America First? Trump Authorizes “Covert” CIA Action in Venezuela

President Donald Trump has secretly escalated his already hawkish policy toward Venezuela, reveals a new report from The New York Times.

On Wednesday, the Times reported—and the president seemed to confirm—that Trump has signed what’s called a “presidential finding,” or a classified directive authorizing covert action, against the regime of Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro.

This would allow the CIA to conduct “lethal operations in Venezuela” as well as “a range of operations in the Caribbean,” according to the Times. Covert action could be taken “either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation.” It’s unclear whether the CIA has specific operations planned in the country, or if the finding is simply to serve as a “contingency.”

After being asked at a press conference why he authorized the CIA to go into Venezuela, Trump told reporters that the country has sent drugs as well as “thousands of prisoners” and “people from mental institutions” into the United States. Referring to his administration’s recent lethal strikes on Venezuelan boats, which he has claimed were all trafficking narcotics, Trump vowed “to stop them by land also.”

Asked whether the CIA has the authority to “take out” Maduro, Trump refused to answer, saying it would be a “ridiculous question for me to answer”—though, he ominously added, “not really a ridiculous question” per se.

The Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture toward the Maduro regime, primarily under the guise of a war on drugs. This includes the legally dubious strikes on Venezuelan vessels, a military buildup in the Caribbean, the posting of a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, and a recent halt on diplomatic talks.

The U.S. has an extensive history of interventions and destabilization campaigns in Latin America, often via covert CIA operations. Despite having campaigned in 2024 on minimizing foreign entanglements, the new report shows that Trump is open to continuing this sordid tradition.

The first order of business in Fox News’s sit-down interview Wednesday with New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani: trying to goad the Muslim assemblyman into opining on the Middle East.

Rather than ask the mayoral frontrunner to explain his stances as they relate to the city he’s running to govern, host Martha MacCallum opted to grill Mamdani on a series of issues not related to Gracie Mansion whatsoever.

First, MacCallum wanted to know if Mamdani would give “credit” to Donald Trump for arranging a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, to which Mamdani responded it was “too early to do so.”

“But if it proves to be something that is lasting, something that is durable, then that’s where you give credit,” Mamdani said.

The next critical query: the mayoral candidate’s thoughts on Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack and the undelivered hostage remains.

“What is your response to what Hamas is doing now?” MacCallum asked.

“I think those are bodies and remains that should absolutely be returned,” Mamdani said. “And I have no issue with critiquing Hamas or the Israeli government, because my critiques all come from a place of universal human rights.”

Mamdani tried to squeeze details actually pertaining to New York City into this answer, acknowledging the city’s rampant affordability crisis. But MacCallum had no interest.

“Do you believe that Hamas should lay down their weapons and leave the leadership in Gaza?” she said, steamrolling past the detail.

“I believe that any future here in New York City is one that we have to make sure is affordable for all. And as it pertains to Israel and Palestine, that we have to ensure that there is peace, and that is the future we have to fight for,” Mamdani said.

“But you won’t say that Hamas should lay down their arms and give up leadership in Gaza?” MacCallum reiterated.

“I don’t really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety,” Mamdani laughed. “And that applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, it applies to anyone you could ask me about.”

Mamdani has taken the Big Apple by storm. After a tight Democratic primary (and stunning upset victory) this summer, the Ugandan-born New Yorker has gained citywide appeal. He is leading the mayoral race by double digits, garnering 46 percent support in the wake of Mayor Eric Adams’s withdrawal, according to a Quinnipiac poll published Thursday.

The 33-year-old has also caught the eye and ire of the White House. Trump has spent months openly browbeating Mamdani, accusing the local lawmaker of being in the country “illegally” while promising to arrest Mamdani if the mayoral hopeful follows through on defying ICE.

The president has also posed direct threats to the denizens of New York, claiming that he would leverage the power of the executive branch to choke funding from the country’s wealthiest metropolis unless it rejects Mamdani’s bid come election day next month.

Donald Trump has reportedly become consumed by his large-scale remodeling at the White House, wandering away from his presidential duties to survey renovations.  

The president has repeatedly derailed visits from foreign dignitaries to give lengthy tours of his new digs, Axios reported Wednesday. Following a joint press conference two weeks ago to tout his tenuous peace plan between Israel and Hamas, Trump led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a 40-minute walk-through of his latest renovations. And Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb was given a similar tour last week. 

Trump also interrupted a meeting with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month to show off his sound system being installed outside. 

In September, GOP lawmakers from Florida were trapped with the president for well over an hour as he showed off the new marble tiles he’d selected for the floors in the washroom of the Lincoln Bedroom—where DOGE czar Elon Musk once stayed at Trump’s behest. Trump led the lawmakers through the iconic Rose Garden, which he had partially paved over with stones, and asked them for their opinions. “He asked me to pick a tile,” one lawmaker told Axios.

One Trump adviser proudly admitted that the president raised exterior decorations with everyone who passed through his office. “He asks everyone for a vote on everything,” the adviser told Axios. “We vote. Anybody that walks through gets a vote. He cares so deeply about perfection that this is what he does.”

Trump’s changes have been extensive. First it was filling the Oval Office, which was refitted with ornate crown molding and gaudy golden decor, including a golden Trump crest above the door and golden cherub statues straight from Mar-a-Lago. The president also added a copy of the Declaration of Independence, though later revealed he had no idea what it said. 

Then it was the massive $200 million ballroom that looks like it will dwarf the White House; the demolished Rose Garden, where Trump will host MAGA elites; and the infamous autopen photograph Trump used to replace a portrait of former President Joe Biden. Now it seems the president has turned his attention to an “Arc de Trump” monument. 

One White House aide said the sweeping renovations were Trump’s “artistic outlet.”

“President [George W.] Bush liked to paint. Trump likes to build and design,” they said. 

While Trump explores his creative side, his White House has directed hundreds of federal workers to be fired amid an ongoing government shutdown with no end in sight. Meanwhile, federal forces are waging war on Democratic cities, and immigration authorities are scouring the land for undocumented immigrants to rip out of their communities. 

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its mass firing of federal workers during the government shutdown.

This Wednesday ruling comes on day 15 of the shutdown, as thousands of federal workers have already been fired and thousands more remain on edge. The district judge in San Francisco said the mass firings appear to be politically motivated.

“I am inclined to grant the plaintiff’s motion,” said Illston during a hearing on the matter. “The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning to assume that all bets are off—that the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like. And I find, I believe, that the plaintiffs will demonstrate, ultimately, that what’s being done here is both illegal, and is in excess of authority, and is arbitrary and capricious.”

The case was brought forth by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represent a combined 800,000 federal workers.

This story has been updated.

One day after Donald Trump celebrated a multibillion-dollar bailout for Argentina, his administration moved to double the ante.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the Treasury building Wednesday that the United States is “working on a $20 billion facility that would be adjacent” to the $20 billion credit swap line Trump already approved, totaling $40 billion in assistance for the economically fragile South American country.

“Many banks are interested in it, and many sovereign funds,” Bessent said. “It is a private-sector solution to Argentina’s upcoming debt payments.”

The aid is intended to salvage Argentina’s collapsing economy ahead of the country’s October 26 midterm elections. That vote will determine if Argentine President Javier Milei, one of Trump’s international allies, will maintain the ability to pursue his dramatic cost-cutting agenda.

But there’s another notable beneficiary of the Trump admin’s Argentina bailout package: major hedge funds led by Bessent’s friends. Several major investment funds, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco, stand to significantly gain from the aid transfer, as do several independent investors with ties to Bessent, The New York Times reported earlier this month.

Bessent described the exchange Wednesday as an “economic Monroe Doctrine,” referring to the 1823 policy that rejected European intervention and colonialism in the Western hemisphere.

“Much better to use the heft of the U.S. economic power rather than have to use military power,” Bessent continued, comparing the situation to the supposed “narco traffic coming out of Venezuela.”

But the White House’s planned Argentina bailout is remarkably hypocritical for an administration that has axed critical executive agencies under the auspice of slashing spending.

Stateside, the government is still shut down over how to fund Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included cuts of billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid—a shutdown that Bessent himself claimed Wednesday was costing America “$15 billion a day.”

And the U.S. will likely need a bailout of its own very soon. American soybean farmers have been pummeled by Trump’s tariff policies, which have ripped the Chinese market from their grasp. However, after it came to light that Argentina had replaced the U.S. as China’s top soybean supplier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the anticipated Argentina-bound cash infusion had morphed into a “credit swap line.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that harassment, assault, and stolen valor allegations against Republican Representative Cory Mills are not “serious” matters of discussion at a Wednesday press conference.

A Florida judge on Tuesday issued a restraining order against Mills, after his ex-girlfriend alleged that he had threatened to blackmail her using sexually explicit images of her and to commit violence against her future romantic partners.

Johnson bristled at reporters after being asked twice about the matter.

Responding to a question from NBC News’s Melanie Zanona, Johnson initially claimed to have “not heard or looked into the details of that.”

NOTUS’s Reese Gorman followed up, noting additional scandals—two out of a bevy of others—that Mills has faced, i.e., a different woman once accused him of assaulting her at his apartment, which she since recanted, and Mills, an Army veteran, has also been accused of stolen valor, including by military veterans who served alongside him.

“Are you concerned about these allegations?” Gorman asked. Johnson told him to ask Mills, whom he called “a faithful colleague,” before pleading ignorance of the allegations.

“Let’s talk about things that are really serious,” said the speaker, growing cross, before taking another question.

Federal agents arrested a Portland mother who was playing the “Ghostbusters” theme song on her clarinet at a protest outside an ICE facility.

Oriana Korol, 38, is a member of the Unpresidented Brass Band, which calls itself a “social action oriented, horn driven marching band,” and seeks to deescalate protest tensions. In a video of her arrest from Sunday, a federal agent can be seen violently dragging Korol to the ground, as two more agents come to his aid and her clarinet falls out of her hands.

She has been in Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Washington, since, and is still being held without bail.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running, and then a federal officer running after them. By the time I turned around, this person had been tackled to the ground, and there was an officer on top of them,” said Mike Thompson, Korol’s bandleader. “This was happening right at Oriana’s feet. And she was kind of, they were kind of pinned against a fence,” he said.

Korol’s husband didn’t know she’d been transported across state lines until 2 a.m. the next morning.

“It is a beautiful party atmosphere. Everybody’s really excited. Then the band hits into ‘Ghostbusters,’ and then at ‘Ghostbusters,’ that’s when ICE start storming in,” Korol’s husband told KOIN 6. “Why are they targeting a clarinet player? A clarinet player standing on the sidewalk far away from the street, following instructions.

“We’re not seeing her. We don’t know when we’re going to see her again,” he added, referring to himself and their 3-year-old child.

This arrest is yet another example of the excessive, indiscriminate, and in some instances unlawful actions that the federal agents who’ve flooded American cities in the past few months have taken. On Tuesday, federal agents in Chicago violated a freshly minted temporary restraining order banning them from tear-gassing civilians, also gassing local police officers in the process.

The Portland Mutual Aid Network has called for Korol’s release, urging supporters to call the Clark County Jail.

“Oriana Korol was peacefully protesting ICE on 10/12 and was illegally detained by ICE and DHS,” their statement reads. “She is the clarinet player for Unpresidented Brass Band, and was playing music for protestors. Protesting for immigrants is not a crime!”

Republicans are rushing to recast upcoming protests against President Donald Trump as anti-American rallies that are somehow prolonging the government shutdown.

During an interview on CNBC Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed the Democrats for a lack of movement on reopening the federal government, claiming that they were waiting to move until after the “No Kings Day” rally planned for October 18 opposing the administration’s authoritarian tilt.

“There’s a thought out there that they’re at least waiting to get this crazy ‘No Kings’ rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest-core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party which is, you know, a big title,” Bessent claimed.

“You know, no kings equal no paychecks,” he added.

During a propaganda press conference later Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the upcoming “No Kings Day” as a “Hate America rally.”

“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said. “I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists in full display. The people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic, and that’s what we’re here doing every single day.”

Other Republicans were quick to join Johnson, with Representatives Steve Scalise and Lisa McClain also referring to the protest as the “Hate America rally.”

Johnson started the trend of villainizing constitutionally protected protest last week when he inexplicably claimed that the “No Kings Day” demonstration was somehow to blame for the government shutdown. “It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base,” Johnson said of Democrats at the time.

For the past three weeks, GOP lawmakers have been phoning in that whole defending-the-Republic thing, ever since Johnson sent them home amid the ongoing government shutdown. It seems clear that it’s Republicans who have refused to negotiate with Democrats—not the other way around.

Crucially, Republicans are blatantly mischaracterizing the attendees of the nationwide “No Kings” rally, in an attempt to criminalize dissent against Trump. These protests, which have been recurring since the beginning of the second Trump administration, have been notably tame, reportedly populated by older, liberal white people who love America but hate Trump’s policies. The temperate collective action would likely not be left enough for anyone who was ostensibly anti-fascist. Republicans’ outlandish predictions for who is likely to attend are simply setting the stage for law enforcement crackdowns on protesters’ First Amendment rights.

The speaker’s suggestion that protesting the government is un-American is particularly disturbing, as it is not only a historically American activity, but also a foundational right supported by the U.S. Constitution—a right that Republicans such as Johnson seem to care about less and less everyday.

The largest political advertisement spender of the year is: you, the U.S. taxpayer.

While the rest of the Trump administration hatchets away at the federal budget, the Department of Homeland Security has gone on a spending spree to heap praise on Donald Trump. The agency has so far spent at least $51 million in 2025 on a sprawling ad campaign warning undocumented immigrants to either exit the country or be “hunted down.”

Fox News bought the bulk of the ad spots, airing $9 million worth of content, Axios reported Wednesday. America’s morning shows saw the most program-specific spending, with Today, CBS Morning, and Good Morning America leading the pack.

Over the course of the last month, viewers of three programs consumed the most DHS advertising: the Mexican soccer league (Fútbol: Liga MX), Fox’s The Five, and Univision’s Despierta America.

But the campaign has also had a digital arm targeting social media users. The ads have specifically targeted Spanish speakers and users who like Mexican pop music, Latin music, the Mexican Grand Prix, Latin cuisine, and the Mexican national soccer team, according to Meta ad library data obtained by Axios.

Almost all the adverts feature DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Directly facing the camera, Noem suggests that undocumented immigrants are “violent criminals” flooding American cities with drugs, and accuses the Biden administration of taking a weak stance on border crossings. (Joe Biden increased border enforcement across the board and arrested an “unprecedented” number of immigrants that crossed illegally, according to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.)

One detail is consistent across all the DHS adspots: unmitigated applause for the current president’s agenda.

“Strong borders mean a stronger America. President Trump is making America safe again,” Noem says at the end of one advert.

Compare that to DHS’s last ad campaign under the Biden administration: a series of billboards in Texas that read a person “in immigration custody has rights.” That campaign cost $150,000, and did not feature President Joe Biden or former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In a now infamous September raid on a 130-unit apartment building in Chicago, hundreds of agents reportedly rappelled in from helicopters, kicked in doors, ransacked rooms, deployed flashbangs, and zip-tied people—immigrants and native Chicagoans, adults and children—in the middle of the night.

Amid growing criticism of this heavy-handed blitz, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller defended the operation, calling it a “brilliantly executed raid against a Tren de Aragua complex filled with TdA terrorists.” (Tren de Aragua, or TdA, is a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration, with characteristic alarmism, claims has “invaded the United States.”)

So, how many members of the Venezuelan gang did they catch in the controversial September raid? DHS says that, of the 37 individuals arrested that night, agents got ahold of “just one ‘verified’ Tren de Aragua member,” MSNBC reported this week.

It was previously reported that two of the 37 arrested were members of TdA, but even that disappointing figure was evidently overstating it. Further, DHS has yet to provide proof of the alleged gang member’s connection to TdA—a point worth noting, since the Trump administration has faced criticism for advancing weak claims of immigrants’ gang membership in service of its mass deportation campaign.

This new finding lends itself to the conclusions Illinois Governor JB Pritzker shared in his recent conversation with TNR’s Greg Sargent about the raid: “If this was Pinochet’s Chile, if this was Argentina under authoritarian rule, maybe you’d call it successful,” he said, adding later, “Whenever the [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [Customs and Border Protection] agents say something, they put out a release or, you know, you’ve got Stephen Miller talking about it, they are lying.”