for some lower-income people who rely on Obamacare, but those do not take effect until January 2027.

The emerging package from the House Republicans does not include an extension of an enhanced tax credit for millions of Americans who get insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Put in place during the COVID-19 crisis, that enhanced subsidy expires Dec. 31, leaving most families in the program facing more than double their current out-of-pocket premiums, and in some cases, much more.

What Trump wants

President Donald Trump has said he believes Republicans are going to figure out a better plan than Obamacare — something he has promised for years — but offered few details beyond his idea for providing Americans with stipends to help buy insurance.

“I want to see the billions of dollars go to people, not to the insurance companies,” Trump said late Friday during an event at the White House. “And I want to see the people go out and buy themselves great healthcare.”

The president did not comment directly on the House’s new plan. He has repeatedly touted his idea of sending money directly to Americans to help offset the costs of health care policies, rather than extending the tax credits for those buying policies through Obamacare. It’s unclear how much money Trump envisions. The Senate GOP proposal that failed to advance would have provided payments to new health savings accounts of $1,000 a year for adult enrollees, or $1,500 for those ages 50 to 64.

It appeared there were no such health savings accounts in the new House GOP plan.

Political pressure is building for many

Going Johnson’s route has left vulnerable House Republicans representing key battleground districts in a tough spot.

Frustrated with the delays, a group of more centrist GOP lawmakers is aligning with Democrats to push their own proposals for continuing the tax credits, for now, so that Americans don’t face rising health care costs.

They are pursuing several paths for passing a temporary ACA subsidy extension, co-sponsoring a handful of bills. They are also signing onto so-called discharge petitions that could force a floor vote if a majority of the House signs on.

Such petitions are designed to get around the majority’s control and are rarely successful, but this year has proven to be an exception. Lawmakers, for example, were able to use a discharge petition to force a vote on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files held by the Department of Justice.

One petition, filed by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., had signatures from 12 Republicans and 12 Democrats as of Friday afternoon. It would force a vote on a bill that includes a two-year subsidy extension and contains provisions designed to combat fraud in the ACA marketplace. There are also restrictions for PBMs, among other things.

Another petition from Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., has 39 signatures and is broadly bipartisan. It’s a simpler proposal that would force a vote on a one-year ACA enhanced subsidy extension and would include new income caps limiting who qualifies for the enhanced credit.

Both discharge petitions have enough Republicans’ support that they would likely succeed if Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries encouraged his caucus to jump on board. So far, he’s not tipping his hand.

“We’re actively reviewing those two discharge petitions and we’ll have more to say about it early next week,” Jeffries said.

Meanwhile, Jeffries is pushing Democrats’ own discharge petition, which has 214 signatures and would provide for a clean three-year subsidy extension. No Republicans have signed onto that one.

And as Republicans made clear in the Senate this week, a three-year extension without changes to the program has no chance of passing their chamber.

Adm. Alvin Holsey has retired one year into a posting that typically lasts three to four years and transferred leadership duties to his top military deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Evan Pettus, during a ceremony at U.S. Southern Command headquarters near Miami.

In farewell remarks, Holsey did not mention the military operations or the reasons for his early retirement. But he urged his successor to uphold longstanding partnerships in the region by standing firmly behind the shared values of democracy and support for the rule of law.

“To be a trusted partner, we must be credible, present and engaged,” Holsey said.

Holsey’s shock retirement was announced by the Pentagon in October, over a month into the Trump administration’s strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 87 people. With the campaign facing growing scrutiny by Congress, Holsey briefed key lawmakers earlier this week.

Long-term replacement for Holsey hasn’t yet been named

The ceremony Friday was more subdued than past retirements, held outdoors amid a small crowd of mostly Southern Command staff and without Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, because President Donald Trump has yet to nominate Holsey’s replacement.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made no mention of the military operations in Latin America as he thanked Holsey for his 37 years of service. Caine referred to Holsey as a “stoic” leader and “quiet professional” who always leads with his heart and head.

“It’s never been about you, it’s been about people, it’s been about others,” Caine said. “You’ve never said ‘I’ in all the conversations we’ve had. You’ve always said ‘we.’ … The impact you’ve had will last for a long time.”

Holsey is departing as Congress is scrutinizing the boat attacks, including one that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of an initial strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth and other top officials have given classified briefings on Capitol Hill this week.

Holsey also spoke this week to key lawmakers overseeing the U.S. military by classified video call. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said afterward that Holsey answered senators’ questions but that “there are still many questions to be answered.” Reed later added that Holsey did not give a reason for his retirement other than saying it was a personal decision.

Boat strike scrutiny increases

Experts in the rules of warfare, human rights groups and even some of Trump’s allies in Congress have questioned the legality of the attacks on those accused of ferrying drugs. For decades, they were arrested at sea by the Coast Guard and brought to the U.S. for criminal prosecution.

The 22 known strikes against alleged drug-smuggling vessels are being supported by a giant flotilla of U.S. warships, attack helicopters, thousands of troops and even the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier.

Trump’s Republican administration has defended its aggressive tactics, designating several drug cartels in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations and declaring that the U.S. is in armed conflict with those criminal organizations, relying on a legal argument that gained traction after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The campaign has ramped up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S. In a sharp escalation Wednesday, U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration has accused of smuggling illicit crude. Sale of that oil on global energy markets is critical to Maduro’s grip on power.

Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Holsey’s departure is the latest in a long line of sudden retirements and firings that have befallen the military’s top ranks since Hegseth took charge of the Pentagon.

A native of rural Fort Valley, Georgia, whose father and several uncles served in Vietnam, Holsey relinquished his command to Pettus to a soulful rendition of “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Pettus, a fighter jet pilot with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, had been serving as Holsey’s top deputy since late 2024. However, it’s unclear how long the Arkansas native will remain in the job. Whomever Trump nominates must be confirmed by the Senate.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking a federal court to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project until it goes through comprehensive design reviews, public comments and wins approval from Congress.

The National Trust argues that Trump, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, while also exceeding his constitutional authority by not seeking congressional approval for a project of this scale.

Trump already has bypassed the federal government’s usual building practices and historical reviews when he razed the East Wing of the White House. He has more recently fired the initial architects for a ballroom that itself would be nearly twice the size of the White House before East Wing’s demolition.

Trump has said a ballroom is overdue for the White House, previously complaining that events were held outside under a tent and guests would get their feet wet if it rained.

The 19 photos released by Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee were a small part of more than 95,000 they received from the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The photos released Friday were separate from the case files that the Department of Justice is now under compulsion to release, but anticipation is growing as the Trump administration faces a deadline next week to produce the Epstein files that have been the source of conspiracy theories and speculation for years.

The photos were released without captions or context and included a black-and-white image of Trump alongside six women whose faces were blacked out.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, did not say whether any of the women in the photos was a victim of abuse, but he added, “Our commitment from day one has been to redact any photo, any information that could lead to any sort of harm to any of the victims.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson accused Democrats of “selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative” and called it part of a “Democrat hoax against President Trump.”

Many of the photos have already circulated in the public. Democrats pledged to continue to release photos in the days and weeks ahead, as they look to pressure Trump over his Republican administration’s earlier refusal to release documents in the Epstein probe. Garcia said that his staff had looked through about a quarter of the images it had received from Epstein’s estate, which included photos that were sent to him or that he had in his possession.

“Donald Trump right now needs to release the files to the American public so that the truth can come out and we can actually get some sense of justice for the survivors,” Garcia added.

Trump, once a close friend of Epstein, has said that he parted ways with him long before he faced the sex trafficking charges. Clinton, too, has minimized his relationship with Epstein, acknowledging that he traveled on Epstein’s private jet but saying through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. Clinton also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims. However, Republicans on the House committee are pushing him and Hillary Clinton to testify in their investigation.

A spokesperson for the Republican-controlled committee also said that nothing in the documents the committee has received shows “any wrongdoing” by Trump.

Andrew lost his royal titles and privileges this year amid new revelations of his ties to Epstein, though he has denied wrongdoing.

The photo release also included images of the right-wing political operative Steven Bannon, billionaires Richard Branson and Bill Gates, filmmaker Woody Allen, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and law professor Alan Dershowitz. The men have denied any wrongdoing in their associations with Epstein, who kept many high-profile figures in his circle of friends.

Amid an earlier release of emails between Summers and Epstein, Summers stepped away from his teaching position at Harvard University and faced other fallout to his standing in academic circles.

Allen has faced allegations from his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, of molesting her as a child. He has denied the allegations.

Some lawmakers, however, believe that other high-powered figures could be implicated in Epstein’s abuse if the full case files from the Justice Department are released.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who was instrumental in passing a bill to require the public release of the files, said it was a good sign that the Department of Justice has sought to have grand jury material released from several courts.

“The grand jury material is just a small fraction of what the DOJ needs to release, because the FBI and DOJ probably has evidence that they chose not to take to the grand jury because the evidence they’re in possession of would implicate other people, not Epstein or Maxwell,” he said.

As Republicans and Democrats have failed to find compromise, senators voted on two partisan bills instead that they knew would fail — the Democratic bill to extend the subsidies, and a Republican alternative that would have created new health savings accounts.

It was an unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats to prevent the COVID-19-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1, including a 43-day government shutdown that they forced over the issue.

Ahead of the votes, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York warned Republicans that if they did not vote to extend the tax credits, “there won’t be another chance to act,” before premiums rise for many people who buy insurance off the ACA marketplaces.

“Let’s avert a disaster,” Schumer said. “The American people are watching.”

Republicans and Democrats never engaged in meaningful or high-level negotiations on a solution, even after a small group of centrist Democrats struck a deal with Republicans last month to end the shutdown in exchange for a vote. Most Democratic lawmakers opposed the move as many Republicans made clear that they wanted the tax credits to expire.

The deal raised hopes for a compromise on health care. But that quickly faded with a lack of any real bipartisan talks.

“We failed,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of four Republicans who voted for the Democratic bill, after the vote. “We’ve got to do better. We can’t just say ‘happy holidays, brace for next year.’”

A Republican alternative

The dueling Senate votes were the latest political messaging exercise in a Congress that has operated almost entirely on partisan terms, as Republicans pushed through a massive tax and spending cuts bill this summer using budget maneuvers that eliminated the need for Democratic votes. In September, Republicans tweaked Senate rules to push past a Democratic blockade of all of Trump’s nominees.

On health care, Republicans similarly negotiated among themselves, without Democrats. The health savings accounts in the GOP bill that they eventually settled on would give money directly to consumers instead of to insurance companies, an idea that has been echoed by President Donald Trump.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said ahead of the vote that the Democrats’ simple extension of the subsidies is “an attempt to disguise the real impact of Obamacare’s spiraling health care costs.”

But Democrats immediately rejected the GOP plan, saying that the accounts wouldn’t be enough to cover costs for most consumers.

The Senate voted 51-48 not to move forward on the Democratic bill, with four Republicans — Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Alaska Sens. Murkowski and Dan Sullivan — voting with Democrats. The legislation needed 60 votes to proceed, as did the Republican bill, which was also blocked on a 51-48 vote.

An intractable issue

The votes were the latest failed salvo in the debate over the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature law that Democrats passed along party lines in 2010 to expand access to insurance coverage.

Republicans have tried unsuccessfully since then to repeal or overhaul the law, arguing that health care is still too expensive. But they have struggled to find an alternative. In the meantime, Democrats have made the policy a central political issue in several elections, betting that the millions of people who buy health care on the government marketplaces want to keep their coverage.

“When people’s monthly payments spike next year, they’ll know it was Republicans that made it happen,” Schumer said in November, while making clear that Democrats would not seek a compromise.

Even if they view it as a political win, the failed votes are a loss for Democrats who demanded an extension of the benefits during the shutdown — and for the millions of people facing premium increases on Jan. 1.

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said the group tried to negotiate with Republicans after the shutdown ended. But, he said, the talks became unproductive when Republicans demanded language adding new limits for abortion coverage that were a “red line” for Democrats. He said Republicans were going to “own these increases.”

House to try again

Republicans have used the looming expiration of the subsidies to renew their longstanding criticisms of the ACA, also called Obamacare, and to try, once more, to agree on what should be done.

In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has promised a vote next week on some type of health care legislation. Republicans weighed different options in a conference meeting on Wednesday, with no apparent consensus.

Murkowski and other Senate Republicans who want to extend the subsidies expressed hope that the House could find a way to do it. GOP leaders were considering bills that would not extend the tax credits, but some Republicans have launched longshot efforts to try to go around Johnson and force a vote.

“Hopefully some ideas emerge” before the new year, said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has been pushing his colleagues for a short-term extension.

“Real Americans are paying the price for this body not working together in the way it should,” said Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican.

Republican moderates in the House who could have competitive reelection bids next year are pushing Johnson to find a way to extend the subsidies. But more conservative members want to see the law overhauled.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., has also been pushing for a short extension.

If they fail to act and health care costs go up, the approval rating for Congress “will get even lower,” Kiley said.

Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds. That is down from 40% in March and marks the lowest economic approval he’s registered in an AP-NORC poll in his first or second term. The Republican president also has struggled to recover from public blowback on other issues, such as his management of the federal government, and has not seen an approval bump even after congressional Democrats effectively capitulated to end a record-long government shutdown last month.

Perhaps most worryingly for Trump, who’s become increasingly synonymous with his party, he’s slipped on issues that were major strengths. Just a few months ago, 53% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of crime, but that’s fallen to 43% in the new poll. There’s been a similar decline on immigration, from 49% approval in March to 38% now.

The new poll starkly illustrates how Trump has struggled to hold onto political wins since his return to office. Even border security — an issue on which his approval remains relatively high — has declined slightly in recent months.

The good news for Trump is that his overall approval hasn’t fallen as steeply. The new poll found that 36% of Americans approve of the way he’s handling his job as president, which is down slightly from 42% in March. That signals that even if some people aren’t happy with elements of his approach, they might not be ready to say he’s doing a bad job as president. And while discontent is increasing among Republicans on certain issues, they’re largely still behind him.

Declining approval on the economy, even among Republicans

Republicans are more unhappy with Trump’s performance on the economy than they were in the first few months of his term. About 7 in 10 Republicans, 69%, approve of how Trump is handling the economy in the December poll, a decline from 78% in March.

Larry Reynolds, a 74-year-old retiree and Republican voter from Wadsworth, Ohio, said he believes in Trump’s plan to impose import duties on U.S. trading partners but thinks rates have spiraled too high, creating a “vicious circle now where they aren’t really justifying the tariffs.”

Reynolds said he also believes that inflation became a problem during the coronavirus pandemic and that the economy won’t quickly recover, regardless of what Trump does. “I don’t think it’ll be anything really soon. I think it’s just going to take time,” he said.

Trump’s base is still largely behind him, which was not always the case for his predecessor, President Joe Biden, a Democrat. In the summer of 2022, only about half of Democrats approved of how Biden was handling the economy. Shortly before he withdrew from the 2024 presidential race two years later, that had risen to about two-thirds of Democrats.

More broadly, though, there’s no sign that Americans think the economy has improved since Trump took over. About two-thirds of U.S. adults, 68%, continue to say the country’s economy is “poor.” That’s unchanged from the last time the question was asked in October, and it’s broadly in line with views throughout Biden’s last year in office.

Why Trump gets higher approval on border security than immigration

Trump’s approval ratings on immigration have declined since March, but border security remains a relatively strong issue for him. Half of U.S. adults, 50%, approve of how Trump is handling border security, which is just slightly lower than the 55% who approved in September.

Trump’s relative strength on border security is partially driven by Democrats and independents. About one-third of independents, 36%, approve of Trump on the border, while 26% approve on immigration.

Jim Rollins, an 82-year-old independent in Macon, Georgia, said he believes that when it comes to closing the border, Trump has done “a good job,” but he hopes the administration will rethink its mass deportation efforts.

“Taking people out of kindergarten, and people going home for Thanksgiving, taking them off a plane. If they are criminals, sure,” said Rollins, who said he supported Trump in his first election but not since then. “But the percentages — based on the government’s own statistics — say that they’re not criminals. They just didn’t register, and maybe they sneaked across the border, and they’ve been here for 15 years.”

Other polls have shown it’s more popular to increase border security than to deport immigrants, even those who are living in the country illegally. Nearly half of Americans said increasing security at the U.S.-Mexico border should be “a high priority” for the government in AP-NORC polling from September. Only about 3 in 10 said the same about deporting immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

Shaniqwa Copeland, a 30-year-old independent and home health aide in St. Augustine, Florida, said she approves of Trump’s overall handling of the presidency but believes his immigration actions have gone too far, especially when it comes to masked federal agents leading large raids.

“Now they’re just picking up anybody,” Copeland said. “They just like, pick up people, grabbing anybody. It’s crazy.”

Health care and government management remain thorns for Trump

About 3 in 10 U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling health care, down slightly from November. The new poll was conducted in early December, as Trump and Congress struggled to find a bipartisan deal for extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies that will expire at the end of this month.

That health care fight was also the source of the recent government shutdown. About one-third of U.S. adults, 35%, approve of how Trump is managing the federal government, down from 43% in March.

But some Americans may see others at fault for the country’s problems, in addition to Trump. Copeland is unhappy with the country’s health care system and thinks things are getting worse but is not sure of whether to blame Trump or Biden.

“A couple years ago, I could find a dentist and it would be easy. Now, I have a different health care provider, and it’s like so hard to find a dental (plan) with them,” she said. “And the people that do take that insurance, they have so many scheduled out far, far appointments because it’s so many people on it.”

Using U.S. forces to take control of a merchant ship is incredibly unusual and marks the Trump administration’s latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The campaign is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding that “it was seized for a very good reason.”

Trump did not offer additional details. When asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The seizure was led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that it was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.

Storming the oil tanker

The Coast Guard members were taken to the oil tanker by helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the official said. The Ford is in the Caribbean Sea after arriving last month in a major show of force, joining a fleet of other warships.

Video posted to social media by Attorney General Pam Bondi shows people fast-roping from one of the helicopters involved in the operation as it hovers just feet from the deck.

The Coast Guard members can be seen later in the video moving throughout the superstructure of the ship with their weapons drawn.

Bondi wrote that “for multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”

Venezuela’s government said in a statement that the seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”

“Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. … It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people,” the statement said.

Half of ship’s oil is tied to Cuban importer

The U.S. official identified the seized tanker as the Skipper.

The ship departed Venezuela around Dec. 2 with about 2 million barrels of heavy crude, roughly half of it belonging to a Cuban state-run oil importer, according to documents from the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, that were provided on the condition of anonymity because the person did not have permission to share them.

The Skipper was previously known as the M/T Adisa, according to ship tracking data. The Adisa was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over accusations of belonging to a sophisticated network of shadow tankers that smuggled crude oil on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.

The network was reportedly run by a Switzerland-based Ukrainian oil trader, the U.S. Treasury Department said at the time.

Hitting Venezuela’s sanctioned oil business

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day.

PDVSA is the backbone of the country’s economy. Its reliance on intermediaries increased in 2020, when the first Trump administration expanded its maximum-pressure campaign on Venezuela with sanctions that threaten to lock out of the U.S. economy any individual or company that does business with Maduro’s government. Longtime allies Russia and Iran, both also sanctioned, have helped Venezuela skirt restrictions.

The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy intermediaries. Many are shell companies, registered in jurisdictions known for secrecy. The buyers deploy so-called ghost tankers that hide their location and hand off their valuable cargoes in the middle of the ocean before they reach their final destination.

Maduro did not address the seizure during a speech before a ruling-party organized demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. But he told supporters that the country is “prepared to break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary.”

Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Democrat says the move is about ‘regime change’

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. seizing the oil tanker cast doubt on the administration’s stated reasons for the military buildup and boat strikes.

“This shows that their whole cover story — that this is about interdicting drugs — is a big lie,” the senator said. “This is just one more piece of evidence that this is really about regime change — by force.”

Vincent P. O’Hara, a naval historian and author of “The Greatest Naval War Ever Fought,” called the seizure “very unusual” and “provocative.” Noting that the action will probably deter other ships from the Venezuela coastline, he said, “If you have no maritime traffic or access to that, then you have no economy.”

The seizure comes a day after the U.S. military flew a pair of fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country’s airspace. Trump has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered more details.

The Trump administration is facing increasing scrutiny from lawmakers over the boat strike campaign, which has killed at least 87 people in 22 known strikes since early September, including a follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of a boat after the first hit.

Some legal experts and Democrats say that action may have violated the laws governing the use of deadly military force.

Lawmakers are demanding to get unedited video from the strikes, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional leaders at a classified briefing Tuesday that he was still weighing whether to release it.

The Coast Guard referred a request for comment about the tanker seizure to the White House.

The now former Miami-Dade County commissioner also became the city’s first Democratic mayor in nearly three decades.

During Wednesday morning’s news conference, Higgins spoke about her plans and priorities for the city’s future, saying she will be a mayor for everyone, regardless of political party.

“It was a very exciting day yesterday in the city of Miami. I am so honored that our incredibly beautiful, diverse community selected me to take on this task in the coming years,” she said. “I promise to go to work every day and make sure that this city does deliver on the promise of the Magic City.”

Higgins earned the seat after defeating Republican candidate Emilio Gonzalez, whom President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis backed.

She believes the election’s outcome sends a message.

“The residents decided to embark upon a different direction,” she said.

Higgins’ campaign priorities were affordability, climate change, and modernizing the city.

“The city has to get to work, become more efficient, be more modern in how it embraces technology. The affordability crisis, we are the tip of the spear in America. We’ve got to build more affordable housing,” she said.

The mayor-elect was asked about immigration and the future of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami.

“There’s no reason in the City of Miami that our police department should be in the job of federal immigration enforcement,” said Higgins. “When I speak to our residents, it’s not just about frustration, it’s also about fear. They’ve never been afraid of their government before, and now they are.”

She added that residents tell her they are worried that their family members may be detained.

“We want a strong border, a path to citizenship, but we don’t want law-abiding people to be ejected from our country, impoverishing their families and driving our economy into ruin,” said Higgins. “We are and have always been an immigrant city. I will speak respectfully about them, their families and more importantly about their contribution to our thriving economy.”

While the mayor’s position is officially nonpartisan, the race drew national attention, as the Democratic and Republican parties watched for clues ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Higgins’ opponent, Emilio Gonzalez, conceded the race. He admitted the outcome was not what he wanted, but encouraged voters to support the incoming mayor.

“Obviously, I don’t like the result,” he said. “I think we all owe her our respect, and we owe her our loyalty. She is our mayor, and we need to all do everything we can to make sure that she succeeds, because if she succeeds, our city will succeed.”

7News political analyst Brian Fonseca said Higgins’ win is a major victory for the local Democratic Party.

“It’s important to note that the Democrats did show up, but you’re talking about a turnout of about 20-plus percent, so it’s still relatively low given these are out of cycle elections. Still, it’s unprecedented in the last 30 years to have a Democrat win the election,” he said.

He added voters based their vote on real issues affecting the Magic City.

“Two of the things that have probably been most meaningful in terms of moving the Miami-Dade voter to the Democratic side in this recent election was cost of living and maybe immigration policy,” said Fonseca.

Higgins will begin her term as mayor later this month.

Machado has been in hiding and hasn’t been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that “María Corina Machado has done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today — a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”

“Although she will not be able to reach this ceremony and today’s events, we are profoundly happy to confirm that she is safe, and that she will be with us here in Oslo,” he said to applause.

Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the prize in her place.

“She wants to live in a free Venezuela, and she will never give up on that purpose,” she said. “That is why we all know, and I know, that she will be back in Venezuela very soon.”

Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that she wouldn’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony but that many people had “risked their lives” for her to arrive in Oslo.

“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, before indicating that she was about to board a plane.

Machado said that “since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them. And as soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I’ve have not seen for two years and so many Venezuelans, Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight.”

Show of solidarity

Prominent Latin American figures attended Wednesday in a signal of solidarity with Machado, including Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.

The 58-year-old Machado’s win for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her South American nation was announced on Oct. 10. Watne Frydnes said that “Venezuela has evolved into a brutal authoritarian state,” and he described Machado as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in recent Latin American history.”

Machado won an opposition primary election and intended to challenge President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González took her place.

The lead-up to the election on July 28, 2024, saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. That increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared the incumbent the winner.

González, who sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest, attended Wednesday’s ceremony.

U.N. human rights officials and many independent rights groups have expressed concerns about the situation in Venezuela, and called for Maduro to be held accountable for the crackdown on dissent.

‘Fight for freedom’

“More than anything, what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey — that to have democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom,” Sosa said as she delivered the lecture written for the occasion by her mother.

The speech didn’t refer to the current tensions between Washington and Caracas, as U.S. President Donald Trump continues a military operation in the Caribbean that has killed Venezuelans in international waters and threatens to strike Venezuela. Machado has consistently endorsed Trump’s strategy toward Venezuela.

Among many “heroes of this journey” honored in the lecture, Sosa mentioned “the leaders around the world who joined us and defended our cause,” but didn’t elaborate.

Watne Frydnes said of authoritarian leaders like Maduro that “your power is not permanent. Your violence will not prevail over people who rise and resist.”

“Mr. Maduro, accept the election result and step down,” he said.

Past winners unable to attend

Five past Nobel Peace Prize laureates were detained or imprisoned at the time of the award, according to the prize’s official website, most recently Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023 and Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski in 2022.

The others were Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar in 1991 and Carl von Ossietzky of Germany in 1935.

Gustavo Tovar-Arroyo, a Venezuelan human rights activist who was forced to flee into exile in 2012, said that Machado’s supporters “did the best for her to be here as she deserves. But we knew the risk.”

He added that they are “disappointed that she cannot be in the ceremony, but this is part of what we do when we fight against a dictatorship, a tyranny or a criminal regime. So we are used to it.”

Higgins, 61, will be the first woman to lead the city of Miami. She spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained. She campaigned as a proud Democrat despite the race being officially nonpartisan and beat Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager, who said he called Higgins to congratulate her.

“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told The Associated Press after her victory speech. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”

With nearly all votes counted Tuesday, Higgins led the Republican by about 19 percentage points.

The local race is not predictive of what may happen at the polls next year. But it drew attention from the two major national political parties and their leaders. The victory provides Democrats with some momentum heading into a high-stakes midterm election when the GOP is looking to keep its grip in Florida, including in a Hispanic-majority district in Miami-Dade County. The area has shifted increasingly rightward politically in recent years, and the city may become the home of Trump’s presidential library.

“Tonight’s result is yet another warning sign to Republicans that voters are fed up with their out-of-touch agenda that is raising costs,” said Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, in a statement.

Some nationally recognized Democrats supported Higgins, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel traveled to Miami on Sunday and Monday to rally voters for the Democrat who served as a Miami-Dade county commissioner for seven years.

Higgins, who speaks Spanish, represented a district that leans conservative and includes the Cuban neighborhood of Little Havana. When she first entered politics in 2018, she chose to present herself to voters as “La Gringa,” a term Spanish speakers use for white Americans, because many people did not know how to pronounce her name.

“It just helps people understand who I am, and you know what? I am a ‘gringa,’ so, what am I going to do, deny it?” she told the AP.

Republicans’ anxiety grows

Republicans in Florida have found strong support from voters with heritage from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, because they likened some members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing with politicians from the governments they fled. Trump and other GOP members have tapped into those sentiments over the past eight years.

However, some local Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated since November’s elections when Democrats scored wins in New Jersey and Virginia, where both winning gubernatorial candidates performed strongly with nonwhite voters.

The results from those races were perceived as a reflection of concerns over rising prices and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies.

U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican whose district is being targeted by Democrats and includes the city of Miami, called the elections elsewhere a “wake-up call.” She said Hispanics also want a secure border and a healthy economy but some relief for “those who have been here for years and do not have a criminal record.”

“The Hispanic vote is not guaranteed,” Salazar said in a video posted on X last month. “Hispanics married President Trump, but they are only dating the GOP.”

David Jolly, who is running to represent Democrats in the Florida governor’s race next year, said the mayoral election was good news for Democrats in what used to be a battleground state.

“Change is here. It’s sweeping the nation, and it’s sweeping Florida,” Jolly said.

Miami mayor-elect gains national platform

The mayoral position in Miami is more ceremonial, but Higgins promised to execute it like a full-time job.

The city is part of Miami-Dade County, which Trump flipped last year, a dramatic improvement from his 30 percentage point loss to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

As Florida’s second-largest city, Miami is considered the gateway to Latin America and attracts millions of tourists. Its global prominence gives Higgins a significant stage as mayor.

Her pitch to voters included finding city-owned land that could be turned into affordable housing and cutting unnecessary spending.

Other elections

Meantime, there were other elections happening for City of Miami commissioner, Miami Beach commissioner and city council seats in Hialeah.

In Miami, Rolando Escalona defeated Frank Carollo for the District 3 commissioner seat.

In Miami Beach, Monica Matteo-Salinas won her commissioner seat, beating her opponent by over 40 points.

In Hialeah, Gelien Perez and William “Willy” Marrero won their respective city council elections.

The president told the crowd gathered at a casino and resort in Mount Pocono that inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats had used the term “affordability” as a “hoax” to hurt his reputation. But his remarks weaved wildly to include grievances he first raised behind closed doors in his first term in 2018 — and later denied saying — asking why the U.S. doesn’t have more immigrants from Scandinavia.

“Why is it we only take people from s—-hole countries, right?” Trump said onstage. “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few?”

Trump said he objected to taking immigrants from “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.” He added for emphasis that those places “are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”

Tuesday’s gathering in the swing state — and in a competitive House district — was an official White House event, yet it seemed more like one of his signature campaign rallies that his chief of staff said he would hold regularly ahead of next year’s midterms. But instead of being in an arena that could draw several thousand attendees, it was held in a conference center ballroom at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, a small town of about 3,000 residents.

Voters starting to blame lasting inflation on Republicans

Following dismal results for Republicans in last month’s off-cycle elections, the White House has sought to convince voters that the economy will emerge stronger next year and that any anxieties over inflation have nothing to do with Trump.

He displayed a chart comparing price increases under his predecessor, Joe Biden, to prices under his own watch to argue his case. But the overall inflation rate has climbed since he announced broad tariffs in April and left many Americans worried about their grocery, utility and housing bills.

“I have no higher priority than making America affordable again,” Trump said. “They caused the high prices and we’re bringing them down.”

As the president spoke, his party’s political vulnerabilities were further seen as Miami voters chose Eileen Higgins to be their first Democratic mayor in nearly 30 years. Higgins defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican Emilio Gonzalez.

The president’s reception in the county hosting his Tuesday rally showed he could still appeal to the base, but it was unable to settle questions of whether he could hold together his 2024 coalition. Monroe County flipped to Trump last year after having backed Biden in 2020, helping the Republican win the swing state of Pennsylvania and return to the White House after a four-year hiatus.

As home to the Pocono Mountains, the county has largely relied on tourism for skiing, hiking, hunting and other activities as a source of jobs. Its proximity to New York City — under two hours by car — has also attracted people seeking more affordable housing.

In Monroe County, people agree that prices are a problem

But what seems undeniable — even to Trump supporters in Monroe County — is that inflation seems to be here to stay.

Lou Heddy, a retired maintenance mechanic who voted for Trump last year, said he’s noticed in the past month alone that his and his wife’s grocery bills have risen from $175 to $200, and he’s not sure Trump can bring food prices down.

“Once the prices get up for food, they don’t ever come back down. That’s just the way I feel. I don’t know how the hell he would do it,” said Heddy, 72.

But Suzanne Vena, a Democratic voter, blames Trump’s tariffs for making life more expensive, as she struggles with rising bills for food, rent and electricity on a fixed income. She remembers Trump saying that he would stop inflation.

“That’s what we were originally told,” said Vena, 66. “Did I believe it? That’s another question. I did not.”

The area Trump visited could help decide control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump held his rally in a congressional district held by first-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who is a top target of Democrats. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, a Democrat, is running for the nomination to challenge him.

Speaking to the crowd before Trump, Bresnahan said the administration was working to lower costs, but voters “aren’t asking for partisan arguments — they’re asking for results.”

It’s not clear if Trump can motivate voters in Monroe County to show up in next year’s election if they’re worried about inflation.

Nick Riley, 38, said he’s cutting back on luxuries, like going out to eat, as he absorbs higher bills for food and electricity and is having a hard time finding a good deal on a used car. Riley voted for Trump in 2020, but he sat out the 2024 election and plans to do so again next year.

“We’re all broke. It doesn’t matter whether you support Republicans or support Democrats,” Riley said. “We’re all broke, and we’re all feeling it.”

Trump to start holding more rallies before midterm elections

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said on the online conservative talk show “The Mom View” that Trump would be on the campaign trail next year to engage supporters who otherwise might sit out a congressional race.

Wiles, who helped manage Trump’s 2024 campaign, said most administrations try to localize midterm elections and keep the president out of the race, but she intends to do the opposite of that.

“We’re actually going to turn that on its head,” Wiles said, “and put him on the ballot because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters.”

The challenge for Trump is how to address the concerns of voters about the economy while simultaneously claiming that the economy is enjoying a historic boom.

Asked on a Politico podcast how he’d rate the economy, Trump leaned into grade inflation by answering “A-plus,” only to then amend his answer to “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

Trump says economy is strong, but Americans should buy fewer dolls

The U.S. economy has shown signs of resilience with the stock market up this year and overall growth looking solid for the third quarter. But many Americans see the prices of housing, groceries, education, electricity and other basic needs as swallowing up their incomes, a dynamic that the Trump administration has said it expects to fade next year with more investments in artificial intelligence and manufacturing.

So far, the public has been skeptical about Trump’s economic performance. Just 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a November survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

But Trump indicated that his tariffs and other policies were helping industries such as the steel sector. He said those industries mattered for the country as he then specifically told Americans that they should buy fewer pencils and dolls from overseas.

“You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” he told the crowd. “Two or three is nice.”

Trump also backtracked on whether he was open to releasing the video footage of the second strike. Last week, Trump told reporters he saw “no problem” in releasing the footage, but on Monday he said he would leave the decision to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Republican administration is facing calls from Democratic lawmakers to release footage of the Sept. 2 operation in the Caribbean Sea, which killed nine people aboard the boat in an initial strike and then two more who managed to survive.

“They were trying to return the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that because that boat was loaded up with drugs,” Trump said on Monday.

When asked by a reporter about his comments last week suggesting he was open to releasing footage of the second strike, Trump denied that was his position and bitterly attacked the reporter as “obnoxious” and “terrible.”

“Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said.

Trump, however, last Wednesday in an exchange with reporters about the strike footage said: “Whatever they have we’d certainly release.”

The Sept. 2 operation was the first in what has become a monthslong series of American strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that the administration says are targeting drug smugglers working on behalf of cartels, including some controlled by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. At least 87 people have been killed in 22 known strikes.

Trump has broadly justified the campaign as necessary for his administration to stem the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States. He claims the U.S. is in armed conflict with narco-terrorists.

Hegseth said in a Fox News interview Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that officials were reviewing the video, but he did not commit to releasing it. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible” about it,” Hegseth said.

The Pentagon on Monday did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of Hegseth’s review or confirm Trump’s assertion that the suspects appeared to be trying to turn over the vessel before the second strike was fired.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon hand over “unedited video of strikes” against drug cartels to Congress, threatening to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget if it doesn’t. The provision is included in the $900 billion defense bill the House is expected to vote on later this week.

Over the weekend, Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would not oppose public release of the footage.

But Cotton, among the top lawmakers on national security committees who were briefed by the Navy admiral commanding those strikes, is splitting with Democrats over whether military personnel acted lawfully in carrying out the second strike to kill the two survivors.

“It’s not gruesome. I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing,” he said, explaining why he does not have a problem with releasing all the footage. “It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years.”

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the video “was profoundly shaking.” And Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it “did not appear that these two survivors were in any position to continue the fight.” Both Himes and Smith, who spoke separately on Sunday talk shows, have viewed the video.

The classified sessions on Capitol Hill came after a report that Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley had ordered the follow-on attack to comply with Hegseth’s demands.

Bradley told lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, but a video of the entire series of attacks left some lawmakers with serious questions. Legal experts have said killing survivors of a strike at sea could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.

The court’s conservative majority suggested it would overturn a unanimous 90-year-old decision that has limited when presidents can fire agencies’ board members, or leave it with only its shell intact.

Chief Justice John Roberts referred to the decision known as Humphrey’s Executor as “a dry husk.”

Liberal justices warned that the decision sought by the administration would concentrate vast power in the president’s hands, robbing the agencies of expertise.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the president would be able to “fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replace them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything.”

Solicitor General D. John Sauer defended Trump’s decision to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter without cause and called on the court to jettison Humphrey’s Executor.

Sauer said the decision “hasn’t withstood the test of time” and had enabled a “headless fourth branch” of government, the administrative state that conservatives and business interests have been taking aim at for decades.

The six conservative justices, including three appointed by Trump in his first term, already have signaled strong support for the administration’s position, over the liberals’ objection, by allowing Slaughter and the board members of other agencies to be removed from their jobs even as their legal challenges continue.

Members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission also have been fired by Trump.

The only officials who have so far survived efforts to remove them are Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, and Shira Perlmutter, a copyright official with the Library of Congress. The court has suggested that it will view the Fed differently from other independent agencies, and Trump has said he wants her out because of allegations of mortgage fraud. Cook says she did nothing wrong.

A second question in the Slaughter case could affect Cook. Even if a firing turns out to be illegal, the court wants to decide whether judges have the power to reinstate someone.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote earlier this year that fired employees who win in court can likely get back pay, but not reinstatement.

That might affect Cook’s ability to remain in her job. The justices have seemed wary about the economic uncertainty that might result if Trump can fire the leaders of the central bank. The court will hear separate arguments in January about whether Cook can remain in her job as her court challenge proceeds.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaled that he is inclined to side with Cook, describing as an “end run” the idea that an illegally fired official would only be entitled to her salary.

Under Roberts’ leadership, the court has issued a series of decisions dating back to 2010 that have steadily whittled away at laws restricting the president’s ability to fire people.

In 2020, Roberts wrote for the court that “the President’s removal power is the rule, not the exception” in a decision upholding Trump’s firing of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite job protections similar to those upheld in Humphrey’s case.

In the 2024 immunity decision that spared Trump from being prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Roberts included the power to fire among the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers that Congress lacks the authority to restrict.

The court also was dealing with an FTC member who was fired, by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, who preferred his own choice at an agency that would have a lot to say about the New Deal.

William Humphrey refused Roosevelt’s request for his resignation. After Humphrey died the next year, the person charged with administering his estate, Humphrey’s executor, sued for back pay.

The justices unanimously upheld the law establishing the FTC and limiting the president to removing a commissioner only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

According to the official, who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of a planned announcement, Trump will unveil the plan Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers and farmers who raise cattle and grow corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, wheat, and potatoes.

Farmers have backed Trump politically, but his aggressive trade policies and frequently changing tariff rates have come under increasing scrutiny because of the impact on the agricultural sector and because of broader consumer worries.

The aid is the administration’s latest effort to defend Trump’s economic stewardship and answer voter angst about rising costs — even as the president has dismissed concerns about affordability as a Democratic “hoax.”

Upwards of $11 billion is set aside for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which the White House says will offer one-time payments to farmers for row crops.

Soybeans and sorghum were hit the hardest by the trade dispute with China because more than half of those crops are exported each year with most of the harvest going to China.

The aid is meant to help farmers who have suffered from trade wars with other nations, inflation, and other market disruptions.

The rest of the money will be for farmers who grow crops not covered under the bridge assistance program, according to the White House official. The money is intended to offer certainty to farmers as they sell their current harvest, as well as plan for next year’s crop.

China purchases have been slow

In October, after Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, the White House said Beijing had promised to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the calendar year, plus 25 million metric tons a year in each of the next three years. Soybean farmers have been hit especially hard by Trump’s trade war with China, which is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans.

China has purchased more than 2.8 million metric tons of soybeans since Trump announced the agreement at the end of October. That’s only about one quarter of what administration officials said China had promised, but Bessent has said China is on track to meet its goal by the end of February.

“These prices haven’t come in, because the Chinese actually used our soybean farmers as pawns in the trade negotiations,” Bessent said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” explaining why a “bridge payment” to farmers was needed.

Farmers appreciate the aid package, but they say it’s likely only a down payment on what’s needed and government aid doesn’t solve the fundamental problems farmers are facing of soaring costs and uncertain markets for their crops. During Trump’s first term, he gave farmers more than $22 billion in aid payments in 2019 at the start of his trade war with China and nearly $46 billion in 2020, although that year also included aid related to the COVID pandemic.

But farmers want to make a profit off of selling their crops — not rely on government aid to survive.

“That’s a start, but I think we need to be looking for some avenues to find other funding opportunities and we need to get our markets going. That’s where we want to be able to make a living from,” said Caleb Ragland, the Kentucky farmer who serves as president of the American Soybean Association.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the president “wants credit for trying to fix a mess of his making” and blamed Trump’s tariffs for the adversity faced by farmers.

“Trump’s tariffs are hammering our farmers, making it more expensive to grow food and pushing farmers into bankruptcy,” Schumer said on the social media site X. “Farmers need markets to sell to — not a consolation prize for the ones he wrecked.”

Rebecca Wolf, a senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group focusing on food sustainability and clean water, added that bailouts are “a denigrating Band-Aid to farmers” who have been left vulnerable to trade wars by “decades of misguided domestic policy.”

“Trump’s tariff tantrum and belittling bailouts will deepen agricultural sector consolidation, funneling money to a powerful few corporations, while running farmers further into the ground,” Wolf said.

Trump has also been under pressure to address soaring beef prices, which have hit records for a number of reasons. Demand for beef has been strong at a time when drought has cut U.S. herds and imports from Mexico are down due to a resurgence in a parasite. Trump has said he would allow for more imports of Argentine beef.

He also had asked the Department of Justice to investigate foreign-owned meat packers he accused of driving up the price of beef, although he has not provided evidence to back his claims.

On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to look at “anti-competitive behavior” in food supply chains — including seed, fertilizer and equipment — and consider taking enforcement actions or developing new regulations.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who backs President Donald Trump’s campaign against suspected drug smugglers, is partially aligning himself with Trump and top Democrats in favor of releasing the video of the Sept. 2 attack. It was the first in what has become a monthslong series of American strikes on vessels near Venezuela that the administration says were ferrying drugs. At least 87 people have been killed in 22 known strikes.

But Cotton, among the top lawmakers on national security committees who were briefed Thursday by the Navy admiral commanding those strikes, is splitting with Democrats over whether military personnel acted lawfully in carrying out a second strike to kill the two survivors. The nine others aboard the boat also were killed.

“I think it’s really important that this video be made public. It’s not lost on anyone, of course, that the interpretation of the video … broke down precisely on party lines,” said Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He said he has spent “years looking at videos of lethal action taken, often in the terrorism context, and this video was profoundly shaking.”

When Trump was asked Wednesday whether he would release the video of that follow-on strike, he told reporters, “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release. No problem.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Fox News interview Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that officials were reviewing the video. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible” about it.

“That boat was still a valid target,” Cotton said, arguing that releasing the video would prove that the two survivors of the initial strike remained a threat.

“It’s not gruesome. I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing,” he said, explaining why he does not have a problem with releasing all the footage. “It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years.” He added that “there’s nothing remarkable on that video, in my opinion.”

The classified sessions on Capitol Hill came after The Washington Post reported that Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley had ordered a follow-on attack that killed those survivors, to comply with Hegseth’s demands. Bradley told lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, but a video of the entire series of attacks left some lawmakers with serious questions. Legal experts have said killing survivors of a strike at sea could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and Himes are among those who have seen the video and they disputed Cotton’s characterization.

“I have no doubt that these guys were involved in the running of drugs. … But in that instance, these guys were about to die,” Himes said.

Smith added: “It did not appear that these two survivors were in any position to continue the fight.”

Himes said lawmakers are aware of the partisan divide.

Some legal experts have disputed that the United States is in an official armed conflict with Venezuela, raising questions about the legalities of using American military personnel for what would amount to law enforcement activities that require due process. Other experts have said that, regardless of the terms of engagement, international law does not allow further attacks on defenseless survivors of a previous attack. Specifically, Pentagon protocols say that firing upon the shipwrecked is illegal.

There have been questions and criticism of the mission raised by lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill, with inquiries ongoing.

Bradley told lawmakers in a closed session that he ordered the second attack on the wreckage of a boat that was carrying cocaine because it was believed that bales of the drug were still in the hull of the boat.

Cotton said Sunday that two final victims were “not in a shipwrecked state” or “floating helplessly in the water” but instead were “sitting or standing on top of a capsized boat.” Because they were “not incapacitated,” he said, “that boat, its cargo … remained valid targets.”

Smith, who saw the same video, said, “The boat was clearly incapacitated. A tiny portion of it remained capsized, the bow of the boat. They had no communications device. Certainly, they were unarmed.”

Cotton was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Smith was on ABC’s “This Week” and Himes appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

This year’s recipients are actor Sylvester Stallone, singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, the rock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford.

Trump said they are a group of “incredible people” who represent the “very best in American arts and culture” and that, “I know most of them and I’ve been a fan of all of them.”

“This is a group of icons whose work and accomplishments have inspired, uplifted and unified millions and millions of Americans,” said a tuxedo-clad Trump. “This is perhaps the most accomplished and renowned class of Kennedy Center Honorees ever assembled.”

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center

Trump ignored the Kennedy Center and its premier awards program during his first term as president. But the Republican has instituted a series of changes since returning to office in January, most notably ousting its board of trustees and replacing them with GOP supporters who voted him in as chairman of the board.

Trump also has criticized the center’s programming and its physical appearance, and has vowed to overhaul both.

The president placed around each honoree’s neck a new medal that was designed, created and donated by jeweler Tiffany & Co., according to the Kennedy Center and Trump.

It’s a gold disc etched on one side with the Kennedy Center’s image and rainbow colors. The honoree’s name appears on the reverse side with the date of the ceremony. The medallion hangs from a navy blue ribbon and replaces a large rainbow ribbon decorated with three gold plates that rested on the honoree’s shoulders and chest and had been used since the first honors program in 1978.

Trump honors the honorees

Strait, wearing a cowboy hat, was first to receive his medal. When the country singer started to take off the hat, Trump said, “If you want to leave it on, you can. I think we can get it through.” But Strait took it off.

The president said Crawford was a “great star of Broadway” for his lead role in the long-running “Phantom of the Opera.” Of Gaynor, he said, “We have the disco queen, and she was indeed, and nobody did it like Gloria Gaynor.”

Trump was effusive about his friend Stallone, calling him a “wonderful” and “spectacular” person and “one of the true, great movie stars” and “one of the great legends.”

Kiss is an “incredible rock band,” he said.

Songs by honorees Gaynor and Kiss played in the Rose Garden just outside the Oval Office as members of the White House press corps waited nearby for Trump to begin the ceremony.

The president said in August that he was “about 98% involved” in choosing the 2025 honorees when he personally announced them at the Kennedy Center, the first slate chosen under his leadership. The honorees traditionally had been announced by press release.

It was unclear how they were chosen. Before Trump, it fell to a bipartisan selection committee.

“These are among the greatest artists, actors and performers of their generation. The greatest that we’ve seen,” Trump said. “We can hardly imagine the country music phenomena without its king of country, or American disco without its first lady, or Broadway without its phantom — and that was a phantom, let me tell you — or rock and roll without its hottest band in the world, and that’s what they are, or Hollywood without one of its greatest visionaries.”

“Each of you has made an indelible mark on American life and together you have defined entire genres and set new standards for the performing arts,” Trump said.

Trump also attended an annual State Department dinner for the honorees on Saturday. In years past, the honorees received their medallions there but Trump moved that to the White House.

Trump said during pre-dinner remarks that the honorees are more than celebrities.

“It gives me tremendous pleasure to congratulate them once again and say thank you for your incredible career,” he said. “Thank you for gracing us with this wisdom and just genius that you have.”

Trump to host the Kennedy Center Honors

Meanwhile, the glitzy Kennedy Center Honors program and its series of tribute speeches and performances for each recipient is set to be taped on Sunday at the performing arts center for broadcast later in December on CBS and Paramount+. Trump is to attend the program for the first time as president, accompanied by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

The president said in August that he had agreed to host the show. At dinner Saturday, he said he was doing so “at the request of a certain television network.” Trump predicted that the broadcast would garner its highest ratings ever as a result. No president has ever been the host.

At the White House, Trump said he looked forward to Sunday’s celebration.

“It’s going to be something that I believe, and I’m going to make a prediction: This will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night,” Trump said.

The president also swiped at late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose program was briefly suspended earlier this year by ABC following criticism of his comments related to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.

Kimmel and Trump are sharp critics of each other, with the president regularly deriding Kimmel’s talent as a host. Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Academy Award multiple times.

Trump said he should be able to outdo Kimmel.

“I’ve watched some of the people that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible,” Trump said. “If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”

Brian Cole Jr. spoke to law-enforcement officers for more than four hours after his arrest, a federal prosecutor, Charles Jones, said Friday during Cole’s initial court appearance.

The prosecutor did not elaborate on what Cole said to investigators, but two people familiar with the matter told the AP he confessed to planting the devices on Jan. 5, 2021. Cole also indicated that he believed conspiracy theories around the 2020 election that President Donald Trump has insisted was stolen and expressed views supportive of Trump, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss by name an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The details add to a still-emerging portrait of the 30-year-old suspect from Woodbridge, Virginia, and it was not immediately clear what other information or perspectives he may have shared while cooperating with law enforcement following his arrest on Thursday.

U.S. Magistrate Moxila Upadhyaya ordered Cole to remain in jail. He did not enter a plea and is due back in court Dec. 15 for a detention hearing.

Cole, wearing a tan-colored jail uniform, answered a few routine questions from the magistrate during Friday’s brief hearing. Relatives of Cole attended the hearing and called out words of encouragement as he was led out of the courtroom.

“We love you!” one shouted.

“We’re here for you, baby,” another said.

Defense attorney John Shoreman declined to comment on the charges after the hearing.

“We’re in the very, very early stages,” he said.

An FBI affidavit says investigators identified Cole as a suspect through analysis of credit card charges related to the purchase of pipe bomb components, information from cellphone towers and a license plate reader.

Nobody was hurt before the bombs were rendered safe, but the FBI has said both devices could have been lethal.

Federal authorities have not publicly disclosed any information about a possible motive or whether there is any connection to the attack on the Capitol the following day by Trump supporters.

The arrest marks the first time investigators have publicly identified a suspect in an act that has been an enduring mystery for nearly five years in the shadow of the violent Capitol attack. For years, the FBI struggled to pinpoint a suspect despite hundreds of tips, a review of tens of thousands of video files and a significant number of interviews.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told ABC News Live that she believes it is “unmistakable” that Cole was responsible for placing the pipe bombs based on evidence collected by investigators.

Surveillance video captured the suspect’s movements through the area where the pipe bombs were placed and the surrounding neighborhood. The suspect, whose face was obscured by a mask, was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, gloves and Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes.

“He told us that he had those sneakers and that he got rid of them after he placed the pipe bombs,” Pirro said.

The FBI said a comparison of records from nearby cell towers and for Cole’s cellphone indicate he was near the RNC and DNC around the same time that the pipe bombs were placed there.

“In my mind, they were on the right path when it was clear that the cellphone was pinging in the exact locations where we had the video of the suspect walking along the area,” Pirro said. “Everywhere he walked, his cellphone was pinging at the cell tower. So it is unmistakable that he was the guy who was walking along and placing those items.”

Investigators also obtained credit card records that show Cole bought items consistent with components used to make the pipe bombs placed at the RNC and DNC, according to the FBI.

Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden but promoted conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the election from him. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House.

Trump, who has openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Price, had been heavily expected to receive the newly created FIFA prize. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a close ally of Trump, has said he thought Trump should have won the Nobel for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

In awarding the prize, Infantino told Trump it was a “beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.” Trump promptly placed the medal around his neck. The certificate that Infantino handed Trump recognizes the U.S. president for his actions to “promote peace and unity around the world.”

Infantino also presented Trump with a gold trophy with his name on it that depicts hands holding up the world. “You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way,” Infantino said.

Trump thanked his family, including his wife, first lady Melania Trump, and praised the leaders of the other two host nations — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum — in his brief remarks, saying the coordination with the countries has been “outstanding.”

“This is truly one of the great honors of my life,” Trump said, adding that “most important, I just want to thank everybody. The world is a safer place now.”

Infantino has often spoken about soccer as a unifier for the world, but the prize is a departure from the federation’s traditional focus on sport.

FIFA has given no details about the process for choosing a winner. When Infantino first announced last month that the organization would give out a peace prize, some of its senior officials were caught off guard, learning about it through reports in the media.

The FIFA president was also on hand Thursday at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, where Trump and the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed a deal aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Congo.

FIFA’s award to Trump came during a week in which his administration has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy to try to end the war in Ukraine, while also under scrutiny for lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and as Trump hardens his rhetoric against immigrants.

The Nobel for peace was awarded this year to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who said shortly after receiving the prize that she was dedicating it in part to Trump for “his decisive support of our cause.”

Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for a series of closed-door classified briefings at the Capitol as lawmakers conduct an investigation after a report that he ordered the follow-on attack that killed the survivors to comply with Hegesth’s demands. Legal experts have said such a strike could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.

“Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, as he exited a classified briefing.

While Cotton, R-Ark., defended the attack, Democrats who were also briefed and saw video of the survivors being killed questioned the Trump administration’s rationale and said the incident was deeply concerning.

“The order was basically: Destroy the drugs, kill the 11 people on the boat,” said Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Smith, who is demanding further investigation, said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water — until the missiles come and kill them.”

The classified sessions with Bradley, alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, provided fresh information at a crucial moment as Hegseth’s leadership comes under scrutiny. But they did little to resolve growing questions about the legal basis for President Donald Trump’s extraordinary campaign to use war powers against suspected drug smugglers. So far more than 80 people have been killed in some 20 strikes.

Late Thursday, U.S. Southern Command announced it had conducted another strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean following a pause of almost three weeks. There were four casualties, according to the social media post.

Lawmakers have not yet specifically authorized the use of military force against the alleged drug boats, and the Republican-controlled Congress has turned back attempts to put a check on Trump’s power to engage in the missile campaign, which Hegseth has vowed will continue. Several Democrats have called for Hegseth to resign.

Congressional investigation gets underway

Lawmakers want a full accounting of the Sept. 2 strike, which was the first in what has become a monthslong series of U.S. military attacks on vessels near Venezuela believed to be ferrying drugs. The Washington Post had reported that Bradley ordered the follow-on attack on the survivors.

But lawmakers who lead the House and Senate’s national security committees in Congress came away with different descriptions of what the two survivors were doing when they were killed.

Cotton said he saw them “trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for United States back over so they could stay in the fight.”

He said there were “several minutes” between the first and second attacks, which consisted of four missile strikes. He said it was “gratifying” that the U.S. military was taking “the battle” to cartels.

But Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, “what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel,” he said, and who “were killed by the United States.”

The survivors did not issue any distress call or other communications, though lawmakers were told it appeared the people had a hand raised, “waving” at one point during the attacks, Smith said.

Smith acknowledged there was likely cocaine on the boat, but he objects to the Republican administration’s rationale for continued attacks on alleged drug runners who may or may not be heading to the United States. “That’s really the core of the problem with all of this,” he said. “That incredibly broad definition, I think, is what sets in motion all of these problems about using lethal force and using the military.”

Who is Adm. Bradley?

At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the military’s elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the strike, he was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

His military career, spanning more than three decades, was mostly spent serving in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He was among the first special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by unanimous voice vote in the Senate this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has described Bradley as among those who are “rock solid” and “the most extraordinary people that have ever served in the military.”

But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a reckoning if it is found that survivors were targeted. “Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable,” he said.

What else are lawmakers seeking?

Underpinning Trump’s campaign against suspected traffickers is his argument that drug cartels amount to armed combatants because their cargo poses a threat to American lives.

Democrats are demanding the release of the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives about the mission from Hegseth. None of the written orders or audio of verbal commands was shared with the lawmakers.

A White House Office of Legal Counsel memo providing a rationale for the strikes was dated after the fact, on Sept. 5. That memo remains undisclosed, and Democrats want it released.

Obtaining further information, though, will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers, who have majority control of the committees, a potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that he and the Senate Armed Services Committee chair, GOP Sen. Roger Wicker, have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes, among other items. The Trump administration has repeatedly denied their requests for basic information about the operation, Reed said.

Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have largely stood by Hegseth and the administration’s decision to conduct the strikes.

Elsewhere, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and others see the U.S. military operation as part of an effort to prompt a government change in the South American country. Maduro on Wednesday acknowledged speaking last month by phone with Trump, who confirmed the call days earlier.