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Venezuela's opposition leader Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize

(Reuters) Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who lives in hiding, won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting dictatorship in the country, receiving the award despite U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated insistence he deserved it. Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela's courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013. "When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation.

Mike Johnson sticks to no-show shutdown strategy as resistance mounts

(Politico) For Mike Johnson, not showing up is the entire battle. The speaker made clear Thursday — nine days into the government shutdown — he is committed to keeping the House out of session as long as it takes to pressure Senate Democrats to act on the stopgap funding bill his chamber passed three weeks ago. Johnson is holding firm on the indefinite recess strategy even as pressure mounts inside his own conference to bring members back to Washington, with more and more GOP lawmakers prodding him to change course.

US buys Argentine pesos, finalizes $20 billion currency swap

(AP) The U.S. directly purchased Argentine pesos on Thursday and finalized a $20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post. “U.S. Treasury is prepared, immediately, to take whatever exceptional measures are warranted to provide stability to markets,” Bessent said, adding that the Treasury Department conducted four days of meetings with Argentinian Finance Minister Luis Caputo in Washington D.C. to come up with the deal. U.S. farmers and Democratic lawmakers have criticized the deal as a bailout of a country that has benefited from sales of soybeans to China, to the detriment of U.S. farmers.

Trump Gonna Sell Student Debt To Wall Street. Remember How Great That Worked With Mortgages?

(Wonkette) The Trump administration is looking to revive a bad idea it played around with in Trump’s first term, to sell some portion of the government’s $1.6 trillion in student loan debt to private investors, Politico reports, citing three anonymous insiders who know things. The idea would be to reduce the amount of debt held by the Education Department, which currently manages student loans, before moving the whole student loan system over to either the Treasury Department or to imprisoned mafiosi in the Bureau of Prisons maybe. Haha, just joking, Trump would probably pardon those guys anyway.

Rep. Jeffries: 'Trump sycophants don't have his immunity'

'What gives them the right?' MAGA senator melts down over Muslims praying outdoors

(Raw Story) Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) suggested that Muslims did not have the right to pray outdoors in the United States. During a Thursday interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Tuberville expressed outrage at Muslims expressing their faith. "I mean, this is out of control!" the senator exclaimed. "What gives them the right, Alex, to go out in the middle of the street in a lot of these big cities and do their prayer? You got a mosque, go to your mosque!"

Peter Thiel in talk on 'Antichrist' says he told Elon Musk not to give wealth to charity

(Reuters) Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, has urged long-time associate Elon Musk to quit the Giving Pledge under which signatories leave the majority of their wealth to charity. In transcripts and audio of lectures given by Thiel and shared with Reuters, Thiel in September recalled how he recently warned Musk that his wealth would go "to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by Bill Gates."

Trump mulling over yet another big architectural addition to Washington

(Daily Beast) President Donald Trump appears ready to leave yet another mark on the nation’s capital with a triumphal arch that could rival the Lincoln Memorial in scale. AFP White House Correspondent Danny Kemp shared a photo of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office with a satellite map of D.C. spread across it, complete with a miniature model of the Lincoln Memorial—and, across the water, a model of an arch that does not yet exist. The arch, which is topped by a winged golden angel, appears to be planned for the traffic circle at the terminus of the Arlington Memorial Bridge—echoing Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, which was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Key Trump nominee accused of sexual harassment

(Politico) In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room. Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.

Letitia James criminally charged in Trump's latest effort to punish rivals

(The Guardian) A federal grand jury indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general, for bank fraud on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, personally presented the case to the grand jury on Thursday, the person said. US attorneys do not typically present to a grand jury. Representatives for James did not immediately return a request for comment.