White House

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s photo portrait display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document U.S. history.

The wall text, which summarized Trump’s first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum’s “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.

The White House did not say whether it sought any changes. Nor did a Smithsonian statement in response to Associated Press questions. But Trump ordered in August that Smithsonian officials review all exhibits before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The Republican administration said the effort would “ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

Trump’s original “portrait label,” as the Smithsonian calls it, notes Trump’s Supreme Court nominations and his administration’s development of COVID-19 vaccines. That section concludes: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.”

The text continues: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”

Asked about the display, White House spokesman Davis Ingle celebrated the new photograph, which shows Trump, brow furrowed, leaning over his Oval Office desk. Ingle said it ensures that Trump’s “unmatched aura … will be felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”

The portrait was taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, who is credited in the display that includes medallions noting Trump is the 45th and 47th president. Similar numerical medallions appear alongside other presidents’ painted portraits that also include the more extended biographical summaries such as what had been part of Trump’s display.

Sitting presidents are represented by photographs until their official paintings are commissioned and completed.

Ingle did not answer questions about whether Trump or a White House aide, on his behalf, asked for anything related to the portrait label.

The gallery said in a statement that it had previously rotated two photographs of Trump from its collection before putting up Torok’s work.

“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”

For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.

And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”

Trump has made clear his intentions to shape how the federal government documents U.S. history and culture. He has offered an especially harsh assessment of how the Smithsonian and other museums have featured chattel slavery as a seminal variable in the nation’s development but also taken steps to reshape how he and his contemporary rivals are depicted.

In the months before his order for a Smithsonian review, he fired the head archivist of the National Archives and said he was firing the National Portrait Gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, as part of his overhaul. Sajet maintained the backing of the Smithsonian’s governing board, but she ultimately resigned.

At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.

The White House said at the time that Trump was a primary author of the plaques. Trump’s two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden’s autopen stand-in describe the 46th president as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

Barrow and Johnson write for the Associated Press and reported from Atlanta and Washington, respectively.

NEW YORK — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.

Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place by Jan. 20, marking one year since his return to the White House.

Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street and the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and to support his second-term agenda.

“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.

Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards, according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the last year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s.

Trump’s administration, however, has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.

Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office. His administration killed a Biden-era regulation that would have capped credit card late fees.

In a joint statement, the banking industry opposed Trump’s proposal.

“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives,” the American Bankers Assn. and allied groups said.

The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to [rein] in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long.”

Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released a plan last February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.

Hours before Trump’s post, Sanders noted that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.

Sweet and Kim write for the Associated Press and reported from New York and West Palm Beach, Fla., respectively.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is meeting with oil executives at the White House Friday in hopes of securing $100 billion in investments to revive Venezuela’s ability to fully tap into its expansive reserves of petroleum — a plan that rides on their comfort in making commitments in a country plagued by instability, inflation and uncertainty.

Since the U.S. military raid to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump has quickly pivoted to portraying the move as a newfound economic opportunity for the U.S., seizing tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, saying the U.S. is taking over the sales of 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan oil and will be controlling sales worldwide indefinitely.

On Friday, U.S. forces seized their fifth tanker over the past month that has been linked to Venezuelan oil. The action reflected the determination of the U.S. to fully control the exporting, refining and production of Venezuelan petroleum, a sign of the Trump administration’s plans for ongoing involvement in the sector as it seeks commitments from private companies.

It’s all part of a broader push by Trump to keep gasoline prices low. At a time when many Americans are concerned about affordability, the incursion in Venezuela melds Trump’s assertive use of presidential powers with an optical spectacle meant to convince Americans that he can bring down energy prices.

The meeting, set for 2:30 p.m. EST, is currently set to occur behind closed doors, according to the president’s daily schedule. “At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said Friday in a pre-dawn social media post.

Trump is set to meet with executives from 17 oil companies, according to the White House. Among the companies attending are Chevron, which still operates in Venezuela, and ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which both had oil projects in the country that were lost as part of a 2007 nationalization of private businesses under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

The president is meeting with a wide swath of domestic and international companies with interests ranging from construction to the commodity markets. Other companies slated to be at the meeting include Halliburton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Singapore-based Trafigura, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Repsol.

Large U.S. oil companies have so far largely refrained from affirming investments in Venezuela as contracts and guarantees need to be in place. Trump has suggested on social media that America would help to backstop any investments.

Venezuela’s oil production has slumped below one million barrels a day. Part of Trump’s challenge to turn that around will be to convince oil companies that his administration has a stable relationship with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, as well as protections for companies entering the market.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are slated to attend the oil executives meeting, according to the White House.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — When a 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an immigration agent Wednesday morning, driving in her Minneapolis neighborhood after dropping her son off at school, the Trump administration’s response was swift. The victim was to blame for her own death — acting as a “professional agitator,” a “domestic terrorist,” possibly trained to use her car against law enforcement, officials said.

It was an uncompromising response without any pretense the administration would rely on independent investigations of the event, video of which quickly circulated online, gripping the nation.

“You can accept that this woman’s death is a tragedy,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media, defending the shooting by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent within hours of her death, “while acknowledging it’s a tragedy of her own making.”

The shooting of Renee Nicole Good, an American citizen, put the administration on defense over one of President Trump’s signature policy initiatives, exponentially expanding the ranks of ICE to outnumber most armies, and deploying its agents across unassuming communities throughout the United States.

ICE had just announced the deployment of “the largest immigration operation ever” in the Minnesota city, allegedly targeting Somali residents involved in fraud schemes. But Good’s death could prove a turning point. The shooting has highlighted souring public opinion on Trump’s immigration enforcement, with a majority of Americans now disapproving of the administration’s tactics, according to Pew Research.

Despite the outcry, Trump’s team doubled down on Thursday, vowing to send even more agents to the Midwestern state.

It was not immediately clear whether Good had positioned her car intentionally to thwart law enforcement agents, or in protest of their activities in her neighborhood.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting said that ICE agents were telling her to move her vehicle. Initial footage that emerged of the incident showed that, as she was doing so, Good briefly drove her car in reverse before turning her front wheels away to leave the scene.

She was shot three times by an officer who stood by her front left headlight, who the Department of Homeland Security said was hit by Good and fired in self-defense.

Only Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, urged caution from lawmakers and the public in responding to the incident, telling people to “take a deep breath” and “hold their judgment” for additional footage and evidence.

He distanced himself from the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem, who took mere hours to accuse the deceased of domestic terrorism. “The investigation’s just started,” Homan told CBS in an interview.

“I’m not going to make a judgment call on one video,” he said. “It would be unprofessional to comment.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Renee Nicole Good was engaged in “domestic terrorism” when she was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent.

(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

Yet, asked why DHS had felt compelled to comment, Homan replied, “that’s a question for Homeland Security.”

It was not just the department. Trump, too, wrote on X that the victim was “obviously, a professional agitator.”

“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” Trump wrote, “who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

Noem was unequivocal in her assessment of the incident during engagements with the media on Wednesday and Thursday.

“It was an act of domestic terrorism,” Noem said. “A woman attacked them, and those surrounding them, and attempted to run them over.”

But local officials and law enforcement expressed concern over the incident, warning federal officials that the deployment had unnecessarily increased tensions within the community, and expressing support for the rights of residents to peacefully protest.

“What I think everybody knows that’s been happening here over the last several weeks is that there have been groups of people exercising their 1st Amendment rights,” Minneapolis Chief of Police Brian O’Hara said in an interview with MS NOW. “They have the right to observe, to livestream and record police activity, and they have the right to protest and object to it.”

“The line is, people must be able to exercise those 1st Amendment rights lawfully,” O’Hara said, adding, “and to do it safely.”

On Thursday, Trump administration officials told local law enforcement that the investigation of the matter would be within federal hands.

Vance told reporters at the White House on Thursday that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security would both investigate the case, and said without evidence that Good had “aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator.”

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe, against our law enforcement officers,” Vance said.

WASHINGTON — Five Senate Republicans broke with party leaders on Thursday to advance legislation that would rein in President Trump’s use of the U.S. military in Venezuela, a move that comes as a growing number of GOP lawmakers have expressed unease about the White House’s threats to use force to acquire Greenland.

The procedural vote, which came over the objections of Republican leaders, now sets the stage for a full Senate vote next week on a measure that would block Trump from using military force “within or against Venezuela” without approval from Congress. Even with the Senate’s approval, the legislation is unlikely to become law as it is unlikely to pass the House, and President Trump — who has veto power over legislation — has publicly condemned the measure and the Republicans who supported it.

“This vote greatly hampers American Self Defense and National Security, impeding the President’s Authority as Commander in Chief,” Trump wrote in a social media post shortly after the 52-47 vote in the Senate.

The Republican defection on the issue underscores the growing concern among GOP lawmakers over the Trump administration’s foreign policy ambitions and highlights the bipartisan concern that the president is testing the limits of executive war powers — not only in Venezuela but also in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a U.S. ally.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), one of the Republicans who voted for the resolution, said that while she supported the operation that led to the capture and extradition of Nicolás Maduro, she did not “support committing additional U.S. forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization.”

The resolution is co-sponsored by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The Republicans who supported it were Sens. Collins, Paul, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Todd Young of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

“Finally, the Senate is exercising its constitutional power over the authorization of the use of force to prevent America from being dragged into a new war over oil,” Schiff said in a social media post after the vote.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the White House on Thursday that he was not concerned about Trump losing support among Republican lawmakers in Washington, adding that passage of the resolution in the Senate would not “change anything about how we conduct foreign policy over the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months.”

But Republican support for the resolution reflects a deepening concern within the GOP over Trump’s foreign policy plans, particularly his threats to acquire Greenland — a move that prompted European leaders earlier this week to call on the United States to respect the Arctic territory’s sovereignty

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Wednesday that he does not believe “anybody’s seriously considering” using the military to take control of Greenland.

“In Congress, we’re certainly not,” Johnson said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) struck a similar tone the same day, telling reporters that he does not “see military action being an option” in Greenland.

Other Republican lawmakers have been more openly critical, warning that even floating the idea of using force against a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a defense alliance that includes the United States, risks weakening America’s position on the world stage.

“Threats and intimidation by U.S. officials over American ownership of Greenland are as unseemly as they are counterproductive,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “And the use of force to seize the sovereign democratic territory of one of America’s most loyal and capable allies would be an especially catastrophic act of strategic self-harm to America and its global influence.”

In a statement Tuesday, the White House said acquiring Greenland was a “national security priority” and that using the military to achieve that goal was “always an option.” A day earlier, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, told CNN that “Greenland should be part of the United States.”

“Nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said.

Miller’s remarks angered Republican senators, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) who in an interview with CNN on Wednesday called the idea of invading Greenland “weapons-grade stupid.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C), who has served as the top Republicans on the Senate NATO Observer Group since 2018, criticized the idea as well in a searing Senate floor speech.

“I’m sick of stupid,” Tillis said. “I want good advice for this president, because I want this president to have a good legacy. And this nonsense on what’s going on with Greenland is a distraction from the good work he’s doing, and the amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.”

Tillis, who is not seeking reelection this year, later told CNN that Miller needs to “get into a lane where he knows what he’s talking about or get out of this job.”

WASHINGTON — Five years ago outside the White House, outgoing President Trump told a crowd of supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I’ll be there with you” — in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden.

A short time later, the world watched as the seat of U.S. power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.

On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there is no official event to memorialize what happened that day, when the mob made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled. The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.

Instead, the day displayed the divisions that still define Washington, and the country, and the White House itself issued a glossy new report with its revised history of what happened

Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans convening away from the Capitol at the rebranded Kennedy Center now carrying his own name, shifted blame for Jan. 6 onto the rioters themselves.

The president said he had intended only for his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to confront Congress as it certified Biden’s win. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.

At the same time, Democrats held their own morning meeting at the Capitol, reconvening members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack for a panel discussion. Recalling the history of the day is important, they said, in order to prevent what Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., warned was the GOP’s “Orwellian project of forgetting.”

And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, summoned people for a midday march and they began retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol, this time to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. About 100 people gathered, including Babbitt’s mother.

Tarrio is among those putting pressure on the Trump administration to seek retribution against those who prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters, and the White House in its new report highlighted the work the president has done to free those charged and turned the blame on Democrats for certifying Biden’s election victory.

“They should be fired and prosecuted,” Tarrio told the rally crowd Tuesday.

He was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year.

Echoes of 5 years ago

This milestone anniversary carried echoes of the differences that erupted that day.

But it unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.

“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they’re undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, responding to requests for comment about the delay in hanging the plaque honoring the police at the Capitol, as required by law, said in a statement that the statute “is not implementable,” and proposed alternatives “also do not comply with the statute.”

Democrats revive an old committee, Republicans lead a new one

At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a number of witnesses and others — including former U.S. Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon, who said he thought he was going to die that day and if it hadn’t been for Jan. 6, he would still be on the force, as well as a Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who refused Trump’s pardon, and silenced the room as she blamed the president for the violence and apologized to the officer, stifling tears.

“I can’t allow them not be recognized, to be lied about,” Hemphill said about law enforcement.

“Until I can see that plaque up there,” she won’t be done, Hemphill said.

Pingeon implored the country not to forget what happened, and said, “I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Among those testifying were former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who along with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the two Republicans on the panel that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win. Cheney, who lost her own reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger, did not appear. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi urged the country to turn away from the culture of violent threats on lawmakers and the police.

Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.

Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the Jan. 6 attack, and Johnson, before he became the House speaker, had led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among some 130 GOP lawmakers voting that day to reject the presidential results from some states.

Instead, they have focused on security lapses at the Capitol — including the time it took for the National Guard to arrive and the failure of the police canine units to discover the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. The FBI arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone needed to speak up for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen, authorities say.

“The Capitol Complex is no more secure today than it was on January 6,” Loudermilk said in a social media post. “My Select Subcommittee remains committed to transparency and accountability and ensuring the security failures that occurred on January 6 and the partisan investigation that followed never happens again.”

The aftermath of Jan. 6

Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while trying to climb through the window of a door near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died later after battling the mob. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.

The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators said they believed the matter was best left to the courts.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled ex-presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Will Weissert, Joey Cappelletti and Gary Fields contributed to this report.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump has spent much of his two-week vacation in Florida golfing. But when he gets back to the White House, there’s a military golf course that he’s never played that he’s eyeing for a major construction project.

Long a favored getaway for presidents seeking a few hours’ solace from the stress of running the free world, the Courses at Andrews — inside the secure confines of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, about 15 miles from the White House — are known as the “president’s golf course.” Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden have spent time there, and Barack Obama played it more frequently than any president, roughly 110 times in eight years.

Trump has always preferred the golf courses his family owns — spending about one of every four days of his second term at one of them. But he’s now enlisted golf champion Jack Nicklaus as the architect to overhaul the Courses at Andrews.

“It’s amazing that an individual has time to take a couple hours away from the world crises. And they’re people like everybody else,” said Michael Thomas, the former general manager of the course, who has golfed with many of the presidents visiting Andrews over the years.

Andrews, better known as the home of Air Force One, has two 18-hole courses and a 9-hole one. Its facilities have undergone renovations in the past, including in 2018, when Congress approved funding to replace aging presidential aircraft and to build a new hangar and support facilities. That project was close enough to the courses that they had to be altered then, too.

Trump toured the base by helicopter before Thanksgiving with Nicklaus, who has designed top courses the world over. The president called Andrews “a great place, that’s been destroyed over the years, through lack of maintenance.”

Other golfers, though, describe Andrews’ grounds as in good shape, despite some dry patches. Online reviews praise the course’s mature trees, tricky roughs, and ponds and streams that serve as water hazards. The courses are mostly flat, but afford views of the surrounding base.

‘They all like to drive the cart’

The first president to golf at Andrews was Ford in 1974. Thomas began working there a couple years later, and was general manager from 1981 until he retired in 2019.

He said the Secret Service over the years used as many as 28 golf carts — as well as the president’s usual 30-car motorcade — to keep the perimeter secure.

“It’s a Cecil B. DeMille production every time,” said Thomas, who had the opportunity to play rounds with four different presidents, and with Biden when he was vice president.

He said the commanders in chief generally enjoyed their time out on the course in their own unique ways, but “they all like to drive the cart because they never get an opportunity to drive.”

“It’s like getting your driver’s license all over again,” Thomas laughed.

Trump golfs most weekends, and as of Friday, has spent an estimated 93 days of his second term doing so, according to an Associated Press analysis of his schedules.

That tally includes days when Trump was playing courses his family owns in Virginia, around 30 miles from the White House, and near his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, where he’s spending the winter holidays. It also includes 10 days Trump spent staying at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where his schedule allowed time for rounds of golf.

Trump has visited Andrews in the past, but the White House and base have no record of him playing the courses.

Another of Trump’s construction projects

Andrews’ military history dates to the Civil War, when Union troops used a church near Camp Springs, Md., as sleeping quarters. Its golf course opened in 1960.

The White House said the renovation will be the most significant in the history of Andrews. The courses and clubhouse need improvements due to age and wear, it said, and there are discussions about including a multifunctional event center as part of the project.

“President Trump is a champion-level golfer with an extraordinary eye for detail and design,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “His vision to renovate and beautify Joint Base Andrews’ golf courses will bring much-needed improvements that service members and their families will be able to enjoy for generations to come.”

Plans are in the very early stages, and the cost of — and funding for — the project haven’t been determined, the White House said. Trump has said only that it will require “very little money.”

The Andrews improvements join a bevy of Trump construction projects, including demolishing the White House’s East Wing for a sprawling ballroom now expected to cost $400 million, redoing the bathroom attached to the Lincoln bedroom and replacing the Rose Garden’s lawn with a Mar-a-Lago-like patio area.

Outside the White House, Trump has led building projects at the Kennedy Center and wants to erect a Paris-style arch near the Lincoln Memorial, and has said he wants to rebuild Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, the Trump administration ended a lease agreement with a nonprofit for three public golf courses in Washington — which could allow the president to further shape golfing in the nation’s capital. The White House, however, said that move isn’t related to the plans for Andrews.

Presidential perks of golfing at Andrews

When the president is golfing, Andrews officials block off nine holes at a time so no one plays in front of him, allowing for extra security while also ensuring consistent speed-of-play, Thomas said.

That’s relatively easily done given that the courses aren’t open to the public. They’re usually reserved for active or retired members of the military and their families, as well as some Defense Department-linked federal employees.

Thomas remembers playing a round with the older President Bush, a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee known for fast play, while first lady Barbara Bush walked with Millie, the first couple’s English Springer Spaniel. George W. Bush also played fast, Thomas said, and got additional exercise by frequently riding his mountain bike before golfing.

When he wasn’t golfing at Andrews, Obama tried to recreate at least part of the experience back home. He had a White House golf simulator installed after then-first lady Michelle Obama asked Thomas how they might acquire a model that the president had seen advertised on the Golf Channel. Thomas gave her a contact at the network.

Obama famously cut short a round at Andrews after nine holes in 2011 to hustle back to the White House for what turned out to be a top-secret review of final preparations for a Navy SEAL raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden.

But, while Thomas was golfing with presidents, he said he never witnessed play interrupted by an important call or any major emergency that forced them off the course mid-hole. There also were never any rain-outs.

“If there was rain coming, they’d get the weather forecast before we would,” Thomas said. “They would cancel quick on that.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Listening to the usual legacy media suspects, one might think 2025 was an apocalyptic wasteland of sorts — an authoritarian fever dream brought on by the return of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office. The reality looked very different. This past year was, in many ways, a pretty great and clarifying one. Let’s take stock of what happened when our government remembered whom it serves, as well as what unfinished business remains as we flip the calendar.

First, the obvious: Political sanity was restored to the nation’s capital. After years of leftist elite-driven chaos — wide-open borders, hyper-vindictive lawfare, fecklessness on the world stage and more — the nation has begun to revert back to first principles: national sovereignty, law and order, and strong leadership abroad. Under Trump, the United States has once again acted like a real nation-state that pursues its real interests — not a nongovernmental organization with a nagging guilt complex.

That reorientation has paid huge dividends. On immigration, the Biden-era invasion at the southern border has tapered by more than 90%. On energy, a renewed embrace of domestic production has led to the lowest average national gas prices in nearly five years. Violent crime, thanks to Trump’s law enforcement operations and innovative use of the National Guard, has dramatically fallen: Murders decreased by nearly 20% from 2024, and robbery and burglary also saw double-digit percentage decreases. Abroad, allies and adversaries alike recalibrated to the reality that the White House once again means what it says.

Still, work always remains. Here, then, is my 2026 wish list.

Peace in Eastern Europe

The Russia-Ukraine war has gone on far, far too long. The Trump administration has exerted tremendous diplomatic effort trying to orchestrate a peace deal, which remains elusive. A durable peace — one that halts the senseless slaughter on both sides, respects Ukrainian sovereignty and accommodates legitimate Russian concerns, and avoids a wider great-power conflagration — should be a paramount Trump administration foreign policy goal in 2026. Russia is the invader and Vladimir Putin is the greater obstacle to a lasting peace, but both sides need to make painful — if, frustratingly, also painfully obvious — concessions.

Victory on birthright citizenship

Back home, a consequential legal battle now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Trump administration’s righteous challenge to the erroneous practice of constitutionally “required” birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of noncitizens. The notion that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, was meant to constitutionalize a global human trafficking magnet — granting automatic citizenship to all children born here, including those whose parents entered the country illegally — is indefensible as a matter of plain constitutional text, the congressional history in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and basic common sense. Indeed, birthright citizenship has been nothing short of ruinous for the United States. A Trump administration victory would restore Congress’s rightful authority over circumscribing citizenship and remove a longstanding incentive for illegal immigration.

Improved affordability and housing costs

Legal victories mean relatively little if ordinary Americans continue to feel like they are getting squeezed. Improved affordability must be front and center in 2026 — from the federal level down to states and localities. The cost of living is not an economic abstraction; it affects rent, groceries, child care and the difficulty of buying a first home. Housing, in particular, demands attention. Housing policy should reward supply, not suffocate it — cutting red tape and burdensome construction fees, reforming zoning incentives, and curtailing the inflationary spending that puts upward pressure on mortgage rates. A nation where young families cannot afford to put down roots is a nation courting decline — the very antithesis of Trumpian restoration.

Justice for Minnesota fraud scandal

The burgeoning fraud scandal over state and federal funds for child care in Minnesota, including at businesses run by Somali Americans — astonishing in scale — has become a test case for whether the rule of law still applies when politics get uncomfortable. Justice means following the facts wherever they lead: recovering stolen taxpayer dollars and holding wrongdoers and abettors legally accountable without fear or favor. To wit, on the subject of abettors: What did Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other prominent Minnesota politicians know, and when did they know it? Moreover, what did Kamala Harris — who picked Walz as her 2024 presidential running mate — know, and when did she know it? The Biden administration and the Walz administration began investigating these fraud allegations years ago, and the American people deserve answers to all these questions.

Tamed Communist China

Finally, no wish list can be complete without confronting the central geopolitical challenge of our age: that of Communist China. Simply put, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, who just presided over their largest live-fire military exercises around Taiwan, must be meaningfully deterred in the Indo-Pacific. That means maintaining a combative tariff posture, implementing as much economic decoupling as is feasible and emboldening key regional allies — such as Japan — who share America’s interest in freedom of maritime navigation and diminished Chinese hegemony. Decades from now, Trump’s presidential legacy will be partially defined by how he handled the China challenge. Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal.

This past year showed what is possible when Washington rejects the politics of managed decline and reembraces the best of the American tradition and way of life. Let us hope we will see more — a lot more — of that same success in this new year.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

WASHINGTON — President Trump is not the first president to want more room at the White House for entertaining, says the longest-serving top aide in the executive residence, offering some backup for the reason Trump has cited for his ballroom construction project.

Gary Walters spent more than two decades as White House chief usher to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush — a role that is akin to being the general manager of the residence.

“All the presidents that I had an opportunity to serve always talked about some possibility of an enlarged area” for entertaining, Walters said in an interview with the Associated Press about his recently published memoir.

Trump has been talking about building a White House ballroom for years, even before he entered the political arena. In July, the White House announced a 90,000-square-foot space would be built on the east side of the complex to accommodate 650 seated guests at a then-estimated cost of $200 million. Trump has said it will be paid for with private donations, including from him.

The Republican president later upped the proposed ballroom’s capacity to 999 people and, by October, had demolished the two-story East Wing of the White House to build it there. In December, he updated the price tag to $400 million — double the original estimate.

Images of the East Wing being demolished shocked historians, preservationists and others, but Walters said there is a long history of projects on the campus, ranging from conservatories, greenhouses and stables being torn down to build the West Wing in 1902, to the expansion of the residence with a third floor, to the addition of the East Wing itself during World War II to provide workspace for the first lady, her staff and other White House offices.

“So there’s always been construction going on around the White House,” Walters said.

Other presidents bemoaned the lack of space for entertaining

When Walters was on the job, the capacity of the largest public rooms in the White House was among the first topics he discussed with the incoming president, first lady and their social secretary, he said. The presidents he served all talked about the limited number of people the White House could handle.

When set up for a state dinner, the State Dining Room can hold about 130 people: 13 round tables each with seating for 10, Walters said. The East Room can accommodate about 300 chairs — fewer if space is needed for television cameras.

Trump complains often that both rooms are too small. He also has complained about the use of large tents on the south grounds, the main workaround for big events such as ritzy state dinners for foreign leaders. Walters said the tents had issues.

“When it rained, the water flows downhill and the grass became soggy, no matter what we tried to do,” Walters said. “We dug culverts around the outside of the tent to try and get the water.” Tents damaged the grass, requiring more work to reseed it, he said.

Walters admitted it was a bit jarring to see the East Wing torn down, and said he had fond personal memories of the space. “I met my wife at the White House and she worked in the East Wing, so that was a joy for me,” said Walters, 79.

His wife, Barbara, was a receptionist in the visitors office during the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The couple recently celebrated 48 years of marriage.

Broken bones alter usher’s career trajectory

Walters owes his place in history as the longest-serving White House chief usher to the misfortune of a broken ankle.

He was 23 in early 1970, honorably discharged from the Army and looking for a job that would allow him to finish college at night. The Executive Protective Service, a precursor to the U.S. Secret Service, was hiring and accepted him.

But shortly before the graduation ceremony, Walters broke an ankle playing football. He could not patrol out of uniform, wearing a cast and hobbling around on crutches, so he was given a temporary assignment in the White House Police Control and Appointments Center. He stayed for five years.

“This injury also changed the course of my career,” Walters wrote in his memoir, “White House Memories: 1970-2007: Recollections of the Longest-Serving Chief Usher.” He gained an ”in-depth knowledge of the ways and security systems of the White House that would ultimately greatly benefit me in my future role in the Usher’s Office.”

A few months after being promoted to sergeant in 1975, he learned of an opening in the Usher’s Office. He applied and joined as an assistant in early 1976.

A decade later, he was elevated to chief usher by Reagan, who gave Walters the top job in the residence overseeing maintenance, construction and renovation projects, and food service, along with administrative, financial and personnel functions. He managed a staff of about 90 butlers, housekeepers, cooks, florists, electricians, engineers, plumbers and others.

Walters retired in 2007 after 37 years at the White House, including a record 21 years as chief usher. He served under seven presidents, from Nixon to George W. Bush.

In that time, Walters saw a broad swath of presidential history: the only president who ever resigned, an appointed vice president become the only unelected president, a president be impeached and stay in office, a father and son become president and the Supreme Court decide the most closely contested presidential election in U.S. history.

He’s often asked what he liked most about his work and “without hesitation I say it is getting to know and interact directly with the president, first lady, and other members of their family. It was an honor to get to know them with my own eyes and ears,” Walters wrote.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump issued the first vetoes of his second term on Tuesday, rejecting two low-profile bipartisan bills, a move that had the effect of punishing backers who had opposed the president’s positions on other issues.

Trump vetoed drinking water pipeline legislation from Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a longtime ally who broke with the president in November to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He also vetoed legislation that would have given the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida more control of some of its tribal lands. The tribe was among groups suing the administration over an immigration detention center in the Everglades known as “ Alligator Alcatraz.”

Both bills had bipartisan support and had been noncontroversial until the White House announced Trump’s vetoes Tuesday night.

Trump appeared to acknowledge the tribe’s opposition to the detention facility in a letter to Congress explaining his veto. “The Miccosukee Tribe has actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” Trump wrote.

Trump did not allude to Boebert in his veto of her legislation, but raised concerns about the cost of the water pipeline at the heart of that bill.

Boebert, one of four House Republicans who sided with House Democrats early on to force the release of the Epstein files, shared a statement on social media suggesting that the veto may have been “political retaliation.”

“I sincerely hope this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics,” her statement said. Boebert added in another post: “This isn’t over.”

The Florida legislation had been sponsored by Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez, whom Trump has endorsed. Gimenez and the Miccosukee Tribe were not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

When asked whether the vetoes were punishment, the White House did not answer and instead referred to Trump’s statements explaining the vetoes.

Congress can override the vetoes by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the House and the Senate, but it’s unclear if there’s enough support in the Republican-controlled chambers to do so, especially heading into a midterm election year where many of them will be on the ballot and many GOP members will count on Trump’s backing.

Boebert’s legislation, the “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act,” aimed to improve access to clean drinking water in eastern Colorado.

While the congresswoman has long been a staunch supporter of Trump, she found herself at odds with the president with her support this year for legislation that required the Justice Department to release files related to Epstein.

Trump fought the proposal before reversing in the face of growing Republican support for releasing the files. Members of his administration even met with Boebert in the White House Situation Room to discuss the matter, though she didn’t change her mind.

Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado, who co-sponsored the legislation, said he was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s veto.

“This was a bipartisan, unanimous bill passed by Congress to uphold a long-standing federal commitment to southeastern Colorado,” Hurd said in a statement.

He said the legislation did not authorize any new construction spending or expand the federal government’s original commitment to the pipeline project, but adjusted the terms of repaying its costs.

Price and Kinnard write for the Associated Press. Kinnard reported from Chapin, S.C.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has indicated that the U.S. has “hit” a facility in South America as he wages a pressure campaign on Venezuela, but the U.S. offered no other details.

Trump made the comments in what seemed to be an impromptu radio interview Friday.

The president, who called radio host John Catsimatidis during a program on WABC radio, was discussing U.S. strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed at least 105 people in 29 known strikes since early September.

“I don’t know if you read or saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from,” Trump said. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So, we hit them very hard.”

Trump did not offer any additional details in the interview, including what kind of attack may have occurred. The Pentagon on Monday referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or one of the U.S. military’s social media accounts has in the past typically announced every boat strike in a post on X, but they have not posted any notice of any strike on a facility.

The press office of Venezuela’s government did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on Trump’s statement.

Trump for months has suggested he may conduct land strikes in South America, in Venezuela or possibly another country, and in recent weeks has been saying the U.S. would move beyond striking boats and would strike on land “soon.”

In October, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela. The agency did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Monday.

Along with the strikes, the U.S. has sent warships, built up military forces in the region, seized two oil tankers and pursued a third.

The Trump administration has said it is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and seeking to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from power.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published this month that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro ‘cries uncle.’”

Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

A funny thing about this year’s best films: Half of them are adaptations. As a movie lover who’s always hunting for new talent, new ideas and new stimuli, I used to view that as creative inertia. But 2025 has changed my mind.

Now I see artists drawing inspiration from the past to show that Hollywood should trust the sturdy bones that have kept it running for over a century: good yarns, bold casting, films that don’t feel made by focus groups or doomsaying bean-counters (or, God help us, AI), but by blood and sweat.

Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.

From original tales to radical reworkings of classics both high-falutin’ and raucously lowbrow, these 10 filmmakers all know that the most vital part of the storytelling business has stayed exactly the same. They have to wow an audience. And they did.

1. ‘Sinners’

Michael B. Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack in the movie “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

A period-piece-vampire-musical mashup could have been discordant, but writer-director Ryan Coogler confidently makes all three genres harmonize. In “Sinners,” Coogler double-casts his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers Smoke and Stack, then pits them against a pack of banjo-picking bloodsuckers helmed by a roguish Jack O’Connell. We’re expecting a big, bloody brouhaha and we get it. Underneath the playful carnage, however, the question at stake is: Why suffer the daily indignities of the Jim Crow-era South when you could outlive — and eat — your oppressors? “Sinners” is the most exciting film of 2025, both for what it is and for what it proves: that fresh blockbusters still exist and people are eager to gobble them up.

(“Sinners” is available on multiple platforms.)

2. ‘Hedda’

Tessa Thompson in the movie “Hedda.”

(Prime Video)

The stage’s iconic mean girl glides from 1890s Norway to 1950s England in this vibrant and venomous adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” Tessa Thompson stars as the restless housewife who needs to secure her milquetoast husband (Tom Bateman) a promotion and has a nasty habit of playing with guns. Keeping pace with her manipulative anti-heroine, writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman”) makes a few calculated moves of her own, including gender-swapping Hedda’s ex into a curvaceous career woman (a haughty Nina Hoss) whose drab and geeky new girlfriend (Imogen Poots) irritates their hostess’ insecurities. As a capper, “Hedda” stages its brutal showdown at an all-night vodka-and-cocaine-fueled mansion shebang with a live jazz band, a lake for skinny-dippers and a hedge maze where former lovers are tempted to canoodle. The original play is over a century old, but every scene feels screamingly alive.

(“Hedda” is available on Prime Video.)

3. ‘Eddington’

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in “Eddington.”

(A24)

No film was more polarizing than Ari Aster’s COVID-set satire about a mask-hating sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix), a sanctimonious mayor (Pedro Pascal) and the high-tech cabal that benefits when these two modern cowboys come to blows. “Eddington” immortalizes the bleak humor and lingo of May 2020 (think murder hornets, Antifa and toilet paper hoarders). More stingingly, it captures the mental delirium of a small town — make that an entire planet — that hasn’t yet realized that there’s a second sickness seeping in through their smartphones. Everyone’s got a device in their hand pretty much all the time, aiming their cameras at each other like pistols in a Wild West standoff. Yet no character grasps what’s really going on. (I have a theory, but when I explain the larger conspiracy, I sound cuckoo too.) This is the movie that will explain pandemic brain to future generations. With distance, I’m pretty sure the haters will come around.

(“Eddington” is available on multiple platforms.)

4. ‘One Battle After Another’

Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “One Battle After Another.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Every shot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s invigorating nail-biter is a banger: sentinels skateboarding over rooftops, caged kids playing catch with a crumpled foil blanket, Teyana Taylor’s militant Perfidia Beverly Hills blasting an automatic rifle while nine months pregnant. It’s the rare film that instantly imprints itself on the viewer. On my second watch, I was shocked by how much of “One Battle After Another” already felt tattooed on my brain, down to the shudder I got from Sean Penn’s loathsome Col. Lockjaw licking his comb to tidy his bangs. Riffing from Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” the central drama follows flunky anarchist Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) fumblingly attempting to rescue his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from Lockjaw’s clutches. But he’s not much help to her, and as the title implies, this is merely one skirmish in humanity’s sprawling struggle for freedom that has, and will, drag on forever. Anderson’s knack for ensemble work stretches back as far as “Boogie Nights,” yet here, even his unnamed characters have crucial roles to play. His world-building has never before felt this holistic and inspirational.

(“One Battle After Another” is now playing in theaters.)

5. ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

(Roadside Attractions)

The backstory behind this stunner couldn’t be more baroque: Director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”) boldly revamped a Broadway musical of an Oscar-winning drama (itself taken from an experimental novel) about two inmates in an Argentine cell who mentally escape into the movies. Each incarnation has doubled down on the sensorial overload of what came before. If you know “Kiss of the Spider Woman’s” lineage, you’ll be impressed by how Condon ups the fantasy and stokes the revolutionary glamour with more Technicolor dance showcases for Jennifer Lopez’. (She’s doing her best Cyd Charisse, which turns out to be darned good.) If this is your first taste of the tale, give yourself over to the prickly but tender relationship between prisoners Luis and Valentin, played by feisty new talent Tonatiuh and a red-blooded Diego Luna. This is go-for-broke filmmaking with a wallop. As Luis says of his own version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” playing in his head, “Call it kitsch, call it camp — I don’t care, I love it.”

(“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is available on multiple platforms.)

6. ‘A Useful Ghost’

A scene from the movie “A Useful Ghost.”

(TIFF)

Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Grand Prix winner opens with a haunted vacuum cleaner. From there, it gets even more surprising. Ghosts have infested a wealthy widow’s factory and are possessing appliances, seducing her son and cozying up to the prime minister for favors. Some of these people have died by accident, some by corporate neglect or worse. This droll spook show bleeds into romance and politics and, to our shock, becomes genuinely emotional. (It helps to remember that the military killed over 80 Bangkok protesters in 2010.) But why vacuum cleaners, you ask? The conceit is more than a sticky idea. Ordinary people can get crushed but the anger they leave behind lingers like fine dust.

(“A Useful Ghost” opens Jan. 16, 2026, in theaters.)

7. ‘The Roses’

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie “The Roses.”

(Jaap Buitendijk / Searchlight Pictures)

Technically, “The Roses” is rooted in the 1980s hit novel and subsequent blockbuster “The War of the Roses,” which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an estranged couple who attack each other with lawyers, poison and chandeliers. In spirit, however, this redo is pure 1930s screwball comedy. Leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are skilled verbal ninjas who hurl razor-sharp insults at each other’s egos, and although their characters’ divorce happens in California, director Jay Roach lets the actors keep their snippy British accents. The script by two-time Oscar nominee Tony McNamara (“The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) adds a cruel twist to the original: This time around, the marrieds truly do try their damnedest to love and support each other. And still, their walls come tumbling down.

(“The Roses” is available on multiple platforms.)

8. ‘In Whose Name?’

Ye and Elon Musk in the documentary “In Whose Name?”

(AMSI Entertainment)

Nico Ballesteros was a high schooler with an iPhone when he entered Kanye West’s orbit in 2018. Over the next six years, the Orange County kid shot over 3,000 hours of footage as Ye (as the artist legally became known in 2021) jetted from Paris to Uganda, Calabasas to the White House, meeting everyone from Kenny G to Elon Musk on a quest to fulfill his creative and spiritual goals while incinerating his personal life and public reputation. Ye gave the documentarian full access with no editorial oversight, besides one moment in which he tells the camera that he wants the film to be about mental health. This riveting tragedy definitely is. We see an egomaniac whose fear of being beholden to anything motivates him to go off his meds, a billionaire provocateur who believes he can afford the consequences of his bigotry and, above all, a deeply flawed man who nukes his entire world to insist he’s right.

(“In Whose Name?” is available on multiple platforms.)

9. ‘Sirāt’

An image from the movie “Sirāt,” directed by Oliver Laxe.

(Festival de Cannes)

The techno soundtrack of Oliver Laxe’s desolate road thriller has rattled my house for months. Lately, I’ve spent just as much time contemplating the movie’s silence — those hushed stretches in which this caravan of bohemians speeds across the Moroccan desert looking like the only free people left on Earth. A father, Luis (“Pan’s Labyrinth’s” Sergi López), and his 12-year-old son team up with this band of tattooed burnouts in the hope of finding the boy’s runaway sister. Before long, Luis is just hoping to make it to safety, assuming anywhere safe still exists. Static on the radio warns that World War III might be underway. These outsiders click off the news and crank up the music. The paradox of “Sirāt” is that I’m dying to talk about it more but I’ve got to keep my mouth shut until people experience its dramatic twists for themselves.

(“Sirāt” returns to theaters on Feb. 6, 2026.)

10. ‘The Naked Gun’

Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson in the movie “The Naked Gun.”

(Frank Masi / Paramount Pictures)

Liam Neeson needed this pummeling pun-fest. So did everyone else in 2025. Director Akiva Schaffer’s continuation of the “Police Squad!” franchise let the 73-year-old “Taken” star poke fun at his own bruising gravitas. Playing the son of Leslie Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin, Neeson kept us in hysterics with a stupid-brilliant barrage of surreal wordplay and daffy slapstick. The casting was as odd — and perfect — as rumors that he and his co-star Pamela Anderson started dating on set. This fourth sequel didn’t try to outsmart the classic Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker template. It simply told the same old story: Cop meets babe, cop and babe canoodle with a magical snowman, cop drops his trousers on live TV, this time minus the blimp. Goodyear? No, the worst — which made Neeson our hero.

(“The Naked Gun” is available on multiple platforms.)

Since I’m all jazzed-up about great movies, here are 10 honorable mentions very much worth a watch.

“The Ballad of Wallis Island”
A kooky millionaire strong-arms his favorite mid-aughts folk duo into playing a reunion show on his Welsh island. Sounds cutesy, but it’s the movie I recommended most — to everyone from my mailman to my mother. They all loved it. Join the fan club.

“Bunny”
This East Village indie by debut director Ben Jacobson is a scummy gem. A gigolo’s birthday goes very wrong. But all the characters racing up and down the stairs of his uber-New York walk-up hovel are a howl.

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Rose Byrne excels equally at comedy and drama. This audit of a breakdown smashes both together and cranks the tension up to eleven. Playing a high-stress working mom of an ill child, her try-hard heroine leans in so harrowingly far, she goes kamikaze.

“Lurker”
Today’s celebrity might be viral on Instagram and unknown everywhere else. Alex Russell’s stomach-churning psychodrama stars Archie Madekwe as an L.A.-based singer on the brink of genuine fame and Théodore Pellerin as the hanger-on who endures — and exploits — the fledgling star’s power moves and hazy boundaries.

“Magic Farm”
Filmmaker Amalia Ulman’s rascally farce stars Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff as clickbait journalists who fly to Argentina to shoot a viral video about a singer in a bunny costume and wind up looking twice as ridiculous.

Keke Palmer, left, and SZA in the movie “One of Them Days.”

(Anne Marie Fox / Sony Pictures)

“One of Them Days”
Keke Palmer and SZA play broke Baldwin Hills roommates who have nine hours to make rent. I’d happily watch their stoner high jinks in real time.

“The Perfect Neighbor”
Pieced together primarily from police body-camera footage, Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary unfurls in a Florida cul-de-sac where a community — adults, kids and cops — agrees that one woman is an entitled pill. The problem is she thinks they’re the problem. And she has a gun.

“Sisu: Road to Revenge”
If Buster Keaton were alive, he’d hail this grisly, mostly mute Finnish action flick as a worthy successor to “The General.” It even boasts a thrilling sequence on a train, although director Jalmari Helander also brazenly poaches from “Die Hard” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

“Train Dreams”
Trees fall in the woods and a 20th-century logger (Joel Edgerton) plays an unheard, unthanked but beautiful role in the building of America.

“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”
Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) teams up with a soul-searching priest (Josh O’Connor) to solve a perplexing church stabbing. From deft plot twists to provocative Catholic theology, Rian Johnson’s crowd-pleasing murder mystery is marvelously executed.

NEW YORK — A planned Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center, a holiday tradition dating back more than 20 years, has been canceled. The show’s host, musician Chuck Redd, says that he called off the performance in the wake of the White House announcing last week that President Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

As of Friday, the building’s facade reads The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. According to the White House, the president’s handpicked board approved the decision, which scholars have said violates the law. Trump had been suggesting for months he was open to changing the center’s name.

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told the Associated Press in an email Wednesday. Redd, a drummer and vibraphone player who has toured with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Ray Brown, has been presiding over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to email seeking comment. The center’s website lists the show as canceled.

President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and Congress passed a law the following year naming the center as a living memorial to him. Kennedy niece Kerry Kennedy has vowed to remove Trump’s name from the building once he leaves office and former House historian Ray Smock is among those who say any changes would have to be approved by Congress.

The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.

Trump, a Republican, has been deeply involved with the center named for an iconic Democrat after mostly ignoring it during his first term. He has forced out its leadership, overhauled the board while arranging for himself to head it and hosted this year’s Kennedy Center honors, breaking a long tradition of presidents mostly serving as spectators. The changes at the Kennedy Center are part of the president’s larger mission to fight “woke” culture at federal cultural institutions.

Numerous artists have called off Kennedy Center performances since Trump returned to office, including Issa Rae and Peter Wolf. Lin-Manuel Miranda canceled a planned production of “Hamilton.”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

TikTok has finalized a deal with Oracle and two other investors that will allow the popular social video platform to continue its business in U.S.

The deal, expected to close on Jan. 22, will be 50% held by a new investor consortium that includes tech giant Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, a technology fund in the United Arab Emirates (with each holding 15%). The rest of the group is made up of ByteDance owning 19.19% and affiliates of existing ByteDance investors holding 30.1%, TikTok said in a memo to employees.

“With these agreements in place, our focus must stay where it’s always been — firmly on delivering for our users, creators, businesses and the global TikTok community,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew wrote in his memo.

The company’s future for many years in the U.S. had been uncertain, amid security concerns among legislators about ByteDance’s ties to China. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance had been under pressure to divest its ownership in the app’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban, due to a law Congress passed that went into effect in January. President Trump has signed orders that have allowed TikTok to keep operating in the country and in September signed an executive order outlining the new joint venture.

The venture, which would oversee U.S. data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance, would be governed by a seven-member board that is majority American, Chew said in his memo. Oracle will be the security partner responsible for “auditing and validating compliance with the agreed upon National Security Terms,” Chew wrote.

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is also a party in effort to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

Oracle did not return a request for comment. Silver Lake declined to comment. The White House on Thursday referred questions about the deal back to TikTok. In September, Trump said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had approved the deal.

“These safeguards would protect the American people from the misuse of their data and the influence of a foreign adversary, while also allowing the millions of American viewers, creators, and businesses that rely on the TikTok application to continue using it,” Trump stated in his executive order.

The announcement will come as a relief to some creators and businesses who rely on TikTok to entertain and reach fans and customers.

“I hope it just stays true to the platform and the independence we get from it,” said Yasmine Sahide, who posts comedy videos on TikTok and has 2.4 million followers. “I hope we’re still able to monetize our videos the same way because without that, I think a lot of people would leave or feel uninspired.”

Keith Lee, a TikTok creator who posts videos about food, said he expects the algorithm to change.”I just hope that we can still stay connected with our community and reach an audience the same way as before,” said Lee, who has 17.3 million followers.

Many TikTok creators are based in Southern California, close to TikTok’s office in Culver City. Over the years when TikTok’s future appeared uncertain, some of those creators diversified, posting their content to other platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

“It’s a smart way to avoid ownership and data issues,” said Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research, of the deal.

If finalized, the deal would remove a persistent issue in Beijing-Washington relations and signal progress in broader talks. But it would also deprive China’s most valuable private company of total control of an American social media phenomenon.

ByteDance’s coveted algorithms are considered central to TikTok’s business. Under the the deal proposed by Washington, ByteDance will license its AI recommendation technology to a newly created U.S. TikTok entity, which will use the existing algorithm to retrain a new system that is secured by Oracle, according to Bloomberg. The algorithm will be retrained on U.S. user data by the U.S. joint venture, according to TikTok.

Some industry observers questioned whether the deal addresses the larger concerns surrounding TikTok in the law Congress passed.

“While these executive orders positively have allowed the platform to operate and maintain the venue for speech, they do not resolve the underlying concerns about the law, which could be applied to other platforms in the future and raise questions about executive power,” said Cato Institute senior fellow in tech policy Jennifer Huddleston in a statement.

“Just because TikTok remains available under such orders does not mean that the policy concerns about the underlying law have been resolved.”

Bloomberg contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Rosenberg is still trying to understand why President Trump would free the man who defrauded him out of a quarter of a million dollars.

Rosenberg, a retired wholesale produce distributor living in Nevada, has supported Trump since he entered politics, but the president’s decision in November to commute the sentence of former private equity executive David Gentile has left him angry and confused.

“I just feel I’ve been betrayed,” Rosenberg, 68, said. “I don’t know why he would do this, unless there was some sort of gain somewhere, or some favor being called in. I am very disappointed. I kind of put him above this kind of thing.”

Trump’s decision to release Gentile from prison less than two weeks into his seven-year sentence has drawn scrutiny from securities attorneys and a U.S. senator — all of whom say the White House’s explanation for the act of clemency is not adding up. It’s also drawn the ire of his victims.

“I think it is disgusting,” said CarolAnn Tutera, 70, who invested more than $400,000 with Gentile’s company, GPB Capital. Gentile, she added, “basically pulled a Bernie Madoff and swindled people out of their money, and then he gets to go home to his wife and kids.”

Gentile and his business partner, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted of securities and wire fraud in August 2024 for carrying out what federal prosecutors described as a $1.6-billion Ponzi scheme to defraud more than 10,000 investors. After an eight-week trial, it took a jury five hours to return a guilty verdict.

More than 1,000 people attested to their losses after investing with GPB, according to federal prosecutors who described the victims as “hardworking, everyday people.”

When Gentile and Schneider were sentenced in May, Joseph Nocella Jr., the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and Christopher Raia, a senior official in the Justice Department, called their punishment “well deserved” and a warning to would-be fraudsters.

“May today’s sentencing deter anyone who seeks to greedily profit off their clients through deceitful practices,” Raia said in a statement.

Then, on Nov. 26 — just 12 days after Gentile reported to prison — Trump commuted his sentence with “no further fines, restitution, probation, or other conditions,” according to a grant of clemency signed by Trump. Under those terms, Gentile may not have to pay $15 million that federal prosecutors are seeking in forfeiture.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters this month that prosecutors had failed to tie “supposedly fraudulent” representations to Gentile and that his conviction was a “weaponization of justice” led by the Biden administration — even though the sentences and convictions were lauded by Trump’s own appointees.

The White House declined to say who advised Trump in the decision or whether Trump was considering granting clemency to Schneider, Gentile’s co-defendant. Attorneys for Gentile and Schneider did not respond to a request seeking comment.

Adam Gana, a securities attorney whose firm has represented more than 250 GPB investors, called the White House’s explanation “a word salad of nonsense,” and questioned why Trump granted Gentile a commutation, which lessens a sentence, rather than a pardon, which forgives the offense itself.

“If the government wasn’t able to prove their case, why not pardon David Gentile? And why is his partner still in prison?” Gana said. “It’s left us with more questions than answers.”

‘It hurts a lot’

To Rosenberg, Tutera and two other investors interviewed by The Times, the president’s decision stripped away any sense of closure they felt after Gentile and Schneider were convicted.

Rosenberg has tried not to dwell on the $250,000 he lost in 2016, after a broker “painted a beautiful picture” of steady returns and long-term profits. The investments were supposed to generate income for him during retirement.

“A quarter of a million dollars, it hurts a lot,” Rosenberg said. “It changed a lot of things I do. Little trips that I wanted to take with my grandkids — well, they’re not quite as nice as they were planned on being.”

Jeffrey Rosenberg, a longtime Trump supporter, said he felt “betrayed” after the president granted clemency to convicted fraudster David Gentile.

(Scott Sady / For The Times)

Tutera, who runs a hormone replacement therapy office in Arizona, invested more than $400,000 with GPB at the recommendation of a financial advisor. She hoped the returns would help support her retirement after her husband had died.

“I was on grief brain at the time and just feel I was taken advantage of and really sold a bill of goods,” said Tutera, 70. Now, she says: “I have to keep working to make up for what I was owed.” She has been able to recover only about $40,000.

Tutera said her sister, Julie Ullman, and their 97-year-old mother also fell victim to the scheme. Their mother lost more than $100,000 and now finds herself spending down savings she had planned to leave to her children and not trusting people, she said.

“That’s really sad,” Tutera said. “People, unfortunately, have turned into thieves, liars and cheaters, and I don’t know what’s happened to the world, but we’ve lost our way to be kind.”

Ullman, 58, who manages a medical practice in Arizona, said the financial loss was life-changing.

“I’m going to have to work longer than I thought I would because that was my retirement fund,” Ullman said.

Mei, a 71-year-old licensed acupuncturist who asked to not use her full name out of embarrassment, said a broker introduced her to the GPB investment funds at a lunch meeting targeting divorced women. She eventually invested $500,000 and lost all of it. It was only through lawsuits that she was able to recover roughly $214,000 of her money, she said.

Mei had planned to retire in New York to be close to her children. But the loss of income has forced her to live in China, where the cost of living is much lower, six months out of the year, she said.

Mei fears Trump’s decision to commute Gentile’s sentence will allow these schemes to continue.

“Donald Trump is promoting more white-collar financial criminals, for sure,” Mei said. “How unfair.”

Bob Van De Veire, a securities attorney who has represented more than 100 GPB investors, said he has mostly handled negligence cases against the brokers who touted GPB investments.

“Based on all the red flags that were present, they should have never sold these investments at all,” Van De Veire said.

Gana, the securities attorney, added that he will continue to fight for victims in civil court, noting the clemency only addressed the criminal conviction.

The commutation caught the eye of Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who sent a letter to the White House last week asking several questions: Why, for example, did Gentile receive clemency while Schneider did not? And what were the trial errors cited as a reason for the commutation? He said victims deserve answers.

“They will not forget that when they needed their government to stand with them against the man who stole their futures, their President chose to stand with the criminal instead,” Gallego wrote.

Rosenberg, the retiree from Nevada, said he still supports the president but can’t help but think Trump’s decision makes him “look like another of the swamp” that Trump says he wants to drain.

“I think Trump does a lot of good things,” he said, “but this is a bad one.”

Still, Rosenberg is hopeful Trump may do right by the victims — even if it’s just by admitting he made a mistake.

“I would like to think that he was fed some bad information somewhere along the way,” he said. “If that is the case … at least come forward and say, ‘I regret it.’ ”

WASHINGTON — President Trump intends to preview his agenda for next year and beyond in a live speech from the White House on Wednesday night. His remarks are coming at a crucial time as he tries to rebuild his steadily eroding popularity.

The White House offered few details about what the Republican president intends to emphasize in the 6 p.m. PST speech. Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.

Trump’s mass deportations of immigrants have also proved unpopular even as he is viewed favorably for halting crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico. The public has generally been nonplussed by his income tax cuts and globe-trotting efforts to end conflicts, attack suspected drug boats near Venezuela and attract investment dollars into the United States.

In 2026, Trump and his party face a referendum on their leadership as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.

Trump has said that he thinks more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Administration officials say investment commitments for new factories will reverse the recent decline in manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.

“It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump said in a Tuesday social media post announcing the speech.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump would discuss his achievements this year and his plans for the remainder of his second term.

Trump has been omnipresent on social media and television this year with his impromptu news conferences and speeches. But addresses to the nation often can be relatively sober affairs, as was Trump’s June address describing the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran.

The president has eschewed the messaging discipline that’s common among most politicians, an authenticity that appeals to some voters and repels others.

In a speech in Pennsylvania last week, he said his tariffs might mean that American children should have fewer dolls and pencils, while confirming a previously denied story from his first term in 2018 that he did not want immigrants from “shithole” countries.

On Monday, Trump on his social media site blamed Rob Reiner’s vocal objections to the president for the killing of the actor-director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

A report released on Tuesday showed a jobs market that looks increasingly fragile, even if the overall economy still appears to be stable.

Employers were adding on average 122,750 jobs a month during the first four months of this year. But since Trump announced his broad tariffs in April, monthly job gains have averaged a paltry 17,000 as the unemployment rate has climbed from 4% in January to 4.6%.

Trump’s team has blamed Democratic lawmakers for shutting down the government for the job losses reported Tuesday during October. The president continues to blame his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for any challenges the nation might face over inflation or ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.