The day so far
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Revelations from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in a series of remarkably unguarded interviews with Vanity Fair caused quite a stir today. Among the key tidbits were Wiles directly contradicting the official administration line when she said that Trump’s real goal in striking alleged drug boats in the Caribbean is indeed regime change in Venezuela, not the so-called “war on drugs”. She also said that Trump was “wrong” to tie former president Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity. And while she doesn’t think Trump is on a retribution tour, she conceded that the case of Letitia James “might be the one retribution”. “When there’s an opportunity [for score settling], he will go for it,” she said of the president.
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Also in those interviews, Wiles said that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality”; JD Vance “has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and his conversion to Trumpism was “sort of political” when he was running for the Senate; and attorney general Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files.
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There were also striking comments about Elon Musk’s ketamine use and his dismantling of USAID, the latter of which Wiles said left her “initially aghast”. Wiles also disclosed that she had warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case. “The tariff decision has been more painful than I expected,” she said.
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Naturally, Wiles slammed the Vanity Fair stories as a “disingenuously framed hit piece”, claiming that a lot of what she said was taken out of context. Meanwhile members of the Trump administration, including Vance and Bondi, presented a united front, rallying around her on social media to express their support and vouch for her loyalty.
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Trump has also reportedly stood by Wiles. He told the New York Post that he has a “possessive and addictive type personality” and didn’t take offence at her choice of words. “I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job,” he said. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”
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Elsewhere, Pete Hegseth said the defense department will not publicly release unedited video of the controversial 2 September double-tap boat strike that killed two survivors from an earlier attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. “Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth said. He said members of the House and Senate armed services committees would be allowed to review the footage; however, he made no commitment to sharing it with the full Congress, despite a defense policy bill calling for its release.
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Unemployment climbed to 4.6% in November, the highest it’s been in almost four years, and the economy gained 64,000 jobs that month after losing 105,000 in October amid the federal government shutdown, according to delayed figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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And on that note, Trump will be giving a national address from the White House at 9pm ET tomorrow. According to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the president will be talking “about all of his historic accomplishments over the past year” and possibly “teasing some policy that will be coming in the new year as well”. There’s still time to clear your diary.
Key events
President Donald Trump said he is ordering a full blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela.
“The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping. For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” reads the post on Truth Social.
He added: “I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”
CDC adopts recommendation to limit hepatitis B vaccines for newborns
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided to remove the well-established recommendation that all newborns in the country receive a hepatitis B vaccine.
The CDC now recommends a birth dose of the vaccine only for babies whose mothers test positive for hepatitis B infection, and in cases where the mother’s status is unknown.
“Individual-based decision-making, referred to on the CDC immunization schedule as shared clinical decision-making, means that parents and health care providers should consider vaccine benefits, vaccine risks, and infection risks, and that parents consult with their health care provider and decide when or if their child will begin the hepatitis B vaccine series,” reads a statement released today by the CDC.
Many medical and public health leaders have denounced the new recommendation, with groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommending that all infants receive the vaccine within 24 hours of birth.
Last week, Ronald G Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said that this recommendation “ignores established science.”
“This will result in more disease, more suffering, more confusion and yes, less trust,” he added.
Tiago Rogero
The US has designated the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest and most powerful illegal armed criminal group, as a foreign terrorist organisation.
The notorious drug-trafficking militia with its roots in far-right paramilitary forces, is present in at least 20 of Colombia’s departments, and dominates people- and drug-smuggling routes through the Darién Gap. It has also battled unsuccessfully against leftwing rebels for control of criminal networks along the Venezuelan border.
In recent years, the group has attempted to present itself as a political movement similar to Colombian insurgent factions groups, which would grant it different conditions at peace talks, but it is not widely considered to have concrete political aims.
In a statement on Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, described the Gulf Clan – which calls itself the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) – as a “violent and powerful criminal organisation with thousands of members” whose “primary source of income is cocaine trafficking, which it uses to fund its violent activities”.
Read the full story:
In Chicago, Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino returned to the city Tuesday with dozens of federal immigration agents, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The return follows a series of clashes across the Chicago area in recent months, as the city has become one of the epicenters of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Agents have previously used violent tactics in the city, including body-slamming and deploying tear gas in residential neighborhoods.
The Tribune reports that, today, agents made arrests at supermarkets and tamale stands. Bovino told reporters on a street corner that “we never left.”
It’s still unclear how long agents are expected to remain in the area.
“I am aware of the presence of Greg Bovino and masked federal agents conducting immigration enforcement activity in the Chicago area, including the Little Village community just days before the holidays, a time when families should be together, not living in fear,” said Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson in the social media platform X.
The mayor added in a separate post: “This activity is occurring alongside a film crew, which appears to be using these raids to create content at the expense of traumatizing families. The crew’s presence turns these operations into a spectacle, showing a disregard for the humanity of those impacted.”
A federal judge in Washington is expected to side with the Trump administration in a lawsuit brought by a preservationist group that sought to stop work on a $300 million White House ballroom on the site of the demolished East Wing, Reuters reports.
After hearing arguments in a case brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, US district judge Richard Leon said today that he was unlikely to issue the temporary restraining order that would halt the construction.
The preservationist group is accusing Donald Trump and federal agencies of building the 90,000-square-foot project without legally required reviews, including by Congress, or approvals.
The judge said the group had failed to show that “irreparable harm” would come from the construction moving forward. Another hearing is expected to be scheduled for January.
The Department of Homeland Security accused US congresswoman Ilhan Omar of pulling a “PR stunt” after she said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped her son in Minnesota.
“ICE has absolutely ZERO record of its officers or agents pulling over Congresswoman Omar’s son. With no evidence, it is shameful that Congresswoman Omar would level accusations to demonize ICE as part of a PR stunt,” DHS posted on X.
“Allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE,” reads the post.
Omar told the Minnesota broadcaster WCCO on Sunday that her son had stopped by ICE agents over the weekend after Donald Trump ordered an operation targeting Minneapolis’ Somali population.
“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [ICE] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar said in the interview.
Several states are suing the Trump administration for blocking the release of more than $2 billion in federal funding for electric vehicle infrastructure.
Colorado, California, and more than a dozen other blue states argue that the decision to halt the funding is unlawful on grounds that the transportation department is overstepping its constitutional authority.
The $2.5b in funding was approved by Congress in 2022 during the Biden administration, and states claim the Trump administration refused to approve new money for the programs.
“The Trump Administration’s illegal attempt to stop funding for electric vehicle infrastructure must come to an end,” said California attorney general Rob Bonta in a statement. “This is just another reckless attempt that will stall the fight against air pollution and climate change, slow innovation, thwart green job creation, and leave communities without access to clean, affordable transportation. While the Administration is busy finding ways for their Big Oil donors to profit, California will continue to fight for its people, environment, and innovation.”
The five-year programs created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act were intended for building or repairing electric vehicle chargers. According to Bonta, the transportation department and the federal highway administration have refused “all new obligations of funds” since the spring of 2025.
Here’s my colleague Chris Stein’s report on Pete Hegseth’s refusal to release the full unedited video of of the 2 September double-tap stirke in the Caribbean that killed two individuals as they were clinging to the wreckage of a burning boat.
As Chris notes, the strike has been the most controversial development in Donald Trump’s campaign against Venezuela, with legal experts raising concerns that US forces may have committed a war crime.
Trump further restricts foreign nationals entry to US, White House says
Donald Trump has signed a proclamation further restricting and limiting the entry of foreign nationals to the United States, the White House announced today, with a particular emphasis on African countries.
Per today’s announcement, the US has imposed full restrictions and entry limitations on nationals from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria – in addition to the initial list of 12 countries (see below).
Full restrictions have also been imposed on individuals holding Palestinian Authority-issued travel documents, as well as Laos and Sierra Leone, which were both previously partially restricted.
The White House said it was also adding partial restrictions on an additional 15 countries, most of them in Africa: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The proclamation also continues the previously imposed full restrictions on nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen; and continues partial restrictions on nationals from Burundi, Cuba, Togo, and Venezuela.
The day so far
-
Revelations from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in a series of remarkably unguarded interviews with Vanity Fair caused quite a stir today. Among the key tidbits were Wiles directly contradicting the official administration line when she said that Trump’s real goal in striking alleged drug boats in the Caribbean is indeed regime change in Venezuela, not the so-called “war on drugs”. She also said that Trump was “wrong” to tie former president Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity. And while she doesn’t think Trump is on a retribution tour, she conceded that the case of Letitia James “might be the one retribution”. “When there’s an opportunity [for score settling], he will go for it,” she said of the president.
-
Also in those interviews, Wiles said that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality”; JD Vance “has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and his conversion to Trumpism was “sort of political” when he was running for the Senate; and attorney general Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files.
-
There were also striking comments about Elon Musk’s ketamine use and his dismantling of USAID, the latter of which Wiles said left her “initially aghast”. Wiles also disclosed that she had warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case. “The tariff decision has been more painful than I expected,” she said.
-
Naturally, Wiles slammed the Vanity Fair stories as a “disingenuously framed hit piece”, claiming that a lot of what she said was taken out of context. Meanwhile members of the Trump administration, including Vance and Bondi, presented a united front, rallying around her on social media to express their support and vouch for her loyalty.
-
Trump has also reportedly stood by Wiles. He told the New York Post that he has a “possessive and addictive type personality” and didn’t take offence at her choice of words. “I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job,” he said. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”
-
Elsewhere, Pete Hegseth said the defense department will not publicly release unedited video of the controversial 2 September double-tap boat strike that killed two survivors from an earlier attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. “Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth said. He said members of the House and Senate armed services committees would be allowed to review the footage; however, he made no commitment to sharing it with the full Congress, despite a defense policy bill calling for its release.
-
Unemployment climbed to 4.6% in November, the highest it’s been in almost four years, and the economy gained 64,000 jobs that month after losing 105,000 in October amid the federal government shutdown, according to delayed figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
-
And on that note, Trump will be giving a national address from the White House at 9pm ET tomorrow. According to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the president will be talking “about all of his historic accomplishments over the past year” and possibly “teasing some policy that will be coming in the new year as well”. There’s still time to clear your diary.
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