Trump threatens ‘massive’ tariffs on China, triggering stock market sell-off
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday voiced frustration with what he called China’s “trade hostility,” threatening to respond with large tariffs on China and to cancel his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The comments triggered a stock selloff. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 385 points, or 0.8%. While the S&P 500 fell 1.25% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 1.75%.
Trump’s remarks came a day after China imposed new restrictions on rare-earth minerals, key materials in the production of semiconductors used for everything from artificial intelligence to home appliances.
In a social media post, Trump said China had sent letters to countries around the world threatening to impose export controls on “each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths.”
“There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World ‘captive,'” but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time,” Trump said.
In retaliation, Trump threatened a “massive increase” on tariffs on Chinese products coming into the US, even though he said the move would be “potentially painful.”
Tariffs on Chinese imports into the US currently stand at 30%, down from the high point of 145% earlier this year.
Trump also threatened to cancel an upcoming meeting with Jinping.
“This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World. I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” Trump concludes.
This comes as the trade truce between the US and China is still in effect but set to expire in less than a month.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) speaks at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on December 1, 2025, in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote a letter to Secretary of the Navy John Phelan on Tuesday expressing concern about the Navy’s review of Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy Captain who serves on the committee.
The letter, which was shared with ABC News, comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Phelan to review Kelly for “potentially unlawful conduct” after the Arizona senator was featured in a video with five other Democrats who have served in the military and U.S. intelligence telling service members they could refuse illegal orders, according to a memo posted on social media by the Pentagon.
In the memo, Hegseth requests that he be briefed on the outcome of the review by no later than Dec. 10.
The Democrats on the committee, except for Kelly, condemned the review in the letter.
“We believe this ‘review’ along with the Department of Defense’s social media post announcing a ‘thorough review’ of Senator Kelly’s actions, ‘which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings’ is inappropriate, threaten the separation of powers established by our Founding Fathers, amount to a purely political exercise seeking to threaten legitimate and lawful actions by a duly elected Senator, and politicize our military justice system,” the senators wrote.
Kelly has criticized the Trump administration for threatening him with legal action. He has continued to post on social media slamming President Donald Trump and his officials over their policies.
“When Pete Hegseth tweeted he was investigating me, Gabby laughed and laughed,” Kelly said during an event last week, referring to his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords. “She realized two things. One, that guy’s a joke, and two, I’m not backing down.”
In the letter, these Democratic senators wrote to Phelan that “the theory that a sitting Member of Congress should be subject to disciplinary action entirely unrelated to their service, particularly for simply restating the law as articulated in the UCMJ and the Manual for Courts-Martial, sets an incredibly dangerous precedent.”
The letter dismissed the review as a “baseless and patently political undertaking” and argued that it violates the separation of powers.
“Senator Kelly has been elected twice by the people of Arizona as their representative and voice in the Senate. The idea that the Department would try to undo or undermine the will of Arizona’s citizens is a direct affront to our democratic system of government,” the senators wrote.
The senators also challenged the idea that the review could be conducted impartially, citing social media posts from Trump and Hegseth that they say have made “fair proceedings impossible.”
Following the video’s posting in November, Trump wrote on social media that the video demonstrated “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump and the White House subsequently denied that he was threatening the lawmakers with execution.
The senators said that statements like this, coupled with a directive from Hegseth to Phelan that he brief Hegseth on the review by Dec. 10, “demonstrate an outright, brazen abuse of power intended to influence the military justice process and intimidate and silence a U.S. Senator for purely political purposes.”
Kelly responded to the call for a review during a press conference earlier this month.
“I will not be intimidated by this president. I am not going to be silenced by this president or the people around because I’ve given too much in service to this country to back down to this guy,” Kelly said at the time.
In their letter, the Democratic senators said that a review of Kelly raises “significant legal concerns” about Kelly’s constitutional protections under a number of statutes.
“The impartiality of our military and the military justice system to fairly uphold the Constitution and the law are paramount to our nation,” the senators wrote.
ABC News has reached out to Phelan for comment.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
(LOS ANGELES) – One of 2025’s major elections could have major reverberations for the 2026 midterms.
Californians are voting on a ballot initiative, “Proposition 50,” to determine if the state will adopt a new congressional map that redraws five districts to be more Democratic-leaning, potentially allowing Democrats to flip them in the midterms.
Supporters of Proposition 50 — including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former President Barack Obama — have pushed for the new map.
Texas Republicans, encouraged by President Donald Trump, revised their maps in a rare mid-decade redistricting move that could allow Republicans to gain five seats in 2026 — and insulate the GOP from the historic midterm headwinds a president’s party can face.
“We have a chance at least to create a level playing field in the upcoming midterm elections,” Obama said during a recent call with supporters of the campaign to vote “yes”.
Hannah Milgrom, a spokesperson for Yes on 50, the political committee supported by Newsom, told ABC News that the group has been working with over 230 community organizations on the ground.
National Democrats have largely supported the initiative, hoping it will be the first of other Democratic efforts to push back on Republican-led redistricting in Texas, Missouri, and other states.
But Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican whose district would be reshaped and made significantly more Democratic-leaning, told ABC News partisan gerrymandering is a “plague on democracy,” and has unsuccessfully pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson to take up a bill banning the practice.
“I think it takes power away from voters, undermines the fairness of elections and degrades representative government,” he said.
Spokespeople for two of the political committees opposing Proposition 50, which are supported by megadonor Charles T. Munger Jr. and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, respectively, told ABC News they were focused in the final weeks before the election on reaching persuadable voters and to emphasizing arguments about allowing voters to choose their politicians, not the other way around.
Actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supported independent redistricting as governor, has also spoken out against the proposition. He said in September, “If you vote yes on that, you’re going backwards.”
“Prop 50 will have a big impact on the midterms … the U.S. House margin right now is so narrow that every seat in every state could make a difference for which party controls Congress,” Christian Grose, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, told ABC News.
If the proposition passes, Grose added, a large margin of support could signal to Democratic donors that there’s enthusiasm for the party — and could impact whether other blue or red states decide to redraw their congressional maps as well.
Grose said Democrats are likely more fired up in part because campaigning towards Democratic voters is how to win with ballot propositions in California, Grose said, but also because of what they see as national stakes: “Democrats, maybe nationally, are viewing things as an existential threat; are viewing Trump as an existential threat. So anything that pushes back against Trump, anything that helps Democrats, is resonating.”
U.S. President Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 22, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said in a post on his social media platform Thursday that he launched a “powerful and deadly strike” on ISIS terrorists in Nigeria, whom he claimed have been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.”
This comes after the president posted a video in early November threatening to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing.” Around that time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s message and said in a post on X that the Department of Defense was “preparing for action.”
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing,” Trump added in the post.
It is not yet clear the outcome of that strike or what the exact target was. ABC News has asked the White House for more information.
In a post on X, Hegseth further said there will be “more to come” and expressed his gratitude to the Nigerian government for its support and cooperation.
“The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end.
“The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas.”
Hegseth ended his post with, “Merry Christmas!”
In a post on X, U.S. Africa Command confirmed the strikes, which it said were conducted “in coordination with Nigerian authorities.”
The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja later released a statement saying that the U.S. strikes were carried out together with Nigerian authorities and are part of the ongoing security work they do with the U.S. and other partners to tackle ISIS and extremist groups.
“In line with established international practice and bilateral understandings, this cooperation includes the exchange of intelligence, strategic coordination, and other forms of support consistent with international law, mutual respect for sovereignty, and shared commitments to regional and global security,” the ministry said.
The Defense Department also reposted President Trump’s statement, along with a brief video clip labeled “unclassified” that shows a missile being launched from a ship, presumably at targets in Nigeria.
The strike against ISIS in Nigeria Thursday comes just days after U.S. strikes were launched against ISIS in Syria, following an attack on U.S. and partner forces in Syria that killed three Americans earlier this month.
Trump in November instructed the Pentagon to prepare for possible action against Nigeria after accusing the Nigerian government of not doing enough to protect Christians from violence.
Asked if there was a possibility of U.S. troops being boots on the ground in the West African country, Trump replied, “Could be.”
“They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers, we’re not going to allow that to happen,” he said.
Days later, the State Department officially updated its designation for Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for its alleged “severe violations of religious freedom” and persecution of Christians.
Last week, Nigeria was also added to the U.S. travel ban list of countries facing partial restrictions and entry limitations.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu doesn’t deny the violence against Christians in Nigeria, but says previous claims that Nigeria is religiously intolerant “does not reflect our national reality.”
Independent experts say extremist groups have targeted both Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, killing tens of thousands of civilians in recent years.
On Christmas Eve, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu posted on X, saying that he prayed “for peace in our land, especially between individuals of differing religious beliefs.”
“I stand committed to doing everything within my power to enshrine religious freedom in Nigeria and to protect Christians, Muslims, and all Nigerians from violence,” the post continued.
