A divided Supreme Court has come to the rescue of Texas Republicans. Thursday’s ruling allows the state’s next congressional elections to use the GOP’s new map pushed by President Donald Trump despite a lower-court ruling that it likely discriminates on the basis of race.
Democrats are pushing for the release of video of the first U.S. military strikes on a boat in the Caribbean that they say shows a war crime or murder. At least 87 people have been killed so far in President Donald Trump’s effort to stop the flow of drugs. The U.S. Southern Command announced another strike against a small boat on Thursday as congressional oversight hearings were under way.
And the Trump administration has instructed U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to prioritize visa applications for foreign investors or 2026 World Cup ticket holders, a mixed message amid Trump’s expanding immigration crackdown. Trump is taking center stage at Friday’s FIFA draw.
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Trump’s ‘America First’ security strategy slams European allies and asserts US power
The White House released a new national security strategy on Friday that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The document includes scathing critiques of the migration and free speech policies of longstanding allies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.
It sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, it reinforces Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritizes U.S. interests above all.
This is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since Trump’s return to office. It is a stark break from the course set by President Joe Biden, who sought to reinvigorate alliances rattled by Trump’s first term and to check a more assertive Russia.
▶ Read more about Trump’s new national security strategy
Refugees around the world are shut out by Trump
About 600,000 people were being processed to come to the U.S. as refugees when Trump suspended the program. Many had already sold their homes and possessions after submitting reams of documents, passing interviews by U.S. officials and even buying airline tickets.
Trump resumed the program in October with a historically low cap of 7,500 people — mostly white South Africans. A litany of new restrictions was announced after an Afghan national was arrested in the shooting of two National Guard members.
▶ The Associated Press spoke to three families whose lives have been thrown into disarray.
Trump’s immigration message is colliding with his welcome to World Cup fans
Trump will take center stage at Friday’s World Cup draw in Washington, rolling out the welcome mat for teams and fans from around the globe at a time when his administration is expanding restrictions on travel to the United States for people from 19 countries and he has hardened his rhetoric against immigrants.
The administration is betting that its push to expedite visa processing for visitors and the excitement about the matchups for next summer’s tournament — hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico — will outweigh concerns that Trump’s immigration messaging undercuts the theme of global unity that the World Cup is meant to represent.
In the past week, Trump has said he wants to permanently pause immigration from poor countries and he has singled out Afghans and Somalis for particular contempt. The Republican president is also overseeing the signing a peace agreement between Rwanda and Congo on Thursday at an event with leaders from a host of foreign countries and he is expected to be honored for his peacemaking efforts by FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, during the World Cup draw.
Critics say the dueling messages are jarring.
▶ Read more about Trump’s messaging
White House to submit plans for new ballroom to planning commission
The White House is expected to submit plans for Trump’s new ballroom to a federal planning commission before the year ends, about three months after construction began.
Will Scharf, named by Trump as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, said Thursday that White House colleagues told him the long-awaited plans will be filed sometime in December.
“Once plans are submitted, that’s really when the role of this commission, and its professional staff, will begin,” said Scharf, who is also a top White House aide. He said the review process would happen at a “normal and deliberative pace.”
Separately, the White House confirmed Thursday that a second architectural firm has been added to the project. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said architect Shalom Baranes of Washington, D.C., was needed as construction moves into a new phase.
▶ Read more about the proposed plans
Another boat is sunk amid probe into the first strike
The U.S. Southern Command said the strike on the small boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean Thursday was the 22nd strike so far, killing four people and raising the death toll to at least 87.
The strike was announced as Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for classified briefings as lawmakers began an investigation into the very first strike. Bradley told them there was no “kill them all” order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Democrats are pushing for the release of video they say shows a war crime, or murder.
▶ Read more about the strike
Supreme Court allows Texas to use redistricted map favorable to GOP
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday came to the rescue of Texas Republicans, allowing next year’s elections to be held under the state’s congressional redistricting plan favorable to the GOP and pushed by President Donald Trump despite a lower-court ruling that the map likely discriminates on the basis of race.
With conservative justices in the majority, the court acted on an emergency request from Texas for quick action because qualifying in the new districts already has begun, with primary elections in March. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the three liberal justices that her colleagues should not have intervened.
▶ Read more about the ruling
Trump calls people from Somalia ‘garbage’
He said it four times in seven seconds. In fact, Trump’s rhetorical attacks on immigrants have been building since he said Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border during his presidential campaign announcement a decade ago.
But with one flourish closing a two-hour Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump amped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric even further and ditched any claim that his administration was only seeking to remove people without legal status.
It was a riveting display in a nation that prides itself as being founded and enriched by immigrants, alongside an ugly history of enslaving millions of them and limiting who can come in.
Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations have reignited an age-old debate — and widened the nation’s divisions — over who can be an American,.
▶ Read more about Trump’s recent comments
Appeals court: Trump must release school mental health grants
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to halt an order requiring it to release millions of dollars in grants meant to address the shortage of mental health workers in schools.
The program was funded by Congress after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, included grants meant to help schools hire more counselors, psychologists and social workers, with a focus on rural and underserved areas of the country.
▶ Read more about the decision
Trump to direct more water to California farms
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Thursday announced a new plan for operating the Central Valley Project, a vast system of pumps, dams and canals that direct water southward from the state’s wetter north.
It follows an executive order Trump signed in January calling for more water to flow to farmers, arguing the state was wasting the precious resource in the name of protecting endangered fish species.
By The Associated Press
