Opening summary: Trump says more oil tankers will be seized near Venezuela
Good morning, US President Donald Trump has said he was leaving the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table, according to an interview with NBC News published on Friday. “I dont rule it out, no,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
Trump has used social media to publicly accuse Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves” as well as “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”. Maduro has strongly denied all these accusations. Here are some of the other developments in the US overnight:
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Trump also told NBC he does not believe it is necessary to repeal the affordable care act, also known as Obamacare. In November, Trump had suggested scrapping Obamacare and redirecting federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under Act toward direct payments to individuals.
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TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app’s US operations to a group of investors, including Oracle, in a big step toward avoiding a US ban and ending years of uncertainty.
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A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a US Justice Department official said. The ruling is a victory for Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.
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Trump also enshrined the US goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.
Key events
Donald Trump will visit North Carolina on a campaigning trip on what is shaping up to be one of the most momentous days of his second presidency. With the long-awaited Espstein files due to be released sometime before midnight under federal law, Trump will go to the city of Rocky Mount, amid reports that locals have been dissatisfied with the results of the administration’s economic policies. The trip echoes the president’s recent visit to Pennsylvania, a battleground state in which he was supposed to persuade voters that he was addressing “affordability” concerns – but ended up dismissing the issue as a “Democrat hoax.” With North Carolina home to a tight Senate race in the 2026 midterm elections, Trump needs to tackle waning Republican support reflected in a recent poll that showed 60% of local voters disapproving his performance on inflation and 52% disagreeing with his tariff policies. Trump has carried North Carolina in each of the last three presidential elections.
Pentagon fails annual audit for eighth year in a row
For the eighth year in a row, the Pentagon has failed as annual audit, the Department of Defense said on Friday, continuing a pattern of financial accountability problems that have drawn bipartisan criticism and emerged as a campaign issue.
“The Department cannot resolve decades of war, neglect of America’s defense industrial base, and soaring national debt through unchecked spending.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement released with the audit.
The White House has consistently denied that Donald Trump has ever engaged in conflicts of interest while president. But experts have been tallying up examples of decisions made over the last 12 months which, they say, amount to corruption coming from the highest office.
Jonathan Freedland is joined by the anthropologist Prof Janine Wedel, as they wade through the most egregious allegations of corruption from Trump’s first year in office, in the Politics Weekly America podcast:
FBI director Kash Patel has said “no one is above the law” after a Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom.
Patel is the latest member of President Donald Trump’s administration to celebrate what it sees as a victory in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a separate social media post: “This Department will not tolerate obstruction, will enforce federal immigration law, and will hold criminals to account – even those who wear robes.”
Media reports said the federal jury delivered a mixed verdict on Hannah Dugan, 66, an elected judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, acquitting her of one of the two charges she faced. She was convicted of obstructing a federal proceeding and cleared of a lesser charge accusing her of concealing a person from arrest, the reports said.
The US military said it killed on Thursday five more alleged drug traffickers aboard two vessels in the Pacific Ocean, bringing the divisive campaign’s death toll to over 100.
The Trump administration has carried out such strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September but has provided no evidence that the boats are involved in drug trafficking, prompting debate about the operations’ legality.
The latest strikes hit two vessels in international waters that were “engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the US Southern Command said on X.
Three people were killed in the first vessel and two in the second vessel, it said.
The strikes have now killed 104 people, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official data.
Read the full story here:
Tom Burgis
One Friday in November, armed police blocked off the road that runs beside Gibraltar’s medieval city walls to clear the way for a convoy of blacked-out BMWs. The vehicles pulled up at the offices of Hassans, a law firm.
The British enclave in the Mediterranean is a hub for the international ultra-rich, and Hassans counts many of them as clients. But few as highly placed as that day’s visitor: Donald Trump Jr, the man running the family business while his father is in the White House.
Three hours later, the president’s son would head along the coast to the Spanish resort of Marbella to hang out at a five-star hotel with his partner, the Florida socialite Bettina Anderson. First, though, there was business to attend to.
But why did Donald Trump Jr turn up in a tiny British enclave looking for money? Read more:
Trump claims he doesn’t need Congress approval for Venezuela land strikes
US President Donald Trump claimed he did not need lawmakers’ approval to strike suspected drug cartels on land in Venezuela, citing concerns over information leaks.
“I wouldn’t mind telling them, but you know, it’s not a big deal. I don’t have to tell them,” he said in the Oval Office.
Democratic lawmakers have maintained that the Trump administration needs congressional authorization to use the military for the purported anti-drug campaign.
Speculation surrounding the affairs of Jeffrey Epstein is expected to reach a defining moment of revelation on Friday with the much-anticipated publication of files relating to the disgraced late financier and sex trafficker.
After months of delay and stalling, the Trump administration is legally obliged to publish a massive archive of documents that could shine fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds and his connections with key public figures, including Donald Trump himself.
A huge archive – set to shed fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds – is legally obliged to be released before a midnight deadline. Read more:
Noem suspends US diversity visa lottery
US homeland security chief Kristi Noem announced the suspension of the diversity visa lottery on Thursday, saying it was used by the “heinous individual” in a mass shooting at Brown University.
Noem wrote: “The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country.
“In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country.
In 2017, President Trump…
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) December 19, 2025
In his NBC interview, Donald Trump declined to say whether removing Maduro was his ultimate goal, telling NBC News: “He knows exactly what I want.”
“He knows better than anybody,” the US President added, referring to Maduro. The report did not elaborate.
Maduro has alleged that the US action is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.
Trump elaborated on his claim there would be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuelan waters, adding: “If they’re foolish enough to be sailing along, they’ll be sailing along back into one of our harbours.”
The Trump administration announced on Thursday it will suspend a green card lottery that allowed a man believed to be behind both a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor into the United States.
Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on Saturday and opening fire on students, killing two and wounding nine.
He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.
Homeland security chief Kristi Noem wrote on social media on Thursday that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”
The US green card lottery grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the State Department.
Trump vows additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela
US President Donald Trump has said there will be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela, in an interview with NBC News.
Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused Venezuela of facilitating the drug trade. The US military has killed at least 90 people since September in strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean that Washington claims were carrying illegal narcotics to the US.
But, the Trump White House has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying fentanyl, which is mainly produced in Mexico, or cocaine, which is typically produced in neighbouring Colombia and shipped to the US via various routes.
Opening summary: Trump says more oil tankers will be seized near Venezuela
Good morning, US President Donald Trump has said he was leaving the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table, according to an interview with NBC News published on Friday. “I dont rule it out, no,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
Trump has used social media to publicly accuse Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves” as well as “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”. Maduro has strongly denied all these accusations. Here are some of the other developments in the US overnight:
-
Trump also told NBC he does not believe it is necessary to repeal the affordable care act, also known as Obamacare. In November, Trump had suggested scrapping Obamacare and redirecting federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under Act toward direct payments to individuals.
-
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app’s US operations to a group of investors, including Oracle, in a big step toward avoiding a US ban and ending years of uncertainty.
-
A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a US Justice Department official said. The ruling is a victory for Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.
-
Trump also enshrined the US goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.
