Merchant, 47, is on trial in Brooklyn Federal Court for murder-for-hire and terrorism related charges, accused of trying to mastermind a political assassination but getting tricked by a confidential informant into hiring two undercover feds as hitmen.
But with insufficient military hardware in the region, warnings from allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, concern among top aides about the implications and effectiveness of the strike options, and secret backchannel talks with the Iranians, he chose not to pull the trigger. This account of Trump's decision-making over the past ten days is based on interviews with four U.S. officials, two Israeli officials and two other sources with knowledge of the behind-the-scenes discussions.
Trump said in the recent order, signed late Friday, that losing control of Venezuelan oil revenue would "materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States" by undermining efforts to stabilize Venezuela. The White House links that stability to "ending the dangerous influx of illegal immigrants and the flood of illicit narcotics" and to countering "malign actors such as Iran and Hezbollah." The order defines "Foreign Government Deposit Funds" as Venezuelan government funds in designated Treasury accounts that come from the sale of natural resources or diluents.
President Donald Trump is gathering with top national security officials on Monday, a meeting that comes as the U.S. Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration's escalating pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan are scheduled to join Trump, who is vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort,
Driving the news: Trump said on Truth Social that he'll allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips - the generation of chips before its current, more-advanced Blackwell lineup - to China, with the U.S. government pocketing a quarter of the revenue. He said he would apply "the same approach to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies." State of play: It's not dissimilar to a deal from earlier this year in which Nvidia and AMD agreed to give the U.S. 15% of the sales of its less-advanced H20 chip to China in exchange for export licenses.
In his final days at the White House, Dick Cheney proposed an epitaph. His, he suggested, had been "a consequential vice presidency." It was an understatement, and characteristically oblique. Consequential might describe Lincoln or Lenin, Gandhi or Genghis Khan. Cheney was speaking of influence, and for once he acknowledged his own. He knew he had changed the nation's course, and he professed to have no regrets. After all this time, I'm still not sure whether to believe that.
Hours later, the president took questions from reporters at the White House, where one journalist asked if the administration has the legal authority to carry out the strikes. Yes, we do, Trump said. We have legal authority. We're allowed to do that, and if we do by land, we may go back to Congress. But we have this is a national security problem.
With the U.S. government confirming that it has the framework for a TikTok sell-off deal in place, ahead of this week's deadline for such a an arrangement to be brought into effect, more information is now coming to light as to how, exactly, TikTok will continue to operate in the region, in alignment with the Which may not quite meet the specifics of the TikTok sell-off act, which includes qualifiers relating to the operating systems of such platforms,
