"We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring. That covers a lot of territory," Trump said on Tuesday. "The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. And it's appropriate."
Trump made the announcement in his first press conference since Congress certified his election win over Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday from Mar-a-Lago. He opened the press event announcing DAMAC Properties will invest $20 billion in new data centers across the country in addition to previewing a bevy of policy issues ahead of his inauguration this month.
Trump did not detail how his administration will go about renaming the body of water, but went on to slam Mexico for the immigration woes in the U.S. under the Biden White House.
"Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country. They can stop them. And we’re going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada, because Canada, they come through Canada too, and the drugs that are coming through are at record numbers, record numbers. So we’re going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada, substantial tariffs," he said.
Trump has referred to Canada as the nation's "51st state," while his son and other Trump allies traveled to Greenland this week following Trump repeatedly called for the U.S. to acquire the autonomous territory under the Kingdom of Denmark.
"As someone who has traveled to some fascinating places across the globe as an outdoorsman, I’m excited to stop into Greenland for a little bit of fun this week," Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News Digital of his trip to Greenland.
A source familiar told Fox News Digital that Trump Jr. is "popping in for a quick day-long trip to shoot some fun video content for podcasting." Trump Jr. is not meeting with government officials while in Greenland, Fox Digital previously reported.
Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom and Brooke Signman contributed to this report.
The Laken Riley Act passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon, the first piece of federal legislation approved by the 119th Congress after the House agreed to its rules for the term.
All voting Republicans supported the bill, along with 48 Democrats – more than the total left-wing lawmakers who voted for it last year. It passed on a 264 to 159 margin and will now be sent to the Senate.
The bill is named after a nursing student who was killed by an illegal immigrant while jogging on the University of Georgia's campus.
The bill would require federal immigration authorities to detain illegal immigrants found guilty of theft-related crimes. It also would allow states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for harm caused to their citizens because of illegal immigration.
Jose Ibarra, who was sentenced to life in prison for Riley's murder, had previously been arrested but was never detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the agency previously said.
The bill passed the House along bipartisan lines last year after it was first introduced by Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga.
All voting Republicans plus 37 Democrats voted for the bill by a margin of 251 to 170. All the "no" votes on the bill were Democrats.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said of the Democrats who opposed it last year, "I think they put politics ahead of principle. And we're going to find out where they stand on this now."
"We have every intention of doing, really important, bipartisan work," Johnson said hours before the vote on Tuesday. "We welcome with open arms any Democrat who wants to help us solve these problems because the American people demand and deserve it, it's overdue. And, we'll be looking for that and we'll see how it shakes out."
It was not taken up in the Senate, however, which at the time was controlled by then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
"[T]he Laken Riley Act, sponsored by Rep. Mike Collins, holds the Biden Administration accountable for their role in these tragedies through their open border policies, requires detention of illegal aliens who commit theft and mandates ICE take them into custody, and allows a state to sue the Federal government on behalf of their citizens for not enforcing the border laws, particularly in the case of parole," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said in his daily House floor lookout.
"House Republicans won’t stop fighting to secure the border and protect American communities. When will Democrats finally decide enough is enough?"
The Senate is also poised to vote on the bill this week.
It is one of several border security bills House Republicans have reintroduced this year as they prepare to take over all the levers of power in Washington, D.C.
Republicans held the House and took over the Senate in the November elections. President-elect Donald Trump will take office on Jan. 20.
As part of Meta’s sweeping changes to content moderation announced today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the company will also be moving its content moderation teams from California to Texas to “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” he wrote on Threads.
“We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas,” Zuckerberg says in a video about the changes. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
Meta’s other moderation changes include ditching its independent fact-checking program in the US in favor of an X-inspired Community Notes feature, removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, and bringing back civic content to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
President-elect Donald Trump said he was pleased by Meta's changing policies.
Evan Vucci/AP
Donald Trump said that Mark Zuckerberg may have taken notice of his threats.
The president-elect previously threatened to jail the Meta CEO for life.
Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers.
President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for changing how it moderates political content on its three major social media platforms.
Trump, who previously threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison, said his comments might have led to the announcement.
"Probably," Trump said when asked if Zuckerberg is "directly responding to the threats you've made to him in the past."
Zuckerberg and Trump once had a frosty relationship, but both sides appear to be warming up.
"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook" Trump told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference.
Zuckerberg made the major shift on Tuesday, announcing that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers and will relax moderation policies on topics like gender and immigration.
"We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."
Joel Kaplan, recently promoted to lead Meta's global policy team, outlined the announcement during an interview on "Fox and Friends," Fox News' morning show that Trump has long watched.
"There is a real opportunity here, with President Trump coming into office, with his commitment to free expression, for us to get back to those values," Kaplan said.
Trump said he saw Kaplan's comments and called the former Bush White House official "very impressive."
Zuckerberg recently dined at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, part of a larger wave of tech CEOs hoping to reset relations with the incoming administration. Meta is also donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration.
Zuckerberg and Trump haven't always gotten along.
Trump's first administration and several states teamed up in 2020 on a major antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. In 2021, Trump, then-a former president, sued Facebook and other platforms for banning him in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Trump and his allies have also been highly critical of Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's charitable giving ahead of the 2020 election to help local election officials deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We are watching him closely," Trump wrote in his book earlier this year in a section about Zuckerberg," and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election."
Before the presidential election, Zuckerberg announced he would not make any donations to election officials again, and he called Trump a "badass" after the president-elect survived an assassination attempt in July.
A representative for Meta didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Jerry Springer was the host of a daytime talk show.
Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty Images
The Netflix docuseries "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action" premiered on Tuesday.
It explores the controversial rise of Springer's daytime talk show, which gained fame for its brawls.
Former producers describe manipulative tactics they used to get guests riled up and ready to fight.
The unruly guests on "The Jerry Springer Show" were not professional actors — but their infamous brawls were encouraged and teased out behind the scenes, producers say.
Netflix's new two-part documentary, "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action," unpacks the show's outrageous premise and its rise to the top of daytime TV ratings in the late '90s. It features several interviews with former producers, who describe the tactics they used to recruit real people with real problems and coax them into having emotional meltdowns on air.
"Just like any other manipulative situation, you need to instinctually pull out of them those points of tension that create a soap opera," Melinda Chait Mele, a producer who'd been hired from the tabloid world, says in the doc.
"A lot of the guests were earnest. They literally did think they were coming on to solve a problem. You wouldn't believe how many people said to me on the telephone, 'I can't wait to meet Jerry. I really hope he can help me with this,'" Mele tells the camera. "Jerry didn't help anybody with any of it. He just stood there and did his thing."
Guests fighting on "The Jerry Springer Show."
Virginia Sherwood/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
As the show was gaining popularity and producers were under more pressure to orchestrate shock and awe, Mele hired Toby Yoshimura, a former bartender with no talk show experience. He proved exceptionally skilled at convincing people to publicly air their grievances.
"These are small-town folk, right? And you're really trying to sell it to them, like, 'You've got this great story. We want to give people an opportunity to see that,'" Yoshimura explains. "In order for them to deliver, they have to like you. So you treat them like they're kings."
Yoshimura says producers would send limousines to ferry guests to and from the airport. A "Jerry Springer" guest identified as Melanie says they were also supplied with plenty of alcohol.
"They did everything in their power to get us as crazy as possible," Melanie says. "They were like, 'Go hog wild! Have fun!' And so we got wasted." By the time she arrived on set the following morning, Melanie says she was hungover, sleep-deprived, and "ready to fuck it up." Meanwhile, producers were with her backstage, coaching her on "what to say and how to act."
Yoshimura describes the environment as a "pressure cooker" and admits that some stories went too far. (Some of the show's most controversial episodes include "I'm Pregnant By My Brother" and "I Married a Horse.")
"You had to reach into their brain and tap on the thing that would make them laugh, cry, scream, or fight. You rev 'em up to tornado level, and then you send 'em out onstage," Yoshimura says, adding later, "This was basically the Stanford Prison Experiment, in that you were playing with people's psyches until you get a result."
This methodology was designed to generate higher ratings, which spiked after an episode that saw a member of the Jewish Defense League start a fistfight with members of the Ku Klux Klan.
"It was brilliant. And it rated through the roof," says Richard Dominick, the executive producer for "Jerry Springer" who's widely credited as the show's mastermind. "If you're producing a show that you want to be insane, and unlike anything that's ever been on TV before, there's your goal. That's what you want."
From that point onward, producers were instructed to pursue on-camera confrontations — and for a while, Dominick's method got results. In 1998, Springer even beat out Oprah Winfrey in the ratings for the most-watched daytime talk show, a feat that producers previously thought was impossible.
"There was no question: Jerry and Richard were on top of the world. I mean, the riches that it gave them, and the fame, were very compelling," says Robert Feder, a longtime media critic who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times during the "Jerry Springer" era.
"But what did they have to do in order to achieve it?" Feder continues. "The degree to which Jerry sold himself out, and the degree to which he was complicit with Richard in exploiting the people who came on the show, is something that had serious consequences."
"The Jerry Springer Show" ran for 27 seasons before it was canceled in 2018; Springer died of pancreatic cancer in 2023. In the final years of his life, Springer disavowed his own show and publicly apologized for the role he played, declaring, "What have I done? I've ruined the culture."
"I look at some of the stuff that's being done now, and I go, 'We're kind of responsible for this crap,'" Dominick says in the doc, which pairs the quote with clips from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," and "The Apprentice." He adds: "Maybe I am gonna go to hell."
However, Yoshimura suggests the show's success reflects just as negatively on viewers — including any viewers of the Netflix doc today — as it does on hosts, creators, and producers.
"Look at the history of the show. A guy punches a girl in the face, it gets huge ratings. We put a girl without clothes on the show, everybody loses their mind," he explains. "All you guys wanna talk about is all that shit."
"But, you know, we're the problem," he adds. "If none of that happened, there's no documentary on Netflix. Full stop."
A view of the Russian Kilo-class attack submarine Novorossiysk near Portugal last week.
NATO Maritime Command
A Russian attack submarine that was stationed in Syria has officially left the Mediterranean Sea.
The departure of the Kilo-class Novorossiysk leaves Russia without any known submarines in the region.
The uncertain fate of Russia's naval presence in Syria amid other setbacks could spell trouble for its submarine force.
Strategic Russian naval bases have been upended by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, creating headaches for the Kremlin's navy, including its submarine force.
Moscow no longer appears to have any attack submarines in the Mediterranean Sea after NATO forces spotted its last known submarine leaving the region last week.
Portugal's military said that it observed a Russian Kilo-class submarine moving through the country's continental exclusive economic zone near northern Spain on Friday. NATO Maritime Command later identified the vessel as the Novorossiysk.
The Novorossiysk was spotted several weeks earlier at Tartus, a naval base in Syria that Russia had used for years. The future of Moscow's military footprint at the facility — and in the country in general — was, however, thrown into uncertainty after the shocking collapse of the Assad regime last month.
There are indications that Russia is drawing down forces at its bases in Syria. Losing Tartus for good would be a significant blow to Moscow's navy — including its capable submarine force — which relies on the warm-water port to project power across the region and beyond.
Early December satellite imagery showed the Novorossiysk docked in Tartus, but by the middle of the month, it was gone, along with the rest of the Russian warships that had been there. Some of the Russian naval vessels have been spotted in recent weeks loitering off the Syrian coast, but the whereabouts of this submarine were less certain.
Russian crew members board the Novorossiysk in Saint Petersburg in August 2014.
OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images
Should Syria's new leadership decide Russia can no longer station its forces at Tartus, it would mark another setback for Moscow's navy, which has suffered a string of stunning losses in the nearby Black Sea since the start of the full-scale Ukraine war nearly three years ago.
Ukrainian forces have used missiles and naval drones to damage or destroy dozens of Russian naval vessels, including one of six improved Kilo-class submarines Moscow's Black Sea Fleet operates, during the conflict.
These attacks have forced Moscow to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet from its long-held headquarters in Sevastopol, a major city in the southwestern corner of the occupied Crimean peninsula, across the region to the port of Novorossiysk along western Russia's coast. If Russia is unable to move back into Sevastopol, that creates complications.
For Russia, losing the ability to keep submarines at Sevastopol and Tartus is less than ideal.
Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that the remainder of the Kilo-class vessels are based in St. Petersburg, where there is a large naval facility and dry docks for maintenance.
"The Russians are now having to redeploy their submarine force back up to the north" instead of relying on warm-water ports that "you could get in and out of them year-round," Clark told Business Insider. "St. Petersburg, you can't get in and out of year-round."
An overview of the naval facility at Tartus on January 6.
Recent developments also seriously undermine Russia's military influence in the Mediterranean and southern Europe, Clark said.
The Novorossiysk is a newer improved Kilo sub. Submarines of this class are diesel-electric vessels and formidable long-range strike platforms that can attack ships and land targets, deploy for weeks on end, and stay relatively undetected. They are effectively Russia's most capable non-nuclear subs and can carry Kalibr missiles.
Russia has kept a Kilo-class vessel in the region for years. The boat's departure from the region, though Russia could ultimately opt to move another sub into the area later, may signal a broader decline in Russian naval might in the Mediterranean.
In four years, Russia appears to have gone "from being a pretty big player in the Med — in terms of naval forces — to now being a nonexistent player," Clark said.
Russia's basing challenges could ultimately hinder its ability to project power. The uncertainty with Tartus and nearby Hmeimim Air Base — underscores a broader issue for the Russian military.
Satellite imagery captured on Monday by Maxar Technologies, a commercial imaging company, shows no obvious signs of any major Russian naval vessels at Tartus, as has been the case for weeks. Ukraine's military intelligence agency has said Russia is withdrawing from the base.
Whether Moscow is able to negotiate an arrangement with the new Syrian leadership to stay in the country or is forced to relocate to a new hub in North Africa to sustain its operations remains to be seen.
In 2007, Jesse Burgess joined his family’s payroll business. He quickly noticed that the business’ six payroll clerks were getting bogged down by repetitive, monotonous tasks — and so he sought to streamline those tasks by creating workflow automation tools. Several years later, Burgess sensed an opportunity to bring the tools he developed for his […]
BMW is totally revamping its in-car user interface, starting with the Neue Klasse sedan later this year and ultimately spreading to all models, the company announced at CES 2025. Some of it looks and feels familiar, but the big change is a widget-based system that lets users customize the layout — including on the car’s […]
Samsung is starting to get things rolling for the release of the Galaxy S25 series. This year, the Galaxy S25 lineup should offer some really nice enhancements and improvements to a line that has proven it’s a strong Android option. With the reserve campaign live, here’s how you can sign up.
Smart home devices are getting a lot smarter, thanks to improvements in standards like what Matter has introduced to the industry. To facilitate that, Google and MediaTek are partnering up to introduce a new Filogic chip dedicated to smart home products.
Apple has just released iOS 18.3 beta 2. While so far we haven’t seen a ton of changes in iOS 18.3, the latest beta does bring one fix for the Calculator app that has been asked for often since iOS 18’s redesign.
As someone who’s been using Satechi products for years, I’ve always admired their sleek designs and focus on functionality. At this year’s Pepcom event, I had a chance to go hands-on with their latest OntheGo collection — a lineup of premium travel chargers that make staying powered up on the move easier than ever. From power banks with built-in stands to versatile wireless chargers, Satechi continues to deliver practical, beautifully crafted tech accessories.
Here’s everything you need to know about the new OntheGo lineup:
