Reactions are pouring in after the United States and Israel announced a major military operation against Iran early Saturday, following weeks of threats from President Trump. 

Mr. Trump announced the assault, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” in a video on Truth Social. He called on Iran’s military forces to lay down their weapons and on Iran’s civilians to rise up and “take over your government.” Mr. Trump told the Washington Post that he wanted to secure freedom and safety for the Iranian people. 

Congressional leaders react

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Iran’s nuclear ambitions, ballistic missile arsenal and support for terrorism “posed a clear and unacceptable threat to U.S. servicemembers, citizens in the region, and many of our allies,” and he praised praised President Trump for “taking action to thwart these threats.”

“I look forward to administration officials briefing all senators about these military operations,” he said. “I commend the bravery of the servicemembers carrying out these operations and pray for the safety of those in harm’s way.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said “Iran is facing the severe consequences of its evil actions,” and confirmed that the “Gang of Eight,” a group of eight congressional leaders who are legally required to be briefed on classified intelligence matters, had been briefed in detail “earlier this week that military action may become necessary to protect American troops and American citizens in Iran.” 

The Trump administration “made every effort to pursue peaceful and diplomatic solutions in response to the Iranian regime’s sustained nuclear ambitions and development, terrorism, and the murder of Americans—and even their own people,” Johnson said. “For decades, Iran has defiantly maintained its nuclear program while arming and funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and other internationally recognized terrorist organizations. Iran and its proxies have menaced America and American lives, undermined our core national interests, systematically destabilized the Middle East, and threatened the security of the entire West.” 

House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries said in a statement that Mr. Trump “failed to seek Congressional authorization prior to striking Iran,” and said his “decision to abandon diplomacy and launch a massive military attack has left American troops vulnerable to Iran’s retaliatory actions.” 

“Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region,” Jeffries said. “However, absent exigent circumstances, the Trump administration must seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war.” 

Jeffries also said that if Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed by military strikes in June 2025, as Mr. Trump previously claimed, “there should be no need to strike them now.” 

He said the president “must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately … clearly define the national security objective and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East.”

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer praised what he called “a bold, decisive act of strength by President Trump” and said, “We pray that because of this leadership, the U.S. and the world will be a safer place.”

Republican reactions 

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the action a “pivotal and necessary operation to protect Americans and American interests” and said the “Iranian regime has never been weaker.” 

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham said the operation had “been well-planned” and would be “violent, extensive and I believe, at the end of the day, successful.”

“My mind is racing with the thought that the murderous ayatollah’s regime in Iran will soon be no more. The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us,” Graham, a Republican representing South Carolina, said on social media. He offered prayers for anyone participating in the operation, and said the effort will make “America more safe and eventually more prosperous.” 

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, shared a list of crimes committed by Iran and said the “butcher’s bill has finally come due for the ayatollahs.” 

Rep. Nancy Mace threw her support behind the president’s action, writing on social media: “President Trump understood what the weak could not bring themselves to say: that peace is not found in appeasement — it is won. The Iranian people have bled for their freedom. Their cries did not fall on deaf ears. Not on Trump’s watch.”

Democrats’ reactions

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat and vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, called the military operation “a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East.”

He condemned the Iranian regime for supporting terrorism and undermining regional stability, but said, “Acknowledging those realities does not relieve any president of the responsibility to act within the law, with a clear strategy, and with Congress.”

“The American people have seen this playbook before – claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building. We owe it to our service members, and to every American family, to ensure that we are not repeating the mistakes of the past,” Warner said. “The president owes the country clear answers: What is the objective? What is the strategy to prevent escalation? And how does this make Americans safer?”

Rep. Jim Himes, a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, called the operation “a war of choice with no strategic endgame.” Himes is a member of the Gang of Eight. He was notified ahead of the start of the operation, a person familiar with the matter told CBS News. 

Himes said that he told Secretary of State Marco Rubio during that briefing that “military action in this region almost never ends well for the United States, and conflict with Iran can easily spiral and escalate in ways we cannot anticipate.” 

“It does not appear that Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history,” Himes said. 

Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona and Iraq War veteran, criticized the operation. 

“I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war,” Gallego said on social media. “Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.” 

Rep. Thomas Massie, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, appeared to describe the operation as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress” on social media. In June 2025, 

Massie introduced a resolution directing the president to “terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran” without an act of Congress. Democrats were planning to compel a vote on a war powers resolution introduced by Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna.

Khanna said Saturday morning that Congress “must convene on Monday” to vote on the resolution “to stop this” and called on Congressional members to share their voting plans over the weekend. Himes said that Mr. Trump’s “own statement acknowledges this is war.” 

“Donald Trump has launched a war on Iran. The Congress must reconvene on Monday to vote on Thomas Massie’s and my war powers resolution to stop this war. Trump says his goal is to topple the Iranian regime,” Khanna said in a video. “But the American people are tired of regime change, wars that cost us billions of dollars and risk our lives. We don’t want to be at war with a country of 90 million people in the Middle East.” 

Sen. Tim Kaine also called on the Senate to “immediately return to session” and vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution “to block the use of U.S. forces in hostilities against Iran.”

“Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East? Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up during his first term?” he said. “For months, I have raised hell about the fact that the American people want lower prices, not more war—especially wars that aren’t authorized by Congress, as required by the Constitution, and don’t have a clear objective.” 

In:

The Trump administration is blocking Venezuela’s government from paying for the cost of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s defense against drug trafficking charges in New York, a move that potentially interferes with his constitutional right to counsel, his lawyer says.

Attorney Barry Pollack told a Manhattan federal judge in an email dated Feb. 20 that the U.S. Treasury Department had blocked the authorization of legal fees that the government of Venezuela is required to pay for Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores under its law and custom. The email was entered into the public court record on Wednesday.

Maduro and his wife have been jailed in New York without bail since they were seized from their Venezuelan home Jan. 3 in a stealth nighttime raid by U.S. military forces. They have both pleaded not guilty. Maduro is scheduled to return to federal court for a hearing on March 17.

In the email, Pollack said that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers sanctions against Venezuela, had granted permission on Jan. 9 approving the payment of legal fees by the Venezuelan government.

Less than three hours later, though, the Trump administration snatched back the authorization “without explanation,” though it left in place a license granting permission for Maduro’s wife’s lawyers to be paid, Pollack said.

The dispute over Maduro’s legal fees is intimately linked to U.S. foreign policy. The first Trump administration cut ties with Maduro in 2019, recognizing the then-opposition head of the National Assembly as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. The Biden administration hewed closely to the same policy.

Messages seeking comment from the Treasury Department, White House and the Justice Department were not immediately returned.  

Allowing the government of Maduro’s replacement, Delcy Rodríguez, his vice president and now Venezuela’s acting president, to pay for the cost of Maduro’s defense could complicate prosecutors’ efforts in court to counter the deposed leader’s argument that his capture was illegal and that as the foreign head of a state he is immune from prosecution under U.S. and international law.

Pollack said he asked the Office of Foreign Assets Control on Feb. 11 to reinstate the original license and clear the way for Venezuela to meet its obligation to pay Maduro’s defense costs.

“The government of Venezuela has an obligation to pay Mr. Maduro’s fees, Mr. Maduro has a legitimate expectation that the government of Venezuela would do so, and Mr. Maduro cannot otherwise afford counsel,” Pollack wrote in the letter. 

Pollack said the U.S. was “interfering with Mr. Maduro’s ability to retain counsel and, therefore, his right under the Sixth Amendment to counsel of his choice.”

A 25-page indictment against Maduro accused him and others of working with drug cartels and members of the military to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. Both he and his wife face life in prison if convicted.

As part of the purported conspiracy, Maduro and his wife allegedly ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money, according to the indictment. It said that included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas.

Maduro’s stunning capture following a monthslong military buildup in the Caribbean has paved the way for the Trump administration to assert enormous influence over Rodriguez. 

Under pressure from the U.S., Rodriguez has moved swiftly to open up Venezuela’s oil industry to American investment, free political prisoners and reestablish direct communications with Washington — something unseen since the first Trump administration shuttered the U.S. embassy in Caracas in 2019. President Trump said Tuesday the U.S. had received more than 80 million barrels of oil from “new friend and partner” Venezuela.

In:

Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, widens Waymo’s early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.

In contrast, Waymo’s robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas.

Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber’s ride-hailing service.

The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo’s goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.

To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.

Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando before the service will be available to all comers in those markets.

MILAN — For much of Sunday’s gold medal final every time the chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” started it was quickly drowned out by “CAN-A-DA! CAN-A-DA! CAN-A-DA!” from largely Canadian crowd.

Jack Hughes would give the Americans the last word.

Hughes’ overtime goal gave Team USA a 2-1 victory and its first Olympic gold medal in nearly a half-century, igniting a chorus of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” that echoed through Canada’s stunned silence at Milano Cortina Ice Hockey Arena and across two countries on either side of the border.

Canada outshot the U.S. 41-26 during regulation but couldn’t find a second goal, and then had to survive a potentially fatal double minor on Sam Bennett late in the third period.

Bennett caught Hughes in the face during play along the boards behind the Canada goal. Team Canada would play two men down for four of the regulation’s final 6:49.

Canada withstood the U.S. power play for nearly 3 minutes when Hughes, himself, was called for high sticking with 3:23 remaining. After both teams played at full strength for 49 seconds.

Again Canada missed a series of chances. Sam Reinhart missed wide. So did Macklin Celebrini before regulation ran out.

The U.S. struck first Sunday.

Team USA forward Matt Boldy picked up the puck near his own blue line, flipped it between two defenders and bore down on Canada goalie Jordan Binnington, juking before flipping a backhand past him for a 1-0 lead with 14:00 remaining in the opening period.

Canada dominated the second period but missed two prime scoring opportunities. The first came with 14 minutes left in the period when Connor McDavid broke loose into the open with only U.S. goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to beat but couldn’t get a shot off before skating into Hellebuyck.

The second came when Team USA’s Charlie McAvoy was whistled for hooking at 10:33 and then Jake Guentzel was penalized for holding 28 seconds later.

But Canada couldn’t take advance of the two-man advantage and the U.S. continued to lead until Team Canada defender Cale Makar scored with 1:44 left in the second period. After a face off on the U.S. end the puck got tied up along the boards before Canada defender Devon Toews found Makar wide open at the top of the right face off circle where he flicked shot over Hellebuyck’s right shoulder inside the post.

Toews missed an opportunity to put Canada up early in the third period. On the edge of the crease, an open space in the goal right in front of him, Toews somehow sent a shot wide of the goal.

Canada missed another prime scoring chance at 15:40 when Celebrini hopped on a blocked shot deflection near his own blue line streaked toward the U.S., firing a low shot that struck Hellebuyck’s outstretched right pad. With just inside 11 minutes remaining, Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon hit the post.

SEOUL — Governments and companies around the world scrambled Saturday to determine the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down most of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs and his response with a new round of import taxes.

The latest twist in the U.S. tariff roller-coaster ride, launched when Trump returned to office 13 months ago and upended dozens of trading relationships with the world’s biggest economy, roiled trade officials from Mexico to South Korea to South America and beyond.

South Korea’s Trade Ministry called for an emergency meeting Saturday to understand the new landscape. Some specific exports to the U.S., like automobiles and steel, aren’t affected by the U.S. high court decision. Those that are affected will probably now be covered by a new tariff imposed by an executive order Trump signed Friday. Trump announced Saturday morning that he would raise that 10% tariff to 15%.

In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the checks and balances in the United States, praising the “rule of law” during a visit to a Paris agricultural fair: “It’s a good thing to have powers and counter-powers in democracies. We should welcome that.”

But he cautioned against any triumphalism.

Officials were going over the language of bilateral or multilateral deals struck with the U.S. in recent months, even as they braced for new swings and Trump’s swift announcement of new tariffs.

“I note that President Trump, a few hours ago, said he had reworked some measures to introduce new tariffs, more limited ones, but applying to everyone,” Macron said. “So we’ll look closely at the exact consequences, what can be done, and we will adapt.”

Mexico braces, adapts

Mexico’s secretary of the economy, Marcelo Ebrard, urged “prudence” Friday in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. “We have to see where this is going,” Ebrard told reporters. “We have to see what measures [Washington] is going to take to figure out how it is going to affect our country. “

Amid widespread concern about tariffs in Mexico — the United States’ major commercial partner, with almost $1 trillion in annual two-way trade — Ebrard cautioned: “I tell you to put yourselves in zen mode. As tranquil as possible.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, when asked about the tariffs, said, “We’ll review the resolution carefully and then gladly give our opinion.”

Ebrard said he plans to travel to the United States next week to clarify matters.

Last year, Ebrard noted, Mexico managed to stave off Trump’s threats to impose a 25% across-the-board levy on all Mexican imports.

However, Mexico has been pushing back against Trump administration tariffs on imports of vehicles, steel and aluminum, among other products.

Among other impacts, the Supreme Court voided so-called fentanyl tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada. The Trump administration said it imposed those levies to force the three nations to crack down on trafficking of the deadly synthetic opioid.

About 85% of Mexican exports to the United States are exempt from tariffs because of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The accord extended a mostly free-trade regimen among the three nations, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The three-way pact is scheduled for joint review starting July 1. That date marks six years since the agreement was signed during the first Trump presidential term.

In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, along the Texas border, Sergio Bermúdez, head of an industrial parks company, discussed Trump’s plan for a new tariff. Trump, he said, “says a lot of things, and many of them aren’t true. All of the businesses I know are analyzing, trying to figure out how it’s going to affect them.”

The impact could be felt especially in Juarez: Much of its economy depends on factories producing goods to export to consumers in the U.S., the result of decades of free trade between the U.S. and Mexico.

The policy swoons in the United States over the last year have made many global business leaders cautious, as they struggle to forecast and see investment take a hit.

CEO Alan Russell of Tecma, which helps American businesses set up operations in Mexico, has seen his job grow increasingly complicated over the last year — his company’s workload has surged as much as fourfold as it grapples with new import requirements. He worries the last U.S. moves will only make things more difficult.

“We wake up every day with new challenges. That word ‘uncertainty’ has been the greatest enemy,” said Russell, who is American. “The difficult part has been not being clear what the rules are today or what they’re going to be tomorrow.”

A ‘good decision’

Swissmem, a top technology industry association in Switzerland, hailed the Supreme Court ruling as “good decision,” writing on X that its exports to the U.S. fell 18% in the fourth quarter alone — a period when Switzerland was facing much higher U.S. tariffs than most neighboring countries in Europe.

“The high tariffs have severely damaged the tech industry,” Swissmem President Martin Hirzel said on X, while acknowledging the dust is far from settled. “However, today’s ruling doesn’t win anything yet.”

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report, as did Associated Press writers Tong-Hyung Kim in Seoul and Megan Janetsky in Mexico City. AP writers María Verza and Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City, Samuel Petrequin in London and Jamey Keaten in Lyon, France, also contributed.

The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to strike down the majority of tariffs imposed by President Trump could provide some relief to L.A.’s trade-reliant economy — but only if they are not reimposed again through other means.

The court’s 6-3 ruling that Trump didn’t have the authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act rolled back levies that have upended international trade.

“We’ve seen that the tariffs have a significant impact on our supply chain, on our manufacturers and especially on our port logistics and trade sector,” said Stephen Cheung, chief executive of the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

“I think this decision will have a significant impact on the Los Angeles economy. However, it’s going to take a long time to unravel, so we’ll see specifically how everything is going to pan out,” he said.

The tariffs dealt a blow to a large swath of businesses in Southern California and across the state, including farmers, automakers, home builders, tech companies and apparel retailers.

MGA Entertainment, the Chatsworth maker of Bratz dolls, said a little more than half of its products are made in China, while hardware and lumber seller Anawalt in Malibu said the majority of its lumber comes from Canada and nearly all of its steel products are made in China.

During a news conference Friday following the decision, Trump said that under other legal authorities he would impose a 10% global tariff and pursue additional levies, including a possible 30% tariff on foreign cars. Later in the day he signed an order imposing the 10% tax, which takes effect Feb. 24.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I’m ashamed of certain members of the court — absolutely ashamed,” Trump said. “They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

Friday’s high-court decision affects up to $170 billion in tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, including 10% to 50% duties and penalties on China, Canada and Mexico.

Whether importers who paid the tax can seek refunds was left to a lower court to decide. It’s estimated some $100 billion in tariffs were not affected by the decision.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — which handle nearly a third of the nation’s containerized cargo and are the primary trade gateway to Asia — saw a surge of traffic the first half of last year as importers sought to get ahead of the tariffs, largely imposed in April.

However, traffic tailed off the second half of the year, with the L.A. port expecting a single-digit decline in volume this year before Friday’s decision.

The twin facilities form the largest ports complex in North America, supporting more than 200,000 jobs and contributing $28 billion to the regional economy in 2022, according to a California Center for Jobs & the Economy report.

The uncertainty surrounding the tariffs derives from the complexity of the tariffs themselves — as well as the other legal options Trump has to impose them again.

Mike Jacob, president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., which represents ocean carriers, marine terminal operators and others in the industry, said the tendency is to think of the tariffs as uniform.

“It was different rates for different countries. That was compounded by different rates for different commodities. And there’s a lot of changes that have occurred with specific commodities,” he said. “So it’s almost impossible to take a broad brush and say, here’s what we expect to happen — except to say that it’s still a pretty unsettled space.”

In imposing a 10% global tariff, Trump would be relying on a provision of the Trade Act of 1974, while his ability to pursue additional levies would rely on other law.

Economist Jock O’Connell, international trade advisor at L.A.’s Beacon Economics, said that Trump may have authority to impose the 10% global tariffs, but additional levies would involve trade authorities.

“That would be a cumbersome process. The tariffs have to be more specifically framed and the subject of an investigation,” he said.

Also complicating the process are trade deals the U.S. has been negotiating with foreign countries based on the tariffs. O’Connell expects they will seek to renegotiate them.

“They’re likely to come back to the table and say, ‘Well, you don’t have the authority to impose these,’” he said.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said importers are facing tough decisions right now, given that any ocean carrier leaving an Asian port today would not be subject to the tariffs that were struck down.

“That executive is asking: ‘Are my commodities now exempt from this tariff?’ If the answer is yes, ‘Can I buy more of that product and get it shipped while there are no tariffs?’” he said.

Those decisions would revolve around such factors as the availability of space on the vessel and local warehouses, as well as trucking services, he said.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the decision should be good news for the larger U.S. economy and businesses on the “front line” of the trade wars, such as transportation, distribution, agriculture and retail.

“If the president lets the Supreme Court decision stand and doesn’t try to replace the tariffs, that’s a plus for the economy — but that’s not what’s going to happen,” he said.

Alysa Liu won the women’s individual figure skating gold on Thursday, a first for Team USA since 2002. In an interview with Kelly O’Grady, Liu opens up about what was going through her mind during the epic performance, her hopes for her legacy, and more.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit slipped modestly in 2025, a year in which President Donald Trump upended global commerce by slapping double digit tariffs on imports from most countries.

The gap the between the goods and services the U.S. sells other countries and what it buys from them narrowed to just over $901 billion from $904 billion in 2024, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Exports rose 6% last year, and imports rose nearly 5%.

Still, the U.S. deficit in the trade of goods such as machinery and aircraft — the main focus of Trump’s protectionist policies — widened 2% to $1.24 trillion last year, partly because American companies raised computer chip and other tech imports from Taiwan to support their investment in artificial intelligence.

Amid continuing tensions with Bejing, the deficit in the goods trade with China plunged nearly 32% to $202 billion in 2025 on a sharp drop in both exports to and imports from the world’s second-biggest economy. But trade was diverted away from China. The goods gap with Taiwan doubled to $147 billion and shot up 44% to $178 billion with Vietnam.

Economist Chad Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the widening gaps with Taiwan and Vietnam might put a “bulls eye” on them this year if Trump focuses more on the lopsided trade numbers and less on the U.S. rivalry with China.

In 2025, U.S. goods imports to Mexico outpaced exports by nearly $197 billion, up from a 2024 gap of $172 billion. But the goods deficit with Canada shrank by 26% to $46 billion. The United States this year is negotiating a renewal of a pact Trump reached with those two countries in his first term.

The U.S. ran a bigger surplus in the trade of services such as banking and tourism last year — $339 billion, up from $312 billion in 2024.

The trade gap surged from January-March as U.S. companies tried to import foreign goods ahead of Trump’s taxes, then narrowed most of the rest of the year.

Trump’s tariffs are a tax paid by U.S. importers and often passed along to their customers as higher prices. But they haven’t had as much impact on inflation as economists originally expected. Trump argues that the tariffs will protect U.S. industries, bringing manufacturing back to America and raise money for the U.S. Treasury.

Mikaela Shiffrin, the U.S. skiing star who’s also her sport’s most decorated athlete of all time, broke her medals drought at the 2026 Olympics on Wednesday, taking home the gold in the women’s slalom.

The 30-year-old appeared stunned and visibly emotional over her triumph after completing a smooth second run in the slalom, which is her best event. She finished with a combined time of 1:39.10, beating Switzerland’s Camille Rast, who held the second place position after two runs, by a substantial 1.5 seconds. Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden positioned herself in third place. 

Shiffrin had sped to an early lead in the event, finishing her first slalom run with a time of 47.13 seconds and gaining an advantage over Rast, Larsson, Germany’s Lena Duerr and other competitors.

Before this latest competition, Shiffrin, the biggest winner in the history of the World Cup circuit and a multi-time Olympian, had failed to make the podium in eight straight Olympic events. The last time she took home a medal was during the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, when she won gold and silver. 

Shiffrin secured her first gold medal in the slalom event during the 2014 Games in Sochi. At just 18, it was also her Olympic debut. 

Shiffrin’s medals drought had persisted this year even as she competed in the women’s giant slalom event on Sunday. Despite being a favorite to win, she finished the race in 11th place, with a series of clean runs that weren’t quite fast enough to make her a serious challenger for top spots. 

Italy’s Frederica Brigone earned the gold in that event, marking fifth overall medal and her second gold since the Milan Cortina Games began. Shiffrin praised her performance after Brigone crossed the finish line.

“That was, like, the greatest show of GS skiing that we’ve had in a really long time,” Shiffin said. “And to do it, you know, at the Olympics where people actually have eyes on the sport. Frederica skied incredible. That was so cool to watch.”

Last week, Shiffrin finished in 15th place in the slalom portion of the women’s skiing team combined race. She and fellow U.S. skiing champion Breezy Johnson earned fourth place in the event overall.

In 2024, Shiffrin crashed after losing control while on the course for the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics. Then last year, she said she was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder from another crash, during which she suffered a puncture wound and severe trauma to her oblique muscles.

Lucia I Suarez Sang and

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

In:

On Thursday, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that calls for the end of the United States’ 64-year-old embargo against Cuba.

The proposed measure comes as the Trump administration has moved toward placing a total oil blockade on the island nation, following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Since Maduro’s capture, the U.S. has cut off all shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. President Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on countries that send oil to the island.

The oil deprivation in Cuba has sparked concern from international bodies, including the United Nations, which warned that the holdout would strain an already-fragile fuel situation and create a humanitarian crisis in the country.

“For 60 years, we have been waiting for [the] embargo to do what politicians in Washington claim it will do — deliver freedom or democracy to the people of Cuba. It has failed,” McGovern wrote in his newly introduced bill.

“It’s time to throw away the old, obsolete, failed policies of the past and try something different. Let’s focus on the people of Cuba — and let’s treat them like human beings who want to live their lives in dignity and freedom. The Cuban people — not politicians in Washington — ought to decide their own leaders and their own future.”

The Massachusetts representative’s proposal mirrors a similar bill that was put forth to the U.S. Senate by Oregon Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in 2025.

Additionally, McGovern criticized the seemingly hypocritical nature that the blockade has on Trump’s desire to curb immigration in the U.S.

“The Trump administration says they want to curtail migration, but their own hard line approach only incentivizes migration to the United States by making living conditions worse in Cuba,” he wrote.

“Not only is the embargo absurdly ineffective — it is counterproductive, hurting the very people it purports to help. It’s not Cuban elites who are harmed by our policies — it’s regular people and families who are denied food, medicine, and basic goods. We ought to use diplomacy and engagement to achieve our goals.”

McGovern isn’t new to looking for an end of the embargo, his advocacy on the topic dates back to at least 2000.

At the turn of the century, he penned an Op-Ed in The Times calling for former President Bill Clinton to put an end to the Cold War politics looming over the two countries’ strain.

“The president should … declare to the Cuban people that the Cold War is finally over,” McGovern wrote in his 2000 article. “He should announce that he will use his executive power to normalize diplomatic relations, lift the travel restrictions imposed on U.S. citizens who want to travel to Cuba and waive as much of the outdated economic embargo as current law allows.”

Other Democratic congresspeople have criticized the devastating nature of the oil embargo in recent days. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the Cuban crisis to that of Gaza, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota called for the “cruel” and “despotic” blockade to be lifted and Rep. Chuy García of Illinois said the blockade is “deliberately starving civilians” in Cuba.

To help curb the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Cuba, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sent two of her country’s naval ships filled with humanitarian aid to the island last week, despite Trump’s tariff threats.

In another effort to send aid to Cuba, an international coalition is preparing to send a flotilla with resources in March to the Caribbean archipelago. Named after “Nuestra América,” the 1891 essay by Cuban independence leader José Marti, the “Nuestra América Flotilla” mission is inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla, which attempted to get aid to Gaza last year amid Israel’s blockade of the Palestine coastline.

The coalition includes the political and grassroots organizations Progressive International, the People’s Forum and Code Pink, among others.

“We are sailing to Cuba, bringing critical humanitarian aid for its people,” the organizers wrote on the official flotilla website. “The Trump administration is strangling the island, cutting off fuel, flights, and critical supplies for survival. The consequences are lethal, for newborns and parents, for the elderly and the sick.”

A man accused of ambushing and fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend has been extradited to Orange County to face a murder charge after eight years on the run in Mexico, authorities said.

Humberto Rodriguez Martinez, 39, is accused of working with a friend to kill his romantic rival outside his ex-girlfriend’s apartment in 2017, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office. Martinez is a Mexican citizen and was in the U.S. illegally at the time of the killing, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors charged Martinez in 2017 with the murder of 32-year-old Daniel Reyes, as well as with felony enhancements for allegedly lying in wait and for using a knife. But for years police were unable to arrest him.

Martinez’s car was recovered in San Diego, while he remained wanted on a $2-million warrant.

His friend, Adan Zapot-Leyva, was arrested two days after the attack and later sentenced to 15 years to life after pleading guilty in 2023 to one felony count of second-degree murder.

Mexican authorities, working with the U.S. Marshals Service, tracked down Martinez in 2024 in Mexico, where he was arrested at the request of the U.S.

On Dec. 4, he was extradited to the U.S. and homicide detectives from the Anaheim Police Department took him into custody at Los Angeles International Airport. He pleaded not guilty to murder on Tuesday and is being held without bail.

“This arrest does not undo the pain the victim’s family has endured, but it reinforces our commitment and promise to our community: We will never stop working until justice is served,” Anaheim Police Chief Manny Cid said in a statement.

Prosecutors accuse Martinez of carrying out a deliberate, jealousy-driven murder plot.

Martinez shared two children with his ex-girlfriend and they were co-parenting for several months after they broke up. On Oct. 17, 2017, Martinez and Zapot-Leyva went to the woman’s apartment to watch the children while she went to work, prosecutors said.

She returned home around 8:30 p.m. and the men left the apartment. About 30 minutes later, her new boyfriend arrived, prosecutors said.

Early the following morning, Anaheim police officers responded to the intersection of Santa Ana and Helena streets after witnesses reported seeing two men chasing Reyes and one of them stabbing him. Reyes died at the scene.

Zapot-Leyva later told authorities that he and Martinez had watched the apartment for several hours because they knew that Reyes was inside, according to his 2023 plea agreement obtained by City News Service.

The ex-girlfriend had called Zapot-Leyva to ask where he and Martinez were and, in a “deliberate trick,” Zapot-Leyva told her they had left the area hours ago, according to the plea agreement. The goal was to fool Reyes into thinking it was safe to exit the apartment.

Once he did emerge, the men chased him down and attacked him, and Martinez stabbed him 10 times, Zapot-Leyva told authorities, according to the plea deal.

Reyes begged them to stop, saying “please don’t … I have children,” according to the plea deal.

“The pursuit of justice will never be derailed by time or distance,” O.C. Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in a statement Friday. “We are grateful for the incredible work of our investigators and prosecutors and of our partners, both domestic and international, for their assistance in tracking down a wanted [murder suspect] and bringing him back to Orange County.”

Cadillac has become the first American auto giant to step into the fiercely competitive world of Formula One with a dedicated team. The storied U.S. brand unveiled the official team livery for its inaugural 2026 season during the Super Bowl Sunday night.

The Super Bowl ad, which aired during the fourth quarter, shows the black and white livery. It features part of President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech in which he said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“That challenge is one that we are willing to accept … and one which we intend to win,” the edited speech said in the ad. The short feature closed out with the phrase: “THE MISSION BEGINS.”

Progress under pressure. The first Cadillac Formula 1® Team livery is here. pic.twitter.com/u2LVwQkFL5

— Cadillac Formula 1 Team (@Cadillac_F1) February 9, 2026

Leading Cadillac’s effort is team principal Graeme Lowdon, who’s built the team from the ground up, including new facilities in Indiana, the home of Indycar; North Carolina, the home of NASCAR; and Silverstone, England, the home of F1.

Speaking with CBS before the livery reveal, Lowdon called the road to get Cadillac into the F1 game “lengthy, with lots of twists and turns.”

He recently shared that Cadillac had hired more than 500 people to join the new team, from a pool of some 143,000 applicants.

“There’s a lot of expectation, and quite rightly so,” Lowdon told CBS News. “General Motors is a hugely respected and impressive entity … so there is that pressure, but that’s what Formula One’s about.”

On the track, the American brand will be represented by former Mercedes team driver Valtteri Bottas, originally from Finland, and Mexican former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. Widely considered to be veterans in the sport, they have a total of 16 Grand Prix victories and more than 500 race starts between them.

Having that level of experience behind the wheel, for an otherwise new team, was the chief motivator behind signing those two drivers, according to Lowdon.

“These guys know how to win,” he said. “But above all else, they have an ability to gel a team together, so they’re the focal point for the engineering activities, the garage activities, everything to do with operating a team at the highest level.”

A slow start in a fast sport? 

Experts say American fans hoping Cadillac will deliver a blockbuster first season as it steps into the ring against longtime heavyweights such as Ferrari and Mercedes may be disappointed. 

The odds of Cadillac winning an F1 race, or even finishing on the podium this season, aren’t generally considered very strong. 

A winning Formula One car, and a winning team behind it, can take at least several seasons to develop, and require consistent investment.

Ross Brawn, the man widely credited as the architect behind German F1 sensation Michael Schumacher‘s success, told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards in London that American fans may need some patience.

“It’s very tough,” Brawn said about the expectations for the Cadillac team this season. “They’ve got some very good people there. They have been sensible in choosing a lot of experienced people, but it’s going to be very tough, so give them a bit of time.”

David Croft, a prominent Formula One commentator for Britain’s Sky Sports network, urged fans this year to look for development, not podium placement.

“Wherever they start the hope for me is that that’s not where they’ll finish,” he told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards. “They’ve got the drive and the determination, and they’ve got the right people in place to be a success eventually in Formula One, but it’s going to take a bit of time.”

Formula One’s growing popularity in the U.S.

According to ESPN, which has long held Formula One broadcasting rights in the U.S., 2025 was the biggest season to date for average viewership for the sport, with 16 of the 24 races setting viewership records. The broadcaster has said that over the past eight years, average viewership per Grand Prix more than doubled, from 554,000 to 1.3 million in the U.S.

Formula One is still dwarfed in the U.S. as a racing spectator sport, with overall viewership for the Nascar Cup Series, for instance, averaging 3.2 million in 2025. 

But insiders say the trajectory is undeniable, and encouraging.

“There was a time we’d go to Austin, the U.S. Grand Prix, and nobody would know what Formula One is when we got to passport control, let alone who we were,” Croft told CBS. “Now people know who we are and what Formula One is, what it stands for.” 

Many pundits see the success of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series behind F1’s rising popularity in the U.S.

Croft also credited the addition of two more races in the United States, in Miami and Las Vegas. Alongside races in Texas, Mexico, Canada and Brazil, a total of six F1 races now take place within American time zones, making it easier for fans to tune into the action live, he noted.

Lowdon hopes Cadillac can ride the wave of popularity, and that fans will enjoy following the new team’s journey – even if it means settling for relatively small “wins” at first.

“It’s really so difficult to achieve success that, if you come along and join the journey … then [fans] can enjoy, if you like, the minor victories along the way,” he said. “Even just producing a car as complex as this is a minor victory in itself.”

In:

The average American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement, underscoring the financial strain millions could face in old age, according to a new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security.

That figure factors in workers with 401(k) and other retirement plan savings, while also including the roughly 56 million U.S. workers who lack access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan. Median savings for all employed adults between the ages of 21 and 64 amounted to $955, the nonpartisan think tank found, tapping data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation.

For workers who do have retirement savings, the median balance stands at $40,000, the group found — a far cry from the roughly $1.5 million that Americans say they need to retire comfortably. Adding to the financial pinch is Social Security’s funding shortfall, which if not addressed by Congress could result in a roughly 20% cut to benefits starting in 2034.

“While there have been some noticeable improvements in the retirement savings system in recent years, many workers are still left out of that system, and major challenges lie ahead,” the report noted. 

More seniors are “unretiring,” or returning to the workforce after retirement for financial reasons, according to a new report from the AARP. The group, which represents the interests of older Americans, found in a survey that 7% of retirees have returned to work in the last six months, with almost half citing financial pressures. 

“With the cost of living still high and many people worried that they don’t have enough saved for retirement, the trend of older adults working longer will likely continue,” Carly Roszkowski, vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP, said in a statement.

The findings come as the Trump administration is rolling out so-called Trump Accounts, aimed at helping millions of children build a nest egg to eventually buy a home, fund their education or start a business. The accounts could also be used to help save for retirement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said.

While Trump Accounts could benefit future workers, the current retirement system effectively excludes millions of Americans who lack access to 401(k)s and similar plans, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS), a nonprofit group whose members include financial services firms, employee benefit plans, trade associations and other retirement service providers.

“The bottom line is that if Americans are not saving for retirement through their employer, then they are probably not saving at all,” the report said.

The paltry level of retirement savings may also help explain rising poverty among older Americans. The share of seniors living in poverty climbed to 15% in 2024, up from 14% a year earlier and the highest rate among all age groups, Census data shows.

Few workers reach retirement benchmarks

The analysis, which also examined savings by age group, found that many older workers are no closer to their savings targets than younger workers, who have more time to catch up. 

The rule of thumb is that people should have retirement savings worth one year of their annual income by age 30, then double that by age 35, and rising from there, according to Fidelity. By 60, the typical worker should have eight times their annual income socked away for their golden years. 

Workers ages 55 to 64 had accumulated only 19% of their targeted retirement savings in 401(k)s or similar plans, NIRS found.

Urgent fix needed for Social Security

Given the meager retirement savings of millions of Americans, Social Security remains an increasingly important source for keeping seniors financially stable and out of poverty. 

Many workers also misunderstand Social Security’s role in retirement, either overestimating or underestimating its importance, experts note. A 2025 survey by life insurer Allianz found that 1 in 5 Americans believe Social Security will provide all the income they need in retirement, when in fact it provides roughly half of the typical senior’s annual income, according to NIRS.

Given that millions of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their annual income, shoring up the program to avoid insolvency is a pressing issue, the report said. 

Lawmakers could address the program’s funding gap by raising the payroll tax rate, increasing the retirement age or lifting the current cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax, which in 2026 is set at $184,500. Income above that threshold is not subject to Social Security taxes.

Without a fix, the resulting 20% reduction in benefits “would have a significant impact on the lives of seniors and other beneficiaries,” NIRS said.

Edited by

Alain Sherter

In:

LOS ANGELES, Calif. /CALIFORNIA NEWSWIRE – NEWS/ — The American Handwriting Analysis Foundation (AHAF) announced today that its annual Cursive Is Cool® handwriting contest is now open to students in Kindergarten through Grade 7, encouraging young writers to express themselves creatively through cursive handwriting.

Now in its 12th year, the Cursive Is Cool® contest continues to grow in reach and enthusiasm, engaging students, teachers, and families worldwide. Children are invited to submit original cursive writing entries, which are judged on legibility, neatness, and creative content.

“Our judges are excited every year to see what children write,” said Lauren Mooney Bear, CG, Campaign for Cursive Chair and immediate past President of AHAF. “The entries are enlightening, often entertaining, and always inspiring. We are delighted to help young writers find their voices.”

The contest is supported by a wide range of individuals and businesses from around the globe, including Amsterdam Printing, Blind Pig Press, Caran d’Ache, Christy Zwenger Author, CursiveLogic, Dixon Ticonderoga, Fahrney’s Pens, Gary’s RV Repair (AZ), Itoya, J6R6, Louise Borden Author, Mirthos Paper, New American Cursive, PEN World, Profolio, Sakura, Sheila Lowe Author, and Writing Academy.

“Write – don’t type,” said Dr. Marion Rollings, Certified Graphologist. “Cursive writing is creative, personal, and fun. It also gives kids the opportunity to experiment with different pens and discover their own writing style.”

Students are encouraged to enter early. First, Second, and Third Place prizes will be awarded in each grade based on handwriting quality, and two additional prizes per grade will be awarded for Creative Content, giving every participant a chance to win. Exceptional teachers will also be recognized.

The contest runs January 23 through April 15, 2026.

For more information, contact Lauren Mooney Bear at mooneybear19@gmail.com or Charles Talmadge at durufle8@gmail.com

Learn more and enter:
https://ahafhandwriting.org/Campaign_for_Cursive_Contest_2026

You don’t have to be the best writer around
To let your cursive skills be found.
Put pen to paper-give it a try,
Your words might soar, your letters fly!
Entering’s easy-jump right in,
Every page could help you win!

ABOUT THE AMERICAN HANDWRITING ANALYSIS FOUNDATION

The American Handwriting Analysis Foundation is a California-chartered 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization and the sponsor of Campaign for Cursive®. AHAF’s mission is to promote and advance the profession of handwriting analysis and to educate the public about the importance of handwriting. Donations are welcome.

Visit https://ahafhandwriting.org/

MULTIMEDIA:

Video: https://ahafhandwriting.org/video/C4C_Kids_video.mp4

If you’re looking for where the most crucial governmental backlash to a merger deal involving Warner Bros. Discovery, you might want to turn your attention east — to Europe, where regulators are girding to take an early look at any such deal.

Both of the leading bidders — Netflix, which has the blessing of the WBD board, and Paramount, which launched a hostile takeover bid — could face obstacles from the European Union. EU officials have spoken only vaguely about their role in judging whatever deal emerges, since the outcome of the tussle remains in doubt.

The European Commission “could enter to assess” the outcome in the future, Teresa Ribera, the EU’s top antitrust official, said last week at a conference in Brussels, but she didn’t go beyond that. Pressure is mounting within Europe for close scrutiny of any deal.

As early as May, UNIC, the trade organization of European cinemas, expressed opposition to a Netflix deal. The exhibitors’ concern is Netflix’s disdain for theatrical distribution of its content compared to streaming.

“Netflix has time and again made it clear that it doesn’t believe in cinemas and their business model,” UNIC stated. “Netflix has released only a handful of titles in cinemas, usually to chase awards, and only for a very short period, denying cinema operators a fair window of exclusivity.”

Neither WBD nor Netflix has commented on the prospect of EU oversight of their deal. Paramount, however, has made it a key point in its appeals to the WBD board and shareholders.

In both overtures, Paramount made much of the size and potential anti-competitive nature of Netflix’s acquisition of WBD. In a Dec. 1 letter sent via WBD’s lawyers, Paramount asserted that the Netflix deal “likely will never close due to antitrust and regulatory challenges in the United States and in most jurisdictions abroad. … Regulators around the world will rightfully scrutinize the loss of competition to the dominant Netflix streamer.”

Netflix’s dominance of the streaming market is even greater in Europe than in the U.S., Paramount said, citing a Standard & Poor’s estimate that Netflix holds a 51% share of European streaming revenue. That figure swamps the second-place service, Disney, with only a 10% share. Paramount made essentially the same points in its Dec. 10 letter to WBD shareholders, launching its hostile takeover attempt at Warner.

European business regulators have been rather more determined in scrutinizing big merger deals — and about the behavior of major corporate “platforms” such as Google and X.com — than U.S. agencies, especially under Republican administrations. One reason may be the role of federal judges in overseeing antitrust enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission.

“Despite the European Commission (EC) successfully doling out fines numbering in the billions of euros for giants like Apple and Google for distorting competition, the FTC has struggled significantly in court, losing virtually all its merger challenges in 2023,” a survey from Columbia Law School observed last year.

The survey pointed to differing legal standards motivating antitrust oversight: “American courts have placed undue weight on preventing consumer harm rather than safeguarding competition; by contrast, the EU has remained centered on establishing clear standards for competitive fairness.”

In September, for example, the European Commission fined Google nearly $3.5 billion for favoring its own online advertising display services over competing providers. (Google has said it will appeal.) The action was the fourth multi-billion-dollar fine imposed on Google by the EC since 2017; Google won one appeal and lost another; an appeal of the third is pending.

As an ostensibly independent administrative entity, the EC at least theoretically comes under less political pressure from the 27 individual members of the European Union than the FTC and Department of Justice face from U.S. political leaders.

President Trump has made no secret of his doubts about the Netflix-WBD deal. As I reported last week, Trump has said that Netflix’s deal “could be a problem,” citing the companies’ combined share of the streaming market. Trump said he “would be involved” in his administration’s decision whether to approve any deal.

That feels like a Trumpian thumb on the scale favoring Paramount. The Ellison family is personally and politically aligned with Trump, and among those contributing financing to the bid is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, a country that has recently received lavish praise from Trump. Another backer is Affinity Partners, a private equity fund led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

The most important question about European oversight of the quest for WBD is what the regulators might do about it. The European Commission tends to be reluctant to block deals outright. The last time the EC blocked a deal was in 2023, when it prohibited a merger between the online travel agencies Booking.com and eTraveli. The EC ruling is under appeal.

At least two proposed mega-mergers were withdrawn in 2024 while they were under the EC’s penetrating “Phase II” scrutiny: the acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot by Amazon, and the merger of two Spanish airlines, IAG and Air Europa.

Typically, the EC addresses potentially anticompetitive mergers by requiring the divestment of overlapping businesses. In the case of Netflix and WBD, the likely divestment target would be HBO Max, which competes directly with Netflix in entertainment streaming. Paramount’s streaming service, Paramount+, also competes with HBO Max but not on the same scale as Netflix.

Antitrust rules aren’t the only possible pitfall for Netflix and Paramount. Others are the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, which went into effect in 2022. The latter applies mostly to social media platforms—the six companies initially deemed to fall within its jurisdiction were Alphabet (the parent of Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (the parent of TikTok), Meta and Microsoft. Those “gatekeepers” can’t favor their own services over those of competitors and have to open their own ecosystems to competitors for the good of users.

The Digital Services Act imposes rules of transparency and content moderation on large digital services. No platforms owned by Netflix, Paramount or WBD are on the roster of 19 originally named by the EU as falling under the law’s jurisdiction, but its regulations could constrain efforts by a merged company to move into social media.

The EU also has begun to show greater concern about foreign investments in strategic assets. Traditionally, these assets are those connected with national security. But defining them is left up to member countries. As my colleague Meg James reported, the sovereign funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar have agreed to back the Ellisons’ WBD bid with $24 billion — twice the sum the Ellison family has said it would contribute.

The Gulf states’ role has already raised political issues in the U.S., since the cable news channel CNN would be part of the sale to Paramount (though not to Netflix). Paramount says those investors, along with a firm associated with Kushner, have agreed to “forgo any governance rights — including board representation.”

That pledge aims to keep the deal out of the jurisdiction of the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which must clear foreign investments in U.S. companies. But whether it would satisfy any European countries that choose to see Warner Bros. Discovery as a strategically important entity is unknown.

Then there’s Trump’s apparent favoring of the Paramount bid. Trump is majestically unpopular among European political leaders, who resent his pro-Russian bias in efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump has castigated European leaders as “weak” stewards of their “decaying” countries.

The administration’s recently published National Security Strategy white paper advocated “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory” and extolled “the growing influence of patriotic European parties,” which many European leaders interpreted as support for antidemocratic movements.

The document “effectively declares war on European politics, Europe’s political leaders, and the European Union,” in the judgment of the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

How all these forces will play out as the bidding war for WBD moves toward its conclusion is imponderable just now. What’s likely is that the rumbling won’t stop at the U.S. border.

California and a coalition of other states are suing the Trump administration over a policy charging employers $100,000 for each new H-1B visa they request for foreign employees to work in the U.S. — calling it a threat not only to major industry but also to public education and healthcare services.

“As the world’s fourth largest economy, California knows that when skilled talent from around the world joins our workforce, it drives our state forward,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who announced the litigation Friday.

President Trump imposed the fee through a Sept. 19 proclamation, in which he said the H-1B visa program — designed to provide U.S. employers with skilled workers in science, technology, engineering, math and other advanced fields — has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

Trump said the program also created a “national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields.”

Bonta said such claims are baseless, and that the imposition of such fees is unlawful because it runs counter to the intent of Congress in creating the program and exceeds the president’s authority. He said Congress has included significant safeguards to prevent abuses, and that the new fee structure undermines the program’s purpose.

“President Trump’s illegal $100,000 H-1B visa fee creates unnecessary — and illegal — financial burdens on California public employers and other providers of vital services, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors,” Bonta said in a statement. “The Trump Administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise.”

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said Friday that the fee was “a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms” that were lawful and in line with the president’s promise to “put American workers first.”

Attorneys for the administration previously defended the fee in response to a separate lawsuit brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Assn. of American Universities, arguing earlier this month that the president has “extraordinarily broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens whenever he finds their admission ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,’” or to adopt “reasonable rules, regulations, and orders” related to their entry.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that this authority is ‘sweeping,’ subject only to the requirement that the President identify a class of aliens and articulate a facially legitimate reason for their exclusion,” the administration’s attorneys wrote.

They alleged that the H-1B program has been “ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited by bad actors,” and wrote that the plaintiffs were asking the court “to disregard the President’s inherent authority to restrict the entry of aliens into the country and override his judgment,” which they said it cannot legally do.

Trump’s announcement of the new fee alarmed many existing visa holders and badly rattled industries that are heavily reliant on such visas, including tech companies trying to compete for the world’s best talent in the global race to ramp up their AI capabilities. Thousands of companies in California have applied for H-1B visas this year, and tens of thousands have been granted to them.

Trump’s adoption of the fees is seen as part of his much broader effort to restrict immigration into the U.S. in nearly all its forms. However, he is far from alone in criticizing the H-1B program as a problematic pipeline.

Critics of the program have for years documented examples of employers using it to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers, as Trump has suggested, and questioned whether the country truly has a shortage of certain types of workers — including tech workers.

There have also been allegations of employers, who control the visas, abusing workers and using the threat of deportation to deter complaints — among the reasons some on the political left have also been critical of the program.

“Not only is this program disastrous for American workers, it can be very harmful to guest workers as well, who are often locked into lower-paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a Fox News opinion column in January.

In the Chamber of Commerce case, attorneys for the administration wrote that companies in the U.S. “have at times laid off thousands of American workers while simultaneously hiring thousands of H-1B workers,” sometimes even forcing the American workers “to train their H-1B replacements” before they leave.

They have done so, the attorneys wrote, even as unemployment among recent U.S. college graduates in STEM fields has increased.

“Employing H-1B workers in entry-level positions at discounted rates undercuts American worker wages and opportunities, and is antithetical to the purpose of the H-1B program, which is ‘to fill jobs for which highly skilled and educated American workers are unavailable,’” the administration’s attorneys wrote.

By contrast, the states’ lawsuit stresses the shortfalls in the American workforce in key industries, and defends the program by citing its existing limits. The legal action notes that employers must certify to the government that their hiring of visa workers will not negatively affect American wages or working conditions. Congress also has set a cap on the number of visa holders that any individual employer may hire.

Bonta’s office said educators account for the third-largest occupation group in the program, with nearly 30,000 educators with H-1B visas helping thousands of institutions fill a national teacher shortage that saw nearly three-quarters of U.S. school districts report difficulty filling positions in the 2024-2025 school year.

Schools, universities and colleges — largely public or nonprofit — cannot afford to pay $100,000 per visa, Bonta’s office said.

In addition, some 17,000 healthcare workers with H-1B visas — half of them physicians and surgeons — are helping to backfill a massive shortfall in trained medical staff in the U.S., including by working as doctors and nurses in low-income and rural neighborhoods, Bonta’s office said.

“In California, access to specialists and primary care providers in rural areas is already extremely limited and is projected to worsen as physicians retire and these communities struggle to attract new doctors,” it said. “As a result of the fee, these institutions will be forced to operate with inadequate staffing or divert funding away from other important programs to cover expenses.”

Bonta’s office said that prior to the imposition of the new fee, employers could expect to pay between $960 and $7,595 in “regulatory and statutory fees” per H-1B visa, based on the actual cost to the government of processing the request and document, as intended by Congress.

The Trump administration, Bonta’s office said, issued the new fee without going through legally required processes for collecting outside input first, and “without considering the full range of impacts — especially on the provision of the critical services by government and nonprofit entities.”

The arguments echo findings by a judge in a separate case years ago, after Trump tried to restrict many such visas in his first term. A judge in that case — brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers and others — found that Congress, not the president, had the authority to change the terms of the visas, and that the Trump administration had not evaluated the potential impacts of such a change before implementing it, as required by law.

The case became moot after President Biden decided not to renew the restrictions in 2021, a move which tech companies considered a win.

Joining in the lawsuit — California’s 49th against the Trump administration in the last year alone — are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

The U.S. government could owe businesses as much as $168 billion if the Supreme Court rules that the Trump administration improperly invoked a federal emergency powers law earlier this year in hitting dozens of countries with new tariffs, according to a recent analysis. 

Through December 5, the U.S. government has collected $259 billion in tariff revenue, the nonpartisan research initiative found. But a ruling by the high court that Mr. Trump unlawfully invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the country-specific tariffs could force the government to offer refunds to importers, said Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In a November hearing on the case, the Supreme Court seemed divided over whether Mr. Trump had the legal authority to impose sweeping levies under IEEPA. Several justices appeared skeptical, noting that IEEPA does not mention the word “tariff” and that no president has ever relied on the act to justify broad-based tariffs on other nations. 

The Trump administration could likely maintain similar tariff rates by drawing on other laws if the IEEPA tariffs are struck down, although those statutes have more restrictions, according to legal experts. 

For example, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows the U.S. president to restrict imports in the name of national security. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 also authorizes the president to apply country-based tariffs if the U.S. Trade Representative determines that another nation is engaging in unfair trade practices.

Despite the prospects of a large government refund for importers, Smetters thinks that striking down the tariffs would ultimately spur U.S. economic growth. 

“Tariffs are one of the least efficient ways of raising revenue,” he told CBS News, adding that tariffs make companies less productive because they have to pay more for imported parts and products.  

“The government would have to come up with that money, so the federal debt would go up a little bit. But if these tariffs really were to go away, it would make U.S. companies more attractive to invest in,” Smetters added.

The Trump administration says tariffs are a key tool for energizing the U.S. manufacturing sector, boosting job growth, reducing the nation’s trade deficit and generating federal revenue. 

“The economic and national security consequences of the failure to uphold President Trump’s lawful tariffs are enormous. The White House looks forward to the Supreme Court’s speedy and proper resolution of this matter,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to CBS News.

Too little, too late?

As of November 17, the overall effective tariff rate in the U.S. was 16.8%, the highest since 1935, according to the Yale Budget Lab. That compares with 2.4% in January before Mr. Trump returned to office. 

As a result, some small businesses say a tariff refund wouldn’t offset the damage they say has been caused by sharply higher import duties. 

“The money would go back to suppliers that incurred the tariffs. We are the end customer, and we continue to get the short end of the stick,” Trinita Rhodes, the owner of Beauty Supply Refresh in Florissant, Missouri, said Wednesday in a media call hosted by Tariffs Cost US, an advocacy group that opposes Mr. Trump’s levies. 

Rachel Lutz, owner of a women’s clothing boutique, The Peacock Room, in Detroit, said a potential tariff refund would come too late. 

“Small businesses don’t have more than a 30-day cash reserve,” he said in the Tariffs Cost US call. “Reimbursement at this point doesn’t make up for the disruption of staff cuts or hiring we could have made. The damage has already been done.”

Consumers are also feeling the impact of tariffs, research shows. Between February and November, U.S. households paid an average of $1,197.50 in tariffs, totaling nearly $160 billion, according to a report this month from Democrats on the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

“While President Trump promised that he would lower costs, this report shows that his tariffs have done nothing but drive prices even higher for families,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire and ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, said in a statement Thursday. “At a time when both parties should be working together to lower costs, the President’s tax on American families is simply making things more expensive.”

Edited by

Alain Sherter

WASHINGTON — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that she and President Trump had a “cordial” hourlong meeting in Washington that ended with both leaders extending invitations to visit each other’s country.

“We’ll arrange a date later,” Sheinbaum told reporters outside the Mexican Cultural Institute.

The meeting was the first time the two had met face to face and followed months of clashes between the United States and Mexico over contentious issues such as trade, immigration and how to combat drug trafficking.

But on Friday, the two world leaders were brought together by soccer.

Sheinbaum was in Washington to attend the FIFA World Cup 2026 draw at the Kennedy Center, alongside Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. The U.S., Mexico and Canada are co-hosting the soccer tournament, which begins in June.

In a social media post, Sheinbaum said the three leaders talked about “the great opportunity that the 2026 FIFA World Cup represents for the three countries and about the good relationships we have.”

“We agreed to continue working together on trade issue with our teams,” she added.

She later reiterated to reporters that the meeting had been “very positive,” and that she impressed upon Trump that Mexico is “extraordinary” country. She said she personally invited him to visit Mexico, and that he extended an invitation to come back to Washington.

Asked if Trump asked anything of her, she said he had “nothing in particular.”

After months of friction between the two countries, the meeting on Friday could break the ice and set the stage for policy negotiations as both presidents navigate pressures from their constituencies.

Since the start of his second term in January, Trump has threatened to impose large trade tariffs on Mexico, the United States’ largest trade partner — but so far, Sheinbaum has been able to stave off many tariffs.

Trump and his team have also been floating the prospect of U.S. strikes on suspected criminals and drug laboratories in Mexico. But Sheinbaum has insisted she would not allow the U.S. military to fight drug cartels within its nation’s borders.

The ongoing negotiations come as Mexicans’ attitudes toward Trump and the United States have continued to sour. In contrast, Mexicans continue to see their own government’s management of the border positively, according to a Pew Research Center report published in July.

The upbeat aftermath of Friday’s meeting belied profound differences of opinion between the leaders of two nations that have an almost 2,000-mile border and share deep economic, security and cultural ties.

The two North American presidents could hardly be more different: Sheinbaum is a scientist and life-long leftist activist who maintains a low-key demeanor; Trump is a real-estate scion who embraces right-wing talking points and craves being the center of attention.

Sheinbaum has had to walk a thin line as she has fought off Trump’s repeated threats to impose punishing tariffs on imports from Mexico, a nation heavily dependent on cross-border trade with the United States.

She has also rejected Trump’s suggestions that U.S. forces may intervene unilaterally in Mexico to attack drug cartels. She has maintained her mantra of “cooperation, not subordination,” even as Trump has mused about striking gangs in Mexico.

In various remarks, Trump has lauded Sheinbaum as “wonderful” and “brave,” while also declaring that she rejected U.S. military aid to fight Mexican cartels because she is is “scared to death” of the cartels.

Sheinbaum has assailed U.S. strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that have left dozens dead. She has also declared Mexico’s opposition to U.S. military intervention in Venezuela or anywhere else in Latin America.

Repeatedly, the Mexican president has insisted that her country would be “nobody’s piñata.”

In his career, Trump has long used Mexico and Mexicans as a political punching bag, catering to anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. Trump kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign declaring that Mexican immigrants were criminals, drug-runners and and “rapists” — though he acknowledged there were some “good people” among them — and repeatedly pledged to build “a big beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border that Mexico would pay for. It didn’t.

After Friday’s meeting, Ronald Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said on X that the encounter “reaffirmed a historic partnership based on results,” adding: “Their dialogue advances a high-level agenda focused on cooperation, security, and prosperity.”

Staff Writers Ceballos reported from Washington and McDonnell from Mexico City.

Federal regulators said they are expanding an investigation into Waymo this week, following reports that the company’s self-driving cars navigated around school buses stopped on the road in Austin, Texas.

In a letter to Waymo dated Dec. 3, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it will investigate the performance of the autonomous vehicles and their ability to follow traffic safety laws. Reuters first reported the news.

The Austin Independent School District told CBS News it is now aware of 20 incidents this school year in which a Waymo vehicle illegally passed a school bus. All 50 U.S. states have laws requiring vehicles to halt for a stopped school bus with flashing red lights and a deployed stop-arm signal, according to the NHTSA.

Waymo said it identified the software issue that contributed to the school bus incidents and that it implemented updates by Nov. 17, which it said improved its vehicles’ performance. The company is also planning to issue a voluntary software recall with NHTSA next week, Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer at Waymo, told CBS News late Friday.

“We will continue analyzing our vehicles’ performance and making necessary fixes as part of our commitment to continuous improvement,” said Peña.

Local officials in Austin say they remain concerned about road safety.

“As of Dec. 1, 2025, Waymo received its 20th citation since the beginning of the school year,” JJ Maldonado, a communications specialist for the Austin Independent School District, told CBS News. “This is after the company said it had fixed the issue through software updates that were implemented on Nov. 17.”

In a Nov. 20 letter to Waymo, the school district called on the robotaxi company to cease operations within the school district during the hours when students are loading and unloading from school buses until software updates are completed and Waymo can guarantee its vehicles will comply with the law. 

Maldonado said the company “refused to cease operations” during the hours the school district had requested.

In response to a request for comment about the NHTSA probe, Waymo pointed to its overall safety record.

“Safety is our top priority, and the data shows we are improving road safety in the communities in which we operate, achieving a fivefold reduction in injury-related crashes compared to human drivers, and twelve times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians,” a Waymo spokesperson told CBS News in an email.

Waymo did not comment on its response to the Austin school district’s request to suspend service when students are getting on and off buses.

In October, NHTSA launched a probe into the company after an incident in Atlanta, Georgia, in which a Waymo vehicle drove around a stopped school bus with flashing red lights and its stop arm deployed. 

While maneuvering around the bus, NHTSA said the vehicle passed the bus’ stop arm and a safety device that swings out from the bus close to where students were disembarking. At the time of the incident, no safety operator was present in the self-driving vehicle, according to the NHTSA.

Atlanta Public Schools, a school district, told CBS Atlanta they are aware of six cases where Waymo cars illegally passed stopped school buses.

Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, first started offering its fully autonomous vehicle service to the public in October 2020 in Phoenix. The company now offers hundreds of thousands of driverless rides each week in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix and Atlanta.

Waymo recently announced it was expanding to Philadelphia, just one of two dozen cities where the company plans to expand.

Edited by

Aimee Picchi

Kathryn Krupnik

contributed to this report.

If buying a home today is financially out of reach for many Americans, affording the rent may also seem like an increasingly tall order. 

In the 50 largest U.S. cities, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment climbed an average of $457 per month, or 41%, to $1,578 between 2020 and 2025, according to a recent study from loan marketplace LendingTree. Two-bedroom rents have surged an average of $505, or 37%, to roughly $1,858 per month over the same period. 

Since 2019, rents nationally have risen 1.5 times faster than wages on average, according to a 2024 report from online real estate brokers Zillow and StreetEasy.

“If your income is rising at the same time your rent is, maybe that extra expense is no big deal,” Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree, said in the report. “However, so many Americans’ financial wiggle room is tiny, even in the best of times, so having to carve out hundreds of extra dollars to pay rent each month can be a big deal.”

Several factors explain why rents have surged, said Rob Bhatt, a consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. Perhaps most importantly, during the pandemic legions of newly remote workers moved to new markets, driving up rent and housing prices.

“All the things that we saw during the pandemic have created stresses on the system, including stresses in these markets that traditionally haven’t been renters’ markets, and so it’s going to take a little bit of time to adjust,” he told CBS News.

High home prices and rising mortgage rates, which have kept a lid on the number of homes coming to market, have also left more renters competing for a limited stock of affordable housing. Rents are projected to ease nationally next year, but only by 1%, according to a recent study from Realtor.com. 

Where have rents risen the most? 

New York, San Diego and Miami have seen the largest monthly rental increases for both one-bedroom units — which rose $854, $817 and $764 in the three cities, respectively, since 2020 — and two-bedroom units, which have jumped $857, $877 and $885, respectively, over the last five years. 

Rounding out the top 10 cities where one-bedroom rents have risen the most over the last five years, according to LendingTree (see chart below for a listing of the change in rents for the top 50 cities):

• Riverside, Calif.
• Tampa, Fla.
• Sacramento, Calif.
• Atlanta
• Orlando, Fla.
• Boston
• Phoenix

In New York and San Diego, the spike in rents is attributable mostly to the demand for housing exceeding supply, according to LendingTree. Renters in those metro areas face limited inventory and plenty of competition. 

LendingTree attributed the surge in rental prices in Miami to the local population boom, noting that strong domestic and international migration to the area has driven up demand.

One high-priced city where rent increases have cooled is San Francisco. The cost of a one-bedroom unit in the city rose $54 a month, to an average of $2,977, over the last five years, while two-bedrooms rose $51 to $3,604, LendingTree found. 

Other cities where rents are growing more slowly are Birmingham, Ala.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; San Antonio, Texas; and St. Louis, Mo.

LendingTree’s findings are based on an analysis of fair-market rents (FMR) from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal agency defines such rents as “estimates of 40th percentile gross rents for standard-quality units within a metropolitan area or nonmetropolitan county.” The firm’s figures exclude rents for public housing and for units built within the past two years. 

Edited by

Alain Sherter

WASHINGTON — An offhand comment by President Trump threatening to attack Colombia, a major U.S. ally, has roiled its government and confounded its public, anxious and unsure whether to take the U.S. leader seriously.

Trump’s remarks came during questions from reporters Tuesday over a prospective U.S. military campaign against drug trafficking networks in Latin America. The mission could expand beyond Venezuela, the prime target of nascent U.S. war plans, the president said.

“I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia, is making cocaine,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting. “Then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much, but yeah, anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack. Not just Venezuela.”

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, who has repeatedly clashed with the White House, likened Trump’s bellicose rhetoric to a declaration of war.

“Do not threaten our sovereignty, because you will awaken the Jaguar,” Petro wrote on X. “Attacking our sovereignty is declaring war; do not damage two centuries of diplomatic relations.”

In an official communique, the Colombian Foreign Ministry called on “brotherly” nations in Latin America and the Caribbean to reject “any attempt at foreign intervention that seeks to undermine sovereignty.”

Trump’s latest threat comes amid deteriorating relations with Bogota, which celebrated 200 years of diplomatic relations with Washington just three years ago and, marking the occasion, was designated a major non-NATO ally by President Biden, a status celebrated across party lines on Capitol Hill.

Petro’s election that year began a shift, with U.S. assistance reduced in 2024 over Petro’s drug policies and, at the beginning of this year, paused completely by the Trump administration. The Treasury Department labeled Petro an “illegal drug dealer” in October and imposed sanctions against him and his family.

Evan Ellis, who served in Trump’s first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean, and international narcotics, told The Times that strikes against Colombia are unlikely — but not as far-fetched as the prospect of a U.S. attack on Mexico, whose economic clout is greater, and whose government has fared better in diplomacy with Washington.

“There’s a strong hope that it’s just bluster — that, given Colombia has a sovereign government that the U.S. recognizes and has long worked with, it’s understood it would be catastrophic for the relationship,” Ellis said. “There’s a combination of concern and confusion, but there is a hope that this is just part of the president’s style.”

Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and deputy secretary of State, Christopher Landau, both have deep knowledge of the region and are said to be advocating against military strikes against U.S. allies. But Petro’s insults against Trump, calling him “ignorant,” “profoundly rude” and “against humanity,” have rankled a U.S. president accustomed to obsequious praise.

“In a certain way, despite the close military relationship and everything at stake, you clearly have a president who’s been imprudent at best,” Ellis said of Petro. “Making shrill and defiant statements against Trump are about the clearest way to get on his bad side.”

United Nations figures show that Colombian cultivation of coca — the raw ingredient in cocaine — has reached record levels in recent years, fueled by rising demand for cocaine not only in the United States, but also Europe and elsewhere.

Whereas U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been strained for more than a quarter of a century, Colombia has long been viewed as a steadfast ally, receiving billions in aid from Washington destined for antidrug campaigns. The alliance has endured despite large-scale internal strife in Colombia and the nation’s status as the world’s primary producer and exporter of cocaine.

The specter of a U.S. military attack seemed unfathomable to many Colombians processing the news Wednesday.

“A few years ago, we would never have imagined that Colombia could be threatened with attacks on its territory,” said Sebastián Bitar, an analyst at the University of the Andes. “We trusted in the solid relationship between the United States and Colombia.”

Guillermo Cochez, a Panamanian politician who served as his nation’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, believes that Trump’s threat against Colombia amounts to bluster, noting close ties between U.S. Southern Command and the Colombian military. “The most Americanized military in Latin America is the Colombian military,” Cochez told The Times.

“The United States will not do anything in Colombia, because they have to solve Venezuela first. That will be happening in the next phase,” Cochez said.

“Petro has so many problems inside Colombia that is known by the American government,” Cochez added. “It’s a distraction for Donald Trump. He’s trying to use his fight with Trump to try to get some respect in Colombia.”

The armed forces of the two nations have collaborated for years, conducting joint training exercises and counter-narcotics operations. A unilateral strike could upend that relationship, wrote the Colombian daily El Heraldo in an editorial, warning a U.S. attack could spark an “unprecedented regional reaction, with internally displaced [civilians], retaliations by various actors, border crises and new diasporas.”

Throughout Latin America, Trump’s saber-rattling has alarmed many — especially on the left — reflecting the region’s historic wariness of U.S. intervention.

Alejandro Rusconi, a left-wing Argentine lawyer and analyst, called Trump’s statements “yet another demonstration of the belligerent escalation being carried out by the U.S. government against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

But many local analysts warned that Colombia needed to heed Trump’s threat, taking whatever steps are necessary to avoid a direct confrontation.

“Its not the time to provoke the United States,” economist Mauricio Reina told Red Más Noticias, a Colombian outlet.

“With Donald Trump,” he added, “one has to fly low, avoiding the radar.”

Private-sector employers in the U.S. cut 32,000 jobs in November, payroll firm ADP said Wednesday, a surprise drop that could firm up expectations of an interest rate cut next week.

Forecasts had predicted a rise in employment last month, with economists polled by FactSet expecting private employers to add more than 40,000 jobs. 

“Hiring has been choppy of late as employers weather cautious consumers and an uncertain macroeconomic environment,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. 

Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees drove the cuts in November, shedding 120,000 jobs. 

“The 31,000 decline in private payrolls reported by ADP was driven by firms with less than 50 employees,” Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said in a report. “Small firms, those with less than 50 employees, have felt the pinch of policy uncertainty, rising input costs and high interest rates the most.”

The labor market weakness was led by cuts in the professional and business services industry, where employers eliminated 26,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality sector gained 13,000 jobs, as establishments gear up for the busy holiday season. 

Although the ADP figures are not viewed as particularly predictive of overall job growth, they are still closely watched as a gauge of the U.S. economy, especially as official data is incomplete due to the 43-day federal government shutdown that ended in November. 

Employers across the U.S. added 119,000 jobs in September, marking a pickup after previous employment data had shown a slowdown in hiring. 

Economists said the latest data from the payroll firm increases the odds that the Federal Reserve will pare its benchmark rate when policymakers meet on Dec. 9-10.

“There’s a high level of disagreement among Fed policymakers right now, but we maintain our call the doves will prevail over the hawks and the FOMC to vote for another 25bps interest rate reduction at next week’s meeting,” said Nationwide Financial Markets economist Oren Klachkin in a report, citing the darker picture painted by the ADP report. 

MEXICO CITY — Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted drug trafficker who prosecutors said “paved a cocaine superhighway” to the United States, walked out of a West Virginia prison this week a free man.

That was thanks to President Trump, who on Monday granted a full pardon to Hernández, the former right-wing leader of Honduras who was serving a 45-year sentence for supporting what a U.S. attorney general had called “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world.”

Trump’s extraordinary reprieve outraged many in Latin America and raised critical questions about his escalating military campaign in the region, which the president insists is aimed at combating the drug trade.

On Tuesday, Trump warned of imminent “strikes on land” in Venezuela, whose leftist leader, Nicolás Maduro, has been described as a “narco-dictator” by the White House, which seems intent on forcing him from power.

“If Trump is supposedly a drug warrior, why did he pardon a convicted trafficker?” said Dana Frank, a professor emerita at UC Santa Cruz specializing in recent Honduran and Latin American history. She described the drug war narrative embraced by the White House as little more than a pretext to push U.S. economic and political interests in the region and justify “a hemispheric attack on governments that are not following what the United States wants.”

The U.S. has killed dozens of alleged low-level drug traffickers in missile attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and has massed 15,000 troops and a fleet of warships and fighter jets off the coast of Venezuela.

Venezuela, home to the world’s largest known oil reserves, has been controlled by Maduro’s leftist authoritarian government since 2013.

The White House has gone to great lengths this year to cast Maduro as a drug trafficking mastermind who leads a smuggling network known as Cartel de los Soles that is composed of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials. Last month the administration designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist group.

But security experts in Venezuela and U.S. law enforcement officials say Cartel de los Soles, unlike the those in Mexico, is not a well-organized drug smuggling organization. They say it also is unclear whether Maduro directs illicit activities or whether he simply looks the other way, perhaps in a bid to build loyalty, while his generals enrich themselves. Maduro says that the accusations are false and that the U.S. is trying to oust him to gain access to Venezuelan oil.

The evidence against Hernández, on the other hand, was much more damning.

Hernández was implicated in multiple drug trafficking cases brought by U.S. authorities, who accused him of helping traffic 400 tons of drugs through Honduras and of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Hernández, prosecutors said, used his army to protect traffickers and once boasted that he was going to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos” by flooding the U.S. with cocaine.

Hernández insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that his 2024 conviction relied on testimony of witnesses — largely convicted drug traffickers — who were not credible. The Trump administration cited those reasons this week when explaining the president’s pardon.

Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, cast the pardon as an act of justice, writing on social media, “After nearly four years of pain, waiting, and difficult trials, my husband Juan Orlando Hernández RETURNED to being a free man, thanks to the presidential pardon granted by President Donald Trump.”

The pardon appears related to a Trump administration effort to sway the results of Honduras’ recent presidential election.

Ahead of Sunday’s vote, Trump threatened on social media to withhold aid from Honduras if voters did not elect conservative candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the National Party, whose members include Hernández. Trump also slammed the current Honduran president, leftist Xiamora Castro.

Election results were still being counted Tuesday but showed Asfura neck-and-neck with another conservative, Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla. Castro was trailing far behind.

Since returning to the White House this year, Trump has sought to exert dominance in Latin America like few presidents in recent memory, cutting deals with right-wing leaders such as Argentina’s Javier Millei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and punishing leftist governments with tariffs and sanctions.

Trump and his officials have overtly sought to influence other elections, supporting right-wing candidates in recent elections in Argentina and Peru.

“It’s a bullying of the democratic process,” Frank said. “It’s a heartbreak for the sovereignty of these countries.”

At home, Trump has repeatedly intervened in the justice system with pardons.

His reprieve for Hernández comes amid a flurry of clemency actions from the president, whose pardon attorney, Ed Martin, has openly advocated for Justice Department investigations that would burden Trump’s political enemies, alongside leniency for his friends and allies. “No MAGA left behind,” Martin wrote on social media in May.

Legal experts say the president’s pardons and commutations appear targeted toward individuals accused of abuses of power and white-collar crimes — the sort of crimes that Trump has been charged with throughout his adult life.

Just in the last several weeks, the president has offered commutations to George Santos, a former congressman convicted of defrauding donors, and David Gentile, a private equity executive convicted of a $1.6-billion scheme that prosecutors say defrauded thousands of ordinary investors.

He also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a crypto finance executive with ties to the Trump family who pleaded guilty to money laundering, as well as Paul Walczak, a nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, only for his mother to secure clemency for him at a Mar-a-Lago dinner.

The clemency actions have divided Trump’s base of supporters, some of whom see the president as protecting conservative voices that faced political prosecutions under the Biden administration. Others still see Trump protecting rich allies as much of the country faces an affordability crisis.

Linthicum reported from Mexico City and Wilner from Washington.

Michael and Susan Dell on Tuesday said they will donate $250 in so-called “Trump accounts” to 25 million American children, a $6.25 billion investment that the Dells said is designed to jumpstart the kids’ futures. 

The money will be given to most children ages 10 and younger who were born before the qualifying date of the Trump accounts, which were created earlier this year through the Republicans’ tax and spending bill. Those accounts are designed to provide $1,000 to babies born during President Trump’s second term in office. 

“Children older than 10 may benefit, too, if funds remain available after initial sign-ups. It is an incredibly practical and direct step to help families begin saving today,” the Dells said in their statement.

Dell, who is ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world’s 11th richest person with net worth of $148 billion, said he and his wife were inspired by the Invest America program, which is the formal name of the Trump accounts. The Dells said they are encouraging others to join in by contributing funds to the accounts, ranging from other philanthropists and businesses to childrens’ families and friends.

“We believe the smartest investment we can make is the one in children,” Michael Dell told “CBS News 24/7 Mornings” in a Tuesday interview. “We know that when a child has an account like this, even a modest sum, it really improves their outlook on life, and they are more likely to graduate from high school and college, and buy a home, start a business, start a family, become productive members of society.”

Susan Dell added that the gift builds on the couple’s previous philanthropic efforts to help children through their foundation. The pair announced the program on Giving Tuesday, an annual event where people are encouraged to make charitable contributions. 

“When we heard about this, for us, this was a natural fit,” Susan Dell told “CBS News 24/7 Mornings.” “This was going to reach a lot of children and help them have a start at a really bright future.”

Dell Technologies — the company founded by Michael Dell, where he serves as CEO — said in June that it had pledged to match the Treasury Department’s $1,000 contributions to the Trump Accounts. The Dell corporate match will be provided to every child born to its U.S.-based employees between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, the company said in an email to CBS News.

“Today’s philanthropic gift from Michael and Susan Dell is separate from, and in addition to, our corporate commitment,” Dell Technologies said. “Together, these contributions provide children with meaningful financial opportunities and a transformative head start toward their futures.”

What are “Trump accounts”?

Every child born in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2025, and Jan. 1, 2029, with a Social Security number, and whose parents have Social Security numbers, would be automatically enrolled in the program, according to Invest America.

Sign-ups are slated to begin on July 4, 2026, with parents and caregivers needed to activate the accounts. The Department of Treasury will seed the accounts with $1,000 per child, while parents, friends and others can also contribute up to $5,000 per year.

Signing up will be easy, according to details released by the Trump adminstration on Tuesday. Parents or guardians will need to file an IRS Form 4547, a one-page document that asks for basic information such as a child’s home address and Social Security number, to activate the account.

The accounts are limited to investing in broad U.S. stock funds that track the overall market, such as a S&P 500 fund, don’t use leverage and charge no more than 0.1% in annual fees. Parents can make elections for their children’s accounts at trumpaccounts.gov.

The accounts are locked until the child turns 18, at which point the funds may be used for qualified expenses, which include: 

• Education, such as college tuition or professional training
• Homeownership via a down payment on a first home
• Entrepreneurship, or the funds to start a business

When children turn 18, they may also opt to keep the money in the account and continue to invest.

How will the Dells’ contributions work?

The $250 contributions will also be made through Invest America accounts, according to a fact sheet about the Dells’ plan. 

The $250 will be contributed to accounts for kids under 10 years old but who were born before 2025, and therefore don’t qualify for the original Trump accounts, the Dells said. Children who are eligible for the $1,000 under the original Invest America plan don’t qualify for the Dells’ $250 investment.

“Priority goes to younger children if demand exceeds available funds,” they noted. “Any remaining funds may open eligibility for older children.”

The accounts will have the same guidelines as the $1,000 accounts, with the investments locked until the children turn 18 years old, at which point they can use the money for qualified expenses like education or buying a home. 

When the children turn 18, the accounts automatically convert to a traditional IRA, which means unused funds can continue to grow. 

Edited by

Alain Sherter

Despite wider economic uncertainty hovering above this year’s holiday season, shoppers turned out in big numbers for Black Friday — spending billions of dollars both in stores and online.

Adobe Analytics, which tracks e-commerce, said U.S. consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online Friday, marking a 9.1% jump from last year. It was a slight increase from the company’s spending estimate of $11.7 billion. 

Traffic particularly piled up between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time nationwide, when $12.5 million passed through online shopping carts every minute. Mobile shopping was estimated to drive more than half of all sales, according to Adobe. 

Consumers also spent a record $6.4 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, per Adobe. Top categories that saw an uptick in sales across both days included video game consoles, electronics and home appliances. Shopping services powered by artificial intelligence and social media advertising have also particularly influenced what consumers choose to buy, the firm said.

In-store traffic continues to dwindle

Meanwhile, software company Salesforce estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled $18 billion in the U.S. and $79 billion globally. And e-commerce platform Shopify said its merchants raked in a record $6.2 billion in sales worldwide on Black Friday. At its peak, sales reached $5.1 million per minute – with top categories including cosmetics and clothing, according to the Canadian company.

Black Friday is far from the sales event that created midnight mall crowds or doorbuster mayhem just decades ago. More and more consumers have instead turned to online deals to make post-Thanksgiving purchases from the comfort of their own homes – or opt to stretch out spending across longer promotions now offered by retailers.

As a result, in-store traffic has continued to dwindle. Initial data from RetailNext, which measures real-time foot traffic in physical stores, found that U.S. Black Friday traffic fell 3.6% from 2024.

But “the story isn’t just that shoppers stayed home; it’s that they’re changing how and when they shop,” Joe Shasteen, global manager of advanced analytics at RetailNext said in emailed comments on Saturday. He explained that customers are now spreading out purchases over a longer time frame and “walking into stores with a far narrower mission than we’ve seen in past holiday seasons.”

Black Friday remains a major date on retailers’ calendar – and Shasteen added that Friday’s drop is “notably better” than a sharper 6.2% decline RetailNext saw in in-store traffic for the days leading up to Thanksgiving. This indicates that, while shoppers remain cautious and are pulling back on in-store spending overall, “they’re still willing to show up for the biggest promotional moments,” he said.

Experts expect heightened holiday spending to continue through the weekend. In terms of e-commerce, Adobe expects U.S. shoppers to spend another $5.5 billion Saturday and $5.9 billion on Sunday – before reaching an estimated $14.2 billion peak on Cyber Monday, which would mark yet another record.

Tariffs create strain on businesses and households

Still, rising prices could be contributing to some of those numbers. U.S. President Donald Trump’s barrage of tariffs on foreign imports have strained businesses and households alike over the last year. The federal government had raised $195 billion in customs duties for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Despite spending more overall, Salesforce found U.S. shoppers purchased fewer items at checkout on Black Friday (down 2% from last year). Order volumes also slipped 1%, the firm noted, as average selling prices climbed 7%.

This year’s holiday spending rush arrives amid heightened economic uncertainty for consumers. Beyond tariffs, workers across public and private sectors are also struggling with anxieties over job security – amid both corporate layoffs and the after-effects of the 43-day government shutdown.

For the November-December holiday season overall, the National Retail Federation estimates U.S. shoppers will spend more than $1 trillion for the first time this year. But the rate of growth is slowing – with an anticipated increase of 3.7% to 4.2% year over year, compared to 4.3% in 2024’s holiday season.

At the same time, credit card debt and delinquencies on other short-term loans have been rising. And more and more shoppers are turning to “buy now, pay later” plans, which allows them to delay payments on holiday decor, gifts and other items.

At the Beijing premiere of “Zootopia 2” last week, Walt Disney Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer Jared Bush encountered a wall filled with letters from people throughout China, all writing about what the original 2016 animated movie meant to them.

They highlighted the optimism of rabbit cop Judy Hopps and how they wanted to emulate her sunny outlook. They cited the unlikely friendship between Judy and her partner in crime, a fox named Nick Wilde, as hope that they could find common ground with different family members. It was a display Bush didn’t see at any other premiere.

“It’s more than just a story,” said Bush, who wrote and directed “Zootopia 2,” directing alongside Byron Howard. “A lot of the time, these characters have helped people through difficult moments of their life. They have a lot of love for these characters.”

To this day, the original “Zootopia” ranks as China’s highest-grossing Hollywood animated film, with a total box office haul there of $236 million. Marketing ahead of the new film has included promotions with 10 brands, as well as displays throughout the country, including in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Beijing.

But over the years, the China market for U.S.-made films has changed dramatically, leading to questions about whether “Zootopia,” which heads to theaters Wednesday, and its loyal following can break through the more difficult landscape that American movies face there today.

Once seen as a major — and lucrative — destination for big Hollywood blockbusters, the country now has a more robust local film industry that’s pumping out strong competitors. The fraying geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China also hasn’t helped, nor has the increasing trend of younger audiences watching short-form content on their phones.

“It’s important to the industry that both ‘Zootopia’ and ‘Avatar’ work,” said Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution for Walt Disney Studios, referring to the upcoming James Cameron-directed “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” “The overall industry needs some success at year-end, and I think this would be a tremendous sign of confidence in the marketplace.”

China was once seen as a gold mine for certain films — namely, big studio movies — that could get approval from its government for release.

A decade ago, Hollywood movies would regularly haul in more than $100 million at the Chinese box office, with massive blockbusters like 2015’s “Furious 7” and 2014’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” drawing north of $300 million each. Some films with softer domestic debuts could count on China to supersize their box-office returns, like 2016’s “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” which grossed nearly $160 million in China alone, but just $26.8 million in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2016, the domestic Chinese film business saw a significant slowdown in box-office growth. As a result, revenue from imported films — largely those from the U.S., such as Universal Pictures’ “Warcraft” and Disney-owned Marvel Studios’ “Captain America: Civil War” — increased by 10.9%, said Ying Zhu, author of “Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World’s Largest Movie Market.”

Those foreign films accounted for 41.7% of the total market share at the time, up from 38.4% in 2015, she wrote in an email. To help boost year-end revenue, Chinese regulators even relaxed the so-called blackout on imported films during December, which was traditionally saved for local movies.

“Zootopia” opened in China to just $22 million at the box office, but momentum grew in subsequent weeks. Though a movie from the U.S. typically got a four-week run in China, Chinese regulators made an exception and added two extra weeks, said Bush, who co-directed and co-wrote the 2016 film.

“‘Zootopia’ was somewhat of a real surprise to us here in China,” he said on a video call from Beijing while on the film’s publicity tour. “We didn’t know that it was going to turn into this phenomenon here.”

Known in China as “Crazy Animal City,” the film’s dynamic between lead characters Nick and Judy and their imperfect but caring relationship appealed to Chinese audiences, as did Judy’s backstory of moving from a small town in the countryside to a major metropolis, Bush said. Animated films have also long been popular in the market.

After the film’s success, Disney built the “Zootopia”-themed land in Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2023 and is the only such land in any Disney park. The studio recently held the movie’s Shanghai premiere at the themed land, as crowds of fans (both there and in Beijing) dressed up as characters from the film, including lesser-known ones like Fru Fru the shrew and Officer Clauhauser, a pop culture-obsessed cheetah.

But since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, China has pulled back from its embrace of Hollywood films, particularly as its political relationship with the U.S. has chilled.

Earlier this year, China planned to reduce the number of Hollywood films it allows into the country, amid tariff tensions with the U.S. At the same time, China’s homegrown film industry has matured, leading to more locally-produced movies at the box office. A notable success was the animated hit “Ne Zha 2,” which raked in almost $2.2 billion worldwide, $1.8 billion of which was in China.

And similar to the U.S., the Chinese film market has also been dented by the growth of short-form content and increasing popularity of watching entertainment on phones and tablets, keeping theatergoers at home.

That’s all meant a less reliable haul for U.S. films. So far this year, the top-grossing American film in China was Universal’s “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” which brought in $79 million — a far cry from the massive returns some U.S. movies once commanded. The last Disney film that was released in China and made more than $100 million was 2024’s “Alien: Romulus.”

But there are still niches that appeal to Chinese audiences, including family movies, big blockbusters laden with special effects and animated franchises. Cripps said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the film’s reception in China, because of the franchise recognition and the themed land in Shanghai.

“Given what’s happened over the last two to three years, it’s hard to get overly excited until you see some actual data,” he said. “But certainly, it feels good going into it.”

Soccer fans traveling to the U.S. to watch the 2026 World Cup being held in North America will drive tourism spending in 11 host cities and provide a substantial boost to local economies, according to Tourism Economics, a provider of global travel data. 

The global soccer tournament, held every four years, is expected to draw 1.2 million international visitors, including spectators and their non-ticketed travel companions, national team representatives, match officials, and others, according to Tourism Economics.

The tournament kicks off on June 12 in Los Angeles. Seventy-eight matches will be played across 11 U.S. cities, with an additional 26 games set to take place in Mexico and Canada. The finals will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19. 

The U.S. metro areas scheduled to host matches, according to FIFA: Atlanta; Boston; Dallas; Houston; Kansas City, Mo.; Los Angeles; Miami; New York/New Jersey; Philadelphia; San Francisco Bay Area; and Seattle. 

The U.S. stands to benefit from an uptick in visitors next year after a sluggish year for international tourism in 2025, according to Tourism Economics. Researchers said foreigners’ negative perceptions of the Trump administration’s trade policies likely weighed on tourism in the U.S. this year. 

In 2025, the U.S. saw a 6.3% decline in international visitors. The firm forecasts 3.7% growth in international visits next year, partly driven by the World Cup. 

“The various headwinds facing international travel are likely to be partially offset by a strong global appetite to participate in the spectacle,” Tourism Economics said in a November report.

A separate report from FIFA and the World Trade Organization assessing the World Cup’s economic impact projects that the influx of visitors in host cities “will likely generate billions of dollars in economic activity,” boosting the hospitality, transportation and retail sectors.

“Hotels in hosting cities are preparing for record occupancy rates, while local businesses stand to gain from increased foot traffic. Beyond the economic impact, the event provides a platform to promote the host cities as global tourist destinations, enhancing their visibility and appeal to international travelers,” the report notes. 

The analysis estimates that international travelers will stay in the U.S. for an average of 12 days, attend an average of two matches and typically spend more than $400 per day.

Edited by

Alain Sherter

They go by names like @TRUMP_ARMY— or @MAGANationX, and their verified accounts proudly display portraits of President Donald Trump, voter rallies and American flags. And they’re constantly posting about U.S. politics to their followers, sounding like diehard fans of the president.

But after a weekend update to the social media platform X, it’s now clear that the owners of these accounts, and many others, are located in regions such as South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics.

Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics — that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.

The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate.

Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, announced Saturday that the social media platform is rolling out an “About This Account” tool, which lets users see the country or region where an account is based. To find an account’s location, tap or click the signup date displayed on the profile.

“This is an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square. We plan to provide many more ways for users to verify the authenticity of the content they see on X,” Bier wrote.

In countries with punitive speech restrictions, a privacy tool on X lets account holders only show their region rather than a specific country. So instead of India, for instance, an account can say it is based in South Asia.

Bier said Sunday that after an update to the tool, it would 99.99% accurate, though this could not be independently verified. Accounts, for instance, can use a virtual private network, or VPN, to mask their true location. On some accounts, there’s a notice saying the location data may not be accurate, either because the account uses a VPN or because some internet providers use proxies automatically, without action by the user.

“Location data will always be something to use with caution,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech and a former director of the International Fact-Checking Network. “Its usefulness probably peaks now that it was just exposed, and bad actors will adapt. Meta has had similar information for a while and no one would suggest that misinformation has been eliminated from Facebook because of it.”

Some of the accounts supported slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk as well as President Donald Trump’s children. Many of the accounts were adorned with U.S. flags or made comments suggesting they were American. An account called “@BarronTNews_,” for instance, is shown as being located in “Eastern Europe (Non-EU),” even though the display location on its profile says “Mar A Lago.” The account, which has more than 580,000 followers, posted on Tuesday that “This is a FAN account, 100 % independent, run by one guy who loves this country and supports President Trump with everything I’ve got.”

Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told CBS News these types of accounts are fueled by public interest in current events.

“It is shining a light on this new rage economy that exists on social media, including X, that takes advantage of current things,” Krebs said. “What’s the latest event? As we’ve seen over the last couple of years, it has there has been a rightward shift of the platform. And I think what we’re really seeing here is foreign-based accounts that are looking to make a little bit of money and taking advantage of this.”

He added, “I think X deserves some credit to shine a light, to kind of expose some of these. … I suspect you’ll see a bunch of these accounts lose influence.”

NewsGuard also found evidence that some X users are spreading misinformation about the location feature itself, incorrectly accusing some accounts of being operated from abroad when they’re actually used by Americans. Investigators found several instances where one user created fake screenshots that appear to suggest an account was created overseas.

It’s not always clear what the motives of the accounts. While some may be state actors, it’s likely that many are financially motivated, posting commentary, memes and videos to draw engagement.

“For the most visible accounts unmasked this week, money is probably the main motivator,” Mantzarlis said. “That doesn’t mean that X — as documented extensively by prior work done by academic and nonprofit organizations that are being attacked and defunded — isn’t also a target for state actors.”

Users were divided over the new ability to see an account’s location information, with some questioning whether it went too far.

“Isn’t this kind of an invasion of privacy?” One X user wrote. “No one needs to see this info.”

CARACAS, Venezuela — On the face of it, the United States appears closer than ever to mounting a military campaign to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.

President Trump says he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the Caribbean nation, and has massed troops, fighter jets and warships just off its coastline.

U.S. service members in the region have been barred from taking Thanksgiving leave. Airlines have canceled flights to Venezuela after the Federal Aviation Administration warned of a “potentially hazardous situation” there. And on Monday the White House officially designated Maduro as a member of an international terrorist group.

In Caracas, the nation’s capital, there is a palpable sense of anxiety, especially as each new bellicose pronouncement emerges from Washington.

“People are very tense,” said Rosa María López, 47, a podiatrist and mother of two. “Although no one says anything because they are afraid.”

Trump has been presented with a set of military options by the Pentagon, a source familiar with the matter told The Times, and is said to be weighing his options. Still, his plans for Venezuela remain opaque.

Trump, even while warning of a possible military action, has also continually floated the possibility of negotiations, saying he “probably would talk” to Maduro at some point.

“I don’t rule out anything,” Trump said last week.

Now people in both the U.S. and Venezuela are wondering: is the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean the prelude to an invasion, or a bluff intended to pressure Maduro to make a deal?

There are members of the White House — especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who are desperate to unseat Maduro, a leftist autocrat whom the U.S. does not recognize as Venezuela’s legitimately elected president.

But other members of Trump’s team seem more intent on securing access to Venezuela’s oil riches, and keeping them from China and Russia, than pushing for regime change. Parties of that camp might be willing to accept a deal with Venezuela that does not call for Maduro’s exit and a plan for a democratic transition.

Months of U.S. saber-rattling without any direct military action against the Maduro government may be weakening the Americans’ negotiating position, said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. “There is a psychological component to this operation, and it’s starting to lose its credibility,” he said. “I do fear that the regime thinks that it has weathered the worst of U.S. pressure.”

Maduro, for his part, insists he is open to dialogue. “Whoever in the U.S. wants to talk with Venezuela can do so,” he said this week. “We cannot allow the bombing and massacre of a Christian people — the people of Venezuela.”

For years, he has refused efforts to force him from office, even in the face of punishing U.S. sanctions, domestic protests against his rule and various offensives during the first Trump administration that Caracas deemed as coup attempts. Experts say there is no evidence that Trump’s buildup of troops — or his attacks on alleged drug traffickers off of Venezuela’s coast — has weakened Maduro’s support amid the military or other hard-core backers.

Venezuela, meanwhile, has sought to use the prospect of a U.S. invasion to bolster support at home.

On Monday, top officials here took aim at the State Department’s designation of an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel as a foreign terrorist group. Rubio claims the Cartel de los Soles is “headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature and judiciary.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the declaration for introducing “a whole bunch of new options” to fight what he described as “narco-terrorists” and “illegitimate regimes.”

The Venezuelan government says the Cartel de los Soles does not exist. Foreign Minister Yván Gil described Monday’s designation as a “ridiculous fabrication.” The U.S., he said, is using a “vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela under the classic U.S. format of regime change.”

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

The Cartel de los Soles, experts say, is less a traditional cartel — with a centralized command structure directing various cells — than a shorthand term used in the media and elsewhere to describe a loose group of corrupt Venezuelan military officials implicated in the drug trade.

The name, Cartel of the Suns, derives from the sun insignia found on the uniforms of Venezuelan soldiers, much like stars on U.S. military uniforms. It has been around since the early 1990s, when Venezuela was an important trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the U.S. market. Today, only a small portion of cocaine trafficked to the U.S. moves through Venezuela.

Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez Sánchez said it is unclear whether Maduro actually directs illicit activities conducted by his military or simply allows it to transpire among his government. Either way, she said, it is “happening under his nose.”

But she did not rule out that seizing on Maduro’s possible links to drug trafficking might be a convenient “pretext” for U.S. political machinations.

For the people of Venezuela, recent weeks have seen a heightened sense of uncertainty and anguish as people ponder ever-conflicting reports about a possible U.S. strike.

More than a decade of political, social and economic upheaval has left people exhausted and numbed, often unable to believe anything they hear about the future of Maduro’s government. There is a widespread sense of resignation and a feeling that things can only get worse.

“Every week we hear they are going to get rid of Maduro, but he’s still here,” said Inés Rojas, 25, a street vendor in Caracas. “We all want a change, but a change that improves things, not makes them worse. We young people don’t have a future. The doors of immigration are closed, we are locked in here, not knowing what is going to happen.”

Mostly, people seem to want an end to the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what comes next.

“I pray every day that this uncertainty ends,” said Cristina López Castillo, 37, an unemployed office worker who favors Maduro’s removal from office. “We don’t have a future — or a present. We live every day wondering what will happen tomorrow. I have more fear of hunger than of Trump.”

Still, Maduro retains many backers — and not only among the military and political elite who have seen their loyalty rewarded with additional wealth. Many people remain thankful for the social welfare legacy of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and are wary of U.S. motivations in Venezuela.

“We Venezuelans do not want to be anyone’s colony, nor do we want anyone to drop bombs on us to get rid of a president,” said José Gregorio Martínez Pina, 45, a construction worker in the capital.

“Is Maduro a narco? I haven’t seen any proof,” he said. “And if they have it, they should present it, instead of having a country living under terror for weeks.”

Times staff writers Linthicum and McDonnell reported in Mexico City. Mogollón, a special correspondent, reported in Caracas. Michael Wilner in the Times’ Washington bureau also contributed reporting.

The situation around Venezuela has Americans asking to know more. 

Across party lines, big majorities say the administration needs to explain what the U.S. intends regarding any action, and that it has not done so clearly yet.

Meanwhile, what Americans hear from the White House about inflation is, they say, not what they’re actually feeling at home: rising prices and worsening economic views. 

In the meantime, Americans do not think of Venezuela as a major threat to the US. Instead, more see a minor one, and they are largely opposed to potential military action.

So, the idea of potential U.S. military action in Venezuela meets with widespread disapproval. It doesn’t get overwhelming backing from Republicans either. 

Three in four Americans also say Trump would need congressional approval before taking military action in Venezuela, including just over half of Republicans.

Just one in five Americans have heard a lot about the U.S. military buildup in the first place. That may be another expression of that sense of limited information about the purpose. 

The current military attacks on boats suspected of bringing drugs find division — just over half approve, driven by nearly universal support among Republicans — though Americans overall overwhelmingly say they should see the evidence that there are drugs.

However, most Americans don’t think U.S. military action in Venezuela would change the amount of drugs coming into the U.S.

Looking more closely within the president’s GOP base: MAGA Republicans are actually more supportive of potential military action than non-MAGA ones.

For context, that is similar to what we’ve seen over time on many issues, including foreign policy, in which that part of the base is largely deferential to the president. (As one example, MAGA was also supportive of the bombing in Iran months ago.) Most of them say the president has explained things, and in turn, are more apt to see any action in Venezuela as decreasing the amount of drugs entering the U.S. 

But many who are opposed to military action, including those within the GOP ranks, may also be seeing this in terms of issue priorities. They’re a little more likely to judge the administration on what it does about the economy than those in favor. And most who judge him on the economy think he isn’t spending enough time on it.

Here’s what Americans say about the economy

There’s a disconnect between how Americans hear the White House describing the economy, and what they’re feeling themselves. 

Most Americans say Trump describes things with prices and inflation as better than they really are.

(This includes four in 10 Republicans who say this about Trump. They are also among those more likely to say prices are going up.)

This comes as ratings for the overall economy continue to be low — as they’ve been for years — ticking down this week to their lowest mark in 2025.

Prices, more generally, are still seen by most as going up.

As we head into the holiday season, that economic dissatisfaction includes the majority of Americans who feel President Trump’s policies are making the cost of food and groceries, specifically, go up.

So, that disconnect appears to continue to weigh on the president’s ratings. 

There are many ways Americans judge a president. For those who say they judge Mr. Trump most on what he does about the economy and inflation, they overwhelmingly say he isn’t spending enough time on that.

That, in turn, has continued to push his approval on handling the economy and inflation down over the course of several months. That trend continues this week, with assessments of the overall economy, and his ratings for handling the economy and inflation, hitting lows for the year. 

More than two-thirds disapprove of his handling of inflation.

He does especially poorly on handling the economy among people who mainly judge him on that. 

Among independents, his ratings for handling the economy, and his ratings overall, have also hit lows for the year. That has continued to push his approval rating overall lower over time too, now down to their low point for his second term after a steady decline over recent months.

The president does a little better on his handling of immigration, backed by continued large support from the GOP base, as has been the case for months.

The decline in the president’s overall approval ratings connects to people’s economic priorities in this way: even among those who voted for him in 2024, disapproval today is more likely to come when people are judging him mostly on the economy.

Deportation

The administration’s deportation program continues to split the country, but support is underpinned by strong approval from Republicans.

Most — particularly those outside the GOP base — continue to feel that ICE is detaining more people than necessary.

But the deportation program is seen by many as more undermining than strengthening the economy.

One possible reason: a third of the country (who tend to live in cities and suburbs) say it is impacting their community for the worse, and they feel people in their area are staying home more as a result of the program.

Epstein files

Americans across party lines think it is important to see the Epstein files released. 

Americans overwhelmingly believe they will contain damaging information about powerful people. Most say it’s too soon to know if what’s in them is true. On balance, though, more think that information will be true rather than false. 

Republicans are more satisfied with how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein case than they were in the summer. (The survey was conducted just after Trump said Congress should vote to release the files, which they did shortly thereafter.) Today, most others are not satisfied.

However, the president’s Republican base says issues surrounding the files are not important to how they judge him. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans say this doesn’t affect how they evaluate Trump overall. (Independents and Democrats, though, give it comparably more importance in this regard.)

---

This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,489 U.S. adults interviewed between November 19-21, 2025. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.4 points.

The car wash hadn’t yet opened for the day, but its owner was already on edge.

He scanned the street for law enforcement vehicles and hit refresh on a crowdsourced map that showed recent immigration sweeps.

“They were busy in our area yesterday,” he warned his employees. “Be careful.”

But except for staying home, there were few precautions that the workers, mostly men from Mexico, could take.

The business is located along one of L.A.’s busiest thoroughfares. Workers are exposed to the street as they scrub, wax and buff the parade of vehicles that streams in between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., seven days a week.

Immigration agents descended on the business multiple times this summer as part of a broader campaign against L.A. car washes. Masked men hauled away around a dozen workers, most of whom were swiftly deported. The Times is not identifying the business, the owner or the workers.

The raids had spooked remaining employees — and many had stopped showing up to work. The replacements the owner hired were mostly other immigrants who showed him Social Security cards that he hoped were legitimate.

Still, it was an open secret that the car wash industry, which paid low wages for back-breaking labor, largely attracted people without legal status.

“Americans don’t want to do this work,” the owner said.

After the raids, he had been forced to close for stretches during the typically lucrative summer months. He was now operating normally again, but sales were down, he had maxed out his credit cards and he was unsure whether his business would survive. Clients — frightened by the raids — were staying away.

“My target is to pay the rent, pay the insurance and pay the guys,” the owner told his manager as they sipped coffee in the early morning November chill and waited for their first customer. “That’s it.”

The manager, also an immigrant from Mexico, nodded. He was juggling his boss’ concerns with personal ones. He and his team had all seen friends, relatives and co-workers vanish in immigration raids. He left home each morning wondering whether he would return in the evening.

The mood at the car wash had once been lighthearted, with employees joking as they sprayed down cars and polished windows. Now everybody, the manager included, kept one eye on the street as they worked. “We say we’re OK,” he said. “But we’re all scared.”

A few minutes before 7 a.m., a BMW sedan pulled in for a wash. The manager flipped on the vacuum and said a prayer.

“Protect me. Protect my colleagues. And protect the place I work.”

The owner was born abroad but moved to Los Angeles after winning the U.S. green card lottery.

He used his life savings to buy the car wash, which at the time seemed like a sound investment. There are some 36 million vehicles in California. And in Los Angeles, at least for most of the year, people can’t rely on rainfall to keep them clean.

His business already took a major financial hit this year during the L.A. wildfires, which filled the air with smoke and ash. Customers didn’t bother to clean cars that they knew would get dirty again.

Then came President Trump, who promised to deport record numbers of migrants.

Previous administrations had focused on expelling immigrants who had committed crimes. But federal agents, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, have vastly widened their net, targeting public-facing workplaces that pay low wages.

Car wash employees — along with street vendors, day laborers, farmworkers and gardeners — have become low-hanging fruit. At least 340 people have been detained in raids on 100 car washes across Southern California since June, according to the CLEAN Car Wash Worker Center, which advocates for workers in the industry.

The owner was shocked when agents toting rifles and dressed in bulletproof vests first stormed his business, blocking exits with their vehicles and handcuffing employees without ever showing a search warrant.

“It was a kidnapping,” he said. “It felt like we were in Afghanistan or Iraq, not in the middle of Los Angeles.”

Some of the men that the agents dragged away in that raid and subsequent ones had been living in the U.S. for decades. Many were fathers of American children.

The manager was racked with survivor’s guilt. He was from the same small town in Mexico as one of the men who was detained and later deported. Another worker taken by agents had been hired the same morning as the raid.

That’s when many employees stopped showing up. One stayed home for almost a month straight, surviving on groceries his friends and family brought to his apartment.

But eventually that employee — and his brother — returned to the car wash. “I’m not brave,” the brother said. “I need the work.”

The brother had been in the country for nearly 25 years and had three U.S.-born children, one of whom had served as a Marine.

He had toiled at car washes the whole time — crouching to scrub tires, stretching to dry roofs and returning home each night with aching heels and knots in his neck. Less punishing industries weren’t an option for somebody without valid work documents, he said, especially in the Trump era.

He had been at the car wash during one of the raids, and had avoided being detained only when the owner stepped in front of him and demanded agents speak to him first.

The man said he had made peace with the idea that his time in the U.S. might come to an end. “At least my children are grown,” he said.

The two brothers were working this brisk November day, hand-drying Audis, Mercedes and a classic Porsche. They earned a little over minimum wage, and got to keep most of their tips.

Their bosses had told them that if immigration agents returned, the workers should consider locking themselves inside the cars that they were cleaning. “Don’t run,” the manager said. “They’ll only chase.”

At the cash register, the cashier watched a website that tracked Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions around the region. So far, there was no activity nearby.

She had been present during the immigration sweeps, and was still mad at herself for not doing more to stop agents from taking her co-workers. “You think you’re gonna stand up to them, but it’s different when it happens,” she said. “I was like a deer in the headlights.”

As workers cleaned his Toyota Camry, a retired history professor waited on a bench, reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. The ICE raids had scared some clients away, but had prompted others to express their support. He said he had made a point to patronize the business because he was angry at the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“They’re not getting the worst of the worst, they’re getting the easiest,” he said.

He noted that a friend of his — a Latino born in the U.S. — now carried a copy of his birth certificate. Just in case.

“That’s not the America I grew up in,” the customer said.

The owner of the car wash, too, was trying to square the promise of the United States with the reality that he was living.

“I thought Trump was a businessman,” he said. “But he’s really terrorizing businesses.”

The owner had paid taxes on his employee’s earnings, he said. So had they. “They were pushing the economy, paying rent, paying insurance, buying things.”

“Fine, take the criminals, take the bad guys,” he continued. “But these are hard workers. Criminals aren’t working at a car wash or waiting in front of a Home Depot.”

The owner had recently obtained American citizenship. But he was disillusioned — by the raids, L.A.’s homelessness crisis, high healthcare costs. He said his wife longed to leave the U.S. and return home.

“This is not the American dream,” he said. “This is an American nightmare.”

As the sun began to sink on the horizon, the last car of the day pulled out of the car wash — a sparkling clean Tesla.

The manager turned off the vacuum, recoiled hoses and exhaled with relief. He and his staff had survived another day. Tonight — at least — they would be going home to their families.

The U.S. Department of Transportation introduced a new female crash dummy as it seeks to step up safety for women, who face a higher injury risk in car crashes than men. 

The U.S. government has used a dummy model for decades that is based almost entirely on male proportions.

The new dummy, known as THOR-05F, is more human-like and contains female-specific proportions, according to the Transportation Department. The new model could potentially replace the Hybrid III dummy, which has previously been utilized for crash testing. 

“Advances in technology now make it possible to more accurately account for the biological differences between male and female anatomy in crash testing,” the Department of Transportation said in a statement Thursday.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men.

Transportation officials will consider using the new dummy in the government’s vehicle crash test five-star ratings once a final rule is adopted, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday in a news release.

The department also noted that THOR-05F will be available to manufacturers to build models and to the automotive industry, which can begin testing the model in their vehicles.

The road to THOR-05F

The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. 

The female dummy is smaller and has a rubber jacket to represent breasts. It’s routinely tested in the passenger or back seat but seldom in the driver’s seat, even though the majority of licensed drivers are women.

But the change is not guaranteed to happen. Some American automakers have been skeptical and a group representing auto insurers has already said it thinks the current crash test dummies are fine.

The new female dummy endorsed by the department more accurately reflects differences between men and women, including the shape of the neck, collarbone, pelvis, and legs. It’s outfitted with more than 150 sensors, the department said.

Maria Weston Kuhn, a law student at New York University, started lobbying members of Congress to pass a law requiring the new female dummy after surviving a 2019 crash in Ireland in which her seat belt slid off her hips and ruptured her intestines. She welcomed Duffy’s support but said she won’t celebrate until NHTSA incorporates the new model into its testing — a step that has been delayed numerous times.

“I fear that with this announcement everybody will throw up their hands and say we’ve won,” Kuhn said Friday. “But we are far from crossing the finish line.”

Some American automakers have been skeptical, arguing the new model may exaggerate injury risks and undercut the value of some safety features such as seat belts and airbags.

Despite Duffy’s announcement, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurers, continues to advocate for the current line of dummies used to represent women and has seen dramatic improvements in safety as a result, spokesperson Joe Young said.

“Certainly, we are going to continue to monitor the new tools and perhaps do some additional research,” Young said. “But for now, our researchers are content and confident that the dummies we’re using are doing a good job.”

Lawmakers and transportation secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for new crash test rules and safety requirements, but developments have been slow.

U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, and Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, both released statements welcoming the female crash test dummy announcement.

“Any progress here is good because there’s simply no good reason why women are more likely to be injured or die in car crashes,” Duckworth said.

Fischer introduced legislation, the She Drives Act, that would require the most advanced testing devices available, including a female crash test dummy. Duckworth is a co-sponsor.

“It’s far past time to make these testing standards permanent, which will help save thousands of lives and make America’s roads safer for all drivers,” Fischer said.

Ford Motor Company is recalling nearly 230,000 vehicles because a software flaw in the instrument panel display can prevent critical information, including warning lights and vehicle speed, from appearing.

The recall affects 2025-2026 Bronco and Bronco Sport vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in a notice posted on Nov. 18. All recalled vehicles are believed to contain the defect.

The government agency said Ford will fix the issue with a software update, which can be installed for free at a dealership or delivered wirelessly through an over-the-air update.

As of Nov. 7, 2025, Ford said it was aware of 12 warranty claims potentially related to the display issue, NHTSA documents show.

Affected owners can contact Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332. The car maker’s recall number is 25SC3.

Ford recalled 740,000 vehicles last month from its lineup due to camera display, steering and seatbelt issues. The car company has issued multiple recalls related to faulty rearview cameras in the last year.

Edited by

Aimee Picchi

As child care costs soar, many Americans today find themselves paying more for a caregiver than they do for their monthly rent, according to a new analysis. 

Child care costs for parents with two kids exceed rental costs in 85 of the country’s largest metro areas, personal finance site LendingTree found. In Omaha, Neb., Milwaukee, Wis., and Buffalo, N.Y., which have the highest child care costs in the country relative to local rents, families with an infant and a 4-year-old under care on average pay more than double the cost of their rent.

Families around the U.S. pay an average of $1,282 for full-time infant care, still below the average monthly cost to rent a two-bedroom unit, LendingTree’s data shows. Families with two children, on the other hand, spend an average of $2,252 per month on child care.

LendingTree, which determined how child care costs stack up against rent in 100 cities. compiled its findings using data from nonprofit group Child Care Aware of America and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Exorbitant child care costs are contributing to what amounts to a crisis of affordability for many Americans, who also face rising food, housing, energy and health care costs. A survey of roughly 3,000 people released this week by Brigham Young University and Deseret News found that 7 in 10 respondents said that raising children is unaffordable, a sentiment that has surged over the last decade.

One parent facing a child care crunch is New York City resident Gina Monroe, who started sending her son to day care in September.

“Having to have a household with both parents working and a grandmother that was getting too old to take care of a two-year-old, you don’t have a choice,” she told CBS News.

The 42-year-old said she pays $450 a week to send her son to a day care center on nearby Long Island. That’s less than her monthly mortgage payment of $3,200, but still represents one of her family’s biggest expenses, she said.

The financial strain of everyday life in the U.S., especially following the fierce inflation that erupted during the pandemic, has emerged as a political flashpoint this year. 

For example, the Trump administration has in recent weeks floated several ideas aimed at easing costs for Americans, including proposals for a $2,000 tariff rebate check and a 50-year mortgage. The administration also last week announced tariff exemptions on some popular grocery store staples, including bananas, beef and coffee, as Americans continue to battle elevated food costs. 

Incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also made issues around affordability the centerpiece of his campaign, urging city officials to establish free child care for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old.

Why are child care costs soaring?

Child care expenses have been rising steadily for years, and show little sign of relenting. From 2020 to 2024, costs rose nearly 30%, data from the nonprofit group Child Care Aware shows. 

The main driver for that surge, according to experts: a shortage of early education workers and available places at daycare centers, relative to the enormous demand for such services from families around the U.S.

To that end, Schulz pointed to what she described as “child care deserts” in some regions, where parents face a dearth of acceptable options. These are most common in low-income rural areas, which have difficulty recruiting and retaining a qualified workforce, a 2023 government report found. 

Where high-quality child care is in short supply, the owners can charge a premium given they face little competition, Schulz noted. 

Many households also don’t have the benefit of having nearby family members who can help with child care responsibilities, Keri Rodrigues, co-founder and president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy group for American families, told CBS News.

“What we actually need are policies that recognize the modern realities of working families and what the true cost of raising children in America actually is right now,” she said.

Edited by

Alain Sherter

The Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday it was lifting all restrictions on commercial flights that were imposed at 40 major airports during the country’s longest government shutdown.

Airlines were given permission to resume their regular flight schedules beginning Monday at 6 a.m. EST, the agency said.

The announcement was made in a joint statement by Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford.

Citing safety concerns as staffing shortages grew at air traffic control facilities during the shutdown, the FAA issued an unprecedented order to limit traffic in the skies. It had been in place since Nov. 7, affecting thousands of flights across the country.

Impacted airports included large hubs in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

The flight cuts started at 4% and later grew to 6% before the FAA on Friday rolled the restrictions back to 3%, citing continued improvements in air traffic controller staffing since the record 43-day shutdown ended on Nov. 12.

The number of flights canceled this weekend was at its lowest point since the order took effect and was well below the 3% cuts FAA was requiring for Saturday and Sunday. Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium showed that less than 1% of all flights were canceled this weekend. The flight tracking website FlightAware said 149 flights were cut Sunday and 315 were canceled on Saturday.

The FAA statement said an agency safety team recommended the order be rescinded after “detailed reviews of safety trends and the steady decline of staffing-trigger events in air traffic control facilities.”

The statement said the FAA “is aware of reports of non-compliance by carriers over the course of the emergency order. The agency is reviewing and assessing enforcement options.” It did not elaborate.

Cancellations hit their highest point Nov. 9, when airlines cut more than 2,900 flights because of the FAA order, ongoing controller shortages and severe weather in parts of the country. Conditions began to improve throughout last week as more controllers returned to work amid news that Congress was close to a deal to end the shutdown. That progress also prompted the FAA to pause plans for further rate increases.

The agency had initially aimed for a 10% reduction in flights. Duffy had said worrisome safety data showed the move was necessary to ease pressure on the aviation system and help manage worsening staffing shortages at air traffic control facilities as the shutdown entered its second month and flight disruptions began to pile up.

Air traffic controllers were among the federal employees who had to continue working without pay throughout the shutdown. They missed two paychecks during the impasse.

Duffy hasn’t shared the specific safety data that prompted the cuts, but he cited reports during the shutdown of planes getting too close in the air, more runway incursions and pilot concerns about controllers’ responses.

Airline leaders have expressed optimism that operations would rebound in time for the Thanksgiving travel period after the FAA lifted its order.

Americans may soon be paying more for their favorite Italian pasta brands — or even have trouble finding imported spaghetti — as the Trump administration eyes a new import duty on 13 of Italy’s largest pasta exporters.

The proposal, published by the Commerce Department in September, would add a new 92% antidumping duty after a U.S. government probe found that some Italian pasta brands, including La Molisana and Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, were selling their products below U.S. market prices. Combined with the existing 15% tariff on European Union imports, the total duties on Italian-made pasta could rise to 107%.

That would represent one of the Trump administration’s highest import duty rates on any product, according to the Wall Street Journal, which earlier reported on the pasta dispute.

If the anti-dumping duty goes into effect, the impact on American consumers would be substantial, according to Phil Lempert, food industry analyst and editor of SupermarketGuru. Some Italian pasta makers may simply stop exporting their products to the U.S., while others might raise their prices, he added. 

“You don’t have enough domestic manufacturing to fill up those shelves,” Lempert said. “So you’re going to walk into the pasta aisle and you’re going to see it half empty.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai told CBS News, “Italian pasta is not ‘disappearing.'” 

He added that the antidumping duty is a proposal and that it is not yet final. “The pasta makers still have several months to continue participating in this review before this preliminary finding becomes finalized,” he said.

Yet some Italian pasta companies are preparing to pull out of U.S. stores as soon as January because of the threat of the new antidumping duty, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Which pasta brands could be affected?

The antidumping duties — a type of federal tariff applied to imported products sold in the U.S. for less than their market value — would impact 13 Italian pasta makers, including La Molisana and Garofalo, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce publication. The companies did not immediately respond to CBS News’ request for comment.

• Agritalia
• Aldino
• Antiche Tradizioni Di Gragnano
• Barilla 
• Gruppo Milo 
• La Molisana
• Pastificio Artigiano Cav. Giuseppe Cocco
• Pastificio Chiavenna
• Pastificio Liguori 
• Pastificio Lucio Garofalo
• Pastificio Sgambaro
• Pastificio Tamma 
• Rummo

What comes next for Italian pasta

Desai, the White House spokesperson, told CBS News that the companies in question failed to adhere to multiple data requests from the Commerce Department as part of a long-running probe into Italian pasta makers that has been ongoing since the mid-1990s.

Desai added that there’s no “hard date” for when the duties would take effect. 

The Commerce Department and International Trade Administration did not immediately respond to CBS News’ requests for comment.

American pasta makers have long accused their Italian rivals of unfairly undercutting them on price. But the Commerce Department’s proposal may mark a tipping point for Italian exporters that rely heavily on the U.S. market.

Last year, the U.S. imported pasta from Italy valued at $684 million, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, which offers global trade data.

Edited by

Aimee Picchi

Swiss drugmaker Novartis opened a new 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Carlsbad to make cancer drugs, as part of its promised $23 billion investment push to build out its domestic U.S. facilities over the next five years.

The plant will produce compounds needed for radioligand therapy (RLT), a form of precision medicine that enables the delivery of radiation directly on cancerous tumors while limiting damage to surrounding cells.

“Radioligand therapy is a breakthrough we’ve unlocked at scale, made possible by reimagining how innovation reaches patients,” said Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis. “As the global leader in RLT for more than seven years, we’ve advanced this technology with a deep belief in its power to transform cancer care.”

This Carlsbad manufacturing facility will be Novartis’ third radioligand therapy production site in the U.S., and will help meet future demand for doses for patients in western states and Hawaii.

“The opening of our Carlsbad facility underscores our strong commitment to the U.S. and dedication to bringing this pioneering treatment to patients across the country,” Narasimhan of Novartis said.

The firm said it was also expanding existing sites in North Carolina, Indiana and New Jersey.

The Trump administration has exerted political and regulatory pressure on pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices and increase domestic drug production through executive orders and threats of tariffs.

Some companies, such as Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have been engaged in public negotiations and struck deals to reduce the price of popular drugs such as Ozempic and Zepbound. Others, such as Novartis, have promised to beef up domestic investments.

In April, Novartis said it would invest $50 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, and has been setting up domestic supply chains for its high-margin business of radioligand therapy. Of this, $23 billion will be used to build and expand ten U.S. sites.

The company announced that it will set up additional radioligand therapy manufacturing facilities in Florida and Texas, and will establish its second global R&D hub in San Diego.

“We commend Novartis for supporting our broader mission of bringing manufacturing capacity in the United States,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said in a press release on Monday. “Our unique partnership approach is working.”

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa met President Trump at the White House on Monday, continuing a stunning reversal of fortunes for a man branded until three days ago as an international terrorist by the U.S. government with a $10 million bounty on his head.

The former leader of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria disavowed Islamic extremism after rising to lead his war-torn country. Nearly a year ago, he led his rebel militia to force long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad out of office and into exile in Russia.

Syria was crippled for decades under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other nations against Assad, and Al-Sharaa is now seeking to normalize relations.

A senior administration official confirmed to CBS News on Monday that Syria will be joining the U.S.-led Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS, marking a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy. Al-Sharaa’s own former militia, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, opposed ISIS during the latter years of Syria’s 14-year civil war, when he went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

He was expected to possibly sign a formal agreement with President Trump during their in person meeting on Monday — which will be their third to date — to cooperate on counterterrorism. That would be a highly symbolic moment, indicating a 180-degree turnaround in how Syria is viewed by the U.S. government.

Under Assad about 12 years ago, ISIS was allowed to grow and metastasize into one of the most powerful terrorist organizations in the world. At one point, it controlled a huge swath of land spanning the Syria-Iraq border.

After meeting Al-Sharaa for the first time in Saudi Arabia in May, Mr. Trump called the Syrian leader a “young, attractive guy, tough guy, strong past.”

Over the weekend, he also became the first Syrian leader to shoot some hoops with the U.S. military. Video shared Saturday by the Syrian foreign ministry shows him nailing a three-pointer as he plays with a U.S. admiral and a brigadier general at an undisclosed location in the U.S. 

But until Friday morning, the Syrian president was still officially designated a terrorist by the U.S. government, as he had been since 2013. That designation was lifted by the end of the day.

There was expected to possibly be discussion at the White House on Monday about the official lifting of U.S. economic sanctions against Syria, which Mr. Trump put in motion in May with an executive order.

That order removed sanctions on Syria, “while maintaining sanctions on the former president, Assad, his associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, persons linked to chemical weapons activities, ISIS and their affiliates, and Iranian proxies,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in June. 

Al-Sharaa’s transitional government has pushed the Trump administration for sanctions relief for months, and work had been underway to ease some sanctions even before the president’s May announcement, but other measures still need to be formally revoked by Congress.

In an apparent bid to show its determination to crack down on ISIS and other extremists, the Syrian government announced that more than 70 alleged members of the group had been detained just hours before al-Sharaa landed in Washington.

In September, addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York — another landmark moment as it had been nearly six decades since a Syrian leader had done so — Al-Sharaa told the gathered leaders that his country was “reclaiming its rightful place among the nations of the world.” 

But to reclaim its place, it also needs to rebuild — a herculean task that Al-Sharaa recently told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan in an interview for 60 Minutes will likely cost $600-$900 billion. 

He stressed that it would require the international community’s help.

“The world watched this tragedy unfold for 14 years and couldn’t do anything to stop this massive crime,” he said of the Syrian civil war. “So, the world today should provide support to Syria.”

On Monday, he was likely to ask the leader of the world’s wealthiest nation to help however he can.

 

1m ago

See which airports have had the most flight cancellations

 

22m ago

“This is simply unacceptable, and everyone deserves better,” American executive says

 

12:46 PM

Charlotte airport officials call flight cuts an “unprecedented situation”

 

12:16 PM

Over 1,700 flights canceled as of Monday afternoon

 

11:59 AM

Trump: “All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!!”

 

11:44 AM

More than 250 flights canceled at NYC airports

 

11:32 AM

Hundreds of flights already canceled for Tuesday

 

11:04 AM

Travelers turn to buses and trains to avoid flight delays, cancellations

 

Updated 10:32 AM

Over 1,600 flights canceled as of Monday morning

 

Updated 10:32 AM

Only 4 air traffic controllers worked at Atlanta’s airport Saturday, transportation secretary says

 

Updated 10:32 AM

Over 5,500 flights canceled since FAA order took effect

President Trump on Friday accused foreign-owned meat packers of driving up the price of beef in the U.S. and asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation.

The president announced the move on social media days after his party suffered losses in key elections in which the winning Democratic candidates focused relentlessly on the public’s concerns about the cost of living. Mr. Trump, however, has insisted grocery prices are down, with some exceptions. The president said the price of boxed beef is “fishy.” 

“I have asked the DOJ to immediately begin an investigation into the Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation,” Mr. Trump wrote in the social media post.

“We will always protect our American Ranchers, and they are being blamed for what is being done by Majority Foreign Owned Meat Packers, who artificially inflate prices, and jeopardize the security of our Nation’s food supply,” he continued.

The president offered no proof to support his allegations.

“Action must be taken immediately to protect Consumers, combat Illegal Monopolies, and ensure these Corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American People,” he said.

Last month, Mr. Trump suggested the U.S. would buy Argentine beef to bring down stubbornly high prices for American consumers, angering U.S. cattle ranchers.

Beef prices have soared in part after drought and years of low prices led to the smallest U.S. herd size in decades. Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter, have also curbed imports.

Mr. Trump’s accusations have renewed a bipartisan presidential fight against rising food prices.

Then-President Joe Biden talked with independent farmers and ranchers about initiatives to reduce food prices by increasing competition within the meat industry. And then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump defeated in winning reelection last year, used her campaign to vow to crackdown on food producers and major supermarkets “price gouging.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation may need to close “certain parts of the airspace” if the longest government shutdown on record continues into next week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday. 

“You will see mass flight delays, you’ll see mass cancellations,” Duffy said at a press conference in Washington, D.C. “And you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it, because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

He added, “We will restrict the airspace when we feel it’s not safe.”

Throughout the 35-day federal shutdown, set to become the longest in U.S. history, Duffy has maintained that commercial air travel remains safe. The tradeoff is that passengers are experiencing more flight delays as officials slow flight traffic based on staffing levels to ensure that the national airspace remains well-monitored, Duffy has said at earlier press conferences. 

More than 10,000 flights within, into or out of the U.S. experienced delays last weekend, while an additional 4,700 trips were delayed on Monday, according to tracking service FlightAware. 

Duffy said on social media on Wednesday that 46% of the previous day’s flight delays were due to staffing issues in air traffic control towers. Ordinarily, personnel issues account for roughly 5% of such delays, according to aviation data. 

“Draconian steps”?

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights following the 9/11 terror attacks for national security reasons, while hurricanes and other weather emergencies can also lead to flight restrictions. But closing parts of the nation’s airspace because of staffing issues would be unprecedented, according to aviation industry experts. 

“In this particular instance, Duffy is talking about staffing. He knows the strain and stress this is taking on air traffic controllers,” Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert on aviation security, told CBS News. 

Closing even a portion of the nation’s vast airspace would be a major step and likely impact travel nationwide, he added. The system operates on a so-called hub-and-spoke model in which passengers using regional airports can connect with major airports to travel around the U.S.

If the airspace around New York were to close, for example, it could affect passengers in multiple cities, according to Jacobson. 

“For us to take such draconian steps to shut it down in sectors of the country would be unprecedented,” he said. “If you shut down the New York area, you shut down a lot of the country because of the interconnectivity of the hub-and-spoke system.” 

More controllers calling in sick

With air traffic controllers working without pay during the shutdown, more than usual are calling in sick, Duffy has said. He has said he is discouraging them from taking on side gigs like delivering for Uber or DoorDash to make ends meet during the funding lapse, given the level of focus that their job requires. 

“The longer this goes on, every day, these hardworking Americans have bills they have to pay, and they’re being forced to make decisions and choices,” Duffy said Tuesday. “As every day goes by, I think the problem is going to only get worse. Not better.”

At an Oct. 28 news conference at LaGuardia Airport in New York, National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels emphasized that his organization’s members are under mounting financial pressures.

“Air traffic controllers have to have 100% of focus 100% of the time,” he said. “And I’m watching air traffic controllers going to work. I’m getting the stories. They’re worried about paying for medicine for their daughter. I got a message from a controller that said, ‘I’m running out of money. And if she doesn’t get the medicine she needs, she dies. That’s the end.'”

The U.S. Travel Association on Monday urged congressional leaders to end the shutdown, which the industry trade group said could disrupt passengers during the busy Thanksgiving holiday. In 2024, 20 million passengers took to the skies over that week. 

“A shutdown places extraordinary strain on federal personnel who are essential to keeping America moving — from Transportation Security Administration officers to air traffic controllers, who are forced to work without pay,” the group said in a Nov. 3 letter. “When staffing shortages worsen, airport wait times grow longer and flight delays and cancellations become more frequent, threatening to derail family travel plans across the country.”

Edited by

Nicole Brown Chau and

Aimee Picchi

Kris Van Cleave and

Kathryn Krupnik

contributed to this report.

MEXICO CITY — They’re blowing up boats in the high seas, threatening tariffs from Brazil to Mexico and punishing anyone deemed hostile — while lavishing aid and praise on allies all aboard with the White House program.

Welcome to the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, the Trump administration’s bellicose, you’re-with-us-or-against-us approach to Latin America.

Not yet a year into his term, President Trump seems intent on putting his footprint in “America’s backyard” more than any recent predecessor. He came to office threatening to take back the Panama Canal, and now seems poised to launch a military attack on Venezuela and perhaps even drone strikes on cartel targets in Mexico. He vowed to withhold aid from Argentina if this week’s legislative elections didn’t go the way he wanted. They did.

“Every president comes in promising a new focus on Latin America, but the Trump administration is actually doing it,” said James Bosworth, whose firm provides regional risk analysis. “There is no country in the region that is not questioning how the U.S. is playing Latin America right now.”

Fearing a return to an era when U.S. intervention was the norm — from outright invasions to covert CIA operations to economic meddling — many Latin American leaders are trying to craft please-Trump strategies, with mixed success. But Trump’s transactional proclivities, mercurial outbursts and bullying nature make him a volatile negotiating partner.

“It’s all put Latin America on edge,” said Michael Shifter, past president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. “It’s bewildering and dizzying and, I think, disorienting for everyone. People don’t know what’s coming next.”

In this super-charged update of U.S. gunboat diplomacy, critics say laws are being ignored, norms sidestepped and protocol set aside. The combative approach draws from some old standards: War on Drugs tactics, War on Terrorism rationales and Cold War saber-rattling.

Facilitating it all is the Trump administration’s formal designation of cartels as terrorist groups, a first. The shift has provided oratorical firepower, along with a questionable legal rationale, for the deadly “narco-terrorist” boat strikes, now numbering 14, in both the Caribbean and Pacific.

“The Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere,” is how Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, has labeled cartels, as he posts video game-esque footage of boats and their crews being blown to bits.

Lost is an essential distinction: Cartels, while homicidal, are driven by profits. Al Qaeda and other terror groups typically proclaim ideological motives.

Another aberration: Trump doesn’t see the need to seek congressional approval for military action in Venezuela.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” Trump said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Trump’s unpredictability has cowed many in the region. One of the few leaders pushing back is Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who, like Trump, has a habit of incendiary, off-the-cuff comments and social media posts.

The former leftist guerrilla — who already accused Trump of abetting genocide in Gaza — said Washington’s boat-bombing spree killed at least one Colombian fisherman. Petro called the operation part of a scheme to topple the leftist government in neighboring Venezuela.

Trump quickly sought to make an example of Petro, labeling him “an illegal drug leader” and threatening to slash aid to Colombia, while his administration imposed sanctions on Petro, his wife, son and a top deputy. Like the recent deployment of thousands of U.S. troops, battleships and fighter jets in the Caribbean, Trump’s response was a calculated display of power — a show of force designed to brow-beat doubters into submission.

Amid the whirlwind turns in U.S.-Latin American relations, the rapid unraveling of U.S.-Colombia relations has been especially startling. For decades Colombia has been the linchpin of Washington’s anti-drug efforts in South America as well as a major trade partner.

Unlike Colombia and Mexico, Venezuela is a relatively minor player in the U.S.-bound narcotics trade, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And yet the White House has cast Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, as an all-powerful kingpin “poisoning” American streets with crime and drugs. It put a $50-million bounty on Maduro’s head and massed an armada off the coast of Venezuela, home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves.

An exuberant cheerleader for the shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions-later posture is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has for years advocated for the ouster of left-wing governments in Havana and Caracas. In a recent swing through the region, Rubio argued for a more muscular interdiction strategy.

“What will stop them is when you blow them up,” Rubio told reporters in Mexico City. “You get rid of them.”

That mindset is “chillingly familiar for many people in Latin America,” said David Adler, of the think tank Progressive International. “Again, you’re doing extrajudicial killings in the name of a war on drugs.”

U.S. intervention in Latin America dates back more than 200 years, when President James Monroe declared that the United States would reign as the hemispheric hegemon.

In ensuing centuries, the U.S. invaded Mexico and annexed half its territory, dispatched Marines to Nicaragua and Haiti and abetted coups from Chile to Brazil to Guatemala. It enforced a decades-long embargo against communist Cuba — while also launching a botched invasion of the island and trying to assassinate its leader —and imposed economic sanctions on left-wing adversaries in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Motivations for these interventions varied from fighting communism to protecting U.S. business interests to waging a war on drugs. The most recent full-on U.S. assault against a Latin American nation — the 1989 invasion of Panama — also was framed as an anti-drug crusade. President George H.W. Bush described the country’s authoritarian leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega, as a “drug-running dictator,” language that is nearly identical to current White House descriptions of Maduro.

But a U.S. military invasion of Venezuela presents a challenge of a different magnitude.

Venezuela is 10 times larger than Panama, and its population of 28 million is also more than tenfold that of Panama’s in 1989. Many predict that a potential U.S. attack would face stiff resistance.

And if curtailing drug use is really the aim of Trump’s policy, leaders from Venezuela to Colombia to Mexico say, perhaps Trump should focus on curtailing addiction in the U.S., which is the world’s largest consumer of drugs.

To many, the buildup to a potential intervention in Venezuela mirrors the era preceding the 2003 Iraq war, when the White House touted not drug trafficking but weapons of mass destruction — which turned out to be nonexistent — as a casus belli.

“Somehow, the United States of America has found a way to combine two of its greatest foreign policy failures — the Iraq War and the War on Drugs — into a single regime change narrative,” Adler said.

Further confounding U.S.-Latin American relations is Trump’s personality-driven style: his unabashed affection for certain leaders and disdain for others.

While Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro sit atop the bad-hombre list, Argentine President Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele — the latter the self-described “world’s coolest dictator” — are the darlings of the moment.

Trump has given billions of dollars in aid to bail out the right-wing Milei, a die-hard Trump loyalist and free-market ideologue. The administration has paid Bukele’s administration millions to house deportees, while maintaining the protected status of more than 170,000 Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.

“It’s a carrot-and-stick approach,” said Sergio Berensztein, an Argentina political analyst. “It’s fortunate for Argentina that it gets the carrot. But Venezuela and Colombia get the stick.”

Trump has given mixed signals on Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The two leftists lead the region’s largest nations.

Trump has wielded the tariff cudgel against both countries: Mexico ostensibly because of drug trafficking; Brazil because of what Trump calls a “witch hunt” against former president Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing Trump favorite convicted of attempting a coup after he, like Trump, lost a bid for reelection.

Paradoxically, Trump has expressed affection for both Lula and Sheinbaum, calling Lula on his 80th birthday “a very vigorous guy” (Trump is 79) and hailing Sheinbaum as a “lovely woman,” but adding: “She’s so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight.”

Sheinbaum, caught in the crosswinds of shifting policy dictates from Washington, has so far been able to fight off Trump’s most drastic tariff threats. Mexico’s reliance on the U.S. market highlights a fundamental truth: Even with China expanding its influence, the U.S. still reigns as the region’s economic and military superpower.

Sheinbaum has avoided the kind of barbed ripostes that tend to trigger Trump’s rage, even as U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats creep closer to Mexico’s shores. Publicly at least, she seldom shows frustration or exasperation, once musing: “President Trump has his own, very special way of communicating.”

Special correspondents Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.

On an overcast morning in September, Hector Alessandro Negrete left his beloved Los Angeles — the city he was brought to at 3 months old — and headed down Interstate 5 to Mexico, the only country where he held a passport.

It was a place that, to him, had “always felt like both a wound and a possibility.”

Negrete, 43, sat in the passenger seat as a friend steered the car south and two more friends in another car followed. He had condensed his life to three full suitcases and his dachshund mix, Lorca.

They pulled over at the beach in San Clemente. Angel Martinez, his soon-to-be former roommate, is deeply spiritual, and his favorite prayer spot is the ocean, so he prayed that Negrete would be blessed and protected — and Lorca too — as they began a new stage in their lives.

On the near-empty beach, the friends embraced and wiped away tears. Martinez handed Negrete a small watermelon.

As instructed, Negrete walked to the edge of the water, said his own prayer and, as a gift of thanks to the cosmos, plopped it into a crashing wave.

Negrete doesn’t call it self-deportation.

“Self-repatriation,” he said. “I refuse to use this administration’s language.”

President Trump had been in office just over a month when Negrete decided he would return to Mexico. Methodical by nature, he approached the decision like any other — by researching, organizing and planning.

Negrete secured three forms of Mexican identification: his voter credential, a renewed passport and a card akin to a Social Security ID.

He registered Lorca as an emotional support animal, paid for a vaccine card and a certificate of good health, and crate-trained her in a TSA-approved carrier.

He announced his decision to leave in June on his Substack newsletter: “If you’re thinking, ‘Alessandro’s giving up,’ look deeper. I am choosing freedom. For the first time, I feel unshackled from the expectations of waiting.”

Negrete had grown tired of wishing for immigration reform. He had built his career advocating for immigrants such as himself, including stints as statewide coordinator for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, and as executive director for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.

He said his work had helped legalize street vending in Los Angeles and he assisted the office of then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in securing the release of a young woman from immigration detention. He was the first openly undocumented and LGBTQ+ person on the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council.

Under previous administrations, Negrete’s political work had felt like a shield against deportation. Even during Trump’s first term, Negrete had marched at rallies denouncing his immigration policies.

But that was before the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols that tore into Southern California during Trump’s second term. On June 6, as anti-ICE protesters took to the streets, Negrete rushed to downtown Los Angeles when fellow activists told him street medics were needed.

“One of my homies said, ‘Hey fool, what are you doing here?’” he recalled. Seeing Los Angeles police officers advancing on the crowd, he realized that no amount of public support could protect him.

He fled. “Thank God I left.”

In mid-August, Negrete hosted a yard sale and going away party. The flier was tongue-in-cheek: “Everything must go! Including me!”

His red T-shirt stated plainly, “I AM UNDOCUMENTED,” and his aviator sunglasses hid the occasional tears. Tattoos dotted his extremities, including an anchor on his right leg with the words “I refuse to sink.”

“I think it hit me when I started packing my stuff today,” he told a former colleague, Shruti Garg, who had arrived early.

“But the way you’ve invited everyone to join you is so beautiful,” she replied.

One table held American pop-culture knickknacks — sippy cups with Ghostface from the movie “Scream,” collectible Mickey Mouse ears, a Detective Batman purse shaped like a comic book, another purse shaped like the locker from the ‘90s cartoon “Daria.”

Negrete said the items reminded him of his youth and represented the gothic, quirky aspects of his personality.

“I was born in Mexico, but I don’t know Mexico,” he said. “So I’m leaving the American parts of me that are no longer going to serve me.”

The back yard slowly filled with loved ones from Negrete’s various social circles. There was his mostly queer softball team — the Peacocks — his running group, his chosen family and his blood family.

Negrete’s close friend Joel Menjivar looked solemn.

“I’m scared it’s going to start a movement,” he said. “Undocumented or DACA friends who are talented and integral to the fabric of L.A. might get ideas to leave.”

Another friend, Mario Mariscal, said he took Negrete’s decision the hardest, though at first he didn’t believe Negrete was serious. More than once he asked, “You really want to give up everything you’ve built here for a new start in Mexico?”

Eventually, Negrete had to tell Mariscal that his questions weren’t helpful. During a deeper conversation about his decision, Negrete shared that he was tired of living with the constant fear of getting picked up, herded into an unmarked van and taken away.

“I just kept telling him, ‘That’s not going to happen to you,’” Mariscal said. “But the more this administration keeps doing it, the more it’s in our face, the more we’re seeing every horror story about that, it became clear that, you know what, you do have a point. You do have to do what’s right for you.”

Negrete is cognizant of the privilege that makes his departure different from that of many other immigrants. He is white-passing, fluent in Spanish and English, and moved with $10,000 in savings.

In June, he was hired as executive director of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Old School Hub, that works to combat ageism around the world. The role allowed him to live wherever he wanted.

He decided to settle in Guadalajara, a growing technology hub, with historic buildings featuring Gothic architecture that he found beautiful. It also helped that Guadalajara has one of the country’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ scenes and is a four-hour drive from Puerto Vallarta, a renowned queer resort destination.

As Negrete began his new job while still in L.A., he picked a moving date — Sept. 4 — and booked a two-week Airbnb near the baseball stadium.

That Guadalajara’s team, the Charros de Jalisco, wore Dodger blue felt like a good omen.

On the drive toward the border, messages poured into Negrete’s phone.

“I’m sending you all my love Alessandro,” one read. “Cuídate. [Take care.] Know that even though you’re far away from home, you carry us with you.”

“Todo te va a salir bien,” read another. Everything will go well for you, it said. “Spread your wings and flyyyyy.”

Afraid of being stopped and detained at the airport, as has happened to other immigrants attempting to leave the country, Negrete preferred to drive to Tijuana and then fly to Guadalajara.

Negrete’s driver, his friend Jorge Leonardo, turned into a parking lot at the sign reading “LAST USA EXIT.”

Negrete put on his black felt tejana hat and called Iris Rodriguez, who was in the companion car. He asked her to cross on foot with him.

“I don’t want to go alone,” he said.

“We’re still on American soil,” Leonardo said. “You can still change your mind.”

Negrete ignored him.

“See y’all on the other side,” he said as he hopped out of the car.

He and Rodriguez stopped for photos in front of a sign with an arrow pointing “To Mexico.” Around a corner, the border came into full view — a metal turnstile with layers of concertina wire above it.

The line for Mexicanos was unceremoniously quick. The immigration agent barely glanced at Negrete’s passport before waving him through.

On the other side, a busker sang “Piano Man” by Billy Joel in perfect English.

“Welcome to the motherland,” Rodriguez told him. Negrete let out a deep breath.

Negrete’s immediate family members, and almost all of his extended family, live in the U.S.

He was born in Manzanillo, Colima, in 1982. Three months later, the family relocated to Los Angeles, where his parents had two more children.

At 17, Negrete was one of two students in his graduating class at Roosevelt High School to get into UC Berkeley. That’s when he found out he didn’t have papers.

His parents had divorced and his father married a U.S. citizen, obtaining a green card when Negrete was at Roosevelt. They began the legalization process for Negrete in 1999, he said, but two years later he came out to his family as gay.

His father was unsupportive and refused to continue seeking to adjust his immigration status. By the time they mended their relationship, it was too late. Negrete had aged out of the pathway at 21.

In 2008, Negrete said, he was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Four years later, President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to protect immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Negrete failed to qualify because of the DUI.

He said he got his record expunged in 2016, but — again — it was too late.

The following year, Trump began unwinding DACA, shutting out new generations of recipients, including Negrete.

Negrete waited until his last night in the U.S. to tell his mother, who now lives in Colorado, that he was leaving. He had grown tired of friends and other family members begging him to change his mind.

He had partially hinged his decision on the fact that his mom was in remission from her third bout with cancer and had just obtained legal residency. With life more stable for her, he could finally seek stability for himself.

“You taught me to dream,” Negrete recalled telling her. “This is me dreaming. I want to see the world.”

She cried and scolded him, promising to visit and repeating what she had said when he came out to her all those years before: “I wish you told me sooner.”

At a hotel in Tijuana, Negrete’s emotions finally caught up with him.

The day after Negrete and his three friends left L.A., three more friends surprised him by arriving in Tijuana for a final Friday night out together. One of them presented a gift he had put together with help from Negrete’s entire social circle — a video with loved ones sharing messages of encouragement.

In Negrete’s hotel room, as he and his friends watched, the mood grew sentimental.

“You’re basically the one that formed the family friend tree,” one friend said in her clip. “Friendships do not die out in distance.”

Negrete sobbed. “Yes! Friendships don’t have borders,” he said.

“Every single one of you has said this hasn’t hit y’all, like it’s a mini vacation,” he said. “I want to think of it as an extended vacation.”

“This isn’t goodbye, this is we’ll see each other soon,” he continued.

Off his soapbox, Negrete then chided his friends for making him cry before heading to a drag show.

Negrete had a habit of leaving social gatherings abruptly. His friends joked that they would refer to him as “catch me on the 101” because every time he disappeared during a night out, they would open Apple’s Find My app and see him on the freeway heading home.

“We’re not gonna catch him on the 101 no more,” Martinez said.

On the flight to Guadalajara, Negrete’s heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. The anxiety attack caught him off guard.

Negrete had worked hard to show his friends and family that he was happy, because he didn’t want them to think he had doubts — and he had none. But he began to worry about the unknown and to mourn his former dreams of gaining legal status and running for public office.

“It hit me all at once,” he recounted. “I am three hours away from a whole new life that I don’t know. I left everything and I don’t know what’s next.”

Many deep breaths by Negrete later, the plane descended through the clouds, revealing vibrant green fields and a cantaloupe-hued sunset.

Inside the Airbnb, he was surprised to find a clothesline instead of a dryer. Noticing the blue 5-gallon jug of water in the kitchen, he remarked that he would have to remember tap water wasn’t safe to cook with. But alongside the new was something familiar: The view from his 11–story apartment showed off a sprawling metropolis dotted with trees, some of them palms.

The next day started off like any Sunday, with a trip to Walmart and drag brunch.

Negrete marveled at the cost of a large carton of egg whites ($1) and was shocked to see eggs stored at room temperature, liquid laundry detergent in bags and only single-ply toilet paper. He treated himself to a Darth Vader coffee mug and a teapot featuring characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

After brunch, it was time to play tourist. Negrete was accompanied by Rodriguez, who stayed with him for the first two weeks, and a new friend, Alejandro Preciado, whom he had met at Coachella in April and happened to be a Guadajalara local.

Their first stop was the city’s Spanish Renaissance cathedral, where Negrete said a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary at his mother’s request. Negrete treated his friends to an electric carriage ride around the historic buildings, where he excitedly pointed out the Gothic architecture, then they bought aguas frescas and walked through an open-air market, chatting in an English-heavy Spanglish.

“I’m trying to look at how people dress,” Negrete said, suddenly self-conscious about his short shorts. “I’m pretty sure I stand out.”

After dinner, Negrete was booking an Uber back to his Airbnb when a message popped up: “We’ve detected unusual activity.”

The app didn’t know he had moved.

Before he arrived in Guadalajara, Negrete had already joined an intramural baseball team and a running club. Practices began days after his arrival.

Within a month, he moved into an apartment, visited Mexico City and reconnected with aunts in Mexico City and Guadalajara he hadn’t seen in decades.

He reflected on the small joys of greeting neighborhood señoras on morning dog walks, discovering the depths of Mexican cuisine and the peace of mind that came with no longer feeling like a target — though he’ll still freeze at the sight of police lights.

Still, Negrete remained glued to U.S. politics. In late September, the federal government detailed plans to begin processing initial DACA applications for the first time in four years. Had Negrete stayed in the U.S., he would have finally qualified for a reprieve.

He isn’t regretful.

His new dreams are wide-ranging. He wants to buy a house in Rosarito, where friends and family from L.A. could visit him. He wants to travel the world, starting with a trip to Spain. And he wants to help U.S. organizations build resources for other immigrants who are considering repatriating.

The goal isn’t to encourage people to leave, he said, but to show them they have agency.

“I actually did it,” he said. “I did it, and I’m OK.”

Now, he said, Mexico feels like an estranged relative that he’s getting to know again.

Last week, HBO Max announced it raised its standard subscription by $1.50 to $18.49 a month — up 23% from when the streaming service launched five years ago amid the pandemic.

Such announcements have become almost routine in the television business as inflation hits streaming platforms that are under growing pressure to turn a profit and pay for higher programming costs.

Once seen as a cheaper alternative to cable, the cost of a streaming subscription for the top platforms continues to rise, much like higher prices for groceries, gasoline and housing.

In fact, the average price for subscriptions to the top 10 paid subscription streaming services in the U.S. increased 12% this year, following double-digit percentage increases per year since 2022, according to Victoria, British Columbia-based Convergence Research Group.

The research firm included streamers such as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV and others in its data set. It factors subscriptions that are with ads or ad-free and does not take into account bundling. All of the major streaming services in the U.S. raised their prices on plans this year, except for Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video, which boosted rates last year.

The price hikes reflect the tough economic realities of media companies that need to replace dwindling revenue from legacy pay TV channels that have seen sharp declines in viewership.

“The rest of their businesses have effectively been under attack by streaming and so they need this area to be profitable in order to compensate for the decline in their own businesses,” said Brahm Eiley, president of the Convergence Research Group. “It’s been tremendous pressure on them.”

Streaming services have been running as loss leaders for some time, said Tim Hanlon, chief executive of Vertere Group LLC, a media consulting firm.

“There’s no question that streaming is now under the gun to be its own profit center,” Hanlon said.

If rates go much higher, consumers may balk, experts said.

“The industry is playing a dangerous game by continuing to raise prices,” said Andrew Hare, senior vice president for the media research consultancy Magid. “We’re nearing a boiling point of rising churn and overwhelming choice.”

Magid has also already seen an uptick in the percentage of consumers who intend to cancel at least one streaming service in the next six months. The figure was 24% in the second quarter of 2025, up from 19% a year earlier.

“Hard as it is to imagine, the cable bundle is starting to look like a better value all the time,” Hare said.

Here is a look at which major streamers have raised prices on their ad-free streaming plans this year.

HBO Max

HBO Max raised prices across all of its plans. Its lowest-cost, ad-free streaming plan went up by $1.50 to $18.49 a month, while the annual version of that plan also increased $15 to $184.99.

HBO Max’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, had 125.7 million global streaming subscribers in the second quarter, up 22% from a year earlier.

Like other streamers, HBO cited the need to help pay for quality content. The platform offers big-budget shows including drama “The Gilded Age” and “House of the Dragon,” which takes place in the “Game of Thrones” universe.

Consumers should brace themselves for more price hikes. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said at a Goldman Sachs investors conference last month that he believes HBO Max is underpriced.

“We want a good deal for consumers, but I think over time there’s real opportunity, particularly for us in that quality area to raise prices,” Zaslav said.

Peacock

Big-time sports properties have been moving to streaming platforms and guess who is going to help foot the bill? Consumers, of course.

Ahead of becoming a major provider of NBA games this season, Peacock increased prices on its plans, including the premium plus ad-free streaming service, by $3 to $16.99 a month. That was the third price hike since Peacock launched in 2020, where its ad-free plan started at $9.99 a month.

The Comcast-owned streamer, which has 41 million paid subscribers, has weekly games on Mondays and Tuesdays and will have a Peacock exclusive NFL game on Dec. 27. Peacock next year will air the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and continue to stream major sporting events such as NFL games.

In a July earnings call, Comcast Corp. President Mike Cavanagh touted how Peacock will have the most hours of live sports of any streamer next year.

Netflix

Netflix has also gotten into the sports business, with the addition of two NFL games on Christmas Day.

The streamer, which remains the industry juggernaut, is also expected to add Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby and an opening night game when MLB finalizes a new media rights deal this year.

The company cited its entry into high-priced sports when it raised its prices on most of its plans, including on its cheapest ad-free monthly plan by $2.50 to $17.99 in the U.S. earlier this year.

“As we continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders in January.

The slice of sports is coming at the expense of fans who need multiple subscriptions — if they want to keep up with every NFL game.

“A certain type of fan is starting to recognize they are being fleeced,” Hanlon said.

Higher prices on ad-free plans can help drive traffic to a streamer’s lowest-priced plans with ads. Netflix launched its subscription plan with ads in 2022 at $6.99 a month and it has only increased by a $1 to $7.99 a month since then in January 2025.

While many major streamers offer cheaper plans with ads, others offer free streaming services with ads such as the Roku Channel or Tubi.

A recent research study by Magid found that three-quarters of consumers are fine with watching commercials, if it saves them money.

Four in 10 said they’re “overwhelmed” by the number of services they use. The average number of streaming subscriptions per household in the third quarter is 4.6, up from 4.1 the previous year.

“Together, these trends point to a more value-driven streaming consumer seeking affordability and simplicity,” the study said.

Apple TV

Apple TV was once one of the lowest-priced subscription service plans, launching at $4.99 a month. Since then, prices for Apple’s video streaming service have increased to $12.99 a month, with its latest price jump of $3 in August.

The Cupertino-based company has been trying to make its streaming business more financially sound, but faces a formidable task as it has been a big spender in attracting name talent to its programs and movies.

When Apple TV first launched, it had just nine programs, but since then has expanded its library to include critically acclaimed shows and films including comedy “Ted Lasso,” drama “Severance” and “The Studio.”

Apple said in a statement that while it did raise its prices on its standard monthly ad-free plan, the cost of its annual subscription remains at $99 and Apple One bundled packages did not change.

Disney+

Last month, Disney+ announced it would increase the cost of its ad-free streaming plan by $3 to $18.99 a month. Hulu did not increase its price on its ad-free monthly streaming plan.

It was the fourth consecutive year the Burbank entertainment giant has boosted its streaming prices since launching Disney+ six years ago, when the service cost just $6.99 a month.

Despite the recent price hikes from Disney and others, Eiley from Convergence Research Group thinks there’s still room for customer growth.

At the end of last year, just 36% of U.S. households had a traditional TV subscription, compared with more than half of U.S. households in mid-2022, according to Convergence Research Group data. By the end of 2028, the research firm forecasts just 21% of households will have traditional TV subscriptions.

“There’s still a massive amount of cord cutting going on,” Eiley said.

The number of international student arrivals in the U.S. dropped by nearly a fifth at the onset of this academic year, according to federal data, the latest sign of a hit to colleges’ foreign student enrollment as the Trump administration has ratcheted up scrutiny of their visas.

International visitors arriving in the U.S. on student visas declined 19% in August compared with the same month in 2024, according to the preliminary data released by the National Travel and Tourism Office. The numbers also declined in June and July, but August is the summer month that typically sees the most international student arrivals — 313,138 this year.

As the federal government has clamped down on student visitors, industry groups have warned of international enrollment declines that threaten school budgets and American colleges’ standing in the world. Although the extent of the change remains to be seen, the new data suggest a turnaround in international enrollment that had been rebounding in the U.S. from a decline worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of key revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and many pay full tuition.

The picture in California

Many California campuses, including the University of California system, have not yet released data on fall enrollment but prepared for potential hurdles in attracting internationals.

For fall 2025 admissions — not enrollment — UC said its nine undergraduate campuses had offered seats to 3,263 more first-year international students, an increase of 17% over last year, according to data reported over the summer. UC also admitted 100,947 first-year California students, up more than 7% from last year,

UC said it increased international admits because of “rising uncertainty of their likelihood of enrollment.” It noted that the share of accepted internationals who choose to enroll is generally “substantially lower” than that of California residents and that the cost of being a non-Californian at UC has gone up. Last year, the UC Board of Regents approved a 10% increase of the “nonresident” tuition fee from $34,200 to $37,602.

At USC, the California campus that typically attracts the largest share of internationals in the state, there were also concerns over a potential dip in foreign student enrollment.

The campus saw a small decline in overall international enrollment, from 12,374 last academic year to 11,959 this fall. Chinese and Indian students made up more than half of the total foreign population, matching trends statewide.

But USC also grew its first-year international community, according to university data about this fall’s new undergraduate class.

Of the 3,759 new first-year students enrolled this fall, about 21%, or 789, are internationals. Last year, about 17% of the 3,489 first-years — 593 — were in the U.S. on visas.

California usually attracts the largest international college community of any state. In 2024, in addition to USC, the biggest draws were UC Berkeley, which enrolled 12,441 students; UC San Diego, 10,467 students; and UCLA, 10,446 students, according to data from the Institute of International Education. STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — were the most popular.

Visa challenges and travel bans blocked some students

Nationally, many students who had plans to study in the U.S. could not enter the country because of difficulty lining up visas. In late May, the State Department paused the scheduling of visa interviews for foreign students, which resumed three weeks later with new rules for vetting visa applicants’ social media accounts.

The timing of the pause had “maximum possible impact” for visa issuances for the fall semester, said Clay Harmon, executive director of the Assn. of International Enrollment Management, a nonprofit membership association.

A travel ban and other restrictions for 19 countries that the Trump administration announced in June created even more uncertainty for some students. Most of the countries included in the ban were located in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The federal data on international dips show those regions experienced the largest declines in international student arrivals this August, with drops of 33% from Africa, 17% from the Middle East and 24% from Asia — including a 45% decrease from India, the country that sends the most students to the U.S.

The data include new as well as returning students, but some who were already in the U.S. avoided traveling outside the country this summer for fear of problems reentering.

Students have concerns about the political climate, research funding and cost

Some international students and their families have been wary of the Trump administration’s wider crackdown on immigration. In the spring, the federal government stripped thousands of international students of their legal status, causing panic before the Trump administration reversed course. Trump also has called for colleges to reduce their dependence on foreign students and cap international enrollment.

Syed Tamim Ahmad, a senior at UCLA who grew up in Dubai, said he was considering applying to medical school in the U.S. before last spring, when sudden student visa cancellations and government suspensions of research funding to Harvard and other elite campuses began to intensify.

“When I was a freshman, it seemed that out of every country the U.S. provided the most opportunities in terms of access to research funding and resources,” said Ahmad, whose major is physiological science. “But by my senior year, a lot of these pull factors became push factors. Funding was cut down, affecting labs, and there is fear among international students about what they put on social media and what they put online. That sense of having freedom of speech in the U.S. isn’t the same.”

Ahmad is now planning to enroll at medical school in Australia.

“There is a similar feeling among many students — that if they are going to graduate school or continuing their studies they should go outside the U.S.,” said Ahmad, who previously served in UCLA’s undergraduate student government as an international representative. “But it’s not everyone. There are also still many people who believe that there are good opportunities for them in the United States.”

Zeynep Bowlus, a higher education consultant in Istanbul, said interest in U.S. universities among the families she works with had been declining over the last few years largely because of financial reasons and skepticism about the value of an American degree. Policy changes in the U.S. are adding to their concerns, she said.

“I try not to make it too dramatic, but at the same time, I tell them the reality of what’s going on and the potential hurdles that they may face,” Bowlus said.

Institutions in other countries have seized the opportunity to attract students who might be cooling on the U.S. Growing numbers of Chinese students have opted to stay in Asia, and international applications to universities in the United Kingdom have surged.

Elisabeth Marksteiner, a higher education consultant in Cambridge, England, said she will encourage families looking at American universities to approach the admissions process with more caution. A student visa has never been guaranteed, but it is especially important now for families to have a backup plan, she said.

“I think the presumption is that it’s all going to carry on as it was in the past,” Marksteiner said. “My presumption is, it isn’t.”

Kaleem is a staff writer for The Times. Seminera and Keller write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.

A decision could come at any time.

And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.

The Chicago-based judges said Trump exaggerated the threat faced by federal immigration agents and had equated “protests with riots.”

Trump administration lawyers, however, said these judges had no authority to second-guess the president. The power to deploy the National Guard “is committed to his exclusive discretion by law,” they asserted in their appeal in Trump vs. Illinois.

That broad claim of executive power might win favor with the court’s conservatives.

Administration lawyers told the court that the National Guard would “defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence” in response to aggressive immigration enforcement, but it would not carry out ordinary policing.

Yet Trump has repeatedly threatened to send U.S. troops to San Francisco and other Democratic-led cities to carry out ordinary law enforcement.

When he sent 4,000 Guard members and 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June, their mission was to protect federal buildings from protesters. But state officials said troops went beyond that and were used to carry out a show in force in MacArthur Park in July.

Newsom, Bonta warn of dangers

That’s why legal experts and Democratic officials are sounding an alarm.

“Trump v. Illinois is a make-or-break moment for this court,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, a frequent critic of the court’s pro-Trump emergency orders. “For the Supreme Court to issue a ruling that allows the president to send troops into our cities based upon contrived (or even government-provoked) facts … would be a terrible precedent for the court to set not just for what it would allow President Trump to do now but for even more grossly tyrannical conduct.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a brief in the Chicago case warning of the danger ahead.

“On June 7, for the first time in our nation’s history, the President invoked [the Militia Act of 1903] to federalize a State’s National Guard over the objections of the State’s Governor. Since that time, it has become clear that the federal government’s actions in Southern California earlier this summer were just the opening salvo in an effort to transform the role of the military in American society,” their brief said.

“At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate. … What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the President on a nationwide basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time.”

Conservatives cite civil rights examples

Conservatives counter that Trump is seeking to enforce federal law in the face of strong resistance and non-cooperation at times from local officials.

“Portland and Chicago have seen violent protests outside of federal buildings, attacks on ICE and DHS agents, and organized efforts to block the enforcement of immigration law,” said UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. “Although local officials have raised cries of a federal ‘occupation’ and ‘dictatorship,’ the Constitution places on the president the duty to ‘take care that the laws are faithfully executed.’”

He noted that presidents in the past “used these same authorities to desegregate southern schools in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education and to protect civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Those who cheer those interventions cannot now deny the same constitutional authority when it is exercised by a president they oppose,” he said.

The legal battle so far has sidestepped Trump’s broadest claims of unchecked power, but focused instead on whether he is acting in line with the laws adopted by Congress.

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Beginning in 1903, Congress said that “the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary” if he faces “danger of invasion by a foreign nation … danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States or the president is unable to execute the laws of the United States.”

While Trump administration lawyers claim he faces a “rebellion,” the legal dispute has focused on whether he is “unable to execute the laws.”

Lower courts have blocked deployments

Federal district judges in Portland and Chicago blocked Trump’s deployments after ruling that protesters had not prevented U.S. immigration agents from doing their jobs.

Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, described the administration’s description of “war-ravaged” Portland as “untethered to the facts.”

In Chicago, Judge April Perry, a Biden appointee, said that “political opposition is not rebellion.”

But the two appeals courts — the 9th Circuit in San Francisco and the 7th Circuit in Chicago — handed down opposite decisions.

A panel of the 9th Circuit said judges must defer to the president’s assessment of the danger faced by immigration agents. Applying that standard, the appeals court by a 2-1 vote said the National Guard deployment in Portland may proceed.

But a panel of the 7th Circuit in Chicago agreed with Perry.

“The facts do not justify the President’s actions in Illinois, even giving substantial deference to his assertions,” they said in a 3-0 ruling last week. “Federal facilities, including the processing facility in Broadview, have remained open despite regular demonstrations against the administration’s immigration policies. And though federal officers have encountered sporadic disruptions, they have been quickly contained by local, state, and federal authorities.”

Attorneys for Illinois and Chicago agreed and urged the court to turn down Trump’s appeal.

“There is no basis for claiming the President is ‘unable’ to ‘execute’ federal law in Illinois,” they said. “Federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks.”

Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer presented a dramatically different account in his appeal.

“On October 4, the President determined that the situation in Chicago had become unsustainably dangerous for federal agents, who now risk their lives to carry out basic law enforcement functions,” he wrote. “The President deployed the federalized Guardsmen to Illinois to protect federal officers and federal property.”

He disputed the idea that agents faced just peaceful protests.

“On multiple occasions, federal officers have also been hit and punched by protestors at the Broadview facility. The physical altercations became more significant and the clashes more violent as the size of the crowds swelled throughout September,” Sauer wrote. “Rioters have targeted federal officers with fireworks and have thrown bottles, rocks, and tear gas at them. More than 30 [DHS] officers have been injured during the assaults on federal law enforcement at the Broadview facility alone, resulting in multiple hospitalizations.”

He said the judges in Chicago had no legal or factual basis to block the deployment, and he urged the court to cast aside their rulings.

Consumer confidence is dropping. The national debt is $38 trillion and climbing like the yodeling mountain climber in that “The Price is Right” game. Donald Trump’s approval ratings are falling and the U.S. is getting more and more restless as 2025 comes to a close.

What’s a wannabe strongman to do to prop up his regime?

Attack Latin America, of course!

U.S. war planes have bombed small ships in international waters off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia since September with extrajudicial zeal. The Trump administration has claimed those vessels were packed with drugs manned by “narco-terrorists” and have released videos for each of the 10 boats-and-counting it has incinerated to make the actions seem as normal as a mission in “Call of Duty.”

“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media and who just ordered an aircraft carrier currently stationed in the Mediterranean to set up shop in the Caribbean. It’ll meet up with 10,000 troops stationed there as part of one of the area’s biggest U.S. deployments in decades, all in the name of stopping a drug epidemic that has ravaged red America for the past quarter century.

This week, Trump authorized covert CIA actions in Venezuela and revealed he wants to launch strikes against land targets where his people say Latin American cartels operate. Who cares whether the host countries will give permission? Who cares about American laws that state only Congress — not the president — can declare war against our enemies?

It’s Latin America, after all.

The military buildup, bombing and threat of more in the name of liberty is one of the oldest moves in the American foreign policy playbook. For more than two centuries, the United States has treated Latin America as its personal piñata, bashing it silly for goods and not caring about the ugly aftermath.

“It is known to all that we derive [our blessings] from the excellence of our institutions,” James Monroe concluded in the 1823 speech that set forth what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially told the rest of the world to leave the Western Hemisphere to us. “Ought we not, then, to adopt every measure which may be necessary to perpetuate them?”

Our 19th century wars of expansion, official and not, won us territories where Latin Americans lived — Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, but especially Mexicans — that we ended up treating as little better than serfs. We have occupied nations for years and imposed sanctions on others. We have propped up puppets and despots and taken down democratically elected governments with the regularity of the seasons.

The culmination of all these actions were the mass migrations from Latin America that forever altered the demographics of the United States. And when those people — like my parents — came here, they were immediately subjected to a racism hard-wired into the American psyche, which then justified a Latin American foreign policy bent on domination, not friendship.

Nothing rallies this country historically like sticking it to Latinos, whether in their ancestral countries or here. We’re this country’s perpetual scapegoats and eternal invaders, with harming gringos — whether by stealing their jobs, moving into their neighborhoods, marrying their daughters or smuggling drugs — supposedly the only thing on our mind.

That’s why when Trump ran on an isolationist platform last year, he never meant the region — of course not. The border between the U.S. and Latin America has never been the fence that divides the U.S. from Mexico or our shores. It’s wherever the hell we say it is.

That’s why the Trump administration is banking on the idea that it can get away with its boat bombings and is salivating to escalate. To them, the 43 people American missile strikes have slaughtered on the open sea so far aren’t humans — and anyone who might have an iota of sympathy or doubt deserves aggression as well.

That’s why when Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of murder because one of the strikes killed a Colombian fisherman with no ties to cartels, Trump went on social media to lambaste Petro’s “fresh mouth,” accuse him of being a “drug leader” and warn the head of a longtime American ally he “better close up these killing fields [cartel bases] immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”

The only person who can turn down the proverbial temperature on this issue is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who should know all the bad that American imperialism has wrought on Latin America. The U.S. treated his parents’ homeland of Cuba like a playground for decades, propping up one dictator after another until Cubans revolted and Fidel Castro took power. A decades-long embargo that Trump tightened upon assuming office the second time has done nothing to free the Cuban people and instead made things worse.

Instead, Rubio is the instigator. He’s pushing for regime change in Venezuela, chumming it up with self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and cheering on Trump’s missile attacks.

“Bottom line, these are drug boats,” Rubio told reporters recently with Trump by his side. “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”

You might ask: Who cares? Cartels are bad, drugs are bad, aren’t they? Of course. But every American should oppose every time a suspected drug boat launching from Latin America is destroyed with no questions asked and no proof offered. Because every time Trump violates yet another law or norm in the name of defending the U.S. and no one stops him, democracy erodes just a little bit more.

This is a president, after all, who seems to dream of treating his enemies, including American cities, like drug boats.

Few will care, alas. It’s Latin America, after all.

The U.S. gross national debt has surpassed $38 trillion for the first time, U.S. Treasury Department data shows.

The country’s mounting debt comes as the government remains closed, disrupting the economy as hundreds of thousands of federal workers go unpaid. 

Government shutdowns can boost the national debt because they delay economic activity and postpone fiscal decisions, while pausing federal programs and starting them up again can also increase costs. The Office of Management and Budget estimated that a 2013 U.S. government shutdown cost $2 billion in lost worker productivity. 

“Reaching $38 trillion in debt during a government shutdown is the latest troubling sign that lawmakers are not meeting their basic fiscal duties,” Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on fiscal policy, said in a statement. 

“If it seems like we are adding debt faster than ever, that’s because we are. We passed $37 trillion just two months ago, and the pace we’re on is twice as fast as the rate of growth since 2000,” he added.

The longest shutdown in U.S. history, the 35-day stalemate in 2018, cost the economy $11 billion, largely to a reduction in spending by federal workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

In September, 81% of voters surveyed by the Peterson Foundation highlighted the national debt an issue of concern. According to economists, the growing mountain of debt leads to higher interest costs for the U.S. government. 

Interest payments on the nation’s debt are forecast to rise from $4 trillion over the past decade to $14 trillion over the next 10 years, curtailing public and private spending in key economic sectors, the Peterson Foundation said. 

Rising U.S. debt could also undermine investor confidence in the economy, David Kelly, chief global strategist with J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in a report earlier this month. 

Credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating in May from its top rating of Aaa to Aa1, reflecting investor concerns about the government’s growing debt. The two other major credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, have also lowered the U.S. rating. 

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and a prominent voice on the nation’s fiscal policies, also expressed concern at the national debt topping $38 trillion.

“The reality is that we’re becoming distressingly numb to our own dysfunction. We fail to pass budgets, we blow past deadlines, we ignore fiscal safeguards and we haggle over fractions of a budget while leaving the largest drivers untouched,” she said in a statement. “Social Security and Medicare, for example, are just seven years from having their trust funds depleted — and you don’t hear anything from our political leaders on how to avoid such a disaster.”