President Donald Trump’s decision to move against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exposed internal strains inside his administration, including sharp disagreements over how the operation was prepared and who was involved.
According to people familiar with the process, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was kept out of months of planning discussions because senior officials questioned whether her long-standing opposition to military intervention would align with the White House’s approach to Venezuela. Those people said the concerns stemmed from her public record criticizing regime-change efforts abroad.
The separation became so widely known inside the White House that aides joked privately that the acronym for her post — DNI — meant “Do Not Invite,” according to three people who described the internal conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House official denied that any such joke circulated.
Gabbard’s past remarks have repeatedly emphasized restraint in Venezuela. In 2019, while serving as a Democratic member of Congress, she said the United States should “stay out” of the country. As recently as last month, she publicly criticized “warmongers” whom she accused of pushing Washington toward conflict.
The episode has become another flashpoint in the uneasy relationship between Gabbard and parts of the Trump team. While Trump campaigned on avoiding new wars, the move to oust Maduro has widened divisions not only among MAGA supporters but also among senior officials inside the administration.
Vice President JD Vance rejected suggestions that either he or Gabbard were excluded from planning the operation, calling those claims “false.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung echoed that defense, saying Trump “has full confidence in DNI Gabbard and she’s doing a fantastic job.”
“We’re all part of the same team,” Vance told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “One of the things that is really amazing about that operation is that we kept it very tight to the senior Cabinet level officials and related officials in our government and we kept this operation secret for a very long time.”
A senior intelligence official also disputed the idea that Gabbard was frozen out entirely, saying she contributed intelligence assessments that aided the mission, even if she was not involved in operational planning. An Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokeswoman pointed to a social media post Gabbard shared Tuesday praising US forces for the operation’s “flawless execution” in capturing Maduro.
“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. The message ended several days of silence while other senior national security officials publicly celebrated the mission through interviews, press briefings, and social media posts.
Earlier, on Jan. 1, Gabbard posted four photos of herself at the beach. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote.
Former intelligence officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations described her absence from planning meetings as unusual, noting that the director of national intelligence is typically the president’s chief intelligence adviser and oversees all 18 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA. Planning for the Venezuela operation intensified in late summer, according to those familiar with the matter.
Photographs released by the White House after the raid showed Trump monitoring the operation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in an improvised war room. Gabbard was not pictured.
“It’s highly unusual for the DNI not to be involved in any of these operations, especially something like Venezuela,” said Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force intelligence colonel. “The visuals from that picture are a perfect description of what’s going on to Tulsi Gabbard at this point.”
The situation has renewed debate inside Trump’s orbit about the value of the DNI role itself. Some allies have argued that the position, created after the September 11 attacks to coordinate intelligence agencies, should be eliminated. Trump and his advisers have also occasionally expressed discomfort with Gabbard since she assumed the post.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Gabbard played only a minimal role in the planning and execution of the raid.
Tensions reportedly flared last summer after Trump grew irritated by a video Gabbard posted in June warning that the world was closer to nuclear war than ever. The video did not name any countries but was released a little more than a week before Trump ordered a strike on Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.
Marc Gustafson, director of analysis at Eurasia Group and a former head of the White House Situation Room, said it is not unheard of for either the CIA director or the DNI to be left out of certain planning processes. He noted that presidents including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump himself during his first term sometimes relied on one intelligence chief over the other. “Then the other would be kind of left out temporarily,” Gustafson said.
Despite the controversy, Gabbard continues to brief Trump regularly and frequently attends Oval Office meetings, according to the senior intelligence official. That official said it was unfair to single out her past policy views, noting that other senior Trump officials — including Vance — have previously disagreed with or even criticized Trump before joining his administration.
Since taking office, Gabbard has leaned into a more political interpretation of her role, prioritizing the declassification of material important to Trump’s base, including records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Russian interference in US elections. She has also focused on rooting out what she and Trump describe as a Deep State within the intelligence community.
Gabbard, 44, served in the Iraq War and remains an officer in the Army Reserve. Throughout her career, she has opposed prolonged US involvement in regime-change conflicts.
In a 2019 post about Venezuela, she argued that “we don’t want other countries to choose our leaders — so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
“When we look throughout history, every time the United States goes into another country and topples a dictator or topples a government, the outcome has been disastrous for the people in these countries,” she said on Fox News in May of that year.
After launching a presidential bid in 2020, Gabbard reiterated those views in a speech last October, saying that “for decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building.”
“The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror,” she said.
{Matzav.com}
At a Brooklyn event on Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani rolled out a proposal that could soon allow city parents to enroll their 2-year-olds in free child care, a move both leaders framed as a major step toward easing the city’s crushing cost of living.
“This is the day that everything changes,” Hochul said, as she simultaneously previewed a broader push to expand access to child care across New York State in the years ahead.
For Mamdani, the announcement marked an early win just days into his tenure, offering momentum to an agenda that has drawn skepticism since the campaign. He rose to office promising to center the needs of working-class New Yorkers, and Thursday’s plan gave his administration a tangible policy victory.
“Today we take one step to realizing a city where every New Yorker, every family, every child can afford to keep calling it their home,” Mamdani said.
“To those who doubt the power of the people to make their own destiny, to the cynics who insist that politics is too broken to deliver meaningful change, to those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer,” he added.
Under the proposal, Hochul said the state will fund the first two years of free child care for 2-year-olds in the city, positioning the effort as an extension of New York City’s existing universal pre-K and 3-K programs. The initial rollout would target “high-need areas” identified by the city before expanding more broadly, with citywide availability projected by the fourth year.
Speaking with reporters after the event, Mamdani said the program is expected to serve roughly 2,000 children this fall, with enrollment growing each year until it becomes universal. He added that the city plans to partner with home-based child care providers to implement the initiative.
Hochul, who faces reelection this year, has aligned herself with the city’s new progressive mayor on child care policy, though long-term costs and structure remain open questions. Beyond the city-focused plan, she also unveiled a sweeping proposal to expand universal pre-K statewide, aiming to make it available throughout New York by the start of the 2028–2029 school year.
The governor said she will formally introduce both initiatives in her upcoming state of the state address and expects to commit $1.7 billion toward the programs announced on Thursday.
Advocates praised the announcement as a turning point. Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, described the plan as a “historic moment.”
“By bringing together the Governor and Mayor around a shared commitment to child care, tens of thousands of families could finally get the relief they desperately need,” Bailin said.
{Matzav.com}
Defying party leaders, a bipartisan bloc in the House moved swiftly Thursday to revive lapsed Affordable Care Act subsidies, approving the bill 230–196 after a procedural maneuver forced it onto the floor. Seventeen Republicans broke ranks to join Democrats, stripping Speaker Mike Johnson of control over the agenda and sending the measure to the Senate.
The push came after a small group of GOP lawmakers signed a discharge petition, a rarely used tactic that bypasses leadership objections and compels debate. Once the threshold was met, the vote became unavoidable, exposing deep divisions within the Republican conference over health care policy and strategy.
Democrats framed the outcome as a win for families squeezed by rising premiums. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries invoked President Trump’s past comments while arguing the issue cannot be dismissed. “The affordability crisis is not a ‘hoax,’ it is very real — despite what Donald Trump has had to say,” Jeffries said. He added that the party had warned before last year’s shutdown that it would not relent. “Democrats made clear before the government was shut down that we were in this affordability fight until we win this affordability fight,” he said. “Today we have an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward.”
The legislation would restore enhanced tax credits for three years, benefits that were enacted during the COVID-19 emergency and expired late last year when negotiations collapsed amid the shutdown. Supporters argue the credits have helped millions maintain coverage as costs climb.
Budget analysts, however, cautioned about the price tag. Ahead of the vote, the Congressional Budget Office projected the extension would add roughly $80.6 billion to the deficit over a decade. At the same time, the CBO estimated the measure would expand coverage significantly—by about 100,000 people this year, rising to 3 million in 2027, 4 million in 2028, and 1.1 million in 2029.
Johnson spent months trying to avoid this outcome. His office warned that pandemic-era health funding has been plagued by fraud, citing a Minnesota investigation, and urged Republicans to oppose the bill. On the House floor, GOP critics echoed those concerns and argued Congress should focus on lowering costs across the system rather than extending targeted subsidies. “Only 7% of the population relies on Obamacare marketplace plans. This chamber should be about helping 100% of Americans,” said Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Despite the House vote, the Senate is not obligated to take up the bill. Instead, a bipartisan group of senators has been crafting an alternative that could attract broader support. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said any viable proposal would need guardrails to ensure aid reaches those most in need, including income limits, a requirement that enrollees pay at least a nominal share, and an expansion of health savings accounts.
Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who is part of those talks, said there is consensus on cracking down on abuse while addressing affordability. “We recognize that we have millions of people in this country who are going to lose — are losing, have lost — their health insurance because they can’t afford the premiums,” Shaheen said. “And so we’re trying to see if we can’t get to some agreement that’s going to help, and the sooner we can do that, the better.”
President Trump has urged Republicans to steer assistance directly into health savings accounts, allowing individuals to manage coverage without federal involvement. Democrats largely dismiss that approach as inadequate given the cost of care.
The rebellion underscored a breakdown in House GOP discipline. By siding with Democrats to force the vote, rank-and-file Republicans effectively wrested control of the floor from leadership—an outcome Johnson had tried to forestall by floating a temporary extension paired with reforms for vulnerable members. That effort fizzled after conservatives objected, leaving only a narrower reform package that passed but stalled.
As premiums spiked at the start of the year, lawmakers from competitive districts took matters into their own hands. Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, along with Mike Lawler of New York, signed the petition, pushing it past the 218-vote mark required to trigger action. All four represent swing seats central to determining next year’s House majority.
What began as a long-shot Democratic gambit has now become validation of their shutdown-era strategy to preserve the subsidies. Party leaders say rising insurance costs will anchor their push to reclaim control of Congress in the fall.
Republicans, meanwhile, face renewed pressure to articulate a coherent health care alternative. President Trump, speaking this week to House GOP lawmakers, urged them to seize the issue—one that has dogged the party since the unsuccessful effort during his first term to repeal Obamacare.
{Matzav.com}
Iranian authorities faced mounting pressure as demonstrations expanded across the country, even as the protests themselves showed no clear central leadership. Analysts say the absence of an organized alternative has historically weakened similar movements.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, who studies Iran.
“There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”
Despite that, unrest continued to grow. Demonstrations that erupted Wednesday in cities and small towns carried into Thursday, with additional markets and bazaars closing in solidarity with protesters. According to the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, at least 45 demonstrators have been killed so far, among them eight minors.
12th day of anti-establishment protests in Iran
The crowd of protesters in Tehran got bigger. Same location as the one quoted here@GeoConfirmed https://t.co/zwOV0BvI4Q pic.twitter.com/oa5c6HNao6
— Ghoncheh Habibiazad | غنچه (@GhonchehAzad) January 8, 2026
The organization said Wednesday marked the deadliest day since the protests began.
“The evidence shows that the scope of the crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding that hundreds more have been wounded and over 2,000 arrested.
Thursday night brought a dramatic escalation in Tehran, where thousands of residents chanted from their homes and poured into the streets after a call for mass demonstrations by exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, witnesses said. Almost immediately after the protests began, internet access and telephone service inside Iran went down.
CloudFlare and the monitoring group NetBlocks both reported the outage, attributing it to government interference. Calls placed from Dubai to Iranian landlines and mobile phones were still connecting. In previous waves of unrest, similar blackouts were often followed by harsh crackdowns.
Pahlavi’s appeal marked a key moment for the protest movement, testing whether Iranians would rally around the son of the late shah, who fled the country shortly before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrators in recent days have openly voiced support for the monarchy — once punishable by death — underscoring the depth of anger driven by Iran’s economic crisis.
Pahlavi urged people to take to the streets at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday and Friday. When the hour arrived, chants echoed through neighborhoods across Tehran, witnesses said, including “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others invoked the monarchy, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Large crowds were visible in multiple areas of the capital.
“Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands,” Pahlavi said in a statement. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the [Revolutionary Guard] that the world and [President Donald Trump] are closely watching you. Suppression of the people will not go unanswered.”
Pahlavi has said he will outline further steps depending on the response to his call. His ties to Israel have drawn criticism in the past, particularly following the 12-day war Israel waged on Iran in June. While some protesters have praised the shah, it remains unclear whether those chants reflect support for Pahlavi himself or nostalgia for the period before the Islamic Revolution.
Iranian officials appeared to be preparing for unrest. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper posted a video online asserting that security forces would use drones to identify participants in the demonstrations.
Even so, authorities have not acknowledged the full scale of the protests, which flared across numerous locations on Thursday, including before the scheduled 8 p.m. rallies. At the same time, Iranian media reported casualties among security personnel.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency said a police colonel died from stab wounds in a town near Tehran. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in Lordegan, in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province. Separately, a deputy governor in Khorasan Razavi province told state television that an attack on a police station in Chenaran killed five people Wednesday night, roughly 700 kilometers northeast of Tehran.
Questions remain over why authorities have not yet unleashed a broader crackdown. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
That warning prompted a sharp response from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“Recalling the long history of criminal interventions by successive US administrations in Iran’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry considers claims of concern for the great Iranian nation to be hypocritical, aimed at deceiving public opinion and covering up the numerous crimes committed against Iranians,” it said.
Despite the rebuke, the US State Department has continued highlighting protest-related footage on the social platform X, including videos showing demonstrators renaming roads after Trump or discarding government-subsidized rice.
“When prices are set so high that neither consumers can afford to buy nor farmers can afford to sell, everyone loses,” the State Department said in one post. “It makes no difference if this rice is thrown away.”
{Matzav.com}
After boasting publicly about blocking the construction of a large mikvah and a major shul in Yerushalayim’s Givat Masua neighborhood, Deputy Mayor Yossi Havilio is now pushing back against claims that the move was ideologically driven or anti-religious.
The controversy erupted after Havilio published a social media post celebrating what he described as a successful struggle to preserve the neighborhood’s “liberal character,” following efforts to stop the establishment of an expansive mikvah and shul complex. The language of the post quickly sparked a heated debate in Yerushalayim, with critics accusing him of framing the issue as a cultural or religious confrontation rather than a planning dispute.
In an interview on Kikar FM, Havilio sought to strip the decision of its ideological overtones and reframe it as a matter of urban planning. He stressed that he did not act alone, saying the opposition was led together with city council member Laura Wharton and local residents, who formally filed objections to the revised plan.
According to Havilio, the neighborhood is largely secular, with a presence of what he termed “moderate religious residents.” He said the original proposal involved a standard shul, which did not face opposition. The dispute began only after the plan was altered.
He explained that the municipality moved to replace a relatively small community structure with a four-story complex that would include a mikvah, a shul, and a multi-purpose hall, situated on a narrow, one-way dead-end street. “It simply doesn’t fit there,” Havilio argued, citing transportation concerns, planning limitations, and potential harm to residents’ quality of life.
Havilio said that when the majority of a neighborhood opposes a project of that scale, especially when alternative locations exist nearby, there is no justification for forcing it through. He rejected the idea that opposing the project amounted to religious coercion, noting that Yerushalayim is home to hundreds of mikva’os and shuls that he does not object to.
At the same time, he stood by his use of the term “liberal character,” saying neighborhoods have the right to protect their identity when faced with unusually large developments. “If most residents don’t want this mikvah and this shul, that needs to be respected,” he said. “This isn’t a fight against religion, it’s about fitting into the environment.”
Havilio also pointed out that additional mikva’os already operate in the surrounding area, including one in nearby Kiryat Menachem, which he said could serve residents of Givat Masua who are interested. He added that many women prefer not to use a mikvah in their immediate neighborhood in any case, questioning the need for what he called an oversized facility in a location ill-suited for it.
During the interview, criticism was raised over the way the struggle had been portrayed publicly, particularly the impression that it was an ideological victory over the religious or chareidi public rather than a narrowly defined planning objection. Havilio rejected that characterization, though he struggled to explain why his original post emphasized the neighborhood’s liberal identity.
“I didn’t say there shouldn’t be large shuls or mikva’os in Yerushalayim,” he said. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
Still, the tension between his technical explanations and the value-laden language of his social media post remained unresolved, leaving the sense that the issue extended beyond zoning and infrastructure and into the realm of identity politics.
{Matzav.com}
Two people were reportedly wounded Thursday afternoon during an encounter involving federal agents in Portland, coming less than 24 hours after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman in Minnesota during a volatile enforcement operation, according to published reports.
Authorities have not released details about the circumstances surrounding the Portland incident or the medical condition of the two individuals who were shot.
Portland City Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney said the two people who were hit were still alive, according to local reporting.
City councilors told KATU that the gunfire broke out near the intersection of East Burnside Street and 141st Avenue.
Sources cited by ABC News said the agents involved in the Portland shooting were members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The Portland episode followed the killing of Renee Nicole Good, 37, who was shot and killed Wednesday afternoon by an ICE agent in Minnesota. Video from the scene appears to show Good striking the officer with her car moments before the agent fired through the vehicle’s window.
President Trump and Homeland Security officials said the agent who fired acted in self-defense after being hit by Good, whom they described as a “domestic terrorist.”
{Matzav.com}
