US politics live: United States bringing in much tighter entry restrictions with social media data on the table

Australians planning trips to the United States may soon encounter a brand new set of requests from local border officers.

Welcome to our live coverage of US politics.

The United States has revealed footage from its seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, which has been interpreted as a “major escalation” of President Donald Trump’s campaign to force the country’s dictator, Nicolas Maduro, from power.

“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House.

“And other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”

He provided few other details.

Attorney-General Pam Bondi later clarified that the tanker had previously been sanctioned for transporting illicit oil.

Meanwhile, holidaying Australians could be caught up in a planned new rule from the Trump Administration.

It has recommended that everyone applying for an ESTA – the visa free authorisation that tourists from many nations, including Australia, apply for when travelling to the US – will have to reveal five years of social media use.

Those applying for longer term visas already have to list social media accounts but asking tourists coming for a matter of weeks to do the same would make the US an outlier and could further discourage tourism.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has said he would consider holding elections.

Donald Trump berated Ukraine for not holding elections earlier this week – despite the logistical difficulties of doing so in wartime.

Read on for more updates.