The US plans to expand the number of countries covered by its travel ban to more than 30, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, has announced.
The bans apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants, such as tourists, students and business travelers. It expands on the list of 19 countries already facing travel restrictions, which includes Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen.
Noem did not specify which countries would be added to the list.
Immigration groups and lawmakers sharply criticized the escalation and plan to halt applications from the 19 countries already named, a decision that comes amid reports that naturalization ceremonies for people on the travel ban list are also being canceled.
Noem reveals plans to widen US travel ban
“I won’t be specific on the number, but it’s over 30, and the president is continuing to evaluate countries,” she said in an interview with Fox News.
An expansion of the list would mark a further escalation of immigration measures the administration has taken since the shooting of two national guard members in Washington DC last week.
US supreme court to decide on legality of Trump birthright citizenship order
The justices will hear the president’s request to uphold his executive order on birthright citizenship, issued just hours after Trump took office for his second term and immediately blocked from taking effect.
The order was a contentious part of the administration’s far-reaching immigration crackdown – and a step that would transform the interpretation of a 19th-century constitutional provision.
Survivors clung to boat wreckage for an hour before second deadly attack
Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according to a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.
The men were shirtless and unarmed and carried no visible radio or other communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.
US policy paper lays bare Trump support for Europe’s far right
Donald Trump’s administration has said Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of immigration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”. Billed as “a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth”, the US National Security Strategy makes explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s far-right parties.
CDC panel votes to limit hepatitis B vaccines for newborns
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s vaccine advisers voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis vaccines in a major move signaling the Trump administration’s regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.
The panel of advisers to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr voted to remove the broad recommendation that all newborns in the US receive a hepatitis B vaccine.
US federal judge orders release of Epstein grand jury materials
US district judge Rodney Smith ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month by Donald Trump, overrode federal rules prohibiting the disclosure of grand jury materials.
The Friday ruling approved the justice department’s request to unseal documents from the 2006-2007 federal grand jury investigation into Epstein in Florida. An earlier attempt to release these same transcripts was denied by a different judge earlier this year.
Trump administration moves to deny visas to factcheckers and content moderators
The action, detailed in a state department memo sent to overseas missions this week, first reported by Reuters and then NPR, directs consular officials to deny visas to any applicant “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.
Ilhan Omar on Trump’s anti-Somali tirade: he ‘knows he is failing’
Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Minnesota representative, wrote in an essay published by the New York Times that Donald Trump is lashing out at her and her community with bigotry because he “knows he is failing”. The US president dismissed Somali Americans earlier this week as “garbage” in a racist rant.
What else happened today:
Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery in an $82.7bn deal that will dramatically reshape the established Hollywood film and TV industry.
The judge presiding over California’s lawsuit against the Trump administration challenged the federal government’s authority and rationale for continuing to maintain command over the national guard troops it deployed to Los Angeles earlier this year.
A US citizen who was seen on home security video being chased by masked federal agents outside New Orleans amid the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown says she surmises that she was pursued because “I’m brown”.
US attorney general Pam Bondi instructed law enforcement officials to investigate antifa and other supposed domestic terror groups, and specifically directed them to search for “tax crimes” the groups may have committed, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.
A tenured professor at San José State University in California is fighting for her job after the university fired her last month over her pro-Palestinian activism – the first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection with campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona representative, said she was “sprayed in the face” during a protest against a federal immigration raid at a Mexican restaurant in Tucson on Friday.
US immigration authorities arrested a visiting professor at Harvard Law School after he was charged with discharging a pellet gun outside a Massachusetts synagogue the day before Yom Kippur, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Thursday – and he agreed to leave the country.
Donald Trump has been named the first winner of the newly created Fifa peace prize, claiming “the world is a safer place now” as he received the award at the draw for the 2026 World Cup in Washington DC.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 December 2025.
