Rubio will field questions on Russia-Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela at news conference

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is poised to take questions Friday in a rare, formal State Department news conference, with the main topics expected to surround Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas peace efforts as well as the Trump administration’s increasing military pressure on Venezuela.

Rubio’s year-end appearance in the State Department briefing room comes as key meetings on Gaza and Russia-Ukraine are set to be held in Miami on Friday and Saturday after a tumultuous year in U.S. foreign policy. Rubio has assumed the additional role of national security adviser and emerged as a staunch defender of President Donald Trump’s “America First” priorities on issues ranging from visa restrictions to a radical overhaul in foreign assistance.

The event also will mark the first time the briefing room has been used since August, when the department ended what had been twice-a-week on-camera press briefings. Rubio, however, has not shied away from answering reporters’ questions while on foreign trips, frequently entertaining multiple queries whereas previous secretaries of state generally limited the number allowed.

The news conference is set to take place just hours before Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff meets with senior officials from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar to discuss the next phase of the Republican president’s Gaza ceasefire plan, progress on which has moved slowly since it was announced in October.

Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including Trump son-in-law and informal adviser Jared Kushner, have been pushing to get the Gaza plan implemented by setting up a “Board of Peace” that will oversee the territory after two years of war and create an international stabilization force that would police the area.

On Saturday, Witkoff, Kushner and perhaps Rubio, who will be at his home in Florida for the holidays, are to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Kirill Dmitriev in Miami to go over the latest iteration of a U.S.-proposed plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

The proposal has been through numerous versions with Trump seesawing back and forth between offering support and encouragement for Ukraine and then seemingly sympathizing with Putin’s hard-line stances by pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to territorial concessions. Kyiv has rejected that move in return for security guarantees intended to protect Ukraine from future Russian incursions.

On Venezuela, Rubio has been a leading proponent of military operations against suspected drug-running vessels that have been targeted by the Pentagon in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. The Trump administration’s actions have ramped up pressure on leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S.

In an interview with NBC News on Friday, Trump would not rule out a war with Venezuela. But Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have publicly maintained that the current operations are directed at “narcoterrorists” trying to smuggle deadly drugs into the United States. Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Rubio’s news conference also comes just two days after the Trump administration announced a massive $11 billion package of arms sales to Taiwan, a move that has infuriated Beijing, which has vowed to retake the island by force if necessary.

Trump has veered between conciliatory and aggressive messages to China since returning to the Oval Office in January, hitting Chinese imports with major tariffs but at the same time offering to ease commercial pressure on Beijing in conversations with China’s President Xi Jinping. The Trump administration, though, has consistently decried China’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan and its smaller neighbors in disputes over the South China Sea.

Since taking over the State Department, Rubio has moved swiftly to implement Trump’s “America First” agenda, helping dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and reducing the size of the diplomatic corps through a significant reorganization. Previous administrations have distributed billions of dollars in foreign assistance over the past five decades through USAID.

Critics have said the decision to eliminate USAID and slash foreign aid spending has cost lives overseas, although Rubio and others have denied this, pointing to ongoing disaster relief operations in the Philippines, the Caribbean and elsewhere, along with new global health compacts being signed with countries that previously had programs run by USAID.

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