Luke Vargas

The Treasury Department said the targeted tankers had engaged in, quote, deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro's corrupt narco-terrorist regime, end quote.

It follows the U.S.

seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast earlier this week and comes as President Trump last night repeated his threat to soon begin strikes on suspected narcotic shipments making their way via land from Venezuela to the U.S.

To Indiana now, where senators have rejected a congressional redistricting plan in a blow to President Trump.

Trump has been pressuring Republican-controlled legislatures and GOP governors to adopt congressional maps under unusual mid-cycle redistricting plans in a bid to ensure the party retains control of the U.S.

House after next year's midterms.

Democratic State Senator Andrea Hundley and Republican State Senator Sue Glick both opposed the redistricting.

Other states, including Texas, North Carolina and Missouri, have approved redistricting that would benefit the GOP, while Democrats last month pushed through a similar plan in California to counter those efforts.

President Trump is attempting to put a lid on state rulemaking efforts around AI, signing an executive order that empowers the Justice Department to punish states whose AI laws are deemed too restrictive.

Tech execs had lobbied for such a move, arguing that the proliferation of AI bills proposed at the state level, which now exceed a thousand, could cause the U.S.

to lose out to China.

In the Oval Office, Trump stressed the need to clear roadblocks for companies working on artificial intelligence.

Democrats and some of Trump's backers, including Steve Bannon and Republican Senator Josh Hawley, have criticized the efforts to rein in state AI laws, characterizing them as a giveaway to tech companies and saying they would undermine state efforts to protect consumers.

Well, speaking of the AI race at the corporate level, OpenAI is rolling out a new version of ChatGPT as it tries to fend off mounting competition from Google and Anthropic.

OpenAI said the new model, dubbed GPT-5.2, was better at math, science, and coding, skills seen as critical if businesses are to see returns on their AI investments.

Journal tech reporter Sam Schechner told me OpenAI needs to act fast to hold on to its early lead in AI adoption.

The update to ChatGPT comes as OpenAI races to release a new model by the end of January that can compete with Google's latest Gemini release.

Under the so-called Code Red efforts, OpenAI is hoping to make ChatGPT both more warm and personable for users and improve its speed and video generation capabilities.

And crypto tycoon Do Kwon has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on fraud charges related to the $40 billion crash of his TerraUSD and Luna coins back in 2022.

Kwon pleaded guilty to two charges back in August in exchange for federal prosecutors dropping seven other counts against him.