President Donald Trump will give an address to the nation live from the White House on Wednesday night, he announced on Tuesday.

Trump teased the address in a statement on social media, saying the speech will take place at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday. He has not clarified a topic for the address.

‘My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 P.M. EST. I look forward to ‘seeing’ you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!’ Trump wrote.

Trump last formally addressed the nation in November after two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in the nation’s capital.

The Trump administration has touted its economic agenda throughout the closing months of the year. Trump himself has highlighted his tariff agenda and pushed last month for Americans to receive payment checks funded by tariff revenues. He vowed that ‘hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff money’ would be distributed as dividends by mid-2026.

‘We’ve taken in hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff money. We’re going to be issuing dividends probably by the middle of next year, maybe a little bit later than that,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The president first floated the idea in early November, saying he would use tariff revenue to send $2,000 payments to low- and middle-income Americans, with any remaining funds directed toward paying down the nation’s soaring debt.

With the nation’s debt hovering just north of $38 trillion, revenue from tariffs amount to little more than a rounding error: billions collected against trillions owed.

The proposal comes at a pivotal moment, with tariff receipts climbing and the Supreme Court reviewing the legality of Trump’s trade measures.

Since Trump announced his ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs in April, tariff revenues have climbed sharply from $23.9 billion in May to $28 billion in June and $29 billion in July. 

Total duty revenue reached $215.2 billion in fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Treasury Department’s Customs and Certain Excise Taxes report.

Fox News’ Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

Vice President JD Vance brushed off a report from Vanity Fair that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles called him a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on Tuesday.

Vance made the comments while taking questions from the press in Pennsylvania, leaning in on his conspiratorial side and suggesting Wiles didn’t intend the comment to be critical.

‘Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,’ Vance told reporters. ‘Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time. For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask three-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills. You know, I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job.’

‘So, at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it,’ he added.

Vance went on to defend Wiles more generally, saying that she is an extremely effective chief of staff whose loyalty to President Donald Trump is guaranteed.

‘I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him. Or subvert his will behind the scenes. And that’s what you want in a staffer. Because as much as I love Susie, the American people didn’t elect any staffer. They elected the president of the United States,’ Vance said. ‘Susie Wiles, we have our disagreements. We agree on much more than we disagree. But I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States, and that makes her the best White House chief of staff that I think the president could ask for.’

Wiles herself blasted the Vanity Fair article in her own statement on social media, arguing it was ‘disingenuously’ framed and lacked ‘significant context.’

The article quotes Wiles as saying Vance was a conspiracy theorist and that he had begun supporting Trump out of political expediency rather than true support. She was also quoted giving frank descriptions of other White House officials, including saying Trump has ‘an alcoholic’s personality.’

‘The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,’ Wiles wrote on X Tuesday.

‘Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,’ she continued.

‘The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade,’ she added.

Lawyers for the Trump administration and a historic preservation group are slated to appear in court Tuesday afternoon in a bid to halt — at least temporarily — President Donald Trump’s plan to continue building out a $300 million White House ballroom on the site of the now-demolished East Wing. 

‘No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else,’ the National Trust said in its lawsuit, filed late last week with U.S. District Judge Richard Leon.

The group argued that Trump’s project has already caused ‘irreversible damage’ to the White House, and asked Leon to grant both a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block the Trump administration from commencing or continuing further work on the ballroom project until the necessary federal commissions have reviewed and approved the plans.

The suit alleges violations of multiple statutes, including the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, and says the ballroom cannot move forward without authorization from Congress, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. Trump fired all six members of the CFA in October; the panel remains vacant.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the Justice Department argued in a separate filing on Monday that Trump does have the statutory authority to modify the structure as president.

‘The President possesses statutory authority to modify the structure of his residence, and that authority is supported by background principles of Executive power,’ the Justice Department told the court on Monday in a separate filing. 

They cited Trump’s personal involvement in the project, and noted that he has regularly taken part in meetings and discussions ‘regarding design and footprint and personally selecting the architect for the project,’ among other things. 

Lawyers for the Trump administration also argued that abruptly halting construction on the project would create ‘security concerns’ at the White House, an argument it is expected to seize on further during Tuesday afternoon’s hearing. 

They also included a declaration from Secret Service deputy director Matthew Quinn that said improvements to the site ‘are still needed before the Secret Service’s safety and security requirements can be met.’

‘Any pause in construction, even temporarily, would leave the contractor’s obligation unfulfilled in this regard and consequently hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission.’

Trump in July first announced his plans to proceed with constructing the sprawling, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which he estimated at the time would cost around $200 million. Trump has insisted it will be funded ‘100% by me and some friends of mine.’

Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that the U.S. mission in Venezuela must end with Nicolás Maduro removed from power, arguing that leaving the embattled leader in place after a major U.S. show of force would be a ‘fatal mistake to our standing in the world.’

‘If after all this, we still leave this guy in power… that’s the worst possible signal you can send to Russia, China, Iran,’ Graham, R-S.C., told reporters after a classified all-senator briefing with War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump administration officials did not say whether a series of narco-strikes in the Caribbean could escalate into direct strikes against Venezuelan territory or a broader campaign to oust Maduro. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital the briefing was ‘absent of specificity and detail’ and left ‘more questions than answers.’

‘I want to reassert, again, you cannot allow this man to be standing after this display of force, and I did not get a very good answer as to what happens,’ Graham said. ‘What I want is some clarity going forward. Is that in fact the goal?… If it’s not the goal, it is a huge mistake.’

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said he heard from briefers that there is a ‘very good process of determining if something’s a target or not’ before striking narco-trafficking boats, but the administration did not clarify its broader strategy toward the Maduro regime. 

‘Right now the focus has been on the boats,’ Bacon said. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing yet with Venezuela writ large.’

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said the classified session also failed to address core questions. 

‘I actually think that was, for me, more of an exercise in futility. I really have no answers. Really didn’t gain anything more than what the public already has gotten,’ he said. He added that there was ‘really no conversation about why… we got 15,000 troops there,’ arguing the deployment ‘doesn’t seem to be just about narcotics trafficking.’ 

Meeks said briefers provided ‘no real rational decision or real answers’ about whether the U.S. is preparing for ‘a war in Venezuela,’ raising what he described as a pressing war powers issue. He said he plans to bring forward legislation this week addressing the recent strikes ‘in the Pacific, in the Caribbean’ as well as any potential move by Trump ‘to go into Venezuela.’

Rubio told reporters the mission is ‘focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere, undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans.’

Hegseth told reporters the War Department would not release video footage of the Sept. 2 narco-strikes — in which Adm. Frank Bradley ordered a ‘double tap’ strike to kill survivors — to the public. The video will instead be shown to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Graham dismissed the footage as ‘the least of my concerns’ but said he urged Hegseth to release it so Americans could ‘make your own decisions.’

Hegseth and Rubio’s briefing came as the U.S. undertakes its largest military buildup in the region in decades: 15% of all naval assets are now positioned in the Southern Command theater. Graham cited the deployment as evidence that anything short of Maduro’s removal would undermine U.S. credibility. 

‘It got, yeah, 15% of the Navy pointed to this guy,’ he said.

Graham also pointed to historical precedent, arguing the U.S. has acted similarly when confronting hostile or destabilizing regimes. 

‘We have legal authority, in my view, to do in Venezuela what we did regarding Panama and Haiti,’ he said, recalling that in 1989 the U.S. ‘literally invaded Panama… took the president in power and put him in jail.’

He said he believes Trump intends a comparable outcome. 

‘Every indication by President Trump is that the purpose of this operation is to shut down the (Maduro) regime and replace it with something less threatening to the United States,’ Graham said.

Pressed on whether he meant regime change or lethal force, Graham replied: ‘I don’t care as long as he leaves.’

The public is now waiting to see whether the Trump administration will turn to direct strikes on Venezuelan territory as a means of pressuring Maduro to leave power — a step Graham argued is necessary for the operation to succeed.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is being sued by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for tens of billions of dollars in damages for a lawsuit he filed against the country during his time as Missouri’s attorney general.

Schmitt is being sued by the People’s Government of Wuhan Municipality, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for roughly $50 billion, several years after the lawmaker sued the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, first obtained by Fox News Digital, accused Schmitt, FBI co-deputy director Andrew Bailey, and the state of Missouri of damaging the reputations of China, Wuhan and the associated research facilities through ‘malicious vexatious litigation, fabricating enormous disinformation, and spreading stigmatizing and discriminating slanders.’

Schmitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital that he’d been ‘banned from Communist China, and now I am being sued and targeted by Communist China in a $50 billion lawfare campaign, and I’ll wear it like a badge of honor.’ 

‘China’s sinister malfeasance during the COVID-19 pandemic led to over a million Americans losing their lives, economic turmoil that rocked our country for years, and an enormous amount of human suffering, and as Missouri Attorney General I filed suit to hold them accountable,’ Schmitt said. ‘Instead of trying to defend its indefensible behavior, Communist China responded with frivolous lawfare, attempting to absolve themselves of all wrongdoing in the early days of the pandemic.’ 

‘This novel lawsuit is factually baseless, legally meritless, and any fake judgment a Chinese court issues in this lawsuit we will easily beat back and keep from being enforced against the people of Missouri or me,’ he continued. ‘This is their way of distracting from what the world already knows, China has blood on its hands.’

Schmitt, who served as attorney general for the Show-Me state from 2019 to 2023, sued the PRC, several Chinese government ministries, the Communist Party of China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in early 2020, shortly after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, Schmitt accused the Chinese government of withholding information on the COVID-19 virus, failing to contain the outbreak of the virus, and actively hoarding high-quality personal protective equipment (PPE) while producing and selling lower-quality PPE for the rest of the world.

That case resulted in an eventual $24 billion judgment earlier this year.

The lawsuit against Schmitt, Bailey, who resigned as Missouri’s attorney general after he was tapped by President Donald Trump to serve as co-deputy FBI director in September, and Missouri contended that the preceding lawsuit, and statements published across a variety of media outlets, led to severe reputational and economic harm.

They’re demanding that apologies be published in several outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Chinese media outlets. The apologies come with a price tag, too.

Wuhan and the Chinese government demanded compensation of over 356 billion Chinese Yuan, which converts to just over $50 billion dollars.