All posts tagged "Americas"

WASHINGTON — Greenland’s the talk of the town, which even has many Republicans nervous.

“The rhetoric going on now is irresponsible,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story.

The rhetoric — including the White House declaring “all options” are on the table when it comes to obtaining the Danish-governed territory — has only been ratcheting up since last weekend, when President Donald Trump deployed the U.S. military to invade Venezuela and capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores....

Foreign leaders seeking to cope with Donald Trump should not shower the U.S. president with flattery and gold gifts, a former British defense secretary said: they should read a near-forgotten 1991 book that describes Trump as a “cocksure boor who pays precious little attention to detail” and a “a lad who literally grew too big for his britches.”

“You only have to meet people, do the job, read the room to realize that sucking up to Donald Trump, giving him gold watches from Switzerland, doesn't work,” said Sir Ben Wallace, British defense secretary from 2019 to 2023, referring to a common tactic among world leaders regarding the U.S. president.

“There's an amazing book called Trumped! written in 1991 by one of his casino bosses from Atlantic City. It's one of the best reads you can read, because it's not written [as] a sort of kiss-and-tell, ‘I knew the president.’ ...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are “hid[ing] in a box somewhere” to avoid public accountability over their armed intervention in Venezuela and extraction of President Nicolás Maduro, a prominent Democratic senator charged, after a closed-door briefing Wednesday.

“The Trump administration chooses to post as many videos as they want publicly to make their point, but they don't want to face the American people with an unclassified briefing,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told Raw Story at the Capitol.

“Why the hell is the Trump administration scared to face the American people in an open setting, before the Senate, before the House? I don't understand that. ...

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats accuse the Trump administration of misleading Congress in the wake of the president’s announcement of an oil tanker blockade on Venezuela, Republicans are dismissing Democrats’ — and some Republicans’ — fears.

At the Capitol on Wednesday, one senior GOP senator went so far as to mock Democrats for speaking up.

“Poor babies,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story....

WASHINGTON — Turns out, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth aren’t very good actors.

Congress doesn’t agree on much, but when it comes to Venezuela and U.S. military strikes on purported drug smugglers, on Tuesday Congress was basically all questions, even after receiving classified briefings from the two members of the Trump cabinet.

Only after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social in the evening, to announce "a total and complete" blockade of oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, did Congress finally get the clarity lawmakers had demanded. ...

Five-year-old Luz spent 72 days separated from her father, Julio Rodriguez, after they were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018.

Escaping extortion and violence in Guatemala, Julio was detained in Texas while Luz was sent to a shelter in New York. Eventually, they reunited in Atlanta and joined family in Massachusetts.

Melanie Hernandez left Guatemala in the middle of the night in 2019 with her 14-year-old son, Lucas, fleeing an abusive husband. She left behind an adult daughter and five-year-old son with severe heart disease. Melanie spent several days away from Lucas when detainees were separated by gender at the U.S. border....