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Rand Paul says Venezuela boat bombings are ‘inappropriate’ and ‘go against our tradition’

admin - Latest News - October 19, 2025
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joins Meet the Press to react to the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats and President Trump’s announcement of covert CIA operations in Venezuela.



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October 21, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 21, 2025, 2:08 PM EDTBy Rob WileIf you get a raise next year, there’s a chance your tax rate won’t change thanks to new tax brackets recently released by the Internal Revenue Service.And if you earn the same amount or less, your rate may even decrease. The IRS usually adjusts tax brackets every year for inflation. This way, a household that reports nominally higher income — but not an increase in buying power — doesn’t tip over into a higher tax.When taxpayers file returns in April 2027, they will see tax bracket thresholds that have increased by about 2.7% over the prior year, to account for inflation, according to the Tax Foundation. #embed-20251010-tax-rate-change-calculator iframe {width: 1px;min-width: 100%}This means a household that reports income near the top of a specific bracket in 2025 — and then reports slightly more income for 2026 — may not necessarily be bumped up to the next income bracket and face a higher tax rate.Some taxpayers who report the same amount of income in 2026 as they did in 2025 could even see their taxes decrease. For example, an individual filer who earns $100,000 in 2026 will owe approximately $13,170 in federal income tax — which is $279 less than that taxpayer would have owed the year before, according to NBC News calculations. “We call it ‘bracket creep’ — where you would end up going into a higher tax bracket if they didn’t end up being adjusted for inflation,” said Tom O’Saben, director of tax content and government relations at the National Association of Tax Professionals, a trade group for accountants. The IRS has also increased the standard deduction, or the amount a household can write off if they choose not to itemize their deductions. For tax year 2026, the standard deduction will increase by 7.3% for all filers over the 2025 rate: This will come to $32,200 for married couples filing jointly, to $16,100 for single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately, and to $24,150 for individual filers who are heads of households. The IRS released the new brackets this month despite the government shutdown, which has caused half its staff to be furloughed.The Trump administration laid off nearly 1,500 Treasury Department employees earlier this month, according to court filings by the government. The cuts reportedly had an outsized impact on the IRS, especially its human resources and IT workforce. Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.
November 4, 2025
Nov. 3, 2025, 10:41 PM ESTBy Gabe Gutierrez, Yamiche Alcindor, Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, Dan De Luce and Abigail WilliamsWASHINGTON — A Fox News report prompted President Donald Trump to call out Nigeria over the killing of Christians and then threaten military action, setting off a scramble in the White House over the weekend, according to multiple U.S. officials.It’s still unclear what — if anything — the administration will do to counter Islamic militants in Nigeria, but precision drone strikes are among the preliminary options being considered, two U.S. officials said.A White House spokesperson declined Monday to offer any details on the plans under consideration.“At President Trump’s direction, the administration is planning options for possible action to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria,” the spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, said in a statement. “Any announcements will come from the President directly.”A vendor sells local newspapers with headlines referring to US President Donald Trump’s comments about Nigeria, on the street of Lagos, Nigeria on Sunday.Sunday Alamba / APTrump’s first social media post on Nigeria came Friday night after he watched a Fox News report on violence in the West African nation, two administration officials said. The president asked his staff for more information about the situation and, shortly after, declared in a Truth Social post that he was designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” over its failure to, in his words, stop the “mass slaughter” of Christians.Trump then went further in a Saturday post, directing the Defense Department to prepare for possible military action.“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote. It’s not the first time the president’s rapid fire social media posts have moved faster than policy deliberations, with officials rushing to draft diplomatic and military options and allied governments taken by surprise. Experts and scholars who follow events in Nigeria say Trump’s portrayal of the security situation in the country as a “Christian genocide” is misleading and oversimplified, as Nigerians of all faiths have suffered at the hands of Islamist extremists and other groups.Trump’s posts even contradicted one of his own senior State Department advisors, Massad Boulous, who said last month that Muslims have died in larger numbers than Christians.“People of all religions and of all tribes are dying, and it is very unfortunate, and we even know that Boko Haram and ISIS are killing more Muslims than more Christians,” Boulos said while meeting with the Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Rome, according to state media outlet, Voice of Nigeria. “So people are suffering from all sorts of backgrounds. This is not specifically targeted at one group or the other.”People walk past torched houses following an attack by Boko Haram in Darul Jamal, Nigeria on Sept. 6, 2025.AP FileSpeaking to reporters on Monday, Trump hinted that he was open to sending troops on the ground in Nigeria, but that seemed like a far less likely option as he has generally been loath to deploy troops to conflicts overseas, according to the two U.S. officials.A senior Trump administration official said the White House is in regular contact with the Nigerian government. “We hope that the Nigerian government will be a partner in the process of addressing this issue, and work with the United States to take swift and immediate action to address the violence that is affecting Christians, as well as countless other innocent civilians across Nigeria,” the official said. Nigeria’s government was taken aback by Trump’s statements, but officials cited the two countries’ friendly relations and called for a cooperative approach between the two governments to tackle the threat posed by Islamist groups.Daniel Bwala, an advisor to Nigeria’s president, told the BBC that any military action against the Islamist groups should be carried out jointly. Nigeria would welcome U.S. help in tackling the militants but added that it was a “sovereign” country.Insurgent groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State’s branch in West Africa sometimes use anti-Christian language, but their attacks are indiscriminate, targeting civilians, officials, and local leaders regardless of religion, according to Miriam Adah, an analyst with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a U.S.-based nonprofit that tracks conflicts and crises.“In Nigeria, the violence is widespread and complex. It involves insurgents, bandits, ethnic clashes, and land disputes — not a single campaign to eliminate Christians,” Adah said. “Both Christians and Muslims are victims.”The bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has pointed to violence against both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, saying there are systematic religious freedom violations in the country. “Violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims in several states across Nigeria,” the commission said in a report last year.It also described the Nigerian government response to attacks on Nigerian civilians by “nonstate actors” as slow or ineffective.Islamist groups like Boko Haram are not the only actors behind violence in Nigeria, experts say.Apart from Boko Haram and an Islamic State branch in northern Nigeria, there is a separatist movement in the southeast, ethnic militant groups in the oil-producing Niger Delta, kidnapping gangs in the northwest and clashes between Muslim herders and Christian farmers in the Middle Belt fueled by climate change.Trump’s comments may have had more to do with domestic American politics than addressing a security threat in Nigeria, experts said. Some Republican lawmakers, aligned with elements of Nigeria’s Christian diaspora population in the United States, have long focused on the plight of Christians in Nigeria. And Trump may have been trying to deliver a message to his Christian supporters in the United States, experts said. “Republicans on the Hill in particular, for years, have been trying to frame Nigeria as ‘a Christian genocide,’ and they have strong allies in the Nigerian diaspora in the United States,” said Darren Kerr, dean of the School of Peace Studies at the University of California at San Diego.Nigeria’s population of 230 million is split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians, and the sectarian divide has triggered political violence in the past. Trump’s comments threaten to potentially “light a match” in an already fragile landscape, Kerr said. “To bring the weight of the United States solely on the Christian side and to frame things in a Muslim-Christian dimension is probably extremely unhelpful to both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria,” Kerr said.The United States does, however, have grounds to question how the Nigerian government is using the weapons and other assistance that Washington has delivered over the years, Kerr said.“Had the President been more measured in his comments to say ‘Nigeria, we give it all this money, what’s happened? That, I think, is a legitimate criticism on the part of the United States to say to the government, ‘Look, what are you guys doing? Where’s the strategy? Where’s the success, where’s the progress that we’re expecting?’”Gabe GutierrezGabe Gutierrez is a senior White House correspondent for NBC News.Yamiche AlcindorYamiche Alcindor is a White House correspondent for NBC News.Gordon LuboldGordon Lubold is a national security reporter for NBC News.Courtney KubeCourtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.Dan De LuceDan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. Abigail WilliamsAbigail Williams is a producer and reporter for NBC News covering the State Department.
October 1, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 1, 2025, 3:17 PM EDTBy Sahil Kapur, Hallie Jackson, Kyle Stewart and Gabe GutierrezWASHINGTON — With the government shut down, Republicans are centering their message on a simple argument: “Democrats are grinding America to a halt in order to give illegal immigrants free health care.”That message, from a new ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee, has been echoed by GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration in recent days.Vice President JD Vance claimed on Fox News that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” turned off health funding for “illegal aliens.”“Democrats want to turn it back on,” he said. “It’s not something that we made up. It’s not a talking point. It is in the text of the bill that they initially gave to us to reopen the government.”Republican lawmakers point blame at Democrats on first day of government shutdown04:27U.S. law already prohibits unauthorized immigrants from gaining any federally subsidized health care coverage — through Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or otherwise. A 1996 statute established that.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Republicans are “lying” about the Democratic bill out of weakness.“Nowhere have Democrats suggested that we’re interested in changing federal law,” he said one day before the shutdown. “The question for the president is whether he’s interested in protecting the health care of the American people.”We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the government shutdown, whether you’re a federal employee who can’t work right now or someone who is feeling the effects of shuttered services in your everyday life. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.The factsThe Republican claim is highly misleading.The Democratic bill would not change existing law barring people who are in the U.S. illegally from getting federal health care coverage.The dispute centers around immigrants whom the federal government has decreed as “lawfully present,” but who haven’t formally been given legal status that is enforceable in court.There are an estimated 1.4 million people considered “lawfully present” in the United States — including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program beneficiaries, who came to the U.S. illegally as children; people who have Temporary Protected Status; and refugees and people seeking asylum who are still going through the legal process. Republicans are seeking to prohibit Medicaid or ACA eligibility for those groups.They are not “undocumented” or “illegal” immigrants. The government knows who they are, and many are going through the process of seeking official legal status or green cards. Among other things, they are not unlawful border-crossers who have been flagged for deportation.The GOP law prohibited those “lawfully present” immigrants from accessing federal health care programs. The Democratic bill would restore that access — but not for undocumented people who lack protected status — while also restoring the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, a core goal for Democrats.The White House defended its claim by pointing to one portion of the “big beautiful bill” that Democrats are seeking to repeal, a section called “Alien Medicaid eligibility.” That section establishes the new limitations on health care access for lawfully present immigrants (“alien” is the federal term used to describe a noncitizen).The White House also says the Biden administration abused the immigration parole program to grant temporary entry to the U.S. for people who shouldn’t have received it. But if the Trump administration revoked that parole status, those individuals would lose their eligibility for any health care coverage under the Democratic proposal.Another provision in the Democratic bill would extend subsidies that keep health insurance premiums low for people insured through the Affordable Care Act, which are set to expire later this year. Undocumented immigrants are already barred from accessing that money, and nothing in the Democrats’ bill changes that.Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Hallie JacksonHallie Jackson is senior Washington correspondent for NBC News.Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Gabe GutierrezGabe Gutierrez is a senior White House correspondent for NBC News.Megan Lebowitz and Tara Prindiville contributed.
October 19, 2025
Oct. 19, 2025, 6:23 AM EDTBy Nick Duffy and Matt BradleyIsrael accused Hamas on Sunday of violating the ceasefire by carrying out attacks on its forces in Gaza, while Hamas accused Israel of working to “fabricate flimsy pretexts” for its own actions.Israeli and Palestinian media reported that the IDF carried out airstrikes in southern Gaza early Sunday, in what would be its first such attacks since the start of the truce that halted its assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave. Two Palestinian eyewitnesses told AFP that fighting erupted in part of the southern city of Rafah still under Israeli control, followed by two air strikes.NBC News has not verified the reports, and the Israeli military did not confirm the strikes.An Israeli military official subsequently accused Hamas of a “bold violation of the ceasefire” with incidents including a rocket-propelled grenade attack and a sniper attack against Israeli forces.”Hamas carried out multiple attacks against Israeli forces beyond the yellow line,” the Israeli military official said, referring to the area where its military is now positioned inside Gaza under the first phase of the ceasefire.Izzat Al-Rishq, a senior member of Hamas‘ political wing, said the group “affirms its commitment to the ceasefire agreement,” accusing Israel of violating the agreement and working to “fabricate flimsy pretexts” to evade its responsibilities.The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect on October 10, when the group agreed to release all Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees under the first phase of a deal brokered by the United States.Both sides have accused the other of violating the terms of the deal. Israel says Hamas is delaying the release of the bodies of hostages held inside Gaza, while Hamas says it will take time to search for and recover remains. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister who opposed the ceasefire, called Sunday for the IDF to “resume the fighting in the Gaza Strip at full strength.”The ceasefire also includes the ramping up of aid into Gaza, where the world’s leading authority on hunger has declared a famine in some areas.On Saturday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt would remain closed “until further notice,” citing the hostage dispute.There have been flashes of violence within Gaza during the ceasefire, marked by at least one public execution and Hamas clashes with rival factions as the militant group tried to reassert control amid the ceasefire in the war-torn territory.On Saturday, the U.S. Department of State said in a post on social media that there had been “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.” Hamas rejected the suggestion.Nick DuffyNick Duffy is a weekend and world editor for NBC News.Matt BradleyMatt Bradley is an international correspondent for NBC News based in Israel.Reuters contributed.
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