President Donald Trump said the prospect of the U.S. going to war with Venezuela is unlikely, but was unapologetic about the strikes he has authorized against Venezuelan boats carrying drugs into the country and said that Nicholas Maduro's days as president are numbered.
"I doubt it, I don't think so," Trump said to "60 Minutes," host Norah O’Donnell when asked about whether the repositioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean meant war with Venezuela.
"But they've been treating us very badly, not only on drugs," he continued.
Trump then bemoaned the way Venezuela seemingly flooded the U.S. with its criminals and mentally ill people during Joe Biden's presidency when the borders were thrown pretty much wide open.
"They've dumped hundreds of thousands of people into a country that… we didn't want – people from prisons," Trump said. "They emptied their prisons into our country. They also, if you take a look, they emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylum into the United States of America because Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country."
O'Donnell then asked Trump whether the strikes are more about stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. or removing Maduro.
"To me, that would be almost number one because we have other countries like Mexico has been very bad to us in terms of drugs. Okay. Very bad," he said. "We have a closed border right now… So think of this: zero people coming into our country through our southern border."
O'Donnell also asked Trump whether Maduro's days as president were numbers, and he said. "I would say yeah. I think so, yeah."
On the question of whether Trump planned land strikes on Venezuela, he said "I’m not saying it’s true or untrue."
He added that he wasn't going to give a reporter information about any plans for military strikes.
There have been rumors about land strikes on Venezuela, which Trump said Friday were not on the table.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was asked on Saturday whether land strikes were planned, but he also refused to discuss it.
"Appreciate the question. But, of course, we would not share any amount of operational details about what may or may not happen," Hegseth said.
It's really good to see a president do something about the flow of drugs into the country, no matter what anyone in the media thinks about it.
President Donald Trump is taking steps to address the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, and he's not pulling punches.
Trump has officially designated Nigeria as a "country of particular concern" and directed the House Appropriations Committee “to immediately look into this matter,” while being clear that the U.S. will not stand by idly while Christians are slaughtered.
Essentially, the Nigerian government is staring down the barrel of a gun as it has been rumored that Trump is considering military measures to crush Nigeria's radical Islamic terrorist groups.
Trump's decision seems to have been spurred by a letter from Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV), who called on Trump to take “immediate action to address the systematic persecution and slaughter of Christians in Nigeria."
This is the kind of foreign policy that Americans want to see out of the Trump administration. No more nation-building in the Middle East, just precise and surgical application of military force to decapitate terrorist groups.
Trump made an announcement on Friday via Truth Social where he emphatically proclaimed that, "Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a “COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN” — But that is the least of it. When Christians, or any such group, is slaughtered like is happening in Nigeria (3,100 versus 4,476 Worldwide), something must be done!"
One can't help but wonder if the former Biden administration would have cared about the slaughter of Christians in a nation that doesn't hold strong geopolitical relevance.
Trump continued in his post by saying, "I am asking Congressman Riley Moore, together with Chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations Committee, to immediately look into this matter, and report back to me. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!"
According to Moore's letter to Trump, over 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in 2025 alone, with hundreds more kidnapped, tortured, or displaced by Muslim terrorist groups like Boko Haram.
Moore issued a statement saying, "The United States cannot stand idly by while believers are slaughtered. We must acknowledge the religious nature of this scourge of anti-Christian violence from radical Islamic terrorists. It’s time for the United States to defend our brothers and sisters in Christ, and designating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern will provide the diplomatic levers to do just that. I urge Secretary Rubio to designate Nigeria as a CPC without delay.”
With that CPC designation secured, the conversation now turns to what measures the Trump administration could take to crush terrorists and protect Christians in Nigeria.
Nigeria's government is firmly at fault for this growing crisis, which Moore explained thoroughly saying, “The government in Nigeria is complicit in the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Christ. If I should give some numbers really quick here: there have been 50,000 to 100,000 murdered Christians in Nigeria. This is an astounding number nobody is talking about."
Nigeria's Muslim President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has even flatly denied that a genocide is occurring by saying, "There’s no religious persecution in Nigeria. It’s a lie from the pit of hell.”
The "lie from the pit of hell" actually comes from Tinubu, who clearly endorses the slaughter of his own citizens because of his denial of Christian genocide. While regime change has a bad track record, the Trump administration could certainly consider such an option to remove Tinubu for being complicit in a genocide.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani has ordered the Trump administration to keep SNAP benefits funded as the government shutdown continues to drag on.
On Friday, Judge Talwani issued an order requiring the Trump administration to direct emergency funds to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as SNAP, funded as the government shutdown is beginning to drag into the months.
The order will ensure that SNAP benefits continue to flow to the 42 million Americans who receive aid just hours before the funding was set to expire.
This order was issued just before a separate federal judge in Rhode Island issued an order mandating similar action from the Trump administration.
While military members and air traffic controllers face uncertainty about their next paycheck, these federal judges are making sure that those abusing welfare to support their lifestyle can still take advantage of the notoriously exploited SNAP program.
A coalition of 25 Democratic governors and state attorneys general sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over its refusal to keep SNAP benefits funded during the ongoing government shutdown.
Considering Democrats are reliant on votes from those perpetually on welfare, it's no surprise to see Democrats push hard to keep those benefits paid out while doing nothing to fund the troops' paychecks.
Talwani, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, wrote in her decision that, "It’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency when there’s no money and a lot of people need their SNAP benefits."
The issue is there isn't much money to go around as the USDA only has a $5 billion contingency fund which will now need to be spent on food stamps.
The Trump administration wanted to keep that contingency fund intact in order to respond to possible natural disasters.
Democrats don't care about ensuring that disaster response is maintained through the shutdown. After all, its Democrats in Congress who refuse to fund the government unless they secure absurd concessions from the GOP.
It's unclear what will happen from here as the Trump administration has yet to announce how it will proceed following these decisions. It's possible that there will be an appeal, but it would take months for this case to be decided, long after the emergency fund is drained.
Ideally, the GOP will take drastic action to end the shutdown but at this point, it seems unlikely that the GOP will unite and end the filibuster.
This decision also highlights the problem of federal judges appointed by Democrat presidents who consistently make activist rulings at the expense of good governance.
President Donald Trump only plans to admit 7,500 refugees into the country in 2026, and that includes mostly white Afrikaners fleeing South Africa.
Refugee groups are shocked and dismayed by the move, which reverses the huge numbers of refugees admitted under former President Joe Biden.
Just over 100,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. in fiscal 2024, the latest year figures were available.
The number of refugees admitted has varied widely in recent years, but the 7,500 figure is historically low.
"For more than four decades, the U.S. refugee program has been a lifeline for families fleeing war, persecution, and repression," Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said. "At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility."
Vignarajah leads one of several groups paid by the federal government to resettle refugees in American communities, so of course she would be unhappy with the limits.
“Since the U.S. Refugee Program was created in 1980, it has admitted over two million people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an advocate at the American Immigration Council, said. “Now it will be used as a pathway for White immigration. What a downfall for a crown jewel of America’s international humanitarian programs.”
Refugees are typically given transportation into the country, and unlike illegal or other immigrants, they are eligible for all entitlement and aid programs.
"Admission numbers will primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa, pursuant to Executive Order 14204, and other victims of illegal or unjust criminal discrimination in their respective homelands… [The order] mandates that the refugees receive the most stringent identification verification of any class of aliens seeking admission or entry to the United States," the Trump directive expected tomorrow reads.
Vice President JD Vance commented on the damage refugees can do to a community when a large number are settled there.
Because of the amount of government benefits they can get and their willingness to live in crowded conditions, they drive up rent prices so that citizens in the community are priced out, he said.
“That completely destroys the ability of Americans to live the American dream, and that’s what those open border policies did,” Vance added.
The presence of the refugees along with illegal immigrants also drives down wages for jobs in the area and puts citizens out of work, because the refugees are willing to work for less.
Trump is trying to reverse this damage by cutting off most illegal immigration and limiting refugees in a way consistent with his America-first policy focus.
President Donald Trump met with China's President Xi Jinping on Wednesday in South Korea, and he called the meeting "friendly" and agreeable.
Trump said that Xi "agreed to almost everything" during their two hours face-to-face, and in return, he agreed to lower tariffs on the world's most populous nation.
"On a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12," he told reporters who were traveling with him on the flight back to Washington.
"It was an outstanding group of decisions I think that was made. A lot of decisions were made too, there wasn't too much left out there," Trump said.
When Xi agreed to work toward decreasing the amount of fentanyl coming into the U.S. from China, Trump lowered the tariffs on Chinese goods from 57% to 47%.
"I believe he's going to work very hard to stop the death that's coming in," Trump said.
In another positive development, China agreed to end its pause on purchasing soybeans from the U.S. The pause caused problems for farmers.
China also agreed to a one-year pause on its limits in exporting rare minerals, which led to the U.S. loosening some of its own export restrictions.
"President Xi is a great leader of a great country, and I think we're going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time," Trump said at the start of the meeting.
Of course, Xi is a communist dictator, not a great leader, but Trump was buttering him up to get what he wanted, so that's okay.
The pair hadn't met in person for six years, but they have spoken on the phone three times and exchanged several letters since Trump took office for the second time.
"China and the U.S. should be partners and friends. This is what history has taught us and what reality demands," Xi said through an interpreter.
They also talked about China buying oil from the U.S. (Alaska), but they skipped over several more controversial topics.
They didn't talk about Taiwan, TikTok, or China buying Russian oil, but hey, it's a good first step toward lowering tensions.
The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal agency that, among other duties, would oversee the ballroom being built after the demolishing of the East Wing last week.
The commissioners were appointed by former President Joe Biden to advise on architectural projects on public land in D.C., and their terms were set to expire in 2028.
President Donald Trump said he will replace them with new members more "aligned" with his policies and goals.
“We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s America First Policies,” a White House official said in a statement.
Besides the ballroom, which will be financed by private donors and not with taxpayer dollars, Trump also plans to build an archway close to the entrance of D.C. across from Arlington National Cemetery.
The commission began in 1910, but its scope has grown since then.
Critics of the East Wing's demolition have said that Trump didn't get proper permits for the project, but the White House said it wasn't required to get approval from the National Capital Planning Commission because it didn't involve new, vertical construction.
The NCPC is now full of Trump allies anyway, so there won't be opposition when the plans for the ballroom are submitted.
Trump has fired and ousted a number of board members and administrators since taking office, one of his strategies to overhaul the deep state that so strongly opposed him during his first term.
So far, he has largely gotten away with it, since the president is given some latitude over firing federal workers at various agencies.
When these commissioners and board members are working with Trump and not against him, it's far easier to get things done and Trump can spend his energy elsewhere, like battling Congress to get his legislative priorities passed.
Trump may have started a trend that will continue, with each successive president from the opposite political party cleaning house after the transfer of power.
While some argue that the deep state provides stability during times when power transitions, there's no reason why term limits wouldn't benefit these positions as much as they do the presidency.
Such housecleanings would help government better reflect the will of the people at a given moment in history, and may help move things along faster than has happened in recent years.
The FBI announced on Monday that they had arrested 29-year-old Tyler Maxon Avalos, an alleged Minnesota anarchist who went by the nickname "Wacko," on October 16 after he posted a hit on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi using the social media platform TikTok.
The post featured an image of Bondi with a red sniper dot on her forehead with the caption, "“WANTED: Pam Bondi / REWARD: 45,000 ‘ DEAD OR ALIVE / (PREFERABLY DEAD)."
Avalos added under the photo, "Cough cough. When they don’t serve us, then what?”
His TikTok account had a link to “An Anarchist FAQ book,” according to authorities.
Avalos also has a long rap sheet, including a stalking conviction in 2022 and a domestic battery conviction in Florida in 2016, when Bondi was state attorney general there.
The specific charge Avalos faces from the feds is interstate transmission of a threat to injure another person.
The investigation into Avalos started on October 9 when a user from Detroit "submitted a report to the FBI National Threat Operations Center" about his TikTok profile, including the pic of Bondi with a sniper dot.
The tipster also flagged the suspect's TikTok feed. TikTok, Google and Comcast helped the FBI track Avalos down.
Avalos's profile contained an anarchy symbol.
According to the court affidavit, anarchism "advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations."
When Avalos appeared in court Wednesday morning, he waived his right to a preliminary hearing.
He was released on his own recognizance but ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
That means a man who said online that he wanted to reward someone if they killed a member of the President of the United States's cabinet is out on the street again.
I will definitely sleep better knowing that, said no one ever. So glad our court system is taking this threat seriously.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that he won't meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin again until he knows they can make a deal to end the war in Ukraine, according to the New York Post.
“We’re going to have to know that we’re going to make a deal,” Trump said from Air Force One.
“I’m not going to be wasting my time. I’ve always had a great relationship with [Putin], but this has been very disappointing.”
Trump made it clear that he didn't think it would take as long as it has to end the fighting in Ukraine--something he said during the campaign he would do on "day one" of his return to office.
“I thought [the Hamas-Israel cease-fire deal] would have been more difficult than Russia and Ukraine, but it didn’t work out that way,” he said.
The comments followed an announcement last week that after a phone call between Trump and Putin, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the U.S. delegation in talks with counterparts in Russia.
The phone call was supposed to be a precursor to a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Trump, but that plan fell apart because Putin rejected a key part of the plan put forward by Trump: ending the war with the current battle lines in place.
That would mean that Russia keeps control of Crimea, but only holds parts of other areas where fighting has raged, including the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Russia has claimed all of these regions and seeks to annex them all.
Indeed, Putin has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and likely over one million Russian lives to accomplish his goal, and no doubt it would be humiliating for him to end the fighting without accomplishing everything he set out to do.
On the other hand, though, the U.S. and other allies have determined that letting Ukraine fall to Russia is not in the world's best interest.
Putin could realistically say that he has been fighting not just Ukraine, but the entire Western world in the war.
It may yet come to that, since the U.S. is now preparing to give Patriot missiles to Ukraine to stave off the Russian aggression. Trump is also putting new sanctions on Russia's two biggest oil producers, hoping to starve the Russian war machine further.
“There’s a lot of hatred between the two, between [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and Putin,” Trump told the press corps. “There’s tremendous hatred.”
Virginia Giuffre's posthumous memoir has dropped more bombshell allegations about the late billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein and his child trafficking operation.
Giuffre, who passed away earlier this year, has been leading the charge in exposing Epstein's sordid empire and has been responsible for the outing of Britain's Prince Andrew as a pedophile.
Giuffre made shockwaves when she accused Prince Andrew of raping her when she was only 17. She had been trafficked by Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, to powerful figures, many of whom have remained unnamed.
Her book, titled "Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice," chronicles her meetings with many powerful figures, including former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump.
She did not accuse either of wrongdoing, but nonetheless, the meeting reinforces already known connections between Clinton and Epstein, who were close. Epstein and Trump were also connected but became estranged in 2004.
Giuffre's collision course with Epstein began when her father got her a job at Mar-a-Lago, where he worked as a maintenance worker. This brought her into contact with high society, as Trump often used the location as a meeting place for the business world's powerful leaders, which included Epstein.
Trump plays a minimal role in Giuffre's story, but things took a turn when she met Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000, and that began a tragic tale that ultimately culminated in Giuffre's death in April of this year at just 41 years old.
Giuffre wrote, "It couldn’t have been more than a few days before my dad said he wanted to introduce me to Mr. Trump himself. They weren’t friends, exactly. But Dad worked hard, and Trump liked that—I’d seen photos of them posing together, shaking hands. Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. 'Do you like kids?' he asked. 'Do you babysit at all?' He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends, many of whom had children that needed tending."
However, it was Maxwell who recruited Giuffre as a masseuse despite her lack of experience, and that led to her traveling with Giuffre and Epstein around the world.
Of course, this led to Giuffre being asked for sexual favors by Maxwell and Epstein for the wealthy and powerful people that they would meet with. Giuffre was young and taken advantage of but her admiration of Epstein and Maxwell quickly deteriorated.
Giuffre wrote, "This was a man who displayed framed photographs of himself with the Dalai Lama, with the pope, and with members of the British royal family. A photo in his Palm Beach house showed Epstein posing behind the podium of the White House briefing room. This was a man who’d had former president Bill Clinton over for dinner (I was at the table that night) and who’d hosted Al and Tipper Gore as well (again, I was there)."
Later in her book, Giuffre detailed being handed over to an unnamed but supposedly famous Prime Minister by Epstein. She claims she was brutally raped by him on Epstein's private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2002.
When she begged not to be given back to the unnamed Prime Minister, who she says laughed at her and choked her, Epstein told her that it was simply part of the job.
Giuffre is just one of dozens of Epstein's victims, and the fact that Epstein and his associates went unpunished for so long is a crime. Epstein would die by suicide before being convicted in court and Maxwell did eventually get convicted, but all of their associates are still out there free men.
As many states are redistricting, New Hampshire's GOP has declined a plan to redistrict after the state's GOP governor indicated no support for the idea.
There are numerous redistricting battles going on around the nation right now, and the GOP has made serious gains, with states like Texas and North Carolina adding more seats to Congress.
These redistricting campaigns, in combination with an upcoming landmark Supreme Court decision, could easily hand the GOP control of the House of Representatives for decades.
However, those victories won't extend to New Hampshire as State Senator Dan Innis has dropped his plan to push redistricting after Governor Kelly Ayotte (R) refused to endorse the idea.
While this is a setback for the Trump administration, it's less consequential considering the massive gains that the GOP has made.
New redistricting efforts have been extremely successful in Texas and North Carolina, with many Democrat seats eliminated, ensuring that the days of the narrow GOP majority in the House are over.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court is considering a case that could knock down a section of the Voting Rights Act that essentially required racial quotas in creating districts.
If the Supreme Court strikes that requirement down, it will allow GOP states to eliminate dozens of Democrat seats that exist entirely because of the Voting Rights Act's racial district quota rules.
That one provision has allowed Democrats to hold onto seats in otherwise entirely red states like Alabama and Mississippi. Without the Voting Rights Act's current rules, there will no longer be districts drawn on racial lines and that will be devastating for Democrats.
However, in New Hampshire, Governor Ayotte claimed that since New Hampshire is in the middle of a current redistricting cycle, it made no sense to redistrict again.
Ayotte explained, "When I talk to people in New Hampshire … it’s not on the top of their priority list. They want us to continue to work in the legislature on housing issues, child care, keeping the state the safest in the nation, and just making sure that we have the best quality education for our children."
This is a fairly good argument against redistricting, considering the political implications. Should New Hampshire's GOP party choose to push for redistricting, it will be a months-long political battle with Democrats, and nothing else will get done.
In more GOP-dominated states, redistricting battles are less costly. But the Granite State is no GOP stronghold and some level of cooperation with Democrats is needed to get business done.
However, the implications of this decision will be worth keeping an eye on as the GOP tallies up its gains in the House from other states.