President Donald Trump will road-test his claims that he’s tackling Americans’ affordability woes at a Tuesday rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania — a trip that comes as polling consistently shows that public trust in Trump’s economic leadership has faltered.
Following dismal results for Republicans in last month’s off-cycle elections, the White House has sought to convince voters that the economy will emerge stronger next year and that any anxieties over inflation have nothing to do with Trump.
The president has consistently blamed his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for inflation even as his own aggressive implementation of policies has pushed up prices that had been settling down after spiking in 2022 to a four-decade high.
The trip hints the dilemma faced by Trump. He wants to take credit for rewiring the U.S. economy with his large tariff hikes and extension of income tax cuts, but he also continues to blame Biden for the increase nationwide in inflation rates that occurred this year during his own presidency. Overall, inflation is tracking at 3% annually, up from 2.3% in April when Trump rolled out a sweeping set of import taxes.
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As Trump was speaking in Pennsylvania, the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, was in Washington appearing alongside Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox at the National Cathedral for an event focused on political civility.
“Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity,” Shaprio said, recounting the political violence that has occurred in his state, including an attempted assassination against Trump and an arson attack at the governor’s mansion.
Cox also called for more productive political discourse. He said the impetus for that must come from voters, rather than Washington.
“If we think that a president of the United States or a governor is going to change where we are right now, we are fooling ourselves,” he said. “I truly believe that the people of our country are the ones who are going to have to change this.”
The event was interrupted several times by protestors who were escorted from the Cathedral.
He spoke for just over 90 minutes.
Trump in his second term has largely eschewed the raucous rallies that defined his three presidential campaigns and his first term. But he seemed to enjoy himself Tuesday, reviving many of his applause lines as he went after his critics and boasted about his own record.
He ended the rally as he has so many before: lingering on stage as the Village People’s “YMCA” played, pointing at people in the crowd and briefly wagging his arms in what has become a signature dance move of his.
The president gave a shout-out to his head speechwriter more than an hour into a speech that was mostly ad-libbed.
“I haven’t read practically anything off this stupid teleprompter,” Trump said. “And then my speechwriters keep getting awards for some of the finest speeches, and I haven’t even read them.”
It was one of many quips from an ebullient Trump who seemed to have fun working his audience.
“The no tax on tips is incredible. No tax on overtime is incredible for my husband,” said Megan Hemhauser, whom Trump invited on stage to briefly speak. “And it all comes back to our family. It saves us and it’s for the future of our children.”
Another woman, waitress Donna Zajack, said her newly tax-free tips will help with her daughter’s tuition.
Trump pointed to one man, saying he plans to buy a house with the money he’ll save from tax-free overtime. The man was not invited on stage.
Trump is rolling out new charts as he makes the case that the economy is thriving despite Americans’ concerns about the cost of living.
“Biden Price Increases & Trump Price Decreases,” one chart’s title reads.
The charts were displayed on large screens during his speech in Pennsylvania.
The president lashed out at “the stupid people” who criticized his travels abroad including a May trip to the Middle East.
Trump went on a tangent about the issue as he recalled a conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The issue has been a source of tension with some Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Trump defended his trips, saying they generated billions in foreign investment for the U.S.
“Somebody complained that I was making a foreign trip,” Trump said at his rally in Pennsylvania. “They say, ‘He shouldn’t be leaving the country.’ Yeah, let’s sit around and twiddle our thumbs.”
Trump says a West Virginia National Guardsman who was shot last month while patrolling in Washington, D.C., is recovering.
“Today I got a call that he got up from bed. Do you believe that? He got up. He got up,” Trump said of 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe.
“Now, he didn’t speak,” Trump added. “He’s not ready for that yet. I mean, he got hit in the head.”
Trump said U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, who was killed in the shooting, is “looking at us from heaven, from above.”
Trump is determined to blame Biden and Democrats for consumer prices that have risen during the year he returned to the White House.
He summed his message up succinctly: “They caused the high prices and we’re bringing them down.”
“If I had one message tonight ...” he added, before breaking off on a two-minute tangent recognizing members of his White House staff. “But that’s our message,” he said, returning to his point. “They gave you high prices. They gave you the highest inflation in history. And we’re giving you — We’re bringing those prices down rapidly.”
The president has consistently blamed Biden for inflation even as his own aggressive implementation of policies has pushed up prices that had been settling down after spiking in 2022 to a four-decade high.
Eileen Higgins defeated Republican Emilio Gonzalez, who was endorsed by Trump.
Higgins spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained.
The local race drew attention from the both Democratic and Republican parties and leaders.
Higgins’ victory provides Democrats another boost ahead of a midterm election when the GOP is looking to maintain its influence in Florida, including in a Hispanic-majority district in Miami-Dade County.
The area has shifted increasingly rightward politically in recent years, and the city may become the home of Trump’s presidential library.
Trump says his White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told him he needs to start campaigning to help Republicans in the midterm elections.
“She said, ‘We have to start campaigning, sir.’ I said, ‘I won,’” Trump told the crowd at his rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.
But Trump says Wiles said the president was needed to help Republicans in next year’s elections, which will decide control of the House and Senate. Voters generally favor the party out of power in the White House during the midterm elections.
Wiles told the online conservative talk show “The Mom View” that Trump’s return to the campaign trail would help to turn out voters who would otherwise sit out the election.
He’s mixing ad-libbed commentary with his written remarks boasting about the economy and going after his enemies.
He has taken several digs at the “fake news” and his predecessor, “sleepy Joe Biden,” drawing cheers and laughter from his enthusiastic audience.
Trump is taking the stage in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.
He walked out to Lee Greenfield’s “God Bless the USA,” the song that has traditionally marked the start of his campaign rallies. He was met with chants of “USA, USA!”
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco had initially halted the data sharing in August, but the order covering 22 states that had sued the administration over privacy concerns was set to expire Tuesday.
Chhabria said in a court hearing it will now remain in effect until Jan. 5, a timeframe the judge said will give attorneys for the federal government and the states time to file further briefs. The judge said he wanted attorneys to lay out their reasoning as to whether he had the authority to, for example, allow the policy to be used narrowly only pertaining to non-citizens enrolled in Medicaid but not more broadly, saying that thus far, “the scope of the policy, who it applies to, has not been adequately explained.”
Chhabria said he didn’t anticipate there being another hearing before he issued a ruling, noting that the new timeframe and briefing schedule would also give both sides time to petition an appellate court before the Jan. 5 expiration date.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is asking for Hegseth to brief all members on the strikes near Venezuela.
“We need an all-member briefing for the House of Representatives,” Jeffries told The Associated Press.
“They haven’t committed to it,” he said of Hegseth. “But we’re going to continue to press our case.”
The move Tuesday appears to be the closest American warplanes have come to the South American country’s airspace since the start of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign in the region.
Public flight tracking websites showed a pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets fly over the body of water bounded by Venezuela for more than 30 minutes.
A U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, confirmed that the jets conducted a “routine training flight” and said they stayed in international airspace. The official likened it to previous exercises aimed at showing the reach of U.S. planes.
The move is the latest action that the U.S. military has taken as it has built up warships in the region and launched deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats. Those attacks are drawing new scrutiny from lawmakers.
— By Konstantin Toropin
The president also said Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett will be a “gift to Republicans” as she launches a new Senate campaign in Texas.
Trump made the comments aboard Air Force One a day after Crockett launched her campaign, telling Trump, “I’m coming for you.” Crockett is running for the seat held by Republican Sen. John Cornyn in what could be a critical race for both parties.
Crockett is a favorite GOP target and an outspoken Trump adversary.
The president didn’t hold back when asked about the race: “I can’t imagine she wins. Maybe she’ll get the Democrat nomination, but I think it’s a gift to Republicans, she’s a terrible representative.”
Trump is making his way to a Pennsylvania resort where he’s scheduled to road-test his claims that he’s tackling Americans’ affordability woes.
The president was late leaving Washington, where he had been attending a Christmas party at the vice presidential residence.
Trump’s event in the Pocono Mountains will be held indoors in a conference center ballroom at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, a smaller venue than the arena rallies that could host thousands during his campaign.
The U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn from an agreement with the city of Houston to curb illegal dumping in Black and Latino neighborhoods.
The action is part of the Trump administration’s broad elimination of jobs and programs dedicated to environmental justice.
Without federal monitoring, advocates in Houston say city officials have become less responsive to residents afflicted by persistent dumping in the historically Black neighborhood of Trinity/Houston Gardens.
The Justice Department and Houston officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Federal authorities also quietly ended a similar agreement over wastewater problems in rural Alabama, according to three former law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the move wasn’t made public.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he spoke with Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, Tuesday morning about President Trump’s “commitment to securing a lasting peace in Ukraine,” in a post on X.
Bessent said in the post that the pair discussed Treasury’s October sanctions on Russia’s oil giants, Lukoil and Rosneft, which are aimed at moving Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and bringing an end to Moscow’s brutal war on Ukraine.
They also discussed “the importance of driving Ukraine’s reform and anti-corruption agenda forward.”
Gavin Newsom is writing a memoir he says will be “a truly vulnerable book” about his family, his struggles growing up with dyslexia and his political career.
It’s the latest effort by Newsom, the California governor and a potential 2028 presidential candidate, to build more nuance into his public persona. He has long pushed back against a narrative that’s dogged him since the start of his political career — that he had a privileged upbringing and rode the coattails of his father’s wealthy and connected friends to political success.
He acknowledged the perception among many voters that he’s a slick politician.
“A lot of people look at me in the stark white shirt, the blue suit and yeah, the gelled hear, and they think, ‘Oh I know this guy. I know him better than I’d ever want to know him.’ I get it,” Newsom says in a video announcing the book.
“This is a story of a kid who always felt like he wasn’t quite enough.” Newsom’s book, “Young Man in a Hurry,” will be released in February.
International alarm over a surge in fighting between Rwanda and Congo is growing less than a week after the two countries signed a peace deal in Washington that Trump has hailed as one of several agreements that are evidence of his peace-making prowess.
In a joint statement released on Tuesday, members of the International Contact Group for the Great Lakes expressed “profound concern” over recent developments in Congo’s South Kivu region where new deadly violence blamed on the Rwandan-backed M23 militia group has exploded in recent days.
The group, which includes Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and the European Union, urged all sides “to uphold their commitments under the Washington Accords of 4 December 2025 and immediately deescalate the situation.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has placed calls to his Egyptian and Saudi counterparts to discuss the urgent need for progress in faltering peace efforts in Sudan, along with other regional matters including the Israel-Hamas conflict and the situation in Yemen.
The State Department said Rubio spoke Tuesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan to discuss the issues.
The department said Rubio and Abdelatty discussed the implementation of the President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza as well as “ongoing engagements to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire in Sudan.”
There was no mention of the Gaza plan in the readout of Rubio’s call with the prince, but there was a reference to the outcomes of Trump’s recent meeting in Washington with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at which Gaza was a main topic as well as “developments in Yemen and the urgent need to advance peace efforts in Sudan.”
Fighting between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has surged despite attempts to broker an end to the fighting, which began in 2023 and has killed more than 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, and displaced 12 million others. Aid groups warn that the true death toll is likely far higher.
The seven-term congressman says he’ll instead run for local office in Fort Worth, seeking to become Tarrant County judge, the county’s top elected official.
“Let me be clear: I’m not stepping back from the fight. I’m stepping into a new one,” he said in a statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court this month allowed the challenged Texas congressional redistricting plan to be used in next year’s election, despite a lower-court ruling that the map likely discriminates on the basis of race.
The Texas congressional map enacted last summer at President Donald Trump’s urging was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. is concerned by an uptick in fighting between Cambodia and Thailand along their contested border less than two months after the two countries signed a peace in Malaysia pushed for by President Trump.
“We strongly urge the immediate cessation of hostilities, the protection of civilians, and for both sides to return to the de-escalatory measures outlined in the October 26 Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords signed by the Prime Ministers of Cambodia and Thailand and witnessed by President Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim,” Rubio said in a statement.
The Cambodia-Thailand deal — one of several Trump has hailed as evidence of his negotiating abilities — has been faltering for weeks but took a big hit when fighting broke out following a weekend skirmish in which two Thai soldiers were injured. Five days of fighting since has left dozens dead on both sides and forced the evacuation of over 100,000 civilians.
Opponents of Missouri’s new congressional map submitted thousands of petition signatures Tuesday calling for a statewide referendum on a redistricting plan backed by President Trump as part of his quest to hold on to a slim Republican majority in next year’s elections.
Organizers of the petition drive said they turned in more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state’s office — well more than the roughly 110,000 needed to suspend the new U.S. House districts from taking effect until a public vote can be held next year.
The signatures must still be formally verified by local election authorities and Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who’s argued the referendum is unconstitutional. But if the signatures hold up, the referendum could create a significant obstacle for Republicans who hope the new districts could help them win a currently Democratic-held seat in the Kansas City area in the November election.
▶ Read more about redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 elections
It’s a resistance to U.S. pressure for painful concessions to Russia as he moved ahead Tuesday to rally more European support for his country.
“Undoubtedly, Russia insists for us to give up territories. We, clearly, don’t want to give up anything. That’s what we are fighting for,” Zelenskyy told reporters in a WhatsApp chat late Monday.
“Do we consider ceding any territories? According to the law we don’t have such right,” he said. “According to Ukraine’s law, our constitution, international law, and to be frank, we don’t have a moral right either.”
In an interview with Politico released Tuesday, President Trump again pressed Zelenskyy to accept the U.S. proposal that Ukraine cede territory to Russia, arguing that Moscow retains the “upper hand” in its nearly 4-year-old invasion, and that Zelenskyy’s government must “play ball.”
▶ Read more about the Russia-Ukraine war
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 7.67 million vacancies in October, close to September’s 7.66 million.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which was delayed by the extended government shutdown, also showed the layoffs rose and number of people quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in the labor market — fell in October.
Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at a record 12.1 million in March 2022, when the economy was roaring back from COVID-19 lockdowns. The job market has cooled partly because of the lingering effect of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to combat an outburst of inflation.
Overall, it’s a puzzling time for the American economy, buffeted by President Trump’s decision to reverse decades of U.S. policy in favor of free trade and instead impose double-digit tariffs on imports from most of the world’s countries.
▶ Read more about U.S. job openings
Except to note that her plans to file a habeas petition could be spoiled because the public release of materials “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial” if the habeas request succeeded.
Lawyers for the Epstein estate took no position.
Former Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello said Tuesday he would challenge Republican U.S. Rep. John McGuire in the midterm elections next year.
“Families can’t afford groceries because Republicans in Congress like John McGuire won’t stand up to Trump’s tariffs,” Perriello said in a video launching his campaign.
Perriello, elected for one term in 2008, was the last Democrat to win Virginia’s 5th Congressional district, which McGuire now represents. It’s a district where President Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by 12 points, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. McGuire was first elected to the district in 2024 after defeating former Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Good in a bitter primary.
Virginia Democrats who control the statehouse have indicated McGuire’s seat may be vulnerable if they’re successful in their efforts to redraw the state’s Congressional maps ahead of elections next November. The General Assembly in October endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting, though another legislative vote is needed to refer the amendment to a statewide ballot.
A federal judge said Tuesday the Justice Department can publicly release investigative materials from a sex trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ruled after the Justice Department in November asked two judges in New York to unseal grand jury transcripts and exhibits from Maxwell and Epstein’s cases, along with investigative materials that could amount to hundreds or thousands of previously unreleased documents.
The ruling, in the wake of the passage last month of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, means the records could be made public within 10 days. The law requires the Justice Department provide Epstein-related records to the public in a searchable format by Dec. 19.
▶ Read more about the Jeffrey Epstein case
President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable on farm subsidies in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump listens during a roundtable on farm subsidies in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
