Trump’s announcement on Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry would be the envoy prompted a new flare-up of tensions over Washington’s interest in the vast territory of Denmark, a NATO ally. Denmark’s foreign minister told Danish broadcasters that he would summon the U.S. ambassador to his ministry.
“We have said it before. Now, we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a joint statement. “They are fundamental principles. You cannot annex another country. Not even with an argument about international security.”
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders and the U.S. shall not take over Greenland,” they added in the statement emailed by Frederiksen’s office. “We expect respect for our joint territorial integrity.”
Trump called repeatedly during his presidential transition and the early months of his second term for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island. In March, Vice President JD Vance visited a remote U.S. military base in Greenland and accused Denmark of underinvesting there.
The issue gradually drifted out of the headlines, but in August, Danish officials summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen following a report that at least three people with connections to Trump had carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.
On Sunday, Trump announced Landry’s appointment, saying on social media that “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security, and will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World.”
Landry wrote in a post on social media that “it’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
The Trump administration did not offer any warning ahead of the announcement, according to a Danish government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The official also said Danish officials had expected Trump to signal an aggressive approach to Greenland and the Arctic in the U.S. administration’s new national security strategy and were surprised when the document included no mention of either.
Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly said Monday that Trump decided to create the special envoy role because the administration views Greenland as “a strategically important location in the Arctic for maintaining peace through strength.”
Danish broadcasters TV2 and DR reported that in comments from the Faroe Islands Monday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he would summon the U.S. ambassador in Copenhagen, Kenneth Howery, to his ministry.
Greenland’s prime minister wrote in a separate statement that Greenland had again woken up to a new announcement from the U.S. president, and that “it may sound significant. But it changes nothing for us here at home.”
Nielsen noted that Greenland has its own democracy and said that “we are happy to cooperate with other countries, including the United States, but this must always take place with respect for us and for our values and wishes.”
Earlier this month, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service said in an annual report that the U.S. is using its economic power to “assert its will” and threaten military force against friend and foe alike.
Denmark is a member of the European Union as well as NATO.
The president of the EU’s executive commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on social media that Arctic security is a “key priority” for the bloc and one on which it seeks to work with allies and partners. She also said that “territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law.”
“We stand in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she wrote.
CBS News abruptly pulled an investigative 60 Minutes segment on the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT prison after the administration refused to grant an interview, according to a correspondent who shared her concerns in an email obtained by the Washington Post.
The decision came directly from the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss, according to an internal email sent to producers from the segment’s correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, who called the decision tantamount to handing the White House a “kill switch.”
“If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote.
Weiss defended the decision in a Monday morning editorial meeting.
“As of course you all have seen, I held a 60 Minutes story, and I held that story because it wasn’t ready,” Weiss told staffers, according to a person who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic comments. “The story presented very powerful testimony of abuse at CECOT, but that testimony has already been reported on by places like the Times. The public knows that Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison. So to run a story on this subject, two months later, we simply need to do more.”
She continued: “And this is 60 Minutes. We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera. To me, our viewers come first, not a listing schedule or anything else, and that is my North Star, and I hope it’s the North Star of every person in this newsroom.”
The segment’s productionteam had sent questions and requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security for the story, according to the email. But the administration declined to grant the journalists an interview.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.”
“The 60 Minutes report on ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast,” a CBS News spokesperson said in a statement. “We determined it needed additional reporting.”Alfonsi did not respond to a request for comment.
The segment, titled “Inside CECOT,” was set to cover the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), one of El Salvador’s most notorious prisons. The network had teased the segment for days, but by Sunday the trailer and promotional materials had been removed from CBS News’ website.
The original preview said that Alfonsi spoke with released prisoners, who describe “brutal and torturous conditions” inside the prison.
Hundreds of Venezuelans who have been deported to El Salvador under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have endured systematic torture and abuse — including sexual assault — during their detention, according to a November report by Human Rights Watch. The report said conditions at CECOT breached the United Nations’ minimal rules for the treatment of prisoners.
In the email to her team, Alfonsi wrote that she learned Saturday that Weiss killed the story, which she says was screened five times and cleared by both the standards department and the network’s attorneys.
Weiss was named CBS’s top editor this fall after David Ellison’s newly formed Paramount Skydance bought the Free Press, the opinion website she founded, for $150 million. While the two properties are still technically separate, Weiss runs both. Her early days at the network have been marked by rapid changes, including restructuring and layoffs. Weiss launched a town hall series including an interview with Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Earlier in December, CBS promoted Tony Dokoupil, who has co-anchored CBS Mornings since 2019, to anchor CBS Evening News, one of the most prominent jobs in television journalism. Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people and a Trump political ally.
In the email, Alfonsi said the sources in the segment “risked their lives to speak with us.” She added: “We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories.”
“If the standard for airing a story becomes ‘the government must agree to be interviewed,’ then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state,” Alfonsi wrote.
“It is factually correct,” she added. “In my view, pulling it now — after every rigorous internal check has been met — is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Democratic critics of Weiss were swift to condemn what they characterized as censoring a story to appease the Trump administration.
“What is happening to CBS is a terrible embarrassment and if executives think they can build shareholder value by avoiding journalism that might offend the Mad King they are about to learn a tough lesson,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) wrote on X. “This is still America and we don’t enjoy bullshit like this.”
Sen. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) said in a social media post that it’s a “sad day for 60 Minutes and journalism,” and said that the Trump administration’s involvement in approving Skydance’s $8 billion deal to buy Paramount led to this. Skydance agreed to concessions to get the deal approved by the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Brendan Carr.
The company promised a review of CBS content, appointed an ombudsman with Republican Party ties to interrogate claims of bias, and said it would refrain from diversity initiatives. Carr had previously threatened to block any mergers for companies engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
“This is what government censorship looks like,” Markey wrote. “Trump approved the Paramount-Skydance merger. A few months later, CBS’s new editor in chief kills a deeply reported story critical of Trump.”
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the East Coast due to unspecified national security risks identified by the Pentagon.
The pause is effective immediately and will give the Interior Department, which oversees offshore wind, time to work with the Defense Department and other agencies to assess the possible ways to mitigate any security risks posed by the projects, the administration said.
“The prime duty of the United States government is to protect the American people,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.”
The administration said leases are paused for the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind.
The Interior Department said unclassified reports from the U.S. government have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called “clutter.” The clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of wind projects, the Interior Department said.
The action comes two weeks after a federal judge struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking wind energy projects, saying the effort to halt virtually all leasing of wind farms on federal lands and waters was “arbitrary and capricious” and violates U.S. law.
Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order blocking wind energy projects and declared it unlawful.
Saris ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, that challenged Trump’s Day One order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects.
An internal CBS News battle over a “60 Minutes” story critical of the Trump administration has exploded publicly, with a correspondent charging it was kept off the air for political reasons and news chief Bari Weiss saying Monday the story did not “advance the ball.”
Two hours before airtime Sunday, CBS announced that the story where correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi spoke to deportees who had been sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, would not be a part of the show. Weiss, the Free Press founder named CBS News editor-in-chief in October, said it was her decision.
The dispute puts one of journalism’s most respected brands — and a frequent target of President Donald Trump — back in the spotlight and amplifies questions about whether Weiss’ appointment was a signal that CBS News was headed in a more Trump-friendly direction.
Alfonsi, in an email sent to fellow “60 Minutes” correspondents said the story was factually correct and had been cleared by CBS lawyers and its standards division. But the Trump administration had refused to comment for the story, and Weiss wanted a greater effort made to get their point of view.
“In my view, pulling it now after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” Alfonsi wrote in the email. She did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Alfonsi said in the email that interviews were sought with or questions directed to — sometimes both — the White House, State Department and Department of Homeland Security.
“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
“Spike” is a journalist’s term for killing a story. But Weiss, in a statement, said that she looked forward to airing Alfonsi’s piece “when it’s ready.”
Speaking Monday at the daily CBS News internal editorial call, Weiss was clearly angered by Alfonsi’s memo. A transcript of Weiss’ message was provided by CBS News.
“The only newsroom I’m interested in running is one in which we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters with respect and, crucially, where we assume the best intent of our colleagues,” Weiss said. “Anything else is completely unacceptable.”
She said that while Alfonsi’s story presented powerful testimony about torture at the CECOT prison, The New York Times and other outlets had already done similar work. “To run a story on this subject two months later, we need to do more,” she said. “And this is ‘60 Minutes.’ We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera.”
It wasn’t clear whether Weiss’ involvement in seeking administration comment was sought. She reportedly helped the newscast arrange interviews with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff this past fall to discuss Trump’s Middle East peace efforts. Trump himself was interviewed by Norah O’Donnell on a “60 Minutes” telecast that aired on Nov. 2.
Trump has been sharply critical of “60 Minutes.” He refused to grant the show an interview prior to last fall’s election, then sued the network over how it handled an interview with election opponent Kamala Harris. CBS’ parent Paramount Global agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying Trump $16 million this past summer. More recently, Trump angrily reacted to correspondent Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump former ally turned critic Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“60 Minutes” was notably tough on Trump during the first months of his second term, particularly in stories done by correspondent Scott Pelley. In accepting an award from USC Annenberg earlier this month for his journalism, Pelley noted that the stories were aired last spring “with an absolute minimum of interference.”
Pelley said that people at “60 Minutes” were concerned about what new ownership installed at Paramount this summer would mean for the broadcast. “It’s early yet, but what I can tell you is we are doing the same kinds of stories with the same kind of rigor, and we have experienced no corporate interference of any kind,” Pelley said then, according to deadline.com.
Sen. Ted Cruz sat down with a longtime ally in November at an office near D.C.’s Union Station to discuss the future of the Republican Party. Before long, the discussion touched on his own future.
His friend Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization for America, told Cruz he believed that “Jew hatred and Israel bashing” was on the rise on the right — and that something had to be done about it. Cruz, who had begun a series of speeches decrying antisemitism in the GOP, told Klein he had been fielding requests from people urging him to run for president in 2028.
Cruz came across as someone “seriously” considering such a run, Klein recalled.
With the future of the party up for grabs in a Donald Trump-less 2028 primary, Cruz has in recent months positioned himself as a loud voice for a more traditional, hawkish Republican foreign policy. He’s also urging the GOP to rid itself of popular MAGA pundit Tucker Carlson, whom he argues is injecting the “poison” of antisemitism into the movement with his broadsides against Israel. Carlson has rejected that characterization.
As he feuds with Carlson, Cruz is weighing a second presidential bid, according to a person close to the senator and another briefed on his thinking, who spoke like others on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal conversations. A White House run would be politically risky for Cruz, 55, putting him on course to collide with Vice President JD Vance, who many Republicans expect to enter the 2028 race.
Friction is already evident behind the scenes: Cruz has criticized Vance, a close ally of Carlson, to Republican donors, according to two people familiar with the comments. The senator has warned that Vance’s foreign policy views are dangerously isolationist, the people said.(Vance has been one of the GOP’s most prominent skeptics of U.S. intervention abroad.)
The emerging rivalry shows how much the party has changed under Trump’s leadership since Cruz arrived in the Senate in 2013. After rising to prominence as a rebel against the establishment, Cruz is now a vocal champion of some longtime orthodox GOP positions, as a new generation of conservatives is ascending with a different vision.
Some political observers are skeptical that another Cruz run would gain much traction. He can no longer run as an outsider and alienated some conservatives with his fight against Trump in the 2016 campaign. Still, Cruz has built name recognition and relationships with plenty of activists and donors across the country in recent years, and it’s far from clear what will animate the base in the next GOP primary.
“Can Ted help craft or meld together the traditional Republican approach with the new reality of what the Republican Party is now?” asked Daron Shaw, a political science professor at the University of Texas who overlapped with Cruz as a staffer on George W. Bush’s presidentialcampaign. “It’s a heavy lift.”
The day after his chat with Klein, Cruz called Carlson “a coward” during a speech before a group supporting Jewish conservatives in Las Vegas, again denouncing the “poisonous lies” of antisemitism. He said they were “blessed” to have Trump, who “loves the Jewish people,” in the White House right now.
“When Trump is not in the White House, what then?” he asked in his booming voice.
“Ted Cruz!” an audience member shouted.
The senator just smiled, then continued his speech.
Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) wears Senate-themed boots in May at the Capitol.
‘All of us hate Ted Cruz’
Anyone considering a run for the GOP nomination in 2028 faces a big obstacle: Vance.
The 41-year-old vice president leads early polls and is seen as a loyal lieutenant to Trump, who maintains high support from the party base even as the president’s approval ratings have plummeted.
But Trump has been noncommittal about endorsing his running mate as heir to his Make America Great Again movement, leaving an opening for an ambitious conservative with a different vision for the party.
“The Republicans will be fighting for their identity,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said of the 2028 primary. Greene, a close ally of Carlson who represents the populist and isolationist wing of the party, added: “There’ll be Ted Cruz, I’m sure, running against JD Vance. All of us hate Ted Cruz.”
Cruz has adapted to changes in his party over several decades in politics. Following a stretch in the establishment during Bush’s 2000 campaign, he became solicitor general of Texas in 2003 and launched a Senate campaign in 2011 as a tea-party-infused change agent, defeating the lieutenant governor in the GOP primary.
“The best thing to happen to the Republican Party was to get its teeth kicked in in 2008,” Cruz said during a 2012 campaign event with the libertarian Ron Paul.
When he arrived in Washington, Cruz picked fights over spending and President Barack Obama’s health care law, sparking a government shutdown in 2013. Not everyone in his party liked his style. “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) joked at a 2016 press dinner.
Cruz brought his insurgent pitch into the 2016 presidential race, but Trump caught fire with an antiestablishment campaign that dramatically eclipsed the senator’s. After bowing out of the GOP race as the last major Trump opponent standing, Cruz told delegates at the Republican National Convention that year to “vote your conscience,” instead of throwing his support behind Trump, who had branded him as “Lyin’ Ted.” He returned to the Senate, where he is now chair of the Commerce Committee and has refashioned himself into a bipartisan dealmaker on aviation safety and other issues.
The Texas senator, who has called himself a “noninterventionist hawk” and has long been a vocal ally of Israel, argues that an anti-Israel foreign policy could embolden terrorists. And he is a defender of the benefits of traditional capitalism at a time when some in the “New Right” are calling for a more populist turn.
“Those who are anti-Israel quickly become anti-capitalist and anti-American,” Cruz said in a brief interview about his decision to speak out against Carlson. “Tucker’s obsession is unhealthy and dangerous.”
By targeting Carlson and growing anti-Israel sentiment within the party, Cruz has hit upon a division within the GOP base that some believe could animate the 2028 primaries. Carlson is closely allied with Vance, a onetime Trump critic who is now an “America First” populist, embracing skepticism of some big-business interests and rejecting the U.S. foreign policy status quo.
Cruz is staking out positions against isolationism and antisemitism at a time when explicitly antisemitic figures such as white supremacist commentator Nick Fuentes are gaining an audience on the right.
Vance, by contrast,has rejected the suggestion that the right has a problem with antisemitism afterCarlson hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview. (The vice president disavowed Fuentes months before the interview and has not explicitly weighed in on Carlson hosting him.)
It’s “kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic,”Vancesaid in a recent interview with NBC News. In a social media postlast week, Vance criticized a news article claiming antisemitism was rising among young people.
“I would say there’s a difference between not liking Israel (or disagreeing with a given Israeli policy) and antisemitism,” he replied to one user.
Asked to respond to Vance’s comment, Cruz said he is not in agreement with “people who are anti-Israel or people who are antisemitic.”
“Every Hamas or Hezbollah or IRGC terrorist that Israel took out makes Americans safer,” Cruzsaid, referencing militants in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that the United States designates as terrorist groups. “And those who don’t see that are not acting in accordance with American national security interests.”
The feud
In early July, Cruz sat down in Washington with Israel’s prime minister and delivered a dire warning. Over cigars at Blair House, Cruz told Benjamin Netanyahu that antisemitism on the right was rising to a level he had never seen before.
“No, Ted,” Netanyahu responded, according to Cruz, who recounted the conversation in a speech. “That’s Qatar, that’s Iran, that’s astroturf, that’s paid for.”
But Cruz said he was not placated. Replies to his social media posts were flooded with anti-Jewish bigotry from what looked to him like ordinary, real people. He began to fear that what he saw as antisemitism on the left was beginning to infect the right, he said.
In June, Cruz sat for an interview with Carlson that grew heated over the topic of Israel. Cruz suggested that Carlson criticizes Israel more than other countries because of bigotry toward Jews. Carlson said he has many Jewish friends who have the same questions as him and grilled Cruz with factual questions on the Middle East. In an uncharacteristic lapse, Cruz failed to identify the population of Iran. “You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asked.
Since then, the two have savaged each other in increasingly personal terms. Carlson has called Cruz “vulgar and dumb and reckless” for connecting U.S. military support for Israel to a biblical responsibility to defend the Holy Land and God’s chosen people. After Carlson hosted Fuentes on his podcast this fall, Cruz called on Republicans to repudiate the pundit.
Carlson “decided Jews are the source of all evil in the world,” Cruz said in a recent podcast. The senator also posted a digitally altered sexually suggestive photo of Carlson to critique his friendly stance toward Qatar, a U.S. ally with which Israel has clashed.
Since the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, internal battles about the future of the GOP have spilled into the open, many centering on the true meaning of “America First” as Trump spends time and political capital on Ukraine, Israel and Venezuela. Carlson criticized Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear sites in June and has warned the president against pursuing regime change in Venezuela, a goal Cruz shares.
“What Ted is trying to do is say, this is where our voters are,” said one person close to the senator. “Trump and Ted are much more aligned on foreign policy than Trump and Tucker are.”
Few Republicans have publicly rallied to Cruz’s side.
“I can tell you, my colleagues, almost to a person, think what is happening is horrifying,” Cruz said in one speech on Carlson. “But a great many of them are frightened because he has one hell of a big megaphone.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said he “applauds” Cruz for speaking out against Carlson. But others declined to weigh in.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), a close Trump ally, said he believes the back-and-forth is personal. “Sometimes when you get embarrassed, you get mad, get your feelings hurt,” he said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said he is surprised but happy that Cruz has the “courage” to challenge such a powerful figure on the right. “To give Senator Cruz due credit, it requires some guts and gumption to stand up against Tucker Carlson,” he said.
As Carlson and Cruz have attacked each other, Trump has declined to take sides, calling Carlson a “nice guy” and Cruz a “good friend” in recent months.
Carlson has said he thinks “antisemitism is immoral, and I am against it.” He argues the feud is just politics. “All [Cruz] wants is to be president. That’s all he’s ever wanted,” Carlson said in an interview. “As a political matter, he somehow thinks that calling me a Nazi is going to get him the nomination because it’s going to hurt JD Vance.” (Cruz has not publicly used that word to described Carlson.)
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Montana), who argued that Cruz damaged his credibility with conservatives after spurning Trump in 2016 but later recovered his standing, said Cruz “always has an eye on running.”
“Ted stakes out his position pretty well, and so were he to run, we know where he is,” Zinke said.
So far, there are few signs that Cruz is gaining an advantage. Hal Lambert, a major GOP donor who helped organize a super PAC to support Cruz when he ran for president in 2016, said he thinks a 2028 bid would be tricky for the senator.
“If JD Vance is running, I’m going to be supporting JD Vance,” Lambert said.
“I just don’t understand what the platform would be,” he said of Cruz’s potential run. “The platform would be, I’m Ted, and that’s JD?”
Kadia Goba and Sarah Ellison contributed to this report.
PHOENIX — Vice President JD Vance said Sunday the conservative movement should be open to everyone as long as they “love America,” declining to condemn a streak of antisemitism that has divided the Republican Party and roiled the opening days of Turning Point USA’s annual convention.
After a long weekend of debates about whether the movement should exclude figures such as bigoted podcaster Nick Fuentes, Vance came down firmly against “purity tests.”
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” Vance said during the convention’s closing speech.
Turning Point leader Erika Kirk, who took the helm after the assassination of her husband, Charlie Kirk, has endorsed Vance as a potential successor to President Donald Trump, a helpful nod from an influential group with an army of volunteers.
But the tension on display at the four-day gathering foreshadowed the treacherous political waters that Vance, or anyone else who seeks the next Republican presidential nomination, will need to navigate in the coming years. Top voices in the “Make America Great Again” movement are jockeying for influence as Republicans begin considering a future without Trump, and there is no clear path to holding his coalition together.
Defining a post-Trump GOP
The Republican Party’s identity has been intertwined with Trump’s for a decade, but he’s constitutionally ineligible to run for reelection despite his musings about serving a third term. Tucker Carlson said people are wondering, “Who gets the machinery when the president exits the scene?”
So far, it looks like settling that question will come with a lot of fighting among conservatives. The Turning Point conference featured arguments about antisemitism, Israel, and environmental regulations, not to mention rivalries between leading commentators.
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, used his speech on the conference’s opening night to denounce “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty.”
“These people are frauds and they are grifters and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro said. He specifically called out Carlson for hosting Fuentes for a friendly interview on his podcast.
Carlson brushed off the criticism when he took the stage barely an hour later, and he said the idea of a Republican “civil war” was “totally fake.”
“There are people who are mad at JD Vance, and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination,” he said. Carlson described Vance as “the one person” who subscribes to the “core idea of the Trump coalition,” which Carlson said was “America first.”
Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet framed the discord as a healthy debate about the future of the movement, an uncomfortable but necessary process of finding consensus.
“We’re not hive-minded commies,” he wrote on social media. “Let it play out.”
If you love America, you’re welcome, Vance says
Vance acknowledged the controversies that dominated the Turning Point conference, but he did not define any boundaries for the conservative movement besides patriotism.
“We don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said.
Vance didn’t name anyone, but his comments came in the midst of an increasingly contentious debate over whether the right should give a platform to commentators espousing antisemitic views, particularly Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identity. Fuentes has a growing audience, as does top-rated podcaster Candace Owens, who routinely shares antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other,” he said.
Vance ticked off what he said were the accomplishments of the administration as it approaches the one-year mark, noting its efforts at the border and on the economy. He emphasized efforts to end diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, drawing applause by saying they had been relegated to the “dustbin of history.”
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” he said.
Vance also said the U.S. “always will be a Christian nation,” adding that “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond.”
Those comments resonated with Isaiah White-Diller, an 18 year-old from Yuma, Ariz., who said he would support Vance if he runs for president.
“I have my right to be Christian here, I have my right to say whatever I want,” White-Diller said.
Turning Point backs Vance for president
Vance hasn’t disclosed his future plans, but Erika Kirk said Thursday that Turning Point wanted Vance “elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” The next president will be the 48th in U.S. history.
Turning Point is a major force on the right, with a nationwide volunteer network that can be especially helpful in early primary states, when candidates rely on grassroots energy to build momentum. In a surprise appearance, rapper Nicki Minaj spoke effusively about Trump and Vance.
Vance was close to Charlie Kirk, and they supported each other over the years. After Kirk’s assassination on a college campus in Utah, the vice president flew out on Air Force Two to collect Kirk’s remains and bring them home to Arizona. The vice president helped uniformed service members carry the casket to the plane.
Emily Meck, 18, from Pine City, N.Y., said she appreciated Vance making space for a wide variety of views.
“We are freethinkers, we’re going to have these disagreements, we’re going to have our own thoughts,” Meck said.
Trump has spoken highly of both Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential successors, even suggesting they could form a future Republican ticket. Rubio has said he would support Vance.
Asked in August whether Vance was the “heir apparent,” Trump said “most likely.”
“It’s too early, obviously, to talk about it, but certainly he’s doing a great job, and he would be probably favorite at this point,” he said.
The United States Coast Guard is pursuing a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a U.S. official said Sunday, in what would mark the third interception of a tanker in the waters off that country this month.
The official described that tanker as “a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion. It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.” The official shared the statement on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a “total and complete blockade” on all oil tankers under sanctions entering or leaving Venezuela. He called the Venezuelan regime a foreign terrorist organization and said it was using oil to finance “drug terrorism.”
If intercepted, this would be the second tanker the U.S. stopped this weekend after seizing the oil tanker Skipper off Venezuela’s coast on Dec. 10. The U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia issued the seizure warrant for the Skipper, alleging it was used in an “oil shipping network” supporting the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force.
Venezuela’s government has called the actions “theft” and “hijacking.”
Early Saturday, U.S. forces boarded a different commercial vessel, the Panamanian-flagged Centuries owned by Centuries Shipping in Hong Kong, off Venezuela. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem posted a video on X showing service members rappelling down from military helicopters onto the vessel, which her department said was suspected of carrying oil subject to U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. has not imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil. And neither the Centuries nor its company is under any sanctions, according to the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency.
These actions come as part of the United States’ monthslong pressure campaign against the government of President Nicolás Maduro, whom the administration wants to force from office. The tanker blockade could impact Venezuela’s already struggling economy, which heavily depends on overseas oil sales.
The U.S. has launched more than two dozen military strikes on boats it claimed had crews who were smuggling drugs into the United States. Officials have said that more than 100 people connected to drug cartels have been killed.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said on ABC’s This Week that he considers the seizing of the second oil tanker a “provocation” and “prelude to war.”
“Look, at any point in time, there are 20, 30 governments around the world that we don’t like, that are either socialist or communist, or have human rights violations … but it isn’t the job of the American soldier to be the policeman of the world,” Paul said.
By contrast, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said on Meet the Press on Sunday, “I am all in the camp for regime change. … Maduro’s days are numbered.”
Jim Foggo, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, said the administration’s plan for Venezuela appears to constitute a “targeted blockade” or “embargo” operation, in which certain ships are stopped and others are allowed through.
“If you want to pick something to go after — an Achilles’ heel — of the Venezuelan regime, it’s oil exports,” Foggo said.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Output has plummeted amid sanctions, poor infrastructure, and mismanagement, but oil still represents the vast majority of the country’s exports. “So this is really going to hurt, and Maduro is going to have to do some serious thinking,” Foggo said.
Foggo, dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy outside Washington, said boarding operations can be unpredictable and dangerous for U.S. troops involved, citing a boarding operation in the Arabian Sea in January 2024 in which two Navy SEALs drowned.
“This is serious business,” Foggo said, noting that Maduro has said that Venezuelan naval forces will accompany vessels. “The danger is that it could go kinetic and someone could get hurt, but we seem to be willing to take that risk.”
Power was restored Sunday morning to the bulk of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco impacted by a massive outage a day earlier that caused major disruptions in the city.
The Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s outage map showed more than 16,000 customers remained without power as of 12 p.m. PST. PG&E said earlier its crews were working Sunday to restore electricity in several neighborhoods and small areas of downtown San Francisco following Saturday’s outage.
PG&E said it could not provide a precise timeframe for when the power would be fully restored.
“The damage from the fire in our substation was significant and extensive, and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex,” the utility said, referring to the substation at 8th and Mission streets. That fire has been blamed for some of the blackouts. The outage remains under investigation.
PG&E said it has mobilized additional engineers and electricians to help with restoration efforts.
“This is a very complex work plan and will require the highest amount of safety focus to ensure safe work actions,” PG&E said. No injuries have been reported.
The outage, which occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, left a large swath of the northern part of the city without power that began to grow in size. At its peak, the outage represented roughly one-third of the utility company’s customers in the city.
At about 4 p.m. on Saturday, PG&E posted on X that it had stabilized the grid and no further outages were expected.
Social media posts and local media reported mass closures of restaurants and shops and darkened street lights and Christmas decorations on Saturday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said on X there were “significant transit disruptions” happening citywide and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops. Waymo, the operator of driverless ride-hailing vehicles, suspended its services. At least one video posted on social media appeared to show a Waymo vehicle stopped in the middle of an intersection.
A White House envoy said Sunday he held “productive and constructive” talks in Florida with Ukrainian and European representatives to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
Posting on social media, Steve Witkoff said the talks aimed at aligning on a shared strategic approach among Ukraine, the United States, and Europe.
“Our shared priority is to stop the killing, ensure guaranteed security, and create conditions for Ukraine’s recovery, stability, and long-term prosperity. Peace must be not only a cessation of hostilities, but also a dignified foundation for a stable future,” U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy said.
The talks are part of the Trump administration’s monthslong push for peace. Trump has unleashed an extensive diplomatic push to end the war, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv. Putin has recently signaled he is digging in on his maximalist demands on Ukraine, as Moscow’s troops inch forward on the battlefield despite huge losses.
Florida talks press on
“The discussions are proceeding constructively. They began earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow,” Kirill Dmitriev told reporters in Miami on Saturday.
Dmitriev met with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram Sunday that diplomatic efforts were “moving forward quite quickly, and our team in Florida has been working with the American side.” This came after Ukraine’s chief negotiator said Friday his delegation had completed separate meetings in the United States with American and European partners.
The Kremlin denied Sunday that trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S. were under discussion, after Zelensky said Saturday that Washington had proposed the idea of three-way discussions.
“At present, no one has seriously discussed this initiative, and to my knowledge it is not being prepared,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said, according to Russian state news agencies.
On Friday, Putin expressed confidence that the Kremlin would achieve its military goals if Kyiv didn’t agree to Russia’s conditions in peace talks.
Possible French-Russian talks
The French presidency on Sunday welcomed Putin’s willingness to speak with President Emmanuel Macron, saying it would decide how to proceed “in the coming days.”
“As soon as the prospect of a ceasefire and peace negotiations becomes clearer, it becomes useful again to speak with Putin,” Macron’s office said in a statement. “It is welcome that the Kremlin publicly agrees to this approach.”
The statement came after reports that Putin was open to holding talks with the French president if there was mutual political will.
Macron’s office said any dialogue would aim “to contribute to a solid and lasting peace for Ukraine and Europe, in full transparency with President Zelensky and our European partners.”
European Union leaders agreed on Friday to provide 90 billion euros ($106 billion) to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, although they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to use frozen Russian assets to raise the funds. Instead, they were borrowed from capital markets.
Ukrainian civilians moved to Russia
In Ukraine, the country’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, on Sunday accused Russian forces of forcibly removing about 50 Ukrainian civilians from the Ukrainian Sumy border region to Russian territory.
Writing on Telegram, he said that Russian forces illegally detained the residents in the village of Hrabovske on Thursday, before moving them to Russia on Saturday.
Lubinets said he contacted Russia’s human rights commissioner, requesting information on the civilians’ whereabouts and conditions, and demanding their immediate return to Ukraine.
The day after President Donald Trump declared he had ended 94% of all seaborne drug trafficking to the United States and reduced illegal migrant border crossings to “zero,” he announced an entirely new rationale for his escalating campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela had stolen “Oil, Land and other Assets” from the United States to finance those criminal activities, Trump said Tuesday in a social media post, an apparent reference to decades-oldexpropriations and the breaking of contracts with U.S. oil companies when Caracas began nationalizing the industry.
Unless what he alleged was U.S. property was returned “IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said, the military juggernaut he has assembled in the Caribbean to blow up alleged traffickers and seize tankers transporting Venezuelan oil “will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
As Trump continues the boat strikes — now numbering 28, with at least 104 killed — and with the declaration ofa “blockade” of all sanctioned vessels transporting Venezuelan oil, he has all but abandoned the public pretense that his goal is simply stopping migrants and drugs, rather than Maduro’s removal.
His “days are numbered,” Trump told Politico in an interview published Dec. 9. Asked Thursday whether he was leaving open the possibility of war with Venezuela, Trump told NBC: “I don’t rule it out, no.”
Maduro is the “indicted head of a cartel, now designated as a foreign terrorist organization,” said a person familiar with administration thinking, one of several individuals and former U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations. The administration named Maduro, already facing a 2020 U.S. indictment for drug trafficking, as the head of the designated Cartel de los Soles, a network of senior Venezuelan political and security officials it says is involved in human and drug trafficking to finance terrorist attacks in the United States.
“At the end of the day, that person is either going to stand trial or be given a chance to negotiate exile … in a third country,” the person said of the Venezuelan leader.
But with Maduro still sitting tight, Trump’s options seem to be narrowing rapidly.
In an emailed response to questions, White House deputy spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “Nothing is ‘narrowing.’” Trump, she said, “has already taken decisive action to stop the illegal migrant invasion, deport violent criminals, and defend our homeland against evil narcoterrorists — which is saving countless lives across the country. President Trump retains all options to keep Americans safe.”
Airstrikes on land, which U.S. officials have said would probably target isolated encampments associated with cocaine trafficking or selected military assets and installations, are “going to start” happening, Trump said last week.
If that doesn’t work in persuading Maduro to flee, regional experts and former officials say, there are only two U.S. choices left — withdrawal or regime change by force.
The prospect of invasion and a military ground operation with the possibility of American deaths, however, may be unpalatable to a president who has vowed “no more wars” and has thus far limited overseas military involvement to standoff strikes by air and sea.
“It’s conceivable to me that in a month, two months, the president … declares victory on grounds that maritime drug trafficking is way down,” Elliot Abrams, Trump’s first-term special envoy on Venezuela, said Tuesday on the School of War podcast. But “if Maduro survives and Trump walks away, it’s a defeat.”
While some in Congress have sharply opposed ongoing U.S. military action in the Caribbean and eastern Pacificwithout legislative approval, let alone a ground invasion of Venezuela, others have called on Trump to move more decisively.
“You cannot allow this man to remain standing after this show of force,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said of Trump’s Caribbean deployment of 15,000 troops and dozens of warships and aircraft. Graham, a retired Air Force legal officer, spoke after a closed briefing Tuesday for Senators by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on a controversial Sept. 2 airstrike that killed 11 people aboard an alleged trafficking boat — including two who initially survived and were hit again while flailing amid the wreckage.
“Is the goal to take him out?” Graham asked about Maduro, saying he hadn’t received answers from the administration. “If it’s not the goal … I think it’s a mistake.”
But as lawmakers continue to argue and the administration ups the ante, “the most interesting question is why is [Trump] doing all this at all,” Abrams said in an interview with the Washington Post.
Trump’s fixation on Venezuela melds a number of his own domestic political aims and the priorities of senior officials around him. The administration’s new National Security Strategy, which shifts U.S. focus to the Western Hemisphere, promises to reward countries that comply with “America First” policies and punish those that do not.
For Rubio — the son of Cuban immigrants who fled the island several years before the 1959 takeover by Fidel Castro and whomade his political career in the anti-Castro cauldron of South Florida — the collapse of Cuba’s communist government has long been a prime goal.
Cuba’s economy has been propped up byVenezuela under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, through a steady supply of oil despite heavy U.S. sanctions. In addition to economic ties and ideological affinity, Maduro’s personal safety is said to be provided by elite Cuban security forces. Many think that the end of Venezuelan aid would be a death knell for the government in Havana.
“Rubio is the driving force behind the military buildup in Venezuela policy in the last several months, but he has not convinced the president yet to use military force,” said a second former official. Others, however, say it is Trump who wants to escalate.
For White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policy, the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who fled to the United States, during Trump’s first term and the Biden administration, provide an easy target. Miller has echoed Trump’s charges that most of the Venezuelans in the U.S. were sent by Maduro from prisons and mental institutions to terrorize and kill Americans.
Those sentiments contrast with Trump’s first term, when the flow of what eventually would be millions of fleeing Venezuelans spread across the hemisphere was viewed more sympathetically. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to the Venezuela-Colombia border to greet them in the spring of 2019, said they were escaping what he called the political and economic “horror” of Maduro’s corrupt and failing socialist economy and demanded they be allowed to leave.
At the time, Trump alsosaid that “all options” were on the table to oust Maduro, charging that in addition to abusing his own people, he had stolen the 2018 election that gave him a second term in office and had formed U.S.-threatening alliances with Russia, China, and Iran. Trump stepped up sanctions, sent U.S. warships to the Caribbean — although fewer than the current armada — and recognized legislative assembly leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
With Guaidó as his guest, Trump told Congress during his 2020 State of the Union address that Maduro was “a socialist dictator” and a “tyrant who brutalizes his people.” The amount of deadly fentanyl entering the country, primarily from China and Mexico, had begun to soar even before Trump took office, reaching its peak as the COVID pandemic waned and beginning an ongoing decline, along with overdose deaths, in 2024, according to U.S. government figures.
During first-term debates in the TrumpWhite House over what to do about Maduro, some advocated the use of military force to oust him, according to subsequent books by then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, who opposed it, and national security adviser John Bolton, who supported it.
With his time in office winding down and Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA Director Gina Haspel also advising against the use of force, according to Esper and others, Trump backed off.
The number of arriving Venezuelans, many crossing the border illegally, increased sharply under the Biden administration. Many were allowed to stay legally under a temporary protected status that recognized the economic and political hardships Trump himself had said were the reason for their flight.
Maduro, who reneged on agreements with the Biden administration to allow a fair election in 2024, was inaugurated for his third term in January, only 10 days before Trump was sworn in again. By then, Guaidó had long since faded from memory. A new opposition figure, María Corina Machado, came to the fore and — though barred by Maduro from running against him — led her party to a landslide win that was widely acknowledged to have been stolen.
Trump lost little time moving on his campaign promise to expel migrants and end opioid deaths, touting crime statistics he wildly inflated and blamed on Biden. In one of his first second-term acts, he ordered the end of protected status for Venezuelans and other migrants, and began widespread deportations. Trump charged that Maduro controlled a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, and had sent it to the United States to wreak criminal havoc, allegations that were not supported by U.S. intelligence assessments.
Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles are among roughlytwo dozen foreign organizations that the administration has designated, under a February Trump executive order, as “narcoterrorists.”
By summer, despite some early attempts at negotiations with Maduro that included an offer to expand U.S. oil operations in Venezuela, Trump had opted for a military path. ThoughVenezuela is not a source of fentanyl and is a trafficker but not a producer of cocaine, according to U.S. law enforcement, pressure against Maduro was seen as a visible reminder to drug-producing countries such as Mexico and Colombia of the consequences of noncooperation.
Miller, current and former U.S. officials said, had first proposed striking Mexican cartels and traffickers as a way to stop drugs and migrants. But as the administration surged thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border and increased intelligence cooperation, Mexico began to curb cartel action. Miller and his team were left looking for another target.
The administration sent warships to the Caribbean, and on Sept. 2, Special Operations forces struck an alleged drug-smuggling boat carrying 11 men with missiles. It had come from Venezuela, Trump said without providing evidence, and was carrying “bags” of fentanyl and cocaine for Tren de Aragua. The United States, he told Congress that month, was in an “armed conflict” with terrorists.
On Dec. 10, U.S. forces in the Caribbean seized an oil tanker, the Skipper, that had just filled up in Venezuela and was headed to Asia. The ship, already under U.S. sanctions for carrying illegal Iranian oil, was to be hauled to a Texas port. Asked by reporters what would happen to the oil, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said a second vessel carrying Venezuelan oil in the Caribbean had been “seized” in a joint operation by the Coast Guard and Defense Department. That ship, the Centuries, was not under U.S. sanctions and it was unclear whether it had merely been boarded by U.S. forces or taken under their control.
