Tulsi Gabbard Had No Clue What Trump Was Doing in Venezuela

Did President Donald Trump actually cut Tulsi Gabbard out of the White House’s preparations to invade Venezuela?

Starting last summer, the White House began excluding Trump’s director of national intelligence from the government’s plans to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Vice President JD Vance denied the reporting later that day.

A few White House aides even joked that Gabbard’s title as “DNI” stood for “Do Not Invite,” three people told Bloomberg. A White House spokesperson denied that the director was actually a punchline.

In the days preceding the large-scale operation, Gabbard posted from Hawaii, hundreds of miles away from Trump’s makeshift situation room at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote in a post on X, as the president prepared to invade.

Gabbard was reportedly kept in the dark because in the past, she had repeatedly expressed her strong disapproval of American intervention—specifically in Venezuela.

In January 2019, she wrote on X that the United States “needs to stay out of Venezuela.” A few weeks later, she wrote that the U.S. “needs to stop using our military for regime change & stop intervening in Venezuela’s military.”

She voiced her criticism again a few months after that. “Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s dictator/government, the outcome has been disastrous,” she wrote. “Civil war/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security.”

Days after the Venezuela operation, Gabbard finally posted a brief statement on X.

“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. “Kudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump’s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve.”

The Trump administration is sticking with ICE.

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday vehemently defended a federal agent’s decision to kill Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, shifting blame to practically every entity beyond the ICE agent that held the gun—including Good herself.

During a hostile White House press conference, Vance claimed that Good had been “brainwashed” by left-wing politics, and argued that the 37-year-old mother was to blame for her own death.

“There’s a part of me that feels very, very sad for this woman. Not just because she lost her life but because I think that she is a victim of left-wing ideology,” Vance said.

“What young mother shows up and decides they are going to throw their car in front of ICE officers that are enforcing legitimate law? You have to be brainwashed to get to that point to where you’re willing—not just to protest, that’s fine—but throw your vehicle in front of law enforcement officers,” he continued, adding that he believed “to get to that point you have to be radicalized in a very, very sad way.”

Yet administration officials—and fans of the president’s violent immigration agenda—seem to be the only ones who interpreted video footage of the attack that way.

Video evidence of the incident suggested Good was letting other vehicles pass her on the road before she pulled out, in an attempt to comply with ICE’s orders, but was momentarily halted when the masked agents approached her window.

As she began to move her vehicle away from the agents, an officer standing in front of the red Honda Pilot sidestepped the car, moving toward her open driver-side window before he pulled the trigger multiple times, video recording illustrates.

The officer then extended his arm and chased after the vehicle, signaling that he was not injured. Her SUV then accelerated down the road, seemingly uncontrolled, before smashing into several parked vehicles.

The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported Thursday that the attacking ICE agent is named Jonathan Ross.

Agents then prevented her petrified neighbors from assisting her, one of whom identified themselves as a physician.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting told MPR News that Good posed “no threat” to the agents.

But Vance insisted on excoriating reporters who verbally described the attack the way it was depicted.

“You still believe that she deliberately tried to ram him despite this video?” prompted one incredulous reporter.

“We’re not going to get the chance to ask this woman what was going on,” Vance replied. “But she accelerated in a way where she rammed into the guy.

“Everybody that is repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis, when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he added.

JD Vance had a complete meltdown Thursday over the media’s coverage of an ICE shooting in Minneapolis that left a U.S. citizen dead.

At a White House press briefing, Vance’s remarks went off the rails while he lectured the press about not writing headlines the way he wants them to.

“‘Outrage After ICE Officer Kills US Citizen in Minneapolis,’” Vance said, reading a headline from CNN. “Well, that’s one way to put it—and that is the way that many people in the corporate media have put this attack in the last 24 hours. And I say attack very, very intentionally.”

“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day,” Vance said, before launching into an outrageous rant about a very neutral headline.

“What that headline leaves out is the fact that that very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 34 stitches in his leg, so you think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?” Vance vented.

“What that headline leaves out is that that woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation in the United States of America,” he continued. “What that headline leaves out is that that woman is part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault, and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”

Setting aside Vance’s absurd suggestion that any officer hurt in the line of duty has a free pass to shoot dead civilians if they get scared, the vice president left out that there is no actual evidence to support any of his claims.

There is no evidence to suggest that Renee Good was attempting to impede law enforcement, and there is no evidence that she was connected to a “left-wing network” of activists. In fact, Good’s ex-husband told reporters that she was not an activist, but a mom who had just dropped her child off at school.

Footage of the incident showed Good, who was blocking traffic, wave at the agents and urge them to “go around” her vehicle. Instead, the ICE agents swarmed her vehicle, pulling on the doors and demanding she “get out of the fucking car!” One witness even said that another officer ordered her to leave. When Good attempted to drive away from the group of officers, one officer standing in front of the vehicle shot her in the head at least three times.

But even if everything Vance was saying was true—and multiple videos indicate it’s not—that would not mean that Good should be killed. The penalty for not complying with ICE cannot be death.

“If the media wants to tell the truth, they ought to tell the truth,” Vance raged Thursday. It seems that what he really meant was, “If the media wants to tell the truth, they ought to say what I want to hear.”

Kash Pate’s FBI is restricting Minnesota investigators from accessing evidence related to ICE’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday in Minneapolis. 

While the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was originally set to investigate Good’s killing, the FBI’s refusal to cooperate has forced them to withdraw from the process entirely. And that lack of FBI cooperation is likely intended to obstruct what seems grimly apparent: that Good was brutally shot and killed in her own neighborhood for virtually nothing. 

“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands. As a result, the BCA has reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation,” the BCA said. “BCA Force Investigations Unit was designed to ensure consistency, accountability and public confidence, none of which can be achieved without full cooperation and jurisdictional clarity.”  

Minnesota and Minneapolis officials have condemned the decision. “We have learned that the Trump administration has now denied the state that ability to participate in the investigation. And I want to make this as clear as possible to everyone: Minnesota must be part of this investigation,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said. 

The FBI will now have full control over the investigation. 

The White House is floating a novel scheme in its quest to annex Greenland: outright bribery.

U.S. officials are reportedly mulling over the possibility of paying Greenlanders up to $100,000 each in order to acquire the Arctic outpost, according to four insiders that spoke with Reuters Thursday. White House aides were involved in the discussions, which proposed individual payments between $10,000 to $100,000 per islander.

Roughly 57,000 people reside in Greenland, a self-governing territory within the kingdom of Denmark. Local leaders have repeatedly stated their disinterest in joining the 50 states, going so far as completely reshuffling their Parliament in March to prioritize opposing the U.S. after a landslide election win for the island’s pro-independence movement.

If Greenlanders somehow changed their mind after months of intimidation and militaristic threats by the White House, then the payment plan could cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $5.7 billion.

What exactly the White House stands to gain from controlling Greenland isn’t clear, particularly because myriad existing treaties already give the U.S. unfettered access to Greenland as a military base.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump has been fixated on the idea since at least 2019, when he told reporters that the arrangement could be handled as a “large real estate deal.”

In recent weeks, the president’s threats have escalated in fervor and frequency. In an interview with The Atlantic published Sunday—just a day after he ordered U.S. forces to bomb Venezuela, raid Caracas, and abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro—Trump said: “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.”

Even White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt couldn’t muster a logical explanation for the president’s Greenland obsession during a press conference Wednesday, vaguely suggesting that the acquisition would be beneficial for national security purposes, citing China and Russia. She did not provide any specific details as to how the U.S. would be able to make better use of the island beyond its current treaty arrangement.

Minneapolis Public Schools have canceled all classes for the rest of the week after a horrifying Border Patrol raid at a local high school, following a fatal ICE shooting of an unarmed woman.

Border Patrol agents pepper-sprayed, tackled, and handcuffed people on the grounds of Minneapolis’s Roosevelt High School on Wednesday—just hours after ICE officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.

“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official told MPR News. “They don’t care. They’re just animals … I’ve never seen people behave like this.”

MPR News reports that even high schoolers were caught in the crossfire of the ICE raid, although most gathered in the library for safety.

Roosevelt Principal Christian Ledesma told parents that he “instituted a lockout due to law enforcement presence outside of our school involving a vehicle that stopped near our building” after dismissal, and that teachers and students “witnessed law enforcement engage with people at Roosevelt.”

“I think school property should be off-limits. I think our kids need to feel safe at school,” said Kate Winkel, who lives near the school and witnessed Border Patrol snatch a person into their vehicle. “The federal government doesn’t need to attack schools.”

This comes as federal agents escalate their aggression against Minnesotans protesting Good’s death.

At least one airline has decided to stop flying for ICE.

Avelo Airlines, the primary commercial air fleet that has carried out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, canceled its contract with the federal government on Tuesday. In an email to employees, CEO Andrew Levy said that Avelo’s arrangement with the government had only offered “short-term benefits” at a cost to the company’s long-term reputation.

“We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy,” Levy wrote in the email, obtained by CNBC. “The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”

Protests took place across the country at Avelo’s commercial bases when the company signed on to work with ICE back in May.

In an attempt to salvage its business, Avelo said in its new announcement it would no longer work with the agency and would close its base outside Phoenix on January 27. But significant damage must have already been done to the company’s financials, as it announced it would additionally shutter Avelo bases at North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham and Wilmington airports, slashing jobs and canceling commercial flights in the process.

“With the closure of the Mesa base, government flying has concluded. For the record, there was never a contract with DHS, ICE or the federal government,” company spokesperson Courtney Goff told NBC Connecticut.

But ICE still has several other companies it can turn to to unceremoniously ship people out of the country, such as CSI Aviation, a charter service that subcontracts flights from GlobalX and Eastern Air Express. The Department of Homeland Security awarded CSI more than $673 million for the 2026 fiscal year.

Did President Donald Trump even watch a video of the ICE shooting in Minnesota before he started spreading lies about the victim?

Speaking to a group of New York Times reporters Wednesday, Trump claimed that Renee Good, a driver who was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent, “didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over.” 

To make his point, Trump trotted out a video he’d already shared to Truth Social earlier that day. The video, taken from a distance, was slowed down to isolate the sound of three gunshots, audible above a witness screaming, “No!” 

The video, however, did not appear to show a federal officer being run over or injured in any way. But in his post, Trump had inexplicably claimed that it was “hard to believe [the officer] is alive” after the incident.

The reporters quickly pointed out that Trump’s cherry-picked video didn’t even support his own fictitious claims. 

“Well,” Trump stammered. “I—the way I look at it …” It seems he could not summon an explanation as he watched the footage he’d boosted to millions of people.  

“It’s a terrible scene,” he said at the end of the video. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”

Trump’s reaction “suggests that no one had shown the video to Trump before he posted about the shooting,” Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote in a post on X Thursday.

The video Trump posted, which went on to be shared by other prominent right-wing figures, did not include footage of moments before the shooting when Good, who was blocking traffic, waved the agents by and urged them to “go around!” 

Instead of pulling around, the ICE agents swarmed her vehicle, pulling on the doors, and demanding she “get out of the fucking car!” One witness even said that another officer ordered her to leave. When she attempted to drive away from the group of officers, the officer standing in front of the vehicle shot her in the head at least three times. 

Trump’s video also did not include footage of ICE agents dismissing a man who identified himself as a physician and asked to check Good’s pulse as she sat motionless in her crashed vehicle. 

After an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good just yards from her home in Minneapolis on Wednesday, federal agents are now upping their aggression against the Minnesotans protesting her painfully unjust death.

CNN has reported that federal agents are using pepper balls and a “gas-like substance” against protesters outside of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. People can be seen on video fleeing from a large cloud of gas as CNN’s Ryan Young said officers “deployed the substance.” One man could be seen on his hands and knees, overcome by the effects of the gas.

President Trump has falsely claimed that Good was trying to hurt the ICE agents on Wednesday. “She behaved horribly,” he said. “And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over.”

But after being shown the video, even he had to admit that it was a “terrible scene.” Nevertheless, federal agents have only cracked down harder on people as they protest the government-supported killing of their neighbor.

Federal Medicaid subsidies could be at risk for millions living in Minnesota, thanks to the executive branch’s latest attempt to punish state residents for a fraud scheme that was caught and handled years ago.

Speaking with Fox Business Wednesday, Mehmet Oz—the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—claimed that billions of dollars for the public health care system was in jeopardy, in Minnesota and elsewhere.

“Well, sticking to the narrative that it’s cold in Minnesota, this is the tip of the iceberg,” Oz said.

The Department of Health and Human Services paused $185 million in aid to Minnesota after right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley alleged there was a sprawling fraud scheme taking federal funds from Minnesota-based day care facilities.

As evidence, he visited a slew of day care centers, arguing that closed sites were fraudulently accepting funding. It would later emerge that elements of Shirley’s report were incorrect or inadequately reported: At least two of the centers featured in his video had been closed for several years, Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families told NewsNation late last month.

More than a dozen schemes have popped up in Minnesota’s safety net programs in recent years, many of them involving members of the state’s Somali population. But they haven’t gone unchecked: More than 90 Minnesotans were charged in federal fraud investigations that began under the Biden administration, at least 60 of which have resulted in convictions.

Yet, apparently incensed by Shirley’s report, the White House ushered a scourge of ICE agents to descend upon the city—though their presence has only caused more problems.

On Wednesday, an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed a 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, just a few blocks from her home. Video footage of the attack suggested Good was attempting to comply with the masked agents’ orders to drive away, but one member of the deportation agency opted to shoot her several times in the face, instead.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting told MPR News that Good posed “no threat” to the agents.

Donald Trump has already cut off $10 billion in funding for social services such as childcare and aid for poor families in five blue states, including Minnesota.