LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
President Donald Trump heads back to Washington after spending Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He's been posting about Afghan nationals and immigration following the attack last week on two National Guard members near the White House. It was an attack that fatally wounded one of them. Additionally, Trump has said that Venezuela's airspace is closed. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram joins us now. Good morning, Deepa.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hey there.
FRAYER: So first, a fact-check - can the U.S. president close another country's airspace?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. I mean, it's a fair question, Lauren, because we don't really have a lot of details or follow-up from the White House about this social media post from Trump that came over the weekend. And all the president said is that the airspace, quote, "above and surrounding Venezuela," should be considered "closed in its entirety." And his post was addressed to airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers. And that's pretty much all we've heard, no other details or any clarification. Is this new policy? You know, what did the president mean by this?
The bottom line, though, is that the president does not have the authority to close another country's airspace. Though I will note that recently, the FAA, which is the Federal Aviation Administration - they did warn that airspace over Venezuela could potentially be hazardous, but that doesn't mean that the airspace is closed.
FRAYER: Well, how has Venezuela responded?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. The Venezuelan government, you know, said it forcefully rejects the president's statement. They called it a colonial threat that undermines Venezuela's sovereignty. Really no mincing words there - and, you know, keep in mind - this is what's important - this is all coming as the U.S. has conducted multiple strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea, the Eastern Pacific, on these boats that the U.S. government says are carrying drugs, and dozens of people have been killed in these strikes.
And then on top of that, Trump has also recently indicated that the U.S. would stop drug traffickers by land as well. And he recently declared the government of Nicolas Maduro, who leads Venezuela, as a terrorist organization. So the tension on this issue has really escalated here.
FRAYER: Deepa, switching gears - Trump said that he was requesting 500 more National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., following that shooting last week. Is that happening?
SHIVARAM: Right. So the president announced he was going to add 500 more National Guard troops, like you said, to D.C. This happened shortly after the attack on guard members outside the White House - nearby the White House earlier this week. That plan appears to remain in place. Those 500 new guard members will join about the 2,000 guard members who are already in the city.
And there is a new development, though, from the weekend, which is that the government has also declared that every group of National Guard members patrolling Washington, D.C, will also be accompanied by at least one D.C. police officer. The details of this - a little unclear. But a police officer who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity said that D.C. police officers would be getting overtime pay to do this work, so it's not interfering with their already day-to-day duties.
FRAYER: And the suspect accused of shooting those two National Guard members is an Afghan national, according to authorities. He lived in Washington state. And now the president says he wants more restrictions on immigrants because of this shooting. What exactly does President Trump want to do?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. Well, the president, you know, posted on social media on his platform Truth Social, and he said that he wants to, quote, "permanently pause migration from all third-world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover." He commented that reverse migration is the answer here. In the immediate aftermath of that shooting, you know, Trump said that he wanted every Afghan who entered to the U.S. after U.S. troops pulled out of Kabul in 2021 - he wanted them to be reexamined. And remember, this happened in the Biden administration, so he's laying a lot of blame on former President Joe Biden.
There really isn't much detail about what that means - the timeline of this, who would be in charge. There's already a lot of security, stringent examination of people who are coming into this country. They are being vetted, but all asylum decisions just in the last day or two have been halted to ensure more vetting and screening, and that's what the president is hoping for.
FRAYER: And the president and lawmakers come back this week to another pressing problem that has yet to be resolved, and that's the extension of the enhanced subsidies for Obamacare. What's the latest on that?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. Remember that this was the issue that really propelled the government to shut down just a month ago. Right now, Congress is pretty divided on how to do it. There's even some division among GOP members. I think the thing to watch out for, though, is to see how the White House and President Trump will weigh in on this because Republicans, like I said, aren't really on the same page here.
FRAYER: That's NPR's White House correspondent, Deepa Shivaram. Thanks so much, Deepa.
SHIVARAM: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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