Live updates: House Democrats release more pictures from Epstein's estate; Trump honors 1980 Olympic hockey team

The U.S. on Friday unsealed a federal court order authorizing the seizure of oil tanker M/T Skipper this week — but the affidavit section which argues for the move is completely blacked out.

The oil tanker was boarded and seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday as the vessel was in international waters after leaving Venezuela, officials have said.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro and FBI Director Kash Patel on Friday evening announced that prosecutors received an order to unseal the seizure warrant.

The seizure warrant was issued by a magistrate judge on Nov. 26, the documents show.

Trump invited members of the press into the Oval Office this afternoon to honor the legendary 1980 Olympic men’s ice hockey team whose ‘Miracle on Ice’ resulted in a historic and symbolic victory against the Soviet Union.

Each of the players — along with some family members of players who had passed — introduced themselves and thanked the president for hosting them, before Trump took the opportunity to praise the group for a “remarkable” performance on the ice so many years ago.

Many of the team members are from Minnesota. One of the players noted the president wasn’t too happy with his state, which prompted the president to talk about Somalians, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and fraud in the state.

The White House, without input from the General Services Administration, is considering the demolition of four federal buildings across Washington, D.C., according to a sworn declaration submitted by Mydelle Wright, who retired in 2024 after 18 years leading a team at the GSA responsible for the stewardship, restoration and management of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

“The White House, acting on its own and not through GSA, has solicited bids and/or is finalizing a bid package (the last step prior to solicitation) to analyze and recommend for demolition four historic federal buildings in DC, which include buildings eligible for and listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a National Historic Landmark,” Wright writes.

Wright says the buildings include the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building (where Department of Housing and Urban Development is headquartered), the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building (where several departments have offices), the GSA Regional Office Building, and the Liberty Loan Building (which was already planned by GSA for disposal).

White House pressure to ramp up deportations has sparked rising tension and finger-pointing inside the Department of Homeland Security, with the agency’s secretary, Kristi Noem, and her top adviser blaming subordinates for not hitting arrest quotas and undermining their relationships inside the West Wing, according to two DHS officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski have sought to deflect blame from themselves for any White House frustration with the pace and scope of deportations, pinning it instead on the leaders of the agencies in charge of immigration enforcement — acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, the DHS officials said.

Underscoring the turmoil, Scott recently expressed concern to colleagues that Lewandowski is able to monitor his emails, the two officials and another DHS official said, sparking concern among other top staffers that their messages were being reviewed.

Read the full story here.

A group of states have announced they're suing the Trump administration over a fee increase for foreign workers to obtain H-1B visas.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts led Democratic attorneys general from 18 other states in a federal lawsuit. The suit alleges that a proclamation Trump signed in September, requiring companies to pay a $100,000 fee to obtain H-1B worker visas, violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution. The proclamation renders the program inaccessible for government and nonprofit employers who lean on H-1B visa holders to provide key services, Bonta's office said in a news release today.

“President Trump’s illegal $100,000 H-1B visa fee creates unnecessary — and illegal — financial burdens on California public employers and other providers of vital services, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors,” Bonta said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers defended the new fee.

Speaker Mike Johnson is eyeing a vote on the House floor “next week” on a package of health care policies, according to House Republican leadership aides, as their alternative to Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies that are slated to expire.

The core bill will include a series of ideas popular among conservatives, including:

— Codifying Association Health Plans (AHPs) and “choice arrangements” that allow several employers to join forces and buy coverage at preferential group rates.

— Appropriating money for cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) to end the insurance practice of “silver-loading” plans on the exchanges.

— PBM transparency that it “would require pharmacy benefit managers to be more transparent with employers” and employer small businesses in negotiations.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Trump held a phone call yesterday, their third such call since Trump doubled tariffs on the South Asian nation in part to pressure New Delhi to cut purchases of Russian oil.

“We reviewed the progress in our bilateral relations and discussed regional and international developments,” Modi said in a post on X, without giving details.

Modi described his conversation as "very warm and engaging," which came as his government seeks relief from the levies, which are as high as 50% on some products and are affecting several industries, including textiles and chemicals.

Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Rick Switzer met with Indian officials this week in New Delhi, as Trump pushes India to cut back on Russian oil as a way of punishing Moscow for its war on Ukraine.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, criticized an executive order Trump signed yesterday aimed at blocking states from regulating artificial intelligence, He said in a statement today that the directive breached states' rights.

“As generative artificial intelligence has advanced, I have been proud to adopt AI-powered tools to improve government services and attract new investment and jobs to our state. However, President Trump’s Executive Order attempting to interfere with state-based regulation on AI will hamper our efforts and violates states’ rights," Murphy said.

Vice President JD Vance will visit Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 16 to discuss the economy and lowering prices amid nationwide concerns about the cost of living.

The visit comes after President Donald Trump delivered remarks in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, located in a midterm battleground district, earlier this week to tout his economic record.

The series of events focused on the economy comes as congressional Republicans have publicly and privately raised concerns about the party's strategy to address Americans' cost-of-living concerns. An October poll by NBC News found that nearly two-thirds of voters say Trump hasn't lived up to expectations on cost of living and the economy.

The United States is ramping up its pressure campaign against Venezuela with the Treasury Department imposing new sanctions on the country’s oil-based economy and on members of authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro’s family, specifically targeting three of his nephews. The escalation comes as the U.S. is moving to keep tens of millions of dollars’ worth of oil from the tanker it seized yesterday. NBC News’ Peter Alexander reports for "TODAY" from the White House.

U.S. issues new sanctions on Venezuela day after seizing tanker

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States filed a lawsuit this morning against the Trump administration over the demolition of the East Wing and the planned White House ballroom. 

“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever—not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else,” attorneys for the trust wrote. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in. President Trump’s efforts to do so should be immediately halted, and work on the Ballroom Project should be paused until the Defendants complete the required reviews—reviews that should have taken place before the Defendants demolished the East Wing, and before they began construction of the Ballroom—and secure the necessary approvals.” 

The nonprofit argues that the administration was required to submit construction and environmental plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts and Congress for review before it began work, but it has yet to do so. 

The Trump administration, they say, is “depriving the public of its right to be informed and its opportunity to comment on the Defendants’ proposed plans for the Ballroom Project. This public involvement, while important in all preservation matters, is particularly critical here, where the structure at issue is perhaps the most recognizable and historically significant building in the country.” 

The trust would like a federal judge in Washington to block continued work on the ballroom project until the necessary federal commissions have reviewed and approved the project’s plans, an environmental review has been conducted, and Congress authorizes it. 

In response to the lawsuit, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, “President Trump has full legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House — just like all of his predecessors did.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it has filed federal lawsuits against Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada for failure to produce statewide voter registration lists upon request, bringing the DOJ’s nationwide total to 18 lawsuits. 

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is also suing one locality — Fulton County, Georgia — for records related to the 2020 election.

The DOJ’s move to sue Fulton County comes as Trump and his allies have made numerous false claims that the Georgia 2020 election was stolen. In 2023, the then-former president was indicted alongside 18 other defendants on felony charges related to efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results. A Georgia judge dropped the charges last month after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from the case. 

“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today released a second batch of images from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.

The batch includes pictures of Epstein with a number of high-profile figures, including President Donald Trump, longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, businessman Bill Gates and movie director Woody Allen. They do not appear to show illegal activity by these individuals.

Read the full story here.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has endorsed former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes’ bid for governor.

“Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes is exactly the kind of bold leader we need to take on the Trump Administration,” Schiff said in a statement to NBC News. “He knows how badly the president has betrayed working people, raising their costs instead of lowering them, and enriching himself in the process. Mandela knows what middle class Americans need, because their story is his story too.”

The endorsement was first reported by NBC News. 

Barnes, who lost a 2022 Senate race in the perennial battleground, is running in a crowded Democratic primary for the state's open governorship.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on three nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, among others, yesterday as Trump looks to inflict further pressure on the South American nation.

The new sanctions on Franqui Flores, Carlos Flores and Efrain Campo come a day after Trump announced that the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. Also included in the sanctions are Panamanian businessman Ramon Carretero, six firms and six Venezuela-flagged ships accused of transporting Venezuelan oil.

Read the full story here.

A federal judge blocked the government from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in this morning.

The intervention came after the same judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration lacked the legal authority to continue holding Abrego in an immigration detention center.

Abrego was detained during a similar scheduled check-in in August. 

Read the full story here.

Millions of Americans could see a massive spike to their health insurance premiums with federal subsidies for people who use the Affordable Care Act marketplace set to expire at the end of the year as lawmakers on Capitol Hill remain deadlocked on a deal. The Democrats’ plan would have allowed the vast majority to keep their benefits for three more years, while the Republicans wanted to scrap them in favor of boosting health savings accounts, but both bills failed. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for "TODAY."

Health care costs set to spike after Senate rejects ACA funding

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Ukraine has presented the U.S. with a revised 20-point framework to end its war with Russia, the country's president said yesterday, adding that the issue of ceding territory remains a major sticking point in negotiations.

Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said the U.S. is offering as a compromise to create a “free economic zone” in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas, which Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede.

Read the full story here.

The Indiana Senate voted against a new Republican-drawn congressional map yesterday, rejecting a bid led by Trump to boost the party in next year’s midterm elections.

The vote was a rare and stunning instance of elected Republicans rebuking Trump, who had pressured Indiana lawmakers for months to pass new district lines. The GOP leaders of the state Senate had long resisted joining the unusual mid-decade redistricting battle playing out across the country, saying there wasn’t enough support in the chamber for a new map that was designed to dismantle the state’s two Democratic-controlled districts.

They ultimately agreed to hold a vote to settle the issue, as Trump and national Republicans pledged to back primary challengers to those who opposed the map and as a growing number of Indiana lawmakers faced violent threats and harassment.

Indiana Senate rejects Republican-drawn congressional map

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Read the full story here.

Wisconsin has quietly emerged as the latest front in the national redistricting fight — and a never-before-used legal process seems likely to determine the state’s congressional lines in the midterm election.

The saga unfolding in the critical Midwestern battleground has the potential to put more districts in play for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterms. But unlike in other states that have redrawn their congressional maps mid-decade in recent months, the push toward a new map in Wisconsin is now hinging on a little-known law the GOP-controlled state Legislature enacted 14 years ago.

Days before Thanksgiving, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered a pair of three-judge panels to oversee two lawsuits that allege that the state’s current congressional map is unconstitutional and seek a redraw. Both panels will meet for the first time today for initial hearings.

Read the full story here.