The House unanimously passed a bill on Monday barring anyone linked to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel from moving to the United States.

It’s a rare moment of bipartisanship on the topic of Israel, an issue that’s otherwise exacerbated deep fractures within both parties in the House of Representatives — particularly for Democrats.

The Republican-led legislation is called the ‘No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act of 2025’ and was introduced by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.

It passed the House by voice vote on Monday afternoon, meaning it advanced with unanimous approval without lawmakers taking individual votes on the bill.

‘There are still some things we can come together on in this body, and one of them is opposition to Hamas and the terrorism they unleashed on civilians in Israel more than two years ago,’ McClintock told Fox News Digital.

‘What this does is place them in the same category as Nazi collaborators in the Holocaust, which are also referenced in the Immigration Nationality Act.’

The bill now heads to the U.S. Senate, where a parallel effort was introduced earlier this year by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.

McClintock told Fox News Digital he was hopeful the Senate would take up the bill — while noting it passed the House last term as well without the upper chamber taking action.

‘The repeated actions of the House in passing this bill, I think, will hopefully inspire the Senate to take it up this year and send it to the president,’ he said. ‘It’s important for two reasons. Number one, to prevent a future Joe Biden from admitting such people, and to empower a future Donald Trump presidency to keep them out.’

The legislation would amend existing U.S. immigration law to deem ‘any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023’ inadmissible to the country.

It would also add Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the list of terror groups whose members and supporters are barred from the U.S. under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

It comes after a Gazan native, Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi, who was residing in Louisiana, was arrested earlier this year over his alleged involvement in the Oct. 7 attack.

The White House confirmed and defended conducting a second strike against alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean in September, amid the Trump administration’s crusade targeting the influx of drugs into the U.S. 

The White House’s statement comes after the Washington Post reported Friday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth verbally ordered that a Sept. 2 attack kill everyone on board the alleged drug boat, drawing scrutiny from lawmakers who are requesting additional oversight into the strikes. The Post reported that a second strike was conducted to take out the remaining survivors on the boat. 

Although the Pentagon pushed back against the report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not deny that a second strike occurred and told reporters Monday that the strike Sept. 2 was conducted ‘in self-defense’ in international waters ‘in accordance with the law of armed conflict.’ 

The White House said Monday that Hegseth authorized the second strike, but the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. Frank ‘Mitch’ Bradley, ordered and directed it. At the time of the strike, Bradley was serving as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, which falls under U.S. Special Operations Command. 

‘On September 2nd, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,’ Leavitt said. ‘Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.’

When asked to confirm that Bradley was the one who ordered the second strike, Leavitt said that he was ‘well within his authority to do so,’ but declined to disclose whether the second strike was ordered because there were survivors remaining from the first strike. 

Leavitt also disputed that Hegseth ever gave an initial order to ensure that everyone on board was killed, when asked specifically about Hegseth’s instructions. 

‘I would reject that the secretary of War ever said that,’ Leavitt said. ‘However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists, again, are trafficking illegal drugs toward the United States, he has the authority to kill them.’

The White House’s statements on the matter don’t completely align with the Pentagon’s. On Friday, the Pentagon denied the Post’s reporting in its entirety. 

‘We told the Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday,’ Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a post on social media Friday. ‘These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.’ 

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Meanwhile, the report has prompted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to ask additional questions about the operations, and press for additional oversight. 

‘This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean,’ Reps. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., who lead the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Saturday. ‘We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.’

Spokespeople for the committee did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital regarding the nature of these additional oversight efforts. 

Additionally, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said Monday that she is calling for an investigation into the matter as well, and said that Hegseth ‘owes answers to the American people immediately.’

The Trump administration has carried out more than 20 strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin American waters, and has bolstered its military presence in the Caribbean to align with Trump’s goal to crack down on the influx of drugs into the U.S.

The White House also confirmed Monday that Trump is slated to hold a meeting on Monday evening to discuss future actions concerning Venezuela. 

President Donald Trump threw himself in the middle of Honduras’ razor-thin presidential race on Monday, warning that there would be ‘hell to pay’ if election officials altered the results.  

Writing on Truth Social, Trump, without offering evidence, accused Honduras of ‘trying to change the results.’

‘If they do, there will be hell to pay! The people of Honduras voted in overwhelming numbers on November 30th,’ Trump said.

The president’s remarks came hours after Ana Paola Hall, president of the National Electoral Council, wrote on X that the preliminary rapid reporting system that began providing results Sunday night had reached its conclusion with votes 57% tallied.

Their count showed a close race between two conservative candidates, Nasry Asfura of the National Party and Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, with Asfura holding a narrow lead of only a few hundred votes. Rixi Moncada, the democratic socialist LIBRE candidate, trailed roughly 20 percentage points behind.  

‘It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes,’ Trump wrote. ‘Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!’

Officials have said the count would continue but did not specify when updated totals would be released, and parts of the council’s online system appeared to have been taken down.

Just before the freeze, Trump had endorsed Asfura, calling him the ‘only Honduran candidate his administration would work with and saying he would fight ‘narco-communists’ alongside the U.S.

Both leading candidates have pointed to the close tally as evidence that they are ahead – though both men have stopped short of declaring victory.

Trump’s announcement that he would pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is now serving a 45-year U.S. sentence – also loomed large over the race, underscoring how U.S. politics can intrude in the country’s politics.

Trump’s latest warning injects new pressure into an already hostile post-election environment. The outcome will determine whether the Latin American country shifts away from the ruling LIBRE party and have deep impacts on its future relationship with Washington.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff is in Moscow is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday after a whirlwind weekend of negotiations with Ukraine aimed at securing a peace deal.

All eyes are on Putin as Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and occasional foreign policy envoy, feel out whether Putin might agree to the 19-point proposal they finalized with Ukrainian counterparts following initial U.S.-Russian talks.

The latest round of diplomacy represents the most active push toward a potential settlement since the full-scale invasion in 2022, but negotiators acknowledge that significant obstacles remain. Core disputes over territory, Ukraine’s long-term security arrangements, and the conditions for any ceasefire are unresolved, and officials say progress will depend on whether Putin shows flexibility during this week’s meetings.

After an initial 28-point plan brokered by Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev was viewed by Kyiv as too favorable to Moscow, U.S. and Ukrainian officials went back to the drawing board. They met in Geneva at the end of November to work through a trimmed-down version of the plan and again over the weekend in Florida to hammer out additional details.

Both sides said the talks were productive but offered no specifics on which issues still divide them.

‘So much work remains,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the meeting. ‘But today was again a very productive and useful session where I think additional progress was made.’

‘There’s a good chance we can make a deal,’ Trump said.

Despite the momentum, the two sides remain far apart. Several of the most sensitive issues were left for a meeting between principal leaders.

Russia insists Ukraine cannot join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — even though Ukraine amended its constitution to make NATO membership a national objective. In the original 28-point plan, Russia also demanded Ukraine reduce its peacetime armed forces to 600,000.

European and Ukrainian officials instead floated an 800,000 cap, according to the Financial Times. Ukraine currently fields around 880,000 troops, up from about 209,000 before the 2022 invasion.

The largest impasse remains territorial concessions. A draft of the earlier proposal suggested recognizing Crimea and large parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as de facto Russian.

Complicating the process is the sudden removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff and chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, who resigned after a corruption probe led to a raid of his home. Yermak had publicly insisted days earlier that Ukraine would not give up land for peace. 

‘Not a single sane person today would sign a document to give up territory,’ he told The Atlantic magazine. 

Putin said at the end of November he was ready for ‘serious’ talks but also asserted that Russia has the upper hand and would halt fighting only if Ukrainian forces withdraw from territory it has recaptured on the front lines.

‘If they don’t withdraw, we will achieve this by force,’ he said.

Analysts say Washington still has levers it could use if negotiations stall, including tightening sanctions and expanding military assistance to Ukraine. But many of the most powerful economic measures — such as penalties on major Russian energy and financial entities — are already in place, and the U.S. has provided Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military aid since 2022. 

That leaves a narrower set of options if the talks reach an impasse.

Trump has voiced frustration with the slow pace of diplomacy in recent days, saying publicly that he believed a resolution ‘should have happened a long time ago,’ though officials have not indicated that Washington is preparing to walk away from the talks.

President Donald Trump is continuing to advocate for the Senate GOP to nix the filibuster.

In a Monday Truth Social post, the president shared a video featuring clips of former Attorney General Eric Holder, who opined that if Democrats win a ‘trifecta’ in the 2028 elections, the prospect of expanding the Supreme Court should be under consideration. 

Holder made the comment while speaking with Ben Meiselas, co-founder of MeidasTouch, which posted the video last month.

In the Monday Truth Social post, Trump referred to Holder, who served under Democratic President Barack Obama, as an ‘Obama sycophant’ and said that ‘Eric Holder (known as ‘FAST AND FURIOUS’) just gave a Speech where he emphatically stated, above all else, that Democrats will PACK the Supreme Court of the United States if they get the chance. The word is, he wants 21 Radical Left Activist Judges, not being satisfied with the heretofore 15 that they were seeking.’

Trump suggested that eliminating the filibuster would enable Republicans to win in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 White House contest.

‘It will be 21, they will destroy our Constitution, and there’s not a thing that the Republicans can do about it unless we TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, which will lead to an easy WIN of the Midterms, and an even easier WIN in the Presidential Election of 2028,’ he asserted.

‘Why would the Republicans even think about giving them this opportunity? The American People don’t want gridlock, they want their Leaders to GET THINGS DONE — TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, AND HAVE THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FOUR YEARS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY, BY FAR, WITH NOT EVEN THE HINT OF A SHUTDOWN OF OUR GREAT NATION ON JANUARY 30TH!’ Trump declared in the post.

Congress will return to Washington, D.C., next week entering into a dead sprint to wrap up work before the year’s end, to cap off a blistering, often dramatic year on the Hill.

Both chambers will have three working weeks before again fleeing from the growing chill in Washington to their respective districts and states. And lawmakers have some of the biggest challenges of the year left to finish.

Perhaps the biggest looming legislative fight will be how lawmakers approach the expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which dominated the recently-ended government shutdown.

Neither side has produced a fulsome plan on how to tackle the subsidies, though some solutions from Republicans, like funneling the subsidy funding into Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), have been floated.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged last week that producing a solution would be a steep hurdle, and reiterated his commitment to Senate Democrats that they would get a vote on whatever proposal they produce no later than the second week in December.

Thune noted that ‘the one thing that unites’ the GOP is the belief that the subsidies need to be reformed and that rising healthcare costs need to be dealt with.

‘I think the affordability issue is a big issue,’ Thune said. ‘I think it’s been exacerbated by the way that Obamacare has been structured through the years, including the way that enhanced subsidies were structured by going directly to insurance companies and incentivizing them to enroll people without their knowledge.’

And the White House also has its own plan, which was expected to be rolled out earlier this week, but sidelined over reportedly disgruntled Republicans who disliked the proposed language.

When asked about specifics of the plan, and it was scrapped, a White House official told Fox News Digital that ‘there was never a healthcare announcement listed on [Monday’s] daily guidance.’

But the rumblings of a plan from President Donald Trump and the administration have encouraged some Senate Democrats.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who originally proposed legislation to extend the subsidies, said that she was glad that the president was making an effort to ensure the credits don’t sunset by the end of the year.

‘I’ve had constructive conversations with many of my Republican colleagues who I believe want to get this done,’ Shaheen said in a statement. ‘They understand that the vast majority of people who benefit from these tax credits live in states the President won, and that the President’s own pollsters have underscored the enormous political urgency of Republicans acting.’

But the Obamacare issue is not the only issue Congress faces. Lawmakers are eyeing passage of the annual National Defense Authorization Act by the end of the year, the Senate is considering another package of Trump’s nominees and another package of spending bills is expected on the horizon, too.

That package of four bills, which is expected to include the Defense, Labor, Transportation and Commerce funding bills, would be a massive step toward averting yet another deadline to fund the government by Jan. 30, 2026.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said earlier this month that there was also an ‘interest on the House side’ to move the bills.

‘The more appropriations bills that we’re able to pass, the better off we’re going to be, the better off the American people will be served,’ she said.

There are also some lingering issues that could pose surprises before the year’s end, including how Congress will handle Russia sanctions and the controversial provision in the package that reopened the government that would allow senators to sue for upwards of $500,000 if their records were requested without notification.

On the sanctions front, the Senate has overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation that Trump appears to support, but there’s a possible disconnect between Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on where the legislation should originate.

Thune believed it’d be better suited in the House given that it’s a revenue-geared bill, while Johnson warned that it would be time-consuming to pass the bill in the lower chamber because of how many different committees it would have to move through.

Some in the Senate are already looking ahead to next year, when lawmakers will be in full midterm election mode. Another crack at budget reconciliation, the process used to pass Trump’s marquee ‘big, beautiful bill,’ has been floated, but whether there is broad buy-in from congressional Republicans remains in the air.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said that it would be ‘legislative malpractice’ to not undertake the grueling process once more.

‘It’s just exquisitely dumb,’ Kennedy said. ‘Why would you not take advantage of an opportunity to pass something with 51 votes? That doesn’t mean that our Democratic colleagues can’t join with us, but if they don’t, they can’t filibuster. Did I mention it’s exquisitely dumb?’

Official peace talks between the U.S. and Ukraine on ending the Ukraine war moved to a productive phase Sunday – but only after President Zelenskyy sent a new-look team to Florida, according to a former Ukrainian government official.

With Rustem Umerov now leading Zelenskyy’s team and longtime adviser and chief of staff Andriy Yermak out, the source claimed the move signaled Kyiv was reassessing its ‘uncompromising’ stance.

The official, who spoke to Fox News Digital on condition of anonymity, said the personnel choice represented a move away from the approach that has shaped Ukraine’s diplomatic strategy for years.

‘Yermak had been teaching Zelenskyy to be a ‘Father of the Nation’ and until now, the Ukrainian side has been pushing for an unachievable and uncompromising position,’ the former official said.

‘Umerov is not a very impressively strong individual in politics, but he wants to achieve results and is known to be aligned with compromise.’

Ukraine’s new delegation also included Andrii Hnatov, head of the armed forces; Andrii Sybiha, the foreign minister; and Umerov, who is head of the country’s security council.

After the meeting, Umerov offered a brief assessment to reporters, saying: ‘We are grateful to American people, American leadership and a great team with, state secretary, Steve, with both Jared Kushner for their tremendous work with us,’ he said.

‘Our objective is a prosperous, strong Ukraine. We will [be] discussing [sic] the future of Ukraine. We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for Ukrainian people. And the U.S was super supportive.’

‘We already had a successful meeting in Geneva, and today we can continue this success. So at the moment, this meeting was productive and successful in the later stages.’

The new team traveled to Florida for discussions aimed at refining President Trump’s proposed framework and his push to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Sunday’s negotiations also took place after a leak published by Bloomberg News, revealed a transcript of an Oct. 14 call where special envoy Steve Witkoff allegedly offered advice to Russian officials on how to sell a peace plan to Trump.

‘The Ukrainian side had in some way undermined peace negotiations and Donald Trump’s efforts, not mentioning that it prolongs the war,’ the former official said.

The same former official said the shift in Kyiv’s delegation followed the dramatic resignation of Yermak, after anti-corruption investigators raided his home on Friday.

‘Yermak was deeply distrusted by many actors, including Western actors including the U.S. administration and including Biden’s administration,’ the source added.

Despite his exit, the official warned that Yermak’s influence may still be shaping the Ukrainian team.

‘Mr. Yermak is still there and, in fact, all the delegation that came to Florida includes Mr. Yermak’s people, his loyal people, very close personally to him –  people who [have] been serving him faithfully for years.’

‘Yermak has not disappeared and might be on the telephone or online and ruling the agenda behind the scenes,’ they added.

They said Yermak’s long-standing governing style still influences Kyiv’s political posture:

‘In Ukraine, as in many post-Soviet countries, there is still the so-called ‘telephone rule’, when a powerful person can influence the outcome of any formal decision-making despite lacking formal powers and in contradiction with the law.’

‘Yermak has been doing this for the last six and a half years,’ the source added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff, and senior advisor Jared Kushner led the American side in Sunday’s session.

Rubio told reporters after the meeting: ‘We had another very productive session. Building off Geneva, building off the events of this week,’ he said.

‘As I told you earlier this morning, our goal here is to end the war,’ he continued. ‘But it’s more than just to end the war. We don’t just want to end the war. We also want to help Ukraine be safe forever. So never again will they face another invasion. And equally importantly, we want them to enter an age of true prosperity.’

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he had spoken to Rubio and Witkoff and that they were ‘doing well.’

‘Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems,’ Trump said. ‘They have some difficult problems. But I think Russia would like to see it end and I think Ukraine… I know Ukraine would like to see it end.’

He also said he thinks there is ‘a good chance we can make a deal.’

In a post shared on X, Zelenskyy highlighted Umerov’s work in Florida as the head of the Ukrainian delegation.

‘Today, following the work of the teams in the United States, head of the Ukrainian delegation Rustem Umerov reported on the main parameters of the dialogue, its emphases, and some preliminary results,’ he said.

‘It is important that the talks have a constructive dynamic and that all issues were discussed openly and with a clear focus on ensuring Ukraine’s sovereignty and national interests. I am grateful to the United States, to President Trump’s team, and to the President personally for the time that is being invested so intensively in defining the steps to end the war. We will continue working. I look forward to receiving a full report from our team during a personal meeting.’

Sunday’s talks came just hours after another deadly Russian strike on Kyiv killed at least one person and wounded 19, including four children, Euronews reported.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the war has left huge areas of Ukraine devastated and roughly 20% of its territory under occupation.

President Donald Trump delivered a stern ultimatum to Nicolás Maduro to leave Venezuela immediately before announcing the country’s airspace should be closed, according to a report.

Per the Miami Herald, Washington’s warning was delivered in a phone call with Caracas and offered guaranteed evacuation for Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and their son, but only if the dictator agreed to resign on the spot. 

The conversation stalled, U.S. officials said, and within hours Washington escalated dramatically. 

The ensuing impasse, a source told the outlet, was over Maduro asking for ‘global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed, and that was rejected.’ 

‘Second, they asked to retain control of the armed forces — similar to what happened in Nicaragua in ’91 with Violeta Chamorro. In return, they would allow free elections.’ 

The final issue was timing, according to the outlet, as Washington demanded that Maduro resign immediately – but Caracas refused.

Trump went on to announce Saturday that Venezuelan airspace would be considered ‘closed in its entirety.’ 

The Herald also reported that the Maduro government tried to schedule another call to Washington but received no response.

According to a defense expert familiar with the country’s military and state-linked cartel ties, Maduro and key players in his regime could now face their most serious threat yet.

‘I think the operations will start imminently,’ former Venezuelan diplomat Vanessa Neumann told Fox News Digital.

‘The clearing of the airspace is an indication and a very clear public warning that missiles might be coming to take out command and control infrastructure or retaliatory infrastructure,’ Neumann said. ‘This will not be like breaking a jar into a thousand pieces, this is where you can lift the concentration of power, and it’s easier to manage.’

‘The targets have been identified through covert operations over the last several years by people on the ground,’ she continued. ‘So they’re well-mapped. This is a capture-or-kill scenario, but there’s a limit to how many people you can remove quickly.’

On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One not to ‘read anything into’ his declaring Venezuela’s airspace closed when asked if a strike was imminent. 

‘Maduro also doesn’t have that many options, and his military is very weak,’ she warned. ‘You can’t go after 30 people simultaneously, who are spread all around, but certainly high on the list would be Maduro himself.’

Venezuela’s armed forces, once among Latin America’s strongest, have been weakened by years of corruption, sanctions, defections, and lack of maintenance. Much of its equipment, Neuman says, has never even been serviced.

‘Their material is extremely old, decayed, and has not been serviced,’ Neuman explained. 

‘They’ve got junk from the Russians. The stuff they originally had from the Americans is decades old and has not been serviced.

‘So, they have neither the personnel, foreign support, nor the material,’ she said.

Ahead of shuttering the airspace, the U.S. also officially designated the cartel allegedly linked with Venezuela’s government, the Cartel de los Soles, as a foreign terrorist organization.

‘This cartel turned Venezuela’s main oil company into a narcotics trafficking money laundering operation, using the company’s access to international finance, until it was sanctioned,’ Neuman, who has worked with governments on countering transnational organized crime linked to the group, explained.

‘They were using Venezuelan military jets to bring in cocaine from Colombia, process it in Venezuela, and then move it into Central America and then into Europe.

‘Jet pilots were making a lot of money off that, and they’ve tortured people. They target people, anybody who tell on them, they’re disappeared,’ Neuman said. ‘They’re now one of the prime drug trafficking networks into the United States and Europe, and use their military positions, including their military-to-military relations, to grow and accelerate those movements.’

In fact, in September, the European Parliament also voted in favor of the EU designating Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization.

‘The Cartel de Los Soles is also a key collaborator and financier of Hezbollah and some of the drug money has been used to fund terrorist attacks that have killed American citizens, even in the Middle East,’ added Neuman, CEO of Asymmetrica Group, which specializes in defense cooperation.

The U.S. has also ramped up a military and intelligence campaign targeting drug-trafficking networks linked to Venezuela, including strikes on suspected narcotics boats.

‘The decision is President Trump’s because when he says, ‘Go’, we go. And nobody knows when he’ll say that,’ Neuman said. ‘He has mobilized so many assets down there now. But what President Trump is doing now is long overdue.’

‘The timing is right now,’ she added. ‘Because even Maduro’s biggest backers, Russia and Iran, are both on the back foot, and China will not go that far in backing Maduro as it has bigger and broader interests throughout the region.’

She also noted that ‘Maduro is also weakened because his partners are weakened and have their own issues to deal with,’ and that ‘we also now have a concentration of power and deep repression within the country that’s quite unified, which means it’s easy to flip.’

Neuman identified others in the regime who may be targeted, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Diosdado Cabello, Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace and Alexander Granko Arteaga, head of Venezuela’s counter-intelligence agency, the DGCIM.

‘One of the reasons Granko is an important figure is that he’s one of the reasons why they haven’t capitulated and why there has not been a military uprising,’ Neuman explained.

‘It’s because of the brutality of the counter-intelligence that they do to their own military, and hundreds of soldiers are tortured. That said, the Venezuelan people have made it clear that they wanted Maduro out and fought democratically but lost,’ she added.

‘They voted in elections, protested peacefully, lobbied for sanctions, and lobbied for international support,’ Neuman said.

President Donald Trump defended calling Venezuela’s airspace closed, saying the country is sending criminals into the U.S., but told reporters not to ‘read anything into it’ when asked whether the warning suggested an imminent strike.

While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Venezuela is ‘not a very friendly country’ and claimed it has sent criminals, gang members and drug traffickers into the U.S.

On Saturday, Trump told airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers to ‘consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.’

When asked Sunday if the warning meant an airstrike is imminent, Trump said: ‘Don’t read anything into it.’

Trump also confirmed a report from the New York Times that he spoke on the phone with President Nicolás Maduro, though he offered no details about the conversation.

‘I wouldn’t say it went well or badly,’ he said. ‘It was a phone call.’

The president’s comments come amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela over Venezuela’s failure to stop drug traffickers from sending narcotics into the U.S.

Since September, the Trump administration has conducted over 20 strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin American waters and beefed up its military presence in the Caribbean as part of Trump’s effort to crack down on the flow of drugs into the U.S.

The strikes have brought the total number of suspected narco-terrorists eliminated to over 82, with three survivors.

But as the U.S. continues to bolster forces in the waters off Venezuela, Maduro has called for peace but also remained defiant against what he called ‘imperialist aggression.’

Maduro delivered an address in Caracas last week while brandishing a sword and warning supporters to prepare for confrontation, saying the U.S. will ‘very soon’ begin stopping suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers on land.

He appeared at a mass rally in the capital holding the sword of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century independence leader regarded as the liberator of much of South America. Maduro told supporters the country was facing a decisive moment.

The Associated Press reported that he said, ‘For anyone, whether civilian, politician, military, or police –  Let no one make excuses. Failure is not an option. The homeland demands it! Our greatest effort and sacrifice. And with (Simón) Bolívar, I come to say that if the homeland demands it, the homeland will have our lives, if necessary,’ he declared while raising Bolívar’s sword.

Maduro framed the situation as a struggle against what he described as external threats, urging Venezuelans to mobilize against any foreign aggression.

Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy and Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.