President Donald Trump announces a new battleship fleet while clamping down on Venezuelan oil, a tangled web of schemes reveals even more fraud in Minnesota, and ballot-counting errors surface in a state that Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.
It’s Tuesday, December 23, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below or on The Daily Wire:
Trump’s Show Of Force In Caribbean
Amid a massive naval buildup in the Caribbean, President Trump announced new efforts to crack down on Venezuela’s socialist regime. The Coast Guard and Navy have seized two “dark fleet” tankers used by Venezuela to ship its oil under other countries’ flags. The additional pressure targets Venezuela’s primary source of funding–the sale of its oil internationally. More broadly, the True administration says the crackdown is intended to send a message to the rest of the world, not just Venezuela, that the illegal activity such as that participated in by Maduro against the United States will not be tolerated.
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‘Industrial-Scale Fraud’ In Minnesota
Stunning new details have surfaced in Minnesota’s sprawling fraud scandal, which is largely tied to the state’s Somali community. Federal prosecutor Joseph Thompson revealed in a shocking press conference that at least $9 billion of taxpayer money could have been stolen in an “industrial-scale fraud” operation. There were 14 taxpayer-funded programs in particular that have been rife with fraud since 2018. Those programs cost $18 billion dollars, and Thompson said it’s possible that half of that, or more, could have been fraudulently claimed. Fraud has been particularly bad in Minnesota, despite some politicians in the state trying to downplay the scandal.
Fulton County Admits It Broke Election Rules In 2020
Election officials in Georgia say that Fulton County violated state election rules when it certified some 315,000 ballots in the 2020 election. The issue came over tabulation tapes and “zero” tapes. State election rules say these tapes have to be signed by election workers to certify their authenticity, but for most of the polls across Fulton County, the tapes weren’t signed. Those tapes account for essentially every early in-person vote cast in Fulton County in 2020–about 315,000 in total. County officials essentially admitted to the mistake in a December 9 Georgia State Election Board meeting, the Federalist reported.
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