Donald Trump has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm while offering full-throated support to Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in Florida.
In a bravura display of mutual admiration, Netanyahu announced that the US president would be awarded the Israel prize, the country’s highest civilian honour, which since its inception in the 1950s has never before been given to a non-Israeli person.
The president also took a moment during the press conference to attack Jerome Powell, calling the Federal Reserve chair a “fool” and once again suggesting he would like to fire him.
Trump also repeated false claims about the cost of a renovation of the central bank headquarters and told reporters that he might file a lawsuit against Powell for “gross incompetence”.
Hamas will have ‘hell to pay’ if it fails to disarm, Trump warns after Netanyahu meeting
The trip by Netanyahu to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence came amid a new push by officials in Washington to force concessions from Israel to allow progress towards the second phase of a Gaza peace plan, which in October halted the devastating two-year-long war.
Trump threatens to fire (and sue) Jerome Powell
Trump boasted about what he said was the great state of the US economy, before adding that it was so, “despite the fact that we have a fool at the Federal Reserve”.
“I mean, Biden reappointed him. It’s too bad. You would have thought he wouldn’t have done that,” Trump said, without any acknowledgment that he had first appointed Powell in 2018.
US struck ‘big facility’ in Venezuela, Trump claimed without offering details
Donald Trump has claimed that US forces struck a “big facility” in Venezuela last week – but the president did not specify what it was or where, and the White House has not commented further.
“We just knocked out – I don’t know if you read or you saw – they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told Republican donor and New York supermarket owner John Catsimatidis on Friday.
Nearly half of Americans think their financial security is getting worse
Twice as many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse than better, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian, and they are increasingly blaming the White House.
The poll, conducted by Harris, will be a further blow to Trump’s efforts to fight off criticism of his handling of the economy and contains some worrying findings for the president.
US pledges $2bn in new UN model for delivery of humanitarian assistance
The United States on Monday pledged $2bn in assistance to tens of millions of people facing hunger and disease in more than a dozen countries next year, part of what it said was a new mechanism for the delivery of life-saving assistance following major foreign aid cuts by the Trump administration.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says she was ‘naive’ for believing Trump is man of the people
Marjorie Taylor Greene, now just days away from stepping down as a congresswoman for Georgia, said in a lengthy interview with the New York Times that she “was just so naive” for believing that Trump was a man of the people.
What else happened today:
Democrats will retake the US House’s majority in the 2026 midterm elections, the chamber’s former speaker Nancy Pelosi has confidently predicted – and she hopes her party colleagues then seize back the congressional power that Republicans have all but ceded to Trump.
Trump’s actions and incendiary remarks in the first year of his second presidential term have left many women, people of color and their allies in a tailspin. Here is Trump – in his own words – as year two of his second term looms.
In the past decade at the forefront of US politics, Trump has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a “hoax”. This year has seen the president ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it
A federal judge has dismissed an indictment against a Los Angeles TikTok streamer who was shot by an officer during an immigration enforcement operation and accused of assault against a federal agent, citing constitutional violations.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 28 December 2025.
