https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/unprecedented-errors-are-eroding-credibility-trumps-justice-department-2025-12-17/
WASHINGTON, Dec 17 - As President Donald Trump's crime crackdown got underway in Washington, D.C., in August, federal agents and police spotted a man named Torez Riley tugging at his backpack inside a Trader Joe's store, searched it and recovered two firearms.
But federal prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges after video surveillance revealed the search lacked probable cause and was unlawful.

In a subsequent legal opinion, a federal magistrate judge said the errors were part of a broader pattern of unprecedented prosecutorial missteps, resulting in a 21% dismissal rate of the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office's criminal complaints over eight weeks, compared to a mere 0.5% dismissal rate over the prior 10 years.
"It appears prosecutors charged and detained Riley before properly investigating the circumstances of his arrest," wrote the magistrate judge, Zia Faruqui.
In years past, it was relatively rare for a federal court to question the Justice Department's competency or good faith. But such questions are becoming more common, thanks to a growing pattern of legal missteps that have dogged the department since January, according to a Reuters review and legal experts.
The Justice Department declined to comment on any pending cases but a department spokesperson said:
"This Department of Justice is winning in court on behalf of the Trump Administration and the American People with 24 successful rulings at the Supreme Court emergency docket so far and multiple prominent indictments of transnational terrorists, violent criminals, and even politicians who have allegedly engaged in corruption."
A spokesman for the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office, Tim Lauer, said: “This office enforces the law as written and brings cases where the facts warrant action. While judges and juries decide outcomes, this office’s role is to hold offenders accountable.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/trump-orders-blockade-sanctioned-oil-tankers-leaving-entering-venezuela-2025-12-16/
WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, a move set to sharply escalate tensions between Washington and Caracas as he targets Venezuela's main source of income.
It is unclear how the Trump administration will impose the blockade against the sanctioned vessels, and whether he will turn to the Coast Guard to interdict vessels like he did last week. The administration has moved thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships - including an aircraft carrier - to the region in recent months.

"For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela."
U.S. crude futures climbed over 1% to $55.96 a barrel in Asian trading after Trump's announcement. Oil prices settled at $55.27 a barrel on Tuesday, the lowest close since February 2021.

Oil market participants said prices were rising in anticipation of a potential reduction in Venezuelan exports, although they were still waiting to see how Trump’s blockade would be enforced and whether it would extend to include non-sanctioned vessels.
"We don’t know how much or how quickly Trump will enforce this," said Rory Johnston, founder of oil markets-focused newsletter Commodity Context.

There has been an effective embargo in place after the U.S. seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela last week, with loaded vessels carrying millions of barrels of oil staying in Venezuelan waters rather than risk seizure.

The US economy added 64,000 jobs in November as the unemployment rate crept up to 4.6%, according to Labor Department data published Tuesday.

The unemployment rate is now at its highest level since September 2021.

The November jobs report, originally scheduled to be published Dec. 5 before the 43-day government shutdown delayed multiple economic data releases, comes as Americans stress over rising layoffs and a frozen job market that can feel impossible to break into. Tuesday’s report suggested those conditions persisted toward the end of the year.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a gain of 50,000 jobs. The healthcare sector, which has fueled job growth this year, added 46,000 positions for the month.

"The US economy is in a hiring recession," Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X.

"Almost no jobs have been added since April," Long added. "Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024."

The last official reading of the labor market, published in November, was pushed back by several weeks and had only offered data for September, showing an unexpected uptick in jobs after the economy actually lost jobs in August and June, marking the first negative employment months since 2020.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unemployment-rate-hit-4-year-high-in-november-even-as-economy-added-jobs-133749371.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-wont-vote-on-health-care-tax-credit-extension-angering-gop-moderates/

Washington — The House won't vote this week on an extension to the Affordable Care Act's enhanced premium subsidies, which lapse at the end of the year.

An 11th-hour effort by moderate Republicans to put an extension on the floor for a vote failed Tuesday night, when the House Rules Committee blocked several of the amendments they were seeking to the attach to a GOP health care plan released last week. The GOP plan does not include an extension.

The committee advanced the bill to the floor late Tuesday. A vote is expected Wednesday.

Moderate Republicans are perplexed at the decision not to hold a vote on an extension ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline, and have warned of the political ramifications of allowing insurance premiums to soar in the new year for more than 20 million Americans who buy their insurance on Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to shut the door on any amendment votes earlier Tuesday, only to open it slightly after a heated meeting with moderates.

"We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure-release valve, and it just was not to be. We worked on it all the way through the weekend," Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning.

The Louisiana Republican later said "there's some ideas on the table that could work."

Moderate Republicans expressed their frustration throughout the day.

"I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bulls--t," Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York told reporters after leaving a GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/rob-reiner-murdertrump-derangement-syndrome-b1262675.html
Donald Trump appeared to suggest that the fatal stabbing of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, was due to “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

In a post on Truth Social, the US President said that the “once very talented movie director and comedy star,” had died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease” called TDS - or Trump Derangement Syndrome.

TDS is said to refer to a feeling of disdain for the president, which Trump supporters in the US have used to describe negative reactions to the president that are characterized as irrational and disconnected from Trump's actual policy positions

In his post the president went on: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession with President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness”

This is not the first time that the president has taken aim at a public figure after their death – with Trump also mocking the late John McCain and General Colin Powell after their deaths.

Reiner, a 78-year-old celebrated director and actor, was outspoken in his support of liberal causes and the Democratic Party.

He even went as far as minimising concerns about Joe Biden’s age, saying “Look, he's old!” in an interview in February 2024 before Biden dropped out.

He told Variety in 2017, “Donald Trump is the single most unqualified human being to ever assume the presidency of the United States”.

Reiner is known for celebrated movie classics including Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, Few Good Men, and When Harry Met Sally.

The couple's 32-year-old son, Nick, is currently in custody after being arrested for murder after the couple were found stabbed to death.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/climate/national-center-for-atmospheric-research-trump.html

The Trump administration said it will be dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions.
The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming.
But in a social media post announcing the move late on Tuesday, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said that the federal government would be “breaking up” the institution.
Mr. Vought wrote that a “comprehensive review is underway” and that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”
USA Today first reported on the White House plans.
Scientists, meteorologists and lawmakers said the move was an attack on critical scientific research and would harm the United States.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research was originally founded to provide scientists studying Earth’s atmosphere with cutting-edge resources, such as supercomputers, that individual universities could not afford on their own. It is now widely considered a global leader in both weather and climate change research, with programs aimed at tracking severe weather events, modeling floods and understanding how solar activity affects the Earth’s atmosphere.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/childrens-pastor-joe-campbell-arrested-child-sex-abuse-charges-rcna210316

Joe Campbell, a Pentecostal preacher who for half a century ministered to thousands of children across four states, has been arrested on child sex abuse charges, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.

Campbell was charged with one count of first degree rape and one count of lewd or indecent acts to a child under 16, according to the charging document. U.S. Marshals arrested him Wednesday morning at Camp Bell, his children's camp in Elkland, Missouri, and brought him to the Greene County jail in Springfield, where he was awaiting transfer to Oklahoma. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

It wasn’t clear if Campbell, 68, had an attorney. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. His arrest represents a long-delayed breakthrough in a 40-year effort by some of his alleged victims to seek justice.

The charges come seven months after an NBC News investigation revealed a pattern of child sex abuse allegations against Campbell and repeated failures by pastors, police and prosecutors to intervene. Five women said he sexually abused them as children in the 1970s and ’80s when he was an Assemblies of God minister; nine others, including four men, said he showed them pornography, made lewd comments or touched them inappropriately during the same period.

Campbell’s rape charge appears to be tied to the alleged abuse of one of those women, Kerri Jackson. Jackson, now 53, says he molested her for years in Tulsa in the early 1980s, beginning when she was around 9. The attorney general’s office presented the case to a multicounty grand jury in Oklahoma City last week and the panel returned the indictment — a milestone Jackson and some of the other women had pursued for most of their lives.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/13/colombias-eln-rebels-prepare-for-battle-amid-trump-intervention-threat

Colombia’s largest remaining rebel force has told civilians living under its authority to stay at home for three days while it stages military drills in response to burgeoning United States threats.

The National Liberation Army (ELN), a left-wing rebel group, ordered the lockdown on Friday, instructing residents to keep off major routes and rivers from Sunday morning as fighters conduct what the group describes as preparations to defend the country against “imperialist intervention”.

The announcement follows warnings from President Donald Trump that nations manufacturing and exporting cocaine to the US could face military strikes or even land attacks.

“It is necessary for civilians not to mix with fighters to avoid accidents,” the ELN said.

Colombia’s Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez rejected the rebel directive as “nothing more than criminal coercion”, pledging that government troops would maintain presence “in every mountain, every jungle, every river”.

The move underscores a deepening confrontation between Washington and Bogota as Trump escalates rhetoric against Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Earlier this week, Trump told business executives that Petro had “better wise up, or he’ll be next”, citing cocaine production as justification for potential action, and alluding to the US military build-up near Venezuela amid threats to remove its President Nicolas Maduro.

In recent days, the Trump administration has imposed new sanctions on Venezuela, targeting three nephews of President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil tankers and shipping companies linked to them, as Washington steps up pressure on Caracas, following the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.