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Latest on the Trump administration: President to address nation amid Venezuela tensions and health care battle
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Trump’s blockade could lead to regime change in Venezuela – analyst says
00:48 • Source: CNN
Trump’s blockade could lead to regime change in Venezuela – analyst says
00:48
• Presidential address: President Donald Trump will deliver remarks to the nation at 9 p.m. ET. The White House said his speech will highlight the administration’s actions during the past year and tease priorities for 2026.
• Venezuela latest: Trump yesterday said he was ordering a complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers coming to and leaving Venezuela. He also demanded oil, land and assets from the country that he claimed it had “stole” from the US.
• Health care vote: House Republicans have approved a narrow package designed to lower health care costs for some Americans in the coming years – marking a win for leadership even as some of their own members complain it falls woefully short of tackling rising prices in 2026.
• Changes at FBI: Meanwhile, Deputy FBI director Dan Bongino is stepping down soon from the job after eight months marked by clashes with his boss, Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
House Speaker Mike Johnson defended his handling of wrangling his caucus on health care and reiterated the defections were not a weakening of his leadership and said any vote on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies would not happen until January.
In response to a question from CNN about Republicans who thought he mishandled the situation, Johnson said he didn’t see how he could have handled it “any better”
“Well, I think two of them said as much. But I think if you talk to everybody across the conference, they’ll say, I’m not sure how it could have been handled any differently or any better,” he said.
Johnson said of the defections of swing-district Republicans who joined Democrats to force a vote on ACA subsidies, “There’s no ill will here. There’s not, this is not a challenge to the Speaker’s leadership. It’s a it’s they’re using the rules. Here’s the reality, everybody, we have a small majority. We have a razor thin majority,” he said.
Johnson said a vote on ACA subsidies would not happen until after the House returns in January and maintained it was “not good policy” when asked if he was okay with letting the subsidies expire in the meantime.
“They had number of signatures on a discharge petition for the subsidies, which is not good policy, as I’ve just explained, but it’s inevitable that it comes the floor for consideration,” he said.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said today that Donald Trump revealed his true motives toward the South American country with his claim that it had stolen US “oil, land and other assets.”
Maduro said Trump’s claim showed the US was really seeking regime change along with ownership of Venezuela’s territory and resources. Previously, the US has characterized its build-up of naval forces near the country as aimed at combating drug-trafficking.
On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the military buildup around Venezuela would get bigger until the country returned to the US “the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”
Trump told reporters today that Venezuela had illegally taken away “energy rights” and that the US wanted them back. “We’re getting land, oil rights, whatever we had. They took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching. But they’re not going to do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out and we want it back.”
Venezuela brought its oil sector under state control in the 1970s. Previously, American companies had a much larger presence in its oil fields.
After over eight hours, former special counsel Jack Smith’s deposition with the House Judiciary Committee is over.
Smith did not answer questions, but his lawyer made a brief statement at the pool camera defending Smith’s testimony and work. Smith departed around 6:48 pm ET.
Remember: Smith defended his criminal investigation into President Donald Trump in the closed-door deposition as he faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers.
President Donald Trump says he wants TV networks like NBC to pay “significant amounts of money” for licenses, which would be a radical change to the beleaguered broadcast business.
Networks “should be properly licensed,” Trump said on Truth Social, while railing against a recent episode of NBC’s “Meet the Press” because he didn’t like one of the guests, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Radio and TV stations are already licensed by the FCC, and in exchange for free use of the public spectrum, they are required to operate in the “public interest.”
Licenses are renewed every 8 years and are virtually never revoked. But Trump has talked frequently about wanting to punish stations and networks that he perceives as adversaries. Press freedom advocates, in turn, have worried that his threats could have a chilling effect.
It would take an act of Congress to overhaul the licensing process the way Trump says he wants.
Trump’s comments came on the same day that his close ally Brendan Carr, whom Trump tapped to chair the FCC, said in a Senate hearing that the agency is not independent, “formally speaking.”
Democrats denounced Carr as a government censor, citing his threats toward ABC about Jimmy Kimmel last September, among other examples.
“You are weaponizing the public interest standard,” Sen. Ed Markey said.
Carr defended his actions and said, “Any broadcaster that complies with the public interest standard is not in any risk at all.”
The House on Wednesday voted to pass a bill that could imprison health care providers for performing gender-affirming care for minors.
The bill — titled the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” and sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia – would make it a class c felony to treat minors with gender-affirming care like surgeries and puberty blockers. The bill could imprison doctors who provide such care for up to ten years.
It’s unclear whether the GOP-led Senate will take up the measure. The House vote was 216-211.
Rep. Greene said last week she secured floor consideration of her bill as part of a deal with leaders who wanted her to drop her opposition to advancing a critical defense policy bill.
We’re expecting to hear from President Donald Trump tonight from the White House.
Before we do, here’s a look at political stories across CNN to get you all up to speed:
- When an attacker killed two US service members and a civilian interpreter in Syria over the weekend, Trump vowed “very serious” retribution against those responsible, and officials were quick to describe the assailant as a “lone gunman” who was a member of ISIS. But since then, Trump is facing a complicated ally and echoes of Afghanistan. Get into the details.
- Among the most important shifts in Trump 2.0 is a multipronged effort by the administration to equate its war on drugs with the war on terror. Read analysis about it here.
- We had analysis looking into what the president can learn from Vice President JD Vance ahead of his national address tonight. Read it here.
- Voters are mad about utility bills and Republicans are blaming some lawmakers in their own party. Learn more.
- Today former special counsel Jack Smith defended his criminal investigation into Trump in a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee. Read about it.
- Trump has reached a new low for his second term in virtually every poll in a series of recent approval ratings. Get the details.
- Trump promised voters in 2024 that if they returned him to the White House, his policies would deliver a blue-collar jobs boom. But jobs report statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released this week show that the opposite is happening. Find out more.
- White House chief of staff Susie Wiles shared blunt assessments of her colleagues with Vanity Fair over the past year. In return, they showered her with praise. Get the latest here.
- Read analysis on what some close-up photos of the Trump administration in the Vanity Fair report really say.
- A federal appeals court is letting Trump continue his deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital. Read more.
- A trailer for a documentary on First Lady Melania Trump teases an inside look at her return to the White House. See more.
- The White House has installed plaques along Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame,” offering descriptions of his predecessors, often written in the style of his social media posts — including insults, baseless claims and random capitalization. Get the details.
- Deputy FBI director Dan Bongino is stepping down soon from the job after eight months marked by clashes with his boss, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and fighting off the conspiracies he once fueled. Read about it here.
- House Republicans approved a narrow package designed to lower health care costs for some Americans in the coming years – marking a win for leadership even as some of their own members complain it falls woefully short of tackling rising prices in 2026. Learn more.
President Donald Trump announced that he will deliver a live address from the White House tonight. CNN’s Kristen Holmes explains what that could entail.
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Trump to address nation from White House tonight
President Donald Trump announced that he will deliver a live address from the White House tonight. CNN’s Kristen Holmes explains what that could entail.
01:35 • Source: CNN
Trump to address nation from White House tonight
01:35
House Republicans have approved a narrow package designed to lower health care costs for some Americans in the coming years – marking a win for leadership even as some of their own members complain it falls woefully short of tackling rising prices in 2026.
The House voted 216-211 to send the measure to the Senate, which is not expected to vote on it before lawmakers leave town for the holiday recess.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his team were aggressive in pushing their health care plan to the floor this week, vowing it will be the first step of a major GOP agenda on lowering costs next year.
They are specifically ignoring, however, the issue of the expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies that were passed during the pandemic to help people afford premium costs. Those tax credits will expire at the end of the month, spiking premiums for tens of millions of Americans next year.
The House on Wednesday rejected a pair of resolutions challenging the Trump administration’s military actions in the Caribbean Sea and targeting Venezuela.
One resolution by Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs committee, sought to direct the president to remove armed forces from “hostilities with presidentially designated terrorist organizations in the Western Hemisphere” absent a declaration of war or congressional authorization. It failed on a 210-216 vote, despite backing from two Republicans and most Democrats.
The other resolution, from Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, would direct the removal of US armed forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela, also absent a declaration of war or congressional sign-off. The House also defeated this measure on a mostly party-line 211-213 vote. Three Republicans broke ranks to vote in favor of the resolution, while one Democrat opposed it.
The resolutions would have required approval from the Senate to go into force.
Some Republican senators expressed optimism the House discharge petition will build momentum for a bipartisan compromise to address expiring Obamacare subsidies.
“I mean, hopefully it would be the basis for bipartisan negotiations to actually get somewhere on premiums. I think we’ve got to do something on that issue,” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, one of four GOP senators who voted to advance a Senate Democratic plan extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years.
Still, Hawley admitted he said that a straight extension likely wouldn’t fly in the Senate, even if it passed in the House.
“The three year extension would need some work before it could pass here,” he told reporters.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who also sided with Democrats on the procedural vote for the three year extension, said the successful discharge petition is “keeping momentum going” toward a bipartisan solution.
“What we’re trying to do is put together a bipartisan bill that would have reforms plus a two-year extension,” said Collins, who has introduced a two-year extension proposal with GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno. “That is the best approach, in my opinion, and we’re making good progress.”
“If we did have a bipartisan plan, I think there’d be interest at the White House to try to get a solution,” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, noting it would “probably be early next year before we can iron it out.”
The South Carolina senator argued Republicans and Democrats alike have “some political liability” around the expiring Obamacare subsidies.
President Donald Trump‘s threat last night of a blockade of sanctioned vessels will likely impact the Venezuelan government’s revenue, but it is not clear that it would be enough to drive Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro from power, experts told CNN.
Francisco Monaldi, the director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University, said that the administration could begin to sanction more vessels to increase the impact of the “blockade.”
However, he noted that the US seizure of an oil tanker last week has already had a deterrent effect on vessels in and out of the region.
That deterrent effect is likely to increase, especially if the threat is interpreted as a full blockade.
Venezuela is likely to face a “a significant devaluation of the domestic currency,” if its oil exports drop, “which will reduce the real income of Venezuelans relatively quickly, but also the government revenues will decline very significantly,” he told CNN.
According to Clayton Seigle, an energy security expert at CSIS, “only a small subset of Venezuela’s oil exports will be at risk” if the threat truly only applies to currently sanctioned vessels.
That means it would have an “outsized effect” on Venezuela, but a “muted” impact on global oil markets and prices, he told CNN.
Seigle said the impact on revenue “is likely to add to pressure to force him out and to either make some type of compromise deal and or simply flee the scene, because if the oil revenues do dry up, he will have a very hard time staying in power.”
House GOP leaders are preparing to send members home for the holidays on Thursday afternoon without voting to address the Obamacare enhanced subsidies cliff that will hit millions of Americans on January 1, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The House plans to leave Washington one day early, as long as Republicans successfully pass measures on health care and permitting before then.
The decision to leave without addressing the subsidies cliff will infuriate a small group of House GOP centrists who have been pleading with Speaker Mike Johnson to put a measure extending those subsidies on the floor. In an act of defiance on Wednesday, four centrist Republicans agreed to back a Democratic push to extend the subsidies, guaranteeing a vote on that party’s bill in early January.
Johnson has no plans to bring up that bill early, or call up a separate centrist compromise, before the House leaves, those people said.
President Donald Trump told reporters Susie Wiles will remain his White House chief of staff, after Vanity Fair quoted her blunt assessments about him and several members of the Cabinet.
“Yeah, she’s doing a great job,” Trump said, indicating he is unfazed by the coverage.
Trump hadn’t previously spoken on camera about the Vanity Fair articles, but he told the New York Post in a phone interview Tuesday that he didn’t take offense to Wiles saying that he has “an alcoholic’s personality.”
“I have said that many times about myself,” he said. “I do. It’s a very possessive personality.”
Members of the Cabinet fervently defended Wiles after the two articles published and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the reporter of a “bias of omission.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday told reporters he thinks Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino wants to go back to his podcast amid a report that he plans to leave the administration.
“Oh, Dan, Dan did a great job, uh, I think he wants to go back to his show,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter at Joint Base Andrews.
MS Now reported on Wednesday that Bongino has quietly told colleagues he planned to leave the bureau early next year.
CNN reported over the summer that Bongino told people he was considering resigning after a falling out with Attorney General Pam Bondi surrounding the Epstein files.
Asked if he still has confidence in FBI Director Kash Patel, Trump said, “Yeah, I do.”
Inside the White House and FBI, it has long been believed that Bongino would depart after a year. He has complained both publicly and privately about the tedious nature of the job and the toll took it took on his personal life.
Some FBI officials believed Bongino would depart the agency after the arrest of a suspect in the 2021 pipe bomb case earlier this month. Bongino took a leading role in the case, which he was fixated on before joining the agency, dedicating many of his shows to conspiracy theories that claimed the planting of pipe bombs near Republicans and Democratic party headquarters on the eve of January 6, 2021, was an inside job.
But in the days after the charges were brought, Bongino told officials he had not made up his mind and might stay through the start of the new year.
US military commanders told members of Congress during a classified briefing today that it would be possible to release the full video of the controversial September 2 strike on an alleged drug boat, according to Rep. Jason Crow, a Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee.
The answer appears to contradict Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s argument that releasing the video would compromise sources and methods.
Crow’s told CNN that lawmakers pressed US military briefers, including Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who led Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike, on whether there was any reason they could not release the full video of the controversial September 2 strike on an alleged drug boat — and were told “no.”
A second source familiar with the classified briefing also confirmed that Bradley and other US military officials made clear that they could prepare the full video for public release.
The second source told CNN that Bradley seemed to suggest he would want the overall context of the strike to be clear, beyond just what’s in the video but releasing the footage is not a problem in and of itself.
Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday the Pentagon would not be releasing the full video of the September 2 attack, which included a follow-up strike that killed two crew members who survived an initial strike.
CNN has asked the Pentagon for comment.
President Donald Trump today attended at Dover Air Force Base the dignified transfer for two US service members killed in Syria over the weekend.
Trump stood next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and saluted as the transfer cases were carried from the C-17 aircraft to the vans. Sgt. William Howard of Iowa was transferred first, followed by Edgar Torres Tovar of Iowa and Ayad Mansoor Sakat of Michigan.
The Air Force Mortuary Affairs website writes that a dignified transfer is “not a ceremony; rather, it is a solemn movement of the transfer case by a carry team composed of military personnel from the fallen member’s respective service. A dignified transfer is conducted for every U.S. military member who dies in the theater of operation while in the service of their country.”
Other attendees included Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, as well as Delaware Sen. Chris Coons.
President Donald Trump’s job approval rating standing at an average of 39% among US adults in CNN’s Poll of Polls average, with 58% disapproving.
Here’s a look at the polls this includes:
• NPR/PBS News/Marist survey released today: Trump’s overall approval rating stands at 38% among US adults. He gets a 36% approval rating on the economy, with a 61% majority of Americans saying that the economy is not working well for them personally and 70% describing the cost of living in their area as unaffordable for the average family.
• Quinnipiac University poll released today: Trump’s approval rating stands at 40% among registered voters, both overall and for his handling of the economy. Most registered voters, 57%, say Trump is more responsible for the state of the economy, which a 65% majority describe as not so good or poor. Just 30% see the economy as getting better, with the rest saying it’s worsening or staying about the same.
• NBC/Survey Monkey poll released over the weekend: The Democratic Party gained an advantage over the GOP, 53% to 47%, on trust to “handle the rising price of everyday things.” Quinnipiac’s poll, by contrast, finds that registered voters narrowly trust the Republicans over the Democrats, 46% to 41%, on the economy.
The details: The NPR/PBS News/Marist poll surveyed 1,440 US adults on December 8-11, using a combination of live telephone calls, text messages and online panels to reach respondents. Results among the full sample of US adults have a margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points. The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,035 registered voters on December 11-15, using live telephone interviews. Results among the full sample of registered voters have a margin of error of +/-3.9 percentage points.
House and Senate moderate Republicans warned GOP leaders to move on a bill to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies or risk sharp blowback at the polls next year.
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski told CNN she has been warning her party for more than a year to act on the issue — and said that the GOP would own skyrocketing health care premiums if the expiring subsidies are not extended.
She said that “there’s no family that I’m talking to in Alaska that can afford a tripling of the rates that they pay.”
“When people feel that they have counted on or waited for their Congress to act on issue that they feel is a huge priority, and they see no action, there’s, there’s consequence to that,” Murkowski said. The Alaska Republican said she told her colleagues last year: ‘We’re going to have to address this. And as the party in charge, we’ve got a responsibility to figure it out.’
Murkowski added: “I do think that there are ramifications if we fail to act on this. But it’s not the political, it’s not the political implications. It’s… you talk to these people, they’re sending me texts, that are sending me letters, that are sharing with me what they and their family are going to be facing in terms of increased costs.”
GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who led the charge in signing onto a Democrat-led petition to force a vote on extending ACA credits after Republican leadership failed to reach an agreement to vote on the issue, told CNN that Speaker Mike Johnson is “out of step” with his swing district constituents.
“We did what was in the interest of my bosses back home, it wasn’t a lack of communication or communication breakdown, as I’ve seen reported, we’ve talked about this ad nauseam, we just had a difference of opinion,” he said, adding, “we keep getting this number thrown at us, that it’s only 7% of the population. But for that 7%, this is everything. I know, some of those 7%.”
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis gave credit to the four House Republicans who signed onto a Democratic-led discharge petition to extend expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies, saying the move leaves the door open to finding a compromise.
Tillis said the three-year clean extension of the Obamacare subsidies would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate but noted the bill would give senators a “vehicle” to make changes, including addressing fraud issues.
“I don’t think I would vote for it,” Tillis said of the three-year extension. “I do believe it’s encouraging to know that we may still have a bite at the apple.”
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, one of four Republicans to vote to advance Senate Democrats’ proposal for a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies last week, said it’s unclear how Senate Majority Leader John Thune would handle the bill.
Asked if House passage of the measure could change the thinking in the Senate GOP conference, Hawley said, “Yeah, I mean then the Senate becomes the roadblock.”
The White House has installed plaques along President Donald Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame,” offering descriptions of his predecessors, often written in the style of his social media posts — including insults, baseless claims and random capitalization.
A plaque at the front of the exhibit, which lines the walkway outside the West Wing of the White House, says it was “conceived, built, and dedicated” by Trump “as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad and somewhere in the middle, who served our Country, and gave up so much in so doing.”
Trump’s own plaque touts his 2024 victory, saying he overcame the “unprecedented Weaponization of Law Enforcement against him, as well as two assassination attempts.” And it declares that Trump, who’s been in office for 11 months, has “delivered” on his Inauguration Day promise to usher in the “Golden Age of America,” pointing to his claims of wars ended, borders secured and alleged gang members deported.
The plaque for former President Joe Biden, whose portrait is represented by a photo of an autopen, leans on familiar Trump grievances. “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction,” part of the plaque reads. “But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”
Other presidents receive similarly politicized descriptions, such as former President Barack Obama.
“Barack Hussein Obama was the first Black President, a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History,” the plaque reads. It dings him for passing what Trump calls “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act” and signing “the one-sided Paris Climate Accords.”
Former President Bill Clinton’s plaque notes policy achievements, but also points out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Trump. “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”
“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement when asked for more information about who’s paying for them.
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