As Venezuela‘s former dictator Nicolás Maduro left his country, captured by U.S. military forces, Maduro’s cabinet and regime officials made it out of the operation largely unscathed, still holding onto their positions of power.

President Donald Trump has opted to work with Maduro’s former vice president Delcy Rodríguez, whom the Venezuelan Supreme Court tapped to serve as interim President in Maduro’s absence. But Trump has also made several looming threats to Rodríguez and the post-Maduro leadership in Venezuela, telling The Atlantic, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

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House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced the first congressional hearing into the Minnesota fraud scandal and invited Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison to participate at a later date.

The first hearing, scheduled for Jan. 7, will include testimony from state Reps. Kristin Robbins, Walter Hudson, and Marion Rarick, all of whom are Republicans. Comer has invited Walz and Ellison to testify on Feb. 10.

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Susie Wiles, described by President Donald Trump as the most powerful woman in the world, has hit back at a series of Vanity Fair articles in which she made several unflattering comments about members of the administration, including her boss.

Wiles, the first-ever female White House chief of staff, referred to the pieces, published Tuesday morning, as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”

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TRUMP’S JOB IS TO STAY FOCUSED ON THE ECONOMY. If you want to see why President Donald Trump is visiting Pennsylvania to talk about affordability, and why he is planning rallies on the topic around the country in the coming weeks, just look at the simple question asked in the new Harvard CAPS Harris poll: “What would you say are the most important issues facing the country today?”

The question was open-ended, and respondents could name more than one issue. The top concern, named by 36% of those surveyed, was price increases, inflation, and affordability. The No. 2 issue, named by 29%, was the economy and jobs. Put them together, and economic issues were by far the most important issue named by the voters in the poll.

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A fishy reek is emanating from the latest scandal about President Donald Trump’s military campaign against drug runners in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. forces have so far attacked more than a dozen fast boats on known drug routes, destroying them and their cargo and killing some 80 members of their crews.

One might assume the fishy thing is the lack of full video of the first attack on Sept 2 that triggered the latest controversy. One might jump to this conclusion because the Pentagon has proudly distributed other videos of successful operations in which boats are seen on grainy video in the crosshairs of missile guidance systems and are suddenly incinerated in a flash of sophisticated ordnance.

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Washington Examiner editor-in-chief Hugo Gurdon joins chief political correspondent Byron York to discuss the six Democratic Senators that released a video for service members from the US military to not follow unlawful orders. The Pentagon has threatened Sen. Mark Kelly for a court martial. Any movement in the Russia and Ukraine peace deal and what it would take.

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In the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election, President Donald Trump was doing nonstop rallies, many of them outdoors despite an assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left him bloodied after a bullet struck his ear.

The rallies felt more like festivals than political events, with crowds gathering hours early amid music and pageantry. Local heroes, union leaders, elected officials, and retired military officers cycled through as warm-up speakers, firing up the audience between tracks like Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Village People’s “YMCA,” and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” Trump’s walk-out anthem.

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Democrats are about to learn the same lesson Republicans have several times before them: like a nuclear war, nobody wins a government shutdown.

That’s not for lack of trying. The federal government has been shut down for more than 40 days, as it took 15 Senate votes for Democrats to relent and allow a short-term funding bill to pass.

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