ReportWire

Tag: Trump

  • House votes on health insurance subsidies as Senate debates military powers

    [ad_1]

    It’s the first week of a new year for Congress, and each chamber is considering legislation with votes to watch on Thursday.Enhanced Health Care SubsidiesThe House of Representatives is voting on a bill to reinstate tax credits that expired last year and were central to the government shutdown.The bill aims to extend these subsidies for three years, helping those without insurance through their employers pay for coverage. Four Republicans: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1st), Rep. Ryan McKenzie (PA-7th), Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8th), and Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17th) joined Democrats to push the vote, which is expected to pass. Five more Republicans joined Democrats during a test vote on Wednesday.However, the Senate is not expected to consider this bill, as they are working on their own Affordable Care Act reform measure designed to pass both chambers.Venezuela War Powers ResolutionThe Senate is revisiting a war powers resolution that would prevent the president from using military force in Venezuela without congressional approval. This follows a recent military operation in Venezuela’s capital, which led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York facing narcoterrorism charges. President Donald Trump has stated that the U.S. is running Venezuela and may deploy the military again if the remaining Maduro regime does not comply with U.S. demands.The same resolution failed a previous vote, as well as a measure to stop the Trump administration from bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the White House says were connected to Venezuela. Past administrations arrested and charged such suspects. The Trump administration’s campaign has killed more than 100 people.Reactions To Greenland RhetoricThe White House’s suggestion to use military force to take over Greenland has been met with criticism on Capitol Hill. Democrats have long opposed this idea, and several Republicans have recently spoken out against it.Rep. Mike Johnson, House Speaker, said, “All this stuff about military action and all that, I don’t even think that’s a possibility.” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina criticized the notion, saying, “Making insane comments about how it is our right to have territory owned by the kingdom of Denmark, folks, amateur hour is over.” Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana noted, “In the case of Greenland, you have two things: one, not a present threat, and so they have a duly elected president. So, he doesn’t have the authority without Congress.”Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska added, “It’s very… amateurish. I feel like we’ve got high school kids playing Risk.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also stated that the president wants to buy Greenland.Earlier this week, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Hearst Television: “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    It’s the first week of a new year for Congress, and each chamber is considering legislation with votes to watch on Thursday.

    Enhanced Health Care Subsidies

    The House of Representatives is voting on a bill to reinstate tax credits that expired last year and were central to the government shutdown.

    The bill aims to extend these subsidies for three years, helping those without insurance through their employers pay for coverage. Four Republicans: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1st), Rep. Ryan McKenzie (PA-7th), Rep. Rob Bresnahan (PA-8th), and Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17th) joined Democrats to push the vote, which is expected to pass. Five more Republicans joined Democrats during a test vote on Wednesday.

    However, the Senate is not expected to consider this bill, as they are working on their own Affordable Care Act reform measure designed to pass both chambers.

    Venezuela War Powers Resolution

    The Senate is revisiting a war powers resolution that would prevent the president from using military force in Venezuela without congressional approval. This follows a recent military operation in Venezuela’s capital, which led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York facing narcoterrorism charges.

    President Donald Trump has stated that the U.S. is running Venezuela and may deploy the military again if the remaining Maduro regime does not comply with U.S. demands.

    The same resolution failed a previous vote, as well as a measure to stop the Trump administration from bombing alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the White House says were connected to Venezuela. Past administrations arrested and charged such suspects. The Trump administration’s campaign has killed more than 100 people.

    Reactions To Greenland Rhetoric

    The White House’s suggestion to use military force to take over Greenland has been met with criticism on Capitol Hill. Democrats have long opposed this idea, and several Republicans have recently spoken out against it.

    Rep. Mike Johnson, House Speaker, said, “All this stuff about military action and all that, I don’t even think that’s a possibility.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina criticized the notion, saying, “Making insane comments about how it is our right to have territory owned by the kingdom of Denmark, folks, amateur hour is over.”

    Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana noted, “In the case of Greenland, you have two things: one, not a present threat, and so they have a duly elected president. So, he doesn’t have the authority without Congress.”

    Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska added, “It’s very… amateurish. I feel like we’ve got high school kids playing Risk.”

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also stated that the president wants to buy Greenland.

    Earlier this week, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Hearst Television: “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.”

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Column: Trump’s 626 overseas strikes aren’t ‘America First.’ What’s his real agenda?

    [ad_1]

    Who knew that by “America First,” President Trump meant all of the Americas?

    In puzzling over that question at least, I’ve got company in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the now-former congresswoman from Georgia and onetime Trump devotee who remains stalwart in his America First movement. Greene tweeted on Saturday, just ahead of Trump’s triumphal news conference about the United States’ decapitation of Venezuela’s government by the military’s middle-of-the-night nabbing of Nicolás Maduro and his wife: “This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”

    Wrong indeed. Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has done nothing but exacerbate the domestic problems that Greene identified as America First priorities — bringing down the “increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare” within the 50 states — even as he’s pursued the “never ending military aggression” and foreign adventurism that America Firsters scorn, or at least used to. Another Trump con. Another lie.

    Here’s a stunning stat, thanks to Military Times: In 2025, Trump ordered 626 missile strikes worldwide, 71 more than President Biden did in his entire four-year term. Targets, so far, have included Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran and the waters off Venezuela and Colombia. Lately he’s threatened to hit Iran again if it kills demonstrators who have been marching in Tehran’s streets to protest the country’s woeful economic conditions. (“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump posted Friday.)

    The president doesn’t like “forever wars,” he’s said many times, but he sure loves quick booms and cinematic secret ops. Leave aside, for now, the attacks in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. It’s Trump’s new claim to “run” Venezuela that has signaled the beginning of his mind-boggling bid for U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. Any such ambition raises the potential for quick actions to become quagmires.

    As Stephen Miller, perhaps Trump’s closest and most like-minded (read: unhinged) advisor, described the administration’s worldview on Monday to CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

    You know, that old, amoral iron law: “Might makes right.” Music to Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s ears as they seek hegemonic expansion of their own, confident that the United States has given up the moral high ground from which to object.

    But it was Trump, the branding maven, who gave the White House worldview its name — his own, of course: the Donroe Doctrine. And it was Trump who spelled out what that might mean in practice for the Americas, in a chest-thumping, war-mongering performance on Sunday returning to Washington aboard Air Force One. The wannabe U.S. king turns out to be a wannabe emperor of an entire hemisphere.

    “We’re in charge,” Trump said of Venezuela to reporters. “We’re gonna run it. Fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time.” He added, “If they don’t behave, we’ll do a second strike.” He went on, suggestively, ominously: “Colombia is very sick too,” and “Cuba is ready to fall.” Looking northward, he coveted more: “We need Greenland from a national security situation.”

    Separately, Trump recently has said that Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro “does have to watch his ass,” and that, given Trump’s unhappiness with the ungenuflecting Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, “Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.” In their cases as well as Maduro’s, Trump’s ostensible complaints have been that each has been complacent or complicit with drug cartels.

    And yet, just last month Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court and given a 45-year sentence for his central role in “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Hernández helped traffickers ship 400 tons of cocaine into the United States — to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” And Trump pardoned him after less than two years in prison.

    So it’s implausible that a few weeks later, the U.S. president truly believes in taking a hard line against leaders he suspects of abetting the drug trade. Maybe Trump’s real motivation is something other than drug-running?

    In his appearance after the Maduro arrest, Trump used the word “oil” 21 times. On Tuesday, he announced, in a social media post, of course, that he was taking control of the proceeds from up to 50 barrels of Venezuelan oil. (Not that he cares, but that would violate the Constitution, which gives Congress power to appropriate money that comes into the U.S. Treasury.)

    Or perhaps, in line with the Monroe Doctrine, our current president has a retro urge to dominate half the world.

    Lately his focus has been on Venezuela and South America, but North America is also in his sights. Trump has long said he might target Mexico to hit cartels and that the United States’ other North American neighbor, Canada, should become the 51st state. But it’s a third part of North America — Greenland — that he’s most intent on.

    The icy island has fewer than 60,000 people but mineral wealth that’s increasingly accessible given the climate warming that Trump calls a hoax. For him to lay claim isn’t just a problem for the Americas. It’s an existential threat to NATO given that Greenland is an autonomous part of NATO ally Denmark — as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned.

    Not in 80 years did anyone imagine that NATO — bound by its tenet that an attack on one member is an attack on all — would be attacked from within, least of all from the United States. In a remarkable statement on Tuesday, U.S. allies rallied around Denmark: “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

    Trump’s insistence that controlling Greenland is essential to U.S. national security is nuts. The United States has had military bases there since World War II, and all of NATO sees Greenland as critical to defend against Russian and Chinese encroachment in the Arctic. Still, Trump hasn’t ruled out the use of force to take the island.

    He imagines himself to be the emperor of the Americas — all of it. Americas First.

    Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
    Threads: @jkcalmes
    X: @jackiekcalmes

    [ad_2]

    Jackie Calmes

    Source link

  • Trump withdraws U.S. from 66 international organizations and treaties, including major climate groups

    [ad_1]

    President Trump on Wednesday withdrew the United States from 66 international organizations and treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    In a presidential memorandum, Trump said it is “contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to” the organizations, which also include groups geared toward education, economic development, cybersecurity and human rights issues, among others. He directed all executive departments and agencies to take steps to “effectuate the withdrawal” of the U.S. from the organizations as soon as possible.

    While the president has already announced a withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement — an international treaty to limit global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change — the latest move will further isolate the nation at a critical moment, experts said.

    The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is a global treaty created in 1992 and signed by nearly 200 countries with the aim of addressing climate change through coordinated international action, including limiting planet-warming greenhouse gases. Trump already raised eyebrows last year by refusing to attend or send any high-level delegates to the annual U.N. Conferences of the Parties meeting in Brazil, where Gov. Gavin Newsom instead took on a starring role.

    Withdrawing from the U.N. Framework Convention is a “shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” Gina McCarthy, a former director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

    “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration,” said McCarthy, who also served as the first White House national climate advisor and is now chair of the America is All In climate coalition.

    David Widawsky, director of the World Resources Institute, called the move a “strategic blunder that gives away American advantage for nothing in return.”

    “The 30-year-old agreement is the foundation of international climate cooperation. Walking away doesn’t just put America on the sidelines — it takes the U.S. out of the arena entirely,” Widawsky said.

    Trump on Wednesday also withdrew the U.S. from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading global scientific body studying global warming. Its major assessments published every six or seven years help inform climate policy around the world.

    Pulling the U.S. out of the IPCC won’t prevent individual U.S. scientists from contributing, but the nation as a whole will no longer be able to help guide the scientific assessments, said Delta Merner, associate accountability campaign director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has attended previous IPCC meetings.

    “Walking away doesn’t make the science disappear, it only leaves people across the United States, policymakers and businesses flying in the dark at the very moment when credible climate information is most urgently needed,” Merner said. “This is a clear attempt to weaken scientific guardrails that protect the public from disinformation, delay and reckless decision-making. Such a move will make it easier for fossil fuel interests to distort the facts while front-line communities pay the price.”

    Trump, who received substantial donations from oil and gas companies during his 2024 presidential campaign, has heavily promoted the development of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal. He has also taken several steps to limit scientific research and climate action in the U.S., including moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, in Boulder, Colo.

    Last year, the Trump administration also fired hundreds of scientists working to prepare the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment and removed the website that housed previous assessments.

    Other climate, environment and energy groups Trump withdrew from on Wednesday include the International Renewable Energy Agency, the International Solar Alliance, the the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, among many others.

    But the United States is the first nation to walk away from the U.N. Framework Convention, according to Manish Bapna, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

    “President Trump pulls the United States out of the UNFCCC at the nation’s peril,” Bapna said. “It is not only self-defeating to let other countries write the global rules of the road for the inevitable transition to clean energy, but also to skip out on trillions of dollars in investment, jobs, lower energy costs and new markets for American clean technologies.”

    [ad_2]

    Hayley Smith

    Source link

  • 3 Practical Ways to Lose Weight That Actually Work Including Cannabis

    [ad_1]

    Learn 3 practical ways to lose weight that actually work including cannabis, focusing on sustainable habits, metabolism, and real-life results.

    Losing weight doesn’t require extreme diets, expensive programs, or punishing workout schedules. For most people, the smartest goal is steady, sustainable fat loss—about 1 to 2 pounds per week, which is exactly what most doctors and nutrition experts recommend. Over a month, it adds up to meaningful progress without wrecking your metabolism or daily life.

    Here are 3 practical ways to lose weight that actually work including cannabis. No special, expensive tricks but, a proven path a regular person drop pounds safely and consistently, with the third approach highlighting how cannabis can be used thoughtfully as part of a modern wellness strategy.

    RELATED: CBD, Intermittent Fasting And Weight Loss

    Weight loss still comes down to one core principle: burning slightly more calories than you consume. The key word is slightly. A daily deficit of 300–500 calories is enough to lose 1–2 pounds per week without triggering intense hunger or fatigue.

    The most practical approach:

    • Focus on protein first (eggs, chicken, fish, beans, Greek yogurt)
    • Build meals around fiber-rich foods like vegetables, oats, and fruit
    • Reduce liquid calories such as soda, sweetened coffee, and alcohol

    Instead of tracking every bite forever, many people succeed by tracking just two weeks per month to recalibrate portion sizes. This alone often creates the needed calorie deficit.

    This approach is simple, flexible, and sustainable for real life.

    Photo by Nastasic/Getty Images

    You don’t need marathon training to lose weight. Consistency beats intensity every time.

    The most effective plan:

    • 30–45 minutes of walking most days of the week
    • 2–3 short strength sessions weekly using bodyweight or light weights
    • Staying active throughout the day—standing, stretching, and moving often

    Walking burns fat efficiently, lowers stress hormones, and is easy to maintain long-term. Strength training preserves muscle mass, which keeps your metabolism higher as you lose weight.

    Together, these habits can burn 1,500–2,500 extra calories per week, enough to support steady fat loss without exhaustion.

    Cannabis may seem like an unlikely weight-loss tool, but research and real-world use suggest it can play a supportive role when used intentionally.

    Many people associate cannabis with overeating, but the reality depends on strain, dosage, and timing.

    Smart cannabis use can help by:

    • Reducing stress and emotional eating
    • Improving sleep quality, which is crucial for fat loss
    • Supporting post-workout recovery and pain management
    • Helping some users regulate appetite more mindfully

    RELATED: Your Zodiac Sign And Marijuana

    Certain strains and cannabinoids, particularly THCV and CBD-dominant products, are associated with appetite control and metabolic balance rather than hunger stimulation.

    The most practical approach:

    • Use low-dose cannabis, not heavy intoxication
    • Avoid late-night use that leads to snacking
    • Pair cannabis with healthy routines like walking, stretching, or meal prep

    For many adults moving away from alcohol, cannabis can also eliminate hundreds of empty calories per week—often enough on its own to trigger weight loss.

    Losing 1–2 pounds per week doesn’t require perfection. It requires small, repeatable habits fitting into daily life.

    Control calories without extremes. Move your body consistently. And when used wisely, cannabis can be part of a balanced, modern approach to weight loss and wellness.

    Sustainable results don’t come from punishment—they come from smart systems working with your body, not against it

    [ad_2]

    Amy Hansen

    Source link

  • Trump ‘leaked’ audio about Epstein, Venezuela isn’t real

    [ad_1]

    Days after the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a viral audio clip appears to show President Donald Trump yelling at advisers to stop the release of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s files. 

    “Leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela,” reads the caption of a Jan. 5 Facebook post sharing the purported recording that drew over 2 million views.

    “(We’re) not releasing the Epstein file, f— Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don’t care what you do, start a f—— war, just don’t let them get out. If I go down, I will bring all of you down,” Trump appears to say. 

    A reporter can then be heard asking Trump if he is all right, to which Trump says, “I feel great, I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something.”

    That part of the recording is authentic. But the first part — about Epstein and Greene — isn’t.

    The fake audio matches the audio in a TikTok video from Nov. 18, 2025, before the U.S. captured Maduro on Jan. 3. Fact-checkers from Lead Stories and Snopes found a similar version of the audio first published Nov. 5, 2025 by the @fresh_florida_air TikTok account, which is no longer available. The archived version of that video shows a Sora watermark, which is OpenAI’s video-generating platform. With the launch of Sora 2 on Sept. 30, 2025, the tool can generate audio-only results. 

    The TikTok account, @fresh_florida_air, posted another version of the “leaked” audio that featured a Sora watermark that said @bradbradt31. PolitiFact searched for that username on the Sora app, but that account is also unavailable. 

    The TikTok user, @fresh_florida_air, told Snopes that the videos were AI-generated. “My intent is creative expression, not presenting anything as factual,” the user said. 

    The second part of the audio clip in the Facebook post that features a reporter asking Trump if he’s OK is real, but it was taken out of context. On Nov. 17, 2025, a reporter questioned why the president sounded hoarse. A longer version of Trump’s response reveals he said he had been shouting during trade talks with a foreign country. Trump was not being asked about a leaked audio or the Epstein files. 

    Our ruling

    A viral Facebook post claims to show “leaked Donald Trump audio about the Epstein files and Venezuela.”

    The audio was created with artificial intelligence. 

    PolitiFact found the first part of the clip was generated with OpenAI’s video-generating platform, Sora. 

    The second part of the clip is real but it’s from November 2025, before Maduro was captured by the U.S. government. At that moment, Trump was not being asked about leaked audio or the Epstein files. We rate this claim False.  

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • CIA advised Trump against supporting Venezuela’s democratic opposition

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — A highly confidential CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a wider conflict in Venezuela if he were to support the country’s democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.

    The assessment was a tightly held CIA product commissioned at the request of senior policymakers before Trump decided whether to authorize Operation Absolute Resolve, the stunning U.S. mission that seized Maduro and his wife from their bedroom in Caracas over the weekend.

    Announcing the results of the operation on Sunday, Trump surprised an anxious Venezuelan public when he was quick to dismiss the leadership of the democratic opposition — led by María Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

    Instead, Trump said his administration was working with Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has since been named the country’s interim president. The rest of Maduro’s government remains in place.

    Endorsing the opposition would probably have required U.S. military backing, with the Venezuelan armed forces still under the control of loyalists to Maduro unwilling to relinquish power.

    A second official said that the administration sought to avoid one of the cardinal mistakes of the invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration ordered party loyalists of the deposed Saddam Hussein to be excluded from the country’s interim government. That decision, known as de-Baathification, led those in charge of Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons to establish armed resistance to the U.S. campaign.

    The CIA product was not an assessment that was shared across the 18 government agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, whose head, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was largely absent from deliberations — and who has yet to comment on the operation, despite CIA operatives being deployed in harm’s way before and throughout the weekend mission.

    The core team that worked on Absolute Resolve included Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who met routinely over several months, sometimes daily, the source added.

    The existence of the CIA assessment was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

    Signs have emerged that Trump’s team was in communication with Rodríguez ahead of the operation, although the president has denied that his administration gave Rodríguez advance notice of Maduro’s ouster.

    “There are a number of unanswered questions,” said Evan Ellis, who served in Trump’s first term planning State Department policy on Latin America, the Caribbean and international narcotics. “There may have been a cynical calculation that one can work with them.”

    Rodríguez served as a point of contact with the Biden administration, experts note, and also was in touch with Richard Grenell, a top Trump aide who heads the Kennedy Center, early on in Trump’s second term, when he was testing engagement with Caracas.

    While the federal indictment unsealed against Maduro after his seizure named several other senior officials in his government, Rodríguez’s name was notably absent.

    Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president Monday in a ceremony attended by diplomats from Russia, China and Iran. Publicly, the leader has offered mixed messages, at once vowing to prevent Venezuela from becoming a colonial outpost of an American empire, while also offering to forge a newly collaborative relationship with Washington.

    “Of course, for political reasons, Delcy Rodríguez can’t say, ‘I’ve cut a deal with Trump, and we’re going to stop the revolution now and start working with the U.S.,” Ellis said.

    “It’s not about the democracy,” he said. “It’s about him not wanting to work with Maduro.”

    In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Machado said she had yet to speak with Trump since the U.S. operation over the weekend, but hoped to do so soon, offering to share her Nobel Peace Prize with him as a gesture of gratitude. Trump has repeatedly touted himself as a worthy recipient of the award.

    “What he has done is historic,” Machado said, vowing to return to the country from hiding abroad since accepting the prize in Oslo last month.

    “It’s a huge step,” she added, “towards a democratic transition.”

    [ad_2]

    Michael Wilner

    Source link

  • Venezuela And Marijuana

    [ad_1]

     A look at marijuana and Venezuela, including international assessments of drug trafficking, domestic cannabis laws, medical use policies, and public opinion.

    The current administration’s seizure of the President and First Lady while taking over of Venezuela has thrust the country into the headlines, especially around drugs and oil. But what is the surprising relationship with Venezuela and marijuana? And there role in the broader context of South America’s illicit drug trade. The country’s actual role is frequently misunderstood. While Venezuela’s geography places it near major drug-producing regions, especially Colombia, recent international assessments suggest its involvement in the global narcotics economy is more limited than commonly portrayed. At the same time, cannabis remains illegal inside Venezuela, with no formal medical marijuana framework and relatively little public debate on legalization.

    RELATED: The Best Cocktails For Holiday Day Drinking

    For decades, Venezuela has been viewed primarily as a transit country rather than a producer of drugs. Its long Caribbean coastline and porous land borders have made it attractive to criminal networks moving cocaine and, to a lesser extent, marijuana out of South America. Marijuana trafficked through Venezuela typically originates in Colombia and is shipped onward to Central America or Caribbean markets. Seizures along border regions and coastal waters have reinforced the country’s reputation as a corridor rather than a source.

    The distinction has gained renewed attention following a recent U.S. government report that concluded Venezuela is not among the world’s major players in drug production or large-scale trafficking. The assessment noted Venezuela has no significant coca cultivation and does not rank as a major producer of marijuana. While isolated trafficking networks continue to operate, the report emphasized Venezuela’s overall role in the international drug trade is smaller than several neighboring countries and far from central on a global scale.

    Within Venezuela itself, marijuana remains strictly prohibited. Recreational use, cultivation, and distribution are illegal under national law. Possession of small amounts may be treated as personal use, but it can still result in legal consequences, including mandatory rehabilitation or criminal penalties, depending on circumstances and judicial discretion. Law enforcement policy has historically focused on deterrence rather than regulation.

    Medical cannabis is also illegal in Venezuela. Unlike many Latin American countries who have introduced tightly controlled medical marijuana programs over the past decade, Venezuela has not adopted legislation allowing cannabis-based treatments. Patients seeking medical cannabis must rely on imported pharmaceuticals which do not contain cannabinoids, or on unregulated alternatives, which remain illegal. Government officials have repeatedly stated cannabis legalization, including for medical purposes, is not currently under consideration.

    RELATED: Upgrade Your Gift Game and Avoid the Lame

    Public opinion on marijuana use in Venezuela is difficult to measure due to limited polling and the country’s restrictive legal environment. There are no large, nationally representative surveys tracking attitudes toward cannabis legalization or medical use. International studies suggest countries with strict prohibition tend to report lower levels of cannabis use, but Venezuela-specific data remains scarce. Cultural attitudes, legal risk, and limited public discussion all contribute to the absence of reliable usage statistics.

    Looking ahead, Venezuela’s cannabis policy appears likely to remain unchanged in the near term. While regional trends point toward broader acceptance of medical marijuana and regulated use elsewhere in Latin America, Venezuela has taken a cautious approach shaped by public security priorities and long-standing drug control laws. As international assessments continue to clarify the country’s limited role in global drug trafficking, future discussion may increasingly focus on domestic health policy and enforcement rather than external perceptions.

    [ad_2]

    Terry Hacienda

    Source link

  • DHS Deploys 2K Federal Agents To Minneapolis Area To Carry Out ‘Largest Immigration Operation Ever’ – KXL

    [ad_1]

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appears before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has launched what officials describe as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, preparing to deploy as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a sweeping crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

    The deployment, which began over the weekend, represents one of the largest single-city mobilizations of Department of Homeland Security personnel in years, according to a person briefed on the operation. The surge dramatically expands the federal law enforcement footprint in Minnesota amid heightened political and community tensions.

    The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the operation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

    Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said during an interview with Newsmax that the agency was carrying out its “largest immigration operation ever,” though he did not specify how many officers were involved.

    Roughly three-quarters of the personnel are expected to come from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, which carries out immigration arrests and deportations, the person said. The operation also includes agents from Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, which typically focuses on fraud and cross-border criminal networks. HSI agents were going door-to-door in the Twin Cities area investigating allegations of fraud, human smuggling and unlawful employment practices, Lyons said.

    The HSI agents are largely expected to concentrate on identifying suspected fraud, while deportation officers will conduct arrests of immigrants accused of violating immigration law, according to the person briefed on the operation. Specialized tactical units are also expected to be involved.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and accompanied ICE officers during at least one arrest. In a video posted on the social media platform X, Noem is seen wearing a tactical vest and knit cap as agents arrest a man in St. Paul. In the video, she tells the man, whose hands are cuffed behind his back, “You will be held accountable for your crimes.”

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that the man arrested was from Ecuador and that he was wanted in Ecuador and Connecticut on charges including murder and sexual assault.

    When asked how many officers and agents had been deployed to Minnesota, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin declined to provide a figure, citing officer safety. She said DHS had surged law enforcement resources to the state and had already made more than 1,000 arrests of people it described as killers, rapists, child sexual offenders and gang members.

    The operation also includes personnel from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including Commander Gregory Bovino, whose role in previous federal operations in other cities has drawn scrutiny from local officials and civil rights advocates, the person familiar with the deployment said.

    Federal authorities began increasing immigration arrests in the Minneapolis area late last year. Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel announced last week that federal agencies were intensifying operations in Minnesota, with an emphasis on fraud investigations.

    President Donald Trump has repeatedly linked his administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota to fraud cases involving federal nutrition and pandemic aid programs, many of which have involved defendants with roots in Somalia.

    The person with information about the current operation cautioned that its scope and duration could shift in the coming days as it develops.

    More about:

    [ad_2]

    Jordan Vawter

    Source link

  • Donald Trump’s approval rating changes direction for first time in months 

    [ad_1]

    President Donald Trump’s approval rating has shifted for the first time in months, according to new data from two national polls.

    Newsweek contacted the White House for comment via email outside regular business hours. 

    Why It Matters

    As economic anxiety and public debate over foreign policy continue to dominate the national agenda, the change in Trump’s approval rating could have implications for both the White House and congressional prospects ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

    What To Know

    The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll—conducted online on January 4 and 5—surveyed 1,248 U.S. adults nationwide. 

    The poll showed Trump‘s overall approval rating climbing to 42 percent, up from 39 percent in December. 

    It marks his highest approval rating since October. The margin of error for this survey was about 3 percentage points.

    Similarly, a recent InsiderAdvantage poll gave Trump a positive net approval rating of 8.4 points, the strongest since August. 

    In that survey, 49.5 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s job performance, 41.1 percent disapproved, and 9.1 percent were undecided. 

    The poll surveyed 800 likely voters on December 20 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percent.

    Recent polling aggregates confirm that the president’s approval rating remains underwater, though there has been a modest uptick compared to late 2025. 

    As of January 6, Decision Desk HQ’s national average places approval at 43.2 percent and disapproval at 53.3 percent, while Ballotpedia’s index shows a similar split of 42 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval. 

    At the time of writing, VoteHub’s live tracker reported that 42.5 percent approved and 53.9 percent disapproved, reinforcing the consensus that disapproval still exceeded approval by double digits. 

    Still, this represents a slight improvement from November’s lows near 41 percent. The shift is incremental rather than dramatic, leaving the president with a persistent net-negative rating.

    Decision Desk HQ’s polling tracker combines all credible public polls that meet the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s standards into an average, focusing on recent data, limiting the impact of campaign-funded polls and smoothing trends as more polls come in to give a clearer picture of public opinion.

    Similarly, Ballotpedia’s index averages the latest polls from trusted national sources over the past 30 days to give an up-to-date picture of public opinion, updating daily as new results come in.

    VoteHub, meanwhile, averages recent polls from reputable pollsters, giving more weight to newer polls, to provide a clear and simple snapshot of public opinion.

    What People Are Saying

    Scott Tranter, the director of data science at Decision Desk HQ, told The Hill: “Roughly a year in, he’s right in the middle. He’s right where, basically, he’s been all year, which is unremarkable. It’s remarkable because it’s unremarkable.” 

    InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery said in a December analysis: “Interestingly, our recent job performance surveys have shown the number of undecided respondents at an unusually high number. This tells us that some voters, particularly independents, remain unsure as to his accomplishments so far. This suggests he has work to do as he and the GOP enter the midterm season.”

    White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Newsweek last month: “President Trump and every member of his administration are clear-eyed about the fact that Americans continue to reel from the lingering effects of Joe Biden’s generational economic crisis.

    “Turning the Biden economic disaster around has informed nearly every action the Trump administration has taken since Day One, from unleashing American energy to cut gas prices to signing historic drug pricing deals to cut costs for American patients. 

    “Much work remains, and every member of the Trump administration continues to focus on recreating the historic job, wage, and economic growth that Americans enjoyed during President Trump’s first term.”

    Desai also previously told Newsweek: “President Trump inherited the worst inflation crisis in a generation from Joe Biden’s incompetence, and his administration has rapidly cooled inflation to a 2.5 percent annualized rate. Americans can count on inflation continuing to fall and real wages continuing to rise.”

    President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social in December: “The polls are rigged even more than the writers. The real number is 64 percent, and why not, our Country is ‘hotter’ than ever before. Isn’t it nice to have a STRONG BORDER, No Inflation, a powerful Military, and great Economy??? Happy New Year!”

    What Happens Next

    The slight uptick in Trump’s approval rating coincides with major diplomatic and military actions—most notably the U.S. strike on Venezuela—and ongoing debates over economic performance, cost of living and party leadership heading into the midterm elections. 

    Polls show persistent concern among Americans about both economic and foreign policy developments, with majorities worried about prices, affordability and the U.S.’s role overseas. The administration’s policy decisions—both domestic and international—and the country’s day-to-day economic experiences are expected to be decisive in shaping public opinion and influencing the 2026 midterms.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rubio and Hegseth brief congressional leaders as questions mount over next steps in Venezuela

    [ad_1]

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump’s decision to forcibly remove Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country’s underperforming oil industry.A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.“We don’t expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., afterward.He said Venezuela’s new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump’s initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.“This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”Johnson added, “We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports, as you know, have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”“What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.Lawmakers were kept in the darkThe briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.“The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.No clarity on what comes nextNext steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”“She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela,” Scott said. “You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election, and I think she will get elected.”Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this, and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”__Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.

    WASHINGTON —

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.

    Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump’s decision to forcibly remove Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country’s underperforming oil industry.

    A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.

    “We don’t expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., afterward.

    He said Venezuela’s new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump’s initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.

    “This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”

    Johnson added, “We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports, as you know, have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.

    But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”

    “What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.

    Lawmakers were kept in the dark

    The briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.

    Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.

    Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”

    Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.

    Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.

    “The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.

    Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”

    Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    No clarity on what comes next

    Next steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.

    The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.

    But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”

    “She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela,” Scott said. “You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election, and I think she will get elected.”

    Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.

    “And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this, and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”

    __

    Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What to know about Nicolás Maduro’s indictment

    [ad_1]

    Ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores pled not guilty to drug trafficking charges Jan. 5 in New York federal court.

    “I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country,” Maduro told the judge.

    U.S. troops captured Maduro and Flores at their home in Caracas, Venezuela, in the early hours of Jan. 3 and transferred them to the U.S.

    The Justice Department first indicted Maduro in 2020 for alleged drug-related actions dating to 1999. A newly unsealed and updated indictment filed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro and two co-defendants with narcoterrorism conspiracy and he, Flores and the four other co-defendants with cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns.

    The indictment calls Maduro an illegitimate leader who transported cocaine under Venezuelan law enforcement protection, enriching his family and cementing power. 

    “This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect, and transport tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment says.

    In August, the Trump administration offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest or conviction.

    The U.S. government’s indictment focuses on cocaine and weapons and is silent about other topics Trump has cited to justify pressure on Venezuela in recent months, such as oil and fentanyl. 

    The case of Manuel Noriega of Panama, whom the U.S. ousted from power to face drug charges 36 years ago, offers some precedent about the U.S. government’s strategy and challenges. 

    Here’s what to know about the government’s case and what could come next.

    What does the indictment say Maduro did?

    In addition to Maduro and Flores, others named as co-defendants include Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello and Maduro’s son, Nicolás, who is a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly. Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the leader of Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, was added as a codefendant in the indictment. 

    According to the indictment, Maduro “engaged in a relentless campaign of cocaine trafficking … resulting in the distribution of thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States.”

    When he was Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister, Maduro issued diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers to help with moving drugs from Mexico to Venezuela, the indictment says. 

    It also says Maduro and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and “ordered kidnappings, beatings, and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.” 

    The indictment focuses on cocaine trafficking and does not mention fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid responsible for most drug overdose deaths in the U.S. Without evidence, Trump has said the boats his administration has struck off of Venezuela’s coast were carrying fentanyl. However, most illicit fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico.

    In his comments about Maduro’s capture, Trump also accused Maduro of stealing and seizing American oil.

    “The defense will certainly argue that this is what the case is really about, not drug trafficking,” David Oscar Markus, a Miami-based criminal defense attorney, said. “It gives the defense a hook on both pretrial motions and jury arguments.” 

    In this Jan. 4, 1990 file photo, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega watches as U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents place chains around his waist aboard a C-130 transport plane. (AP)

    How can the U.S. indict a foreign leader? 

    The Trump administration might have relied on a 1989 memo by then Assistant Attorney General William Barr giving the FBI authority to arrest people for violating U.S. law even if it contravenes international law. It was written months before the U.S. invaded Panama to capture Noriega.

    In 1989, President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. forces into Panama to seize Noriega, the country’s strongman, after his indictment by a U.S. grand jury on drug-related charges. (Noriega’s status as head of government was contested in Panama, and the U.S. did not recognize his status.)

    After turning himself in and being extradited to Florida, Noriega was tried and convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. 

    An armored vehicle leaves Manhattan Federal Court where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was arraigned with his wife Cilia Flores, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP)

    What are the biggest challenges prosecutors could face? 

    Maduro might try to claim “head of state immunity.” 

    Under international law, heads of state are generally entitled to absolute immunity in other nations’ courts, Curtis A. Bradley, University of Chicago law professor, said.

    However, the U.S. government doesn’t recognize Maduro as the lawful head of state, so U.S. courts likely would not grant him head of state immunity. U.S. courts tend to defer to the executive branch about whether to confer immunity. 

    “Sure, he can claim it,” said Dick Gregorie, a retired federal prosecutor who indicted Noriega. “Is that going to work? I don’t think so.”

    An appeals court panel upheld Noriega’s conviction in 1997, dismissing his argument that his position as head of state should have preempted his prosecution.

    Even if Maduro’s capture violated international law, it would not be a basis for dismissing prosecution, per the “Ker-Frisbie doctrine” of U.S. law. In 1992, for example, the Supreme Court in United States v. Alvarez-Machain found that a Mexican national’s abduction from his home did not prohibit his U.S. trial.

    Jon May, a former Noriega defense attorney, said that prosecutors face a general challenge of relying on witnesses who could have credibility issues.

    “The challenge of building a case like this comes down to corroboration,” May said.

    Gregorie said that the biggest problem in the case will be discovery, which likely includes intelligence information about Maduro and witnesses. 

    What are the next steps in the prosecution?

    Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein set the next court hearing for March 17. Maduro’s defense attorney is Barry Pollack, who also represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

    Markus predicted that the start of a multi-month trial is at least a year away. 

    PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.

    RELATED: Fact-checking Donald Trump following U.S. attacks on Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Video showing Venezuelans celebrating is from 2024

    [ad_1]

    After Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s capture, social media users rapidly shared videos showing Venezuelans celebrating.

    But many of these videos predated his arrest by the U.S. military. One in particular — from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — stood out, receiving 2 million views as of Jan. 5.

    “Millions of Venezuelans flooded the streets of Caracas and other major cities in celebration of the ouster of Communist dictator Nicholas Maduro,” Jones posted Jan. 3 on X along with a video showing hordes of people gathered outside, chanting and waving the Venezuelan flag.

    The same video was shared July 30, 2024, on X and Instagram. It shows people protesting election officials’ declaration that Maduro had won the country’s presidential election. Venezuelan politician Tomás Guanipa also shared the footage in a 2024 Instagram post in which he called on the National Electoral Council to publish the presidential election results. A Dominican Republic news outlet also reported on the footage.

    Maduro and wife Cilia Flores were both forcibly taken into U.S. custody Jan. 3 and made their first appearance in U.S. federal court Jan. 5, facing charges related to cocaine trafficking. Maduro and Flores each pleaded not guilty.

    In some parts of the world, Venezuelan expatriates celebrated Maduro’s ousting. He led an authoritarian regime for 13 years and declared victory after a 2024 election that international observers described as fraudulent. The country’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, received about 70% of the vote.

    However, anti-Maduro sentiments were muted in Venezuela’s streets following the U.S. raid and capture, reporting from the country shows. Maduro’s inner-circle, including his vice president, who has now been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president, appeared to remain in leadership roles, raising citizens’ concerns about possible retaliation. Fortune reported that the streets of Caracas were largely quiet in the days following the U.S. attack that led to Maduro’s capture, save Maduro supporters who publicly condemned his arrest. The Associated Press shared footage of a quiet Caracas after the U.S. operation.

    Jones wasn’t alone in sharing outdated or out of context video as proof Maduro’s capture had sparked widespread celebration inside Venezuela. 

    President Donald Trump shared a video Jan. 5 of Venezuelans gathering with the caption, “Trump just showed every liberal Democrat what a real No Kings celebration is supposed to look like.” But the footage was first shared in 2024 and showed people in El Vigía, Venezuela, cheering Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s movement.

    YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video on X Jan. 3 that he also said showed celebrations in Venezuela. But the Miami Herald and other local news outlets said the scene was filmed Jan. 3 in Doral, Florida.

    And a widely shared Jan. 3 X post showed video of someone tearing a Maduro poster from a Venezuela billboard. But that scene was captured in July 2024 in an Aragua, Venezuela, protest against election fraud, according to a Venezuelan news outlet.

    Our ruling

    Jones said a video showed “millions of Venezuelans flooded the streets of Caracas” to celebrate Maduro’s capture.

    The footage dates back to 2024 when citizens protested election officials’ declaration that Maduro had won the country’s presidential election. News coverage shows Venezuelan streets were largely quiet following U.S. attacks in Caracas.

    We rate this claim False.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact-checking Trump on U.S. oil investment in Venezuela

    [ad_1]

    One thing President Donald Trump has consistently promised after the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is private U.S. investment in the country’s underproductive oil fields.

    “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said Jan. 3 in a Mar-a-Lago press conference.

    He reiterated that Jan. 4 to reporters on Air Force One, saying, “We’re going to have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure. The oil companies are ready to go.”

    Are they? It’s less certain than Trump makes it sound.

    When reporters sought concrete details about investments, Trump declined to offer them. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Jan. 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump, saying he expects “dramatic interest from Western companies,” without offering specifics. 

    When contacted for comment, the White House told PolitiFact the administration has had conversations with multiple oil companies, without naming any. “All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said.

    The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s leading trade association, said in a statement to PolitiFact that the group is “closely watching” developments. 

    “Globally, energy companies make investment decisions based on stability, the rule of law, market forces, and long-term operational considerations,” the statement said.

    A ConocoPhillips spokesperson gave a similar response, according to media reports, saying the company “is monitoring developments” but that it would be “premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.”

    Experts told PolitiFact there is ample reason for caution about a surge of new private investment in Venezuelan oil infrastructure. While Venezuela’s oil reserves are the world’s largest, obstacles include high up-front costs for building out infrastructure, limited profit potential amid today’s low oil prices and continuing concerns about political stability.

    “I do not see a compelling business case for any U.S.-based company to invest billions of dollars over years to decades to try to turn a profit in Venezuelan oil,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor with the University of Texas at Austin’s petroleum and geosystems engineering department.

    Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis with GasBuddy, a gasoline price app, said the uncertainty over Venezuela’s governance is likely to worry oil companies.

    “Oil companies probably aren’t chomping at the bit to invest billions of dollars and take their chances until there’s clarity in the Venezuelan regime,” De Haan said. “I don’t believe there will be beyond a negligible impact from the situation, potentially for years, and even then, only if things go very right.”

    What would be the upsides of oil industry investment in Venezuela?

    U.S. companies such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited Venezuela after Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor, moved to nationalize the oil industry in 2007. Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company that has been consistently producing oil in Venezuela in recent years.

    How Venezuela’s nationalized, and in some cases internationally sanctioned, oil resources are opened will determine who benefits, said Kenneth Gillingham, a Yale University professor of environmental and energy economics.

    If the market were opened only to the biggest U.S. oil corporations, those companies would mainly benefit, but their gains would be more limited if the market also were opened to companies based outside the U.S., Gillingham said. U.S. motorists could benefit from increased production pushing prices lower, but those gains would depend heavily on global market factors.

    Some oil companies could be attracted to Venezuela because it would allow them to diversify their investments, said Skip York, a fellow at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies. 

    Compared with crude oil in many countries, Venezuelan crude is relatively heavy. That means it takes longer to extract, but once the wells are in place, they can keep producing for longer periods of time. 

    The U.S. generally doesn’t produce heavy crude from its own deposits, but a portion of the U.S. refinery sector is specifically built to handle it. So having a steady supply of heavy Venezuelan crude could keep these refineries operational. Rubio cited this opportunity on “This Week.”

    If Venezuela returns to political and economic stability, York said, “one could expect returns of 15% to 20%, which could be competitive with other development opportunities.”

    Obstacles remain for U.S. oil companies 

    Oil experts cited several challenges to achieving large profits from Venezuelan reserves:

    The up-front cost of improving infrastructure will be significant. “The Venezuelan oil industry has been nationalized for many decades now and has suffered from a lack of investment, both foreign and domestic,” Daigle said. New investment would be needed to keep facilities and operations up to date, with no certainty of payback. 

    Venezuela’s political situation remains unsettled. “Not many companies are going to rush to go into an environment where there’s not stability,” Ali Moshiri, who headed Chevron’s operations in Venezuela until 2017 and now runs a private oil company with interests there, told The New York Times. 

    At a minimum, Venezuela would need a new petroleum law framework, York said. Even after all the legal and financial issues have been resolved, he said, it would take “years to refurbish infrastructure and drill new wells.”

    Oil prices are low. High up-front infrastructure costs and risks from political instability could be justified financially if oil prices were high enough. But prices are relatively low. Since Trump became president, crude oil’s price per barrel has fallen by about one-quarter.

    “With oil (prices) near multi-year lows, oil companies likely won’t be running to spend money in Venezuela that could further erode oil prices,” De Haan said.

    The reluctance to spend significantly to expand production can already be seen domestically in declining industry efforts to drill new U.S. wells. A weekly count of oil rigs in use in the U.S. shows a 16% decline since their most recent peak in April.

    If companies aren’t eager to spend on drilling in the U.S., with its established infrastructure and relative political stability, it’s not clear that they would go all in on Venezuela. 

    The long-term importance of oil depends on the future of electric vehicles. “If we continue using lots of oil and oil prices stay high, then it is likely that new entrants in Venezuela would recoup their investments over time,” Gillingham said. “However, if electric vehicles continue to come down in price and really take off, in the U.S. and globally, this will keep a lid on oil prices and make it less likely that the investment costs will be recouped.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact-checking Trump following U.S. attacks on Venezuela and capture of Maduro

    [ad_1]

    President Donald Trump said a U.S. military assault succeeded in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both facing U.S. charges related to cocaine trafficking under newly unsealed indictments. 

    In a Jan. 3 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”

    Trump also said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president. Trump said Rodríguez had talked to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”

    However, Rodríguez criticized the U.S. military action as “brutal aggression” on state television and called for Maduro’s immediate release.

    Maduro, an authoritarian, has led Venezuela since 2013, succeeding an ideological ally, Hugo Chávez, who had been in office since 1999. Under both men, U.S. relations with Venezuela frayed over foreign policy, oil and human rights.

    In July 2024, Maduro declared victory following an election that international observers described as fraudulent. The country’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, received about 70% of the vote.

    Tensions between Trump and Maduro escalated in September after the U.S. government began attacking vessels off the coast of Venezuela, killing more than 100 people, in what Trump described as an effort to thwart drug smuggling.

    When a reporter asked Trump during the Mar-a-Lago press event whether he’d spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado following Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Machado “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”

    Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy in Venezuela, had a 72% approval rating from Venezuelans according to a March poll by ClearPath Strategies.

    Trump said without evidence that the United States’ role in governing Venezuela “won’t cost us anything” because U.S. oil companies would invest in new infrastructure in the oil-rich country. “It’s going to make a lot of money,” Trump said. 

    Here, we fact-checked Trump’s and Rubio’s statements from the press conference.

    Rubio: “It’s just not the kind of mission that you can prenotify (Congress about) because it endangers the mission.” 

    The administration’s lack of warning to Congress bucks laws and precedents. 

    Rubio said members of Congress were not notified in advance. Trump said the administration was concerned about Congress potentially leaking news of the administration’s decision to capture Maduro.

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., praised the operation as a “decisive action.”

    But Congressional Democrats said Congress should have been notified in advance. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said, “Maduro is terrible. But Trump put American servicemembers at risk with this unauthorized attack.”

    Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said Trump and his cabinet were not forthcoming about their intentions for regime change, so “we are left with no understanding of how the administration is preparing to mitigate risks to the U.S. and we have no information regarding a long-term strategy following today’s extraordinary escalation.”

    The U.S. Constitution assigns Congress the right to declare war. The last time that happened was for World War II.

    Since then, presidents have generally initiated military action using their constitutionally granted powers as commander in chief without an official declaration of war. 

    Since Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president has had to report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing the U.S. military into hostilities and terminate the use of the military within 60 days unless Congress approves. If approval is not granted and the president deems it an emergency, an additional 30 days are granted for ending operations.

    In recent decades, congressional consent has usually been granted through an authorization for the use of military force. But an authorization has not been passed for operations in Venezuela. Kaine and other lawmakers have pursued legislation — so far fruitlessly —  to prohibit the use of federal funds for any use of military force in or against Venezuela without Congressional authorization.

    The Trump administration has whittled away at prior notification requirements. Under federal law, eight bipartisan, senior members of Congress must receive prior notice of particularly sensitive covert actions. In June 2025, the administration told Republicans, but not Democrats, about the forthcoming U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. For the Venezuela operation, it appears no lawmakers were notified in advance.

    Trump: Each U.S. boat strike off the coast of Venezuela saves 25,000 people. 

    Pants on Fire! 

    The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September. Trump said previously that the boats were carrying drugs en route to the U.S. and during the press conference he said the drugs on each boat would kill “on average, 25,000 people.”

    However, experts on drugs and Venezuela told PolitiFact the country plays a minor role in trafficking drugs that reach the U.S. And the administration has provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of the drugs could have been destroyed.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 73,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That means the drugs on 32 boats would have been responsible for 800,000 deaths, nearly 11 times the number of U.S. overdose deaths in one year. 

    Trump: “Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang Tren de Aragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide.”

    There is no evidence Maduro sent members of Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S. 

    The U.S. Justice Department indictment against Maduro does not mention Trump’s statement.

    An April report from the federal National Intelligence Council contradicted Trump’s statements about links between Maduro and Tren de Aragua. 

    “While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables (Tren de Aragua) to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the report said.

    Trump: Venezuela “stole” U.S oil in the past.

    This needs context. 

    In the early 20th century, Venezuela’s long-serving dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez, allowed foreign companies almost exclusive access to the country’s oil resources. 

    In 1975, after decades of seeking greater control of its oil resources, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry.

    “Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,” Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver, told The Washington Post. “The U.S. was much more interested in having Venezuela be a provider of oil — relatively cheap oil — than to have a production collapse in Venezuela,” Rodríguez said. As a result, the change was “relatively uncontroversial” at the time.

    U.S. oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil and Gulf, now Chevron, lost about $5 billion each in assets and were compensated $1 billion each, according to news reports, the Post reported.

    But Rodríguez said the companies didn’t push for additional compensation at the time, in part because no forum existed to do so.

    In general, experts have told PolitiFact that invading a country to take its oil would be both illegal and unethical. In 2016, Trump mused about how the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil when it invaded to oust Saddam Hussein.

    Experts pointed to the Annex to the Hague Convention of 1907 on the Laws and Customs of War, which says that “private property … must be respected (and) cannot be confiscated.” It also says that “pillage is formally forbidden.”

    “If ‘to the victors go the spoils’ was legal doctrine, then we would have believed that (then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein) should have been able to keep Kuwait City after he invaded” in 1990, terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross told PolitiFact in 2016. “But we viewed that — quite rightly — as an act of aggression under the U.N. Charter.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump’s threats of intervention jolt allies and foes alike

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”

    Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said.

    In just 37 minutes while speaking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump threatened to attack five countries, both allies and adversaries, with the might of the U.S. military — an extraordinary turn for a president who built his political career rejecting traditional conservative views on the exercise of American power and vowing to put America first.

    The president’s threats come as a third of the U.S. naval fleet remains stationed in the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring attack on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.

    The goal, U.S. officials said, was to show the Venezuelan government and the wider world what the American military is capable of — and to compel partners and foes alike to adhere to Trump’s demands through intimidation, rather than commit the U.S. military to more complex, conventional, long-term engagements.

    It is the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular force in surgical military operations — Maduro’s capture, last year’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, assassinations of Islamic State leadership and Iran’s top general in Iraq — that demonstrate Trump as a brazen leader willing to risk war, thereby effectively avoiding it, one Trump administration official said, explaining the president’s strategic thinking.

    Yet experts and former Trump aides warn the president’s approach risks miscalculation, alienating vital allies and emboldening U.S. competitors.

    At a Security Council meeting Monday at the United Nations in New York — called by Colombia, a long-standing and major non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the United States — Trump’s moves were widely condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Charter,” a French diplomat told the council, “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”

    Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated historically strong ties with the Trump administration, said the White House operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the era of illegality and American dominance through force, chaos and lawlessness.”

    Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with vast natural resources, drew particular concern across Europe on Monday, with leaders across the continent warning the United States against an attack that would violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.

    “That’s enough now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said after Trump told reporters that his attention would turn to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.

    “If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told local press. “That includes NATO, and therefore, post-World War II security.”

    Trump also threatened to strike Iran, where anti-government protests have spread throughout the country in recent days. Trump had previously said the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if Iranian security forces begin firing on protesters, “which is their custom.”

    “The United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours before launching the Venezuela mission. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

    In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened military action against leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, without evidence, of running “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

    Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as illegal a series of lethal U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

    “Stop slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. attempts against his presidency “will unleash the people’s fury.”

    Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, said he would go to war to defend Colombia.

    “I swore not to touch a weapon again,” he said. “But for the homeland, I will take up arms.”

    Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a devoted U.S. ally. For decades, the countries have shared military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

    Even some of Petro’s domestic critics have comes to his defense. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, said Colombia’s sovereignty “must be defended.”

    “Colombia is not Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It is not a failed state, and we will not allow it to be treated as such. Here we have institutions, democracy and sovereignty that must be defended.”

    The president of Mexico, another longtime U.S. ally and its largest trading partner, has also spoken out forcefully against the American operation in Caracas, and said the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America threatens the stability of the region.

    “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

    She addressed Trump’s comments over the weekend that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico, and that the United States was “going to have to do something.”

    Trump has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the United States may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

    “Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

    Cuba also rejected Trump’s threat of a military intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, suggested that Havana may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.

    “We call on the international community to stop this dangerous, aggressive escalation and to preserve peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.

    The U.S. attacks on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of additional military ventures, have caused deep unease in a relatively peaceful region that has seen fewer interstate wars in recent decades than Europe, Asia or Africa.

    It also caused unease among some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the United States out of “endless” military conflicts for good.

    “I was the first president in modern times,” Trump said, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start no new wars.”

    Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

    [ad_2]

    Michael Wilner, Kate Linthicum

    Source link

  • Mexico’s president slams Trump’s attack on Venezuela, says it destabilizes the hemisphere

    [ad_1]

    MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday again condemned the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America for threatening the stability of the hemisphere.

    “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

    “Unilateral action and invasion cannot be the basis of international relations in the 21st century,” she said. “They don’t lead to peace or development.”

    Her comments came as Trump on Sunday threatened more military strikes on Venezuela — and raised the possibility of intervention in Mexico as well as in Cuba, Colombia and the Danish territory of Greenland. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said drugs were “pouring” through Mexico and that “we’re going to have to do something.”

    He has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the U.S. may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

    “Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

    Sheinbaum is part of a bloc of leftist Latin American leaders who have spoken out forcefully against the U.S. after its surprise attack on Caracas on Saturday morning. U.S. special forces abducted Maduro, Venezuela’s leftist president, and his wife, Cilia Flores, the former head of the National Assembly.

    Venezuela says at least 40 people were killed in the attack. The couple have been indicted in New York’s Southern District on drug trafficking charges.

    Right-wing leaders in the region, on the other hand, have cheered the removal of Maduro from power.

    At her news conference on Monday, Sheinbaum called for cooperation among countries in the region, at one point quoting Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

    “Washington called for good faith and justice toward all nations, and for the cultivation of peace and harmony among all,” she said.

    Nations cannot impose their wills on other countries, she said, and do not have the right to their resources. That was a clear reference to Trump’s stated desire to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

    “Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government,” she said. “Each nation has the inalienable right to decide its political, economic, and social model, free from external pressure.”

    Sheinbaum warned that infighting among Latin American nations would hurt the region economically.

    “Global economic competition, particularly in the face of Asia’s growth, is not achieved through the use of force … but rather through cooperation for development, productive investment, innovation, education and social welfare,” she said.

    She said Mexico was committed to fighting organized crime, and reminded the U.S. that it fuels that dynamic.

    “The violence plaguing our country is partly caused by the illegal flow of high-powered weapons from the United States into Mexico, as well as the serious problem of drug consumption in our neighboring country,” she said.

    [ad_2]

    Kate Linthicum

    Source link

  • Jack Smith’s Closing Argument

    [ad_1]

    Republicans’ takeaways from Smith’s testimony were, at best, tangential to furthering their claims of weaponization. The main one concerned the House select committee on January 6th, which conducted a separate, public investigation. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, was the star witness, testifying in the summer of 2022 that Trump had lunged for the wheel of the Presidential limousine and demanded to be taken to the Capitol. But Smith described Hutchinson as “a second- or even third-hand witness,” and said that her account had been contradicted by someone who was present. “The partisan January 6th Committee’s ENTIRE case was just destroyed by . . . Jack Smith,” Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee posted on X. “Star witness completely unreliable!” A gotcha, perhaps, but of Democrats on the committee, not of Smith, who comes off as a careful prosecutor, mindful of courtroom limits on the use of hearsay.

    The conventional wisdom about the criminal cases that were brought against Trump after his first term—four in total—has become that they were politically harmful to Democrats and legally unwise. That seems half right. Certainly, the onslaught of cases against the once and future President contributed to a sense of partisan piling on. But the indictments that Smith’s office secured were the strongest of the lot, and Smith’s testimony illustrated their importance. Others may have second thoughts about the wisdom of pursuing Trump. Not Smith. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today,” he said, “I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

    Meanwhile, the Trump Administration’s allegation that Biden weaponized the Justice Department grows more surreal by the day. The Republican counsel opened his questioning of Smith by taking him through the elements of Justice Robert Jackson’s famous speech, as Attorney General in 1940, about the tremendous power of the federal prosecutor, to “pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.” The counsel asked, “Do you agree with that?,” and you could see where this might be heading—an indignant account of vindictive prosecution.

    But it was Trump who ordered the failed indictments of the New York attorney general Letitia James (three tries, no less) and the former F.B.I. director James Comey, and who fired prosecutors who refused to comply with his instructions. Susie Wiles, Trump’s own chief of staff, has acknowledged, “I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.” In late December, Attorney General Pam Bondi commented on an active grand-jury investigation into government weaponization during the Biden and Obama Administrations, claiming that there was “a ten-year stain on the country committed by high-ranking officials” and that one of the investigation’s subjects, the former C.I.A. director John Brennan, was among the “bad actors.” This is hardly the Jacksonian vision of prosecutors with “sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship.”

    Perhaps the most maddening aspect of the Smith deposition was that he was effectively barred from commenting on the stronger of his cases, the classified-documents prosecution. Smith ended his cases after Trump’s reëlection; later, Smith submitted reports describing them, as required under Justice Department regulations. But, in January of 2025, the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the classified documents case, Aileen Cannon, blocked Smith’s report from becoming public, on the basis that charges were still pending against two co-defendants, the Trump aide Walt Nauta and the Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira. The Trump Administration then moved to drop the cases against them. But Cannon dawdled in ruling on whether the report should be unsealed, leading an appeals court to chide her in November for “undue delay.”

    An hour before Smith’s testimony, his attorney Peter Koski said at the deposition, the Justice Department informed Smith by e-mail that Cannon’s order meant he was barred from discussing any information contained in the report. Asked about why Trump refused to return the documents despite repeated requests, and about why he took them in the first place, Smith demurred. “Given the current state of the injunction, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer,” he said. A few days after the deposition, Cannon finally ruled that her order sealing the document would expire in February—at which point she could agree to release the report. Even if Cannon were to allow it, though, the final decision would fall to Bondi. Special-counsel reports have been routinely released, but don’t count on Cannon or Bondi to follow suit. The definitive account of the documents’ case could easily remain hidden from public view.

    Smith’s deposition was, in all likelihood, as close as he will get to making a closing argument. It marks, most likely, the unsatisfying conclusion of an unsatisfying episode, one that underscored the limitations of the criminal-justice system in dealing with a lawless President. Now, with Trump calling Smith a “criminal” who should be “investigated and put in prison,” one question is the jeopardy that Smith himself may face. “I am eyes wide open that this President will seek retribution against me if he can,” Smith said at one point in the deposition. Still, he said, of his testimony before the committee, “I came here. I was asked to come here.” ♦

    [ad_2]

    Ruth Marcus

    Source link

  • Commentary: In Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, Marco Rubio is the biggest sellout of all

    [ad_1]

    By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternal exploding cigar.

    For over 175 years — ever since the United States conquered half of Mexico — nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out.

    We have helped depose democratically elected leaders and propped up murderous strongmen. Trained death squads and offered bailouts to favored allies. Ran economic blockades and encouraged American companies to treat the region’s riches, and its workers, like a cookie jar.

    From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we’ve only looked out for ourselves in Latin America even while wrapping our actions in the banner of benevolence.

    It’s rarely ended well for anyone involved — especially us. Many of the leaders we put into power became despots we tolerated until they ran their course, like Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The political upheaval we helped create has led generations of Latin Americans to migrate to el Norte, fundamentally changing our country even as too many Americans think people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral homes.

    So there Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, insisting that the capture of Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife by American troops was a military action as brilliant and consequential as D-day. He also announced that the U.S. would “run the country” and practically jiggled out his weird “YMCA” dance at the idea of making money from Venezuelan oil.

    His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, just like the rest of Latin America. And if allies and enemies alike still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donroe Doctrine.”

    Because of course he did.

    No one in Washington should be more versed in this terrible history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the U.S.-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.

    Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades, despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who had fled civil wars sparked by the U.S. in one way or another.

    Yet he’s Trumpworld’s biggest cheerleader for Latin American regime change, helping torpedo the president’s anti-interventionist campaign promise as if it were a narco boat off the South American coast.

    On Saturday, Rubio looked on silently as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said Cuban leaders “should be concerned” and offered a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”

    In Latin America, few are more reviled than the vendido — the sellout. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin dating back to the tribes who aligned with Spanish conquistadors to take down repressive empires, only to suffer the same sad end themselves. Vendidos have dominated the region’s history and stilted its development, with leaders — Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, the Somozas of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic — more than happy to side with the yanquis at the expense of their own countrymen.

    Rubio belongs to this long, sordid lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst vendido of them all.

    Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 president debate with candidate Donald Trump.

    (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

    I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Though too right-wing for my taste, he seemed like a Latino politician who could thread the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.

    It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s boorishness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “For years to come, there are many people … that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well, one way or the other.”

    The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio ended up endorsing Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged and proclaiming at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”

    Rubio’s reward for his boot-licking? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stall.

    I’m sure all of this comes off as leftist babble to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, Miami to Los Angeles. Only a deluded pendejo could support what Maduro wrought on Venezuela, which was a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America teetered from one crisis to another.

    But for Trump, toppling Maduro was never about the well-being of Venezuelans or bringing democracy to their country; it was about securing a foothold to flex American power and enrich the U.S.

    Meanwhile, his deportation Leviathan has gobbled up tens of thousands of undocumented Venezuelans and canceled the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands more.

    Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to be eligible for temporary protected status, which is granted to citizens of countries considered too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”

    Now? At a May news conference, he maintained that the 240 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador earlier in 2025 “were not migrants, these were criminals,” even though the Deportation Data Project found that only 16% of them had criminal convictions.

    Rubio has long fashioned himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has been a hero to many Latinos ever since.

    But even Bolívar knew to be skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the U.S. “seems destined by Providence to plague [Latin] America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”

    Plague, thy name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant over Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of U.S. meddling that ties your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s cronies remain in power if they play along with you and Trump, even though they stole an election in 2024, proves you’re as much for the Venezuelan people as, well, Maduro.

    Vendido.

    [ad_2]

    Gustavo Arellano

    Source link

  • Nicolas Maduro arrest: Protesters rail against Venezuelan despot outside jail where he awaits prosecution – amNewYork

    [ad_1]

    Over one hundred protesters marched outside of the MDC jail where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is currently being detained, denouncing the measures the United States took to capture him.

    Photo by Dean Moses

    Over one hundred protesters marched on Sunday outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center jail in Brooklyn, where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is currently being detained, denouncing the measures the United States took to capture him.

    According to the demonstrators who strode up and down the sidewalk in the shadow of the same jail that holds Luigi Mangione and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, New Yorkers have no love for Maduro. However, they say they are furious over his apprehension since they feel President Donald Trump acted illegally to enter Venezuela.

    “The United States, once again, decided to act against international laws, kidnapping a sitting leader of a foreign government with no rhyme or reason that could be justified, and is looking to further destabilize countries whose governments they don’t agree with. We need to be out here in the streets making that known that we don’t agree with it,” protester William Novello said, adding that he wants the world to know that not every American agrees with the military strike. “People around the world can act in solidarity, knowing that the people in the United States are trying to fight back against what their government does. They need to see us out here.”

    Crowds gathered at MDC Brooklyn to protest Maduro’s U.S. detention.Photo by Dean Moses

    Police barricaded off the entrance to the jail facility, forcing the demonstrators to occupy the sidewalk just outside the area, where they clung to picket signs reading “No U.S war on Venezuela” and “U.S out of the Caribbean” while the crowd chanted “Hands off Venezuela’s oil” and “No blood for oil.”

    Lindsay Katt said she watched the news in horror when the explosions in Caracas were first reported and felt the need to join the protest.

    “I think it’s unconscionable. I understand that this leader is disliked greatly and has his own problems. I think those things aren’t mutually exclusive. I don’t believe that one justifies the other. And I think the moment we start to negotiate whose humanity is worth protecting, all of our humanity becomes negotiable,” Katt said. “If we don’t step up together, anyone who has the power over us has the conditioning and ability to repress us.”

    they say they are furious over his apprehension because President Donald Trump invaded Venezuela to do so.Photo by Dean Moses

    Those stomping the street also say they are fuming over the U.S taking control of Venezuela itself, while also announcing its intention to take control of the country’s oil supply.

    “I think what the US government has done is a violation of the sovereignty of Venezuela. They have no right to go into another country and tell them what they should do, and they openly say they’re there to get the oil, the gold, the lithium, the natural resources of the whole region. That’s not good for working people in Venezuela. It’s not good for working people here,” Seth Galinski said. “They’re trying to steal the wealth of Venezuela and other countries, and they’re dragging us towards the Third World War.”

    Maduro is expected to appear in Federal court in Lower Manhattan on Monday to face drug charges.

    “Hands off,” a sign read.Photo by Dean Moses

    [ad_2]

    By Dean Moses and Florencia Arozarena

    Source link

  • U.S. national intelligence director is silent on Venezuela operation

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.

    Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.

    CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.

    “Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.

    Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

    In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

    “Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”

    Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”

    “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.

    “We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

    [ad_2]

    Michael Wilner

    Source link