Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday, going on to call out a reporter for supposedly trying to stir up tension during a press conference.

Rubio made the statement during a joint appearance with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. A reporter referenced Fico’s previous criticism of the U.S. operation against Maduro and asked whether he stood by it, leading Rubio to address the issue first while he was answering other questions from the same reporter.

‘I think you asked him a question in order to, like, see if you can get him against us, or something… A lot of countries didn’t like what we did in Venezuela. That’s okay. That was in our national interest,’ Rubio said. 

‘I’m sure there’s something you may do one day that we don’t like, and we’ll say we didn’t like that you did this,’ Rubio continued, while turning to Fico. ‘So what? That doesn’t mean we’re not going to be friends, we’re not going to be partners,’ Rubio said.

‘We have very close allies that didn’t like what we did in that regard. I can tell you what, it was successful. It was necessary, because the guy was a narco-terrorist, and we made him a bunch of offers,’ the secretary continued. 

‘And look what’s happened in Venezuela in the six weeks since he’s been gone,’ Rubio said acknowledging that the country still has ‘a long way to go.’

‘There’s still much work that needs to be done, but I can tell you Venezuela is much better off today than it was six weeks ago. So we’re very proud of that project. And I know some will disagree … I think everyone can now agree that Venezuela has an opportunity at a new future that wasn’t there six weeks ago,’ he added.

Rubio’s statement comes days after President Donald Trump recounted the military’s strength during the operation to capture Maduro. Trump, speaking in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, honored U.S. special forces and their families for their roles in the operation.

‘It was in a matter of minutes before (Maduro) was on a helicopter being taken out of there. They had to go through steel doors,’ Trump said Friday afternoon. ‘The steels were like it was like paper-maché. You know what paper-maché is? That’s weak paper.’

U.S. special operations forces carried out the successful capture of Maduro and his wife on sweeping narcotics charges. Trump celebrated that there wasn’t single U.S. casualty during the operation, despite Maduro being housed on a heavily-armed military base.

‘These guys blasted through every door,’ Trump continued Friday. ‘They got up to him before he got to the big safe. But that wouldn’t have worked either, because they had equipment that was going to knock that out in a matter of minutes, but he never got there. It went so fast.’

Maduro was whisked off on a helicopter, before he was brought to the U.S., where he faces federal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-trafficking conspiracy and weapons-related offenses. He is being held in federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Members of President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace have pledged more than $5 billion in aid for Gaza, the president announced Sunday.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social, saying the funding would be formally pledged during a Feb. 19 meeting in Washington, D.C. The Board of Peace was chartered in January and currently includes nearly 20 countries.

‘On February 19th, 2026, I will again be joined by Board of Peace Members at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., where we will announce that Member States have pledged more than $5 BILLION DOLLARS toward the Gaza Humanitarian and Reconstruction efforts, and have committed thousands of personnel to the International Stabilization Force and Local Police to maintain Security and Peace for Gazans,’ Trump wrote.

‘Very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarization. The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman,’ he added.

Israel formally joined the Board of Peace last week ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump at the White House.

Leaders from 17 countries participated in the initial Gaza Board of Peace charter signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, including presidents and other senior government officials from Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia.

A handful of other countries were also invited by the White House to join, including Russia, Belarus, France, Germany, Vietnam, Finland, Ukraine, Ireland, Greece and China, among others. Poland and Italy on Wednesday said they would not join.

Trump has deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Michael Murphy, a guided-missile destroyer, as his envoys meet with Iranian officials in Oman.

Other U.S. naval assets, including the USS Bulkeley, USS Roosevelt, USS Delbert D. Black, USS McFaul, USS Mitscher, USS Spruance and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., are positioned across key waterways surrounding Iran, from the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, and Arabian Sea.

Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.

The government entered a partial shutdown at midnight Friday after Congress failed to reach a funding deal — and some lawmakers’ decision to attend an international gathering in Europe this weekend is drawing criticism from colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

‘It’s absurd, I hope the American people are paying attention,’ Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told Fox News Digital.

The deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by the end of the week came with a built-in complication: members of both chambers were scheduled to attend the annual Munich Security Conference, with many set to depart by day’s end Thursday.

Without a deal in place, Congress left Washington, D.C., on Thursday after the Senate failed to pass both a full-year funding bill for DHS and a temporary, two-week funding extension.

At midnight Friday — with several lawmakers already in Germany — DHS shut down.

Both Republican leaders warned members to be prepared to return if a deal was reached. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., gave senators 24 hours’ notice to return, while House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., allowed a 48-hour window.

Despite the conference being scheduled months in advance, some lawmakers said leaving Washington — or even the country — during an active funding standoff sent the wrong message.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arguing that Democrats blocked Republican-led efforts to prevent a partial DHS shutdown.

‘Schumer’s what’s deciding this,’ Scott told Fox News Digital. ‘I mean, he’s deciding that he’s more interested in people going to Munich than he is in funding DHS.’

Several lawmakers from both chambers are attending the conference, participating in side discussions and panels during the annual forum, where heads of state and top decision-makers gather to debate international security policy.

Members of the House expressed frustration that senators would leave amid stalled negotiations between Senate Democrats and the White House.

‘The Senate started out a week ago saying, ‘I don’t think anybody should leave town,’’ Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., told Fox News Digital. ‘Now they’re doing the Munich thing. At least [the House] sent a bill over…not a great pride moment for the federal government, is it?’

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., led a bipartisan delegation of 11 senators to the conference.

When asked whether the shutdown would affect his travel plans, Whitehouse said, ‘I hope not.’

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who was scheduled to participate in a panel with Graham titled ‘The State of Russia,’ according to the conference agenda, said lawmakers should have resolved outstanding issues before leaving town.

‘I’m not delighted with Republican resistance and unresponsiveness, but it’s on them at this point,’ Blumenthal said.

House rules prohibit official congressional delegations, also known as CODELs, during a shutdown. Still, several House members made the trip to Bavaria. At least a handful of House Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., attended the conference.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during a hearing on the impact of a DHS shutdown that it would be ‘unconscionable if Congress leaves and does not solve the problem.’

‘I’m sure Munich is a great place. I’ve been there many times. The beer is outstanding,’ Cole said. ‘But we don’t need to go to a defense conference someplace in Europe when we’re not taking care of the defense of the United States of America.’

Lawmakers are expected to continue negotiations throughout the weekend while many are abroad. Senate Democrats have signaled they may present a counteroffer to the White House but have not finalized a proposal.

If an agreement is reached, it would still take time to draft the legislative text and bring the measure to the Senate floor. Even so, some lawmakers argued that stepping away from negotiations — whether returning home or traveling overseas — was the wrong move.

‘I’ve been pretty outspoken to say we need to stay as long as we have to be here to be able to get things resolved so we don’t ever have a shutdown,’ Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital.

‘That’s the easiest way to resolve it is to say ‘no one walks away from the table,’’ he added. ‘We stay at the table.’

Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital the situation reflects poorly on GOP leadership’s handling of funding priorities, though he acknowledged the significance of the international conference.

‘There’s a certain irony that we would not be here to fund essential services of our government, but we have enough time and energy to go to the Munich Security Conference, which admittedly is a very important international gathering,’ Morelle said. ‘But I think it says a lot about the lack of leadership…we can’t do the fundamentals of this job.’

Too often, watching the ladies on ABC’s ‘The View’ is like finding the five more partisan Democrat accounts on Instagram or X. You’ll get every Democratic National Committee talking point, with an emphasis on how the left is amazing and the right will end democracy as we know it.

This week, ‘The View’ crew repeatedly gushed over the allegedly marvelous Super Bowl halftime show of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, because he hates President Donald Trump and ICE. The fact that it was almost entirely in Spanish (except for a Lady Gaga interlude) was a point of pride and proved that Americans are backward people. ‘This country seems to be one of the only countries in the world that is so proud of being monolingual and not being able to communicate in more than one language,’ Co-host Sunny Hostin complained. ‘And, the fact of the matter is, in about 20 years, multi-ethnic people will be the majority in this country! So, if you don’t understand Spanish, maybe start taking a little Duolingo course!’

Co-host Joy Behar added disdain to the Bad Bunny critics: ‘These are not exactly the same people that go to the opera where they speak Italian and French. But let’s not go there. The country, in my opinion, has a misplaced set of values.’

Try to imagine Behar feeling morally superior as she goes to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to see the new woke version of Bizet’s ‘Carmen,’ where the setting is MAGA – ‘an industrial American town’ in flyover country – and the villains are ICE agents. Then it doesn’t matter if it’s in French.

The only hope in the coming weeks is that Alyssa Farah Griffin’s maternity leave results in a little more conservative dissent on this remarkably one-sided program. Already, fans of the show are up in arms that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is going to pop in, as if she was unacceptably ultraconservative in her decade on the show. It’s easier for the liberals to feel smart when nobody calls them out for sounding stupid.

On Thursday, after Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before Congress, Hostin accused Bondi of ruining the Department of Justice, which had supposedly never been a partisan agency under Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Joe Biden. ‘The Justice Department is in shambles. So, the people of the United States have that person who is deeply unqualified, who is deeply unserious as their protection, as the person that is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America! I am so disgusted! I am so saddened by what is the destruction of one of the biggest and strongest institutions in our country!’ Nobody pushes back on these speeches.

Then Behar typically came unglued: ‘By the way, you know, just a little history, during the Watergate scandal President Nixon did not go to jail but John Mitchell did. John Mitchell was his attorney general. So, at the end of the day, Miss Bondi, you’re looking at some prison time.’ For what? Who needs to look it up? Emotion in search of an applause line is everything.

Minutes later, she played historian again, in the fight between Trump and Democrats in Congress like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who nudged military personnel to defy Trump: ‘Again, I hate to bring up history again but there’s something called the Nuremberg defense, which basically states that acting under orders, illegal orders does not relieve a person of responsibility under international law.’ They always have to compare Trump to Hitler and his Nazi underlings.

She continued: ‘These people were saying, you do not have to obey an illegal order. And the illegal orders are the following,’ she said, reading from a paper. ‘Telling generals to send members into major cities to use them as training grounds. Suggesting that troops shoot protesters in the legs. Ordering unlawful military strikes on boats in international waters…. the Nuremberg Trial proved that going against an illegal order is legit.’

Nobody should want these ladies as their experts on history or politics or culture. But they are reliable robots on the social-media memes and themes that the Democrats use in their efforts to win every news cycle. It’s shocking that this show is under the ABC News umbrella, because there’s nothing in this show that sounds like journalism. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., alleged at the Munich Security Conference on Friday that U.S. aid to the Jewish state enabled a genocide by Israel. AOC’s attack on the Jewish state in Munich unfolded in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement that carried out the worst genocide in human history.

AOC’s assault on Israel’s war campaign to defeat the U.S. and EU-designated terrorist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip sparked outrage and intense criticism from academic military and Middle East experts.

During the town hall event in Munich, the Squad member said, ‘To me, this isn’t just about a presidential election. Personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws. And I think that personally, that the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza. And I think that we have thousands of women and children dead that don’t, that was completely avoidable.’

She continued, ‘And, so I believe that enforcement of our own laws through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance, when you see gross human rights violations, is appropriate.’

The Leahy Laws prohibit the Department of Defense and the State Department from funding ‘foreign security force units when there is credible information that the unit has committed a ‘gross violation of human rights.’ Former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., introduced the bill in 1997.

Tom Gross, an expert on international affairs, told Fox News digital that ‘AOC has flown all the way to Munich — infamous as the city in which Hitler staged his Nazi Beer Hall Putsch that marked the beginning of the road to the Holocaust — in order to smear the Jewish people further with a phony genocide allegation.’

Gross added, ‘Such preposterous allegations of ‘genocide’ form the bedrock of modern antisemitic incitement against Jews in the U.S. and globally. This shocking ignorance and insensitivity by Ocasio-Cortez should rule her out of any potential presidential bid or other high office.’

Military experts and genocide researchers have debunked the allegation that Israel carried out a genocide against Palestinians during its self-defense war against the Hamas terrorist organization that started after Hamas terrorists attacked communities in parts of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that saw over 1200 Israeli and foreign nationals killed and 251 brutally kidnapped and taken into Gaza by Hamas and other terrorists.

Danny Orbach, a military historian from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of ‘Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7 2023, to June 1, 2025,’ told Fox News Digital that Ocasio-Cortez accusation that Israel committed genocide is an ‘accusation that is incorrect both factually and legally. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide requires proof of a special intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part, and as a baseline condition, an active effort to maximize civilian destruction.

‘The evidence shows the opposite: as demonstrated in our multi-author study Debunking the Genocide Allegations, Israel undertook unprecedented measures to mitigate civilian harm, including establishing humanitarian safe zones that independently verified data show were approximately six times safer than other areas of Gaza.’

Orbach added, ‘Israel also issued detailed advance warnings before strikes and facilitated the entry of over two million tons of humanitarian aid, often at significant cost to its own military advantage, including the loss of surprise and the sustainment of an enemy during wartime.’

He concluded, ‘These measures were taken despite Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, its systematic use of human shields and hospitals for military purposes, and a tunnel network exceeding 1,000 kilometers — an operational challenge without historical precedent. Finally, no credible evidence demonstrates the kind of unambiguous, exclusive genocidal intent toward Palestinians that international law requires and that cannot be reasonably interpreted otherwise.’

The conservative commentator Derek Hunter posted on X. ‘Imagine going to Germany to complain about a fake genocide by Jews…in Munich, of all places. @AOC is about as smart as clogged toilet.’

In Dec. 2024, Germany joined the U.S. in rejecting the allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

Senate Republicans gained a key ally in their quest to enshrine voter ID into law, but the lawmaker’s support comes with a condition.

A trio of lawmakers, led by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have undertaken a campaign to convince their colleagues to support the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, working social media and closed-door meetings to secure the votes.

The campaign has proven successful, with the cohort gaining a crucial vote from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who announced that she would back the SAVE America Act, which recently passed the House. With Collins, Senate Republicans have at least a slim majority backing the act.

‘I support the version of the SAVE America Act that recently passed the House,’ Collins said in a statement first reported by the Maine Wire. ‘The law is clear that in this country only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections.’

‘In addition, having people provide an ID at the polls, just as they have to do before boarding an airplane, checking into a hotel, or buying an alcoholic beverage, is a simple reform that will improve the security of our federal elections and will help give people more confidence in the results,’ she continued.

Collins noted that she did not support the previous version of the bill, known simply as the SAVE Act, because it ‘would have required people to prove their citizenship every single time they cast a ballot.’

Her decision gives Lee and Senate Republicans the votes needed to clear a key procedural hurdle in the Senate.

‘We now have enough votes to pass a motion to proceed to the House-passed bill — even without any additional votes — with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie,’ Lee said in a post on X.

That tie-breaking scenario would only present itself if Republicans turn to the standing, or talking, filibuster. It’s a move that Lee has been pushing his colleagues to make, and one that would require actual, physical debate over the bill. 

It’s the precursor to the current version of the filibuster, where the only hill lawmakers have to climb is acquiring 60 votes. Lee and other conservatives believe that if they turn to the standing filibuster, rather than the ‘zombie filibuster,’ they can barrel through Democratic resistance.

But some fear that turning to that tool could paralyze the Senate floor for weeks or even months, depending on Senate Democrats’ resolve.  

And Collins’ support is not enough to smash through the 60-vote Senate filibuster.

Complicating matters, Collins made clear that she does not support doing away with the filibuster, as do several other Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who reiterated earlier this week that the GOP doesn’t have the votes to eliminate the legislative tool.

‘I oppose eliminating the legislative filibuster,’ Collins said. ‘The filibuster is an important protection for the rights of the minority party that requires Senators to work together in the best interest of the country.’

‘Removing that protection would, for example, allow a future Congress controlled by Democrats to pass provisions on anything they want — D.C. statehood, open borders, or packing the Supreme Court — with just a simple majority of Senators,’ she continued.

GOP senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, remain the only Republicans who have not pledged support for the SAVE Act.

The White House on Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council by drawing a sharp contrast with the Biden-era, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum citing higher production and lower gas prices as proof of ‘real savings’ for Americans.

‘Under the President’s leadership and through the Council’s relentless execution, we have delivered historic gains in energy production, affordability, and security,’ Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, told Fox News Digital. 

‘Gasoline prices have fallen to some of the lowest levels in years, permitting has been streamlined, and American energy exports are surging,’ he added. ‘These achievements are not abstract, they mean real savings for families, farmers, and small businesses, and they are strengthening our position on the world stage.’ 

Trump signed an executive order creating the National Energy Dominance Council on Feb. 14, 2025, which was tasked with cutting red tape and coordinating agencies to boost U.S. energy production, speed up permitting approvals, expand exports and deliver a national ‘energy dominance’ strategy. 

A year later, the administration pointed to a series of metrics showing the U.S. has accelerated past Biden-era data on production — while driving down energy costs that ripple through household budgets, from gas and heating to shipping and groceries.

U.S. crude oil production, for example, reached a record 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025, with the White House calling it the highest output of any country in the world. In comparison, the Biden administration took four years for production to climb from 11.3 million to 13.2 million barrels per day, a figure ‘Trump blew past in months,’ according to the White House. 

On the natural gas production front, the administration said the U.S. produced 110.1 billion cubic feet per day in November 2025, the highest level recorded since federal tracking began in 1973. All in, production is about 8% above the Biden-era average, and 4% above the previous record for U.S. natural gas production, according to the data. 

While the U.S. has also widened its lead as the world’s top liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, with average LNG exports rising to 15 billion cubic feet per day in 2025, up from 11 under the Biden administration. 

‘As we mark this anniversary, we reaffirm our commitment to advancing American Energy Dominance and ensuring that our nation’s energy abundance continues to power prosperity, security, and freedom for generations to come,’ Burgum added in a comment to Fox News Digital. 

Lowering prices through an expanded energy grid was crucial to the executive order establishing the council itself, calling for ‘reliable and affordable energy production to drive down inflation, grow our economy, create good-paying jobs.’

Energy has emerged as a key piece of the administration’s puzzle of addressing affordability concerns stemming from the Biden era when inflation hit a 40-year-high, as cheaper energy typically ripples through the economy by cutting transportation and shipping costs and lowering the power bills factories pay to make everything from groceries to building materials. 

The White House cast cheaper gas as a kitchen-table win this year, touting pump prices are about $2.90 a gallon, which is 16% below the Biden-era average and a roughly 42% drop from the $5.02 peak in June 2022.  The administration celebrated that affordable energy benefits Americans from working families and rural communities, to small businesses and farmers who typically frequently drive farther for gas or those on a budget. 

Crude oil prices have fallen by roughly 18% in 2025, dropping to $65 a barrel from the $79 Biden-era average, according to the data. 

Environmental groups have meanwhile slammed Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ push as a fossil-fuel expansion that undercuts climate goals and could increase pollution and impacts on public lands and communities. 

‘One year ago, President Donald J. Trump launched the National Energy Dominance Council to restore America’s Energy Dominance and make life more affordable for hardworking families. Today, the results speak for themselves,’ Burgum said of the data.