Secretary of State Marco Rubio will publicly testify on the Trump administration’s policy in Venezuela Wednesday morning after vowing to lawmakers that no more military action was expected in the region. 

Rubio’s return to the Hill, an increasingly frequent occurrence in recent months, comes after he, President Donald Trump, administration officials and Senate Republican leadership successfully killed a bipartisan push to rein in the president’s war authorities in Venezuela. 

His scheduled appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday at 10 a.m. comes just weeks after he helped to convince two lawmakers, Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to flip their votes and back the administration. 

Both were concerned about boots on the ground in Venezuela and Congress’ constitutional authority to weigh in on the matter.

They were convinced by Rubio and the administration that no further military action would take place, and that if it were, President Donald Trump would come to Congress first. 

Young said at the time that the effort, spurred by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was ultimately just a messaging exercise that never would have survived in the House, nor evaded a veto from Trump. 

‘I had to accept that this was all a communications exercise,’ Young said. ‘I think we [used] this moment to shine a bright light on Congress’ shortcomings as it relates to war powers in recent history.’

Rubio also wrote to Senate Foreign Relations Chair James Risch, R-Idaho, to spell out that the administration would clue in Congress should any future military action take place in the region.

‘Should there be any new military operations that introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities, they will be undertaken consistent with the Constitution of the United States, and we will transmit written notifications consistent with section 4(a) of the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148),’ he said.

However, Rubio’s appearance before the panel comes on the heels of unrest stateside following another fatal shooting in Minnesota, where Alex Pretti was killed in the midst of a Department of Homeland Security-led immigration operation in Minneapolis.

While he won’t have to answer for that situation, it has drastically shifted the Senate’s attention over the last several days. 

It also follows Kaine’s vow to file several more war powers resolutions against Trump, specifically against action in Greenland, Iran and elsewhere. 

Kaine believed that he could take advantage of cracks that formed in Republicans’ unified front earlier this month, when five joined all Senate Democrats to advance his resolution to require any future military action in Venezuela would need Congress’ approval.

‘The way cracks grow is through pressure and the pressure campaign that I sort of decided to launch by use of these privileged motions,’ Kaine said after his initial push failed. 

‘I’m going to file every one I can to challenge emergencies, to challenge unlawful wars, to seek human rights reports, arms transfers if they’re wrong,’ he continued.

House Republicans are coalescing around progressive ‘Squad’ member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after she was attacked during a town hall in Minneapolis on Tuesday night.

‘This is totally unacceptable. I am glad Rep. Omar is okay,’ Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., wrote on X in response to a video of the incident.

It’s a rare show of bipartisanship in the face of political violence that has become common in recent years amid increasingly volatile rhetoric on both sides.

Support for Omar came from both conservative and moderate Republicans after a man appeared to confront her and spray a substance on her before he was quickly subdued at her public event.

‘Political, religious, and ideological differences never justify violence,’ Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, wrote of the attack. ‘Those who resort to violence to make a political point should understand that such actions only undermine the very rights that form the foundation of our Republic.’

Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., noted that political violence against members of Congress had been escalating for some time.

‘The assault on Congresswoman Omar is disturbing and unacceptable, and the attacker must be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law,’ he said in his own statement. ‘This attack is the latest of thousands of acts and threats of violence directed against Congress over the past year, resulting in a 57% increase just since 2024.’

Moderate Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., similarly said Wednesday morning, ‘I condemn the attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar that occurred yesterday.’

‘We always have the right to free speech and to petition the government, but political violence must be dealt with sternly. The criminal here needs to spend some time behind bars,’ Bacon said.

And Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., noted she ‘deeply disagreed’ with Omar but said she was ‘deeply disturbed’ by the attack.

‘No elected official should face physical attacks. This is not who we are,’ Mace said.

It comes in addition to a slew of Democrats condemning the incident, though several immediately sought to blame President Donald Trump and the GOP for previously criticizing the progressive Minnesota lawmaker.

‘Trump’s hateful, dangerous rhetoric fuels this kind of political violence, and we must all reject it,’ said Rep. Rob Menendez, D-N.J.

And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on X, ‘It is not a coincidence that after days of President Trump and [Vice President] Vance putting Rep. Omar in their crosshairs with slanderous public attacks, she gets assaulted at her town hall.’

The attack occurred minutes after Omar’s town hall began, and despite being urged to wrap up the event, she continued until the end.

Her office released a statement afterward, ‘During her town hall, an agitator tried to attack the Congresswoman by spraying an unknown substance with a syringe. Security and the Minneapolis Police Department quickly apprehended the individual. He is now in custody. The Congresswoman is okay. She continued with her town hall because she doesn’t let bullies win.’

The suspect who attacked her was arrested and charged with third-degree assault.

The U.S. is not preparing to utilize additional military force in Venezuela, but won’t hesitate to employ such force in the event of an ‘imminent threat,’ according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

‘The president never rules out his options as commander-in-chief to protect the national interest of the United States,’ Rubio told lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. ‘I can tell you right now with full certainty, we are not postured to, nor do we intend or expect to have to take any military action in Venezuela at any time. The only military presence you will see in Venezuela is our Marine guards at an embassy.’ 

That said, Rubio said that certain events could warrant military actions — pointing to a hypothetical scenario where an Iranian drone factory emerged in the region and threatened U.S. presence or allies there. 

‘The president does reserve the option in self-defense to eliminate that threat,’ Rubio said. ‘We don’t see that, we don’t anticipate that, but it could happen. We hope not … But I think it would require the emergence of an imminent threat of the kind that we do not anticipate at this time.’ 

Rubio’s remarks came in response to questions about his prepared statement, which said that the U.S. is prepared to exert military force to ensure cooperation from Venezuela’s interim government if it defies Washington following the ouster of dictator Nicolás Maduro. 

‘We are prepared to use force to ensure maximum cooperation if other methods fail,’ Rubio’s prepared testimony had said, which he ultimately did not end up using. ‘It is our hope that this will not prove necessary, but we will never shy away from our duty to the American people and our mission in this hemisphere.’

Rubio’s prepared testimony also maintained that there are no U.S. troops in Venezuela, and that the operation did not amount to waging a war in Caracas.

‘There is no war against Venezuela, and we did not occupy a country,’ Rubio said in his prepared remarks. ‘There are no U.S. troops on the ground. This was an operation to aid law enforcement.’

The move to ouster Maduro has attracted scrutiny, mostly from Democrats, who have called into question the legality of the operation in Venezuela, which was conducted without Congress’ approval. 

But efforts in Congress to pass a war powers resolution that would have limited the Trump administration from conducting additional military action in Venezuela failed to pass earlier in January. Rubio previously has claimed Congressional approval wasn’t required because the operation was not an ‘invasion.’

On Wednesday, Rubio said that should U.S. military forces be involved in Venezuela in a ‘sustained’ way, Congress would receive notification 48-hours after the fact, and would be required to receive Congressional approval if the engagement lasted longer than 60 days. 

Rubio also told lawmakers that Congress wasn’t consulted about the potential raid due to concerns from the Department of War about leaks, and because it wasn’t even a possibility to execute such a mission until late December 2025 after all negotiation efforts with Maduro had failed. 

‘It was also a trigger-based operation. It may never have happened,’ Rubio said. ‘It required a number of factors to all align at the right place, at the right time, in a very limited window, and it wasn’t even clear if it was ever going to be possible.’ 

On Jan. 3, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. special forces had executed a ‘large-scale strike’ against Caracas, Venezuela, and seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The two were transported to New York and appeared in a Manhattan federal court Jan. 5 on drug charges, where they each pleaded not guilty.

The raid followed months of pressure on Venezuela to squeeze out Maduro amid more than two dozen strikes in Latin American waters against alleged drug traffickers — which the Trump administration claimed aligned with Trump’s effort to curb the influx of drugs into the U.S.

Since Maduro’s capture, the U.S. has conducted at least one additional strike against alleged drug trafficking vessels in the region. 

The Trump administration had previously asserted that it did not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state and instead, claimed he was the leader of a drug cartel. Additionally, Trump said in December 2025, shortly before the operation, that he believed it would be ‘smart’ for Maduro to step down.

The Trump administration has so far backed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, to lead Venezuela’s interim government. 

A new report is warning that the combined war casualties in the nearly four-year Russia-Ukraine war could hit 2 million by spring 2026. The number includes soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides of the conflict.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a report on Tuesday predicting the grim milestone. CSIS states that Russia suffered 1.2 million casualties, including 325,000 troop deaths, between February 2022 and December 2025. It estimates that Ukraine suffered between 500,000 to 600,000 casualties, including 140,000 troop deaths. CSIS estimates that the current combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could be as high as 1.8 million.

Getting a clear picture of the fatalities and casualties suffered on both sides is not easy as neither Moscow nor Kyiv gives timely data on military losses, according to The Associated Press, which noted that the two countries are also simultaneously focused on amplifying each other’s casualties. Russia has publicly acknowledged the deaths of just over 6,000 soldiers, the AP reported. 

The outlet noted that activists and independent journalists have said that reports of military losses have been repressed in Russian media.

‘Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power,’ the report reads.

‘No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,’ the report notes.

Russian battlefield casualties and fatalities have been ‘significantly higher’ than Ukraine’s, according to the report. 

CSIS estimates the ratio to be roughly 2.5:1 or 2:1. CSIS points to several reasons for the high Russian casualties and fatalities, including the country’s ‘failure to effectively conduct combined arms and joint warfare, poor tactics and training, corruption, low morale and Ukraine’s effective defense-in-depth strategy in a war that favors the defense.’ The report also states that Russia has accepted taking high casualties as part of its strategy.

‘Russia’s attrition strategy has accepted the costs of high casualties in hopes of eventually wearing down Ukraine’s military and society,’ CSIS states in its report.

In addition to its high casualty rate, Russia has also been advancing ‘remarkably slowly,’ according to the report. CSIS stated in its report that Russian forces had advanced at an average rate of 15 to 70 meters (49 to 230 feet) per day in its most prominent offenses since seizing the military initiative in January 2024. The authors of the report say Russia’s pace is ‘slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century.’

The report comes less than one month before the fourth anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine. Despite international mediators, including the U.S., making attempts to end the war, it has persisted, with both sides suffering casualties.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said two people were killed during Russian strikes that hit an apartment block on the outskirts of Kyiv, the AP reported. Additionally, at least nine people were injured in separate attacks on the Ukrainian cities of Odesa and Kryvyi Rih.

Representatives for Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. recently met in the United Arab Emirates for the first trilateral talks since 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that the ‘conversations were constructive.’

‘A lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive,’ he wrote on X, noting the delegations could have further meetings as early as next week. ‘As a result of the meetings held over these days, all sides agreed to report back in their capitals on each aspect of the negotiations and to coordinate further steps with their leaders.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Russia and Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministries.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

China’s expanding push into the Pacific Islands is raising alarms among experts, who warn that Beijing is quietly working to establish a foothold in territory long viewed as vital to American defense.

Rather than deploying troops or building overt military bases, experts say China is using infrastructure projects, political influence and economic leverage to gain access to strategically sensitive areas across Micronesia, a region tied to the United States through decades-old security agreements.

Fox News Digital has learned that a Chinese-backed runway on the island of Yap is due to be officially opened during a handover ceremony on Feb 9. The president of the Federated States of Micronesia is expected to attend, along with representatives from the Chinese company involved in the project.

One of the experts tracking the developments, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) senior fellow Cleo Paskal, traveled to the Federated States of Micronesia to see them firsthand. She told Fox News Digital she spent four days sleeping on the open deck of a Chinese-donated cargo ship in order to witness a Chinese company breaking ground on a project to rehabilitate a World War II Imperial Japanese runway.

‘It’s not a huge runway, but what it does is it gets China in the door and on the ground in a very strategic location,’ Paskal said.

The project is located in the state of Yap, a remote east-to-west island chain that sits along key maritime and air routes connecting Hawaii, Guam and East Asia. U.S. military planners have long considered Yap one of the most strategically important locations in the Pacific.

Paskal said the same Chinese company involved in the runway is now working on another major infrastructure project on Yap: the reconstruction of a bridge on the main island.

‘At the same time, because of how strategic it is, Secretary Hegseth announced not that long ago about $2 billion worth of defense infrastructure investment for Yap,’ she said. ‘Now, when he says Yap, what he means is the main island of Yap.’

According to Paskal, that distinction matters.

‘The story here is that the Department of War is focused on the main island, but, from what I’ve seen, there are no plans for the rest of the island chain,’ she said. ‘Meanwhile, the Chinese are using other entry points into the political and economic system in order to start to break open access to Yap.’

She described China’s approach as fundamentally different from Washington’s.

‘So it’s not just a physical kinetic infrastructure operation,’ Paskal said. ‘It’s also a political warfare operation, whereas the U.S. is focusing more just on a very narrow band of the kinetic map.’

The geography at stake has shaped American security strategy for generations.

During World War II, the lagoon at Ulithi, part of the Yap island chain, served as the largest U.S. naval base in the world, hosting hundreds of American warships as the military prepared for operations against Imperial Japan.

That history, Paskal said, helps explain why the region remains so sensitive today.

Under the Compact of Free Association, the United States retains exclusive defense rights in Micronesia. The agreements allow Washington to deny military access to other powers, establish defense facilities and maintain strategic control, while granting Micronesian citizens the right to live and work in the United States and serve in the U.S. military. The Compact creates such deep ties that Micronesia is considered part of the U.S. domestic mail system.

The compacts were designed after World War II to ensure Pacific islands once controlled by Japan could never again be used as launch points for attacks against the United States.

But Paskal warned that China is finding ways to work around, and potentially undermine, those arrangements.

She said U.S. officials often focus on visible construction sites while underestimating the broader political campaign that enables Chinese access in the first place. This includes cultivating ties with national leaders, engaging local officials such as customs and immigration officers and securing contracts through regional development banks in order to place Chinese companies and personnel on the ground.

According to Paskal, Chinese firms are often willing to absorb financial losses in exchange for long-term strategic positioning.

The concern is heightened by political shifts within Micronesia itself. While states such as Yap have historically been more resistant to Chinese engagement, the national government has grown closer to Beijing in recent years.

Former President of the Federated States of Micronesia David Panuelo warned in a March 9, 2023, letter that China was engaging in political warfare, including alleged bribery and pressure campaigns. He later lost his re-election bid, while the current government is viewed as more receptive to China.

When asked by Fox News Digital about China’s activities in Micronesia, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said, ‘I am not aware of the specifics.’

The spokesperson emphasized that China views Pacific Island Countries (PICs) as partners in development and denied any geopolitical intent.

‘China always respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of PICs,’ the spokesperson said, adding that Beijing has ‘never interfered in the internal affairs of PICs, never attached any political strings, and never sought any geopolitical self-interest.’

Paskal said this characterization is not accurate, pointing to what she described as China’s targeted efforts to interfere with the internal decisions of three Pacific Island countries — Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu — to recognize Taiwan, including explicitly attaching support to derecognition.

The spokesperson’s statement added that the South Pacific should be ‘a stage for cooperation, rather than an arena for vicious competition’ and insisted China’s engagement does not target any country.

For U.S. security experts, however, the concern is not a single runway or bridge, but the gradual erosion of strategic access in a region that has underpinned American defense for more than 80 years.

China expert Gordon Chang told Fox News Digital, ‘We lost so many American lives in World War Two, taking these islands from the Japanese. And now we are letting China dominate them. This is just wrong. I can’t, I get angry when I think about this. But the important point here is that we have the power to stop this,’ he said.

‘The three compact states are our closest military allies, our closest allies full stop. We said that again. The three complex states in the Western Pacific are our closet allies. Guam is actually part of the United States. So we have the power to stop this and we’re not doing that. And this is now on us, a strategic failure, a failure to understand what China is doing. I hope that the administration starts to understand the significance of what’s occurring and moves to block Chinese infiltration of the Western Pacific.’

As Paskal warned, China’s campaign in the Pacific is unfolding not through force, but through influence, access, patience and presence.

Neither the White House nor the Department of War responded to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.