Salem News Channel

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the stand in a Miami federal courtroom, saying he had no knowledge that former Congressman David Rivera was allegedly lobbying on behalf of Venezuela’s government. Rubio testified he would have been “shocked” to learn of any connection between Rivera and Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, emphasizing that their discussions focused on potential political changes in the country—not support for its government. Prosecutors allege Rivera and a co-defendant were involved in a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort tied to Venezuela and failed to register as foreign agents. The defense argues the work was commercial in nature and did not require registration under federal law. The case centers on whether Rivera violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, with Rubio’s testimony offering key insight into their past interactions and the broader effort to influence U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

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The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a mid-decade redistricting plan that gives Republicans an improved chance at winning an additional U.S. House seat in this year’s midterm elections. The decision marks a legal victory for President Donald Trump in a nationwide redistricting battle. But it may not be the final word. Opponents have submitted more than 300,000 petition signatures in an attempt to put the new map to a statewide vote. Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature approved new U.S. House districts in September at the urging of Trump, shortly after Texas Republicans also redrew their congressional districts. Trump is hoping the new districts could help the GOP hold on to its narrow majority in the House, where Democrats need to gain only a few sets in November to win control and impede Trump’s agenda. Opponents had argued that Missouri’s constitution allows redistricting only immediately after a census — not in the middle of a decade. But the state’s high court rejected that argument in a 4-3 decision, concluding there was no explicit prohibition against the Legislature doing redistricting more often.

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The Pentagon is weighing deployment of thousands of 82nd Airborne troops as President Donald Trump signals both escalation and openness to a deal with Iran. According to two people familiar with the matter, the Pentagon is expected to send thousands of soldiers to the Middle East from the U.S. Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It would add to a massive U.S. military buildup as the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran continues. The move would expand options to include deployment of forces inside Iranian territory and could dramatically raise the stakes in the operation, which is already in its fourth week and has roiled global markets. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to talk about a possible deal with Iran to end the war. Tehran denies the conversations have taken place. "We're in negotiations right now. They're doing it along with Marco, JD, we have a number of people doing it. And the other side, I can tell you they'd like to make a deal." He also said that Iran had made a major energy-related concession to the United States, describing it as a positive development, although he did not give details. Trump suggested the gift was related to the Strait of Hormuz, the oil transit waterway that the United States has struggled to keep open. "They gave us a present. And the present arrived today, and it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money." The war with Iran has taken a toll on Trump’s popularity. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 36%, the lowest since he returned to the White House.

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According to the New York Times, the U.S. has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war. Pakistan mediators reportedly have shared the Trump administration's peace plan with Iranian officials. Stay with SNC for updates on this developing story.

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Trump is Confronting Intense Pressure Head-On.

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More than 450 Transportation Security Administration officers have quit since the start of a partial government shutdown on February 14, leading to massive delays at U.S. airports, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday. About 50,000 TSA officers are going without pay and are set to miss a second full paycheck on Friday. Hundreds of U.S. immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 U.S. airports on Monday to aid security screening, including at some airports where wait times have topped three or four hours. DHS said on Monday nearly 11% of TSA officers nationally - or more than 3,200 - did not show up for work. ICE and other law enforcement personnel at DHS are getting paid during the shutdown. On Monday, more than 30% of TSA workers were absent at New York JFK, Baltimore, Houston Hobby, Atlanta and New Orleans airports, DHS said. At New York LaGuardia, ICE officers were walking the terminal on Monday and not performing duties handled by TSA officers. Social media posts from other airports showed ICE agents standing near TSA officers who were checking identification. DHS rushed to deploy ICE agents after President Donald Trump said over the weekend they would be placed at airports if Democratic lawmakers did not make a funding deal. Democrats have held up funding for DHS while demanding a change in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, sparking public outrage. Republicans have rejected Democratic proposals to fund TSA while negotiating over ICE reforms.

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The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that a system which would have allowed a New York airport controller to track movement of aircraft and vehicles did not alert during a Sunday night collision between an Air Canada commercial jet and a truck that killed two pilots. The NTSB, an independent safety agency, is leading the investigation into the fatal collision of the Air Canada Express CRJ-900 jet with a firetruck at LaGuardia Airport. The flight, operated by regional partner Jazz Aviation, had 72 passengers and four crew. The truck, which was on its way to assist another plane that had reported an emergency, crossed the runway just nine seconds before the crash, according to the plane's cockpit voice recorder. "ASDE-X did not generate an alert due to the close proximity of vehicles merging and unmerging near the runway, resulting in the inability to create a track of high confidence," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters in New York. ASDE-X, or the Airport Surface Detection Equipment Model X, is a surveillance system designed to help reduce runway incursions that allows air traffic controllers to track surface movement of aircraft and vehicles. Homendy also said the truck did not have a transponder, unlike similar vehicles at other airports in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration has encouraged airports to equip firetrucks with transponders because it makes the vehicles' movement easier to track at busy airports. She said it is unclear if an alerting technology would have prevented the incident since it happened so fast. Air crashes typically are caused by multiple factors with the investigation's goal to improve aviation safety and not assign blame. U.S. air safety experts have said communications between the plane ?that was landing, the controller and the trucks would be key areas of the investigation. The collision has raised questions about the controller's workload and staffing at the busy New York airport. The NTSB, which has sounded the alarm about close calls and runway incursions for years, last month found the deadly January 2025 mid-air collision of an American ?Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter was caused in part because the high workload "degraded controller performance and situation awareness". Homendy said the tower had standard staffing for a Sunday night. She added that there were two controllers working in a glass-enclosed section of the airport's traffic control tower. Homendy said on Tuesday that the NTSB will interview the local controller who started at 10:45 p.m. ET after a shift change 15 minutes earlier and whose interactions with different planes and the truck were heard on liveatc.net. A separate controller in charge was providing clearances for departing aircraft. It is not clear who was conducting the duties of ground controller, or assigning directions to airport vehicles. Air traffic controllers make the decisions about when planes can land and take off, and when ground vehicles can enter runways. The controller who made the call for the Air Canada flight ?to land had been trying to find a gate for a separate United Airlines flight that complained of a bad odor, according to the recording. The incident has raised questions about whether the controller was distracted by the United Airlines flight, which had declared an emergency. "I would caution pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved," she said. "This is a heavy workload environment."

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Are There Too Many Objectives with the Iran War?

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Trump Doesn't Trust the Iranians

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Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday afternoon, President Trump answered questions about the ongoing conflict with Iran. Trump said Iran has agreed to no nuclear weapons. “They’ve agreed,” Trump said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that.” Trump says negotiations to end the Iran war are happening "right now" and that Iran is "talking sense". The Comments come a day after Iranian officials denied any contact with the United States.

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Senator Chris Murphy Admits Democrats Care About Illegals More Than American Citizens

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Media Ignores Chicago University Killing & Senator Cornyn Joins

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Monday night, the Senate voted to confirm Markwayne Mullin as the new secretary of Homeland Security. Tuesday afternoon, he was sworn in, in the Oval Office. President Trump tapped the Republican senator from Oklahoma to take over the department after firing Secretary Kristi Noem. Earlier Tuesday, Oklahoma's governor appointed energy executive Alan Armstrong to serve in the U.S. Senate through the end of the year and finish Mullin's term.

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Today, Josh breaks down how the Left is once again siding with America’s enemies. He highlights protests taking place in Cuba by Code Pink activists—many of whom are staying in luxury hotels while demonstrating against the United States. Josh also covers the latest developments in Iran, the state of U.S.–Israel relations, and upcoming peace talks scheduled to take place in Pakistan. He then turns to the growing chaos at airports across the country, where ICE agents are now stepping in to assist TSA as the partial government shutdown continues to disrupt operations. Finally, Josh discusses a tragic case out of Illinois in which an 18-year-old girl was allegedly killed by an illegal alien.

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Melania Trump is calling on nations to work together to improve access to education and technology for children. The first lady issued her plea on Tuesday at the State Department in Washington while opening a summit of her Fostering the Future Together initiative. The two-day gathering brought together her counterparts and representatives from more than 40 countries as well as technology companies and pioneers of artificial intelligence. Melania Trump said the purpose is to cultivate the skills young people need to succeed in a changing world. The second day of the summit takes place at the White House on Wednesday.

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Officials say an oil refinery fire near the Texas coast has been put out and a shelter-in-place order has been lifted, hours after a large explosion at the complex shot plumes of smoke into the air. Mayor Charlotte M. Moses says no one was injured in Monday’s explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur. The explosion comes amid a spike in gas prices driven by uncertainty over the global oil supply because of the Iran war. Valero’s website says the refinery has about 770 employees and can process about 435,000 barrels of oil per day. The plant refines heavy sour crude oil into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

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Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for access to evidence they say they need to independently probe three shootings by federal officers, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The lawsuit claims that the federal government reneged on its promise to cooperate with state investigations after the surge of federal law enforcement in Minneapolis, and are seeking a court order demanding that the Trump administration comply. The lawsuit said the federal government is not permitted to “withhold investigative evidence for the purpose of shielding law enforcement officers from scrutiny."

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The Senate has voted to confirm Markwayne Mullin as the new secretary of Homeland Security. The vote late Monday fell largely on party lines. President Donald Trump tapped the Republican senator from Oklahoma to take over the department after firing Secretary Kristi Noem. Oklahoma's governor on Tuesday appointed energy executive Alan Armstrong to serve in the U.S. Senate through the end of the year and finish Mullin's term. The choice by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who had pledged to pick a “conservative voice” to fill Mullin's seat, elevates to the Senate the chairman and former CEO of Williams Companies, a major pipeline operator based in Tulsa. “He’s a strong business leader who understands the power of free markets and limited government,” Stitt said. Mullin, who was confirmed on Monday to take over the embattled Department of Homeland Security, would have been up for reelection in November. The last nine months of his term will now be filled by Armstrong, who under Oklahoma law must agree to not run for a full term this fall. Republican U.S. Rep Kevin Hern quickly announced his candidacy for the Senate seat and has already been endorsed by President Donald Trump. Armstrong, who has never served in elected office, has spent his career with Williams Companies, which employs about 5,800 people and specializes in the collection, storage and transportation of natural gas. He became president and CEO in 2011 and transitioned to executive chairman last year. Armstrong, 63, said making it easier to get permits for major infrastructure projects in the U.S. will be one of his top priorities in the Senate. “The truth is, it's gotten very, very hard to build large-scale infrastructure, and it is so critical to our country's competitiveness in the long term,” he said. Armstrong said he met with Trump and believes his previous work with Trump's Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright helped him earn the president's support. “Those gentlemen know how hard I've been working to get permitting reform done, so he (Trump) was very welcoming and highly supportive,” Armstrong said. “It was a very interesting meeting.” Armstrong is a longtime supporter of Stitt, giving him $8,500 in total campaign contributions since 2018, the maximum amount allowed under Oklahoma law. Stitt, who will leave office in January and is head of the National Governors Association, made the pick weeks after Trump lashed out at him following a dispute over who was allowed at the group's annual meeting. Former Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, Jr., described Armstrong as an “even-tempered individual” who is more likely to build consensus around a decision rather than being driven by political ideology. Bartlett, whose father served in the U.S. Senate in the 1970s, said Armstrong’s knowledge of the energy industry and its market factors also make him an ideal selection, particularly as the Iran war rattles the global flow of oil. “I think that certainly is a great approach, finding consensus for making a decision,” said Bartlett, the president of an oil and gas company. In confirmation hearings last week, Mullin tried to present himself as a steady hand to the lead agency following the firing of Kristi Noem, who came under intensifying backlash over immigration enforcement and mass deportation operations carried out under her watch.

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A U.S. Park Police officer shot during what authorities called an ambush was released from the hospital Tuesday, the Park Police said in a posting on its X account. The officer, whose identity was not disclosed, was shot Monday evening as he drove in an unmarked vehicle in a Washington neighborhood near its line with Maryland. Park Police Chief Scott Brecht said in a press briefing that the officer was working on an investigation when two gunmen fired at him. The chief declined to give specifics of the investigation. The officer was shot in the shoulder, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The investigation, which is being conducted jointly by the Park Police and Washington's Metropolitan Police Department, continues. Brecht said authorities were searching for two suspects. Jeffery Carroll, Washington’s interim police chief, said at the press briefing that the officer was targeted and it was possible the gunmen knew he was a police officer. Federal officials said they were assisting in the investigation.

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Pakistan's prime minister said on Tuesday he was willing to host talks between the U.S. and Iran on ending the war in the Gulf, a day after President Donald Trump postponed threats to bomb Iranian power plants, saying there had been "productive" talks. In a post on X, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistan welcomed and fully supported ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the war. "Subject to concurrence by the U.S. and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honored to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement," he said. The U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28 after saying they had failed to make enough headway in talks aimed at ending Iran's nuclear program, although mediator Oman said significant progress had been made. Since then, Iran has attacked countries that host U.S. bases, struck Gulf energy infrastructure and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, conduit for a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas, creating the worst energy supply shock in history. A Pakistani government source said discussions on a meeting were at an advanced stage and if it did happen, "a big 'if'", it would take place within a week. The war is already taking a toll on major economies around the world, according to business surveys on Tuesday which showed how a surge in energy prices and rising uncertainty were dampening activity and pushing inflation expectations higher. On the ground, there were no signs of conflict abating in the Gulf or Lebanon, where Israel is carrying out a parallel operation against the militant group Hezbollah, which has fired at Israel in support of its patron Iran. An Iranian missile was intercepted over Lebanese airspace for the first time on Tuesday, three senior Lebanese security sources said, with two of them saying a foreign naval vessel was responsible for the interception. Trump said on Monday the U.S. and Iran had held "very good and productive" conversations about a "complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East" and that he was postponing for five days a plan to hit Iran's energy grid. He said talks had begun on Sunday and continued into Monday, with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner involved. But after Trump's Truth Social comment on Monday, Iran denied that any talks had been held. Iran's powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf - the interlocutor on the Iranian side, according to an Israeli official and two other sources familiar with the matter - described reports of direct talks as "fake news". Trump's threat to bomb Iran's electricity plants had prompted Tehran to threaten retaliatory strikes on the power infrastructure of U.S. allies across the region, sending the price of benchmark Brent crude oil soaring as high as $114.43 on Monday morning. After declining on Trump's step-back, prices were about 3% higher again on Tuesday around $103 on concern over supply shortages. Three senior Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump appeared determined to make a deal, although they viewed it as unlikely that Iran would agree to U.S. demands. They said these were likely to include curbs on Iran's nuclear program and ballistic weapons development. Three senior sources in Tehran said Iran's negotiating stance had only hardened since the start of the war, under the growing influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that it would demand significant concessions from the U.S. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke to Trump less than 48 hours before their countries began the war, was expected to convene security officials for talks on Trump's bid for a deal with Iran, two senior Israeli officials said. Iranian missiles triggered air raid sirens in densely populated Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, where there are also military sites. A missile carved a massive crater in the road of one neighborhood, and the blast blew out the walls of a multi-story apartment building, scattering debris across the street. It was the latest in a series of Iranian attacks in recent days that have penetrated Israel's sophisticated air defenses. There were no reported deaths. Israel's military said its fighter jets had carried out a wave of strikes in central Tehran on Monday, targeting command centers including facilities associated with the IRGC's intelligence arm and the Intelligence Ministry. It said it had hit more than 50 other targets overnight, including ballistic missile storage and launch sites. Air defense systems were activated across Tehran as explosions were heard simultaneously in several areas of the capital, according to the Iranian news agency Nournews. At least eight people were killed and 28 injured in a strike on a residential area of Tabriz, a city of 1.7 million in Iran's northwest, the provincial director for crisis management told Tasnim news agency.

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