But as President Donald Trump welcomed Republican senators for lunch in the newly renovated Rose Garden Club — with the boom-boom of construction underway on the new White House ballroom — he portrayed a different vision of America, as a unified GOP refuses to yield to Democratic demands for healthcare funds, and the government shutdown drags on.
“We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, which tells you about leadership,” Trump said in opening remarks, extolling the renovations underway as senators took their seats in the newly paved over garden-turned-patio.
It was a festive atmosphere under crisp, but sunny autumn skies as senators settled in for cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolates, and Trump’s favored songs — “YMCA” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — played over the new sound system.
And while Trump said the shutdown must come to an end — and suggested maybe Smithsonian museums could reopen — he signaled no quick compromise with Democrats over the expiring healthcare funds.
Later at another White House event, Trump said he’s happy to talk with Democrats about healthcare once the shutdown is over. “The government has to be open,” he said.
As the government shutdown enters its fourth week — on track to become one of the longest in U.S. history — millions of Americans are bracing for healthcare sticker shock, while others are feeling the financial impact. Economists have warned that the federal closure, with many of the nearly 2.3 million employees working without pay, will shave economic growth by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per week.
The Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries had outreached to the White House on Tuesday, seeking a meeting with Trump before the president departs for his next overseas trip, to Asia.
“We said we’ll set up an appointment with him anytime, anyplace before he leaves,” Schumer said.
With Republicans in control of Congress, the Democrats have few options. They are planning to keep the Senate in session late into the night Wednesday in protest. The House has been closed for weeks.
The Republican senators, departing the White House lunch with gifts of Trump caps and medallions, said there is nothing to negotiate with Democrats over the healthcare funds until the government reopens.
“People keep saying ‘negotiate’ — negotiate what?” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said after the hour-long meeting. He said Republicans and the president are willing to consider discussions over healthcare, “but open up the government first.”
Missed paychecks and programs running out of money
While Capitol Hill remains at a standstill, the effects of the shutdown are worsening.
Federal workers are set to miss additional paychecks amid total uncertainty about when they might eventually get paid. Government services like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, and Head Start preschool programs that serve needy families are facing potential cutoffs in funding. On Monday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the National Nuclear Security Administration is furloughing its federal workers. The Federal Aviation Administration has reported air traffic controller shortages and flight delays in cities across the United States.
At the same time, economists, including Goldman Sachs and the nonpartisan CBO, have warned that the federal government’s closure will ripple through the economy. More recently, Oxford Economics said a shutdown reduces economic growth by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per week.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted that the Small Business Administration supports loans totaling about $860 million a week for 1,600 small businesses. Those programs will close to new loans during the shutdown. The shutdown also has halted the issuance and renewal of flood insurance policies, delaying mortgage closings and real estate transactions.
And without action, future health costs are expected to skyrocket for millions of Americans as the enhanced federal subsidies that help people buy private insurance under the Affordable Care Act, come to an end.
Those subsidies, in the form of tax credits that were bolstered during the COVID-19 crisis, expire Dec. 31, and insurance companies are sending out information ahead of open enrollment periods about the new rates for the coming year.
Members of both parties acknowledge that time is running out to fix the looming health insurance price hikes, even as talks are quietly underway over possible extensions or changes to the ACA funding.
Democrats are focused on Nov. 1, when next year’s enrollment period for the ACA coverage begins and millions of people will sign up for their coverage without the expanded subsidy help. Once those sign-ups begin, they say, it would be much harder to restore the subsidies even if they did have a bipartisan compromise.
But senators left the meeting, some saying it was more of a luncheon than a substantial conversation. They said they could hear, but not see, the ballroom construction nearby.
Trump had previously indicated early on during the shutdown that he may be willing to discuss the healthcare issue, and Democrats have been counting on turning the president’s attention their way. But the president later clarified that he would only do so once the government reopens.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s plan for a swift meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin is on hold, a U.S. official said Tuesday, the latest twist in his stop-and-go effort to resolve the war in Ukraine.
The meeting was announced last week and was supposed to take place in Budapest, Hungary, in the near future. However, the idea was paused after a call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The decision to hold off on a meeting between Trump and Putin will likely relieve European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.
The leaders — including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor — said they opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump has occasionally suggested.
They also plan to push forward with plans to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war efforts, despite some misgivings about the legality and consequences of such a step.
Trump has not yet commented publicly about the change in plans for his meeting with Putin. They previously met in Alaska in August, but the encounter did not advance Trump’s stalled attempts to end a war that began almost four years ago.
The Kremlin didn’t seem to be in a rush to get Trump and Putin together again either. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “preparation is needed, serious preparation” before a meeting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by seeking long-range Tomahawk missiles from the U.S., although Trump has waffled on whether he would provide them.
“We need to end this war, and only pressure will lead to peace,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday in a Telegram post.
He noted that Putin returned to diplomacy and called Trump last week when it looked like Tomahawk missiles were a possibility. But “as soon as the pressure eased a little, the Russians began to try to drop diplomacy, postpone the dialogue,” Zelenskyy said.
Trump’s stance on the war has shifted throughout the year. He initially focused on pressuring Ukraine to make concessions, but then grew frustrated with Putin’s intransigence. Trump often complains that he thought his good relationship with his Russian counterpart would have made it easier to end the war.
Last month, Trump reversed his long-held position that Ukraine would have to give up land and suggested it could win back all the territory it has lost to Russia. But after a phone call with Putin last week and a subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump shifted his position again and called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” in the more than three-year war.
On Sunday, Trump said the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.
Trump said Monday that while he thinks it is possible that Ukraine can ultimately defeat Russia, he’s now doubtful it will happen.
Ukrainian and European leaders are trying hard to keep Trump on their side.
“We strongly support President Trump’s position that the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations,” the leaders’ statement said. “We can all see that Putin continues to choose violence and destruction.”
Russia occupies about one fifth of Ukraine, but carving up their country in return for peace is unacceptable to Kyiv officials.
Also, a conflict frozen on the current front line could fester, with occupied areas of Ukraine offering Moscow a springboard for new attacks in the future, Ukrainian and European officials fear.
The statement by the leaders of Ukraine, the U.K., Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Denmark and EU officials came early in what Zelenskyy said Monday would be a week that is “very active in diplomacy.”
More international economic sanctions on Russia are likely to be discussed at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
“We must ramp up the pressure on Russia’s economy and its defense industry, until Putin is ready to make peace,” Tuesday’s statement said.
On Friday, a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing — a group of 35 countries who support Ukraine — is due to take place in London.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia called new evidence presented by President Donald Trump’s administration weak and untrustworthy in a blistering legal response to federal efforts to investigate its doctors providing gender-affirming care.
CHOP’s response, filed late Monday in federal court in Philadelphia, came in defense of accusations by the U.S. Department of Justice that it’s investigating “fraudulent billing practices“ at the hospital.Federal officials say they’re looking into whether CHOP doctors were fudging or lying about diagnoses to get private and public health insurance companies to cover off-label drug prescriptions used to treat patients with gender dysphoria — a medical condition in which a person’s body does not match their gender identity.
In its filing, CHOP lawyers called the DOJ’s allegations “unreliable,” and urged U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney to disregard claims that are “threadbare, of dubious origin, and so heavily qualified and caveated as to offer the court no meaningful information.”
CHOP and the DOJ are locked in a legal battle over a sweeping federal subpoena sent to the hospital in June. The subpoena seeks patient names, Social Security numbers, addresses, diagnoses, and treatment notes, in addition to doctor emails and encrypted text messages.
In July, CHOP filed a motion to limit the scope of the subpoena to protect patient privacy. Judge Kearney is now weighing CHOP’s motion.
In the latest filing, CHOP’s lawyers argued the DOJ’s “new evidence” against the hospital was unfairly “shoehorned” into a separate but related case filed last month by a group of CHOP patients and their families who also want Kearney to block the release of private medical records to the DOJ.
“That new evidence should not be considered because it is not before the Court in this case and is unreliable in any event,” CHOP lawyers wrote in the filing. “The government (still) cannot establish that its need for extraordinarily sensitive and personal patient information outweighs the highest-order privacy interests on the other side of the ledger.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Feds seek patient information from CHOP
In April, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo, entitled “Preventing the Mutilation of American Children,” in which she tasked the DOJ with enforcing measures targeting gender-affirming care for youth.
About two months later, the DOJ sent subpoenas to CHOP and at least 19 other hospitals nationally that are under scrutiny for treating transgender youth. The subpoenas sparked legal opposition playing out in federal courts in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
The DOJ’skey focus is how doctors are prescribing puberty blockers and hormones “off-label,” meaning for a condition not specifically approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Once a drug is approved by the FDA, it is legal for doctors to prescribe it to treat other conditions that could benefit from the medication. Off-label prescribing is a common and widely accepted medical practice, especially in pediatrics.
Gender-affirming care for children and adolescents has been deemed medically appropriate by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other major medical and mental health organizations. Research shows young people with gender dysphoria suffer higher rates of suicide, self-harm, depression, and anxiety.
CHOP’s Gender and Sexuality Development Program, created in 2014, is one of the nation’s largest such clinics and provides medical care and mental health support to hundreds of new families each year.
CHOP’s legal fight for patient privacy
Late last month, families and patients joined in CHOP’s fight against the federal subpoena by filing a separate motion to protect their privacy rights. That motion was filed on behalf of five parents with transgender children and one adult who received care at CHOP.
In response to that case, the DOJ filed a “Declaration,” or sworn statement, from Lisa Hsiao, acting director of the DOJ’s Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch, formerly known as the Consumer Protection Branch. In it, Hsiao said the government has new evidence “particular to CHOP that raises concern that federal healthcare offenses may be occurring there.”
Hsiao said the government analyzed CHOP’sinsurance claims and found that between 2017 and 2024, CHOP providers diagnosed 250 minors with central precocious puberty at age 10 or older, “including numerous teenagers aged 14 to 18.”
“This is well beyond the age at which children are typically diagnosed with precocious puberty,” Hsiao stated. The government, she said, suspects doctors are improperly using the precocious puberty diagnosis to get insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria.
In Monday’s court filing, CHOP lawyers accused the DOJ of attempting to “shoehorn its new evidence into CHOP’s case” through the other case.
CHOP also argued Hsiao’s declaration provides nothing to support its contentions surrounding precocious puberty diagnosis.
“Moreover, the government fails to contextualize the findings of its rudimentary analysis, offering no comparator for the use of the code for precocious puberty at peer hospitals, let alone hospitals that, like CHOP, have providers who specialize in treating endocrine disorders,” CHOP lawyers wrote.
The source of “the data set is entirely unknown,” CHOP’s lawyers noted, addingthe declaration never says how many patients were treated for gender dysphoria during that time frame.
The CHOP lawyers also criticized Hsiao for writing in her sworn declaration that the government was aware of a lawsuit filed against CHOP that alleges doctors hastily prescribed puberty blockers and hormones to a minor who later regretted it.
Hsiao later refiled the declaration to remove any reference to a lawsuit after learning that it hadn’t been filed.
CHOP lawyers wrote they believe the lawsuit reference came from a news article about a former CHOP patient. The article said the patient “was suing the hospital.” However, CHOP was unaware of any such lawsuit.
“The similarities between the report and the allegations in the Hsiao Declaration — including the reference to a lawsuit — raise suspicions that, in looking to justify its investigative interest in CHOP, the government simply searched the internet for stories fitting its narrative and presented the one it found as fact without adequately scrutinizing its veracity.”
As nearly 2 million Pennsylvanians brace for the loss of their food assistance next month due to thefederalgovernment shutdown, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services is pinning the blame on Republicans on Capitol Hill.
States administer the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides support to low-income people, including families with children. But as the standoff in Congress prevents federal funding from flowing to states, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration entered the messaging battle over the cause of the disruption to benefits.
“Because Republicans in Washington D.C., failed to pass a federal budget, causing the federal government shutdown, November 2025 SNAP benefits cannot be paid,“ reads a pastel orange banner on the DHS website from Friday, alerting recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to the impending changes.
The message reflects the mounting impacts of the government shutdown, which is in its third full week, and the growing political tensions between Republicans and Democrats on the state and national levels after lawmakers failed to pass funding to avert a government shutdown by Oct. 1.
Shapiro has frequently gone head-to-head with the Trump administration, but the use of a state government website is a notable escalation.
The governor said in a news release Monday that Congress already had kicked off hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians from Medicaid and SNAP when it passed President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July.
“Now, Republicans are once again threatening vital support for Pennsylvania families and children — it’s time for them to pass a federal budget and end this shutdown.”
Pennsylvania Human Services Secretary Val Arkoosh added that “Inaction from Republicans in Congress” jeopardizes the well-being of Pennsylvanians.
A significant impact will be felt next month in Philadelphia, where half a million people will not receive SNAP benefits. The program,which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, serves households including elderly people, individuals with disabilities, and children.
Another Democratic-led state, Illinois, also referred to the lapse in funding as the “Republican federal government shutdown” on its benefits webpage. Other Democratic-led states near Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, have not posted political messages on their states’ SNAP benefits pages.
Republicans in Pennsylvania criticized the use of the DHS website for a partisan message.
“Public service isn’t a political weapon and using a government website to fuel your partisan agenda is indefensible,” the Pennsylvania GOPwrote Monday in a post on X.
The shutdown is “Democrat-led,” says the Trump administration’s State Department website.
“The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government,” declares a bright red banner on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development homepage.
The rising political pressure comes as the Trump administration began rolling out highly politicized messaging to the public and federal employees after the government shutdown began earlier this month.
And some federal workers — nonpartisan civil servants who have been coping with plummeting morale and either being furloughed or working without pay during the shutdown — have been on the receiving end of politicized messaging, too.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court in Philadelphia to overturn an order that has, for the moment, blocked authorities from deporting pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil — the latest development in a complex legal saga that began when the administration was seeking to crack down on anti-Israeli college campus protests earlier this year.
During a hearing before a three-judge panel in a Center City courtroom, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said the earlier order, issued by a federal judge in New Jersey, was “indefensible” for several reasons — including that it was issued in the wrong jurisdiction, and that it was effectively helping Khalil’s lawyers improperly “fragment” the various legal proceedings against him and seek venues that might issue favorable rulings.
Khalil’s attorneys, however, said the judges should uphold the lower court’s ruling because the government had illegally targeted the 30-year-old for removal over his political views — something they called a clear First Amendment violation and a situation that could have wider implications amid Trump’s push to increase deportations.
Speaking outside the courthouse after the hearing, Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was born in Syria, told a crowd of supporters he planned to continue his legal fight to remain in the United States.
“This shows how my case is actually just a test for everyone’s right’s here across the country,” he said. “Not only one place, not only for specific people, for immigrants or documented or undocumented people, it’s for everyone across the country.”
Eric Hamell, of West Philadelphia, holds up a sign saying Free Mahmoud Khalil during a rally outside the James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
The case against Khalil began in March, when he was arrested by immigration authorities at Columbia University, where he had recently completed a master’s degree and had become a prominent figure at pro-Palestinian protests. Authorities detained Khalil and then pushed to deport him, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio citing an obscure legal statute in contending that Khalil’s rhetoric and continued presence in the country could undermine U.S. foreign policy interests.
Khalil’s lawyers quickly challenged the administration’s actions in court — first in New York, where he lived and was arrested, then in New Jersey, where he was detained in the immediate aftermath of his arrest.
Within days, however, Khalil was transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, where he was held for more than three months (he was living there this spring when his wife, an American citizen, gave birth to their son in New York).
The issue of where Khalil was located was something Ensign, the government attorney, said was important for the appellate judges to consider: Because Khalil was primarily detained in Louisiana, Ensign said, any legal challenge seeking to have him released should have taken place in that jurisdiction.
And in Ensign’s view, that meant the June ruling by a judge in New Jersey that ordered Khalil released — and temporarily blocked his deportation — should be overturned.
Several judges appeared skeptical of the jurisdictional aspect of Ensign’s argument. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, pointed out that authorities were moving Khalil to various jurisdictions over a weekend — and suggested attorneys couldn’t be forced to wait until the work week to file emergency challenges to what they viewed as wrongful detention.
“The lawyers didn’t know” where Khalil was, Bibas said. “They had to do their best.”
The judges seemed more receptive to another of Ensign’s arguments: That Khalil is currently the subject of a complex web of legal cases, with various claims being weighed in various courts.
In addition to the matter being argued in Philadelphia on Tuesday, his immigration case remains pending in Louisiana because of a separate issue: In September, an immigration judge there ruled that Khalil be removed to Syria or Algeria because he failed to disclose information about his past work with pro-Palestinian groups on his green card application.
While his attorneys have appealed that ruling, the appellate panel on Tuesday questioned whether it was appropriate for different jurisdictions to be weighing different aspects of his various cases — particularly when many of the legal issues in them are generally similar.
Circuit Judge Thomas M. Hardiman asked whether doing so would give Khalil a “second bite at the apple” to challenge rulings that don’t go his way.
It remained unclear Tuesday how or when the judges might rule.
Khalil, meanwhile, said outside the courthouse afterward: “We are in the fight until the end.”
The sense of loss that has permeated 2025 struck again this weekend when we learned of the sudden death of a Philly journalism legend, Michael Days, who guided the Philadelphia Daily News during most of its last dozen freewheeling and Pulitzer-winning years before we merged with The Inquirer in 2017. He was just 72, far too young. The top-line of Mike’s obituary was how, as the first African American to lead a newsroom in America’s founding city, he paid it forward by mentoring the next generation of rising Black journalists. But people like me who worked for him remember him more simply as the wisest and mostempathetic human being we ever had as a boss. He leaves right when the nation’s newsrooms need decent souls like Mike Days more than they ever did.
What a $10M bribe rumor says about Trump, Middle East peace, and America’s fall
President Donald Trump talks with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi during a summit to support ending the more than two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza after a breakthrough ceasefire deal, Oct. 13 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
The thing about being a 79-year-old president is that sometimes you just blurt stuff out, with no filter as to whether your words might be embarrassing, undiplomatic — or potentially incriminating.
Consider the case of Donald John Trump, the 47th U.S. president and the oldest one on the day of his election. Last week, in what may prove to be a fleeting moment of triumph as Trump celebrated a Gaza peace deal that included the release of 20 Israeli hostages, POTUS arrived at an Egyptian resort town for a Middle East summit. He kicked off the day with a one-on-one sit-down with Egypt’s strongman ruler, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
“There was a reason we chose Egypt [for the summit] because you were very helpful,” Trump said as a gaggle of reporters and photojournalists entered their meeting room.
Really? Helpful in what way?
“I want to thank you,” the American president told Sissi, who seized power in a 2013 coup. “He’s been my friend right from the beginning during the campaign against Crooked Hillary Clinton. Have you heard of her?”
Here Trump was pushing, ever so absurdly, for the Nobel Peace Prize, and then he had to spoil it all by saying somethin’ stupid like, you bribed me. Well, he almost spoiled it, if more journalists — aside from MSNBC’s brilliant Rachel Maddow, who seized on the remark hours later — had grasped the potential import of this presidential prattle.
It’s certainly legal, if gross, for Trump to be close pals with Sissi, even if Human Rights Watch reports that the Egyptian dictator is “continuing wholesale repression, systematically detaining and punishing peaceful critics and activists and effectively criminalizing peaceful dissent.” What would not be legal is the Middle Eastern nation interfering in the 2016 election, in which Trump narrowly defeated Clinton in the handful of swing states that tipped the Electoral College.
What made Trump’s comments last week so jaw-dropping is that U.S. federal investigators worked for several years trying to prove exactly that scenario. In August 2024, days after Trump was nominated by the GOP for his second reelection bid, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department investigated a tip that Sissi’s Egypt provided Trump with $10 million the candidate desperately needed in the 2016 homestretch to defeat Clinton. That happened right before Trump, as 45th president, reopened the spigot of foreign aid that had been halted because of Sissi’s human rights abuses.
It’s known that Trump did put $10 million into the campaign, which he listed as a loan. The Post in 2024 offered a tantalizing, if circumstantial, piece of evidence — that the Cairo bank had received a note from an agency believed to be Egyptian intelligence to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million in two, 100-pound bags full of U.S. $100 bills, five days before Trump took the oath of office.
But the investigative trail ran cold. In 2019, then-special counsel Robert Mueller turned the matter over to Trump’s appointees in the Justice Department, who of course didn’t pursue the president’s bank records. Neither — inexplicably — did Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, as the statute of limitations expired in January 2022. That’s where things stood last week before Trump started blathering in Sharm El Sheikh.
One reason I’m writing about this is the sheer frustration that Trump — yes, allegedly, possibly — might have gotten away with bribery to the point where he’s almost bragging about it in public. But I also think the mysterious case of the Egyptian bags of cash speaks to the present, dire American moment in a couple of ways.
For one thing, it casts a light on what’s really behind what Trump hopes will be viewed as the signature achievement of his second presidency. That would be the fragile peace deal that aims to end the last two years of bloodshed in Gaza that started with the Hamas terror attack of Oct. 7, 2023 and has resulted in at least 67,000 dead Palestinians and the utter destruction of their seaside homeland.
How did Trump get a deal that had eluded his predecessor Biden, in a region that has vexed every American president from both parties? It certainly helped that most of the power brokers with the clout and the cash to help end the fighting in Gaza are repressive strongmen — or, as Trump might call them, role models. And they all seem to speak the same language of corrupt back-scratching.
If those bags with $10 million in greenbacks did make their way to Trump in 2017, it looks like small change in today’s cross-Atlantic wheeling-and-dealing. After all, a key go-between in the negotiations — Qatar, which has good relations with Hamas and has hosted its exiled leaders — gifted America a $400 million jet that Trump plans to use not just as Air Force One but in his post presidency, while his regime has promised to protect the Qatari dictators if they are ever attacked.
Another key supporter of the plan is the United Arab Emirates, which also backs the UAE firm that recently purchased a whopping $2 billion in cryptocurrency from a firm owned by Trump’s family as well as the family of Steve Witkoff, the regime’s lead Middle East negotiator. At the same time, Trump’s U.S. government allowed UAE to import highly sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence.
Witkoff’s negotiation end–game brought in Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who forged close ties during his father-in-law’s first term with Saudi Arabia’s murderous de facto ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who pulled the levers for a $2 billion investment in a hedge fund created by Kushner despite no prior expertise.
Those Saudi ties could prove critical to future stability in the region, and in a joint interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday night, Kushner and Witkoff made no apologies for mixing billion-dollar deals with the pursuit of world peace. “What people call conflicts of interest,” Kushner said, “Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships.”
OK, but those “trusted relationships” are built on a flimsy mountain of cash that could collapse at any minute. Look, I’m thrilled like everyone else that 20 Israeli hostages are finally reunited with their loved ones, and to the extent Trump and his regime deserve any credit, I credit them. But the art of the deal that the president is bragging about is all about the Benjamins — more worthy of applause on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than a Nobel Peace Prize.
Real peace is based on hard work and trust, not Bitcoin — so is it any wonder that the ceasefire is already collapsing with two dead Israeli soldiers and fresh, lethal airstrikes in Gaza? The only thing with any currency among a rogues’ gallery of world dictators is currency, and that transactional stench has fouled everything from Cairo to K Street.
Is it any surprise that a regime whose origin story allegedly includes bags of Egyptian cash would do absolutely nothing when it was told that its future border czar, Tom Homan, was captured on an audiotape accepting $50,000 in a fast-food bag from undercover FBI agents who said they wanted government contracts?
In hindsight, the failure to pursue that report of the $10 million Egyptian bribe opened up a floodgate of putrid corruption, wider than the Nile. It signaled a sick society where everything is for sale — even world peace — but nothing is guaranteed.
Yo, do this!
The 1970s and ‘80s are having a cultural moment right now, and this boomer is here for it! On Apple TV (they’ve dropped the “+,” probably after paying some consultant $1 million for that pearl of wisdom) comes the long-awaited five part docuseries about the life and times of filmmaker Martin Scorsese, the savior who rose from NYC’s mean streets to give us Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and so much more. Watching Mr. Scorsese is going to make the eventual death of the baseball season so much easier to take.
The earthy, urban musical equivalent of Scorsese would have to be Bruce Springsteen, who has been marking the 50th anniversary of his breakthrough Born to Run LP with all kinds of cool stuff, capped with Friday’s long-awaited release of the first-ever biopic about “The Boss,” Deliver Me from Nowhere. Staring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, the film’s unlikely narrative — focusing on the making of 1982’s highly personal and acoustic Nebraska as the rock star seeks release from a bout of depression — sounds like exactly the uplift that America needs right now.
Ask me anything
Question: As someone living in Ireland and looking across the ocean. Trump won’t be in power forever, but how is anyone going to deal with the MAGA crowd that helped elect him? That level of stupidity, hatred and racism cannot be fixed. How is [t]he USA ever going to heal? — Stephen (@bannside@bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: That’s a great question, Stephen, and like most great questions there’s no easy answer. Although I’m optimistic that the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election will happen and that the anti-Trump coalition that we witnessed at “No Kings” will prevail, I agree with you that it’s only a partial and temporary fix. I’d fear an Iraq-level resistance could rise up in the regions we call “Trump country.” My long-term solution would be along the lines of what I proposed in my 2022 bookAfter the Ivory Tower Falls: Fix higher education — broadly defined as from the Ivy League to good trade schools — to made it a public good that reduces inequality instead of driving it. And promote a universal gap year of national service for 18-year-olds, to get young people out of their isolated silos. There are ways to prevent the next generation from becoming as stupid or hateful or racist as the Americans who came before them, but it will take time and patience that we seem to lack right now.
What you’re saying about…
Remember the Philadelphia Phillies? When I last saw you here two weeks ago, their annual postseason collapse and the fate of manager Rob Thomson was a hot topic. As expected, there was minimal response from you political junkies, and opinions were split — even before the team defied the conventional wisdom and announced he’ll be returning in 2026. Thomson’s supporters were more likely to blame the Phillies’ inconsistent sluggers, with John Braun asking “who could you hire who could guarantee clutch hits?” Personally, I’m with Kim Root: “I follow the Philly Union, who just won the Supporters Shield — that is all.”
📮 This week’s question: Back to the issue at hand: I’m curious if newsletter readers attended the “No Kings” protest last Saturday, and what you see as the future of the anti-Trump movement. Are more aggressive measures like a nationwide general strike needed, or is the continued visibility of nonviolent resisters enough? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “No Kings future” in the subject line.
Backstory on who the “No Kings” protesters really were
Demonstrators gather for a ’No Kings’ rally in Philadelphia on Saturday.
They clogged city plazas and small-town main streets from San Diego to Bangor on Saturday, yet the more than 7 million Americans who took part in the massive “No Kings” protest — the second-largest one day demonstration in U.S. history, behind only the first Earth Day in 1970 — seemed to mystify much of the befuddled mainstream media. Just who were these people protesting the Donald Trump presidency, and why are they here?
Instead of a journalist, it took a sociologist to get some answers. Dana Fisher — the Philadelphia-area native who teaches at American University and is the leading expert on contemporary protest movements — was out in the field Saturday at the large “No Kings” march in Washington, D.C., collecting data with a team of researchers. She’s shared her early top-line results with me, aiming to both give a demographic and ideological snapshot and also compare Saturday’s crowd with her findings at other recent rallies.
If you were among the 7 million on Saturday, some of this data won’t surprise you. The protesters were, on the whole, older than the average American, with a median age of 44 (compared to 38 for the nation as a whole.) Once again, the “No Kings” participants were overwhelmingly white (87%) with women (57%) in the majority. But it’s also worth noting that men (39%) were more likely to take part than earlier protests tracked by Fisher, and the 8% who identified as Latino is double the rate of Hispanic participation in the 2017 Women’s March.
That last finding may reflect the passions of the “No Kings” protesters, who listed immigration as a key motivation at a rate of 74%, second only to their general opposition to Trump (80%, kind of a no brainer). That certainly jibed with the demonstrators at the rally I attended in suburban Havertown, who again and again mentioned the sight of masked federal agents grabbing migrants off the street as what compelled them to come out.
Fisher’s most telling findings may have been these: The people out in the streets are mad about what they see happening to America, with 80% listing “anger” as an emotion they are feeling, trailed closely by “anxiety” at 76%. Yet few of those who spoke with her team believed that will translate into violence. The number of demonstrators who agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so off track, Americans may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” was only 23% — lower than other protests her team has surveyed. It seems like the larger the public show of resistance to Trump’s authoritarianism, the more optimism that the path back to democracy can be nonviolent.
What I wrote on this date in 2021
I hate to say I told you so but… On this date four years ago, Joe Biden was still clinging to dreams of a presidential honeymoon after ousting Donald Trump in the 2020 election, but there were dark clouds on the horizon. On Oct. 21, 2021 I warned that sluggish action on key issues was starting to hurt his standing with under-30 voters. I wrote that “while the clock hasn’t fully run out on federal action around issues like student debt or a bolder approach on climate — the disillusionment of increasingly jaded young voters could change the course of American history for the next generation, or even beyond.” How’d that turn out? Read the rest: “From college to climate, Democrats are sealing their doom by selling out young voters.”
Recommended Inquirer reading
I returned from a much-needed staycation this weekend by leaving the sofa and spending a glorious fall morning at the boisterous “No Kings” protest closest to home in Delaware County, which lined a busy street in Havertown. I wrote about how the protests are winning back America by getting under the skin of Donald Trump and the GOP, who can no longer pretend to ignore the widespread unpopularity of their authoritarian project.
Every election matters, even the ones that are dismissed as “off-year” contests. In today’s heated and divisive climate, even what used to be a fairly routine affair — the retention of sitting judges on the state and local level — has taken on greater importance. Here in Pennsylvania, the state’s richest billionaire, Jeff Yass, is spending a sliver of his vast wealth to convince voters to end the tenure of three Democrats on the state Supreme Court. The Inquirer’s Editorial Board is here to explain why that’s a very bad idea. On the other hand, some judges up for retention in the city of Philadelphia — where jurists haven’t always lived up to the promise of America’s cradle of democracy — deserve closer scrutiny. The newsroom’s Samantha Melamed revealed a leaked, secret survey detailing what Philadelphia attorneys think of some of the judges on the November ballot, and it is not pretty. The bottom line is that you need to vote this year, and subscribing to The Inquirer is the best way to stay informed. Sign up today!
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WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Donald Trump’s $250 million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.
Dramatic photos of the demolition work showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing.
Trump announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college baseball champs Louisiana State University and LSU-Shreveport in the East Room. He noted the work was happening “right behind us.”
“We have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said, adding, “It just started today.”
Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.
“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said last month.
It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission’s offices are closed because of the government shutdown.
The Republican president had said in July when the project was announced that the ballroom would not interfere with the mansion itself.
“It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said of the White House.
The East Wing houses several offices, including those of the first lady. It was built in 1902 and and has been renovated over the years, with a second story added in 1942, according to the White House.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said those East Wing offices will be temporarily relocated during construction and that wing of the building will be modernized and renovated.
“Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt said when she announced the project in July.
Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he’s adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.
Trump said in the social media announcement that the project would be completed “with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”
The ballroom will be the biggest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition in 1948 of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn, even dwarfing the residence itself.
At a dinner he hosted last week for some of the wealthy business executives who are donating money toward the $250 million construction cost, Trump said the project had grown in size and now will accommodate 999 people. The capacity was 650 seated people at the July announcement.
The White House has said it will disclose information on who has contributed money to build the ballroom, but has yet to do so.
Trump also said at last week’s event that the head of Carrier Global Corp., a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, had offered to donate the air conditioning system for the ballroom.
Carrier confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that it had done so. A cost estimate was not immediately available.
“Carrier is honored to provide the new iconic ballroom at the White House with a world-class, energy-efficient HVAC system, bringing comfort to distinguished guests and dignitaries in this historic setting for years to come,” the company said in an emailed statement.
The clearing of trees on the south grounds and other site preparation work for the construction started in September. Plans call for the ballroom to be ready before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.
It’s been six months since President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on U.S. imports. For local small-business owners, the impact so far depends on what they sell. But they’re all thinking ahead about more adjustments they will have to make.
Trump declared an “Independence Day” on April 2, implementing a minimum 10% tariff on all countries selling products into the U.S., with larger ones on countries including India and China. Since then the president has either threatened or implemented additional tariffs on certain products such as steel and aluminum, sectors such as furniture, and “reciprocal tariffs” on countries to match their tariffs on American imports.
Many economists have warned that these higher costs will drive up inflation, slow our economy, and hurt many small businesses that rely on imported goods.
Fred Woll, president of Philadelphia packaging products supplier F.P. Woll & Co., said he’s seen tariffs from overseas suppliers but “decided to eat a 5% price increase.” He doesn’t think he can do that again.
“We have been in business in the City of Philadelphia since 1907, and gone through many, many challenges over the last 100-plus years,” he said. “This current challenge may end up being existential, and it’s our country doing it to itself.”
George Patti, the owner of Head Start Shoes in Philadelphia, is also feeling pressure.
“Everything is costing me more money and the dollar has dropped in value,” Patti said. “The costs of our merchandise is higher, and we’ve had to raise prices 10% to 15%.”
At Tildie’s Toy Box in East Passyunk and Haddonfield, owner Michelle Gillen-Doobrajh said tariffs have made this year “confusing and difficult” and the added costs will “absolutely” have an impact on how they do business going forward.
Michelle Gillen-Doobrajh (right) talks with 10-year-old customer Harlowe McGrath at Tildie’s Toy Box shop in downtown Haddonfield.
“I am beginning to pass on items where the cost has gone up too much to be realistic for the consumer,” she said. “I fear that product selection will decrease, and many manufacturers will end up going out of business and retailers will follow.”
“We will have to get used to paying more money for less product,” Gillen-Doobrajh added.
Not every company is suffering. The family-run Trappe Tavern in Trappe, Montgomery County, has not seen a significant impact.
“We’ve had some prices creep up,” David Duryea, the restaurant’s owner said. “In general, it hasn’t really had much of an effect at all.”
If the costs of his food and other supplies continue to go up, Duryea said, people will eventually cut back on their spending and that could affect his business.
“If that happens, we’re going to have to raise prices like everyone else,” he said.
Despite new tariffs on steel, Upper Darby-based Delaware Valley Steel has not been significantly impacted, at least for now. That’s because “we don’t import any of our inventory,” said Jerry Sharpe, the company’s CEO.
However, Sharpe warns that whenever tariffs are applied, the domestic steel mills that sell him products see that as an opportunity to raise prices.
“If demand picks up, which I believe it will later this year, we will see increased pricing from the domestic mills,” he said. “We’re also going to be hit with a 20% tariff on an expensive piece of machinery we have ordered.”
Kevin McLaughlin, a partner at business advisory firm Centri Consulting in Philadelphia, said the common theme among his firm’s clients is uncertainty.
“While the full impact of tariffs has not yet sifted through every corner of the economy, growing businesses and businesses with thinner margins and less negotiating power than large corporations are often the first to feel the pressure,” he said.
Ten year-old customer Harlowe McGrath looks through figures — all of them 3D printed in the U.S. — at Tildie’s Toy Box shop in downtown Haddonfield Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Store owner Michelle Gillen-Doobrajh is one of many Philly-area business owners dealing with tariffs. McGrath, who lives in town, was shopping with her mother, Kimberly McGrath.
How small-business owners are navigating tariff uncertainty
Woll says he’s focusing on cutting his overhead and may lay off employees. Gillen-Doobrajh is changing her product mix by “stocking up where tariffs are low” and foregoing unnecessary items.
“I’m trying to be really smart and frugal with buying overall,” she said. “I am also paying attention to where items are made and holding out hope that these tariffs will dissolve so that our industry can survive.”
Frank Cettina, who runs operations at Computer Components Corp., a precision tools contract manufacturer based in Philadelphia, is passing along any added costs to customers, with transparency. Tariff-related cost increases are noted separately and determined “on a customer-by-customer basis,” he said.
“We are not making blanket cost increases because our intention is to remove them when and if they go away or change,” Cettina said. “We are also offering any alternative sources where we can.”
Patti said he will likely buy less product but will also “buy higher quality just to pick up my margins” and compensate for the loss of volume.
McLaughlin, the consultant, struck a more positive tone. He said clients are “stress-testing” multiple “what-if” scenarios so their businesses can adapt quickly.
“With all the uncertainty, we are consistently encouraged by how resourceful our clients are through this unique time,” he said. “Many are using this moment as an opportunity to strengthen supplier relationships, accelerate efficiency, and polish their value propositions.”
KYIV, Ukraine — President Donald Trump said Monday that while he thinks it is possible that Ukraine can defeat Russia, he’s now doubtful it will happen.
The comments from Trump added a fresh layer of skepticism toward Kyiv as he plans to meet again in the coming weeks with Russian President Vladimir Putin for face-to-face talks in Budapest, Hungary, on ending the war.
“They could still win it. I don’t think they will, but they could still win it,” Trump told reporters on Monday at the start of a White House meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
But after a lengthy call with Putin last week followed by a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump made another reversal and called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end their brutal war.
Asked on Monday about his whiplashing opinion on Kyiv’s position, Trump offered the dour assessment about Ukraine’s chances. He added, “I never said they would win it. I said they could. Anything can happen. You know war is a very strange thing.”
Earlier Monday, Zelenskyy said that during the White House meeting Trump informed him that Putin’s maximalist demand — that Ukraine cede the entirety of its eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — was unchanged.
Still, Zelenskyy described the meeting as “positive,” even though Trump also rebuffed his request for long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
In public comments in the weeks leading up to his meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump had appeared to warm to the possibility of sending the Tomahawks, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory.
But the U.S. leader’s tone changed after his latest call with Putin and he made clear that he was reluctant to send Ukraine the missile system, at least for the time-being.
“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Sunday. His comments were embargoed until Monday morning.
Zelenskyy also expressed skepticism about Putin’s proposal to swap some territory it holds in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions if Ukraine surrenders Donetsk and Luhansk, saying the proposal was unclear. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up the Donbas.
Ukraine’s leader said Trump ultimately supported a freeze along the current front line.
“We share President Trump’s positive outlook if it leads to the end of the war,” Zelenskyy said, citing “many rounds of discussion over more than two hours with him and his team.”
Zelenskyy was diplomatic about his meeting with Trump despite reports that he faced pressure to accept Putin’s demands. The meeting followed the disastrous Oval Office spat on Feb. 28 when the Ukrainian president was scolded on live television for not being grateful for U.S. support.
Zelenskyy said he has not been invited to attend but would consider it if the format for talks were fair to Kyiv.
He also took a shot at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, saying he does not believe that a prime minister “who blocks Ukraine everywhere can do anything positive for Ukrainians or even provide a balanced contribution.”
Zelenskyy said he thinks that all parties have “moved closer” to a possible end to the war.
“That doesn’t mean it will definitely end, but President Trump has achieved a lot in the Middle East, and riding that wave he wants to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” he added.
Ukraine is hoping to purchase 25 Patriot air defense systems from U.S. firms using frozen Russian assets and assistance from partners, but Zelenskyy said procuring them would require time because of long production waits. He said he spoke to Trump about help procuring them more quickly, potentially from European partners.
Zelenskyy said the United States is interested in bilateral gas projects with Ukraine, including the construction of an LNG terminal in the southern port city of Odesa. Other projects of interest include those related to nuclear energy and oil.
MEXICO CITY – The Trump administration’s justification for blowing up suspected drug traffickers off the Venezuelan coast has been clear and consistent: These people aren’t just criminals; they’re “narco-terrorists” smuggling a “deadly weapon poisoning Americans” at the behest of terrorist organizations.
“We take them out,” Trump told the nation’s three- and four-star generals and admirals last month. “Every boat kills 25,000 on average – some people say more. You see these boats, they’re stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.”
Claiming the power to summarily kill traffickers as though they’re enemy troops, Trump has authorized the U.S. military to strike at least six speedboats the administration has deemed suspicious, killing dozens of people since the beginning of September. At least half of the strikes and 21 of the killings, locals say, have transpired in the waters between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago – nations so close that on clear days they’re within eyesight of each other.
But records and interviews with 20 people familiar with the route or the strikes, including current and former U.S. and international officials, contradict the administration’s claims. The passage, they said,is not ordinarily used to traffic synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, present in 69 percent of drug overdose deaths last year. Nor are the drugs typically headed for the United States.
Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean nation more than 1,000 miles south and 1,200 miles east of Miami, is both a destination market for marijuana and a transshipment point for South American cocaine bound for West Africa and Europe, according to U.S. officials, Trinidadian police and independent analysts. The fentanyl seized in the United States, in contrast, is typically manufactured in Mexico using precursors from China and smuggled in through the land border, most often by U.S. citizens.
The military strikes are unlikely, as a result, to cut overdose deaths in the United States, officials say – but it has brought U.S. forces into striking distance of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.Trump has accused the authoritarian socialist, who claimed reelection last year despite ballot audits showing he lost the vote, of leading the Venezuela gang Tren de Aragua to push lethal drugs into America.
“When I saw [an internal document on the strikes],” a senior U.S. national security official said, “I immediately thought, ‘This isn’t about terrorists. This is about Venezuela and regime change.’ But there was no information about what it was really about.”
The official, like others quoted in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide his candid assessment.
The White House declined to share evidence to support the claims that Trump has used to justify the strikes. A spokeswoman defended the killings as necessary to protect Americans.
“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narco-terrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The president will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
Two family members of the 11 men killed in September in the first attack acknowledged by Trump did not deny that the men aboard had been taking marijuana and cocaine from Venezuela to Trinidad. But they said Trump’s allegation in his announcement was inaccurate that they’d worked for the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
“I knew them all,” said one of the family members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “None of them had anything to do with Tren de Aragua. They were fishermen who were looking for a better life” by smuggling contraband.
On Tuesday, Trump said, a new strike had killed“six male narco-terrorists” off the Venezuelan coast. That afternoon, one mother in the Trinidadian community of Las Cuevas received a call from her brother, a fisherman. Her son Chad Joseph, the second of her six children, had been killed in the explosion.
Speaking by phone Thursday morning, Leonore Burnley was furious. Her son had been deprived a trial. And she’d been deprived of any chance of closure.
“You can’t get the body to bury it,” she said.
Joseph had spent the last three months in Venezuela working odd jobs, Burnley said. He had written her recently to say he would be returning home.
She called Trump’s claim he had been involved in trafficking drugs a lie.
“They are judging him wrong,” she said. “He was no drug dealer. Chad was a good boy, anything you want, he would help; he was a loving child.”
“Twenty-six years he have,” she said.
Claiming the power to summarily kill traffickers as though they’re enemy troops, Trump has authorized the U.S. military to strike at least six speedboats the administration has deemed suspicious, killing dozens of people since the beginning of September.
How cocaine courses through Venezuela
In recent years, drug cartels in Colombia and other South American nations have supercharged cocaine production. The rush to bring it to market – largely the United States and Europe, but increasingly West Africa – has transformed the continent’s criminal landscape, fueling the rise of new transnational gangs and threatening weaker national governments with limited power of state.
Venezuela, too, has been swept into the boom. Economically battered by years of socialist mismanagement and punishing international sanctions, a nation that was once Latin America’s wealthiest has become increasingly involved in the trade. Along its border with Colombia, cocaine is now produced for sale and shipment abroad.
U.S. federal prosecutors in March 2020 accused senior government officials in the Maduro regime, including Maduro himself, of leading the Cártel de Los Soles – “Cartel of the Suns” – a criminal networkthat extorts drug trafficking groups and controls routes and product itself.
Venezuela, U.S. investigators say, is now a narco free-for-all filled with armed groups from throughout Latin America.
“The Mexicans are there,” one former Drug Enforcement Administration agent said. “The Colombians are there, sometimes on behalf of the Mexicans. Sometimes the Hondurans and Guatemalans have guys there, too.”
Most of the South American cocaine bound for North America flows through the Pacific, but some does depart Venezuela through the Caribbean, according to U.S. officials and analysts who track drug routes. Much of it courses overland through the western states of Zulia and Falcón before shipping northward to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic. Some travels by air, departing clandestine airstrips in Maracaibo or Apure state for Central America and onward to Mexico and the United States.
It’s less common, investigators say, to ship U.S.-bound cocaine northeast into the Sucre peninsula and across the narrow Bocas del Dragón channel to Trinidad – the route the administration has targeted. Trinidad is used far more frequently as a gateway to Europe. Spanish authorities seized 1.65 tons of cocaine that had transited through the island, the State Department reported in 2024. Portuguese authorities in June recovered 1.66 tons of cocaine that traversed the same route.
“When you look at a map, countries like Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname are used as transshipment points of massive amounts of cocaine from Colombia into Venezuela [and then onward] to West Africa and Europe,” a former senior U.S. security official said. He added that routes may change based on pressure.
One recently retired senior Trinidadian police official, asked whether Sucre traffickers were bringing drugs intended for the United States, chuckled.
“Why would they use Trinidad and Tobago to transport drugs to the United States, when you have Colombia and Mexico and all of these other places that are closer?”
The waters between Sucre and Trinidad
The Sucre peninsula, known for its paradisiacal beaches and green-thatched mountains, has always been poor. But its fortunes turned decidedly for the worse in recent years, as the economy melted down and the state slipped into lawlessness.
With few opportunities to work, fishermen turned to the smuggling route that has long tethered Sucre to Trinidad, a half-hour boat ride away.
The former senior Trinidadian police official has investigated the route since 1989. It has historically carried manykinds of contraband: guns, cigarettes, alcohol, honey, exotic animals and people. But in recent years, as more drugs poured into Venezuela, it began to be used as a route to bring over marijuana and cocaine.
“It’s 80 percent marijuana,” said one Trinidad criminologist who has studied seizure data. “Cocaine is a much, much smaller amount.”
While Tren de Aragua has had a presence in Sucre, locals and drug trafficking analysts say it doesn’t control the trade. The drugs are instead moved by other local gangs.
“We have found no links between Tren de Aragua and multinational smugglers,” said Jeremy McDermott, co-founder of Insight Crime, whose team recently visited the region. “There was an attempt by them to penetrate Sucre, but they were ejected by local gangs.”
“The evidence,” he added, “does not support the claims” by the Trump administration.
One man who grew up in San Juan de Unare along the Sucre coast, but moved to Caracas after his community plunged into poverty, said his cousin Reibys Gomez was among the first fishermen to take drugs to Trinidad. He said his cousin had a young family to support.
“People are in need,” he said. “They live off fishing and hunting, and that’s it.”
Now Reibys is dead, and the man said his family has “deteriorated” in San Juan de Unare – unable to collect his body and haunted by questions over why the U.S. military killed him.
“They were going to Trinidad,” he said. “They weren’t going to the United States.”
