Donald Trump expected to deliver remarks on ‘affordability’ at Pennsylvania rally – live

Donald Trump is expected to deliver remarks on “affordability” at a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, shortly.

The treasury secretary Scott Bessent has begun speaking before the president’s arrival, from a podium flanked by two signs reading “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks”.

Bessent’s remarks have denounced Joe Biden’s policies, which he called the “three I’s: immigration, interest rates and inflation”, echoing Trump’s recent statements that he inherited an economic crisis from his predecessor.

Two American fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela today, the Associated Press reports.

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Two US Navy F/A-18 fighter jets flew over the body of water for more than 30 minutes, according to public flight-tracking websites. An anonymous US defense official confirmed the “routine training flight” to the AP.

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The exercise today appears to be the closest warplanes have come to Venezuelan airspace since the Trump administration launched its escalating attacks on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean.

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Speaking to reporters today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the “full video” of the “double tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela should be released.

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The top Democrat said that the American people should “have an opportunity to determine for themselves whether that strike killing people who were shipwrecked and, by all accounts, were not presenting any threat to American military personnel, whether that kind of seemingly extrajudicial killing is consistent with American values”.

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The 2 September strike has left defense secretary Pete Hegseth embattled, with several congressional lawmakers calling for further investigation into the series of events that killed the remaining survivors on the vessel.

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Jeffries added that if the administration thinks that their “actions are justifiable, what are they hiding from the American people?”

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More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws. They accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks. There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work, unilaterally dropped cases and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied immigrant children and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country.

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A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month. In his order today, judge Paul A Engelmayer cited the recent legislation and also granted the DoJ’s request to release discovery material – which could comprise thousands of documents and exhibits.

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Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine. The Louisiana lawmaker and former hepatologist also criticized some of the panel’s logic in citing European countries that also don’t recommend a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. “When those who oppose this recommendation say: ‘Well, the Europeans don’t do it,’ that is how that is such a selective bias presentation information,” Cassidy said today at a Politico event on healthcare affordability. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice.”

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In his interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a “double tap” strike on an alleged drug-ferrying boat “if he wants”. He added: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.” Trump also said he had seen the video of the strikes. Asked whether he thought the second strike was necessary, he said “it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don’t get involved in that”.

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The top Democrat on the House oversight committee, Robert Garcia, said that a federal judge’s decision to allow the justice department to unseal the grand jury documents in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case is a “victory for transparency” in the Epstein investigation.

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“We must continue fighting to deliver justice for survivors. Release the files, NOW,” Garcia added in a statement, referring to the deadline the Department of Justice has to release all documents related to Epstein in a searchable format.

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A reminder that the committee is conducting a concurrent investigation into the Epstein case. Oversight Democrats have released several bundles of documents, including emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which he wrote that Donald Trump “knew about the girls”.

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Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine.

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On Friday, the panel voted to recommend that parents of infants whose mothers test negative for hepatitis should decide when – or if – their child should receive the vaccine series, in consultation with a healthcare professional. A reminder that health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr replaced the panel with a hand-picked roster of new advisors, several of whom have expressed vaccine skepticism.

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“If you’re infected at birth, you have a 95% chance of becoming a chronic carrier,” said Cassidy, a former hepatologist. “If you’re vaccinated at birth, then you’ve got a little bit more than 0% chance of becoming a chronic carrier – an incredibly effective intervention.”

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The Louisiana lawmaker also criticized some of the panel’s logic in citing European countries who also don’t recommend a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. “When those who oppose this recommendation say, ‘well, the Europeans don’t do it’, that is how that is such a selective bias presentation information,” Cassidy said today at a Politico event on health care affordability. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with a ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice.”

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Donald Trump signed mortgage documents in the 1990s claiming two separate Florida properties would each serve as his principal residence – the same thing his administration is calling “mortgage fraud” when done by political rivals, records show.

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ProPublica unearthed documents demonstrating that within seven weeks of each other in late 1993 and early 1994, the president obtained loans for neighboring Palm Beach homes, pledging each would be his primary dwelling. Instead of living in them, though, he rented both out as investment properties.

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There is no suggestion that the activity is or was illegal, and proving intent is key in fraud cases. Yet Trump has called the same behavior – having two primary dwelling mortgages – “deceitful and potentially criminal” in relation to mortgage fraud charges against the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. The Trump administration is bringing several similar cases against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, the senator Adam Schiff and the congressman Eric Swalwell.

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James was charged in October over a Virginia property she designated as a second home before renting out. Cook was fired after signing two primary residence mortgages weeks apart – just as Trump did.

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The Trump loans in question in 1993 and 1994 financed two Woodbridge Road properties adjacent to Mar-a-Lago, for $525,000 and $1.2m. Each mortgage contained standard occupancy requirements mandating Trump make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there at least one year.

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Records place Trump at his Manhattan residence, Trump Tower, throughout the period. He would not officially change his permanent residence to Florida until 2019. Newspaper advertisements from the mid-1990s seen by ProPublica confirm both homes were marketed as rentals, with the larger seven-bedroom property listed at $3,000 a day in 1997.

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Both mortgages have since been paid off, the outlet said, and any potential violations fall well outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud.

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ProPublica said Trump hung up when a reporter asked whether his Florida mortgages resembled those he has accused others of fraud over.

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Two Senate Democrats – Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto – introduced new legislation today that would to prevent any living or sitting US president from being featured on any currency.

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They’re announcing the bill after the US mint released draft designs for a commemorative coin ahead of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. The drawings featured three coins with Donald Trump’s face on the obverse.

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“President Trump’s self-celebrating maneuvers are authoritarian actions worthy of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, not the United States of America,” Merkley said.

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The Change Corruption Act is also co-sponsored by Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Richard Blumenthal. In a statement, the latter said that the “rejection of monarchy” means that the US has “never allowed the image of a living or sitting president to be used on circulating currency”.

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On Thursday, the Senate will hold their much-anticipated vote on whether to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits, which are set to lapse at the end of this year. It’s part of the guarantee that congressional Republicans gave when a small group of Democrats agreed to end the record-breaking government shutdown, and pass a stopgap spending bill.

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Now, Democrats are putting forward a plan that extends the subsidies for three years. It’s destined to fail in the GOP-controlled Senate. But what’s unclear is what alternative the majority are willing to back.

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Leading the pack seems to be the legislation put forward by Republican senators Bill Cassidy, the former physician who chairs the health committee, and Mike Crapo – the Idaho lawmaker who serves as the chair of the Senate budget committee. Their offering is, in many ways, in line with what Donald Trump has pushed for. It would deposit funds into health savings accounts (HSAs) for those enrolled in bronze or catastrophic plans on the Obamacare exchanges.

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“Democrats’ temporary Covid credits do not lower costs or premiums. They direct billions of dollars to insurance companies,” the GOP lawmakers argue. “Republicans are proposing to empower patients to control their own health care.”

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Meanwhile, Ohio senator Bernie Moreno and Maine’s five-term senior senator Susan Collins have unveiled their own proposal to extend ACA subsidies for two years, while implementing an income cap for households whose income exceeds $200,000, and eliminating zero-premium plans.

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Happening now at the supreme court, arguments in a case that challenges the limits on campaign finance contributions from party committees.

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In National Republican Senatorial Committee v Federal Election Commission, the challengers (in this case the Senate committee focused on electing GOP members to Congress) argue that the cap on coordinated spending –violates the first amendment, and a party’s ability to sufficiently support a candidate. Depending on the scope of the decision, if the challengers are successful, a party group could spend an unlimited amount of money taking out ads during an election.

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Defending the FEC today in court is the high-profile Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, with support from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

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More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws and accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks.

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There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work unilaterally dropped cases, and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. By 1 May of this year, the department had lost about 70% of its attorneys – a staggering number. The letter was released on Tuesday to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the founding of the civil rights division.

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Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, has cheered the departures of career employees, describing them as activists who did not want to do the work that was asked of them. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights,” the letter says. “Having no use for the expertise of career staff, the Administration launched a coordinated effort to drive us out.”

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The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country. Dhillon also encouraged lawyers to leave and accept a paid leave offer and threatened to lay employees off if they did not, the letter says. Justice department officials appeared caught off guard by how many people were leaving earlier this year and quietly asked employees to reconsider leaving.

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“America deserves better,” the letter says. “The future of the Civil Rights Division is in jeopardy, and with it, the rights it protects. We hope that one day we can return the Division to its righteous work. Until then, we will continue to defend those rights and the Constitution wherever we find ourselves. We call on all Americans to join us. Demand that the Division enforce our civil rights laws and defend the Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all.”

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A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month.

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The legislation requires the Department of Justice to release the full tranche of records related to disgraced financier, in a searchable format by 19 December.

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In his order today, judge Paul A Engelmayer cited the recently passed bill, and granted the DoJ’s request to release discovery material – which could comprise thousands of documents and exhibits. However, Engelmayer stipulated that the justice department would still be required to abide by a protective order to “withhold or redact segregable portions that contain personally identifiable and other victim-related information”.

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A reminder that Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes in a minimum security facility in Texas. In October, the supreme court rejected her petition to overturn her conviction.

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Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend a fundreaising event in New York City, 15 March 2005.”,”caption”:”Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend a fundreaising event in New York City, 15 March 2005.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Patrick McMullan/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1765291085000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”09.38 EST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1765310706000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”15.05 EST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1765292901000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”10.08 EST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”10.08″,”title”:”Federal judge grants DoJ request to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury documents”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Tue 9 Dec 2025 18.53 EST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Tue 9 Dec 2025 06.50 EST”},{“id”:”69382a958f0822e6061ebb07″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is covering the latest out of Europe on our dedicated live blog today. In his interview with Politico, Donald Trump dismissed EU leaders as “weak” and labelled Europe as a “decaying group of nations”.

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Trump also said he didn’t have much hopes about European involvement in Ukraine peace talks, as “they talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.”

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Jakub notes that “these comments will do nothing to reassure European leaders concerned about the anti-EU outbursts over the weekend coming from the American right.”

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While these comments are, in many ways, more of the same from the president, the timing is certainly significant.

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“For him [Trump] to repeat all these lines with some pride as he gets named by Politico as ‘the most powerful person shaping Europe’ at the same time as European leaders want – or, more accurately, really need – to stay close to him on Ukraine … it makes it all very complicated for everyone involved,” Jakub writes.

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In his interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked if the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a second US military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug ferrying boat on 2 September.

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“He can if he wants,” Trump said, adding: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.”

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Trump said he had seen the video of the strikes. Asked if he thought the second strike was necessary, he said:

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n

Uh, well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don’t get involved in that. That’s up to them.

n

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Trump claimed that each strike on an alleged drug boat saved the lives of 25,000 Americans, a figure that has been strongly questioned by public health experts.

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He added:

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n

And we’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon, too.

n

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Asked by Politico to grade the US economy, Trump first rated it as “A-plus”, before upgrading it to “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus”. Questioned over the cost of living for voters, Trump said he “inherited a total mess”, and added: “Prices were at an all-time high when I came in. Prices are coming down substantially … It’s been 10 months. It’s amazing what we’ve done.”

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Asked if he would rule out reducing tariffs on any more goods, Trump said:

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n

“On some. And on some I’ll increase tariffs. Because you know what happens is because of tariffs, all of the car companies are coming back.”

n

You know, we lost 58% of the automobile business. We a monopoly in the world. We had everything. And because we had presidents that either weren’t smart or didn’t have business sense or their people didn’t do a good job … they could’ve kept that.

n

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Trump also spoke about the computer chip industry, after yesterday’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell some of its chips to China.

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n

“We could’ve kept the chip market. We had 100% of the chip market, Intel, all of these guys. You know, there’s the thing. They came in to see me, Intel. They needed something to be done by the government. I said, I’m gonna do it, but I think you have to give us 10% of your company. You know what happened? We made $40bn on that deal. The price went through the roof. The United States … in about 10 minutes, I made $40bn. Nobody talks about that.”

n

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Nvidia shares rose 1.7% in US pre-market trading on Tuesday after Trump said he would allow the sale of its H200 chips to approved Chinese customers. The US president announced on Monday that he had granted Nvidia permission to ship H200 chips to China in exchange for a 25% surcharge for the US, a move that could allow the world’s most valuable company to win back billions of dollars in lost business.

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China’s tech stocks slipped slightly after Trump’s announcement. China’s SSE Star Chip index dropped by 1% at the start of trading, before recovering slightly to a 0.43% fall. China’s CSI semiconductor industry index had a similar drop, before recovering to a 0.36% fall.

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Last night, Trump insisted that Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips wouldn’t be sold to China, posting on Truth Social:

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n

Nvidia’s US Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal.

n

My Administration will always put America FIRST. The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

n

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Trump’s move was criticized by some senior Democratic senators, including Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons — the top two Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee — Jack Reed, the Democratic head of the Senate armed services committee, and Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate banking committee.

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They, and other Democratic senators, urged Trump to reverse the decision, saying:

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“The Trump administration’s announcement that it will allow the export of advanced H200 AI chips to China is a colossal economic and national security failure. The H200s are vastly more capable than anything China can make and gifting them to Beijing would squander America’s primary advantage in the AI race.”

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Donald Trump has defended his tariff regime as he prepares to give a speech on the US economy and cost of living at a rally in Pennsylvania this evening.

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Posting on his social media platform Truth Social in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Trump wrote:

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n

Because of Tariffs, easily and quickly applied, our National Security has been greatly enhanced, and we have become the financially strongest Country, by far, anywhere in the World. Only dark and sinister forces would want to see that end!!!

n

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Supreme court justices are due to make a ruling on Trump’s tariffs soon, having heard oral arguments on their legal validity last month. The ruling is expected by the end of this year or early 2026.

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In a second post, Trump wrote:

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n

The biggest threat in history to United States National Security would be a negative decision on Tariffs by the U.S. Supreme Court. We would be financially defenseless. Now Europe is going to Tariffs against China, as they already do against others. We would not be allowed to do what others already do!

n

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On Monday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said that he had told Beijing that if China did not reduce its “unsustainable” trade deficit with EU, then Europeans would be forced to take measures such as imposing tariffs on Chinese products.

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On Tuesday, the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, said that “mutually destructive consequences of tariffs have become increasingly evident” over the course of this year, though he did not mention Donald Trump by name.

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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, are expected to brief the “Gang of Eight” lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon, Reuters reports, citing two sources familiar with the plan and a Trump administration official.

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The “Gang of Eight” – which includes intelligence committee and Senate and House of Representatives leaders from both parties – is traditionally briefed on major national security actions.

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The sources did not discuss the nature of the briefing, expected to take place at 3:30pm ET.

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Tensions have been mounting between the US and Venezuela, as Donald Trump threatens land strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers, after more than three months of a military campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. On Tuesday, Politico published an interview with the president in which he refused to rule out putting US troops into Venezuela. “I don’t comment on that. I wouldn’t say that one way or the other,” he said.

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Asked if he would consider adopting a similar strategy to that taken with Venezuela against Mexico and Colombia, Trump replied: “Yeah, I would. Sure. I would.”

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The US military has also built up the presence of warships in the Caribbean, including an aircraft carrier strike group and a nuclear submarine.

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Adm Alvin Holsey, the outgoing commander of the US military’s southern command, which oversees American troops in Latin America, is also expected to brief a separate group of House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday, two people familiar with the matter said.

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Holsey will step down on Friday, less than two months after the surprise announcement of his early retirement, which came just over a month into the Pentagon’s accelerating campaign against suspected drug boats. The strikes have resulted in the deaths of nearly 90 people and raised concerns among Democrats and legal experts.

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Trump’s military operations have been under increased scrutiny since a 2 September decision to launch a second strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.

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The video of the attack, viewed by lawmakers last week, showed two men clinging to wreckage after their vessel was destroyed in the first strike, according to sources familiar with the imagery. They were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible communications equipment.

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The defense department’s Law of War Manual forbids attacks on combatants who are incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked, as long as they abstain from hostilities and do not attempt to escape. The manual cites firing upon shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be refused.

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On Monday, Trump said he would let Hegseth decide whether to release the full video of the strike, in a shift from comments last week when he said the government would “certainly release” any footage, “no problem”.

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“Whatever Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said on Monday.

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The annual defense policy bill currently passing through Congress includes provisions that would compel the Pentagon to provide Congressional committees with unedited video of the strikes. Lawmakers in Congress have tried in recent months to compel Hegseth’s department to share more information about the attacks. The bill would withhold a quarter of the Pentagon’s travel funds if the footage is not shared.

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American warplanes pass near Venezuela

Two American fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela today, the Associated Press reports.

The exercise today appears to be the closest warplanes have come to Venezuelan airspace since the Trump administration launched its escalating attacks on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean.

Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania is off to a late start after the president departed Washington behind schedule after attending the vice-president’s Christmas party.

In Mount Pocono, rally attendees are awaiting the president’s rally as songs typical of the president’s past campaign appearances, including Don’t Stop Believing and Hotel California play over the loudspeaker.

Donald Trump is expected to deliver remarks on “affordability” at a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, shortly.

The treasury secretary Scott Bessent has begun speaking before the president’s arrival, from a podium flanked by two signs reading “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks”.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the justice department today for the release of a secret memo detailing the Trump administration’s justifications for striking boats in the Caribbean.

The lawsuit, filed under the Freedom of Information Act, calls for the release of “a legal opinion authored by the Office of Legal Counsel”. It notes that the legal organizations filed a Foia with the federal government asking for those documents on 15 October. “

“Because the public deserves to know how the Trump administration has justified the outright murder of civilians as lawful, and the grounds on which it purports to provide immunity from prosecution for personnel who carried out these crimes, Plaintiffs now ask the Court for an injunction requiring Defendants to process their FOIA request and immediately release responsive records,” the filing reads.

Pope Leo XIV voiced concerns about the future of the United States’s alliance with Europe following a meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The first pope born in the United States, Leo told reporters that the peace plan proposed by the United States marks “a huge change in what was for many, many years a true alliance between Europe and the United States”.

In an interview with Politico earlier today, Donald Trump dismissed EU leaders as “weak” and labelled Europe as a “decaying group of nations”.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent spoke with Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko about Russian oil sanctions, Bessent said in a social media post today.

“I highlighted President Trump’s commitment to securing a lasting peace in Ukraine and discussed Treasury’s sanctions on Russia’s top oil giants, Lukoil and Rosneft,” Bessent said.

He added that the pair also discussed “Ukraine’s reform and anti-corruption agenda”, which made headlines in recent weeks after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff resigned following corruption allegations.

House speaker Mike Johnson announced an effort to rally the leaders of legislatures around the world to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize in 2026, in collaboration with Amir Ohana, the speaker of the Israeli Knesset.

Johnson and Ohana had previously announced the effort in October, and signed a letter launching it today. Both credited Trump for his work to release the remaining 7 October hostages.

“While the world has aspired to peace in the Middle East for generations, President Trump has now created that path and forced the release of the last of the living hostages who endured two long years in Hamas captivity,” Johnson said in a statement.

Representative Marc Veasey, a Democrat from Texas, will not seek re-election after the supreme court approved the state’s plan to redraw its congressional map.

Veasey, who has served seven terms in Congress, says he’ll run for a local judgeship in Fort Worth instead.

“Let me be clear: I’m not stepping back from the fight. I’m stepping into a new one,” he said in a statement.

Here’s more of our coverage of Texas’s effort to redraw its congressional map to add five Republican-friendly districts:

Jeffries also said that representative Jasmine Crockett was going to be a “formidable candidate” for the US Senate, after the Texas Democrat announced her bid on Monday.

Jeffries did not confirm whether he would endorse the representative, who will face off against state legislator James Talarico in a competitive primary.

“We’re still in the process of working through the House battlefield, so I’ve got no visibility into what we might do at any point into the future relative to the Senate at the moment,” Jeffries said today. “We’ll leave that to Chuck Schumer and the crew over there.”

Jeffries calls for the release of video of ‘double tap’ strike on suspected drug vessel

Jeffries added that if the administration thinks that their “actions are justifiable, what are they hiding from the American people?”

Here’s a recap of the day so far

More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws. They accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks. There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work, unilaterally dropped cases and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied immigrant children and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country.
A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month. In his order today, judge Paul A Engelmayer cited the recent legislation and also granted the DoJ’s request to release discovery material – which could comprise thousands of documents and exhibits.
Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine. The Louisiana lawmaker and former hepatologist also criticized some of the panel’s logic in citing European countries that also don’t recommend a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. “When those who oppose this recommendation say: ‘Well, the Europeans don’t do it,’ that is how that is such a selective bias presentation information,” Cassidy said today at a Politico event on healthcare affordability. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice.”
In his interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a “double tap” strike on an alleged drug-ferrying boat “if he wants”. He added: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.” Trump also said he had seen the video of the strikes. Asked whether he thought the second strike was necessary, he said “it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don’t get involved in that”.

Donald Trump expected to deliver remarks on ‘affordability’ at Pennsylvania rally – live

American warplanes pass near Venezuela

Jeffries calls for the release of video of ‘double tap’ strike on suspected drug vessel

Here’s a recap of the day so far

Garcia says judge’s decision to release Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury records is a ‘victory for transparency’

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