Trump says war with Venezuela is possible – US politics live

Speculation surrounding the affairs of Jeffrey Epstein is expected to reach a defining moment of revelation on Friday with the much-anticipated publication of files relating to the disgraced late financier and sex trafficker.

After months of delay and stalling, the Trump administration is legally obliged to publish a massive archive of documents that could shine fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds and his connections with key public figures, including Donald Trump himself.

A huge archive – set to shed fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds – is legally obliged to be released before a midnight deadline. Read more:

US homeland security chief Kristi Noem announced the suspension of the diversity visa lottery on Thursday, saying it was used by the “heinous individual” in a mass shooting at Brown University.

Noem wrote: “The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country.

“In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.

“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”

In his NBC interview, Donald Trump declined to say whether removing Maduro was his ultimate goal, telling NBC News: “He knows exactly what I want.”

“He knows better than anybody,” the US President added, referring to Maduro. The report did not elaborate.

Maduro has alleged that the US action is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.

Trump elaborated on his claim there would be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuelan waters, adding: “If they’re foolish enough to be sailing along, they’ll be sailing along back into one of our harbours.”

The Trump administration announced on Thursday it will suspend a green card lottery that allowed a man believed to be behind both a mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor into the United States.

Claudio Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national, is accused of bursting into a building at the Ivy League school on Saturday and opening fire on students, killing two and wounding nine.

He is also accused of killing a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) two days later.

Homeland security chief Kristi Noem wrote on social media on Thursday that Neves Valente “entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card.”

The US green card lottery grants up to 55,000 permanent resident visas annually to people “from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the State Department.

US President Donald Trump has said there will be additional seizures of oil tankers near Venezuela, in an interview with NBC News.

Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused Venezuela of facilitating the drug trade. The US military has killed at least 90 people since September in strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean that Washington claims were carrying illegal narcotics to the US.

But, the Trump White House has provided no public evidence that these vessels were carrying fentanyl, which is mainly produced in Mexico, or cocaine, which is typically produced in neighbouring Colombia and shipped to the US via various routes.

Good morning, US President Donald Trump has said he was leaving the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table, according to an interview with NBC News published on Friday. “I dont rule it out, no,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

Trump has used social media to publicly accuse Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his government of using “stolen” oil to “finance themselves” as well as “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping”. Maduro has strongly denied all these accusations. Here are some of the other developments in the US overnight:

• Trump also told NBC he does not believe it is necessary to repeal the affordable care act, also known as Obamacare. In November, Trump had suggested scrapping Obamacare and redirecting federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under Act toward direct payments to individuals.

• TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app’s US operations to a group of investors, including Oracle, in a big step toward avoiding a US ban and ending years of uncertainty.

• A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a US Justice Department official said. The ruling is a victory for Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.

• Trump also enshrined the US goal to put humans back on the moon by 2028 and defend space from weapon threats in a sweeping executive order issued on Thursday, the first major space policy move of his administration’s second term.