The Latest: Hegseth and Rubio to brief lawmakers on US military escalation

President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials overseeing national security are expected back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as questions mount over the swift escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others are set to brief members of the House and the Senate amid congressional investigations into a military strike in September that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine. Legal experts say it could have been a war crime, or murder. On the eve of the hearings, the U.S. military announced three more boat attacks targeting “designated terrorist organizations,” killing eight more people.

Here's the latest:

Karoline Leavitt joins Wiles in pushing back against Vanity Fair piece

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is defending chief of staff Susie Wiles after an explosive Vanity Fair piece that featured months of Wiles’ interviews with the magazine about Trump and his second presidency.

Neither Wiles nor Leavitt are denying any specific claims or quotations in the piece. But their pushback shows an effort to blunt potential criticism of Wiles, who to this point has maintained a low profile despite her considerable influence.

“President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie,” Leavitt posted Tuesday on social media. “The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership.”

Wiles managed Trump’s 2024 campaign and then he tapped her as the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff.

Trial of Milwaukee judge charged with helping immigrant escape federal authorities enters 2nd day

Prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan knew what was at stake when she directed an immigrant to a private door in the courthouse to evade agents.

Jurors on Monday heard audio from the incident in which Judge Dugan told her court reporter, “I’ll get the heat,” as they discussed who would assist Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.

The prosecution continued its case Tuesday with cross examination of an FBI agent who was part of the arrest team.

Wiles pushes back at Vanity Fair story featuring her thoughts on Trump

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is blasting a Vanity Fair piece that featured months of interviews about Donald Trump and his second presidency.

Wiles, in a social media post, called the two-part profile “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” Wiles did not deny any specific quotations attributed to her, including criticism of Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy “quirky Bobby,” and saying Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.” (The president does not drink.)

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out,” Wiles asserted without details.

The first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, Wiles previously has kept a low profile despite her considerable influence.

Delayed jobs reports show more Americans struggling to find work

The United States gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said Tuesday in delayed reports. And the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, highest since 2021.

Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in inflation.

American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have. But they’re reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use artificial intelligence and how to adjust to Trump’s unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from around the world.

▶ Read more about how the uncertainty leaves jobseekers struggling to even land interviews

US-led peace efforts between Russia and Ukraine appear to be picking up momentum

The Ukrainian president says proposals being negotiated with U.S. officials for a deal to end the fighting in Russia’s nearly 4-year-old invasion of his country could be finalized within days, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin before possible further meetings in the U.S. next weekend.

A draft peace plan discussed with the U.S. during talks in Berlin on Monday is “not perfect” but is “very workable,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, while cautioning that some key issues — notably what happens to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces — remain unresolved.

But as the spotlight shifts to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin may balk at some of the proposals thrashed out by officials from Washington, Kyiv and Western Europe, including postwar security guarantees for Ukraine.

Zelensky: ‘We are very close’ to a deal on security guarantees

The security proposal discussed in Berlin will be based on Western help in keeping the Ukrainian army strong, an official from a NATO nation said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“Europeans will lead a multinational and multi-domain force to strengthen those troops and to secure Ukraine from the land, sea and air, and the U.S. will lead a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, with international participation,” the official said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated Tuesday that Russia wants a comprehensive peace deal, and that if Ukraine seeks “momentary, unsustainable solutions, we are unlikely to be ready to participate.”

“We want peace — we don’t want a truce that would give Ukraine a respite and prepare for the continuation of the war,” he told reporters. “We want to stop this war, achieve our goals, secure our interests, and guarantee peace in Europe for the future.”

White House denies conflicts

“It seems like another example of the pay-to-play administration,” said Kedric Payne, who leads the ethics program at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “There is clearly a perception that in order to get favorable policies and acts from the administration, a company needs to provide a financial benefit to the president.”

Trump Media did not respond to specific questions about the arrangement. “Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

How a Trump Media deal with a crypto firm exposes potential conflicts of interest

Crypto.com was under siege for more a year, told enforcement action was likely as part of an aggressive Biden administration push to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. Then Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and the company’s legal peril dissipated.

By August, Crypto.com announced it was plunging roughly $1 billion worth of assets into a venture with a new partner — Trump’s social media company, which had lost hundreds of millions of dollars since its 2021 launch.

Legal and ethics experts say Crypto.com’s journey from investigative target to Trump business partner provides a case study of conflicts of interest as Trump family businesses enter lucrative arrangements with federally regulated companies, some of which have benefited from action taken by his administration.

▶ Read more from the AP investigation into Trump’s relationship with Crypto.com

Hegseth and Rubio are expected back on Capitol Hill as questions mount over boat strikes

Hegseth, Rubio and others are set to brief members of the House and the Senate behind closed doors as the U.S. is building up its presence with warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.

▶ Read more about the briefing

Trump administration says White House ballroom construction is a matter of national security

The Trump administration said in a court filing Monday that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for unexplained national security reasons and because a preservationists’ organization that wants it stopped has no standing to sue.

The filing was in response to a lawsuit filed last Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt President Donald Trump’s project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and a public comment period and wins approval from Congress.

The administration’s 36-page filing included a declaration from Matthew C. Quinn, deputy director of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency responsible for the security of the president and other high-ranking officials, that said more work on the site of the former White House East Wing is still needed to meet the agency’s “safety and security requirements.” The filing did not explain the specific national security concerns; the administration has offered to share classified details with the judge in a private, in-person setting without the plaintiffs present.

▶ Read more about the court filing

A timeline of Trump’s fights with media, including the BBC and Jimmy Kimmel

Here’s a look at key moments in Trump fights with the media in his second term:

Trump sues BBC for $10 billion, accusing it of defamation over editing of president’s Jan. 6 speech

The 33-page lawsuit filed in Florida accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “ a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence ” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

It accuses the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.” It seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.

The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the speech he gave before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.

BBC chairman Samir Shah had called the edit an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.

▶ Read more about the lawsuit