Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

Advocates sounded the alarm Friday over federal agents’ arrest last week of a family of legal asylum-seekers apprehended just outside a Portland, Oregon, hospital where they had rushed their 7-year-old daughter for emergency medical treatment.

Yohendry De Jesus Crespo and his wife Darianny Liseth González de Crespo—Venezuelans with pending asylum claims living in Gresham, Oregon—were rushing their daughter Diana to Adventist Hospital in Portland on Jan. 16 as the child suffered an unstoppable nosebleed.

According to the Oregonian, Diana never got to see a doctor, as three unmarked vehicles and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded their family car in the emergency room parking lot.

“The parents pleaded to let their 7-year-old daughter... be released so she could receive urgently needed medical care, but that request was denied,” Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz (D-50) said on Facebook.

Friend Ana Linares said the family was arrested, driven to a facility in Tacoma, Washington, and then sent to Texas, where they are being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio.

The facility, which is run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children, as well as poor sanitary and health conditions. Detainees also report being served moldy or worm-infested food.

Ruiz said the child “remains ill, reportedly suffering from a fever, and has not received basic medical care.”

The family’s arrest—which took place less than 1,000 feet from where a US Border Patrol agent shot a Venezuelan couple earlier this month—appears to be the first time in Oregon that immigration enforcers have detained an entire family unit.

Heather Pease, a spokesperson for Adventist Hospital, told the Oregonian that “no law enforcement agency contacted us” about arresting the family, “and we did not coordinate with any agency.”

“Adventist Health Portland is here for our community, open, available, and ready to provide care when it’s needed most,” Pease added. “Patient care remains our priority, regardless of circumstances.”

It is unclear why the family was arrested. Neither parent has any known criminal record. Linares said the couple—who met in the Panamanian jungle while making their way to the United States—waited to enter the US legally and applied for an appointment. They were assigned a 2028 immigration court date to plead their asylum cases.

“They are good people, not criminals,” Linares told the Oregonian. “They were looking for stability. They wanted to help their families in Venezuela.”

The Trump administration’s deadly mass deportation blitz has targeted children—among them US citizens, including a 3-year-old cancer patient—for detention and deportation.

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, federal agents seized at least four children from Minnesota public schools over the past two weeks, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, who were sent to the Dilley lockup.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, a record 73,000 people facing deportation are currently being jailed by ICE, including 6,000 family units.

Some of the nearly 5,000 children who were separated from their parents or other relatives during Trump’s first term have also yet to be reunited with their families.

Child welfare advocates worry that Trump administration pressure to increase arrests and the commodification of migrants by for-profit prisons and other private profiteers is incentivizing the arrest and detention of immigrants, including children.

Asserting that “the immediate health and well-being” of Diana Crespo “must be the top priority,” Ruiz said on Facebook, “We urgently call for the child to receive appropriate medical care without delay and for the family to be afforded due process and access to legal counsel.”

“Situations involving children require heightened care, compassion, and coordination,” he added, “and we expect all responsible agencies to act swiftly and humanely to ensure this child’s health and safety are protected.”

The latest in a series of congressional efforts to rein in President Donald Trump’s military aggression against Venezuela failed Thursday as Republican lawmakers again defeated a war powers resolution by the tightest possible margin.

House lawmakers voted 215-215 on H.Con.Res.68—introduced last month by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.)—which “directs the president to remove US armed forces from Venezuela unless a declaration of war or authorization to use military force for such purpose has been enacted.”

Unlike in the Senate, where the vice president casts tie-breaking votes, a deadlock in the House means the legislation does not pass.

Every House Democrat and two Republicans—Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Thomas Massie of Kentucky—voted in favor of the measure. Every other Republican voted against it. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) did not vote.

The House vote came a week after Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote was needed to overcome a 50-50 deadlock on a similar resolution introduced last month by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

The War Powers Resolution of 1973—also known as the War Powers Act—was enacted during the Nixon administration toward the end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The law empowers Congress to check the president’s war-making authority by requiring the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours. It also mandates that lawmakers approve any troop deployments lasting longer than 60 days.

Thursday’s vote followed this month’s US bombing and invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife on dubious “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking allegations. Trump has also imposed an oil blockade on the South American nation, seizing seven tankers. Since September, the US has also been bombing boats accused of transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

“If the president is contemplating further military action, then he has a moral and constitutional obligation to come here and get our approval,” McGovern said following the vote.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY) lamented the resolution’s failure, saying, “The American people want us to lower their cost of living, not enable war.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said on Bluesky: “Only Congress has the authority to declare war. Today, I voted for a war powers resolution to ensure Trump cannot send OUR armed forces to Venezuela without explicit authorization from Congress.”

Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy adviser at the advocacy group Demand Progress, also decried the resolution’s failure.

“We are deeply disappointed that the House did not pass this war powers resolution, though it’s notable that it failed only due to a tie,” he said.

“As with the recent Senate vote, the administration expended extraordinary energy pressuring Republicans to block this resolution,” Kharrazian added. “That effort speaks for itself: With the American people tired of endless war, the administration knows that a Congress willing to enforce the law can meaningfully curtail illegal and escalatory military action. We urge members of Congress to continue fully exercising their constitutional authority over matters of war.”

Vice President JD Vance left observers scratching their heads Thursday after he touted the Trump administration’s economic policies by comparing them to the doomed ocean liner Titanic.

Speaking at an event in Toledo in his home state of Ohio under a banner reading, “Lower Prices, Bigger Paychecks,” Vance addressed the worsening affordability crisis by once again blaming former Democratic President Joe Biden—who left office a year ago—for the problem.

“The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America. And yes, there is an affordability crisis—one created by Joe Biden’s policies,” Vance said. “You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time to fix what was broken.”

Responding to Vance’s remarks, writer and activist Jordan Uhl said on X, “The Titanic, a ship that famously turned around.”

Podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen asked on X, “Does he know what happened to the Titanic?”

One popular X account said, “At least he’s admitting what ship we’re on.”

In an allusion to the Titanic‘s demise and the Trump administration’s deadly Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown, another Bluesky user quipped, “Ice was the villain of that story too.”

Puns aside, statistics and public sentiment show that Trump has utterly failed to tackle the affordability crisis. The high price of groceries—a central theme of Trump’s 2024 campaign—keeps getting higher. And despite Trump’s claim to have defeated inflation, a congressional report published this week revealed that the average American family paid $1,625 in higher overall costs last year amid tariff turmoil, soaring healthcare costs, and overall policies that favor the rich and corporations over working people.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Thursday found that 49% of respondents believe the country is generally worse off today than it was when Biden left office a year ago, while only 32% said the nation is better off and 19% said things are about the same. A majority of respondents also said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living (64%) and the economy (58%).

“You know, a thing about a phrase like ‘lower prices, bigger paychecks’ is that you can’t actually fool people into thinking that you’ve delivered these things if they can look at their own bank account and see it’s not true,” Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson wrote on X.

“I know the Trump administration’s standard strategy is to just make up an alternate reality and aggressively insist that anyone who doesn’t believe in it is a domestic terrorist,” Robinson added, “but personal finances are really an area where that doesn’t work.”

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s gifting of her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump raised eyebrows around the world Friday—but it wasn’t the first time that the winner of the prestigious award gave it away.

Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to the 58-year-old opposition leader “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado joined a notorious group of Nobel Peace laureates who either waged or advocated for war, as she backed Trump’s aggression against her country. This has included a massive troop deployment, military and CIA airstrikes, bombing of boats allegedly transporting drugs, and the abduction earlier this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Trump has ordered the bombing of nine other countries during his two terms, more than any other president in history. US forces acting on his orders have killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. While running for president in 2016, Trump vowed to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State militants and “take out their families,” and then followed through on his promise.

Despite being passed over by Trump for installation in any leadership role in Venezuela so far, Machado presented Trump with her framed Nobel medal along with a certificate of gratitude during a Thursday meeting at the White House. Trump subsequently posted on his Truth Social network that “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”

That gesture prompted the Norwegian Nobel Committee to issue a statement noting that the prize cannot be given away.

“Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” the committee said. “A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time.”

The committee’s statement was extraordinary—but this is not the first time that a Nobel winner gave away their prize. In 1943, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun gifted his 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature—awarded for his novel Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil)—to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after a trip to Germany. Other Nobel laureates have donated or sold their medals.

The progressive media outlet Occupy Democrats said on social media: “Clearly, the similarities between Trump and Goebbels extend beyond just a mutual admiration for fascism. Both men possess(ed) the kind of spiritually sick, egotistical temperament that allows one to accept a prize that someone else has earned.”

“Obviously, Donald Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize,” the outlet continued. “He has bombed Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, innocent fishing boats in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and is in the process of turning the United States into a war zone. That said, Machado doesn’t deserve it either.”

“Anyone spineless enough to surrender the prize to an evil man like Trump in the hopes of obtaining power is not someone we should be celebrating,” Occupy Democrats added.

Last month, Wikileaks founder and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee Julian Assange sued the Nobel Foundation—the Swedish organization that manages administration of the approximately $1.2 million-per-winner prize—in a bid to prevent Machado from receiving the money.

Machado’s win also sparked protests outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

The father of three children who were hospitalized in Minneapolis on Wednesday night accused federal agents of launching flash-bang munitions and tear gas into their family van after they were caught up in protests against the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown.

“Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car,” Shawn Jackson told KMSP. “My 6-month-old can’t even breathe.”

The explosions were strong enough to trigger the car’s airbags.

“They were innocent bystanders driving through what should have been a peaceful protest when things took a turn,” Destiny Jackson, the children’s mother, said.

Destiny Jackson said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “began to start throwing tear gas bombs everywhere.”

“We were trying so hard to get out the way but didn’t want to harm anybody with our car in the process,” Jackson added. “One of the bombs rolled under our truck, and within seconds our truck lifted up off the ground, and the airbags deployed, the car doors locked themselves, and the car began to fill with the powerful tear gas. We fought hard to get the doors open and get all of the kids out. Bystanders had to help.”

Shawn Jackson told KMSP while holding up his child’s car seat: “This was flipped over. My car filled with tear gas; I’m trying to pull my kids from the car.”

Destiny Jackson said she performed CPR on the infant after the baby stopped breathing and lost consciousness.

Three of the children—the 6-month-old infant and two others, ages 7 and 11 years—were taken by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.

“My kids were innocent, I was innocent, my husband was innocent, this shouldn’t have happened,” Destiny Jackson told KMSP. “We were just trying to go home.”

Jackson said that neither she nor her husband have ever protested before—but now they feel they have good reason to do so.

“I’m mad as hell,” Shawn Jackson said during an interview with Sky News. “But now there’s gonna be hell on wheels. They’re definitely gonna have to pay for this.”

“This just shows how they don’t care,” Jackson said of the federal agents. “I was arguing with the officers to call the ambulance for five minutes... He knew there were [children] in the car; he didn’t even try and help.”

Also on Wednesday in Minneapolis, a federal officer shot and wounded a man who the US Department of Homeland Security said was an undocumented Venezuelan pulled over during a “targeted traffic stop.” DHS said the man fled after exiting his vehicle, that a fight ensued when an officer caught him, and that the agent shot the man in the leg after a pair of bystanders came to the targeted individual’s aid and attacked the officer.

Protests have been mounting in the Twin Cities following last week’s killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross and the Trump administration’s subsequent effort to portray the victim as a domestic terrorist.

Demonstrators are also condemning what many opponents call the invasion and occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, as well as the Trump administration’s wider campaign targeting undocumented immigrants for roundup, detention, and deportation.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said that “armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.”

State and local officials in Minnesota have implored the Trump administration to end its operation in the state. Meanwhile, Trump threatened Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act—which hasn’t been used since the Los Angeles uprising in 1992—to deploy troops to quell Twin Cities protests.

The ACLU, the ACLU of Minnesota, and a trio of law firms on Thursday filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of people “whose constitutional rights were violated” by federal operatives in the state.

“The people of Minnesota are courageously standing up to the reign of terror unleashed by the Trump administration,” plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Fram said in a statement.

The father of three children who were hospitalized in Minneapolis on Wednesday night accused federal agents of launching flash-bang munitions and tear gas into their family van after they were caught up in protests against the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown.

“Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car,” Shawn Jackson told KMSP. “My 6-month-old can’t even breathe.”

The explosions were strong enough to trigger the car’s airbags.

“They were innocent bystanders driving through what should have been a peaceful protest when things took a turn,” Destiny Jackson, the children’s mother, explained.

Destiny Jackson said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “began to start throwing tear gas bombs everywhere.”

“We were trying so hard to get out the way but didn’t want to harm anybody with our car in the process,” Jackson added. “One of the bombs rolled under our truck, and within seconds our truck lifted up off the ground, and the airbags deployed, the car doors locked themselves, and the car began to fill with the powerful tear gas. We fought hard to get the doors open and get all of the kids out. Bystanders had to help.”

“My kids were innocent, I was innocent, my husband was innocent, this shouldn’t have happened,” Destiny Jackson told KMSP. “We were just trying to go home.”

Jackson said that neither she nor her husband have ever protested before—but now they feel they have good reason to do so.

“I’m mad as hell,” Shawn Jackson said during an interview with Sky News. “But now there’s gonna be hell on wheels. They’re definitely gonna have to pay for this.”

“This just shows how they don’t care,” Jackson said of the federal agents. “I was arguing with the officers to call the ambulance for five minutes... He knew there were [children] in the car; he didn’t even try and help.”

Also on Wednesday in Minneapolis, a federal officer shot and wounded a man who the US Department of Homeland Security said was an undocumented Venezuelan pulled over during a “targeted traffic stop.” DHS said the man fled after exiting his vehicle, that a fight ensued when an officer caught him, and that the agent shot the man in the leg after a pair of bystanders came to the targeted individual’s aid and attacked the officer.

Protests have been mounting in the Twin Cities following last week’s killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross and the Trump administration’s subsequent effort to portray the victim as a domestic terrorist.

Demonstrators are also condemning what many opponents call the invasion and occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, as well as the Trump administration’s wider campaign targeting undocumented immigrants for roundup, detention, and deportation.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said that “armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.”

State and local officials in Minnesota have implored the Trump administration to end its operation in the state. Meanwhile, Trump threatened Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act—which hasn’t been used since the Los Angeles uprising in 1992—to deploy troops to quell Twin Cities protests.

The ACLU, the ACLU of Minnesota, and a trio of law firms on Thursday filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of people “whose constitutional rights were violated” by federal operatives in the state.

“The people of Minnesota are courageously standing up to the reign of terror unleashed by the Trump administration,” plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Fram said in a statement.

Progressive advocacy groups are set to lead nationwide rallies this weekend to protest Wednesday’s killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer in Minneapolis and the Trump administration’s wider deadly mass deportation campaign.

Groups including 50501 Movement, Indivisible, the Disappeared in America campaign, MoveOn, the ACLU, Voto Latino, and United We Dream are planning demonstrations across the country to protest the killing of Good and what Indivisible called the “broader pattern of unchecked violence and abuse carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against members of our communities.”

Good, a US citizen, was shot multiple times by veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer Jonathan Ross on Wednesday while driving in south Minneapolis. Bystander video shows Good slowly maneuvering a Honda Pilot SUV in an apparent effort to drive away from officers when Ross draws his pistol and fires at her head.

President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration quickly spread lies about Good, with the president saying she “ran over” Ross and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others accusing the 37-year-old mother of three—one of whose children is now orphaned—of “domestic terrorism.”

“After ICE executed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and federal agents shot two more people in Portland, the 50501 Movement is demanding the immediate abolition of ICE,” 50501 said in a statement Friday. “Renee Nicole Good and the Portland victims are just the most recent victims of ICE’s reign of terror. ICE has brutalized communities for decades, but its violence under the Trump regime has accelerated.”

“Marginalized communities have taken the brunt of their force; in 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody,” 50501 added. “This past September, ICE shot and killed Silverio Villegas González, a father and cook from Mexico who was living in Chicago. In that same city, a Border Patrol agent celebrated after repeatedly shooting and injuring Marimar Martinez. The American people have had enough.”

The ACLU said in a statement that “an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother, shooting her three times in the head through her car window. This is a reckless, horrific shooting that should have never happened.”

“Renee’s killing came just one day after the Trump administration stormed Minnesota communities with an unprecedented 2,000 federal agents. Children are afraid to go to school and Minnesota families are reeling from fear and a sense of chaos,” the group continued. “For months, the Trump administration has been deploying heavily armed federal agents into our communities. They are smashing car windows, dragging people from their cars, zip-tying children, and physically harming our neighbors—citizens and noncitizens alike.”

“We can’t wait around while ICE harms more people,” the ACLU added. “Congress MUST demand an end to these reckless immigration raids, and oppose any bill that would add to ICE’s already massive budget.”

United We Dream said that Good’s “brutal killing is a horrifying reminder of the threat armed forces pose to our collective safety, especially at a time when local, state, and federal officials have consistently called on the federal government to invest in the resources working families truly need—healthcare, housing, access to food—instead of indiscriminate terror in our communities.”

“In 2025 alone, 32 people died in immigration detention,” the group added. “Billions poured into immigration raids for the sake of ripping apart communities in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis does nothing but lead to irreparable damage, violence, and death. We demand an immediate end to this cruelty and for elected leaders at every level to speak out in defense of immigrant communities and our shared safety.”

MoveOn argued that “the Trump administration is not making anybody safe—they are creating chaos and destroying lives.”

“You don’t raid peaceful cities, schools, libraries, and churches unless your goal is to terrorize communities and silence dissent,” the group added. “MoveOn is outraged and devastated that the unnecessary, reckless, and escalatory deployment of ICE is causing even more senseless killings. Trump’s ICE agents need to follow the advice of local officials and leave Minnesota immediately.”

Represent Maine, an “ICE out for Good” national coalition partner, said in a promotion for a Saturday noon rally in Augusta that “ICE’s campaign of terror is out of control and leading to the murder of our people.”

“Entire communities are being traumatized,” the group continued. “Immigrants, refugees, and American citizens are being targeted. This is not normal border enforcement: This is state violence.”

“We will gather to remember those who have been killed, kidnapped, and disappeared by ICE, and the families and communities devastated in their wake,” Represent Maine added. “We demand ICE out of Maine NOW!”

Dan Harmon of 50501 Minnesota said Friday, “They have literally started killing us—enough is enough.”

“We are a peaceful and community-oriented state that will not allow the violent ICE secret police to continue kidnapping our neighbors and killing our friends,” he said. “Immediately after the shooting, hundreds of Minnesotans gathered to respond on site, just as we did in 2020 after officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.”

“ICE must be removed from Minnesota and permanently abolished,” Harmon added.

ExxonMobil’s CEO told President Donald Trump during a Friday meeting that Venezuela is currently “uninvestible” following the US invasion and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, underscoring fears that American taxpayers will be left footing the bill for the administration’s goal of exploiting the South American nation’s vast petroleum resources.

Trump had hoped to convince executives from around two dozen oil companies to invest in Venezuela after the president claimed US firms pledged to spend at least $100 billion in the country. However, Trump got a reality check during Friday’s White House meeting, as at least one Big Oil CEO balked at committing financial and other resources in an uncertain political, legal, and security environment.

“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told Trump during the meeting. “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system. There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.”

There is also skepticism regarding Trump’s promise of “total safety” for investors in Venezuela amid deadly US military aggression and regime change.

However, many of the executives—who stand to make billions of dollars from the invasion—told Trump that they remain eager to eventually reap the rewards of any potential US takeover of Venezuela’s vast oil resources.

The oil executives’ apparent aversion to immediate investment in Venezuela—and Trump’s own admission that the American people might end up reimbursing Big Oil for its efforts—prompted backlash from taxpayer advocates.

“Trump must not give these companies billions in handouts and stick American taxpayers with the bill,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on social media Friday. “And oil execs should commit now: no taxpayer subsidies, no special favors from the White House.”

Sam Ratner, policy director at the group Win Without War, said Wednesday that “already today, Trump was saying that US taxpayers should front the money to rebuild Venezuelan oil infrastructure, all while oil companies keep the proceeds from the oil.”

“This is not just a war for oil, but a war for oil executives,” Ratner added.

Noting that “Big Oil spent nearly $100 million to get Trump elected in 2024,” former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich—who served during the Clinton administration—described Friday’s meeting as “returning the favor” and “oligarchy in action.”

According to an analysis by the advocacy group Climate Power, fossil fuel industry interests spent nearly $450 million during the 2024 election cycle in support of Trump and other Republican candidates and initiatives.

Reich and others also noted that Trump informed oil executives about the Venezuelan invasion even before he notified members of Congress.

“That tells you everything you need to know: It was never about ‘narcoterrorism’ and always about oil,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said on Bluesky.

The legal watchdog Democracy Forward this week filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding information about any possible Trump administration collusion with Big Oil in the lead-up to the Venezuela invasion.

Other observers shot down assertions by Trump and members of his administration that the attack on Venezuela and Maduro’s ouster are ultimately about restoring democracy.

“Want to know who’s meeting with Trump this morning about Venezuela’s future?” Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) asked on X.

“Not pro-democracy leaders,” she said. “Oil and gas executives.”

Free press defenders voiced alarm and outrage following Wednesday’s vote by a congressional committee to subpoena a journalist wrongly accused of “leaking classified intel” and “doxing” a US special forces commander involved in President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and abduction of the South American nation’s president and his wife.

"Sound the alarm," wrote Responsible Statecraft, the magazine for the foreign policy think tank Quincy Institute, in a social media post on X Thursday.

Seth Harp is an investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and Iraq war veteran whose work focuses on links between the US military and organized crime. On January 4—the day after the US bombed and invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—Harp posted on X the name and photo of a commander in Delta Force, which played a key role in the attack.

Experts noted that Harp did not break any laws, with Freedom of the Press Foundation chief of advocacy Seth Stern pointing out that “reporters have a constitutional right to publish even classified leaks as long as they don’t commit crimes to obtain them.”

“Harp merely published information that was publicly available about someone at the center of the world’s biggest news story,” he added.

However, the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday approved in a voice vote a motion introduced the previous day by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to subpoena Harper. Democrats on the committee backed the measure after Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) added an amendment to also subpoena co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, according to the Washington Post.

Responding to the committee vote, Harp told the Post:

The idea of a reporter “leaking classified intel” is a contradiction in terms. The First Amendment and ironclad Supreme Court precedent permit journalists to publish classified documents. We don’t work for the government and it’s our job to expose secrets, not protect them for the convenience of high-ranking officials. It’s not “doxing” to point out which high-ranking military officials are involved in breaking news events. That’s information that the public has a right to know.

Harp also took to social media to underscore that he’s not the only journalist being targeted with dubious “doxing” claims.

The House lawmakers’ vote drew widespread condemnation from press freedom advocates.

“Luna’s subpoena of investigative reporter Seth Harp is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US special forces,” Defending Rights & Dissent policy director Chip Gibbons said in a statement.

“Harp did not share classified information about the US regime change operation in Venezuela. And even if he had, his actions would firmly be protected by the First Amendment,” Gibbons added. “This is a dangerous assault on the press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee.”

PEN America Journalism and Disinformation program director Tim Richardson said Thursday that “any attempt to haul an investigative reporter before Congress for doing their job reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a free press.”

“Seth Harp is an independent journalist, not a government official, and therefore cannot be accused of ‘leaking’ classified information in the way those entrusted with such material can,” Richardson added. “The information at issue was publicly available, not secret or unlawfully obtained.”

In a bid to protect reporters and their sources, House lawmakers in 2024 unanimously passed the PRESS Act, legislation prohibiting the federal government from compelling journalists and telecommunications companies to disclose certain information, with exceptions for imminent violence or terrorism. However, under pressure from Trump, the Senate declined to vote on the proposal.

“The bill died after Trump ordered the Senate to kill it on Truth Social,” said Stern. “Apparently, so did the principles of Reps. Luna, Garcia, and their colleagues.”

A leading international economist said Sunday that the US invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its socialist leader are about reasserting control over the world’s largest petroleum reserves by Washington imperialists and Wall Street shareholders.

Gabriel Zucman—a professor at the Paris School of Economics and University of California, Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy—said on his Substack that the US invasion is motivated by the “$100–$150 billion per year to be captured by US shareholders of oil companies, should a new regime friendly to US interests take power in Caracas.”

President Donald Trump and other senior US officials have openly vowed to seize Venezuela’s oil, even while claiming that Saturday’s invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are about bringing Maduro to justice on dubious criminal charges, combating narco-trafficking, and protecting US national security.

“Maduro was a brutal and corrupt autocrat,” Zucman, who also directs the independent EU Tax Observatory, continued. “But Trump has never had any trouble working with brutal and corrupt autocrats; such traits rarely trouble him.”

Indeed, the Trump administration have provided military, financial, or diplomatic support to some of the world’s most prolific human rights violators, from the Gulf monarchies to Egypt’s military rulers to a sadistic dynasty in Equatorial Guinea and dictatorships in Central Asian countries including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All of the aforementioned nations sit atop major oil and natural gas deposits.

“The real goal of the Trump operation lies elsewhere: reclaiming Venezuela’s oil rents for the benefit of America’s economic elite—an arrangement that peaked in the 1950s,” Zucman asserted, referring to a period in which then-Venezuelan President Marcos Pérez Jiménez ruled the country with an iron fist and was backed by Washington, largely because he let foreign oil companies exploit Venezuela’s vast petroleum resources.

“In 1957, at the peak of this extractive regime, profits earned by US oil companies in Venezuela were roughly equal to the profits earned by all US multinationals—across all industries—in the rest of Latin America and in continental European countries combined,” he continued.

“About 12% of Venezuela’s net domestic product—the value of everything produced in the country each year—flowed directly to the pockets of US shareholders,” Zucman noted. “That was roughly the same amount of income received by the poorest half of the Venezuelan population combined.”

“This is the ‘golden age’ the Trump administration wants to bring back: a sharing of oil rents that is difficult to imagine being more unequal,” he added.

Critics have accused the US of waging war for oil for nearly a century. US administrations have explicitly asserted the right to use military force to safeguard control of access to petroleum resources since the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The George W. Bush administration even initially called its impending invasion and occupation of Iraq “Operation Iraqi Liberation,” before changing it so the abbreviation did not spell “OIL.”

While Trump campaigned on the promise of no new wars and claims to avoid giving world leaders “lectures on how to live,” he has now ordered the bombing of more nations than any US president in history. All 10 countries attacked by Trump since 2017—Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—are oil producers or possess significant fossil fuel resources.

Democratic New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration on Thursday will feature luminaries of the left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will gather to swear in the democratic socialist in a location befitting a candidate who ran on a transit-forward platform.

Mamdani will be officially sworn by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James during a private ceremony attended by members of his family in the abandoned—but well-preserved—Old City Hall subway station, Streetsblog first reported.

“When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904—one of New York’s 28 original subway stations—it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said in a statement.

“That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath City Hall: It will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above,” he added.

Mamdani ran on a platform of fare-free city buses—to be funded by tax hikes on corporations and wealthy individuals—improved public transit performance, sustainability and emissions reduction, technology-enhanced mobility, and multimodal integration.

“When I take my oath from the station at the dawn of the New Year, I will do so humbled by the opportunity to lead millions of New Yorkers into a new era of opportunity, and honored to carry forward our city’s legacy of greatness,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani is set to be ceremoniously sworn in at a 1:00 pm public event at City Hall alongside incoming Comptroller Mark Levine and reelected Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, both Democrats. CNN reported Tuesday that Mamdani will be introduced by Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

“For the many New Yorkers who have long felt betrayed by a broken status quo, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embodies a new kind of politics that puts working people at the heart of it,” Mamdani said in a statement.

“I’ve been so proud to count her as a partner across the many stages of our people-powered movement—from the primary campaign to our Forest Hills rally in October to the very first day of the transition—and I’m honored that she’ll be a part of our historic City Hall inauguration,” he added.

Sanders (I-Vt.) will subsequently administer the oath of office to Mamdani.

“His victory is not just about one city or one election, it is about the strength of a working-class movement that says unequivocally: The future of New York belongs to the people, not the billionaire class,” Sanders said last week of Mamdani. “It is my honor to swear him in as the next mayor of New York City.”

Streetsblog reported that the ceremonial inauguration will take place alongside a car-free block party on Broadway.

While Republicans—and plenty of so-called “moderate” Democrats—are unnerved by the prospect of Mamdani’s mayordom, a recent Rasmussen survey found that a majority of all US voters under the age of 40 want a democratic socialist to be the next president of the United States.

“A significant majority of Americans are sick of the neoliberal ‘let the rich run things because they know best’ bulls--- that Republicans, ‘tech bros,’ and a shrinking minority of on-the-take Democratic politicians embrace,” frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Thom Hartmann wrote last week.

“The exploding popularity of progressive politicians from Zorhan Mamdani to Bernie Sanders, [Democratic Texas Congresswoman] Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t an anomaly,” he added, “they’re a signpost to both electoral and governing success for the next generation of genuinely progressive Democratic politicians.”

Tom Barrack, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, faced backlash Monday after arguing that US-backed Middle Eastern monarchies—most of which are ruled by prolific human rights violators—offer the best model for governing nations in the tumultuous region.

Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar on Sunday, Barrack, who is also a billionaire real estate investor, cautioned against trying to impose democratic governance on the Middle East, noting that efforts to do so—sometimes by war or other military action—have failed.

“Every time we intervene, whether it’s in Libya, Iraq, or any of the other places where we’ve tried to create a colonized mandate, it has not been successful,” he said. “We end up with paralysis.”

“I don’t see a democracy,” Barrack said of the Middle East. “Israel can claim to be a democracy, but in this region, whether you like it or not, what has worked best is, in fact, a benevolent monarchy.”

Addressing Syria’s yearlong transition from longtime authoritarian rule under the Assad dynasty, Barrack added that the Syrian people must determine their political path “without going in with Western expectations of, ‘We want a democracy in 12 months.’”

While Barrack’s rejection of efforts to force democracy upon Middle Eastern countries drew praise, some Israelis bristled at what they claimed was the suggestion that their country is not a democracy, while other observers pushed back on the envoy’s assertion regarding regional monarchies and use of what one Palestinian digital media platform called “classic colonial rhetoric.”

“The reality on the ground is the opposite of his claim: It is the absence of democratic rights, accountable governance, and inclusive federal structures that has fueled Syria’s fragmentation, empowered militias, and pushed communities toward separatism,” Syrian Kurdish journalist Ronahi Hasan said on social media.

Ronahi continued:

When an American official undermines the universal principles the US itself claims to defend, it sends a dangerous message: that Syrians do not deserve the same political rights as others and that minority communities should simply accept centralized authoritarianism as their fate.

Syria doesn’t need another foreign lecture romanticizing monarchy. It needs a political system that protects all its people—Druze, Alawite, Kurdish, Sunni, Christian—through genuine power-sharing, decentralization, and guarantees of equality.

“Federalism is not the problem,” Ronahi added. “The problem is denying Syrians the right to shape their own future.”

Abdirizak Mohamed, a lawmaker and former foreign minister in Somalia, said on social media: “Tom Barrack made public what is already known. The US labels dictators and monarchies benevolent when their behavior is aligned with US interest, and when their behavior isn’t aligned with US interest they are despots. Labeling dictators benevolent is [an] oxymoron that shows US hypocrisy.”

For nearly a century, the US has supported Middle Eastern monarchies as successive administrations sought to gain and maintain control over the region’s vast oil resources. This has often meant propping up monarchs in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran (before 1979), the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar—regardless of their often horrific human rights records.

While nothing new in terms of US policy and practice in the region, the Trump administration’s recently published National Security Strategy prioritizes “flexible realism” over human rights and democracy and uses more candid language than past presidents have in explaining Washington’s support for repressive monarchs.

“The [US] State Department will likely need to clarify whether Barrack’s comments represent official policy or personal opinion,” argued an editorial in Middle East 24. “Regardless, his words have exposed an uncomfortable truth about US foreign policy in the Middle East: the persistent gap between democratic ideals and strategic realities.”

“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this episode is what it reveals about American confidence in its own values,” the editorial added. “If US diplomats no longer believe democracy can work in challenging environments, what does this say about America’s faith in the universal appeal of its founding principles?”

A leading nuclear safety expert sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Trump administration’s expedited safety review of an experimental nuclear reactor in Wyoming designed by a company co-founded by tech billionaire Bill Gates and derided as a “Cowboy Chernobyl.”

On Monday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it has “completed its final safety evaluation” for Power Station Unit 1 of TerraPower’s Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, adding that it found “no safety aspects that would preclude issuing the construction permit.”

Co-founded by Microsoft’s Gates, TerraPower received a 50-50 cost-share grant for up to $2 billion from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The 345-megawatt sodium-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) relies upon so-called passive safety features that experts argue could potentially make nuclear accidents worse.

However, federal regulators “are loosening safety and security requirements for SMRs in ways which could cancel out any safety benefits from passive features,” according to Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power safety director Edwin Lyman.

“The only way they could pull this off is by sweeping difficult safety issues under the rug.”

The reactor’s construction permit application—which was submitted in March 2024—was originally scheduled for August 2026 completion but was expedited amid political pressure from the Trump administration and Congress in order to comply with an 18-month timeline established in President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14300.

“The NRC’s rush to complete the Kemmerer plant’s safety evaluation to meet the recklessly abbreviated schedule dictated by President Trump represents a complete abandonment of its obligation to protect public health, safety, and the environment from catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents or terrorist attacks,” Lyman said in a statement Tuesday.

Lyman continued:

The only way the staff could finish its review on such a short timeline is by sweeping serious unresolved safety issues under the rug or deferring consideration of them until TerraPower applies for an operating license, at which point it may be too late to correct any problems. Make no mistake, this type of reactor has major safety flaws compared to conventional nuclear reactors that comprise the operating fleet. Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

Of particular concern, NRC staff has assented to a design that lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs. TerraPower argues that the reactor has a so-called “functional” containment that eliminates the need for a real containment structure. But the NRC staff plainly states that it “did not come to a final determination of the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.”

“Even if the NRC determines later that the functional containment is inadequate, it would be utterly impractical to retrofit the design and build a physical containment after construction has begun,” Lyman added. “The potential for rapid power excursions and the lack of a real containment make the Kemmerer plant a true ‘Cowboy Chernobyl.’”

The proposed reactor still faces additional hurdles before construction can begin, including a final environmental impact assessment. However, given the Trump administration’s dramatic regulatory rollback, approval and construction are highly likely.

Former NRC officials have voiced alarm over the Trump administration’s tightened control over the agency, which include compelling it to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.

Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, said earlier this year that Trump’s approach marks “the end of independence of the agency.”

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident,” she warned.

A report published Wednesday by Greenpeace exposes the plastics industry as “merchants of myth” still peddling the false promise of recycling as a solution to the global pollution crisis, even as the vast bulk of commonly produced plastics remain unrecyclable.

“After decades of meager investments accompanied by misleading claims and a very well-funded industry public relations campaign aimed at persuading people that recycling can make plastic use sustainable, plastic recycling remains a failed enterprise that is economically and technically unviable and environmentally unjustifiable,” the report begins.

“The latest US government data indicates that just 5% of US plastic waste is recycled annually, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014,” the publication continues. “Meanwhile, the amount of single-use plastics produced every year continues to grow, driving the generation of ever greater amounts of plastic waste and pollution.”

Among the report’s findings:

• Only a fifth of the 8.8 million tons of the most commonly produced types of plastics—found in items like bottles, jugs, food containers, and caps—are actually recyclable;
• Major brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Nestlé have been quietly retracting sustainability commitments while continuing to rely on single-use plastic packaging; and
• The US plastic industry is undermining meaningful plastic regulation by making false claims about the recyclability of their products to avoid bans and reduce public backlash.

“Recycling is a toxic lie pushed by the plastics industry that is now being propped up by a pro-plastic narrative emanating from the White House,” Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar said in a statement. “These corporations and their partners continue to sell the public a comforting lie to hide the hard truth: that we simply have to stop producing so much plastic.”

“Instead of investing in real solutions, they’ve poured billions into public relations campaigns that keep us hooked on single-use plastic while our communities, oceans, and bodies pay the price,” he added.

Greenpeace is among the many climate and environmental groups supporting a global plastics treaty, an accord that remains elusive after six rounds of talks due to opposition from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other nations that produce the petroleum products from which almost all plastics are made.

Honed from decades of funding and promoting dubious research aimed at casting doubts about the climate crisis caused by its products, the petrochemical industry has sent a small army of lobbyists to influence global treaty negotiations.

In addition to environmental and climate harms, plastics—whose chemicals often leach into the food and water people eat and drink—are linked to a wide range of health risks, including infertility, developmental issues, metabolic disorders, and certain cancers.

Plastics also break down into tiny particles found almost everywhere on Earth—including in human bodies—called microplastics, which cause ailments such as inflammation, immune dysfunction, and possibly cardiovascular disease and gut biome imbalance.

A study published earlier this year in the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that plastics are responsible for more than $1.5 trillion in health-related economic losses worldwide annually—impacts that disproportionately affect low-income and at-risk populations.

As Jo Banner, executive director of the Descendants Project—a Louisiana advocacy group dedicated to fighting environmental racism in frontline communities—said in response to the new Greenpeace report, “It’s the same story everywhere: poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities turned into sacrifice zones so oil companies and big brands can keep making money.”

“They call it development—but it’s exploitation, plain and simple,” Banner added. “There’s nothing acceptable about poisoning our air, water, and food to sell more throwaway plastic. Our communities are not sacrifice zones, and we are not disposable people.”

Writing for Time this week, Judith Enck, a former regional administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency and current president of the environmental justice group Beyond Plastics, said that “throwing your plastic bottles in the recycling bin may make you feel good about yourself, or ease your guilt about your climate impact. But recycling plastic will not address the plastic pollution crisis—and it is time we stop pretending as such.”

“So what can we do?” Enck continued. “First, companies need to stop producing so much plastic and shift to reusable and refillable systems. If reducing packaging or using reusable packaging is not possible, companies should at least shift to paper, cardboard, glass, or metal.”

“Companies are not going to do this on their own, which is why policymakers—the officials we elected to protect us—need to require them to do so,” she added.

Although lawmakers in the 119th US Congress have introduced a handful of bills aimed at tackling plastic pollution, such proposals are all but sure to fail given Republican control of both the House of Representatives and Senate and the Trump administration’s pro-petroleum policies.

Republicans on Tuesday invoked drone strikes during then-President Barack Obama’s tenure in a dubious effort to justify what experts say is the Trump administration’s illegal boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers, while falsely claiming that Democrats and the media ignored airstrikes ordered by the former president.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked during a Tuesday press conference about a so-called “double-tap” airstrike—military parlance for follow-up strikes on survivors and first responders after initial bombings—that killed two men who survived a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the southern Caribbean Sea.

Although US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has denied it, he reportedly gave a spoken order to “kill everybody” in the boat, which was supposedly interpreted by Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley as a green light for launching a second strike after the discovery that two of the 11 men aboard the vessel were alive and clinging to its burning wreckage.

Responding to the question concerning the strike’s legality, Johnson pointed to upcoming congressional consultations on the matter and said that such attacks are “not an unprecedented thing.”

“Secondary strikes are not unusual,” he noted. “It has to happen if a mission is going to be completed.”

“It’s something Congress will look at, and we’ll do that in the regular process and order,” Johnson continued, referring to a classified briefing with Bradley and some lawmakers scheduled for Thursday. “I think it’s very important for everybody to reserve judgment and not leap to conclusions until you have all the facts.”

“One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama... I think there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it,” he said.

The lack of attention to Obama’s strikes claimed by Johnson is belied by congressional hearings, lawsuits, and copious coverage—and condemnation—of such attacks in media outlets including Common Dreams.

Progressive lawmakers and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were among the numerous US officials who criticized Obama-era drone strikes.

Trump administration officials have reportedly cited the Obama administration’s legal rationale for bombing Libya to justify the boat strikes to members of Congress.

Other Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures noted on Tuesday that Obama—who bombed more countries than his predecessor, former President George W. Bush and was called the “drone warrior-in-chief”—ordered strikes that resulted in massacres of civilians at events including funerals and at least one wedding.

At least hundreds of civilians were killed in such strikes, including 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who, according to an Obama administration official, was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was slain in Yemen in 2011. This, after al-Awlaki’s father—an accused terrorist who was also American—was assassinated by a drone strike ordered by Obama.

Asked by a reporter about the legality of assassinating US citizens without charge or trial, then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs infamously asserted in October 2012 that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki should have had “a far more responsible father.”

Buried deep in a New York Times article published earlier that year was the revelation that Obama’s secret “kill list” authorized the assassination of US citizens, and that his administration was counting all military-age males in a strike zone as “combatants” regardless of their actual status in an effort to artificially lower the reported number of civilian casualties.

“Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” Obama once boasted, according to the 2013 Mark Halperin and John Heilemann book Double Down. “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

A third member of the al-Awlaki family, 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki—also an American citizen—was killed in a US commando raid in Yemen ordered by President Donald Trump in early 2017.

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed by US airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the decadeslong so-called Global War on Terror, in which more than 900,000 people were slain, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

At least thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded by US bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during Trump’s first and second terms, during which rules of engagement aimed at protecting noncombatants have been loosened.

At least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, according to Trump administration figures. Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of victims, claim that some of them were civilians uninvolved in narcotrafficking.