President Trump used a pre-scheduled Hispanic Heritage event at the White House, to update on several initiatives and current policy events ongoing during the administration.
President Trump discusses the end to U.S. military force operations in Iraq and the drawdown directive given by his office for full and complete withdrawal. Additionally, President Trump discusses ongoing issues on the trade front, tariffs, the auto sector, Canada, AI/SI and much more. WATCH:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave an extensive press conference following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the conclusion of U.S. participation in the 2026 UNGA. The full video and transcript are below.
There’s little argument that Secretary Rubio is one of the most remarkable Secretary of States’ in our modern history.
[Transcript] – SECRETARY RUBIO: Okay, go ahead.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, what were the U.S. demands with the Iranians yesterday, and was there any discussion of return to the MOU, or have the terms changed for the United States in terms —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, yesterday’s conversation was with some of the mediators involved in that process, and I don’t want to characterize it as one direction or another. I think it’s a pretty clear understanding of what this – remember everything here, at its core, the number one issue – the President highlighted this yesterday in his speech before the world – Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Everything emanates from that.
We understand the straits is an issue. The southern lane of the straits is open. Every day more and more barrels of oil are flowing through there. And they’re open, thanks to the efforts of the United States military that’s both defending shipping and has removed mines. And that trend will continue. Meanwhile, the only blockade in the Hormuz Straits is the one we’ve imposed on Iran because they keep firing on ships and they continue to do so as early as this morning. There was another launch, so – on shipping. So, we’ll continue to defend. We’ll continue to hold the straits open. So that’s an issue.
But the core issue here is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. We make that point in every interaction with them. Beyond that, I would say that – I don’t want to characterize these meetings because these – if there’s going to be a deal with Iran, it’s not going to happen at a press conference. It’s going to involve a lot of hard work over a period of time, and it will engage and involve mediators as well.
So as the President said, he’s open to a deal. The President’s open, still to this moment, to making a deal with Iran that allows Iran to be what it should be, which is a great and prosperous country. But if they continue to insist on the desire for a nuclear weapon, their support for proxies in the region that – their support of terrorism – they’re the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism – then we’re going to have big problems with them. And the President has a number of options available to him, including the ones he’s already taken, which is to impose severe and growing economic costs. But he also has some military options, upon which I won’t speculate.
During remarks following discussions with Sergey Lavrov at the United Nations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that President Trump has extending the G20 invitation to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.
The G20 in Miami is scheduled for December 14th and 15th, and while there is no official reason for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ever attend any of the G7, G20 or NATO forums, the President of Ukraine has been a participant in the last several years due to the European and Canadian political manipulations surrounding such events.
That said, if Vladimir Putin attends the G20 and Zelenskyy is invited to the G20 (for whatever ridiculous justification that might be presented), it would be the first time Zelenskyy and Putin have been in an international forum simultaneously.
In the background today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was reported to have told Secretary Rubio that Russia understands the United States no longer is influencing the EU-NATO decisions about escalating conflict in the European desire to achieve full military combat against Russia; therefore there was no reason for Lavrov and Rubio to waste time in discussions of some meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy when the people in actual control of Kiev’s decision-making are in London, Berlin and Brussels.
It appears Rubio respected Lavrov’s pragmatic reality yet still wants to set the stage for an opportunity that exists outside the constraints of the EU-NATO alliance – hence, the G20 venue in Miami becomes a possibility.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks to the assembled press pool following extensive conversations with various foreign ministers, including discussions today with Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Questions to Rubio surrounded the Iran conflict, the status of Venezuela, the discussions between the U.S., Russia and Ukraine, the status of Cuba and beyond. Secretary Rubio gives direct, honest and substantive responses to each of the regional questions asked. Exceptional press conference. WATCH:
President Trump emphasizes the importance of the western hemisphere and Latin America by participating in a second meeting of the “Shield of Americas” team. The objective of the assembly is to secure the western hemisphere, coordinate economic, political, and security efforts among participating countries to strengthen judicial practices, improve investment opportunities, and build hemispheric partnerships. The shield emphasizes intelligence sharing and coordinated operations to locate and dismantle drug cartel networks and associated criminal infrastructure.
Structure and Operations: The Shield of the Americas functions as a head-of-state level organization, working closely with the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C), which is led by USSOUTHCOM and focuses on military and security operations against cartels. The coalition’s operational arm, the Americas Counter Cartel Conference, brings together defense and security ministers from member states to coordinate strategies against drug trafficking, organized crime, and threats to critical infrastructure. Participating countries gain access to U.S. military equipment, training, intelligence, and surveillance capabilities, including support from the U.S. Space Force’s Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking system.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins CNBC ‘Squawk Box’ this morning to discuss his 12-hour meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. Within the interview Bessent details the ‘U.S.-China AI Dialogue’, the calls for a slowdown in AI development and whether regulation is needed.
Secretary Bessent notes President Trump is not going to deliver liability immunity to AI frontier labs and existing legal frameworks within the U.S. will remain as protective pathways as development moves from AI labs into engineering outcomes.
This is the core of the issue. The investors that poured money into the AI labs, now support immunity from legal liability that doesn’t exist in any other sector other than Big Pharma. AI wants the same protection as Big Pharma, and President Trump is not going to allow the shift in responsibility from AI developers to government. WATCH:
Also below is the full debriefing from Secretary Bessent and USTR Jamieson Greer that followed the Sunday meeting between the U.S. and Chinese counterparts.
As CTH has noted, the pace of these critical economic developments is going to speed up over the next several days and weeks. It becomes increasingly important to stay tuned-in to the granular issues as they unfold in order to fully appreciate the landscape that surrounds us. It can be challenging to absorb information as the pace increases, yet it is critical to remain aware so that each building block in the nationalist policy making remains in context.
Promethean Action’s Barbara Boyd recaps some of last week’s geopolitical events and activities of both President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Good video for those catching up.
President Trump reacts to Mark Carney’s push to align Canada with the EU, calling it “laughable” and warning that if it’s hostile the U.S. could impose heavy tariffs or even halt trade with Europe. The episode argues the administration is securing the southern border through Marco Rubio’s Latin America trip and “Operation Shield of the Americas,” linking Peru’s participation and Keiko Fujimori’s election to an intensified campaign against cartels, drug production and trafficking, and Chinese influence.
Boyd’s recap frames Carney as a longtime opponent of U.S. interests, citing his Bank of England role, “green” credit agenda, and support for Ukraine, and claims Canada-EU plans target Arctic control and the U.S. northern defense line. It ends with Trump announcing a permanent U.S. presence in Greenland and warning Canada to curb fentanyl labs and criminal networks. WATCH:
This is big. Through this executive order President Trump is defining fraud, corruption and abuse within the H1B visa system as a “national security threat.” That designation gives DHS and State Dept officials an elevated power-set to immediately introduce corrective action.
….”The systematic and organized abuse of the H-1B program is also a national security threat”…
Many of us have wanted urgent action on this matter. President Trump has addressed forcefully. [EXECUTIVE ORDER HERE]
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program was created to identify uniquely skilled and highly specialized foreign temporary workers to strategically supplement the United States economy. Instead, the program has been widely abused by certain employers, third-party placement groups, and outsourcing firms to undercut and displace the supply of skilled United States labor. The large-scale, systematic abuse of the H-1B program to obtain non-qualifying foreign labor has undermined the additive purpose of the program and harmed the wages, working conditions, and job opportunities of skilled American workers.
The abuse of cheaper H-1B labor places downward pressure on domestic pay. H-1B visa holders earn far less than comparable United States-born workers, despite the statutory mandate that H-1B workers be paid equally to their domestic peers, with the estimated wage gap starting at $9,000 and climbing as high as $20,000 in H-1B reliant industries. One company even warned its shareholders that restrictions on cheap H-1B labor could force the company to use “local” workers, which “may only be available at higher wages.”
Many employers have laid off large numbers of highly skilled American workers, only to promptly hire large numbers of H-1B workers who are often lower-skilled and lower-paid. For instance, technology sector employers have collectively requested H-1B visas for hundreds of thousands of workers, yet have also laid off somewhere between 800,000 to 1.3 million American employees from 2022 through 2026. Employers have even forced laid off American workers to train their foreign replacements.
Many jobs held by H-1B workers eventually leave the United States entirely. Employers with outsourcing business models use teams of H-1B visa holders to replace United States workers at third‑party client businesses and liaise with other individuals working off-site from their country of origin. As soon as practicable, much of their own work is transferred offshore. In Fiscal Year 2026, the top six users of the H-1B program operating with this outsourcing business model accounted for over 25,000 H-1B cap registrations. One foreign country’s foreign minister even publicly admitted that H-1B “has become the outsourcing visa.”
Following the previous discussion with leaders from South Africa, President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have now announced visa restrictions for the nation of South Africa.
Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, authorizes the Secretary of State to render inadmissible any alien whose entry into the Unites States “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
STATE DEPT – As stated in President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14204, “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa,” the United States remains gravely concerned about racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination occurring against the Afrikaners and other minority populations in South Africa, including race-based discriminatory legislation, threats of land expropriation without compensation, and incitement of racial violence through dehumanizing chants and slogans.
The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns and so today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act targeting foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa. The United States will not allow such behavior to go unchecked. These actions directly undermine peace, economic stability, and the rule of law, and they are incompatible with the pillars of America’s foreign policy.
We once again strongly urge the South African government to quickly address these egregious actions. {Source}
Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to impress; however, his response to the Wall Street Journalist narrative engineer is absolutely brilliant.
Following visits to Colombia and Ecuador, Secretary Rubio is in Peru today to discuss the “Shield of The Americas”; a joint collaboration and intensely strategic partnership between the United States and Latin American countries to eliminate corruption, arrest narcotraffickers and remove all corrupt elements.
During a news conference with Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, Secretary Rubio addressed the Peruvian people in both English and Spanish as he explained the specifics of the Shield and what the partnership entails. During the Q&A session of the press conference, a Wall Street Journal narrative engineer asked a question about sovereignty and the U.S. acting unilaterally if Peru didn’t agree to address the threat.
Essentially, Rubio responded by telling the journalist to stop working for the ‘Bureau of Imaginary Problems’. I have prompted the video at the point of the question and then provided the transcript from that moment to the end. The overall English audio-dub is not bad, so the entire presser is well worth watching:
[Transcript] – QUESTION: Vera Bergengruen with The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Secretary, you have stressed that the members of the Shield of the Americas are sovereign partners. But if one of these governments refuses to act against one of these groups that Washington deems a terrorist threat, does the U.S. reserve the right to act unilaterally, including here in Peru?
And President Fujimori: (Via interpreter) The question wanted more information about the partner of the Shield of the Americas. This will include to collaborate with the United States here in the country.
SECRETARY RUBIO: I’ll answer that question in English and Spanish. I don’t know if you guys heard it. Basically, the gist of the question is, if you’re a member of the Shield and refuse to act, does the United States – will the United States act unilaterally?
Well, if we were going to act unilaterally, why would we need the Shield? We’re not – if we were interested in acting unilaterally, we have the capacity to act unilaterally. The reason why we’re not doing it is because we want to do it with our partners. It’s the most effective way to do it. For us to confront transnational criminal groups, we need to do it inside the sovereign territory of countries, and we want to partner with those countries. It’s in their interest to do it. That is why we have the Shield. That is why the Shield exists.
People make up these problems that don’t exist. They’re getting ahead of themselves with these – these ridiculous sort of things that no one’s even contemplating. The bottom line is the reason why we have a Shield is because we choose to act in partnership with our partners. So it’s very simple. This is not very complicated; let me explain this to you. It’s a very, very simple equation. We have a country that says we want to defeat these criminals, these terrorists, these evil, despicable human beings; we want to defeat them. We want to work with America to defeat them. And so we say, of course we want to work – what should we say to them? No, we don’t want to work with you? No, we’d like you not to do anything about these groups?
