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Venezuela said Tuesday it would limit the number of accredited diplomats at the French, Italian and Dutch embassies, citing their governments' "hostile" response to Nicolas Maduro's inauguration for a third presidential term.

The Venezuelan foreign ministry said the diplomats -- maximum three per country -- would also need "written authorization... to travel more than 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Plaza Bolivar" in the capital Caracas.

Many career diplomats believe that Marco Rubio, the man tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be secretary of state, is facing a grim future should he gain Senate confirmation.

In interviews with Politico, many diplomats predicted that Rubio would last two years on the job at most, with many going so far as to say that he would be out in less than a year.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) literally yelled at defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth as he dodged questions about his fiscal leadership at several veterans organizations.

"Mr. Hegseth, this hearing is about whether you are qualified to be secretary of defense," Duckworth explained during Tuesday's Senate confirmation hearing. "And any sense that the Department of Defense that keeps us safe is being steered by someone who is wholly unprepared for the job puts America at risk."

The Affordable Care Act reined in many of the worst abuses of the health insurance industry, like denying people for pre-existing conditions or for meeting a lifetime coverage maximum — but it remains an industry where patients can be denied critical care for nonsensical reasons — and horror stories continue to abound, Arwa Mahdawi wrote for The Guardian.

The issue has sprung into national prominence following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the arrest of Luigi Mangione for the crime. Many took to the internet to apparently root for the killer, with polling showing some 40 percent of young Americans found the shooting "acceptable" and 7 in 10 Americans believe insurance company greed played a role.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) apologized to defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth after he was confronted about sexual assault allegations.

During a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, multiple Democratic senators noted that Hegseth had been accused of raping a woman.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) called out Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's defense secretary nominee, after he refused to commit to resigning from the position if he drank alcohol while at work.

During Tuesday's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hirono asked Hegseth about reports that he had problems with alcoholism.

"The View's" Whoopi Goldberg attacked Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for saying that if the federal government helps southern California after the wildfires, the funds should be "conditional."

"This is the thing: a burnt house doesn't care who you voted for," Goldberg said. "When you've lost everything, that's not what is on your mind, okay? And for you to threaten and forget all the people you think live out there with all the money, it's all the folks who work in the banks, who do hair, who write the tickets that need to be — all those people, they also lost their homes."

With the Republican-controlled Senate set to hold confirmation hearings for more than a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump's nominees this week, a watchdog group on Tuesday urged Democrats to oppose any effort to ram the picks through without sufficiently aggressive questioning and vetting.

"There's far too much at stake for our national security and economy for senators to rubber stamp any of President-elect Trump's nominees without doing their due diligence," Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement. "Trump has lost any benefit of the doubt with his nominations of people with serious conflicts of interest and ethical problems. These nominees should be subject to more than a skin-deep examination of their records and senators who would fast-track nominations in the interest of going home early for the weekend would not be acting in the public interest."

Donald Trump called for the creation of a new federal agency dedicated to collecting the tariffs he's threatening to impose on U.S. trading partners — but he was quickly taught there's already a government entity that does that.

While the president-elect and his allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have called for the elimination of millions of government jobs and even some federal departments, Trump sketched out a proposal for a new one that suggests his tariff threats are more than just a negotiating tactic.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) unloaded on defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth for his remarks about women serving in combat.

At Tuesday's Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing, Gillibrand noted that Hegseth had "denigrated" women in the military.