Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado gifted her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump at the White House Thursday. Machado met with the president a day after Trump spoke with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, over the phone. Machado had previously dedicated her award to Trump last year “for his decisive support of our cause.” “I presented the President of the United States the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado told reporters on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. She said Trump deserved the accolade “as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.” Trump thanked Machado for the award and complimented the opposition leader in a post on Truth Social. “It was my Great Honor to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today. She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much,” said Trump. “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!” Top Trump officials have repeated the administration’s commitment to long-term democratic elections in Venezuela, however, the president has not placed a timeline on when elections might happen. Securing trustworthy democratic elections is one of the top priorities of Machado, whose party has been kept out of power in part due to election rigging by Venezuela’s Communist regime. After ousting former Venezuela strongman Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and forcibly extraditing him to New York to face trial on drug-related charges, the Trump administration has left Rodriguez to steady the Venezuela government while using an oil embargo to force Caracas to align itself with U.S. interests. Trump has declined to pressure Rodriguez to turn over the government to the opposition. The White House was reportedly convinced prior to Maduro’s arrest that Machado did not have the sway among Venezuela’s government and power brokers to stabilize the government. Some of the reforms that Washington has tasked Caracas with include ridding foreign influence from nations such as China and Cuba from Venezuela’s government. Washington has kept up pressure on Venezuela by restricting Caracas’ ability to sell oil on the international market. The United States has seized at least half a dozen oil tankers loaded with Venezuelan crude. The ships belong to a “ghost fleet” of foreign vessels that often use deception to carry sanctioned goods. Instead, Washington has struck a deal with Rodriguez’s administration and will handle the sale of Venezuelan oil on international markets. The Trump administration says it can secure a higher price for Venezuela while keeping influence over Caracas by controlling the flow of its most important export.

Comedian Jay Leno said certain people believe he should get a girlfriend to keep him company as his wife of 45 years, Mavis, battles dementia. The former host of “The Tonight Show” discussed what he’s been hearing during a recent episode of the “Life Above the Noise with Maria Shriver” podcast. “I’ve said this a bunch of times: you take a vow when you get married — and people are stunned … they’re so shocked that you would live up to it,” Leno said. Mavis was diagnosed with dementia in 2024 and Leno was granted a conservatorship in April of that year. “My favorite thing was … and this is the most Hollywood thing. A guy said to me, ‘So, are you gonna get a girlfriend now?’” the 75-year-old comedian said. Leno said he responded by saying, “Well no, I have a girlfriend. I’m married. Been married 45 years.” The person apparently pushed back, saying, “Yeah, but you know what I mean.” Leno went on to marvel at how people’s views on marriage have changed over the years. “No, we’re kinda in this together here,” he recalls saying. “Honey, I’ll be with my girlfriend! I’ll be back later,” he joked. Leno said people now aren’t used to “just doing the right thing because you’re supposed to.” “That used to be the norm, and then when you strayed, that was the out-of-whack part. Now the out-of-whack part is fairly common, and staying and doing what you’re supposed to do is stunning to people,” Leno told Shriver. “We kind of made a deal.” “This is that thing of, ‘Okay, you’ve been pretty lucky up to this point. It’s been easy sailing. This is where it gets a little tricky,’” the former late night host added. “I’m glad I’m passing the test. Because you never quite know what you’re going to do in that situation. So I like to think I made the right decision.”

Just months after California was rocked by violent anti-ICE riots, California Governor Gavin Newsom claims that his state “cooperates” with federal immigration authorities. Newsom made the statement during an interview with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, who pressed him on California’s sanctuary state status and his history of anti-ICE rhetoric. Most recently, Newsom’s press office suggested that the shooting of a woman driving her car toward an ICE agent in Minneapolis was “state-sponsored terrorism.” “We work very directly with ICE as it relates to [California prisons]. California has cooperated with more ICE transfers than probably any other state in the country. And I’ve vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that,” Newsom said. “
So when it comes to the issues of violent criminals, when it comes to felons, people that are being released from the largest state system in the United States of America, California cooperates with ICE,” he added. While Newsom told Shapiro that California prisons had handed over 10,000 illegal alien felons to ICE, the data during his tenure as governor tell a different story. .@GavinNewsom REFUSES to tell @benshapiro if he thinks boys can become girls: Shapiro: “The fundamental question…is the question that you’re not wanting to answer, which is whether boys can become girls.” Newsom: “Yeah…I think…I’m for the grace of God…Yeah.” pic.twitter.com/Lse5fNw3SY — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 16, 2026 According to the Center for Immigration Studies, from October 1, 2022, to February 6, 2025, 52% of all ICE detainers — requests for local law enforcement to hold illegals arrested for crimes — were in California. The total number was over 13,000, well over the next highest total of 2,946 (Illinois). Newsom also talked tough on handing over violent offenders, but during that same time, law enforcement in his state released at least 29 illegals facing homicide charges or convictions. Additionally, local law enforcement have pointed to state sanctuary city policies for hamstringing their ability to reach out to ICE when they arrest illegal aliens for crimes. During his interview with Shapiro, Newsom admitted that it was a “fair” criticism to knock his press office for accusing ICE of committing terrorism and criticized calls from fellow Democrats to completely abolish the agency. Newsom’s admission came after Shapiro told him his office accusing ICE of terrorism “makes our politics worse” and “our ICE officers are obviously not terrorists.” After the Minneapolis shooting, Newsom claimed that ICE was acting as President Donald Trump’s “personal police force” and had “rampaged” America. “His administration has driven extremism and cruelty while discarding basic safeguards and accountability,” Newsom claimed. “His reckless crackdown must end.” In September, Newsom signed legislation aimed at barring ICE officers from wearing masks while they conduct operations. The bill came as ICE officers have faced a surge in harassment, assaults, and violent threats. That law came after Los Angeles was rocked by violent riots as law enforcement officers were attacked and vehicles were burned after ICE started conducting operations in the area. The riots prompted President Trump to send in the National Guard to protect federal operations. Newsom claimed that the move was “purposefully inflammatory” and would “erode public trust.” Those riots ended up costing more than $30 million, including more than $1.4 million in property damage.

The following is an edited transcript from The Michael Knowles Show. * * * The Left can’t let the transgender issue go away. They were clobbered on it last November. They’ve been losing on it for years. Conservatives won the argument, decisively — and yet the Left keeps dragging it back into the spotlight. Now they’re pushing cases all the way to the Supreme Court under the guise of “defending girls’ sports,” even as the Court is actively weighing a major transgender-related case. That context matters, because it’s why a recent Senate hearing landed the way it did. During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing focused on abortion drugs, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), one of the best to ever do it, grilled Democrat witness Dr. Nisha Verma, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, on the question that has dominated American politics for the past five years. The exchange, which quickly went viral, revolved around a simple inquiry: “Can men get pregnant?” SPOILER ALERT: Men cannot get pregnant pic.twitter.com/08JwHUlxIj — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 14, 2026 Hawley is so good at this. This question is just another version of “What is a Woman?” It’s another way of asking whether men can become women. It should be a layup for the Left. All they have to say is: “No, men cannot become pregnant.” They could even try to weasel out of it. They could say something about “trans men” or redefine terms in the usual bureaucratic way. Any halfway competent liberal operative would recognize that this issue is pure political poison and dodge it immediately.  But they can’t. The transgender issue may be the single biggest loser for the Left in my lifetime — possibly even more damaging than their insistence on flooding the country with foreign criminals. And yet they refuse to abandon it. Not because it’s culturally edgy or titillating, but because it represents the inescapable conclusion of their entire political project. Conservatives sometimes understate what’s actually going on here. We describe transgenderism as a natural outgrowth of gay marriage, gay rights, or feminism — movements that insist men and women are fundamentally the same. That’s part of the story, but it doesn’t go deep enough. The reason Republicans and conservatives keep hammering this issue — and the reason the Left cannot give it up — is because it strikes at the core of liberalism itself. At its heart, liberalism is about maximizing individual autonomy. That idea goes back centuries. The seed of liberalism says: I am primarily an individual, and I will control everything. I will control my destiny, my traditions, my morality, my religion, my history, and even my country. And eventually, I will liberate myself from my own body. That is the culmination. WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show It took centuries to get here. First, we had to liberate ourselves from the king. Then from the Church. Then from the family, through the liberalization of divorce. Then from history, through radical revisionism. Then from the nation, through the collapse of patriotism. Then from the moral order, especially in matters of sex. And finally, liberation from biological reality itself. Liberalism is not complete until the body is treated as irrelevant. Which brings us, inevitably, to St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas identified the idea underlying transgenderism — that the body has nothing to do with who we really are — as one of the oldest and most dangerous heresies. The belief that I am born male but am really female, and therefore my body is wrong or bad, is not new. It appears in ancient heresies like Gnosticism and Docetism, which treated matter as corrupt and the physical world as a mistake. Aquinas argued that these were the worst heresies of all, because they directly deny the central truth of Christianity: the Incarnation — that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So it should not surprise us that modern liberalism, which often functions as an inversion of Christianity, would culminate in precisely this heresy. A political philosophy built on autonomy over reality eventually arrives at the rejection of the body itself. That’s why the Left can’t walk away from this issue, no matter how badly it hurts them politically. It isn’t just another policy debate. It’s the logical endpoint of their worldview.

The negative portrayal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by Democrats is leading to violence in the streets, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt warned on Thursday after The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan asked her about rising unrest. Leavitt showed a picture of a CNN chyron that read: “Protests Erupt After Federal Agent Shoots Man In Minneapolis.” “That’s not the story,” Leavitt said. ?@PressSec goes OFF on the MSM and Democrats for demonizing ICE agents: “I would encourage everyone in this room, and I would encourage Gov. Walz and other Democrats who are demeaning law enforcement to sit down and have a cup of coffee with an ICE agent… The Democrat party… pic.twitter.com/AB7SIjKgdB — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 15, 2026 To learn the real story, Leavitt urged Americans to turn to the Department of Homeland Security’s statement. “This ICE agent was executing a targeted operation against a Venezuelan illegal alien who was unlawfully present in this country,” Leavitt said. “When this ICE agent tried to detain the individual, three more of his comrades came rushing out of the house and started ambushing and attacking the ICE agent. They used a shovel or a broom to smash his face in, and so yes, that agent had to use self-defense and take up his weapon to protect his own life.” The press secretary reiterated that ICE agents and law enforcement are enforcing the country’s immigration laws while “elected officials are encouraging violence” against “our brave men and women in law enforcement.” “Democratic governors and mayors” were not the only targets of Leavitt; the press secretary had a fiery exchange with a reporter who brought up Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s comment that ICE agents “are doing everything correctly.” The reporter asked Leavitt, given that Renee Good was shot in the head, how ICE agents could be doing “everything correctly.” Leavitt first responded with a question, asking the reporter: “Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?” The reporter answered, “Because an ICE agent acted recklessly and killed her unjustifiably?” .@PressSec absolutely nukes a Fake News loser: “You’re a left-wing hack. You’re not a reporter. You’re posing in this room as a journalist… You and the people in the media who have such biases but fake like you’re a journalist — you shouldn’t even be sitting in that seat.” pic.twitter.com/ebZzHj7hPs — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 15, 2026 Leavitt responded, “Oh, okay, so you’re a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion. … Do you have the numbers of how many American citizens were killed at the hands of illegal aliens who ICE is trying to remove from this country? I bet you don’t. Shame on you and the people of the media who have a crooked and biased view.” She then encouraged Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other Democrats “who are demeaning law enforcement to sit down and have a cup of coffee with an ICE agent or a border patrol agent.” “These are great, patriotic men and women who have families who put on the uniform every day and are following our nation’s immigration laws at the direction of their bosses, and again at the direction of the law. They are simply trying to enforce the law and the Democrat Party has demeaned these individuals; they have even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo.” Leavitt said it is that very rhetoric that is “absolutely leading to the violence we are seeing in the streets.”