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Dec. 13, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Dareh Gregorian and Jiachuan WuPresident Donald Trump’s heated rhetoric against his perceived political enemies has resulted in a blizzard of threats against at least 22 officials on both sides of the aisle in recent weeks, according to an NBC News tally.Among those who’ve been targeted with threats after being mentioned in social media posts by the president are numerous Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — but even more Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and over a dozen Indiana state lawmakers.Three of the members of Congress that Trump accused of sedition, meanwhile, have filed complaints against him with the U.S. Capitol Police. The Capitol Police declined to comment on the complaints, saying in a statement, “For safety reasons, we cannot discuss any potential investigations.”The threats come amid an ugly spike in political violence, including the November shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. One, Sarah Beckstrom, died.

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President Donald Trump’s heated rhetoric against his perceived political enemies has resulted in a blizzard of threats against at least 22 officials on both sides of the aisle in recent weeks, according to an NBC News tally



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Dec. 13, 2025, 5:30 AM ESTBy Marin Scott and Tavleen TarrantThe videos began to circulate on social media in early November: Ukrainian soldiers appearing to weep and surrender on the front lines.To the naked eye, they look real, mirroring many of the videos that have emerged from the region during years of conflict. Few have telltale signs of manipulation.But Aleksei Gubanov, a popular Russian livestreamer who now lives in New York, immediately recognized something fishy: his own face.“At first I didn’t take it seriously, but soon I noticed how quickly the view count was growing and, even worse, how many people believed these videos were real,” Gubanov said of the videos he saw. “Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of users were leaving comments expressing condolences to the supposedly Ukrainian soldiers in the videos and directing anger toward the Ukrainian leadership.”Gubanov, who streams video games and chatting on Twitch and fled Russia due to his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, has never served in the armed forces, let alone in the Ukrainian army. What his followers had flagged was an AI-generated video that used his likeness to spread a false narrative about morale among Ukrainian troops.“We were taken to draft commission and sent here. Now we are being taken to Pokrovsk. We don’t want to. Please,” the AI-generated Gubanov said in Russian while wearing a uniform with the Ukrainian flag on it. “Mom, Mom, I don’t want!”The video is one of 21 AI-generated videos of Ukrainian soldiers reviewed by NBC News in recent weeks that appear to have been created or manipulated using advanced artificial intelligence programs, resulting in some so realistic that they offer few hints of their origins.But in at least half of these videos, a small logo in the corner gives it away: They were made with Sora 2, the latest iteration of OpenAI’s text-to-video generator. Some of the videos generated by Sora used the faces of popular Russian livestreamers, such as Gubanov, in dramatic deepfakes while others show groups of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russian forces en masse.Those that appear to have been generated by other AI platforms also had very subtle errors that would be challenging for most people to find, such as incorrect or simplified versions of the uniforms and helmets Ukrainian soldiers wear. And to Ukrainians, there’s an obvious issue: The majority of videos feature soldiers speaking Russian, while only eight of the 21 videos feature military personnel speaking Ukrainian.
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Dec. 13, 2025, 6:30 AM ESTBy Nicole AcevedoLawful permanent residents are seeing their naturalization ceremonies abruptly canceled this month as the Trump administration puts an indefinite “hold” on immigration applications from certain countries.The holds apply to green card and U.S. citizenship requests by people from 19 countries deemed “high risk” by the Trump administration. The list includes Cuba, Iran, Haiti and Somalia, among others.Lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, are already among the most thoroughly vetted individuals in the nation’s immigration system. When they decide to naturalize, they undergo an even more comprehensive government review that includes background checks, interviews with immigration officers and a citizenship test.The citizenship ceremony is the last step in a long process that starts with having a green card for several years, submitting the application, paying hundreds of dollars in fees, completing an interview with an immigration officer, passing a background check as well as an English and civics test, all before finally taking the oath.“If you’re scheduled for an oath ceremony, you have gone through all of the checks that are required,” said Deborah Chen, supervising attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group’s immigrant protection unit.The Trump administration’s new policy placing a hold on naturalization ceremonies for immigrants from the 19 countries is the latest among several other changes implemented this year that could make it more difficult for many lawful permanent residents to become U.S. citizens.In addition to the holds on immigration applications, the administration is cutting grants to groups that help prepare people to become citizens, implementing stricter social media vetting for those seeking citizenship, conducting neighborhood investigations into applicants’ “moral character,” and giving a more difficult civics test required for citizenship.Ready to become citizens — now ‘re-scrutinized’In Florida, Anyi Cabrales, who is Cuban, went to the salon on the morning of Dec. 1 to get her hair done ahead of her citizenship ceremony, she shared on social media. Cabrales told Noticias Telemundo she had been looking forward to the special occasion for the past eight months, but a few hours before being sworn in as a U.S. citizen she received a phone call from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official notifying her about the cancelation.In Massachusetts, a Haitian immigrant who has lived in the state for more than 20 years was pulled out of the line at her citizenship oath ceremony on Dec. 4, Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship, the legal services organization helping the woman, told NBC Boston.“It’s just because of this policy memo, all of a sudden, everyone from these 19 countries are going to be re-scrutinized,” NYLAG’s Chen said.Throughout the year, USCIS has been cutting back on naturalization ceremonies in smaller localities across the nation, many of them held in public or donated venues such as public libraries and historical sites and buildings like Oakland’s Paramount Theatre in California and the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.Last month, USCIS canceled naturalization ceremonies held in local courthouses across seven counties in upstate New York. Those ceremonies were quickly reinstated two days later following public outcry. This week, three of those counties had their ceremonies canceled again.In Ulster County, one of the counties affected, the cancelations are causing not just “emotional damage” to those ready to take their citizenship oath, said Victor Cueva, a naturalized citizen born in Peru who serves as the executive director of the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network. “There’s also legal damage.” Canceling these ceremonies, and in many cases not rescheduling them, Cueva said, “is a harm done to people that have gone through 99% of the naturalization process.”USCIS has said it wants to do away with judicial oath ceremonies, which take place at courthouses, and allow only administrative ceremonies that are held in USCIS field offices or other federal buildings. For some, the cancelations would mean that people would have to wait longer and travel farther outside their county to take their citizenship oath.USCIS did not respond to a request for comment. The agency previously told NBC News it had concerns about the efficient use of USCIS grants following the funding freeze in February. In a policy email made public by the Immigration Policy Tracking Project, USCIS said it stopped coordinating naturalization ceremonies in public venues, preferring to continue conducting them at USCIS field offices.President Donald Trump laid the foundation for a more strict naturalization process in his Jan. 20 executive order seeking to enhance vetting and screening efforts for migrants coming to the United States as well as those already in the country.About a month later, the Trump administration stopped disbursing USCIS grants to organizations providing English classes and civics instruction to lawful permanent residents getting ready for their citizenship interviews and tests.In Rhode Island, Channavy Chhay began noticing the ripple effects of these cutbacks. As the executive director of the Center for Southeast Asians, she works with many families who’ve come from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.In a state that is home to one of the nation’s largest Southeast Asian refugee populations per capita, there are essentially no citizenship classes, Chhay said. The discontinuation of the USCIS grants jeopardized the support of four federally funded citizenship and immigration services programs in Rhode Island that helped lawful permanent residents go through the naturalization process.In June, following the travel ban on 19 “high risk“ countries including Laos and Myanmar, decisions on immigration applications from many in these communities stalled, Chhay said. After all immigration requests from people in these countries were indefinitely halted this month, it “just went dark.”“We haven’t seen anyone get sworn in or get the chance to even file to become U.S. citizens. We haven’t seen that at all for a long time,” said Chhay.Aside from USCIS’ use of criminal history checks by the FBI and biometric screening, between August and September the Trump administration reintroduced neighborhood investigations into prospective citizens’ “moral character” as well as stricter social media vetting of applicants. The agency has said the changes are part of a “multi-step overhaul” to restore “robust vetting for all aliens and stricter reviews.” In neighborhood investigations, immigration officers visit an applicant’s home to assess good “moral character” and interview neighbors, landlords, co-workers and other community members about the applicant.Some clients of the New York Legal Assistance Group who had pending naturalization applications when the new policies went into effect were denied because they owed taxes, even though they were on a payment plan, according to NYLAG’s Chen.“It used to be that if you didn’t have any arrests, that was good enough,” Chen said, adding “that’s not good enough” anymore. To prove “good moral character,” applicants must also show “positive attributes,” such as family caregiving, educational attainment, stable employment and community involvement.With the growing scrutiny, compounded by immigration officers’ wider discretion to determine if someone has “good moral character,” the organization began advising more clients to renew their green cards instead of going through the naturalization process, Chen said, to avoid any potential issues that could jeopardize a person’s legal immigration status.USCIS plans to soon open a vetting center in Atlanta that will use “powerful screening resources” and “state-of-the-art technologies” including artificial intelligence to review immigration applications, especially from “presidentially designated countries of concern,” according to a news release.Nicole AcevedoNicole Acevedo is a news reporter for NBC News.
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November 19, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 19, 2025, 1:47 PM ESTBy Sahil KapurWASHINGTON — With a near-unanimous vote in Congress to pass his bill requiring the release of Jeffrey Epstein files, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., can claim a victory that no other Democratic presidential prospect has achieved: cracking the MAGA coalition.Early polls suggest he’d be a heavy underdog if he runs. But the California Democrat has been traveling to swing states and early contests to test the water for a possible White House bid.Khanna, 49, teamed up with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to introduce the Epstein Files Transparency Act in July. The bill requires the Justice Department to release its records related to Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender who had connections to a number of powerful figures, within 30 days.Khanna and Massie attracted Republican co-sponsors and just enough signatures to end-run House GOP leaders and force a vote, with MAGA luminaries such as Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado supporting the measure.It was a rare bipartisan feat, made more difficult by President Donald Trump, who pushed for months to dissuade Republicans from joining the effort. But in the final days, Trump bowed to what increasingly appeared to be an inevitability, flipping his stance and backing it. Party leaders followed him. Every Republican except one joined unanimous Democrats on Tuesday to vote for the measure on the House floor, sending it to the Senate, which passed it unanimously.In an interview in the speaker’s lobby moments before the House vote on his bill, Khanna told NBC News his project contains the building blocks of a national vision.“Whatever role I have, I hope it’s a role in shaping the national future of the Democratic Party and the country,” he said. “We need to build an enduring coalition around a vision of new economic patriotism that can unite the left and right. And the elements of that are to rail against an elite governing class that has created a system that’s not working for ordinary Americans. And then to offer a concrete vision of how we’re going to prioritize the economic independence and success of those forgotten Americans, as opposed to just this billionaire elite class.”He melded the new effort into his larger left-right message, attacking “the Epstein class that has accumulated power and doesn’t play by the rules and has impunity at the expense of ordinary Americans.”Khanna’s approach is unique among Democrats. He doesn’t quite have the fiery rhetoric of other rumored White House hopefuls such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and he doesn’t have the iconic progressive image of New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Simply put, his willingness to partner with MAGA figures who are detested by liberals may not be a selling point for an angry and fired-up Democratic base.“That’s a criticism I sometimes get,” Khanna quipped.Still, the California Democrat shows his sharp elbows against Republicans at times, most notably positioning himself as a foil to Vice President JD Vance, who’s seen as a potential Republican front-runner in 2028. He’ll often go after him on social media. During a speech in April at Yale Law School, where both Vance and Khanna received their degrees, Khanna drew a comparison between the vice president and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Vance’s office did not return a request for comment.Rep. Ro Khanna says Epstein is a winning issue for Democrats: ‘This is about trust in government’01:23Khanna lacks the national name recognition of other Democrats, including Pete Buttigieg, a former presidential candidate and transportation secretary in the Biden administration, who has also been viewed as a potential 2028 candidate.Not since the 1800s has a House member ascended straight to the presidency; and as an Indian American, Khanna would be looking to make history in more ways than one.But what he has built is a level of trust among Republicans who wouldn’t work with other Democrats. He said he’s done that by “being civil to colleagues” — including some hard-right Republicans — and building trust and partnerships with them, giving them credit, taking his message to “Republican-leaning podcasts” and “treating MAGA voters with respect.”“I have not gotten into Twitter wars with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. I have a real friendship with Thomas Massie,” he said. “They trusted me enough not to make it about Donald Trump — from day one, any press conference we did, anything we did, we talked about it being about the survivors, not political.”Khanna said his insistence on seeing the humanity in those GOP lawmakers, who are top Democratic foes, was key to success.“It was the whole thing,” he added. “If I had engaged in those kind of meme wars and others, there’s no way Massie would have worked with me.”The White House downplayed the Khanna-Massie effort, despite the president fighting it for months, saying Trump had already been “calling for transparency,” on the Epstein files “and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”Khanna has a different vision of bipartisanship than other Democrats, including former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, who sought to find the most moderate Republicans and work with them on noncontroversial goals. By contrast, Khanna tends to look for GOP lawmakers to partner with on populist issues that both the left and the right can sell as a rebuke of an entrenched establishment.He has teamed up with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., to repeal Trump’s tariffs on coffee, and with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, to propose congressional term limits. He worked with Republicans to advocate for reining in the government’s warrantless surveillance powers under FISA Section 702 and to prevent U.S. military intervention in Yemen.Massie said Khanna’s approach was instrumental in the success of their Epstein measure. He said he saw an opening when Khanna offered an Epstein amendment in the Rules Committee, and “got every Democrat and one Republican to vote for it.”“Ro gave me the idea, whether he meant to or not,” Massie said. “He’s able to put aside the partisan bomb throwing in order to work across the aisle, and he’s really good on TV.”“He was an important element of this,” the Kentucky Republican said. “And it was his idea, really, to organize the survivor press conference. So I don’t know if it would have succeeded with any other Democrat on the other side of the aisle.”Others have nothing to say about Khanna, including Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, who replied, “No comment,” when asked about his role in the Epstein bill.On the House floor before the vote, Khanna thanked his Republican partners on the bill. “The Epstein class is going to go,” he said. “And the reason they’re gonna go is the progressive left and the MAGA right and everyone in between is finally waking up against this rotten system.”In the NBC News interview, Khanna repeatedly invoked President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a guidepost for his populist views and desire to take on wealthy interests, while conceding that his progressive ideals won’t fully upend the MAGA coalition. But he believes he has a better theory of how to engage those voters than some recent — unnamed — Democratic presidential prospects.“Do I think somehow we’re going to win all of Trump’s voters? No. I’m not naive,” he said. “But I think that that has a better shot of winning than we’re just going to do Infrastructure 2.0.”Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
October 17, 2025
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October 5, 2025
Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 5, 2025, 8:28 AM EDTBy Dennis Romero”Saturday Night Live” returned after its 50th anniversary season by mocking President Donald Trump’s administration and also making a little fun of itself. Puerto Rican musical sensation Bad Bunny returned to hosting duties amid conservative outcry at his selection as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show performer.The cold open took viewers to Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s meeting Tuesday with senior military officers from across the globe at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia.Hegseth, played by “Weekend Update” co-host Colin Jost, was introduced by a colleague saying, “You will now be yelled at by a former Fox News host.”Jost’s Hegseth criticized the nation’s military branches for being out of shape. “Our military will now have the same rules as any good frat party: No fat chicks. And if you’re a fat dude, goddamn it you better be funny as hell,” he said.Trump, reprised by James Austin Johnson, said he showed up to the sketch to supervise the show.”I’m just here keeping my eye on ‘SNL,’ making sure they don’t say anything too mean about me,” he said, a seeming reference to Jimmy Kimmel’s briefly being taken off the air.Noting last season’s 50th anniversary celebrations, Johnson’s Trump said, “They should have called it at 50, right? So sad to see something get old and confused, and yet still demand your constant attention.”The 51st season, he said, was “off to a rough start.””Seventeen new cast members and they got the ‘Update’ guy doing the cold open,” Trump said.The night’s host, Bad Bunny, addressed the controversy over his scheduled performance at the 2026 Super Bowl.”I’m very happy and I think everyone is happy about it, even Fox News,” he said during the show’s opening monologue. The line was followed by a quick cut of Fox News hosts and commentators each saying one word that, in a sentence, stated, “He should be the next president.”Bad Bunny’s scheduled halftime performance has drawn the attention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is a U.S. citizen. Some right-wing commentators have criticized the NFL’s halftime curation by noting Bad Bunny performs predominantly in Spanish, the country’s second most-spoken language.The performer, who recently wrapped up a residency in Puerto Rico, chose not to include U.S. locations for this concert tour this year, explaining in September that he feared they would draw immigration agents.Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Friday on a podcast that ICE agents would be “all over” the Super Bowl, scheduled for Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, California.During the monologue, Bad Bunny included some words in Spanish on his choice as halftime performer, words he dedicated to “all the Latinos and Latinas in the entire world and here in the United States.””More than being an accomplishment of mine, it’s an accomplishment for everybody, demonstrating that our mark and our contribution to this country will never be able to be removed or erased by anybody,” he said in Spanish.He added, in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”Bad Bunny’s hosting duties Saturday marked a milestone for the show. He helped “SNL” wrap its 50th season by appearing as its musical guest, and NBC said it was the first time an artist had been billed on the last show of a full season and the first show of the next.NBC said Bad Bunny first appeared on “SNL” in a Kenan Thompson sketch about baseball legend David Ortiz in 2020 before performing music on the show the next year.The artist also connected with global K-pop fans. A sketch about friends catching up at a restaurant after years apart featured a surprise cameo from some of the singing stars of “KPop Demon Hunters,” the hit animated Netflix movie about a K-Pop group who are undercover demon hunters. They performed part of their song “Golden,” which has topped Billboard charts for 11 weeks.“It’s actually not for kids,” he says of the trio. “It’s for smart adults.””SNL” had big shoes to fill after that 50th season, which included an anniversary special, a docuseries on the show’s history and a look back at its musical guests throughout the years.For Season 51, “SNL” welcomed five new performers with comedic or improvisational comedy background: Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Veronika Slowikowska, and Ben Marshall, an “SNL” writer for three seasons and member of comedy group Please Don’t Destroy.Several cast members did not return for the new season, including Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow and Emil Wakim.Doja Cat made her debut as an “SNL” musical guest. The show also featured Hollywood heavy-hitters Jon Hamm and Benicio del Toro.Hamm (or, as Bad Bunny put it, “Juan Jamón”) showed up as a Bad Bunny fan and later as Profesor Jirafales in a parody of the classic Mexican comedy series “El Chavo del Ocho.”Del Toro made a cameo in a sketch set in 900 A.D. about the origins of Spanish, asking, “What if we made it harder to learn?”He also suggested the letter “R” should last “a long time,” and said, “I think we should take a nap in the middle of the day.”“SNL” airs on NBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which is also the parent company of NBC News.Dennis RomeroDennis Romero is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
November 8, 2025
Nov. 8, 2025, 5:15 AM ESTBy Jeremy Mikula and Melinda YaoThe World Series ends in a thriller, a Democratic Party stalwart says goodbye, and Japan deploys troops to take on a wild species. Test your knowledge of this week’s news, and take last week’s quiz here. Jeremy MikulaJeremy Mikula is the weekend director of platforms for NBC News.Melinda YaoI am an intern for NBC News’ Data / Graphics team.David Hickey, Lara Horwitz and Kayla Hayempour contributed.
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