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U.S. Pursues Third Oil Tanker Linked to Venezuela; CNN Granted Rare Access to Border Patrol Academy; Mexican Naturalist Revisits Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary. Aired 3-3:45a ET
Aired December 23, 2025 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church.
Just ahead, the U.S. ramps up aggressive action to seize oil tankers near Venezuela as another alleged drug boat is struck in the Pacific. CNN has granted rare access to a Border Patrol academy where a surge of new recruits is learning how to carry out Trump's immigration crackdown. And we'll bring you an inside look at Mexico's sanctuary for the endangered monarch butterfly.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Live from Atlanta, this is "CNN Newsroom with Rosemary Church."
CHURCH: Good to have you with us. Well, tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela are growing even more heated. The U.S. Military reports hitting another alleged drug boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing one person. It's the latest strike in what the Pentagon calls "Operation Southern Spear," meant to curb the flow of narcotics to the U.S. One hundred and five people have been killed since early September.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump is again warning Venezuela's president to step down. He says if Nicolas Maduro wants to play tough, it will be the last time he's ever able to play tough. Mr. Trump confirmed the U.S. is still in active pursuit of an oil tanker near Venezuela accused of carrying sanctioned oil. If the U.S. seizes it, the ship would be the third taken by American forces since early December. Reporters asked what the president plans to do with the tankers and the oil.
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UNKNOWN (voice-over): Are you able to share what became of that tanker? Was the U.S. able to seize it?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No. It's moving along. And we'll end up getting it. Yes, we're actually pursuing it. Can you imagine? Because it came from the wrong location. It came out of Venezuela. We're going keep it. We're keeping it. UNKNOWN (voice-over): Are we going to sell it or put it in the strategic --
TRUMP: Maybe we'll sell it, maybe we'll keep it, maybe we'll use it in the strategic reserves. We're keeping it. We're keeping the ships also.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Venezuela is warning the seizure of tankers and a U.S. naval blockade will have unintended consequences for the U.S. and the world.
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YVAN GIL PINTO, VENEZUELAN FOREIGN MINISTER (Through translator): We responsibly warned that these aggressions will not only impact Venezuela. The blockade and piracy against Venezuelan energy trade will affect oil and energy supply, increase instability in international markets, and hit the economies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the world, especially in the most vulnerable countries.
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CHURCH: More now from CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak.
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KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: President Trump says the U.S. remains in pursuit of an oil tanker in international waters off the coast of Venezuela that began almost 24 hours before he was speaking on Monday. The U.S. looking to interdict this vessel as part of President Trump's efforts to cut off Venezuela's top economic lifeline, its oil industry. You know, he was speaking from down here in Palm Beach. He was announcing a new class of U.S. battleship that's called the "Trump class." He says it will be the most advanced in the world, that it will replace what he says is a tired U.S. naval fleet. He says he will be heavily involved in its designs because, as he says, he's a very aesthetic person. But, of course, the backdrop to that announcement was this growing pressure campaign that the U.S. is executing on the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro. The president says that, ultimately, the goal could be to oust Maduro from power. Listen to what the president said.
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TRUMO: I think it probably would. I can't tell. That's up to him, what he wants to do. I think it would be smart for him to do that. But, again, we're going to find out. He can do whatever he wants. We have a massive armada formed, the biggest we've ever had and by far the biggest we've ever had in South America. He could do whatever he wants. It's all right. Whatever he wants to do. If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it'll be the last time he's ever able to play tough.
(END VIDEO CLIP) LIPTAK: So, you hear the president there discussing his strategy when it comes to Venezuela. He has been saying now for weeks that he could order strikes on land in that country.
[03:05:00]
He keeps saying that that will happen soon. But, so far, he has stopped short of giving the order, which perhaps speaks to some of the reservations the president has about becoming embroiled in a prolonged conflict, about the U.S. getting mired in a foreign war.
Now, these oil tankers do seem to be a separate matter. The tanker that the U.S. is continuing to pursue is the third boat that the U.S. attempted to intercede as the U.S. tries and enforce this oil embargo that the president has announced on Venezuela. He seemed confident on Monday that the U.S. would eventually be able to intercept this boat. And he seemed confident that the U.S., as it continues to intercept these oil tankers, will be able to keep the oil.
Kevin Liptak, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.
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CHURCH: And I spoke last hour with Brian Fonseca, director of Florida International University's Institute for Public Policy. I asked him what it would look like if Maduro were forced from power.
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BRIAN FONSECA, DIRECTOR, FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY: Well, I think regime change would probably look like some type of transition government. I don't think that it will swing all the way over to the opposition. At least, I don't think that's the best thing to do because a lot of the governing institutions are still under the control of the regime and sort of those loyal to the regime. And so, I think you're going to have to have some type of power sharing between, you know, members of the opposition, members of the current government.
The military will play a heavy role, and they'll probably occupy sort of the governing structure while calling for new elections in 18 months or something like that. I mean, that's a scenario. There are certainly a few other scenarios, but I think that's probably the most likely, is that you have a fracture within, then you have some type of power sharing that goes on for about 18 months until you can hold new democratic elections and have a democratically-elected president for Venezuela.
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CHURCH: Now to Ukraine where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed optimism over negotiations to end the war, writing on X, "We are very close to a real outcome. We are also developing the first draft of the agreement on Ukraine's recovery, economic strategy."
But he also said there are certain points that Ukraine is not prepared to accept, and he is sure the same is true for Russia. To that point, a Kremlin spokesperson told a Russian newspaper that the weekend talks in Miami cannot be considered a breakthrough.
John Lough is the head of foreign policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, a London-based think tank. He joins us from Redburn in England. Appreciate you being with us.
JOHN LOUGH, HEAD OF FOREIGN POLICY, NEW EURASIAN STRATEGY CENTRE: Good morning.
CHURCH: So, it appears Ukraine's President Zelenskyy is optimistic about current negotiations to end the war in his country. How likely is it that President Putin shares that same optimism?
LOUGH: Well, I think, firstly, President Zelenskyy has to play along with the Trump administration and try to be constructive, although I think he's got profound doubts about the nature of the deal that he believes the U.S. wishes to impose on him.
For his part, I think President Putin is not in a real hurry to end this war. He thinks that he can, in fact, win the war. And it seems that his military and security chiefs have been telling him for some time that the Ukrainians are going to collapse any moment. So, he's sorts of keeping up this pressure by suggesting to everybody that Russia is just on the verge of winning. And this is his way, I think, also of influencing the Trump administration and, in fact, trying to persuade them to tell President Zelenskyy, look, you've got to really accept the terms of the deal that are on the table here.
So, I think it's a mixed picture. It looks as though the Russians are advancing slowly. Ukrainians are kicking off, I think, still formidable resistance, but they've got the numbers against them. And I think we're going to see over the coming months, probably in Ukraine itself, an acceptance that, ultimately, they are going to have to surrender territory. But if they can surrender that territory and get real security guarantees from the western allies, that's a deal that they should probably take.
CHURCH: Right. As you've pointed out there, the two main sticking points yet to be worked out here are the division of Ukrainian territory and, of course, security guarantees. What will be the likely outcome when it comes to territory given to Putin -- given that Putin wants as much land as he can get his hands on? What do you think would be the position as far as Ukraine? What would it be willing to give up?
LOUGH: Well, I think this is very, very hard to predict because obviously, there are very strong feelings around this in Ukraine given the enormous sacrifices the country has made to defend itself. And I think the question will have to be put to probably some form of national referendum.
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In any case, to change the borders of Ukraine, this is obviously constitutional matter, so it can't just be decided by the president. And I think this is probably Zelenskyy's Trump card in the sense because he's under enormous pressure from the U.S. in particular to say, well, look, we do understand we've got to give up territory.
But there are some people who believe that Ukrainians, although, ultimately, they accept they might lose that territory if they have to continue fighting for it, let's say over the next 12 months, they'd actually rather fight for it than abandon it. And I think this is where the political problem lies in Ukraine.
CHURCH: And on that other sticking point, security guarantees, how is that likely to be worked out? What do you think the ultimate decision will be?
LOUGH: Well, the meeting that took place recently between Ukrainians, Europeans, with U.S. present also in Berlin last week, suggested that there might be some way of enshrining in a treaty or treaties between Ukraine and its western partners, arrangements where western countries will come to the aid of Ukraine if it faces further military aggression from Russia. But precisely, what they have been committed to do is unclear. And, obviously, I think nobody wants to get into a direct war with Russia over Ukraine on the part of the western allies.
So, what ultimately can they give Ukraine in the form of a security guarantee? I think that still has to be fleshed out. But we are moving, I think, much further down the road here. And the western allies, particularly the Europeans, are recognizing that they have to be part of this peace arrangement. This implies certain commitments on their part.
CHURCH: John Lough, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your analysis.
LOUGH: Thank you very much.
CHURCH: And still to come, former neighbors of the suspect in the Brown University shootings and the killing of an MIT professor paint a mixed picture of someone who once was a brilliant student. A report from Portugal when we come back.
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CHURCH: Brown University has placed its campus police chief on leave following the mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others. The university announced the action on Monday, pending a review of the shooting. A former Providence, Rhode Island police chief will take over in the interim and will also head up that review. Separately, the U.S. Department of Education is launching its own review of the university's security procedures. In the 10 days since the shooting, many questions have been raised about safety on the campus.
Well, the search for a motive in those shootings and the killing of an MIT professor has widened. Former neighbors of the deceased suspect say he was estranged from his family in Portugal. People who knew him there paint a mixed picture, calling him very bright but reclusive.
CNN's Vasco Cotovio has this report.
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VASCO COTOVIO, CNN JOURNALIST (voice-over): A brilliant man, the best of students. As authorities continue to piece what may have led Claudio Neves Valente to allegedly open fire on a class at Brown University and then kill MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, the picture emerging is of a careful and meticulous man, which seems to tally with the memories people have of Valente growing up in Portugal.
(INAUDIBLE) hometown just narrow outside the capital, Lisbon, Valente's physics teacher, shocked to hear him named the prime suspect, had only the best to say.
JOSE MORGADO, FORMER TEACHER OF CLAUDI NEVES VALENTE (through translator): He was the best of his class. A brilliant person, really exceptional. As a human being, he was excellent as well. I used to tell my colleagues that Claudio was the perfect student.
COTOVIO (voice-over): Morgado says he helped Valente prepare for the '95 physics Olympics in Australia before he went to study at one of Portugal's most elite and competitive universities. It's there he met MIT Professor Loureiro.
BRUNO SOARES GONCALVES, PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR PLASMA NUCLEAR FUSION, INSTITUTE SUPERIOR TECNICO: We need to have in mind we are in the best -- we were and they were in the best physics course in the country.
COTOVIO (voice-over): Loureiro and Valente attended the same course at the same time. Colleagues who knew both have described Valente as the smarter of the two, but also was arrogant and argumentative.
Those who lived near him while he was studying in Lisbon speak of a polite teenager, but one who they say was estranged from his close family.
MARIA MARGARIDA BAPTISTA, NEIGHBOR OF CLAUDIO NEVES VALENTE (through translator): I really liked Claudio. He was very quiet. He was a bit strange. But he was a really bright boy. But nothing else. I know that he would disappear, and his parents were always looking for him.
COTOVIO (voice-over): Neighbors say he eventually sold his house in Lisbon after finishing his degree.
SOARES GONCALVES: Now, we know that Claudio was the best in class -- in course from that amounts of students. So, it's surprising that someone that had so much, apparently, to give also to physics, ends up doing something of this sort.
COTOVIO (voice-over): He moved to the United States, enrolling in a PhD at Brown, only to drop out shortly after. He returned to Portugal at one point, but his last known address was in Florida.
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A lot still unclear about his life and what his motive may have been.
Vasco Cotovio, CNN, Lisbon, Portugal.
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CHURCH: Still to come, CNN goes inside the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. We will hear why so many Latinos are joining the Border Patrol.
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CHURCH: Welcome back to "CNN Newsroom." I'm Rosemary Church. I want to check today's top stories for you. The U.S. Military has struck another alleged drug boat in the Eastern Pacific. Southern Command says one person was killed. That brings the death toll now to 105 in what the Pentagon calls "Operation Southern Spear." The mission is aimed at stopping the shipment of narcotics mostly from Venezuela.
President Trump says Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro, would be smart to step down. Mr. Trump says the U.S. is still actively pursuing another oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, and he's warning the U.S. will keep any sanctioned tankers and oil it seizes.
At least five people, including a two-year-old child, were killed when a Mexican naval plane crashed in Texas. The plane was transporting burned victims and went down in the waters of Galveston Bay on Monday afternoon, according to officials. Search and rescue crews recovered two people alive, but one person is still unaccounted for.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is offering $3,000 and a free flight to undocumented migrants who self-deport before the end of the year. That's triple the usual cash payment. The Trump administration is promising a harsher crackdown on immigration in the new year. A surge of new recruits is attending the U.S. Border Patrol agency training to join that controversial push.
CNN's David Culver takes us there.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the morning inspection, and there are about 1,100 recruits.
UNKNOWN: You all are a tremendous part of national security, and we sincerely appreciate that you've taken the first step and that you signed up.
CULVER (voice-over): After months of request, we're granted rare access inside the U.S. Border Patrol Academy --
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-- where under President Donald Trump, the curriculum has changed.
UNKNOWN: This is the fastest I've ever seen government move.
CULVER (voice-over): One of the biggest changes, a new pursuit policy.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Our last pursuit policy, we would let them go. So, they knew that the Border Patrol would not pursue them.
UNKNOWN: Execute.
CULVER (voice-over): That's no longer the case.
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They're also rolling out new firearms technology for better aim.
AGENT JEREMY DAVID, FIREARMS INSTRUCTOR, U.S. BORDER PATROL ACADEMY: The new implementation is the MRDS, which is a miniature red dot site.
CULVER: Is it a game-changer, though, for you?
DAVID: One hundred percent.
CULVER: Really?
DAVID: Yes.
UNKNOWN: We got (INAUDIBLE) this afternoon.
CULVER (voice-over): Many of the changes paid for, they say, by President Trump's big, beautiful bill, which also allocates funding for 3,000 new Border Patrol agents on top of the more than 19,000 already on the job.
CHIEF JARED ASHBY, U.S. BORDER PATROL: We'll grow this year to about 17, 1,800 students at any given time now.
CULVER: And that's going to be a record-high?
ASHBY: That would be a record-high.
CULVER (voice-over): Keeping those numbers up requires a major recruiting push.
UNKNOWN: We have an incentive right now that if you graduate the academy, you get $10,000.
CULVER (voice-over): Customs and Border Protection says applications are up nearly 70% from a year ago.
CULVER: How old are you now? JUAN PERALTA, BORDER PATROL RECRUIT: I'm 20.
CULVER: You're 20?
PERALTA: Yes.
CULVER: When you tell your friends back home like I'm joining Border Patrol, are some like surprised?
PERALTA: Yes, they're kind of like, wow, you're starting pretty young or how do you feel about arresting your own kind?
CULVER: How do you -- how do you answer that when you hear that?
PERALTA: They didn't come in the right way, so they aren't my kind.
CULVER (voice-over): Juan's story may surprise you. Latino, the son of an immigrant, raised in a border town. But here, we find that's more common than you might think.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): How many of you are fluent in Spanish right now?
CULVER (voice-over): CBP says more than half of their agents serving along the southern border are Hispanic.
UNKNOWN: Who was boarding race along the border? Yes, good, good group.
CULVER (voice-over): To better understand what motivates them to join, we go to El Paso, Texas.
ZIPPORAH RIOS, EL PASO RESIDENT: We have friends who like, oh, they're siblings who are in Border Patrol or like they're going into Border Patrol.
ANGIE PRADO, EL PASO RESIDENT: I have a cousin actually that's in Georgia getting -- doing the training to do Border Patrol, and then come back here.
CULVER (voice-over): Increasingly, Border Patrol agents are being pulled into ICE operations far from the border. Controversial. And at times, (INAUDIBLE).
[03:30:00]
CULVER: Is that the Border Patrol you know? Is that what you're accustomed to here?
PRADO: From what I have seen on social media, that definitely doesn't look like something our Border Patrol would be doing or how they would be behaving.
CULVER: And do you think most of them are motivated by it being a good career opportunity?
UNKNOWN: I think so.
PRADO: For sure.
CULVER (voice-over): And just as they can see why some here sign up for Border Patrol, they also sympathize with migrants trying to do it the right way, legally.
PRADO: And then you see people that are getting arrested at court because they're like going through the --
RIOS: Going through the process of trying to get their citizenship and doing it the right way.
PRADO: And they still get detained.
CULVER: Don't -- no.
CULVER (voice-over): We see that in the halls just outside of El Paso's immigration courtrooms where volunteers prepare folks for their hearings.
CULVER: So, we're going to go see somebody who just stepped out of court here and might be detained by the federal agents, which is an ICE initiative, but we're told Border Patrol agents are supporting this.
CULVER (voice-over): You can hear one of the volunteers praying aloud. They took the son into custody, and then step back out, realizing his mother was also on their list.
UNKNOWN: (INAUDIBLE). I think this is right. (INAUDIBLE).
CULVER: Do you really wonder why are they doing this?
UNKNOWN: I do get upset. And I just tell them, this mom, this family, they're not criminals.
AGENT CLAUDIO HERRERA, U.S. BORDER PATROL: I'm not going after my own kind because my own kind will do it legally.
CULVER (voice-over): Born in Mexico, Agent Claudio Herrera first came to the U.S. as a student. He says it took him 11 years to become a citizen. And six years ago, he joined the Border Patrol.
HERRERA: I've been asked sometimes before in my past, aren't you ashamed of being apprehending your own blood?
CULVER: What do you say to that? How do you answer that?
HERRERA: of course not, because I'm protecting my community. My deepest advice to anybody that is coming from Mexico, we know that you want a better future for you and your family, but if you decide to do it illegally, you will only find jail or you will only find death.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CULVER (on camera): We found that even with all the debate and tension right now around deporting migrants, interest in joining the agency has not necessarily dropped off. But most of the potential candidates we spoke with stressed that deportations are not what's attracting them to border patrol. Instead, they pointed to the new financial incentives, efforts to stop drugs from getting into the U.S., and what one candidate described as a job that means both enforcing the law and, as he sees it, helping migrants navigate legal pathways into the U.S.
David Culver, CNN.
CHURCH: Millions of butterflies are mysteriously drawn to a sanctuary in rugged forested mountains in Mexico every year. Coming up, a deeper look at the unique phenomenon.
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[03:35:00]
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CHURCH: This is our "Business Breakout." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a pill version of the popular weight loss drug Wegovy. Currently, patients need a weekly injection to take the drug. It's a man-made version of a hormone the body produces naturally to regulate food intake. The daily pill will be available by prescription in the U.S. in January.
Larry Ellison says he will personally guarantee $40 billion worth of Paramount's offer for Warner Brothers Discovery. The Oracle founder is the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison. Warner Brothers Board has rejected the Paramount bid several times. This guarantee is intended to counteract objections to the financing of the bid.
Gold has hit a new high with some predicting it will reach $5,000 an ounce next year. The precious metal jumped nearly 2 percent on Monday to close at $4,469 an ounce. Gold is considered a safe haven asset in times of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
President Donald Trump is suspending the leases for several large offshore wind projects already under construction. CNN's Kristen Holmes has more.
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KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Donald Trump is escalating his attacks on a form of energy he has long taken issue with, offshore wind farms. The Trump administration announced they are suspending federal leases for all large offshore wind projects currently under construction. The administration is citing national security risks for the move. But a release from the Interior Department didn't get into specifics, citing classified reports from the Department of War.
The sweeping order will bring five current projects in the Atlantic Ocean to a halt, which will impact billions of dollars in investments and stall a much-needed new electricity set to come online in the next few years.
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CHURCH: Every year, millions of monarch butterflies return to a 50- year-old sanctuary in Mexico.
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The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, which is a world heritage property, protects key overwintering sites for the butterflies. It was first discovered in 1975.
CNN's Carmen Aristegui joins a Mexican naturalist as she returns to the sanctuary for the first time in decades.
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CARMEN ARISTEGUI, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): It has been 50 years since the Monarch Butterfly reserve was first discovered by two people, Catalina Aguado and her husband, who set out to find where monarch butterflies go to hibernate.
After searching for two years, they finally managed to find these places. The sanctuary known as El Campanario in the ejido of El Rosario in Mexico is one of the areas where monarch butterflies spend their winters.
CATALINA AGUADO, DISCOVERED MONARCH BUTTERFLY RESERVE: It was emotional. It was scary also because we didn't want to disturb them. And we knew that if we found them, then everybody would know, and we didn't know what was going to happen. It was very surprising. You see all these butterflies that you have never seen in your life.
ARISREGUI (voice-over): Fifty years later, in our conversation with Cathy Aguado, we were given a rare opportunity to understand the decades-long efforts of multiple organizations to protect the monarch butterfly and to understand its migratory full and what this phenomenon truly represents.
AGUADO: I think that my contribution is important in that, perhaps, I inspired other people to do something similar, to keep on looking for beautiful things that they can work to preserve. It's very important to take care of nature in general because we are part of it. And whatever affects every other creature, it affects us. So, if we take care of nature, it will take care of us.
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CHURCH: Well, you could call it a holiday gift for fans of the artist Banksy. This new artwork from the anonymous British street artist appeared in London on Monday. It shows two children wearing winter hats, lying on the ground with one pointing to the sky. Banksy painted the black and white mural on the side of an old building in the bay's water district. Well, here in the U.S., the Powerball jackpot will grow to an estimated $1.7 billion for Wednesday's drawing after no one won the grand prize on Monday. That's still short of the all-time U.S. Powerball record of $2.04 billion in 2022.
I want to thank you so much for your company. I'm Rosemary Church. Have yourselves a wonderful day. "World Sport" is coming up next.
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