Temperatures are forecast to become more January-like by Saturday
Record challenging heat for many across South-Central Texas (Copyright KSAT-12 2025 – All Rights Reserved)
FORECAST HIGHLIGHTS
RECORD HEAT: Mid-80s will put us in record territory today
RAIN CHANCES: Small chances ahead of a cold front
COLDER AIR: Arrives with gusty winds by the weekend
FORECAST
RECORD CHALLENGING HEAT
While clouds continue to thin out allowing temperatures to climb quickly. Highs today should reach the mid-80s, putting us within range of a record (84, 1989).
Peak temperatures today (Copyright KSAT-12 2026 – All Rights Reserved)
RAIN RETURNS
The changing weather brings more than just cooler air. Rain is expected to start Thursday and last into Friday afternoon. The rain is likely to be scattered, and mainly signals the shift to much cooler weather to follow
Rain chances increase with incoming cold front (Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.)
CHILLY WEEKEND
It’s trending cooler for both Saturday and Sunday, with highs potentially staying in the 50s. Gusty north winds will be an issue on Saturday and may kick up mountain cedar. The other concern would be near-freezing temperatures on Sunday and Monday mornings. As of now, the forecast calls for temperatures to be just above that mark, however, cloud cover will play a big role on just how low we go. We’ll keep you posted.
7 Day Forecast (Copyright KSAT-12 2026 – All Rights Reserved)
Daily Forecast
KSAT meteorologists keep you on top of the ever-changing South Texas weather.
Justin Horne is a meteorologist and reporter for KSAT 12 News. When severe weather rolls through, Justin will hop in the KSAT 12 Storm Chaser to safely bring you the latest weather conditions from across South Texas. On top of delivering an accurate forecast, Justin often reports on one of his favorite topics: Texas history.
Shelby Ebertowski joined KSAT 12 News in January 2025. She came to San Antonio from Fargo, North Dakota via the University of North Dakota, where she learned the ropes as a weekend forecaster over two years at KVLY. Her love of weather love began after experiencing Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Great Job Justin Horne, Shelby Ebertowski & the Team @ KSAT San Antonio for sharing this story.
After spending the first 16 years of her federal government career focused on the impacts of climate change, Libby Jewett hoped to wrap up her time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working on solutions.
So in 2023, the marine ecologist gave up her post as the founding director of NOAA’s ocean acidification program, moved from Washington, D.C., to New England, and joined the agency team working on the permitting of offshore wind energy. Technically, it was a demotion, since she no longer was a manager, but Jewett was eager to help tackle the slew of projects proposed on the Atlantic Coast during President Joe Biden’s administration.
But that work, and Jewett’s career as a public servant, came to an abrupt halt soon after President Donald Trump took office. Amid the upheaval early last year as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed the federal workforce and Trump ordered a stop to U.S. offshore wind development, Jewett, 62, opted to retire.
DOGE was quietly disbanded in November after falling far short of its budget-cutting goals. Trump has escalated his war on offshore wind, citing unspecified secret national security risks, in an effort to maintain a halt on all projects in the face of a federal judge’s Dec. 8 ruling that such a ban was illegal. And the tumult of the first year of Trump’s second term lingers, destined to have a lasting impact on NOAA, in large part because of the exodus of experts like Jewett.
As Jewett looks ahead to continuing her work on climate change—including as an author on the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment—she also is reflecting on the work she and her colleagues did at NOAA. After a year of attacks on the federal workforce, Jewett hopes to help foster better public understanding of how government works and what agencies like NOAA do.
“I feel like the way that government functions well is that you have teams of people who are dedicated to the mission of the organization, and you listen to them, and you collectively come up with a better answer than if you tried to do it on your own,” Jewett said.
She had a chance to assemble such a team when evidence first emerged that greenhouse gases were transforming the chemistry of the oceans, putting at risk the nation’s $3 billion-a-year shellfish industry, the coral reefs that act as natural barriers against storms and support a quarter of all marine life and the millions of people who rely on healthy seas.
A Son’s Inspiring Field Trip
Jewett did not start out as a scientist, and instead had what she describes as a “meandering career” in public service. After growing up in the Washington, D.C., area—her father was general counsel for the Inter-American Development Bank—she majored in Latin American studies at Yale, then earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
She worked on childcare issues for a nonprofit in Boston, then moved to an organization that assisted Central American refugees and later became a fundraiser for an environmental group focused on conservation initiatives in the Great Lakes. While working among environmentalists, she found herself longing for a better understanding of the science that informed their work.
At this point, Jewett and her husband, a doctor, had two children. Unexpectedly, she became even more drawn to science through her experiences as a parent. “I think it was on one of my son’s kindergarten field trips, and we were out doing something in streams,” Jewett said. “What I remember is thinking, ‘Oh my God, I love this.’”
In retrospect, she believes that exploring the water resonated with her because of her childhood summers spent in Maine. Her large family (she was one of six children) would pack provisions into a small boat and head to an uninhabited island to camp for two weeks in the outdoors, with activities and timing of their travel to the mainland dictated by the surrounding waters and weather. “When I started thinking about getting a Ph.D. in science, and about what kind of science that would be,” Jewett said, “there was never any doubt that it would be marine science.”
She enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Maryland, sometimes taking her children with her while she did her field work. They’d help her lift panels that she had lowered into the York River, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, to see what type of organisms would attach themselves to the surfaces over time. Analysis of these so-called “fouling communities” of barnacles, algae and other organisms can tell much about the health of an ecosystem, including the impact of non-native species.
While commuting to the laboratory from her home each day, Jewett passed a large bronze work of art: an upturned hand releasing four gulls. It was the statue outside the Silver Spring, Maryland, headquarters of NOAA.
“The Hand of NOAA,” a sculpture created by Raymond Kaskey, sits outside NOAA’s Silver Spring, Md., headquarters. Credit: NOAA Heritage
Jewett decided to apply to work at the agency, at first because it seemed like a convenient commute from home. Her academic colleagues warned her that joining a government agency would mean doing less science and attending more meetings. But in 2006, the year after earning her Ph.D., she became a contractor with NOAA’s National Ocean Service, working on the problems of harmful algal blooms. Jewett soon found that she had landed in precisely the work she had been seeking all along—applying science to benefit the public.
“The interface between policy and science was my dream, exactly,” Jewett said.
She helped develop a harmful algal bloom forecast for the coast of Texas, which informs coastal communities and industries about the location, size and movement of fast-growing cyanobacteria. These blooms, often caused by warm water, sunlight and excess nutrients from fertilizer runoff and other pollutants, release toxins that can harm people, pets and wildlife. Soon, Jewett became a full-time government employee and program manager for NOAA’s work on hypoxia, or low-oxygen episodes, a problem also tied to runoff pollution.
In addition to the work itself, Jewett enjoyed getting together with colleagues at NOAA to talk about new science. So she organized a “journal club.” It was kind of like a book club, but instead of books, members identified interesting scientific research papers to read and talk about over lunch. “It was something we did for fun on the side,” Jewett said, laughing.
For one lunch session, Jewett picked out new research that was being spearheaded by one of NOAA’s own scientists, Richard Feely, at the agency’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. It was about a threat to shelled creatures like the ones that would attach themselves to the panels Jewett had studied near the Chesapeake Bay. In a series of studies beginning in 2004, Feely and his team had documented how carbon dioxide was changing not only the atmosphere, but the chemistry of the oceans, posing great risk to a wide variety of sea life.
An Industry “Scared to Death”
That journal club meeting, and a fortuitous meeting between Jewett and Feely, would begin a collaboration that, over time, launched NOAA’s work on ocean acidification. Feely got word that a group at NOAA headquarters was discussing his research and he reached out to Jewett. He and his team of scientists were convinced that ocean acidification already was a problem that required more than the research they were doing. It was a problem they believed that NOAA needed to act on.
In the Pacific Northwest beginning in 2005, oyster larvae in hatcheries had begun dying and production was plummeting due to what the farmers suspected was a bacterial disease. The industry, which supports 3,200 jobs in coastal Washington, had invested in sanitizing tanks to kill bacteria, but the problems persisted.
As a senior scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Richard Feely focused on carbon cycling and ocean acidification. Credit: NOAA
Feely suspected that Pacific oysters were the earliest known victims of ocean acidification. He met with farmers to explain how the seas were absorbing one quarter to one third of the carbon pollution generated each year by humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. The resulting chemical reaction causes the water to become more acidic and reduces the available calcium carbonate that is essential for the formation of shells and skeletons in marine life.
The problem was exacerbated on the West Coast because of upwelling patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Even though the oceans are vast enough to take in massive amounts of carbon, Feely led a research cruise survey of the western continental shelf in 2007 that confirmed that the most acidic waters from the deep were welling up regularly near the Pacific coast of North America. Previously, scientists had projected that carbon dioxide would cause problematic acidity in oceans “over the next several hundred years.” But Feely told the farmers his research indicated that levels were corrosive enough to interfere with oyster development now.
“They were flabbergasted,” Feely recalled recently. “And they were scared to death.”
But NOAA did more than deliver the bad news. The agency would provide help. Today, oyster growers—as well as fisheries and communities on all U.S. coasts, continental and island—rely on NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), a network of buoys and sensors, to provide real-time data on ocean acidity. The Pacific Northwest oyster industry has been able to dramatically improve survival rates by taking steps such as chemical buffering or avoiding filling tanks with seawater at times when acidity levels are too high.
Feely credits Jewett with leading what he describes as “the visionary work” to make it happen. She helped assemble a NOAA team to develop the strategic research plan that became the blueprint for the agency’s ocean acidification work.
“She was the coordinating person who brought everybody together, kept expanding and kept making sure that everybody was well organized and well structured,” Feely said. “Just an amazing leader. She had a great way of making people feel comfortable working together. She was so encouraging, always very positive and always seeing where the future could lie.”
Darcy Dugan, who led the development and launch of Alaska’s ocean acidification network and is now its director, agrees. “When I think of Libby, I just think of this ray of light, and her warmth and her curiosity and her commitment to collaboration,” Dugan said. “She was super-committed to science and was very pioneering. She also cared about relationships and had a way of always making you feel valued.”
Part of NOAA’s job was communicating to Congress the national economic implications of the threats to premium species in U.S. fisheries, like lobsters, crabs and sea scallops. Even though shellfish accounted for just 17 percent of U.S. commercial fishery landings in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, they provided 51 percent of the $5.9 billion value of the industry’s catch.
Feely testified repeatedly before Congress as Jewett and her team worked behind the scenes. With urging from the shellfish industry and state officials, Congress passed the first law in the world to address the problem, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act (FOARAM), in 2009. Jewett would become NOAA’s first ocean acidification program director, and the first female director in the agency’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research division. Under her leadership, NOAA chaired an interagency working group of 14 federal agencies engaged on the issue. And the work extended beyond the U.S. borders. The United States was instrumental in the launching of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) in 2012, now involving 114 countries.
Richard Feely stands on the deck of a ship operated by Oregon State University during a 2007 research cruise studying ocean acidification. Credit: NOAA
Ocean climate scientist Sarah Cooley first worked with Jewett when she was a NOAA outside research partner, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Cooley remembers being impressed at how Jewett made sure NOAA’s ocean acidification program was not just academic but rooted in the needs of communities reliant on the sea.
“I would say one of the things that Libby really did that was very unique was she saw how to bring together the natural systems piece of the research and the social systems piece of the research,” Cooley said. “And I think that’s very unusual in a program in NOAA’s OAR. A lot of those research programs are very natural-systems focused. But Libby really led bringing in that community-needs focus.”
Jewett credits her team with bringing that emphasis to the human dimensions of the ocean acidification problem. They realized it was lacking in early versions of the plan, she said. “At some point, pretty early on, my staff came to me and said, ‘We need to rethink this,’” she recalled. Instead of starting out trying to figure out all the marine organisms that were vulnerable, they urged that NOAA’s program first consider the people. “We need to consider how humans are vulnerable to ocean acidification either through the food they eat, cultural practices or places they visit,” Jewett recalled. From there, NOAA could work backward to assess the marine species, considering them as part of a socio-ecological system.
“This was a turning point for the program,” Jewett said. “Being challenged by my staff was good for the program and something any good leader should receive humbly and consider seriously.”
NOAA’s ocean acidification plan therefore emphasized the need for local and regional studies, recognizing, for instance, that some Indigenous communities rely on vulnerable species for subsistence, and that a coastal community relying exclusively on tourism related to a coral reef ecosystem might be more culturally and economically vulnerable than a community with a highly diversified economic base.
NOAA’s work has helped the industry and coastal communities better cope with ocean acidification, but the problem is far from solved. A NOAA-funded University of Washington study published last year showed that owners and operators of Pacific Northwest shellfish aquaculture facilities now view ocean acidification as a lower-priority concern than marine heat waves, disease and harmful algal blooms. The researchers said more effort was needed to communicate how all of these stressors are interconnected, and how solutions such as diversification of species could help with all these challenges.
One of the final things that Jewett worked on as program manager was a review of all the federal government had accomplished on ocean acidification and all that was left to do. The U.S. Ocean Acidification Action Plan, released by the Biden administration in 2023, called for further advances in research and monitoring, including through the use of artificial intelligence, and researching promising strategies for mitigating acidification—for example, through seagrasses and other plant life that can take up excess carbon dioxide from seawater. The plan also called for accelerating research into nascent ideas for marine carbon removal technology—both their promise and their potential risks.
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The idea of focusing more on climate solutions appealed to Jewett, especially the most important solution—reducing the carbon pollution from fossil fuels. NOAA had new and important work in this area—the environmental analysis on offshore wind. After working on a temporary detail with NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, she decided to join that team on a permanent basis.
Finding a successor for Jewett as director of the ocean acidification program was a lengthy process, not that unusual for a government leadership position. After a nationwide search, the post went to Cooley, who by then had spent a decade at the Ocean Conservancy, including as director of its ocean acidification program and more recently as its senior director for climate science. Cooley took the helm of the program in August 2024.
But Jewett’s work in NOAA’s offshore wind program, Cooley’s leadership of the agency’s ocean acidification program and indeed, the future of all the federal government’s climate work, were thrown into chaos soon after Trump took office in January 2025.
“A Psychological Push to Get Us Out”
For Jewett, the new administration brought an abrupt stop to 18 months of running full speed to keep up with the burgeoning offshore wind business. “It was really crazy, fast-paced work, because there was a big push on the part of the Biden administration,” she said. There were no commercial wind energy projects in U.S. waters when Biden took office; his administration had approved 11 by the end of 2024 and proposals for more were under consideration.
NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center was tasked with providing the scientific data and environmental reviews to ensure that marine ecosystems, fisheries and coastal communities were protected amid the drive to deploy offshore wind. Working with that team, Jewett was drawing on her experience launching the agency’s ocean acidification research portfolio, “trying to be thoughtful about how we were investing the money we had,” she said.
Libby Jewett outside her Vermont home in September 2025. Credit: Marianne Lavelle/Inside Climate News
But on his first day in office, Trump signed two executive orders that were “the first blow and the second blow” that knocked Jewett out of her career at NOAA. He withdrew all federal offshore areas from leasing for wind energy, and began a review of all the offshore wind decisions that had already been made, signaling his plan to terminate them.
At the same time, Trump ordered a termination of all remote work arrangements. Jewett and her husband had settled in Vermont and she had been working remotely from her home, coming into the NOAA office in Rhode Island as was needed—essentially, every two weeks. To stay with the federal government would mean both personal upheaval and professional uncertainty.
NOAA also quickly became a particular target of Musk and the DOGE team, and soon hundreds of agency workers were being laid off.
“There was kind of this psychological push to get us out,” Jewett said. “They wanted as many people as possible to retire and, in fact, they kind of dangled this idea that if enough people left then earlier career scientists might not have to leave. And I felt like I’m OK with that trade-off, because I’ve gotten to know these incredible scientists who are early in their career, and they’re doing great science. They should stay and be the future of the agency.”
Jewett retired on April 30, but the future of the agency looked even more uncertain when the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal came out the following month. NOAA’s fisheries and ecosystem science programs would get a 25 percent cut, with the offshore wind work phased out altogether, even though the agency’s job was to help minimize marine life impacts—at times, Trump’s stated issue with the industry.
Jewett’s old program, ocean acidification, also was going through turmoil. Cooley, in her position as program leader for less than a year, was one of thousands of probationary employees across the federal government who were laid off in February. “I just couldn’t believe this was happening,” Jewett said.
Cooley, who will take over as executive director of the nonprofit Earth Science Information Partners in January, said she realized she was vulnerable at the start of Trump’s second term. Even though her deputy told her she was being “morbid,” she said she made sure she had another colleague with her at every meeting so there would be continuity.
“I started building redundancy into our program so that the work could continue,” Cooley said.
On paper, NOAA’s ocean acidification program is, indeed, continuing. But in reality, it is hobbled by cutbacks, according to those familiar with its work. Fewer research grants are being issued than in previous years. And there are local impacts. For instance, instruments at NOAA’s remote Kodiak, Alaska, site that were designed to provide continuous monitoring of ocean acidity conditions couldn’t be used last year because the technician position was eliminated, said Dugan of Alaska’s Ocean Observing System.
Although the Trump administration’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal would continue the Congressionally mandated ocean acidification program, it would zero out the funding that flows to the regional ocean observing systems like Alaska’s that do the monitoring that are a linchpin of the program. There’s bipartisan opposition to deep cuts at NOAA, but no final decisions have been made, and the agency is operating with stopgap funding through January.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations about, ‘How do we navigate this?’,” Dugan said. “And some of the scenarios were pretty bleak. We’ve felt a sense of relief for this [fiscal] year’s funding, but it’s hard to be in this space of uncertainty.”
Another linchpin of the ocean acidification program, pioneering scientist Richard Feely, also is gone. He retired in September after 51 years at the agency. Eligible to retire much earlier—Jewett said Feely was talking about retirement from the day she met him—Feely, 78, stayed long enough to see his science make a positive difference in people’s lives, he told the representatives of the Pacific Northwest fisheries industry and coastal community who attended his retirement party.
“I said the reason I stayed so long is because you guys responded to the research that we provided you,” Feely said. “I saw how our community changed because of the research, and I couldn’t walk away from it.”
He is especially proud of the U.S. leadership that led to the growth of ocean acidification research and monitoring around the world. “Most people say that the fisheries management in the United States is the best there is,” Feely said. “And I think that is because such good coordination occurs, because of the impact of NOAA science and the fisheries research efforts that have occurred in this country.”
Although Jewett is at peace with her own departure from NOAA, she is worried about the long-term impact of the past year’s mass exodus from NOAA. “It’s like the institutional memory of the organization,” she said. “All these leaders of things who’ve been around for a long time and know how it operates, we’re kind of moving on.”
In August, Jewett got word that she has been selected to serve as one of about 50 U.S. authors who will be working on the next assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She’ll be working on the so-called “Working Group II” report—back to assessing the impacts of climate change, rather than helping deploy the solutions, as she hoped to be doing now. “I am proud to carry the torch for all the NOAA scientists who cannot serve on this round of the assessment,” Jewett said in a post announcing the news on LinkedIn.
NOAA has lost close to 2,000 of its 11,800 employees through layoffs and retirements since Trump took office, according to members of Congress. If these numbers are true, agency staffing is at its lowest level since the agency’s creation in 1970.
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Marianne Lavelle is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Inside Climate News. She has covered environment, science, law, and business in Washington, D.C. for more than two decades. She has won the Polk Award, the Investigative Editors and Reporters Award, and numerous other honors. Lavelle spent four years as online energy news editor and writer at National Geographic. She spearheaded a project on climate lobbying for the nonprofit journalism organization, the Center for Public Integrity. She also has worked at U.S. News and World Report magazine and The National Law Journal. While there, she led the award-winning 1992 investigation, “Unequal Protection,” on the disparity in environmental law enforcement against polluters in minority and white communities. Lavelle received her master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is a graduate of Villanova University.
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ANDREW NAPOLITANO (SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST): Well, the problem here is a couple of things. One, in order to discipline Senator Kelly, he’s got to be activated as Captain Kelly in the Navy. And then he can be subject to some discipline. And the Constitution prohibits activating members of Congress to active duty.
HIGBIE: So actually, I did some searching on that. It actually — it bestows the power onto the congressmen. If they are activated, it’s their responsibility to step down from Congress. I don’t think it prohibits them.
NAPOLITANO: Well, you know, this is not an area in which there’s been a lot of litigation, and the language in the Constitution is a bit ambiguous. But it would be interpreted to protect Congress. Why? Because it’s two separate branches. And the purpose of this is to make sure that no person has divided loyalties and is in two separate branches, the executive branch and the legislative branch at the same time. That’s also the reason why we have the speech or debate clause, so that the executive branch, here the Secretary of War, cannot punish somebody who is in the legislative branch because of what someone in the legislative branch said about a political issue.
CARL HIGBIE: So DOD directive 1344-10 allows for short term activation, but requires, it requires the resignation from Congress if they are activated —
NAPOLITANO: It would be unconstitutional to require somebody to resignation from Congress. So we don’t know how this is going to turn out, except it’s going to end up in a federal court, and it may very well end up in the Supreme Court.
It is a profound issue of free speech. Can the executive branch punish someone in the legislative branch because of the exercise of free speech? The short answer is no.
HIGBIE: The short answer is no. But I think the real answer, because you are — even when you’re an officer and you retire from duty, you know this —
NAPOLITANO: Yes.
HIGBIE: That you are still held to a standard of, you know, of higher character —
NAPOLITANO: Correct.
HIGBIE: And I believe that — there’s a really easy case. Merriam-Webster – indictment — incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority. They did that.
NAPOLITANO: But, you know, this is not sedition. This is not encouraging violence.
HIGBIE: But that’s not all sedition is.
NAPOLITANO: It’s a legally accurate statement. You do not have to obey an illegal order. Now, if ever — I’ll concede you this, if every enlisted person was deciding for him or herself what order is legal or illegal —
HIGBIE: That’s the point.
NAPOLITANO: You’d have a serious problem on your hands. But if something is profoundly and clearly illegal, you step aside and say, I can’t do it.
HIGBIE: So Cambridge Dictionary defines sedition — and I think this is what the DOJ is going after — language or behavior intended to persuade others to oppose their government.
NAPOLITANO: Well, that’s not the federal definition in the statute. The definition in the statute is words encouraging violence to overthrow the government. There’s no words in the — encouraging violence in the clip that you just ran. There’s no words encouraging violence in any of it. It’s all free speech.
HIGBIE: I see. I think we’re going to have a really hard time with that —
NAPOLITANO: I’ll tell you something we’ll agree on. It’s going to be a fascinating constitutional issue.
HIGBIE: Oh, a hundred percent.
NAPOLITANO: Speech and debate clause. You have this unique clause that most people didn’t even know was there, that you can’t be in two branches of the government at the same time.
HIGBIE: Right. But I see you and I disagree on that. I think that it’s the duty of the congressman by taking the oath of becoming a soldier, they then are already accepted that they have to resign from Congress should they be recalled.
NAPOLITANO: I think it’s the duty of the secretary of defense or the Secretary of War to wait until this person is no longer in Congress.
HIGBIE: Oh, see, I think it’s the duty of the Secretary of War to bury that guy under the jail.
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The MAGA heir-in-waiting delivered a fiery keynote at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, built on anti-feminism, racial resentment and fear.
Vice President JD Vance speaks on the final day of Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference at the Phoenix Convention Center on Dec. 21, 2025. (Caylo Seals / Getty Images)
I’m not a fan of Vice President JD Vance’s politics, or his ideology. I especially disdain his frequent derision of progressives and feminists, which I consider to be not only wrongheaded, but often embarrassingly reductive.
Nonetheless, I do appreciate something about the vice president’s approach to public life: his chutzpah. He boldly puts forth arguments he knows are contentious—ones not likely to be received warmly by large segments of the intellectual/academic elite, on both sides of the Atlantic.
A graduate of Yale Law School and best-selling memoirist, Vance clearly fancies himself part of the tradition of politician-intellectuals—someone who uses the public stage not only to promote specific policies, but to advance a set of ideas on a range of important social and political issues.
In her new book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, Laura Field positions Vance as part of the “post-liberal” wing of the movement, one that she describes as “sober, traditionalist and highbrow.”
Notwithstanding that generous characterization, Vance seems to take special pleasure in attacking—and mocking—the liberal intelligentsia. (He delivered a speech entitled “The Universities Are the Enemy” at the National Conservatism conference in 2021.)
Vance’s meteoric political rise was bankrolled and promoted by the right-wing Silicon Valley investor and billionaire, Peter Thiel. The vice president of the United States is considered Thiel’s protégé, but his political career has also benefitted from the support and advocacy of Elon Musk, David Sacks and other influential tech bros, who believe he possesses the skills necessary to harness right-wing populist energy for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022, in Miami. (Marco Bello / Getty Images)
It’s certainly [Vance’s] right, and prerogative, to share his views. But it’s up to us—his audience—either to accept or push back on those frequently controversial takes.
Vance does this, in part, through his relentless attacks on “wokeism.” That word has become a catchall on the right, and even in the political center, for initiatives that promote racial and gender equity on university campuses, the workplace, the military and so on.
His attacks often come in the form of speeches that receive a great deal of attention, mainly because he’s only “one heartbeat away” from the presidency. It’s certainly his right, and prerogative, to share his views. But it’s up to us—his audience—either to accept or push back on those frequently controversial takes.
That’s what I’m doing here.
Vance Channels Charlie Kirk at Turning Point
Vance gave the closing keynote speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 conference in Phoenix on Dec. 21. It was the first TP gathering since the right-wing organization’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in September, and thus bound to attract an extraordinary amount of media coverage and commentary.
Much analysis of AmericaFest—both inside and outside the conservative infotainment complex—focused on Nicki Minaj’s sharp right turn and/or infighting in the MAGA coalition between right-wing luminaries such as Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, especially in light of the increasingly brazen expressions of anti-Semitism in the movement. One catalyst for the tensions currently roiling the right is the growing popularity of the openly racist and anti-Semitic Nazi-sympathizer Nick Fuentes, a once-fringe, far-right figure who has graduated into a bold-letter name.
At AmericaFest, Vance famously refused to insert himself directly into the fractious debate over anti-Semitism on the right. As a likely top-tier contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, he sought to position himself above the fray, by refusing to criticize this ominous development—which would carry the risk of alienating potential far-right supporters.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” Vance declared. “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
Instead, he cycled through a laundry list of right-wing Christian nationalist gripes about Democrats and the “left.” Like so many other right-wing figures in the current era—public officials and media influencers alike—he returned repeatedly to MAGA talking points about white masculinity under siege, and the urgent need for those on his “team” to fight back.
This was certainly to be expected, especially at this venue. One of Charlie Kirk’s and Turning Point’s main organizational goals from the beginning has been the reinforcement of white male centrality and power. Kirk himself was masterful at convincing young men—especially young white men—that an oligarchy-friendly right-wing policy agenda was both in their interest and their path to salvation.
CEO of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk speaks with rapper Nicki Minaj during Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix on Dec. 21, 2025. (Olivier Touron / AFP via Getty Images)
It is also notable, though not surprising, that almost every gendered reference throughout the speech was directed toward men. Women play a role in MAGA, but not a leading role.
Deconstructing Vance
Below is a sampling of Vance’s “important work” at AmericaFest, followed by my brief reflections and rebuttals. I’ve arranged Vance’s comments in the order in which they appeared.
Please note that while Vance did address other matters, I’ve chosen mainly to highlight his remarks about gender and masculinity, for two reasons.
this topic constituted a major throughline in his speech, and
it’s a major area of focus in my work.
Also, due to the cherry-picked nature of what I’ve highlighted—in italics—I realize that I’ve possibly omitted some useful, or perhaps even necessary, context. The transcript of his remarks is readily available online; readers who are so inclined can judge for themselves whether the quotes I pulled from the VP’s speech represent his views accurately enough for this exercise.
Let’s jump right in.
Vance: People of every faith come to our banner because they know that the America First movement will make their lives better, and they also know that the Democrats don’t care about anything other than maybe transing their kids.
Let’s put aside the snarky and trollish quality of this statement. In the era before Donald Trump, it would have been regarded as wholly inappropriate for a senior public official to say something so ludicrous, much less a person with serious intellectual pretense. Nonetheless, this passage captures, in a nutshell, the essence of right-wing culture war propaganda. The conservative side of this “war” manifests itself, on gender-related topics, as a full-throated defense of traditional masculinity in the face of feminist critiques.
“Transing their kids” does a lot of work here, beyond its obvious appeal to anti-trans sentiment and bigotry. Right-wing attacks on Democratic support for transgender rights also help to convey a cartoonish stereotype about liberals and progressives: that they have special contempt for heteronormative, heterosexual men.
Meanwhile, Vance’s dismissive smear about Democrats shifts the focus away from core economic issues and evades a critical question that MAGA supporters have a tough time answering: How exactly does the America First movement intend to make the lives of working people better?
The reality is that the Republican Party and the Trump-Vance administration have enacted massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and made devastating cuts to programs that serve the working and middle classes. All the while, they’ve claimed to represent the interests of the working class.
But what steps have they taken to help accomplish this goal? What legislation do they support that would materially benefit the MAGA base? It’s largely left unsaid, beyond the usual complaints about immigrants taking the jobs of so-called “heritage” Americans. What is said, and implied, is that Democrats are elitists that don’t care about the plight of working people, and are only concerned about “identity” politics issues that affect a tiny percentage of the population.
The left has long criticized the Democratic Party—sometimes bitterly—for its cautious centrism on issues of economic justice. But aren’t the big-tech, finance, and crypto-bro supporting Republicans even more elitist? Compared to the billionaire-friendly Republicans, the Dems are consistently more pro-worker on everything from raising the minimum wage, to labor organizing, job safety, healthcare, child care, family leave, consumer rights, support for public higher education and so many other issues that affect working families.
… Vance’s dismissive smear … evades a critical question that MAGA supporters have a tough time answering: How exactly does the America First movement intend to make the lives of working people better?
Vance: We have finally made it clear that in the United States, we believe in hard work and merit. Unlike the left, we stand against treating … anybody different because of their race or their sex. So we have relegated DEI to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs. In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore. … We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot. And if you’re that, you’re very much on our team.
This is the distilled essence of MAGA’s appeal to racial and gender grievance: Hard-working white Americans, especially white men, have rightfully earned their status. And they resent it when undeserving women and people of color try to shame them in order to get more for themselves.
The phrase “you don’t have to apologize for being white any more” succinctly captures one of the animating energies of Trumpism, as well as a staple of contemporary right-wing propaganda: that white people and men have been made to feel guilty—by liberals and progressives—since the 1960s.
Writing about Vance, the scholar and social critic Kristoffer Ealy says, “When a guy like that stands on a stage and tells a crowd ‘you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,’ he’s not confused. He’s not lost. He’s not misinformed. He’s running a psychological con.”
Ealy refers to Jennifer Freyd’s concept of DARVO: Deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender—a courtroom tactic often used by men who use violence in their intimate relationships with women (and others).
“It’s a way to take a real grievance (the harm inflicted on marginalized groups),” Ealy writes, “deny the underlying reality, attack the people raising it, and then flip the roles so the dominant group gets to claim victimhood.”
By contrast to the supposed guilt-tripping from the left, MAGA Republicanism offers white men both absolution and redemption, even if it has to be delivered via the unlikeliest of messengers: a wealthy real estate nepo baby from New York City who is also amoral, misogynous and a malignant narcissist.
It’s also worth noting that, consistent with his attacks on “the universities,” Vance’s hostility to DEI conveys disrespect, even contempt, for more than a century of sociological theory and research that demonstrates clearly the deep structural roots of social inequality.
Vance: To honor Charlie, but also to honor all of you, we’re working to end the scourge of left-wing violence in the United States of America. We’re going after the far-left crime networks, but we’re also going after the monsters that fund them. We don’t just want to go after the Antifa member who threw a brick at an ICE agent. We want to know who bought the brick, and we’re going to prosecute them, too.
For years, commentators and influencers in conservative media have pushed the false narrative that “left-wing violence” is a major problem in the U.S. It’s tempting to attribute this to pure projection, coming from the side that gave us the Jan. 6 insurrection, proliferating right-wing militias and the Proud Boys—not to mention the Trump administration’s deployment of the national guard to American cities, the performative, violent cruelty of ICE, and other jacked-up, aggressive uses of state power.
I’ll opt instead for the words of the sociologist Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University:
“It’s so important to fact check this. There is recent data [from the Center for Strategic and International Studies] showing increases in far-left violence in the U.S., but the numbers the reports are relying on are so small (five events in the first half of 2025) that there is no way to draw any kind of statistical conclusion from them. What is clear is that over the past decade, with tremendous consistency, the vast majority of political violence, and the most lethal attacks, have come from supremacist and anti-government movements associated with the far right. There just is no equivalency to attacks from the far left—even though there has been a recent increase in far-left violence.
“It’s critical to not ignore the possibility of continued or spiking violence from the left, especially given data showing increasing willingness of Americans across the spectrum to support the use of violence to achieve political goals in some cases. But the facts on this are very clear and it’s essential to speak with clarity to the public about where the continued sources of threats come from in terms of the biggest risks.”
Vance: But ask yourself, what do all of these people have in common? And the unfortunate answer is they are puppets. They don’t actually matter. They are cogs in a machine that wants to make you poorer, that wants to make you less powerful, and wants to make you less safe in the country your ancestors built. And while President Trump and I are doing everything we can to break that machine, the left is still there, my friends, and they are still very powerful. Don’t delude yourselves.
Note Vance’s intentional and repeated use of the word “machine.” For many years, MAGA propagandists have tried—in an impressive feat of mental gymnastics—to co-opt left-wing language about solidarity with the working-class. (As if the GOP was the true party of working-class resistance to concentrated wealth and power.)
(Bonus thought: Try to imagine Rage Against the Machine appearing as invited performers at the Republican National Convention!)
This Orwellian inversion—the notion that the GOP is the authentic pro-worker party—is how you get Trump-supporting right-wing manfluencers like Andrew Tate positioning himself on the side of young men against the “matrix,” the term he uses for the machine. Tate, the deeply misogynous and alleged rapist/sex-trafficker, tells his millions of young male followers that one way to counteract the dreaded system of wage-slavery is to support right-wing politicians!
Vance claims that he and Trump want to “break the machine” that makes people poorer and less powerful. How, exactly, do they intend to do this? They have installed numerous officials who are committed to busting labor unions and dismantling worker protections. They have appointed a multitude of judges to the federal bench who routinely rule against workers and consumers in favor of the rich and powerful. They have sought to undo a century’s worth of laws designed to regulate the behavior of wealthy corporations in favor of the public interest.
In what way does any of this help average people struggling to make ends meet?
Vance: Think about it. [Tyler Robinson] has everything that the far left wants from our young men. He rejected the conservatism and the spirituality, the values of a small-town family. He moved into a small apartment, he became addicted to porn, he became addicted to hate, and he ended up sleeping with somebody who doesn’t know whether they’re a man or a woman. That is the nightmare scenario, but that is the scenario that the left has actively advertised they want for American families, and the young men in the audience in particular. That is exactly why we have to fight them.
Reality check: The vice president of the United States actually said the left wants young men to be just like Charlie Kirk’s killer. An alleged murderer. Rejecting small town values and religion. Becoming addicted to porn and hate. Being sexually confused.
Right-wing propaganda has long promulgated the specious idea that liberals and progressives hate men, especially white men. Sadly, this rhetorical strategy has worked. It’s one of the primary reasons why the Republican Party continues to roll up huge electoral majorities among white men, especially working-class white men.
But let’s be clear: Vance’s statement does not represent a serious argument about the sort of policy agenda that would most benefit young men. It’s a smear job, designed to taint what he alternately refers to as the “far left,” “the left” and the Democrats as depraved and degenerate, and thus worthy of scorn and contempt.
Vance: The fruits of true Christianity are men like Charlie Kirk. The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons. And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asks them to do. Because so many of us recognize that it is better to die a patriot than live a coward.
Vance’s speech was peppered with religious language and references to Christian belief and practice. In fact, one of the most quoted—and controversial—lines in his speech was that “we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation.”
Like Charlie Kirk, Vance issued explicit appeals to young men in the vernacular of Christianity, an increasingly popular right-wing tactic. A growing body of research data shows young men long for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
What JD Vance refers to as “the fruits of true Christianity” are in no way the sole province of the political right.
In fact, countless scholars of religion, in our time and long before (even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) have argued that Christian teaching is actually more compatible with left-wing and feminist ideas about compassion, equality and justice, than it is with conservative ideas about protecting and reinforcing existing hierarchies of power and privilege.
One takeaway for liberals and progressives is that they too, should consider issuing appeals to young men as “good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things,” “slayers of dragons” and men “willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asks.” None of that is incompatible with progressive ideals of fairness and democracy, provided it’s presented in a way that allows for a more expansive and inclusive vision for what young men—and everyone else—can aspire to be.
In the post-Charlie Kirk era, JD Vance and others in MAGA world will continue to market themselves aggressively to young men, especially young white men. The reason why is obvious: Their electoral math depends on winning big among those voters.
A growing number of Democrats, and Democratic Party strategists, seem to have figured this out. They recognize the urgent need to speak directly to and with young men. They understand that they have to provide these young men with a different—and healthier—path to validation than the fake news on offer by the right: a promise that they can regain lost glory by blaming and scapegoating women, LGBTQ people and others.
If they can do this, and pull back some of the young men drawn into the MAGA universe over the past decade, right-wing attempts to roll back the democratic gains of the past half-century will come up short, and this country can once again begin to move forward.
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Mario Götze will go down in soccer history as the player who scored the winning goal that made Germany the 2014 FIFA World Cup champion. But he is also an increasingly seasoned angel investor.
Companion M, Götze’s personal investment vehicle, now has a portfolio of more than 70 companies, two of which became unicorns in 2025 — Danish fintech Flatpay and German AI startup Parloa. But the athlete also learned some lessons along the way about vetting opportunities. “I only agree to invest if the startup and its founders check all the boxes,” he told TechCrunch.
The boxes can be quite subjective at the stage at which Götze invests — typically pre-seed and seed rounds, with ticket sizes between €25,000 and €50,000 ($29,000-$58,000). To address this, Götze says Companion M “focuses on specific areas where we have built profound network and expertise.” Surprisingly, sports isn’t one of those areas — at least not directly.
According to Götze, Companion M primarily focuses on B2B SaaS, software infrastructure, and cybersecurity, as well as health and biotech. While that’s not sports tech per se, health and biotech are a natural niche for an athlete interested in human performance and wellness — and who has the freedom to pursue unconventional opportunities in those fields.
With cannabis still forbidden for athletes in competition, Götze will have to wait to try the stuff himself: The 33-year-old is still playing professionally at the top league level with German club Eintracht Frankfurt. But rather than waiting for retirement, he is taking cues from American athlete-investors such as NBA champion Kevin Durant.
Götze is not the only active European soccer player who also invests in startups — for instance, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé also do. But as the father of two young daughters, he has to balance his various commitments. “I have to schedule calls before or after practices and align meetings with weeks when I don’t have away games or play Champions League,” Götze wrote.
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Götze isn’t doing it all himself, but he is not simply entrusting others with his money either. Instead, he created Companion M as a small team that supports him with angel investing, partnerships, and other tasks. “These are important for myself as a brand, particularly in the long term, after [my] active career,” he explained.
There is an undeniable branding aspect to these efforts. When Götze became Revolut’s first-ever brand ambassador for Germany, the fintech company cited his track record as an angel investor as an incentive. But while preparing for his post-soccer career, Götze has found what he describes as “another passion apart from sport.”
This passion may be less unexpected than it seems. While Götze and his brothers all became soccer players, their father Jürgen is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of TU Dortmund University, and the family spent time in Houston, Texas, when Jürgen was visiting Rice University as a postdoctoral researcher.
Not coincidentally, Götze mostly invests in Europe and in the U.S., with past investments including Miami-based Arcee AI and Frankfurt-based Qualifyze. Several portfolio companies went on to raise significant amounts of follow-on funding, and he has already exited some, such as Berlin-based KoRo.
Exits give Götze capital to reinvest, but he’s also focused on long-term wealth consolidation. As a limited partner, Companion backed more than 20 venture capital firms on both sides of the Atlantic, including 20VC, Cherry Ventures, EQT Ventures, Planet A, Merantix, Visionaries Club, and World Fund.
Götze is still under contract with his club and is reportedly discussing an extension. But whenever he finally retires, these venture firms could count him as a peer. “After my career ends, I plan to focus on my investment activities,” he told Bloomberg. But even then, don’t expect him to publish his anti-portfolio of startups he passed on and that later became huge successes.
“There are plenty of new startups every year, and there will be some that you miss out on. But regretting past decisions leads to making uneducated or impulsive decisions in the future,” he told TechCrunch. Spoken like a true sportsman: Dwelling on what you missed won’t help you score the next goal.
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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed back against Democratic criticism of this weekend’s military operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, noting that his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden had also called for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader on drug trafficking charges.
Trump in remarks before a House Republican retreat in Washington grumbled that Democrats were not giving him credit for a successful military operation that led to the ouster of Maduro, even though there was bipartisan agreement that Maduro was not the rightful president of Venezuela.
In 2020, Maduro was indicted in the United States, accused in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy. White House officials have noted that Biden’s administration in his final days in office last year raised the award for information leading to Maduro’s arrest after he assumed a third term in office despite evidence suggesting that he lost Venezuela’s most recent election. The Trump administration doubled the award to $50 million in August.
“You know, at some point, they should say, ‘You know, you did a great job. Thank you. Congratulations.’ Wouldn’t it be good?” Trump said. “I would say that if they did a good job, their philosophies are so different. But if they did a good job, I’d be happy for the country. They’ve been after this guy for years and years and years.”
Trump’s latest comments came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the Venezuela operation amid mounting concerns that the Republican administration is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation with lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.
After the briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he does not expect the United States to deploy troops to Venezuela, saying the U.S. actions there are “not a regime change” operation. Democratic leaders said the session lacked clarity about the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela.
Americans are split about the capture of Maduro — with many still forming opinions — according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and SSRS using text messages over the weekend. About 4 in 10 approved of the U.S. military being sent to capture Maduro, while roughly the same share were opposed. About 2 in 10 were unsure.
Nearly half of Americans, 45%, were opposed to the U.S. taking control of Venezuela and choosing a new government for the country. About 9 in 10 Americans said the Venezuelan people should be the ones to decide the future leadership of their country.
Maduro pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. courtroom on Monday. U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife early Saturday in a raid on a compound where they were surrounded by Cuban guards. Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodriguez, has been sworn in as Venezuela’s acting president.
In the days since Maduro’s ouster, Trump and top administration officials have raised anxiety around the globe that the operation could mark the beginning of a more expansionist U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. The president in recent days has renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests and threatened military action on Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
Trump has said that his administration will now “run” Venezuela policy and would press the country’s leaders to open its vast oil reserves to American energy companies.
Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Rosa Villavicencio said Tuesday she’ll meet with the U.S. Embassy’s charge d’affaires in Bogota to present him with a formal complaint over the recent threats issued by the United States.
On Sunday, Trump said he wasn’t ruling out an attack on Colombia and described its president, who’s been an outspoken critic of the U.S. pressure campaign on Venezuela, as a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
At a news conference, Villavicencio said she’s hoping to strengthen relations with the United States and improve cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, echoing comments made Monday by several members of Colombia’s government.
“It is necessary for the Trump administration to know in more detail about all that we are doing in the fight against drug trafficking,” she said.
Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom on Tuesday joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty. The island is a self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark and thus part of the NATO military alliance.
“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
—
AP writer Linley Sanders and Manuel Rueda contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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The politically-charged 2018 “This Is America” video from Childish Gambino has come back to haunt viewers with a new face, thanks to R&B singer Tyrese.
Social media got a kick out of an AI-generated parody video shared on Instagram, which places a shirtless Donald Trump into a reworked version of Gambino’s award-winning music video.
Tyrese failed to add any context or meaning behind why he shared the specific video that prompted immediate reactions from fans who questioned how the post might be received beyond social media, as well as the imagery and timing.
Parody of Trump as Childish Gambino, shared by singer Tyrese, sparked laughs online, but fans warned the satire could be dangerous given Trump’s history of targeting entertainers. (Photos by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images; Donald Glover/YouTube)
The clip, originally posted by Demon Flying Fox, circulated briefly before being removed, positions Trump at the center of a stylized performance modeled after the original music video, with exaggerated choreography and symbolic scenes meant to mirror the tone of Gambino’s work.
Members of Trump’s inner circle, including first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are depicted in the video wearing church choir robes as they appear to praise Trump for capturing Venezuela’s leader.
Throughout the video, Trump is shown dancing and striking poses while moving through a series of scenes that echo in an unsettling way compared to the original visual.
One moment in particular drew attention: Trump pointing a water gun at the back of the Venezuelan leader’s head, a visual reference meant to parallel the abrupt tonal shifts that made “This Is America” such a cultural flashpoint.
Glover first debuted the song during his “Saturday Night Live” performance, but it was the four-minute visual that truly set off conversation. The original clip shows the bare-chested artist — performing under his Childish Gambino moniker — dancing playfully through a warehouse with schoolchildren and a church choir, lulling viewers into a sense of absurdity.
That tone abruptly shifts when Glover pulls out a firearm, turning the choreography into a stark, unsettling spectacle. The moment lands alongside lyrics that bluntly frame the chaos he’s portraying, underscoring the song’s critique of violence and life in America.
The parody draws from the recent event where the POTUS toppled the leadership of the South American country, packaging this in a format designed for social media consumption rather than serious debate.
Tyrese’s followers weighed in on their feelings about the parody, most sharing laughing emojis while others warned him that his mocking of Trump could have repercussions.
“Oooo … you better watch out …. you know how Trump comes after Libs in entertainment,” one person wrote, expressing concern that Tyrese might be inviting unwanted attention.
Another commenter questioned how the parody would be interpreted, adding, “Now he’s going to think this is a tribute.”
Others leaned into the humor of the clip itself.
“He definitely wishes he could do those moves,” one user joked, while another summed up the technology behind the video by writing, “Yo AI is truly Diabolical!”
The reactions grew more layered as additional memes entered the discussion.
A GIF from the popular “South Park” series, showing Trump next to the devil, overlaid with the words “HEYYY RELAX GUY!” circulated alongside the parody. That prompted a reply warning, “Yeah, cause this is America and you will mess around and find yourself in a BK prison with homeboy and his wife,” referencing where the Venezuelan president and his spouse are currently held.
Several commenters who claimed to be Venezuelan criticized the video. Many of the posts that enthusiastically praise Trump’s actions appeared to come from private accounts.
The caution from Tyrese’s fans reflects a broader awareness of how Trump has responded to entertainers who enter his political orbit.
Fellow singer Beyoncé experienced that same backlash after publicly supporting Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign, when Trump accused her and other celebrities of being used to influence voters. The reaction wasn’t framed around policy differences so much as resentment toward the cultural power entertainers can wield, particularly when they engage audiences, like Black and brown people and younger voters, he has struggled to reach.
The commander-in-chief has repeatedly returned to that posture, criticizing musicians, actors, and comedians as “Hollywood elites” during rallies and online posts while simultaneously reacting strongly to their political speech.
His frustration appeared especially visible when Taylor Swift’s endorsement energized millions of voters, prompting him to post on social media, “I hate Taylor Swift,” which only amplified her influence.
These moments underscored a pattern in which celebrity involvement becomes both a target and a fixation.
That pattern intensified when Trump demanded investigations into Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono, alleging without evidence that they were illegally paid to endorse Harris.
He later singled out Beyoncé again, claiming she received millions for a brief appearance at a campaign event. Those claims were publicly disputed by her mother, Tina Knowles, who stated that Beyoncé covered her own expenses. The Harris campaign similarly denied paying personal fees to celebrity endorsers.
Placed against that backdrop, the fan-created parody Tyrese reposted reads as more than a fleeting joke.
The laughter it sparked is tempered by the concern expressed in his comments, where fans weighed humor against potential fallout. For Tyrese, who is used to going viral for his social media antics, that possibility sits at the heart of the warning echoed throughout the thread: He’s going to think this is a tribute.
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Trump is threatening prolonged U.S. military action in Venezuela and signaling further escalation across Latin America. Congress must act now to stop another endless conflict before it deepens global instability.
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Nvidia-watchers had plenty to celebrate at CES this week, with news that the company’s latest GPU, Vera Rubin, is now fully in production. Those powerful AI chips—the picks and shovels of the AI boom—are, after all, what helped make Nvidia the world’s most valuable company. But in his keynote address, CEO Jensen Huang once again made clear that Nvidia does not see itself as simply a chip company. It is also a software company, with its reach extending across nearly every layer of the AI stack—and with a major bet on physical AI: AI systems that operate in the real world, including robotics and self-driving cars. In a press release touting Nvidia’s CES announcements, a quote attributed to Huang declared that “the ChatGPT moment for robotics is here.” Breakthroughs in physical AI—models that understand the real world, reason, and plan actions—“are unlocking entirely new applications,” he said.
In the keynote itself, however, Huang was more measured, saying the ChatGPT moment for physical AI is “nearly here.” It might sound like splitting hairs, but the distinction matters—especially given what Huang said at last year’s CES, when he introduced Nvidia’s Cosmos world platform and described robotics’ “ChatGPT moment” as merely “around the corner.”
So has that moment really arrived, or is it still stubbornly out of reach?
Huang himself seemed to acknowledge the gap. “The challenge is clear,” he said in yesterday’s keynote. “The physical world is diverse and unpredictable.”
Nvidia is also no flash in the pan when it comes to physical AI. Over the past decade, the company has laid the groundwork by developing an ecosystem of AI software, hardware, and simulation systems for robots and autonomous vehicles. But it has never been about building its own robots or AVs. As Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia’s vice president of simulation technology, told Fortune last year, the strategy is still about supplying the picks and shovels.
There’s no doubt that Nvidia has progressed in that regard over the past year. On the self-driving front, today it unveiled the Alpamayo family of open AI models, simulation tools and datasets meant to help AVs safely operate across a range of rare, complex driving scenarios, which are considered the some of the toughest challenges for autonomous systems to safely master.
Nvidia also released new Cosmos and GR00T open models and data for robot learning and reasoning, and touted companies including Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, Franka Robots, Humanoid, LG Electronics and NEURA Robotics, which are debuting new robots and autonomous machines built on Nvidia technologies.
Even with increasingly capable models, simulation tools, and computing platforms, Nvidia is not building the self-driving cars or the robots themselves. Automakers still have to turn those tools into systems that can safely operate on public roads—navigating regulatory scrutiny, real-world driving conditions, and public acceptance. Robotics companies, meanwhile, must translate AI into machines that can reliably manipulate the physical world, at scale, and at a cost that makes commercial sense.
That work—integrating hardware, software, sensors, safety systems, and real-world constraints—remains enormously difficult, slow, and capital-intensive. And it’s far from clear that faster progress in AI alone is enough to overcome those hurdles. After all, the ChatGPT moment wasn’t just about the model under the hood. Those had existed for several years. It was about the user experience and a company that was able to capture lightning in a bottle.
Nvidia has captured lightning in a bottle before—GPUs turned out to be the unlikely but perfect engine for modern AI. Whether that kind of luck can be repeated in physical AI, a far messier and less standardized domain, is still an open question.
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The trial of former Uvalde CISD police officer Adrian Gonzales got underway Tuesday, with a jury seated and opening statements expected to begin.
Gonzales is charged with child endangerment in connection with the law enforcement response to the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
He faces 29 counts of abandoning or endangering a child — one count for each child who was inside the classrooms.
Prosecutors allege Gonzales failed to confront the shooter despite being among the first officers on scene.
Adrian Gonzales in court on Jan. 6, 2026.
Before opening statements Tuesday morning, Gonzales’s defense attorney asked the judge to exclude graphic autopsy photos of the children, arguing the images could unfairly prejudice the jury. The judge ruled that some photos may be admitted but said he will decide which ones on a case-by-case basis as the trial proceeds.
The judge also placed limits on courtroom language, allowing the children to be referred to as “victims,” but not as victims of Gonzales.
Gonzales’s attorney emphasized that Gonzales never fired a weapon and was not the shooter, arguing he should not be held responsible for the massacre.
Prosecutors countered that under Texas law, adults responsible for children have a legal duty to protect them — a central argument in the child endangerment charges.
The case marks one of the first major courtroom tests of efforts to hold law enforcement officers criminally accountable for actions taken — or not taken — during the Uvalde school shooting response.
The jury was selected from more than 400 potential jurors, and the trial is being held in Corpus Christi in Nueces County after a judge granted a change of venue, citing concerns that an impartial jury could not be seated in Uvalde.
During jury selection Monday, presiding Judge Sid Harle acknowledged it was likely no one in the jury pool had not already heard about the shooting.
Former Uvalde CISD police chief Pete Arredondo is the only other officer to be indicted. He is awaiting a separate trial.
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