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Protesters clashed with law enforcement in Minneapolis Thursday after the fatal shooting of a US woman further deepened the divide over President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal forces to crack down on illegal immigration.Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot in the head on Wednesday as she apparently tried to drive away from agents in the northern US city as they approached her car, which they said blocked their way.Vice President JD Vance said, without providing evidence, Good was part of a “broader left-wing network” opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and insisted the officer acted in “self-defense.”The White House asserted that US law enforcement was under “organized attack” and presented a version of the shooting disputed by officials in Minnesota, who contend that federal forces are making the streets more dangerous.Large, noisy crowds gathered around Minneapolis in protest on Thursday, chanting slogans against ICE. Federal immigration officers armed with pepperball guns and tear gas wrestled several protesters to the ground.In a separate incident Thursday afternoon, US federal agents shot and wounded two individuals in the western city of Portland, Oregon, local police said.”Two people are in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents,” a statement from Portland Police said, adding a man and a woman were wounded by “apparent gunshot wounds.”Speaking at a news conference late Thursday, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek voiced concern about the use of force by federal agents in Portland and called for a full investigation into the shooting. – ‘Smoke and mirrors’ -Trump and senior officials have claimed that in the Minneapolis incident, Good was trying to kill the ICE agents.”I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either,” the president told The New York Times.Footage from Wednesday shows an agent attempting to open Good’s car door before another officer, standing near the front bumper, fires three times into the moving Honda SUV.The vehicle veers into parked cars, as horrified onlookers hurl abuse at the federal officers before her bloodied body appears slumped at the wheel. Good leaves behind a wife and a six-year-old, officials said. More than $800,000 has been fundraised for her family.A US citizen, Good was not the target of immigration enforcement action and was only suspected of blocking traffic, police said.Vance alleged Thursday that Good was part of a broader effort “to attack, to doxx, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said “law enforcement are under organized attack.”- Immigrant deportations -Protests in Minneapolis grew after Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz called it a “patriotic duty” to demonstrate.”Watching that woman get murdered yesterday — no more. This can’t continue to happen. And I can’t sit home and just watch it,” 62-year-old Shanda Copeland told AFP at a protest in the city on Thursday. “I feel like at least I’m here and I’ll raise my voice as loud as I can.”Minneapolis schools were closed Thursday and Friday in anticipation of unrest.Walz said Minnesota must participate in the shooting probe alongside federal investigators — otherwise Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “is judge, jury and basically executioner.”But Vance suggested the officer would be cleared by a federal probe that would exclude state-level officials.”The idea that this was not justified is absurd,” he said.Wednesday’s incident came during protests over immigration enforcement in southern Minneapolis, where locals are expressing widespread anger over Trump’s vow to arrest and deport “millions” of undocumented people.The victim’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune her daughter “was probably terrified” and “not part” of anti-ICE activity.Religious leaders addressed crowds at the scene of Good’s death, where a memorial of flowers and candles was growing.Nearby, Abdinasir Abdullahi, 38, a naturalized US citizen originally from Ethiopia, told AFP he goes nowhere without his passport for fear of ICE.”They don’t trust if I say I’m a citizen, they don’t want to trust you,” he said.

US President Donald Trump will meet the heads of major US oil companies on Friday, aiming to convince them to support his plans in Venezuela, a country whose energy resources he says he expects to control for years to come.US forces seized Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in a sweeping military operation on January 3, with Trump making no secret that control of Venezuela’s oil was at the heart of his actions. Washington has “maximum leverage over the interim authorities in Venezuela right now,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when she confirmed the talks with top US oil executives. “We’re meeting tomorrow with all of the big oil executives, they’re going to be right here in the White House,” Trump said in an interview broadcast by Fox News Thursday night.The Trump administration has repeatedly said that it is running Venezuela, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday asserting that Washington will control the country’s oil industry “indefinitely.”Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s deputy, has said that her government remains in charge, with the state-run oil firm saying only that it was in negotiations with the United States on oil sales. US outlet NBC News reported that the heads of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are expected at the White House meeting.”It’s just a meeting to discuss, obviously, the immense opportunity that is before these oil companies right now,” Trump’s spokesperson Leavitt told reporters Wednesday.Chevron is the only US company that currently has a license to operate in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips left the country in 2007, after refusing then-president Hugo Chavez’s demand that they give up a majority stake in local operations to the government.- Suffering under sanctions -Sanctioned by Washington since 2019, Venezuela sits on about a fifth of the world’s oil reserves and was once a major crude supplier to the United States.But it produced only around one percent of the world’s total crude output in 2024, according to OPEC, having been hampered by years of underinvestment, sanctions, and embargoes.Trump sees the country’s massive oil reserves as a windfall in his fight to further lower US domestic fuel prices, a major political issue. But he could face an uphill task convincing the major US oil companies to invest in Venezuela due to uncertainty about governance post-Maduro, security and the massive expense of restoring production facilities. – ‘Controlled by me’ -On Tuesday, Trump said that Venezuela’s interim government would deliver up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, and that the proceeds “will be controlled by me.””The Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “This oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.”He later added that the proceeds spent by Venezuela would be used solely to purchase US products. US Energy Secretary Wright has downplayed concerns about the investments required to ramp up Venezuelan production, saying it should be possible to increase output by several hundred thousand barrels a day in the short- to medium-term.He admitted, however, that it would require “tens of billions of dollars and significant time” to bring production back to historic highs of more than three million barrels per day.In his first term, Trump imposed an oil embargo aimed at economically suffocating Venezuela, which heavily depends on exports of the commodity.When he returned for his second term, he also ended most of the licenses allowing oil and gas multinationals to operate in the country, with the exception of Chevron. Washington now says it is “selectively rolling back sanctions” to enable the sale and transport of Venezuelan crude oil on global markets. Wright said that the Trump administration would also help major US oil companies to establish a long-term presence.Venezuelan crude is known to be viscous and difficult to refine. The US Department of Energy is already planning to ship light oil to be mixed with Venezuelan crude in order to make that process easier. It also plans to authorize the shipment of equipment and experts to the country to upgrade infrastructure. 

Here are the nominees in key categories for the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, which will be handed out on Sunday.”One Battle After Another” leads all contenders with nine nods, followed by “Sentimental Value” with eight and “Sinners” with seven.- FILM -Best film, drama”Frankenstein””Hamnet””It Was Just An Accident””The Secret Agent””Sentimental Value””Sinners”Best film, musical or comedy”Blue Moon””Bugonia””Marty Supreme””No Other Choice””Nouvelle Vague””One Battle After Another”Best male actor, dramaJoel Edgerton, “Train Dreams”Oscar Isaac, “Frankenstein”Dwayne Johnson, “The Smashing Machine”Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”Jeremy Allen White, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”Best female actor, dramaJessie Buckley, “Hamnet”Jennifer Lawrence, “Die, My Love”Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”Julia Roberts, “After the Hunt”Tessa Thompson, “Hedda”Eva Victor, “Sorry, Baby”Best male actor, musical or comedyTimothee Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”George Clooney, “Jay Kelly”Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”Lee Byung-hun, “No Other Choice”Jesse Plemons, “Bugonia”Best female actor, musical or comedyRose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”Cynthia Erivo, “Wicked: For Good”Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”Chase Infiniti, “One Battle After Another”Amanda Seyfried, “The Testament of Ann Lee”Emma Stone, “Bugonia”Best supporting actorBenicio Del Toro, “One Battle After Another”Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein”Paul Mescal, “Hamnet”Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”Adam Sandler, “Jay Kelly”Stellan Skarsgard, “Sentimental Value”Best supporting actressEmily Blunt, “The Smashing Machine”Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”Ariana Grande, “Wicked: For Good”Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, “Sentimental Value”Amy Madigan, “Weapons”Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”Best directorPaul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”Guillermo Del Toro, “Frankenstein”Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just An Accident”Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”Chloe Zhao, “Hamnet”Best non-English language film”It Was Just An Accident” (France)”No Other Choice” (South Korea)”The Secret Agent” (Brazil)”Sentimental Value” (Norway)”Sirat” (Spain)”The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia)Best cinematic and box office achievement:”Avatar: Fire and Ash””F1″”KPop Demon Hunters””Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning””Sinners””Weapons””Wicked: For Good””Zootopia 2″Best animated feature”Arco””Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba — Infinity Castle””Elio””KPop Demon Hunters””Little Amelie or the Character of Rain””Zootopia 2″- TELEVISION -Best drama series”The Diplomat””The Pitt””Pluribus””Severance””Slow Horses””The White Lotus”Best male actor, dramaSterling K. Brown, “Paradise”Diego Luna, “Andor”Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”Mark Ruffalo, “Task”Adam Scott, “Severance”Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”Best female actor, drama Kathy Bates, “Matlock”Britt Lower, “Severance”Helen Mirren, “Mobland”Bella Ramsey, “The Last of Us”Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”Rhea Seehorn, “Pluribus”Best musical or comedy series”Abbott Elementary””The Bear””Hacks””Nobody Wants This””Only Murders in the Building””The Studio”Best male actor, musical or comedyAdam Brody, “Nobody Wants This”Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”Glen Powell, “Chad Powers”Seth Rogen, “The Studio”Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”Best female actor, musical or comedy Kristen Bell, “Nobody Wants This”Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”Selena Gomez, “Only Murders in the Building”Natasha Lyonne, “Poker Face”Jenna Ortega, “Wednesday”Jean Smart, “Hacks”Best limited series or TV movie”Adolescence””All Her Fault””The Beast in Me””Black Mirror””Dying for Sex””The Girlfriend”Best male actor, limited series or TV movie Jacob Elordi, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”Paul Giamatti, “Black Mirror”Stephen Graham, “Adolescence”Charlie Hunnam, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”Jude Law, “Black Rabbit”Matthew Rhys, “The Beast in Me”Best female actor, limited series or TV movie Claire Danes, “The Beast in Me”Rashida Jones, “Black Mirror”Amanda Seyfried, “Long Bright River”Sarah Snook, “All Her Fault”Michelle Williams, “Dying for Sex”Robin Wright, “The Girlfriend”- FILMS WITH MOST NOMINATIONS -“One Battle After Another” – 9″Sentimental Value” – 8″Sinners” – 7″Hamnet” – 6″Frankenstein” – 5″Wicked: For Good” – 5

Hollywood’s awards season kicks into high gear on Sunday at the Golden Globes gala, with the politically charged “One Battle After Another” expected to solidify its status as the film to beat, two months ahead of the Oscars.Paul Thomas Anderson’s screwball thriller, which centers on an aging revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti), is a rollicking ride featuring violent leftist radicals, immigration raids and white supremacists.At a time when the United States is deeply polarized, many critics and pundits have hailed the film as capturing the moment.With nine nominations, “One Battle” appears a lock to take home the prize for best comedy/musical film.”We’re seeing a real sweep and a juggernaut in that movie,” Deadline’s awards columnist and chief critic Pete Hammond told AFP, recalling that so far, it has won every best picture prize so far this season.DiCaprio will vie for best actor with Timothee Chalamet, who boosted his Oscars campaign with a win at the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday for his star turn in “Marty Supreme” as an ambitious 1950s table tennis player.”Leonardo DiCaprio would be tremendously helped by actually winning at the Globes. That’s the ideal moment to stop Timothee Chalamet’s momentum before the Oscars,” Hammond said.Teyana Taylor, who plays an unapologetically bold leftist revolutionary, could fuel a sweep for “One Battle” if she can pick up the prize for best supporting actress.But in her way are Amy Madigan for her wacky villainous turn in “Weapons” and Ariana Grande for her portrayal of Glinda in the blockbuster “Wicked: For Good.”- ‘Sinners’ versus ‘Hamnet’ -The Golden Globes offer separate awards for dramas and comedies/musicals — widening the field of stars who could walk the red carpet, and fueling the suspense. “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s searing period horror film about the segregated South of the 1930s, is expected to be the toughest competition for “One Battle” at the Oscars. But at the Globes, they are in separate categories.”Sinners” surprised moviegoers with its eclectic mix of vampires, politics, race relations and blues music.It is the frontrunner for the best drama film Globe, against rival “Hamnet,” which stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his grief-stricken wife, as the two cope with the death of their young son.”Sentimental Value,” the Norwegian family dramedy starring Stellan Skarsgard, earned a strong eight nominations, is also in the running.A “Sinners” victory “would be an indication of a real change,” Hammond says, noting that in the past, voters “were never actually that drawn to Black stories.”Buckley is the favorite for best drama actress honors.The Golden Globes went through a crisis period, following a Los Angeles Times expose in 2021 that showed that the awards’ voting body — the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — had no Black members.Now under new ownership, and with the HFPA disbanded, a wider net of overseas critics has been brought in to pick the winners.”That makes it much more difficult for pundits to predict,” Hammond explained.”These new voters are less keen on movies that make a lot of money at the box office, and more interested in international movies that are highly praised in Cannes and Venice.”- Prize for Iran’s Panahi? -One of those movies is Brazilian thriller “The Secret Agent,” and lead actor Wagner Moura — already a winner at the Cannes Film Festival — is favored to win best drama actor honors over “Sinners” star Michael B. Jordan, according to awards prediction site Gold Derby. Skarsgard, a Hollywood stalwart, is poised to take home the award for best supporting actor. “The Secret Agent” and “Sentimental Value” will vie for the Globe for best non-English language film with “It Was Just An Accident” from Iranian director Jafar Panahi. “The Globes may want to make a statement and give him this prize,” Hammond said of Panahi,  who has been sentenced in absentia to one year in prison over “propaganda activities” against the Islamic republic.The Globes also honor the best in television, with HBO’s black comedy anthology “The White Lotus,” sci-fi office thriller “Severance” and searing teen murder saga “Adolescence” leading the contenders.Comedian Nikki Glaser will return as host of the gala in Beverly Hills.

NASA crewmembers at the International Space Station will return to Earth within days after an astronaut suffered a health issue, the US space agency said Thursday, the first such medical evacuation in the orbital lab’s history.Officials did not provide details of the medical event but said the unidentified crewmember is stable. They said it did not result from any kind of injury onboard or from ISS operations.NASA chief medical officer James Polk said “lingering risk” and a “lingering question as to what that diagnosis is” led to the decision to return early. Officials insisted it was not an emergency evacuation.The four astronauts on NASA-SpaceX Crew 11 — US members Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman along with Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov — would return within the coming days to one of the routine splashdown sites.Amit Kshatriya, a NASA associate administrator, said it was the “first time we’ve done a controlled medical evacuation from the vehicle. So that is unusual.”He said the crew deployed their “onboarding training” to “manage unexpected medical situations.””Yesterday was a textbook example of that training in action. Once the situation on the station stabilized, careful deliberations led us to the decision to return Crew 11… while ensuring minimal operational impact to ongoing work aboard.”- ‘Trained professionals’ -The four astronauts set to return have been on their mission since August 1. Such journeys generally last approximately six months, and this crew was already due to return in the coming weeks.Officials indicated it was possible the next US mission could depart to the ISS earlier than scheduled, but did not provide specifics.Chris Williams, who launched on a Russian mission to the station, will stay onboard to maintain US presence.Russians Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev are also there.NASA had previously said it was postponing a spacewalk planned for Thursday due to the medical issue.Astronauts Fincke and Cardman were to carry out the approximately 6.5-hour spacewalk to perform power upgrade work.Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS functions as a testbed for research that supports deeper space exploration — including eventual missions to Mars.The ISS is set to be decommissioned after 2030, with its orbit gradually lowered until it breaks up in the atmosphere over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard.

Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by a US immigration agent on Wednesday in the midwestern city of Minneapolis, was an “extremely compassionate” person, her mother told the Minnesota Star-Tribune newspaper.”She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” Donna Ganger told the newspaper. The 37-year-old — a poet and a mother to three children — was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while she was behind the wheel of her car. The Trump administration was quick to claim her death was an act of self-defense, but local authorities and witnesses dispute that account — and widely shared video evidence has called into question the officer’s use of deadly force. In 2020, Good earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Old Dominion University in Virginia, the school said in a statement honoring her Wednesday. “May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace. My hope is for compassion, healing, and reflection at a time that is becoming one of the darkest and most uncertain periods in our nation’s history,” university president Brian O. Hemphill said.Good was a published poet who was awarded the Academy of American Poets 2020 poetry prize while at her university. In a biography for the award, she was described as loving movie marathons and making “messy art with her daughter and two sons.” US media report that her private Instagram account bio described her as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN” and had an emoji of a rainbow LGBTQ+ flag.Her children were from her first two marriages and at the time of her death, she was married to a woman, who she lived with in Minneapolis where they were raising her youngest child, a six-year-old boy.More than $800,000 has been raised to support her surviving family.Despite accusations from the Trump administration that she was endangering the lives of federal immigration agents, Good’s mother told the Minnesota Star-Tribune that she was not taking part in any action against ICE. Her first husband, who declined to be identified, told US media that Good was a devoted Christian and was not an activist.

Hours after a fatal shooting in Minneapolis by an immigration agent, AI deepfakes of the victim and the shooter flooded online platforms, underscoring the growing prevalence of what experts call “hallucinated” content after major news events.The victim of Wednesday’s shooting, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was hit at point-blank range as she apparently tried to drive away from masked agents who were crowding around her Honda SUV.AFP found dozens of posts across social media platforms, primarily the Elon Musk-owned X, in which users shared AI-generated images purporting to “unmask” the agent from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.”We need his name,” Claude Taylor, who heads the anti-Trump political action committee Mad Dog, wrote in a post on X featuring the AI images. The post racked up more than 1.3 million views.Taylor later claimed he deleted the post after he “learned it was AI,” but it was still visible to online users.An authentic clip of the shooting, replayed by multiple media outlets, does not show any of the ICE agents with their masks off.Many of the fabrications were created using Grok, the AI tool developed by Musk’s startup xAI, which has faced heavy criticism over a new “edit” feature that has unleashed a wave of sexually explicit imagery.Some X users used Grok to digitally undress an old photo of Good smiling, as well as a new photo of her body slumped over after the shooting, generating AI images showing her in a bikini.Another woman wrongly identified as the victim was also subjected to similar manipulation.- ‘New reality’ -Another X user posted the image of a masked officer and prompted the chatbot: “Hey @grok remove this person’s face mask.” Grok promptly generated a hyper-realistic image of the man without a mask.There was no immediate comment from X. When reached by AFP, xAI replied with a terse, automated response: “Legacy Media Lies.”Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard identified four AI-generated falsehoods about the shooting, which collectively amassed 4.24 million views across X, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.The viral fabrications illustrate a new digital reality in which self-proclaimed internet sleuths use widely available generative AI tools to create hyper-realistic visuals and then amplify them across social media platforms that have largely scaled back content moderation.”Given the accessibility of advanced AI tools, it is now standard practice for actors on the internet to ‘add to the story’ of breaking news in ways that do not correspond to what is actually happening, often in politically partisan ways,” Walter Scheirer, from the University of Notre Dame, told AFP.”A new development has been the use of AI to ‘fill in the blanks’ of a story, for instance, the use of AI to ‘reveal’ the face of the ICE officer. This is hallucinated information.” AI tools are also increasingly used to “dehumanize victims” in the aftermath of a crisis event, Scheirer said.One AI image portrayed the woman mistaken for Good as a water fountain, with water pouring out of a hole in her neck.Another depicted her lying on a road, her neck under the knee of a masked agent, in a scene reminiscent of the 2020 police killing of a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked nationwide racial justice protests.AI fabrications, often amplified by partisan actors, have fueled alternate realities around recent news events, including the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and last year’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.The AI distortions are “problematic” and are adding to the “growing pollution of our information ecosystem,” Hany Farid, co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP.”I fear that this is our new reality,” he added.

US President Donald Trump is considering adding a second story to the famed White House colonnade as part of his plans to build a huge $400-million ballroom, the architect in charge of the project said Thursday.The addition of a new level above the West Wing colonnade would restore “symmetry” to the presidential residence, Shalom Baranes told the first Washington planning committee meeting on the project.The blueprints already envisage a two-story colonnade linking the main White House mansion to the 1,000-seat ballroom, where Trump plans to host foreign dignitaries and major events.Baranes added that the new ballroom, for which Trump last year demolished the historic East Wing, will be at the same height as the main building to preserve its historic proportions.It is the first time that plans have been unveiled to change the West Wing of the White House. Trump appeared on the roof of the current colonnade earlier this year with the previous architect for the project.”This scheme does require a two-storey colonnade connecting the East Room in the White House to the new ballroom,” Baranes told the National Capital Planning Commission.”The White House is therefore considering the idea of a modest one-storey addition to the West Wing colonnade which would serve to restore a sense of symmetry around the original central pavilion.”The addition would sit above the famous white-columned colonnade, where presidents have been pictured for decades strolling on their way from the main residence to the Oval Office.It would also lie above the briefing room where presidential press secretaries address the media, and the working areas for the White House press corps.Trump faced criticism for demolishing the entire East Wing, the traditional home for the offices of the US first lady, without first consulting historical organizations or the capital planning commission.He has also paved over the grass of the White House Rose Garden.The Republican president has installed his staff secretary Will Scharf — who is often seen at Trump’s side in the Oval Office during his lengthy executive order signing sessions — as head of the commission.The cost of the ballroom has meanwhile soared. The White House cited $200 million when the plans were first unveiled in July, but Trump said in December it could cost double that.

US lawmakers voted Thursday to revive health insurance subsidies that expired at the end of last year, offering hope to millions of Americans facing steep premium hikes — and pressuring the Senate to follow suit.The bill, which passed with Democratic support and backing from a small bloc of Republicans defying their own leadership, would extend enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — widely known as Obamacare — for three years. Those subsidies lower monthly insurance costs for Americans who buy coverage on government-run marketplaces.Their expiration on January 1 more than doubled payments for many households, reigniting a politically sensitive debate over health care affordability in a year set to be dominated by the high-stakes midterm congressional elections.Even supporters concede the House bill is unlikely to become law in its current form.President Donald Trump has criticized the subsidies as wasteful and has urged Republicans to push for changes, though he has also told lawmakers they may need to be flexible to reach a deal.House Speaker Mike Johnson, a staunch Trump loyalist, had resisted allowing the measure onto the floor, reflecting deep divisions within his party over the program. But a handful of centrist Republicans joined Democrats in using a rarely successful procedural maneuver — a discharge petition — to force the vote over leadership’s objections.Ultimately, 17 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the bill, a public break that underscored growing anxiety among lawmakers from competitive districts about voter backlash over rising healthcare costs.”The affordability crisis is not a hoax. It is very real despite what Donald Trump has had to say,” Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democratic minority, told reporters. “Housing costs are too high. Grocery costs are too high. Utility bills are too high. Childcare costs are too high. And healthcare costs are out of control.” The subsidies were originally created under the Affordable Care Act and expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic, making coverage cheaper and available to more people. An estimated 22 million Americans currently benefit from the enhanced assistance.The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. A similar three-year extension failed there in December, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates a three-year clean extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies would cost almost $81 billion over a decade — but would lead to eight million more people getting health insurance by 2029.The House vote appears to have injected new momentum into bipartisan talks now underway in the upper chamber.A small group of senators from both parties has been negotiating a narrower compromise that could include a shorter extension, tighter income limits and new options for directing aid straight to patients rather than insurers.

US President Donald Trump said in an interview published Thursday that his “own morality” was the only constraint on his power to order military actions around the world.Trump’s comments to The New York Times came days after he launched a lightning operation to topple Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and threatened a host of other countries plus the autonomous territory Greenland.”Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” Trump told the newspaper when asked if there were any limits on his global powers.”I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”The Republican president then added that “I do” need to abide by international law, but said “it depends what your definition of international law is.”The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which tries war criminals, and it has repeatedly rejected decisions by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court.Trump himself has had his own run-ins with domestic law, having been impeached twice, faced a slew of federal charges including conspiring to overturn the 2020 election — which were eventually dropped after his re-election — and convicted for covering up a hush money payment to a porn star.While proclaiming himself as “peace president” and seeking the Nobel Prize, Trump has launched a series of military operations in his second presidential term.Trump ordered attacks on Iran’s nuclear program in June and in the past year has also overseen strikes on Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen — and most recently on Venezuela.Since Maduro’s capture, an emboldened Trump has threatened a string of other countries including Colombia, as well as Greenland, which is administered by fellow NATO member Denmark.Asked whether his priority was preserving the NATO military alliance or acquiring Greenland, Trump told the Times: “it may be a choice.”Some members of Congress, including a handful of Republicans, are trying to check Trump’s power.On Thursday the Senate advanced a measure to rein in presidential military action in Venezuela. But even if it reaches his desk, Trump would likely veto it.Billionaire Trump, who made his fortune as a property developer, added that US ownership of Greenland is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success.”Trump said separately that he had no problem with his family conducting foreign business deals since his return to office.”I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it,” Trump told the daily. “I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”