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Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said that he sees the U.S. mission that led to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a success, openly criticizing fellow Democrats for attacking President Donald Trump over the operation.

Appearing on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Fetterman expressed frustration that Democrats who long demanded Maduro’s removal are now condemning the Trump administration after the goal was achieved.

“I don’t know why we can’t just acknowledge it’s been a good thing what’s happened. I’ve seen the speeches from, whether it’s Leader Schumer or kinds of past tweets from President Biden,” he said, referencing recent remarks by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and earlier statements from Joe Biden when he was out of office.

“We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here,” Fetterman added.

Schumer, however, warned over the weekend that “launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless.”

The criticism echoed earlier attacks from Biden, who in 2020 accused Trump of posturing on Venezuela while praising strongmen abroad. In a social media post that year, Biden charged that Trump talked “tough” on the country but admired “thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro.”

Those past remarks, Fetterman said, only highlight the inconsistency in the current Democratic response. He questioned why the party refuses to acknowledge what he views as a clear achievement.

“I salute our military, what they’ve done,” he said on Fox News. “That was really surgical and precise and very efficient — so why we can’t celebrate these kinds of things?

Fetterman also said Maduro’s removal could mark a turning point for Venezuela itself.

“And now I’m open to the good opportunities, a better future for Venezuela after this happened,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinforced that argument during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, noting that the U.S. government itself had previously placed a multimillion-dollar bounty on Maduro’s capture.

“In the Biden administration, they had a $25 million reward for [Maduro’s] capture,” Rubio told NBC host Kristen Welker.

“So, we have a reward for his capture, but we’re not going to enforce it?” he asked.

Rubio also responded to complaints that Congress was not notified ahead of the mission. He said secrecy was essential because the operation depended on specific conditions and any leak could have put it at risk.

“We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” Rubio told reporters during a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida.

“It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met. Night after night, we watched and monitored that for a number of days. So it’s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, ‘Hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days,’” he said.

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{Matzav.com}

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is accusing fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina of nudging President Donald Trump into a foreign policy move that Paul says contradicts the president’s long-held views, following the U.S. operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

Speaking with reporters on Monday, Paul said Graham was a driving force behind the decision to deploy U.S. special operations forces to Caracas, arguing that Graham successfully pushed the president toward an action Trump had historically resisted.

According to Paul, the mission clashes with Trump’s repeated opposition to regime-change efforts and overseas nation-building, positions the president has emphasized throughout his political career.

“This is Lindsey Graham,” Paul said. “Lindsey Graham has gotten to the president.”

Paul said Trump has consistently warned that removing foreign governments rarely ends well, pointing to numerous public statements in which the president criticized such interventions.

“I saw a clip — there’s like 20 clips — of [Trump] saying he’s not for regime change, and how regime change has always gone wrong,” Paul said.

“Somehow, they’ve convinced him it’s different if it’s in our hemisphere.”

Paul warned that the episode reflects the rising sway of more interventionist Republicans within the party, singling out Graham as a leading voice shaping Trump’s approach to Venezuela and foreign policy more broadly.

Graham, meanwhile, has been open for years about his desire to see Maduro ousted from power. His frustration surfaced publicly last month after War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers during a classified briefing that removing Maduro was not being actively pursued at that time.

“I want to know what’s going to happen next,” Graham said after that briefing.

“Is it the policy to take Maduro down? It should be, if it’s not.

“If he goes, what’s going to happen next?” Graham asked. “I’d like a better answer as to what happens when Maduro goes.”

After Maduro was taken into custody over the weekend, Graham applauded the outcome and framed it as a potential turning point for leftist governments across the region.

“As I have often said, it is in America’s national security interest to deal with the drug caliphate in our backyard, the centerpiece of which is Venezuela. With Maduro’s capture, the drug caliphate is moving toward collapse,” Graham wrote in a post on X.

“Free Cuba,” Graham added.

{Matzav.com}

Several European leaders pushed back Tuesday on U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments seeking an American takeover of Greenland. The leaders issued a statement reaffirming the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island “belongs to its people.” The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty […]

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Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday unveiled a sweeping legislative proposal aimed squarely at Israel’s most volatile political and societal fault line: military service and the government’s push to advance a draft-exemption law for chareidim. Bennett announced what he termed the “servicemembers’ law,” a comprehensive benefits package for soldiers and reservists that he […]

Fire safety inspections hadn’t been carried out since 2019 at the Swiss bar where a fire at a New Year’s party left 40 people dead and over 100 injured, local authorities said Tuesday. Investigators have said they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire at Le Constellation in the resort town of Crans-Montana […]

Dr. Dan Diker, a Middle East, counterterrorism, and national security analyst and the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, spoke to Arutz Sheva about Venezuela’s contribution to anti-Israel terror. “The world paid attention to Venezuela’s significant involvement in global terrorism and global drug trafficking, and now, it is all coming out,” he said. […]

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Jerusalem Police are preparing for a protest against the Chareidi draft law at the Bar Ilan area in Jerusalem scheduled at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. The protest is being held by the Eidah HaChareidis and some of the smaller Chassidish courts. At least one of the Sephardi Gedolim, HaGaon HaRav Ben Tzion Mutzafi, has also […]

HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau delivered a shiur at Wolfson Yeshiva in Jerusalem on Monday evening and addressed the judicial system’s distorted and evil motivations for persecuting lomdei Torah. “There are misguided Jews who followed various ideological forms of idolatry,” the Rosh Yeshiva said. “Many placed their faith in the authorities of the state with all […]

President Trump said Monday that American energy companies could be active in Venezuela far sooner than many expect, predicting that operations could begin within a year and a half — and possibly even earlier.

“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News.

According to the president, the financial burden would initially fall on the private sector. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” he said.

Trump’s comments came in the wake of a U.S. military operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Following that development, the president said the United States would maintain a role in the country “as it pertains to oil.”

He explained that before any large-scale drilling can resume, American firms would first need to overhaul Venezuela’s deteriorated oil infrastructure, which has suffered years of neglect and mismanagement.

At present, Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company still operating in Venezuela.

Other major players exited long ago. ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil pulled out nearly two decades ago after then-president Hugo Chávez nationalized foreign-owned energy assets.

Trump said the scale of investment required would be massive. “It’ll be a very substantial amount of money,” he said. “But they’ll do very well.”

“And the country will do well,” the president added.

He also argued that restoring Venezuela as a major oil producer would have broader economic benefits for the United States. “Having a Venezuela that’s an oil producer is good for the United States because it keeps the price of oil down,” Trump said, adding that expanded drilling would “reduce oil prices.”

Trump said that while his administration did not notify U.S. oil companies in advance of the military operation, discussions had been taking place in more general terms. Officials had been “talking to the concept of, ‘what if we did it?’” he said.

“The oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something,” Trump said. “But we didn’t tell them we were going to do it.”

Looking ahead, Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to meet later this week with executives from Exxon and ConocoPhillips to discuss Venezuelan oil, according to Bloomberg News.

NBC News, citing a White House official, reported that Wright has been assigned to lead the administration’s efforts to restore and rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.

{Matzav.com}

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All are asked to be mispallel for Rav Dovid Magid, formerly rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva of Bayonne, NJ, who is in need of rachamei Shomayim after suffering a medical episode on Motzoei Shabbos.

Rav Magid was transported for medical care following the incident, and family members have since asked that his condition be kept in mind during tefillah.

The rosh yeshiva‘s name for Tehillim is Elchonon Dovid Aryeh Leib ben Itta Faiga.

{Matzav.com}

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani moved Monday to tamp down speculation at City Hall after an executive order he signed prompted talk that New York City’s police commissioner had been sidelined.

The rumors began circulating after Mamdani’s first-day order granted his first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan, oversight authority over the New York City Police Department. Some observers read the move as a demotion of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, leading to widespread chatter that her standing in the administration had been reduced.

Mamdani addressed the issue publicly, insisting that the reporting structure at the top of the department remains unchanged.

“My police commissioner will continue to report directly to me,” he said while speaking to reporters at an unrelated event.

The order signed on New Year’s Day placed the New York City Police Department within the first deputy mayor’s portfolio for day-to-day administrative matters, a framework that had been common under earlier city leaders.

That structure was altered under Mayor Eric Adams, who instead created a first deputy mayor for public safety role and had the police commissioner report through that office — a position that had not existed since the 1990s.

Phil Banks, who served in that public safety role under Adams, later came under scrutiny for allegedly interfering in police operations and ultimately stepped down amid a wide-ranging federal corruption investigation.

Although Mamdani’s order largely reverted the NYPD to a previous bureaucratic arrangement, it was interpreted by some as a dramatic shakeup that could weaken the department’s independence. Additional speculation spread that Mamdani had stopped receiving daily intelligence briefings from the police commissioner.

Those concerns led the National Jewish Advocacy Center to send a sharply worded letter to the mayor, particularly in light of its earlier objections to Mamdani rescinding executive orders related to antisemitism.

Tisch has been viewed by many inside and outside City Hall as a stabilizing influence within Mamdani’s democratic socialist administration. Both she and the mayor have acknowledged disagreements on certain policy issues, including matters connected to Israel.

Pressed again about the order, Mamdani emphasized the distinction between administrative supervision and ultimate accountability.

“My police commissioner, just like my schools chancellor, will report directly to me,” he said.

“The executive order is in terms of the question of coordination. This is about the daily minutiae of coordination.”

{Matzav.com}

The federal government has picked two companies to replace 612 radar systems nationwide that date back to the 1980s as part of a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that contractors RTX and Spanish firm Indra will replace the radar systems […]

Federal officials moved Monday to halt more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding to several Democrat-led states, citing concerns that taxpayer dollars were improperly diverted to non-citizens, according to administration sources, the NY Post reports.

The funding freeze affects California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, with the Department of Health and Human Services set to pause distributions from three major federal programs: the Child Care Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and the Social Services Block Grant.

The largest portion of the freeze involves TANF, with approximately $7.35 billion slated to be withheld from the five states. An additional $2.4 billion in CCDF funding will also be blocked, along with roughly $869 million from the Social Services Block Grant program.

Administration officials said the decision would be formally communicated through letters sent Monday to each state, outlining concerns that benefits were fraudulently provided to non–U.S. citizens.

The action follows earlier scrutiny of state-administered programs. More than six years ago, the HHS Office of Inspector General determined that New York City improperly charged the federal government over $24.7 million for child care subsidies.

Minnesota has been a particular focus of federal investigations. In December, HHS sent letters to Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey questioning whether billions in taxpayer funding had unlawfully helped “fuel illegal and mass migration,” a development first reported by The Post. Those inquiries were followed by investigations launched by the Treasury Department and the House Oversight Committee into a growing fraud scandal involving nonprofits tied to the Somali community in the Twin Cities.

According to the Pew Research Center, Minnesota was home to about 130,000 illegal migrants as of 2023, up roughly 40,000 from 2019 and accounting for about 2% of the state’s population. The state’s Somali diaspora exceeds 100,000 people, most concentrated in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area.

Federal prosecutors have already obtained dozens of convictions connected to a $250 million fraud scheme involving Feeding Our Future, a Somali-linked organization accused of using stolen funds to buy luxury vehicles and real estate. First Assistant Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson has alleged the scope of the fraud is far larger, claiming as much as $9 billion may have been skimmed.

“What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering, industrial-scale fraud,” Thompson told reporters in a Dec. 18 news conference.

Public attention intensified after YouTuber Nick Shirley visited about 10 child care centers that collectively received $111 million in taxpayer funds. Subsequent reporting by the Minnesota Star Tribune found that fewer than half of those facilities appeared to be operating.

Gov. Walz addressed the issue Monday during a press conference in which he also announced he was ending his bid for a third term.

“We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if we can’t earn the public’s trust,” the Minnesota Democrat said, before criticizing President Trump and his “allies in Washington.”

“We’ll win the fight against the fraudsters, but the political gamesmanship we’re seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder,” he added.

President Trump responded with a Truth Social post later Monday, accusing Walz and others of massive corruption.

“Minnesota’s Corrupt Governor will possibly leave office before his Term is up but, in any event, will not be running again because he was caught, REDHANDED, along with Ilhan Omar, and others of his Somali friends, stealing Tens of Billions of Taxpayer Dollars,” Trump wrote.

“I feel certain the facts will come out, and they will reveal a seriously unscrupulous, and rich, group of ‘SLIMEBALLS,’” the president added.

“Governor Walz has destroyed the State of Minnesota, but others, like Governor Gavin Newscum, JB Pritzker, and Kathy Hochul, have done, in my opinion, an even more dishonest and incompetent job. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!”

Democratic lawmakers sharply criticized the funding freeze. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York denounced the move as politically motivated.

“To use the power of the government to harm the neediest Americans is immoral and indefensible,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “This has nothing to do with fraud and everything to do with political retribution that punishes poor children in need of assistance. I demand that President Trump unfreeze this funding and stop this brazen attack on our children.”

Officials in several affected states said they had not yet received formal notification. A spokesperson for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said “the state has not been officially notified of any changes to these funding sources,” adding that if accurate, “it would be awful to see the federal government targeting the most needy families and children this way.”

A representative for California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration likewise said the state had not been given guidance on funding changes, but emphasized that California is “committed to safeguarding the integrity of all child care subsidy payments and takes any potential misuse of funds seriously.”

{Matzav.com}

Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman said his party would oppose a proposed military draft law if it proves to be a political façade, warning that the High Court of Justice should not interfere in legislative matters.

Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with journalist Yishai Cohen on the Kikar HaShabbat studio program, Rothman addressed his ongoing confrontation with Israel’s judicial system, the judicial overhaul he sought to advance, the so-called “Qatargate” affair, remarks made by former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, the controversy surrounding the draft law and the status of yeshiva students, and the possibility that the High Court could order the dismissal of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Rothman sharply rejected Barak’s recent claim that Israel is no longer a liberal democracy and is instead ruled by a single individual. According to Rothman, “The system really is being run by one person — and that person is Yitzchak Amit, who involves himself in every issue even when he has no authority to do so. But this is coming to an end. I think Yitzchak Amit knows it’s ending, and so does Aharon Barak. Their one-man rule is over, and that’s why we’re hearing these cries of alarm.”

Rothman also said he does not recognize Amit as president of the Supreme Court, stressing that Amit currently serves only as acting president under the law. “He’s sitting there as an acting president, and that’s fine — that’s what the law provides,” Rothman said. “The committee that selected him — who convened it? Was it convened by a lawfully elected chair? These are basic questions.”

Turning to the possibility that the High Court of Justice could order Ben-Gvir removed from office, Rothman urged Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to ignore such a ruling if it is issued. “Under no circumstances,” Rothman said. “If Netanyahu makes it clear from day one that he will not comply with such a delusional, exhausting, and unlawful ruling, that is what matters here. If a court says it doesn’t care about the law and the government obeys it anyway, then the responsibility lies with the government. You must not listen to an illegal ruling like that — it’s a blow to democracy.”

Rothman also launched an attack on Supreme Court justices often described as conservatives, arguing that no such category truly exists on the court. He singled out Justice Noam Sohlberg, saying that while some have labeled him conservative, Rothman always viewed him as merely “less activist.” Rothman criticized Sohlberg’s silence amid recent judicial developments, calling it “shocking” and accusing him of a lack of leadership. “With the level of leadership he is showing today,” Rothman said, “I don’t think he’s suitable to serve as president of the Supreme Court at all.”

Addressing the contentious draft legislation, Rothman emphasized that he would abide by the decision of his party faction. “I was very clear,” he said. “Support or opposition to the law — I will accept whatever decision my faction makes. As Simcha Rothman, I am not demanding anything personally. The same body that made life-and-death decisions, such as hostage releases — I said I will stand with my faction.”

He added that, on a personal level, he would favor a return to the Tal Law framework or treating chareidi yeshiva students similarly to religious women who are exempt from military service on religious grounds. Rothman concluded with a warning that if the draft law turns out to be an “Isra-bluff” — a hollow compromise — his party will not support it.

{Matzav.com}

Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas for the first time Monday at the CES tech showcase, ratcheting up a competition with Tesla and other rivals to build robots that look like people and do things that people do. “For the first time ever in public, please welcome Atlas to the stage,” said […]

Firefighters responded to a blaze Monday afternoon at an apartment complex under construction on Cedarview Avenue in Lakewood. The fire occurred at one of the new residential buildings being developed for BMG’s talmidim. BMG told Lakewood Alerts the fire occurred at approximately 3:00 p.m. and was related to ongoing construction. The damage was limited to […]