The U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report delivered a grim assessment of conditions in Venezuela, declaring that human rights have fallen to a new low following reports of widespread abuses and state-sanctioned repression, particularly after the July 2024 presidential election when Nicolás Maduro clung to power. 

‘The human rights situation in Venezuela significantly worsened,’ the report reads. ‘Throughout the year, and particularly after the July 28 [2024] presidential election, Nicolás Maduro and his representatives engaged in serious human rights abuses, reaching a new milestone in the degradation of the rule of law’ after the election, according to the U.N. Independent International fact-finding mission on the country in September.

According to the most recent State Department report, credible evidence indicates a dramatic escalation in arbitrary or unlawful killings, disappearances, torture and harsh prison conditions. NGOs and U.N. observers documented extensive restrictions on freedom of expression, with journalists and human rights defenders facing arrests, harassment and censorship. The judiciary remained deeply compromised — unable or unwilling to hold perpetrators accountable for abuses.

The report noted that the United Nations International Fact Finding Mission stated at least 25 people were killed in the first days following the July 2024 elections, including two children. 

Pro-Maduro leaders ‘harassed and intimidated privately-owned and democratic opposition-oriented television stations, media outlets, and journalists’ through threats, property seizures and prosecutions.

The sweeping report, which will go public Tuesday afternoon, also calls out Brazil and South America for human rights abuses. 

In a parallel diplomatic maneuver, the U.S. Department of Justice, backed by the State Department, significantly increased the reward for Maduro’s capture from $25 million to $50 million. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Maduro of leading one of the world’s most notorious narco-trafficking operations, including associations with the Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa cartel and the infamous Cartel of the Suns. The Drug Enforcement Administration has reportedly seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his allies, with nearly seven tons directly tied to him.

This nullified the previous reward levels — $15 million initially set during Trump’s first term, later raised to $25 million under the Biden administration. Venezuela’s foreign ministry dismissed the bounty as a ‘political propaganda operation.’

The State Department report highlights an alarming absence of credible efforts by Venezuelan authorities to investigate or prosecute those responsible for human rights violations. Security forces, including the military, police, and colectivos — pro-Maduro armed groups — were repeatedly implicated in abuses, yet the justice system remained ineffective, allowing a culture of impunity to flourish.

Maduro was indicted in Manhattan court in 2020, during the first Trump administration, on narco-terrorism charges. 

The dictatorial Venezuelan leader held onto power after the 2024 presidential election where the U.S. and much of Europe recognized his opposition as Venezuela’s duly elected president.

An Israeli nongovernmental organization is working behind the scenes to provide a critical link between the Israeli military and international organizations with one goal in mind: Get humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

‘We really became this informal connector and facilitator between the Israeli authorities and the humanitarian community,’ IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer said.

IsraAID has worked in 64 countries and is currently the largest humanitarian organization based out of Israel. 

Polizer says there is broad consensus now that a concerning humanitarian level was reached in Gaza with pockets of malnutrition across the strip. He notes that it isn’t only food that is needed by the civilian population, but also medicine, water and nutritional provisions.

‘When we reach severe malnutrition levels, we know that just rice and flour is not going to solve the problem,’ Polizer added. ‘We need nutritional supplements, we need people to get protein.’ 

For nearly five months, there was no consistent flow of aid. That has changed in recent weeks with thousands of trucks being distributed along with airdrops of supplies to civilians. Recently, the entry of commercial trucks was partially approved.

‘The declared policy of Israel for two and a half months after the ceasefire collapsed was that nothing comes in,’ Polizer said. ‘That was the policy because the plan was to pressure Hamas.’

The IsraAID CEO says the focus must be on saving lives, not on playing the ‘blame game.’ He urges the United Nations, the Israel Defense Forces, the  Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and all humanitarian organizations to work together and find solutions.

‘As a humanitarian organization, the concept of ‘do no harm’ is really our Bible,’ Polizer added.

A few months after the war started, IsraAID started to receive requests from global humanitarian organizations they had worked with in Afghanistan and Ukraine, asking for help to facilitate aid deliveries to Gaza.

These groups had issues with customs clearance and approval from the Israeli military to deliver supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. These were problems IsraAID could help solve.

Despite the political and cultural differences, Polizer said the Jewish community of the United States is stepping up to donate and support finding solutions for the hunger crisis in Gaza.

‘You can support the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but it does not mean you are anti-Israel,’ he concluded.

An environmental advocacy group accused of trying to manipulate judges has removed and anonymized the names of jurists who worked with the activist network and praised its activities, following a Fox News Digital report exposing an online forum promoting climate litigation updates.

The Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), founded in 2018 by the left-wing Environmental Law Institute, describes itself as providing judges with ‘authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law,’ according to its website.

The group has been accused by Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, of working to ‘train judges’ and ‘make them agreeable to creative climate litigation tactics.’ In July, Fox News Digital reported on CJP’s yearslong, nationwide forum where jurists privately exchanged climate-related legal updates and information alongside CJP leadership — a forum that was abruptly made private in May 2024.

CJP’s testimonial page boasting praise from jurists who participated in the program was overhauled this summer, including obliterating testimony from a judge identified in Fox News Digital’s July report. Fox Digital reviewed archived links to CJP’s testimonial page and found Judge Sam Scheele’s comments were still public on the site in May but were removed by the end of July following Fox Digital’s report. 

‘It’s been truly a privilege. I am welcomely absorbing everything that has been brought to us and I look forward to carrying that forward and paying it forward,’ read a quote from Scheele when he served on Indiana’s Lake Superior Court’s Civil Division, according to an archived link of the website’s page from May. 

At the end of July, another archived link showed that Scheele’s quote and name had been removed from CJP’s testimonial page, while four other quotes were attributed to anonymous ‘participating judges.’ One remaining quote was still attributed to the former president of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, a nonprofit that funds progressive causes in the U.S. It is unclear the exact day the changes were made to the testimonial page. 

A spokesperson for the Environmental Law Institute told Fox Digital when asked about changes to the testimonial page that updates were made out of an effort to ‘protect privacy and prevent baseless criticism and harassment.’ 

‘Judges are encouraged, and many required, to participate in continuing education on topics relevant to emerging trends in the law – including those related to science. Recent changes to CJP’s website were made to protect privacy and prevent baseless criticism and harassment,’ the spokesperson said. 

Scheele was among a handful of judges who communicated on CJP’s online forum that ran from September 2022 and maintained until May 2024, according to documents previously reviewed by Fox News Digital. While Scheele’s testimony was obliterated from the website’s testimonial page, two other favorable quotes from judges were anonymized and attributed to a ‘participating judge,’ while two other quotes remained unchanged and were both attributed to a ‘participating judge,’ Fox News Digital found. 

Fox News Digital obtained the archived chat history of the now-defunct chat forum between CJP and jurists last month, which detailed numerous messages between at least five judges and CJP employees trading links on climate studies, congratulating one another on hosting recent environmental events, sharing updates on recent climate cases that were remanded to state courts, and encouraging each other to participate in other CJP meet-ups. 

One message posted by Delaware Judge Travis Laster, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, features a YouTube video of a 2022 climate presentation delivered by a Delaware official and a Columbia University professor that focused on the onslaught of climate lawsuits since the mid-2000s. 

It also included claims that such lawsuits could one day bankrupt the fuel industry. 

Laster shared the video in the group with a disclaimer to others: ‘Because the link is of a judicial event that is otherwise not public, please do not forward or use without checking with me. I suspect that goes without saying, but the powers that be will be happier that I said it.’

Scheele was among a handful of other judges who responded to Laster’s video and message, praising it as ‘great work.’

‘This is great work/great stuff, Travis; congrats on a job well-done, & thank you so much for sharing this!,’ Scheele responded, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. 

Scheele’s office did not respond to Fox Digital’s request for comment regarding why his name and testimony were removed from the website. 

Scheele’s office did respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiry last month regarding his past participation in the forum, saying he first joined the 2022 National Judicial Conference on Climate Science more than two years before his appointment to the Indiana Court of Appeals. 

‘At the last minute, when another appointed delegate was unexpectedly unable to attend, Judge Scheele was asked by Indiana’s state court administration to fill in as Indiana’s representative, and he accepted the invitation. As is normal in conferences attended by our judges, this conference addressed emerging, hot-button issues that might come before the courts,’ Scheele’s office said. 

‘Judge Scheele does not recall any substantive communication on the ‘listserv’ mentioned. He, like all of our Court of Appeals of Indiana judges, is dedicated to the unbiased, apolitical administration of justice in the State. He, like all of our judges, educates himself on emergent topics in the law and applies his legal training to evaluate the legal issues before him,’ the office continued. 

CJP told Fox News Digital of the now-defunct email list last month that it was created in September 2022 to help members of its Judicial Leaders in Climate Science program communicate and network with one another for the duration of the program.

The one-year program, established by CJP in coordination with the National Judicial College, ‘trains state court judges on judicial leadership skills integrated with consensus climate science and how it is arising in the law,’ the group told Fox News Digital.

CJP’s educational events are done ‘in partnership with leading national judicial education institutions and state judicial authorities, in accordance with their accepted standards,’ a spokesperson for the group said in an emailed statement. ‘Its curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.’

‘CJP’s work is no different than the work of other continuing judicial education organizations that address important complex topics, including medicine, tech and neuroscience,’ the spokesperson added.

News of the program’s outreach comes as the U.S. has seen a sharp uptick in climate-related lawsuits in recent years — including cases targeting oil giants Shell, BP and ExxonMobil for allegedly using ‘deceptive’ marketing and downplaying the risks of climate change, as well as lawsuits brought against state governments and federal agencies, including the Interior Department, for allegedly failing to address pollution risks or protect against the harms of climate change, according to the plaintiffs.

Sen. Cruz has repeatedly put CJP under the public’s microscope, including in June during a Senate subcommittee hearing, called ‘Enter the Dragon – China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,’ where the Texas Republican argued there is a ‘systematic campaign’ launched by the Chinese Communist Party and American left-wing activists to weaponize the court systems to ‘undermine American energy dominance.’ 

CJP, Cruz said, is a pivotal player in the ‘lawfare’ as it works to secure ‘judicial capture.’ 

Cruz said CJP’s claims of neutrality are bluster, and the group instead allegedly promotes ‘ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law, and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.’

CJP has denied Cruz’s accusations, and describes itself as ‘neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation.’

Judges have previously landed in hot water over climate-related issues in group forums, including in 2019, when a federal judge hit ‘reply all’ to an email chain with 45 other judges and court staff regarding an invitation to a climate seminar for judges hosted by the Environmental Law Institute. The judge was subsequently chastised by colleagues for sharing ‘this nonsense’ and suggested it was an ethics violation, while others defended that flagging the event to others was not unethical. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report. 

Vice President JD Vance is poised to meet with U.S. troops at a military installation in England Wednesday – capping off a high-stakes trip to the U.K. meeting with European leaders to discuss the war in Ukraine ahead of President Donald Trump’s Friday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vance’s visit to the U.K. comes as he’s sought to lay some groundwork with European allies leading up to Trump’s talk with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska – and as he’s turned up the heat on them to take greater ownership in the discussions since the conflict is in their backyard. 

The vice president is slated to visit Royal Air Force Base Fairford, where the U.S. Air Force’s 501st Combat Support Wing and the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron are based. Vance, a former Marine, is expected to voice appreciation for their service, according to a source familiar with Vance’s prepared remarks. 

The military installation serves as a key location for U.S. Air Force operations and is Air Force Global Strike Command’s preferred bomber forward operating base in Europe. U.S. Air Force bombers are regularly deployed to the military base as part of Bomber Task Force Europe 25-2 to integrate with NATO allies and sharpen the service’s global strike capabilities. 

Days after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, several Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bombers from Fairford conducted joint operations with Germany and Romania over NATO’s eastern flank.

There are approximately 10,000 U.S. troops stationed in the U.K., according to foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations. 

Prior to addressing U.S. troops, Vance is poised to participate in calls with European leaders to discuss the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Fox News Digital has learned. 

The calls come on the heels of multiple other discussions with European allies on a series of topics – including the war – during Vance’s U.K. visit. Vance has met with multiple U.K. leaders, including U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy. 

A U.S. official told Fox News Digital that Vance and Lammy discussed the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. and the two allies’ shared economic and technology goals during a meeting on Friday at Lammy’s official residence, Chevening House, in Kent, England. 

Meanwhile, the two leaders also discussed the state of affairs in the Middle East, as well as negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the U.S. official said. 

The two also met with representatives of Ukraine and other European allies at Chevening House on Saturday. The meeting led to ‘significant progress’ on ending the conflict in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official. 

No other details were provided regarding the Ukraine talks. It’s unclear if Vance will accompany Trump to Alaska for talks with Putin. 

However, Vance said in an interview with Fox News that he communicated to European leaders that the U.S. is ‘done with the funding of the Ukraine war business,’ and that European allies must assume more responsibility in ending the conflict. 

‘What we said to Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods, this is in your back door, you guys have got to step up and take a bigger role in this thing, and if you care so much about this conflict you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself,’ Vance told Fox News on Sunday. 

Congress has passed multiple measures to support Ukraine, totaling at least $175 billion in spending to aid Ukraine since February 2022, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters Monday that he’d know within minutes is Putin actually interested in a deal or not. Still, he said Moscow and Kyiv must come to terms with some ‘land swapping’ issues to sign off on a deal. 

‘If it’s a fair deal, I will reveal it to the European Union leaders and the NATO leaders and also to President Zelenskyy,’ Trump said. ‘I may say, ‘lots of luck, keep fighting,’ or I may say we can make a deal.’

Trump’s meeting with Putin also comes as his relationship with the Russian leader has soured as peace negotiations have lagged. While the two seemed to remain cordial with each other publicly during Trump’s first administration, that’s changed in recent weeks as Trump has grown fed up with Putin’s tactics. 

‘We get a lot of bulls— thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,’ Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on July 8. ‘He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.’

The ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee penned a letter to the Department of Justice demanding information about Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent prison transfer and meeting with a top Trump administration official. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said the recent transfer of Maxwell – a convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged accomplice – out of a maximum security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, gives ‘the strong appearance’ that the Trump administration ‘is attempting to cover up the full extent of the relationship between President Trump and Mr. Epstein.’ 

In the letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Bureau of Prisons Director William K. Marshall III, Raskin said Maxwell’s new home at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, provides ‘greater freedom for inmates.’ He argued that such an ‘extraordinary transfer’ would typically be ‘categorically off limits to sex offenders.’ 

‘These actions raise substantial concerns that the administration may now be attempting to tamper with a crucial witness, conceal President Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offenders, and coax Ms. Maxwell into providing false or misleading testimony in order to protect the President,’ Raskin wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Fox News Digital. ‘The transfer also appears to violate both DOJ and Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policies.’ 

The letter asked for a cache of documents related to why Maxwell was transferred from Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Tallahassee to Federal Prison Campe (FPC) Bryan. 

Raskin is also seeking a transcript and recording of Maxwell’s recent, hours-long meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the Tallahassee prison. 

‘These meetings were highly unusual for several reasons. Mr. Blanche, who until ten months ago served as Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer, met with Ms. Maxwell and her attorney with no line prosecutors present. The meeting took place just days after DOJ leadership fired one of the chief career prosecutors on the Epstein matter,’ Raskin wrote, referencing the Justice Department’s firing of Maurene Comey from the Southern District of New York. 

Comey – the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey – most recently worked on the prosecution of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Her other high-profile cases include the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions. 

The DOJ confirmed criminal investigations into her father – as well as former CIA Director John Brennan last month. 

Reached by Fox News Digital on Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesperson confirmed the receipt of Raskin’s letter but declined to comment further.

In his letter to Bondi and Marshall, Raskin further argued that convicted sex offenders would typically be barred from federal prison camps, which provide ‘access to the community,’ and any transfer would require ‘multiple levels of review that would ordinarily take months to complete.’ He said any approval of a transfer ‘typically requires new facts or evidence’ and even so, ‘an inmate would then have to join a months-long waitlist for an opening at a camp.’

‘Ms. Maxwell, however, appears to have short-circuited the entire review process and jumped the queue, receiving a place in Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan within a matter of days,’ Raskin wrote. ‘Neither DOJ nor BOP has provided anything like a satisfactory explanation for providing Ms. Maxwell this uniquely favorable treatment.’ 

The letter – also signed by all Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee – seeks a list of any administration officials who ‘were aware of, were involved in, or approved’ of the transfer. Raskin also demanded information regarding ‘any possible benefits to Ms. Maxwell, including transfers, changes to conditions of confinement, pardons, commutation, or changes to DOJ positions in ongoing matters.’

Raskin acknowledged that Maxwell was recently subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee to testify. To Bondi and Marshall, the congressman said ‘there can be no question that your actions have served to send a clear message to Ms. Maxwell in the lead up to any testimony before Congress and the American public: this Administration can punish or reward her as it sees fit for its own purposes.’

Former Navy SEAL and current GOP House lawmaker Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona delivered a pointed message to former President Barack Obama.

‘You’ve done enough damage. Probably best to sit this one out,’ the congressman told Obama in a post on X.

Crane made the comments in response to a post in which Obama declared, ‘Since we passed the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have tried over and over to repeal it. And over and over, they’ve failed — in part because millions of people now depend on the ACA for quality, affordable health care. Now Republicans are trying something different: quietly weakening the law and hoping you won’t notice. We can’t let them.’

GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wrote in response to the Democrat’s post, ‘Obamacare was a great deal—for huge healthcare companies But it’s made healthcare less affordable for hardworking American families, who have seen their healthcare costs skyrocket—while a small handful of healthcare giants have reaped a windfall of billions of dollars a year.’

‘The worst part of Obamacare was putting able-bodied, working-age adults on government assistance instead of helping them find employment. I’ve been vocally against this since day one. Medicaid should be for needy children, families, and seniors. Not for those who can work!’ former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is now the president of the Young America’s Foundation, wrote.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Obama’s post.

Obama served two consecutive terms as president, with his White House tenure spanning from early 2009 through early 2017, when he was succeeded by President Donald Trump.