<....It’s a model that Owens has honed to perfection. Outrage drives clicks, listens and views. It keeps fans coming back. And this in turn makes advertisers sit up and take note. Her husband, George Farmer, the British son of a multi-millionaire Tory peer and hedge fund manager, oversees the business side of the operation, and told Bloomberg that her advertisers “have reported seeing returns of two-to-one on dollars spent with us, and up to five-to-one reported in some cases”.

Her huge listener base means that the podcast can inevitably charge higher advertising rates; recent analysis from Fortune magazine suggested that her company generates up to $10m in revenues per year. And according to Farmer, only one advertiser has pulled out over the past year; the show now has almost 60 sponsors, Bloomberg reports. In 2023, her anti-trans YouTube videos were demonetised, and last year, she was temporarily suspended after violating hate speech policies, but she has since returned with a vengeance. And even if these bigger sites did ban her, she would probably follow in the footsteps of other “cancelled” right-wing figures and simply move to a new platform.

What’s particularly shrewd, though, is the way Owens has a knack for throwing herself into topics that are guaranteed to creep onto your social feed. Take actor Blake Lively’s legal battle against her It Ends with Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni. Owens covered the story in obsessive detail, responding to suggestions and “clues” from followers with all the zeal of a TikTok sleuth.

Elsewhere, she borrows the aesthetic of your classic lifestyle influencer. Her website, Club Candace, doesn’t exactly look like the online home of a conservative firebrand; instead of Maga red and shouty graphics, it’s all swirly, cursive fonts and glowing photos of Owens. But then you look closer at the merch she’s selling: the “Candace Intelligence Agency” T-shirts ($35), the “we don’t know-know, but we know” sweater ($60), a slogan that gets to the heart of Owens’s fast-and-loose attitude to facts, and the “conspiracy theorist” mug ($16).

And yet with the Macron lawsuit looming, Owens may have met her match. For all the successes of her podcast, she is now facing a major legal battle. She has been asking fans to donate to her legal fund, and estimates she will need around $5m, but that feels like a conservative estimate. Should she lose, she could face millions in legal fees alone. The case of fellow right-wing podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones feels particularly pertinent here: Jones was ordered to pay around $1.4bn in total damages after the families of Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victims won two separate defamation suits against him. He has since been declared bankrupt (although he is still broadcasting).

In American defamation cases against public figures, though, the onus is on the plaintiff to prove “actual malice”, or essentially to show that the defendant knew the information they were sharing was untrue. This can be tricky to prove. In 2021, Owens was hit with a separate defamation suit by the former Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik. She claimed that Owens had smeared her with false allegations of drug use, fraud and working as a “madame” in a strip club, but the case was tossed out by a judge; Klacik ended up being required to pay her $115,000 to cover legal fees.

Using Kirk’s death as another trending topic to boost her profile looks like an ill-advised move, too. Owens is far from the only podcaster to indulge in bizarre conspiracy theories, but her personal link to Kirk, coupled with her willingness to exploit that for clicks and listens, makes the whole spectacle feel extremely murky. In aiming for Turning Point, too, she risks splitting her support base. Here, she is not going after the “establishment” or the “elite”, those bogey people of conspiratorial thinking, but her own political allies. And the signs are that Turning Point are not going to let her get away with it.

<Team For Against Combined

Overall Correct / Total Picks 142/272 (0.522)

Arizona Cardinals 3/6 (0.500) 8/11 (0.727) 11/17 (0.647)

Atlanta Falcons 2/7 (0.286) 3/10 (0.300) 5/17 (0.294)

Baltimore Ravens 5/10 (0.500) 5/7 (0.714) 10/17 (0.588)

Buffalo Bills 6/14 (0.429) 2/3 (0.667) 8/17 (0.471)

Carolina Panthers 1/3 (0.333) 5/14 (0.357) 6/17 (0.353)

Chicago Bears 5/9 (0.556) 3/8 (0.375) 8/17 (0.471)

Cincinnati Bengals 2/7 (0.286) 4/10 (0.400) 6/17 (0.353)

Cleveland Browns 2/8 (0.250) 3/9 (0.333) 5/17 (0.294)

Dallas Cowboys 6/11 (0.545) 4/6 (0.667) 10/17 (0.588)

Denver Broncos 5/10 (0.500) 4/7 (0.571) 9/17 (0.529)

Detroit Lions 4/9 (0.444) 4/8 (0.500) 8/17 (0.471)

Green Bay Packers 3/9 (0.333) 5/8 (0.625) 8/17 (0.471)

Houston Texans 7/11 (0.636) 4/6 (0.667) 11/17 (0.647)

Indianapolis Colts 5/8 (0.625) 4/9 (0.444) 9/17 (0.529)

Jacksonville Jaguars 6/8 (0.750) 4/9 (0.444) 10/17 (0.588)

Kansas City Chiefs 5/11 (0.455) 5/6 (0.833) 10/17 (0.588)

Las Vegas Raiders 2/2 (1.000) 10/15 (0.667) 12/17 (0.706)

Los Angeles Chargers 6/12 (0.500) 2/5 (0.400) 8/17 (0.471)

Los Angeles Rams 10/13 (0.769) 3/4 (0.750) 13/17 (0.765)

Miami Dolphins 3/6 (0.500) 7/11 (0.636) 10/17 (0.588)

Minnesota Vikings 3/7 (0.429) 5/10 (0.500) 8/17 (0.471)

New England Patriots 8/11 (0.727) 2/6 (0.333) 10/17 (0.588)

New Orleans Saints 3/6 (0.500) 5/11 (0.455) 8/17 (0.471)

New York Giants 3/9 (0.333) 2/8 (0.250) 5/17 (0.294)

New York Jets 2/4 (0.500) 8/13 (0.615) 10/17 (0.588)

Philadelphia Eagles 9/15 (0.600) 1/2 (0.500) 10/17 (0.588)

Pittsburgh Steelers 3/5 (0.600) 5/12 (0.417) 8/17 (0.471)

San Francisco 49ers 6/10 (0.600) 2/7 (0.286) 8/17 (0.471)

Seattle Seahawks 12/15 (0.800) 1/2 (0.500) 13/17 (0.765)

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 4/9 (0.444) 6/8 (0.750) 10/17 (0.588)

Tennessee Titans 0/3 (0.000) 8/14 (0.571) 8/17 (0.471)

Washington Redskins 1/4 (0.250) 8/13 (0.615) 9/17 (0.529)>

A creditable performance, lying twelfth equal of eighty teams, but two games short of the money.

<The tragedy of American manufacturing under President Donald Trump is not merely that it is shrinking. It is that U.S. manufacturing is shrinking under a lunatic who never tires of boasting that he alone can make U.S. manufacturing great again. The boast, like so many in the Trump era, has aged horribly.

Under President Joe Biden, manufacturing did something unusual in modern politics. It worked.

Output climbed to record levels. Investment poured into factories, supply chains stabilized following the Covid hurdles, and the dull, unglamorous business of making things regained a measure of dignity. The boost in U.S. manufacturing was achieved not with chest-thumping speeches or tariff tantrums, but with policies designed for the real world—predictability, infrastructure, and a government that did not wake up each morning looking for a trade war to fight.

Then came Trump 2.0 and with it the old MAGA chaos: tariffs waved like magic wands, certainty treated as weakness, and economic policy reduced to a series of impulsive taunts thrown at U.S. allies and rivals alike.

The result has been a manufacturing sector retreat—contracting for ten straight months, a sustained decline that no amount of Trump shrieking and podium pounding can wish away.

As Barron’s reports, The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index fell to 47.9 from November’s 48.2 reading, the lowest of 2025 despite modest improvements in employment

The consistent decline since Trump 2.0 took office is particularly noteworthy when you consider Old man Orange sold us his tariffs in 2025 as medicine. Trump said the tariffs would discipline foreign competitors, resurrect factories, and restore American industrial dominance.

In practice, the Trump tariffs have functioned more like a recurring fever: raising costs for manufacturers, snarling supply chains, and making long-term planning an exercise in guesswork.

When steel, aluminum, and components grow more expensive overnight—and might grow more expensive again tomorrow—investment does not flourish. It hides.

Manufacturing thrives on characteristics that sound boring: stability, clarity, and predictability. In other words, manufacturers need to have confidence that the rules will not change before the next quarterly report. Trump offers none of this. Instead, Trump delivers uncertainty as spectacle, a governing style that treats unpredictability as a strength. The MAGA crowd may roar. But economists wince and U.S. factories quietly scale back....>

<....There is a special irony in watching Trump align himself with American manufacturing workers while presiding over policies that undermine the very industries Trump claims to champion. Protectionism, according to Trump, is a kind of muscular patriotism. In reality, protectionism is a tax. It is paid by producers, passed on to consumers, and absorbed by workers when factory orders diminish and shifts are cut. It is nationalism for people who do not read balance sheets, including the MAGA nutjobs.

Meanwhile, the comparison to the previous administration lingers like an inconvenient footnote Trump desperately keeps trying to erase. Manufacturing did not boom under Biden because he insulted trading partners or slapped tariffs on impulse.

Manufacturing grew to record levels during the Biden administration because companies believed the future would resemble the present closely enough to justify investment. Confidence, not bravado, did the heavy lifting.

These days, Trump claims that America’s economy under Biden was “dead.” And in a suspension of reality and common sense that only Trump could imagine, Trump says we are the hottest economic nation in the world.

When confronted with actual reality and statistics from the administration’s own government agencies, Trump’s defenders insist the manufacturing and industrial pain is temporary. Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent maintain that the ongoing contractions are a necessary sacrifice on the altar of future industrial greatness.

This is the same argument made by every economic quack throughout the industrial age: endure the harm now and trust the miracle will arrive later. Manufacturers, being practical and (rational) people, are not buying it.

So what we are left with in the U.S. under Trump is a familiar pattern: loud promises, thin results, and an insistence that basic facts are wrong, rather than the policy.

Manufacturing is not declining because it lacks patriotism. It is declining because it lacks a U.S. President who understands that modern industry is built on cooperation, predictability, and trust—not haphazard tariffs.

If American manufacturing is going to recover, it will not be rescued by slogans or by a deranged President Trump who mistakes chaos for strength. U.S. manufacturing will recover once White House policy is grounded in economic sense rather than applause lines. Until then, Trump’s vision of industrial revival remains a noisy farce, highlighted by bluster, and collapsing under basic arithmetic.

The only thing Trump is growing in U.S. manufacturing, like so much else, is decline.>

<Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that he planned to discuss a U.S. acquisition of Greenland with Danish officials next week, as the White House again asserted that President Donald Trump’s preference would be to acquire the territory through a negotiation.

The U.S. would even consider purchasing the island.

But press secretary Karoline Leavitt held out the possibility of a military takeover should diplomatic efforts fail and likened Trump’s approach to how he dealt with Iran and Venezuela, both of which he opted to attack after negotiations faltered.

“Look at Venezuela. He tried ardently to strike a good deal with Nicolás Maduro. And he told him, ‘I will use the United States military if you do not take such a deal and you will not like it.’ And look at what happened,” Leavitt said. “He tried to have serious interest in a deal with the Iranian regime with respect to their nuclear capabilities, and so Operation Midnight Hammer happened.”

That the White House makes no distinction between two longtime adversaries openly hostile to the United States with a Democratic ally and NATO member stands to only deepen the fear inside Europe that Trump could break the decades-old alliance.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned Monday that an American attack on another NATO country would mean “everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.”

Pressed on why Trump was openly bullying Denmark, which controls Greenland, instead of working to update existing security agreements and pursuing new economic cooperation with a longtime ally, Leavitt was coy.

“Who said diplomacy isn’t taking place behind the scenes?” she said.

But the panicked responses from Denmark’s leaders, not to mention several European heads of state who jointly declared Tuesday that any U.S. violation of Greenland’s sovereignty would be a breach of the NATO charter, made it clear that officials in Copenhagen and Brussels, as well as Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, feel a rising threat.

And as several Republican allies have tried to downplay the likelihood of any actual U.S. effort to take Greenland, the White House continues to insist that the president is serious about acquiring the territory — one way or another.

“He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how could we acquire Greenland,” Rubio said. “There’s an interest there. So, I just reminded [members] of the fact that not only did [President Harry] Truman want to do it, but President Trump’s been talking about this since his first term.”

Longtime Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement Wednesday that strengthening America’s foothold in the increasingly competitive Arctic region does not have to come at the expense of its oldest security alliance.

“Close security cooperation between Americans, Danes, and Greenlanders is a tradition older than NATO, the most successful military alliance in human history,” McConnell said. “Threats and intimidation by U.S. officials over American ownership of Greenland are as unseemly as they are counterproductive. And the use of force to seize the sovereign democratic territory of one of America’s most loyal and capable allies would be an especially catastrophic act of strategic self-harm to America and its global influence.”

Leavitt insisted the president maintains his stated commitment to NATO and its founding principle that an attack on any member amounts to an attack on all, pointing to a social media post from the president hours earlier that suggested it’s the alliance’s commitment to the U.S. that is in doubt.

“I DOUBT NATO WOULD BE THERE FOR US IF WE REALLY NEEDED THEM,” Trump blasted on Truth Social, insisting the U.S. would still defend alliance members. “We will always be there for NATO, even if they won’t be there for us.”

The one time NATO’s Article 5 was invoked was after 9/11, when allies, including Denmark, sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan.

“Past leaders have often ruled things out. They’ve often been very open about ruling things in and basically broadcasting their foreign policy strategies to the rest of the world, not just to our allies but most egregiously to our adversaries,” Leavitt said. “That’s not something this president does. All options are always on the table for President Trump.”>

<President Donald Trump on Saturday named the 2024 killing of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston as a rationale for capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Nungaray was sexually assaulted, strangled to death and thrown into a north Houston bayou last June, in a violent crime that shocked the region and made national headlines. Two Venezuelan nationals who are thought to have entered the United States without permission were arrested on suspicion of capital murder in connection with her death. Authorities said they intend to seek the death penalty, though trial dates have not been set.

In an address from Mar-a-Lago on Saturday morning, Trump said Nungaray's slaying had been carried out by members of Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which he said had been "sent by Maduro to terrorize our people."

Harris County authorities have not said that Nungaray's accused killers, Franklin Peña and Johan Martinez-Rangel, were affiliated with Tren de Aragua.

"They kidnapped, assaulted and murdered, by Tren de Aragua - animals - they murdered Jocelyn and left her dead under the bridge," Trump said. He also said Nungaray was an example of "those innocent Americans whose lives were so heartlessly robbed by this Venezuelan terrorist organization, one of the worst."

Trump's comments about Nungaray were part of a rambling speech announcing the U.S. government's capture of Maduro and his wife from the Venezuelan capital early on Saturday, the culmination of a monthslong pressure campaign against the leader. Trump said the U.S. government would "run" the South American country for an unspecified amount of time until a peaceful transfer of power could be arranged.

Trump said the capture of the Venezuelan president ensures that "Maduro will never again be able to threaten an American citizen or anybody from Venezuela - there will no longer be threats."

The president invoked Nungaray's killing during his presidential campaign in which he blamed undocumented immigrants for exacerbating violent crime in the U.S. In March, Trump hosted Nungaray's mother, Alexis, at a speech to Congress when he announced that a Galveston Bay wildlife refuge would be renamed in Jocelyn's honor.

More than a year and a half after Nungaray's death, it is still unclear when Peña and Martinez-Rangel will stand trial, though lengthy court proceedings before a trial are not uncommon for capital murder cases in Harris County. Both men are in custody at the Harris County Jail on $10 million bail.>

<President Trump’s Senior Advisor for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Kari Lake, is known for continuing to contest the results of the two Arizona elections she lost to Democrats: the 2022 gubernatorial election (to Governor Katie Hobbs) and the 2024 senatorial election (to Sen. Ruben Gallego).

While running for governor, Lake repeatedly disparaged the late Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, telling McCain supporters to “get the hell out” of one of her events and referring to the war hero as a “loser.”

McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, said at that time: “My father will always be an icon and the people of Arizona deserve someone better than Kari Lake.”

Today, when McCain learned that Lake had reportedly purchased a $60,000 condominium in her native Iowa “as speculation swirls about her future,” she took a swipe at Lake and wrote: “Wanna know who won every election they ever ran for in Arizona and didn’t have to carpetbag and flee to another state because they were so hideously unpopular?”

Wanna know who won every election they ever ran for in Arizona and didn’t have to carpetbag and flee to another state because they were so hideously unpopular? https://t.co/fdu8zvXDUf

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 7, 2026

The “Kari Lake War Room” account on X responded to McCain: “Meghan, can you clarify who you’re talking about? Because you can’t be referring to your father, who moved to Arizona from Washington, DC, in 1981 when he was 44 years old and then decided to run for office. Also, ‘never lost an election (in Arizona)’ is a mighty big caveat, considering what happened in 2008.” (Sen. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, was defeated by Barack Obama in 2008, though McCain secured all 10 of Arizona’s electoral votes in that election.)

Note: In Iowa, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst‘s seat is up for grabs in 2026, although President Trump has already endorsed U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson for the job. Primaries will be held on June 2. Many Iowans also suspect Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley will retire soon, though the 92-year-old politician said in August that he’s leaving the door open for another re-election bid in 2028.>

<Look at the images, if you have the stomach for it.

Look at the maroon Honda Pilot, a suburban relic of soccer games and grocery runs, now a rolling tomb. Look at the airbag, white, nylon, and soaked in the bright, arterial spray of a woman whose only crime was being in the way of the Machine.

Renee Nicole Good is dead. She was a mother. A poet. A U.S. citizen. She wasn’t a “target.” She wasn’t a “terrorist.” She was a neighbor who dropped her six-year-old at school and then encountered the hooded, nameless goons of Stephen Miller’s American SS.

And then the lying started. It didn’t start slow; it erupted with the practiced, oily precision of a regime that views the truth as a soft target. It was a volcanic, confident, blisteringly mendacious explosion of the MAGA narrative of “hero cops vs. domestic terrorists.”

Trump’s ludicrous social media posts and Stephen Miller’s instant trolling of the dead and mockery of the shock and horror Americans and the citizens of Minneapolis felt, set the tone for the Big Lie of Renee Nicole Good’s murder.

Kristi Noem, the lesser meat puppet of this dystopian play, took to the microphones to weave a fantasy. She talked about “domestic terrorism.” She talked about a truck “stuck in the snow” being swarmed. She spoke of an agent “dragged and rammed.”

It is all a lie.

It was a lie born in the fever swamps of the MAGA fever-brain and polished by the hacks at DHS. The video shows the truth: the agent was clear. The car was moving away. The shots were an execution, not an act of self-defense.>

<The Trump administration’s rapid and aggressive response to the Minnesota shooting has prompted quiet concern among some administration allies, as well as former and current Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Particular anguish centers around how quickly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in public remarks from Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday insisted that Renee Good, the 37-year old woman killed by an ICE officer, had committed an act of “domestic terrorism” and tried to “ram them with her vehicle.”

Even supporters of the president fear that the administration’s approach — within hours the White House deputy chief of staff had also deemed this a case of “domestic terrorism” — risks undermining public confidence in the ongoing investigation and expanding the credibility gap between the public and the immigration agency patrolling dozens of American cities.

“Do I think it’s domestic terrorism? Yeah, I do,” said a person close to the White House, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive situation and ongoing investigation. “But it might not have been wise to say that at the outset, how [Noem] said it.”

Within 48 hours, another shooting, this time in Portland, Oregon, by a Customs and Border Protection officer, further inflamed outrage as protesters, Democrats and top administration officials accused each other of fascism and terrorism.

The shootings — and the eye witness videos circulating on the internet — come amid heightened tensions between Americans and the thousands of federal agents deployed in U.S. cities. Vice President JD Vance on Thursday lamented the threats and attacks ICE agents are under. On Friday, he shared a new video that he implied vindicated the officer in Minnesota by showing his “life was endangered and he fired in self defense.”

Still, the administration’s aggressive tactics, aimed at ramping up arrests and deportations, have brought widespread condemnation and a growing number of confrontations between protesters and immigration officials, who are deployed for crowd control and other tasks the agencies historically don’t perform.

It has left ICE as the latest and most prominent example of an ongoing national Rorschach test in which Republicans and Democrats watch the same video and claim to see wildly different truths, and some inside the agency worry that the administration’s rhetoric will only widen political fractures.

“I don’t know how we recover from this,” said an administration official.

In Portland, DHS said the agents were attempting to stop an unauthorized immigrant from Venezuela affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Portland police said officers responded to the scene and treated a man and a woman with gunshot wounds, both of whom remain hospitalized.

The Portland FBI issued an initial post Thursday on X characterizing the incident as an officer-involved shooting. It was later deleted. When POLITICO requested the statement from Portland FBI Thursday evening, it characterized it as an “assault on federal officers.”

The incident in Portland appeared to be a targeted operation, but Democrats tied it to the shooting in Minneapolis as another example of the Trump administration rushing to close a case prior to an investigation. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth said Friday that the administration “can’t be trusted,” citing a separate case in Chicago from last year.

“This pattern of ‘shoot first, then lie, lie, deny’ has to stop,” she said. “The videos don’t lie.”

The administration official was more sympathetic to the Portland agents because it was a targeted operation, but the official added that it will be difficult for the average American to separate the two closely-timed incidents.

“This is highly problematic and not a good look and not something our government should be remotely engaged in,” the administration official said of the Minneapolis shooting.

When asked about concerns that the administration’s approach could undermine public confidence in its investigation, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin also pointed POLITICO to the new footage shared by Vance and other administration officials. She added: “If you weaponize a vehicle, a deadly weapon to kill or cause bodily harm to a federal law enforcement officer, that is an act of domestic terrorism and will be prosecuted as such.”....>

<....Minnesota officials have accused federal law enforcement of stymying state investigators into the deadly ICE-related shooting, which came as more than 2,000 agents descended on Minnesota this week in the Trump administration’s largest immigration operation to date. As for Oregon, state officials have opened a separate investigation.

Officers were deployed to the North Star State from across the country, as part of the administration’s efforts to crackdown on the welfare-fraud scandal in the state.

Just hours after the shooting in Minneapolis, DHS declared on X that the woman’s actions were an act of “domestic terrorism.” Noem gave live remarks soon after echoing this conclusion. White House officials argued the same, all before an investigation had really begun.

“Whatever outcome this investigation produces, I don’t see how anyone’s gonna believe it when the secretary already is firmly — and doubled down on — a conclusion without knowing all the facts,” said John Sandweg, who led ICE from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama administration.

Border czar Tom Homan’s response was initially more measured, telling CBS News that he wouldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation. He released a statement later on Wednesday, saying the “brave women and men of ICE are heroes. Like all Americans, our officers have a right to self defense. Full stop.”

“Homan had a very mature response, and a thoughtful, professional way of dealing with it,” said the person close to the White House. “I think you can read a lot into that.”

The White House on Thursday added a press briefing to the schedule, with Vance at the podium for more than 30 minutes fielding questions from reporters. Vance said, without offering evidence, that the woman shot and killed in Minnesota was influenced by a leftist network. Reporters pushed him on whether there was a risk in defining the victim in the early stages of the investigation. He said the Department of Justice, in addition to the investigation DHS is conducting, will continue to look into the incident.

“But the simple fact is what you see is what you get in this case. You have a woman who was trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement officer. Nobody debates that. I can believe that her death is a tragedy, while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of a far-left who has martialed an entire movement of lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”

Trump on Friday was asked during his meeting with oil executives about what he’s learned about the “left wing network” Vance referred to. The president said he had not seen the vice president’s remarks, but he referenced a woman screaming “shame” in one of the videos circulating online and called her a “professional troublemaker.”

“You have agitators, and we will always be protecting ICE and we will always be protecting our Border Patrol and our law enforcement,” the president told reporters.

Court filings show that the officer who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, had been injured in June when he was dragged by a different vehicle in Minnesota. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that the officer had “abrasions all over his body” from the operation targeting an unauthorized immigrant convicted of felony sexual assault on a minor and suggested that it helps explains why Ross was likely on hyper-alert when Good began driving.

But some former and current officials who have worked in immigration enforcement — while they note many facts remain unknown — were alarmed by the footage and the agent’s decision to fire his weapon. And Sandweg, the former ICE leader, fears that the administration’s response will only create more challenges for law enforcement officers who are already being placed in “tough” situations they aren’t trained for.

“You’re not doing the agency or the agents any justice when you rush out and reflexively defend them. You just create risks of more of this,” he said. “No one at ICE goes to work saying ‘I want to shoot someone,’ absolutely not. But the aggression is being rewarded, and I think sometimes you’re better off to just stop and think a little bit.”>

<It seems appropriate right now to try to clarify one of the most basic questions America is (or should be) struggling with: What does it mean to be a human being?

The confusion is mounting.

Three illustrations:

1. Corporations

Corporations are not human beings. That should be self-evident.

But in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled (in its Citizens United case) that corporations are the equivalent of “people” under the First Amendment to the Constitution, with rights to free speech.

This ruling has made it nearly impossible for the government to restrict the flow of money from giant corporations into politics. As a result, the political voices — and First Amendment rights — of most real human beings in America are being effectively drowned out.

But in coming years, states will have an opportunity to circumvent Citizens United by redefining what a “corporation” is in the first place.

Absent state charters that empower them to become “corporations,” business organizations are nothing more than collections of contracts — between investors and managers, managers and employees, and consumers and sellers.

In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible [that] possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it …. The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote.”

Montana is now readying a proposition for its 2026 ballot that would empower organizations that sought to be corporations there to do many things — except to fund elections. (I’ve written more on this, here.)

2. Artificial Intelligence

AI is not human, although it’s becoming increasingly difficult for many real people to tell the difference between “artificial general intelligence” and a real person.

As a result, some real people have lost touch with reality — becoming emotionally attached to AI chat boxes, or fooled into believing that AI “deepfake” videos are real, or attributing higher credibility to AI than is justified — sometimes with tragic results.

In his typically ass-backward pro-billionaire way, Trump has issued an executive order aimed at stopping states from regulating AI. But some governors — most interestingly, Florida’s Ron DeSantis — have decided to establish guardrails nonetheless.

DeSantis is calling on Florida’s lawmakers to require tech companies to notify consumers when they are interacting with AI, not to use AI for therapy or mental health counseling, and to give parents more controls over how their children use AI. DeSantis also wants to restrict the growth of AI data centers by eliminating state subsidies to tech companies for such centers and preventing such facilities from drying up local water resources.

In a recent speech, DeSantis said:

“We as individual human beings are the ones that were endowed by God with certain inalienable rights. That’s what our country was founded upon — they did not endow machines or these computers for this.”

I never thought I’d be agreeing with Ron DeSantis, but on this one he’s right.

Corporations are legal fictions. Human AI is a technological fiction. Neither has human rights. Both should be regulated for the benefit of human beings....>

<....3. Non-Americans and suspected enemies

The third illustration of our current confusion over what is a human being is endemic in Trump’s policies toward immigrants and many inhabitants of other nations, now especially in and around Venezuela.

Yesterday, a federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman during an immigration raid in Minneapolis. Despite what Trump and Kristi Noem say, a video at the scene makes clear that the shooting was not in self-defense. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said: “We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety,” adding that it cost a person her life.

ICE agents are arresting and detaining people on mere suspicion that they are not in the United States legally — sometimes deporting them to foreign nations where they’re brutalized — without any independent findings of fact (a minimum of “due process”).

Meanwhile, Trump and Stephen Miller, his assistant for bigotry and nativism, are busy dehumanizing immigrants. For example, Trump describes Somalian-Americans as “garbage.”

Last weekend, the U.S. killed an estimated 75 people in its attack on Venezuela, as it abducted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The U.S. has been bombing and killing sailors on small vessels in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela on the suspicion they’re smuggling drugs into the United States — on the vague pretext that they’re “enemy combatants,” although Congress has not declared war.

Trump’s justification for all such killings has shifted from preventing drug smuggling to “regaining control” over oil reserves that Venezuela nationalized 50 years ago.

In all these cases, the Trump regime is violating fundamental universal human rights considered essential to human dignity.

Corporations and AI are not human beings, but people who come to the United States seeking asylum indubitably are human. So too are undocumented people who arrived in the United States when they were small children and have been here ever since. As are our neighbors and friends who, although undocumented, are valued members of our communities.

As are the Venezuelans who have been murdered by the Trump regime.

So, what does it mean to be a human being?

It means the right to be protected from the big-money depredations of giant corporations, and from the emotional lure of AI disguised as a human.

And it means to be treated respectfully — as a member of the human race possessing inherent, inalienable rights.

<After months of trading insults, President Donald Trump and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's feud has reached volcanic heights since a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.

The Trump administration is refusing to allow state investigators to examine the evidence and spotlighting Minnesota's recent welfare fraud scandal, while Walz and allies, such as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, are responding by seeking an independent review. They have harsh words for the administration, which has vigorously defended ICE agent Jonathan Ross and alleged that Good provoked the killing by driving toward Ross.

Walz launched into the fray with criticism in the initial hours of the incident, casting the administration's depiction of the event as being a "propaganda machine" in a Jan. 7 post on X.

"Tim Walz is a joke. His entire administration is a joke," Vice President JD Vance responded in a Jan. 8 White House press briefing. On Jan. 9 Trump called Walz "an incompetent governor, fool."

"I mean, he's a stupid person," added Trump, who previously used a slur for the intellectually disabled to describe Walz.

Frey, who won a third term last fall, demanded ICE leave the city in expletive-laced remarks hours after Good's death.

Now Good's death is set to be turned into another political football with the Land of 10,000 Lakes once again being the possible ground zero of civil unrest ahead of a critical election, political observers say.

"It's one of the most shocking and high-profile instances of ICE's highly aggressive tactics and approaches, and it's on video," said Matthew Dallek, a historian and professor of political management at George Washington University.

"I don't know if it's a turning point, but the gloves are off and as terrible as it is, this concentrates everybody's minds on the dangers of deploying thousands of ICE agents, many of whom are untrained and often masked, in the interior (of the country)."

'At war': Walz, Minnesota Democrats raising bigger alarms than in 2020 Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announces in St. Paul on Jan. 5, 2026, that he's ending his reelection bid amid mounting pressure over a fraud scandal that has engulfed his administration in recent weeks. Walz was the 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president. Minneapolis is experiencing a dark sense of deja vu locally, activists tell USA TODAY.

The city was thrust into the spotlight after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that was watched by millions. It resulted in nationwide demonstrations and ignited a divisive partisan debate, much like Good's killing.

"We're a blue state, we're a progressive city and we have liberal policies that (Trump's) administration doesn't like," said Shannon Gibney, an English professor and member of Minneapolis Families for Public School, a grassroots group that has joined opposition to the Trump's immigration enforcement campaign.

"So it does feel like a political battle, and we're sort of stuck in the crosshairs here."

But unlike that saga six years ago, the clash between Trump and Minnesota Democrats has been building months before Good’s death, punctuated by the president's longstanding disdain for Walz, dating back to his criticism of the governor's handling of the 2020 Floyd protests.

As would be expected, both men traded jabs during the 2024 campaign when Walz was the Democratic vice presidential nominee, but the tensions have risen since Trump came back to the White House.

In March 2025, Walz outraged the president's supporters when he described ICE as "Trump's modern-day Gestapo" during a commencement address. The animosity grew later that year when after a targeted shooting of two Minnesota Democratic state legislators, Trump dismissed calling Walz to offer condolences, calling the former VP nominee a "whacked out" governor.

But the president has done more than engage in name-calling and has used his vast executive powers to exert pressure on Democratic-led states such as Minnesota.

On Jan. 7, the Trump administration froze more than $10 billion in federal child care and family assistance funds to Minnesota and other states, such as California, Colorado, Illinois and New York over unspecified fraud concerns. A judge temporarily blocked the move on Jan. 9.

"There's a reason why Trump is concentrating his forces in places with governors that he hates, because it's not just Minnesota − it's Illinois, California, etc." Dallek said. "He's kind of exerting his desire to be dominant in states and with governors that he feels have treated him horribly."....>

<....White House blasted Walz, Minnesota over fraud scandal before shooting

Trump and his allies have a different take, arguing that federal intervention is needed across the board due to Walz running an "incompetent" liberal state, riddled with corruption.

Two days before Ross, a U.S. Army veteran and former Border Patrol agent, fatally shot Good, the administration was spotlighting reports about dozens of Somali immigrants being charged with allegedly bilking billions from Minnesota programs, such as COVID-19 pandemic relief programs.

"The Department of Homeland Security is on the ground conducting door-to-door investigations of suspected fraud sites in Minnesota, with hundreds of (federal) officers in the state and more on the way," the White House said in a Jan. 5 statement to USA TODAY.

The same day the Trump administration announced about 2,000 ICE agents would be flooding into Minneapolis, a city with roughly 600 sworn police officers.

Walz simultaneously made headlines when he announced Jan. 5 that he was forgoing a third term amid mounting pressure over the fraud scandal, which elated conservative activists but the Trump administration hasn't relented.

"I think Tim Walz should resign because it's very clear either that he knew about the fraud in Minneapolis ... or at the very least he looked the other way," Vance, who jousted with Walz during the 2024 VP debate, alleged during the Jan. 8 White House press briefing.

At the same briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt came out swinging at Minnesota Democrats in defense of the ICE agent while touting the Medicaid fraud investigation, which dates back to the Biden administration.

"The Department of Homeland Security will continue to operate on the ground in Minnesota, not only to remove criminal illegal aliens, but also to continue conducting door-to-door investigations of the rampant fraud that has taken place in the state under the failed and corrupt leadership of Democrat Gov. Tim Walz," she said.

Minnesota Democrats express lack of trust in Trump's DOJ

One of the first signs that Trump and Walz' beef would be impacting the ICE shooting case came within a day of the deadly incident when the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said the FBI notified them that they would no longer have access to any evidence after the state agency initially said it was partnering federal investigators.

The state agency shut down its probe as a result, much to the delight of Trump, who told reporters at the White House on Jan. 9 that Minnesota is filled with "crooked officials" before falsely claiming without evidence that he won the last three presidential elections in the state.

"It's got an incompetent governor, fool," Trump said. "I mean, he's a stupid person."

Democrats in the state aren't bowing a knee, however, with several city council members, state legislators and activists joining Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, at a Jan. 9 press conference, where they pressed for a fair probe including state investigators into Ross' actions. He and others argue that the state agency has a record of being impartial in law enforcement shooting cases, and must be involved in order for Minnesotans to have faith in any outcome....>

<....Many of the officials present expressed that there will be significant skepticism of the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, pointing to comments by Trump, Vance and Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem, who've all said Ross acted in self-defense.

"It is important and critical to our community to have a sense of trust in this process by having an independent investigation to present to the county attorney so the adequate charges can be made," Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez, a son of Mexican immigrants, said during the press conference.

Those calls prompted a response by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, two of the state's top prosecutors, who in a joint appearance told reporters they're launching independent review into Good's killing.

Moriarty called on members of the public to share any video or other evidence surrounding the shooting with her office, and specifically pushed back at Vance's assertion at the White House press briefing that the ICE agent had "absolute immunity" from state prosecution.

"We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case," she said at a Jan. 9 news conference. "It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent."

Asked if federal authorities might reconsider blocking Minnesota investigators from participating, DOJ officials pointed to Frey's comments, such as saying that claims of self-defense by the ICE agent were "bulls--t," as an indicator that state officials have no intent to pursue a good-faith investigation.

"Federal agents risk their lives each day to safeguard our communities," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told USA TODAY in a statement, adding that following any officer-involved shooting, "standard protocols ensure that evidence is collected and preserved" properly.

"They must make decisions, under dynamic and chaotic circumstances, in less time that it took to read this sentence," Blanche said. "The law does not require police to gamble with their lives in the face of a serious threat of harm. Rather, they may use deadly force when they face an immediate threat of significant physical harm.">

<Last Saturday (January 3th), a massive US military attack, concentrating the largest naval aggressor force ever assembled in the Americas in the Caribbean, kidnapped Nicolas Maduro and decapitated the country’s government. Since then, Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have multiplied threats. They spoke of a “second attack.” They boasted that “any member of the government or armed forces” could suffer the same fate as Maduro. They added that Delcy Rodriguez, the acting vice president, could face “something worse .” In the most recent outburst, Trump himself “assured” in a social media post on January 6th that Washington would demand 30 to 50 million barrels of oil from Caracas (two months of production), the revenue from which he would personally manage…

On the same day this latest intimidation was uttered, Delcy Rodriguez made her first appearance on the streets of Caracas as acting president. She chose a symbolic location as the setting : the José Félix Ribas Socialist Commune, part of the Chavista project (only recently resumed by Maduro) to create institutions of power and popular economic initiative . She was categorical: “here the people govern, here there is constitutional power.” She denounced Trump’s action as “unilateral armed aggression.” She demanded that “the harassment of Venezuela and the aggression against the people of Bolívar cease,” and that the president be released.

The dice are still rolling, in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. The swift military action of the United States and Trump’s pronouncements since then mark a turning point in relations between Washington and the region. International law has been violated in multiple ways, and in an undisguised manner. The White House announces the return of the Monroe Doctrine and the Big Stick strategy, now in a worsened version (the “Donroe Doctrine” ). But a deeper examination of the facts, which will follow, reveals that its power has limits.

They appear in Trump’s own decisions. Despite the immense military power he possesses, and his effort to concentrate it in the Americas (the “western hemisphere” of the Monroe Doctrine), the president cannot launch a large-scale invasion, as his recent predecessors did in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, he also hesitated to take the step that would seem natural after the success of the attack: to go further and attempt regime change.

The contradiction between Trump’s plans and his actual powers opens a breach, and the main objective of this text is to explore it. Latin America, and Brazil in particular, can no longer maintain the same relations with the United States as before – but governments and public opinion are slow to realize this.

This is not about issuing protest statements (those that Brazil has sponsored or signed so far are reasonable). The Donroe Doctrine, the pioneering attack on Venezuela, and Trump’s subsequent threats to other countries in the region constitute, together, a permanent declaration of war. In this sense, the empire is naked – for it has stripped itself of the trappings that associated it, in the past, with “democracy,” “freedom,” or the “rule of law . “

But potentially aggressive powers take advantage of two kinds of vulnerabilities. The first, fundamental one, is the prolonged absence of national projects. A primary focus of neoliberalism, most Latin American countries remain subservient – even now, when this ideology is in tatters – to the belief in “market solutions.” Brazil is part of this group.

The second weakness is more specific, yet more urgent. For this very reason, it suggests a starting point for action. The gaps in the White House’s power are especially serious in three dimensions: a) information technologies, networked communication platforms, and artificial intelligence, where American big tech companies , associated with the far right, exert complete dominance; b) the Armed Forces, whose weaponry, communication, and logistics are subordinated to the United States; c) diplomacy, which remains incapable of seeing – much less exploiting – the new possibilities opened up by the decline of the Eurocentric order. It remains particularly blind, as will be seen, to the multiple overtures launched by China.

Certain risks are also opportunities. For three decades, the Brazilian left has been undergoing a process of institutionalization that has distanced it from thinking about – and projecting to the population – a historical horizon. Now there is a strident warning sign. Will it help awaken it from its lethargy?>

<....I.

The assault

Don’t go hunting for traitors. A brutal imbalance of forces made the kidnapping possible.

Just a few hours separate the two surprising events – one dependent on the other. Around two in the morning on Saturday (January 3rd), after months of preparations, the weight of the most powerful military forces on the planet fell like a lightning bolt on Caracas. Operation Absolute Resolve was beginning , which would unfold in just over two hours. The pilots of 150 aircraft, stationed at air bases and on warships deployed to the Caribbean, finally received the order to begin the mission that had been exhaustively rehearsed for months.

In a few minutes, four strategic targets for the defense of Venezuela were destroyed – bringing the country to its knees, as reported by Carla Ferreira : Fort Tiuna , the country’s main military installation, headquarters The Ministry of Defense and the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces were destroyed; the La Carlota Air Base , the logistical hub for the protection of the capital; the General Command of the Bolivarian Militia, the brains behind the armed civilian resistance forces, located very close to the Miraflores Presidential Palace; and the Port of La Guaira , which supplies the capital with medical supplies, consumer goods, and manufactured goods. The anti-aircraft batteries that were supposed to protect Caracas were also destroyed.

As the planes moved, among them powerful F-18s, F-22s, and F-35s – opened a lethal corridor . An electronic attack, produced by specialized Boeing Growlers , put Venezuela in a “cyber blackout,” and increased its defenses by blocking interception possibilities. Through this large opening , flying at very low altitudes and invisible to radar, Chinook helicopters penetrated . Inside were hundreds of soldiers from the elite Delta Force. They had been briefed – by CIA agents, spy drones, and possibly informants within the Venezuelan security apparatus – on the precise location (Fort Tiuna) where Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were that night. They knew its interior in detail, having simulated the operation in scenarios that reproduced it, on a 1:1 scale, at the Joint Special Operations Command in the US state of Kentucky.

The final phase lasted just over half an hour. Maduro and Cilia were kidnapped, handcuffed, and taken to the small aircraft carrier USS Iwo Jima, from where they departed for the Guantanamo naval base and from there, by helicopter, to New York. About eighty members of Maduro’s security detail – including 32 Cubans – were murdered by the invaders. No American soldiers died, says the Pentagon . The US war budget , which will exceed $1 trillion in 2026, is the largest in the world, and greater than the combined budgets of the next ten countries. It is equivalent to the GDP of Colombia or Belgium. From a military point of view, the operation was a success.

II.

The nervous mouth:

All of Latin America is now under threat, Trump announces.

The paths of politics are more tortuous and complex. It was around 1:30 PM on that same Saturday (January 3rd) when Donald Trump spoke to the press for the first time, at his mansion in Florida, about Maduro’s kidnapping . How to defend the invasion and bombing of a sovereign country – which has never attacked or threatened the US – and the kidnapping of its head of state? Beyond the inherent difficulty of the problem, there were aggravating factors. The hypothesis that Venezuela supplies cocaine to the US is implausible , according to the US intelligence agencies themselves. The US has never filed any complaint about this with the UN Security Council or the International Court of Justice. And, for geopolitical and partisan reasons, Trump himself has just released international drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, from prison; he was sentenced to 45 years in a New York court after extradition and due legal process.

Trump’s response will continue to shape international relations long afterward.

That the spectacular action of Delta Force in Caracas has been lost in the dust of time. On January 3rd and 4th, in successive statements by its leaders, the United States announced that it would attempt to impose, throughout the Americas, an aggravated version of the Monroe Doctrine (of 1823) and the Big Stick Ideology ( of 1904). The threat was explicit, in theory, in the new National Security Strategy made public by the White House in December 2025. But the extent of Washington’s covetousness for Latin American riches and the intention to usurp the sovereignty of the continent’s states would be brutally exposed later....>

<....The intimidating outburst first emanated from Trump’s own throat. “The United States’ domination of the Americas will never be questioned again. [That] will not happen,” the president told reporters. Maduro’s kidnapping was, predictably, linked to his alleged involvement in cocaine production. But it soon became clear that this was merely a pretext, because the president went on to describe the fate he intends to give… to Venezuelan oil. “We will manage it professionally, we have the largest oil companies on the planet. We will invest billions and billions of dollars.” To ensure this control, under the new strategy, Trump said he did not rule out the possibility of a military invasion (boots on the ground ) [although he is very afraid to trigger it, as will be seen].

It would soon become clear that the White House’s target encompasses much more than Venezuela. On Sunday morning (January 4th), speaking to Fox News , Trump extended the threat to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Asked if the attack on Caracas suggested anything to Claudia, he promptly replied: “She’s not governing her country – it’s the cartels (…) Something needs to be done.” On the same day, in an interview with The Atlantic magazine , the vociferations turned against Greenland: “We need it, for our defense.” And later, aboard the presidential plane, his nervous mouth sought out Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia: The country “is also very sick, governed by a sick man, who likes to produce cocaine and sell it to the United States — and he won’t continue doing that for much longer”…

III. A remote-controlled government?

Trump and Rubio want to control Venezuela from a distance.

In Trump’s regression to the Monroe Doctrine and the Big Stick ideology, there is a striking and paradoxical innovation. It is exposed in the attack on Venezuela. At least for the moment, the United States is not seeking regime change , which it has pursued throughout the world for decades, under both Republican and Democratic governments. They demand a total reorientation of policy . Maduro was kidnapped, but not killed (unlike Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi). Furthermore – and much more importantly – Trump and his advisors have said they are offering both Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and members of the country’s state and military apparatus a consolation prize. They can remain in their posts and enjoy their respective comforts, provided that… they obey their new masters. In this attempt at an arrangement, bizarre and extremely uncertain, lies one of the keys to understanding what is happening now in both Caracas and Washington.

The experiment began to be rehearsed in Saturday’s interview in Palm Beach. An imperial Trump expressed the White House’s intention to “run the country . ” But, to the astonishment and disappointment of many, he dismissed the possibility of installing opposition figure Maria Corina Machado in power. Identified with the international far-right, she possesses some political capital and had recently attempted to court American corporations with the promise of “massive privatization” of Venezuelan oil, gold, and infrastructure. In her own words, “a $1.9 trillion opportunity”…

Trump preferred to back Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who, according to him, will govern under very special conditions. “Marco [Rubio, Secretary of State] is working on this directly and just spoke with her. Essentially, she is willing to do what I deem necessary to make Venezuela great again”… However, he threatened: “We are ready to launch a second, much larger attack if necessary.” He went further: “All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand that what happened to Maduro could happen to them as well . ” And he made it clear that the situation will persist until the US can “organize a safe transition.”

A few hours later, speaking on state television, Delcy suggested a different course of action. She called Washington’s intervention “barbaric,” reaffirmed that Maduro is “the only president of the country,” denounced his “kidnapping” (using the precise term), and called for his release. That was enough for Trump and his advisors to return to the attack. On Sunday morning, Secretary Marco Rubio announced in an interview that the US will continue blocking Venezuelan oil exports until the state-owned company that exploits most of the oil fields (PDVSA) opens itself to foreign investment – especially American investment. “[The blockade] will remain until we see changes, not only to favor the national interest of the US, which is the number one objective, but also to promote a better future for the people.”....>

<....Hours later, the president himself returned to the topic in another contact with journalists . Asked about oil, he promptly replied: “We need full access. To oil and other things in the country.” And regarding who wields power in Caracas, he assured: “We are dealing with whoever took office. Don’t ask me who is in charge , because I will answer, and that could be very controversial.” The reporter insisted: “What does that mean?” “It means we are in charge,” Trump replied.

Repeated threats made too often may reveal doubt about one’s ability to carry them out.

IV.

The limits

Contrary to what he tries to make people believe, the emperor cannot do everything.

Invading a sovereign country, kidnapping its president, and withdrawing. Renouncing “regime change.” Getting rid of an ally like Maria Corina Machado. Believing in controlling a government through coercion. What led Trump to follow, in the operation against Venezuela, a pattern so different from those normally employed in interventions carried out by the United States? The facts are recent and are developing. More time will be needed for definitive answers. However, based on an examination of objective events and trends, it is possible to formulate good hypotheses.

The first relates to one aspect of the decline of American power: the breakdown of the social consensus necessary for wars. Trump captured this sentiment. One of the key points of his speeches in the race for the White House was the denunciation of interventions abroad. In condemning them, he pointed to them as a product of the establishment’s actions. He insisted on the cost they imposed on Americans, how much they benefited the military-industrial complex, and how they diverted resources that, according to him, could have “made America great again” (MAGA). The narrative became hegemonic. In December 2025, according to polls cited by The Conversation website , 63% of American voters rejected military action against Venezuela.

This is probably the main reason for discarding Maria Corina. Putting her in power would mean a huge provocation for the supporters of Chavismo. The country would plunge into instability – the worst possible scenario for the enormous investments needed in the oil industry and its vulnerable facilities. Having installed her in the Miraflores Palace, the US would need to defend her. Trump would clash both with a large majority of the electorate and with his own discourse.

The second hypothesis relates to Trump’s particular choices in trying to counter the decline. He refuses to resort to the international institutions built after World War II to sustain American hegemony. He calls them “globalist.” In bilateral relations with other countries, he maximizes the economic and military power of the US to extract concessions. (It is worth recalling his significant victories in trade agreements with the European Union and Japan after imposing the “tariff hike”). He seeks to add to this power his personal brutality: supremacist impulses, constant harassment, insults, and the habitual use of lies and falsification. He is obsessed with restoring the power of American corporations. Aren’t these precisely the central elements of his aggression against Venezuela and his attempt to remotely control its rulers?

* * *

Will this recipe be effective in Venezuela? It is, evidently, too early to know. The US show of force was impressive and devastating. The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro leaves Chavismo deprived of its main popular leader and the point of unity among all its factions. The notorious bureaucratization of some of its members holding positions in the State tends to make Trump’s abject proposal tempting. The pressure will be amplified by the blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments , which the US has not relaxed and which deprives the country of its main source of foreign exchange.

But there is another side to Chavismo. The one that was forged in the commander’s historical battles. The one that was inspired by the anti-imperialist project and the broad redistribution of oil wealth. The one that participated in processes such as the 1999 Popular Constituent Assembly and the multiple attempts to invent a popular democracy capable of overcoming the limits of liberal institutions. The one that was enthusiastic about Maduro’s efforts to revive the “popular communes” after the debacle in the 2024 presidential elections. Unlike what happened in the military dictatorships sponsored by Washington during the Cold War, this tradition is not being destroyed – and it is unlikely to be while Delcy Rodriguez remains at the head of the government. Trump’s project, as we have seen, is different....>

<....What will happen when the two sides of this coin – the attempt to force Chavismo to act against what constituted it; and the continued power of a movement whose rebellious origins have not been lost – become incompatible? Trump’s intervention has once again placed Venezuela at the center of the global geopolitical stage. Everything that happens there will have repercussions. Will Trump order Delcy Rodriguez to execute his plan? Will she acquiesce? If she does, will there be a revolt? What will happen then?

The enormous shock caused by the swift action of the US on Saturday may have led some to believe that a chapter in Latin American history was closing. In Venezuela, on the contrary, a new page in the struggle for the country’s future – extremely difficult and arduous, but not lost – may be opening.

But what about Latin America as a whole, and Brazil in particular?

V.

The opportunity

: Faced with the Donroe Doctrine, Latin America and Brazil either bow down or reinvent themselves.

In May 2025, an extensive article in the digital magazine Defesanet revealed that members of the Trump administration coveted the infrastructure of Fernando de Noronha and the Natal-RN Air Force Base. The White House’s new National Security Strategy was being drafted. The publication found that diplomats from Trump’s inner circle had raised the issue in contacts with Brazilian politicians and military personnel. They intended to install surveillance and power projection structures (equipment and airports) over the South Atlantic in both locations, which would naturally require the creation of operational enclaves, shielded from Brazilian authorities. They brandished, as an argument, a bizarre “functional right of strategic reuse”—the same one the White House has used to try to regain control of the Panama Canal. Defesanet itself considered: “the name for this is colony”…

The episode reveals, almost in the form of a caricature, a new reality. Faced with the Donroe Doctrine, and what it has already produced in Venezuela, the governments and societies of Latin America have two alternatives. If they bow down or remain silent, they will deepen the lethargy and the feeling of impotence that has spread throughout the region for three decades, since the neoliberal project became hegemonic. The structural impasses – inequality, productive regression, technological backwardness, devastation of nature, institutions alienated from real life, and so many others – will remain unaddressed. The countries will be vassals of a declining power, condemned to the miseries of late capitalism and to a peripheral condition.

But Trump’s intimidation tactics and his desire to tighten the noose on colonization may, paradoxically, sound the wake-up call. In this scenario, the awareness that there is a risk of deeper subjugation leads to the identification of vulnerabilities. And the effort to remedy them triggers a national mobilization capable of reviving ideas that are currently dormant: such as national project , reconstruction , and political horizon .

In this movement, three objectives can be strategic: a) Digital Sovereignty; b) revision of the National Defense Policy; and c) foreign policy focused on building a post-Eurocentric order and partnerships with the Global South. These are challenging. They will require persistent and prolonged construction. However, they are clear, capable of mobilizing and generating positive secondary effects.

The fight for Digital Sovereignty is, of the three, the most crucial, urgent, and complex. But perhaps it is the one that can most unleash political and economic energies currently contained. The current scenario is contradictory. In some aspects, the dependence on the US is dramatic: Brazil finds itself surrendered to its big tech companies. A study conducted in 2025 by researchers Sérgio Amadeu and Jeff Xiong demonstrated that the country hosts almost all of the strategic data it generates on servers belonging to American corporations. This includes data from Brazilian universities, research and technology centers, the SUS (Unified Health System), IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the Federal Revenue Service, and the superior courts (including the STF and TSE), for example....>

<....The development of basic software is in the same subservient position – to the point, for example, that “ Google and Microsoft host the emails and data repositories (drive) of 154 Brazilian public universities.” Also foreign are the platforms used almost universally in the country for internet research (Google), personal communication via messaging (Whatsapp-Meta), social networks (Facebook and Instagram-Meta or TikTok-Bytedance), or for personal transportation, delivery, accommodation, one-off service contracts, and many others. All of them capture, process, distribute through algorithms, and monetize and commercialize both communication consciously generated by the population (a text or video post on a social network, for example) and data generated involuntarily (such as any form filled out online). Algorithmic programming, now reinforced by artificial intelligence, has enormous power to influence behavior – including electoral behavior. And the alignment of big tech companies with far-right policies has become blatant since Trump’s inauguration.

Conversely, the country has two enormous strengths in the same field: a large contingent of highly trained programmers and developers (who today, due to a lack of alternatives, work mainly for big tech companies ) and informed, creative social movements capable of formulating policy for the area. If the fight for digital sovereignty becomes a state priority, overcoming vulnerability could advance consistently and relatively quickly.

In 2025, hacktivist Uirá Porã outlined, in an interview with Outras Palavras , a possible roadmap: 1. Build, starting from universities, a Brazilian network of public data centers ; 2. Recover the two state-owned companies in the sector (Dataprev and Serpro), currently entangled in subservient partnerships with US big tech companies ; 3. Articulate, within these companies and regionally linked to university data centers , teams of developers willing to produce applications for municipalities, other public entities, companies, and civil society. In this design, Digital Sovereignty ceases to be merely a strategic objective of the State and begins to unfold into services to society, stimulating the mass training of qualified professionals and a space for the development of awareness and social reinvention.

* * *

A revision of the National Defense Policy is necessary to confront an even more glaring weakness. The very orientation of some of the Navy’s frigates in the oceans now depends… on Elon Musk’s Stalink. But not only that. Historian Manuel Domingos, who studies the Brazilian Armed Forces in depth, recalls in a recent text that the Brazilian Armed Forces have lived, since the time of Baron Rio Branco, with the fetish of dependence on technology purchased from Western powers. Defense is not understood as an organic action of Brazilian society – which could lead to autonomous technological development. Packages are acquired – the Swedish Gripen fighters or French submarines, for example – that subject the country to multiple dependencies.

In June 2024, for example, the US Department of Justice requested that Saab, the manufacturer of the Gripen fighter jets sold to Brazil, provide “clarifications” about the operation. The magazine Sociedade Militar warned at the time: “The move raises suspicions about possible interference aimed, in fact, at keeping Brazil in a state of dependence on the US (…) The Gripen, despite being a modern fighter jet, depends on a chain of international suppliers: the engine is American, the ejection system is British, and several other components come from different parts of the world. This means that if at any point the US or the UK decide to put the brakes on, for political or commercial reasons, these fighter jets would be grounded. And it’s not just theory – history has already shown this in several episodes…”

Freeing the country from such dependence, to prevent the Armed Forces’ own equipment from being at risk of being blocked, may be an understandable and politicized project. But, as in the case of Digital Sovereignty, it goes beyond the interests of the State. Manuel Domingos argues in his text that the National Defense Policy, published in May 2024, “turned to dust in the early hours of last Saturday,” when the US demonstrated what it is willing to do. But he recalls that a review could, in addition to technological autonomy, bring into debate other points equally important for a national project. Among them, guiding the Armed Forces towards their role of defending the territory (challenging the tendencies to turn them against “internal enemies”) and also considering, in the military field, a policy of integration of South America – including to have more strength against real threats…..>

<....The Trump threat, as we can see, may lead Brazil to reflect on itself. But in a time of global challenges – such as growing inequalities, the risks of environmental collapse, and the constant threats of war – isn’t it also necessary to rethink geopolitical alliances?

VI. Alliances

To confront the US, Latin America needs allies. China is stepping forward.

A third weakness becomes apparent when analyzing the conditions for Latin America and Brazil to confront the new threatening attitude of the US. Especially during Lula’s third term, foreign policy became timid, conventional, and incapable of envisioning partnerships and collaborations outside the Eurocentric order.

Gone are the days of Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and his bold and surprising initiatives – his central role in the creation of BRICS, the organization of a summit between South America and Arab countries (which startled Washington), or the attempt (with Turkey) to broker a peace agreement between the United States and Iran (sabotaged by Hillary Clinton). Under Mauro Vieira, what prevails in Itamaraty is what economist Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. , with biting irony, called the “permanent visa group in the US.” These are the diplomats who fear (even since the Trump administration) any gesture that might upset the US – especially strategic rapprochements with BRICS and China.

Although the Chinese have long been Brazil’s main trading partners, the country has established a relationship with them that reproduces its colonial past and its productive regression. It exports primary products – especially soybeans and iron ore. It imports technological goods and services. Two proposals from Beijing, launched in recent months – the Global Governance Initiative , from September 2025, and the Policy Document for Latin America , from December – suggest that the bilateral agenda could be very different.

The first proposal outlines five seemingly generic propositions that directly clash with Trump’s “imperial right to intervention.” Three stand out: a) “egalitarian sovereignty” (“all countries, regardless of size, strength, or wealth, will have their sovereignty and dignity respected, their internal affairs free from external interference, and the right to independently choose their social system and level of development”), b) respect for international law and UN bodies; c) a “people-centered approach” (“the well-being of populations is the ultimate purpose of global governance”). The second, longer and more detailed proposal formulates specific collaboration proposals, encompassing, among others, areas and themes relevant to Brazil: (re)industrialization, nature preservation, clean energy, science and technology (including the internet and AI), military exchange, and others.

Neither document received significant attention in the Brazilian mainstream media. Both deserve careful examination. It’s not about proposing an “alignment with China,” as those opposed to the partnership sometimes pejoratively proclaim. Rather, it’s about recognizing that while Washington clearly announces an imperialist and aggressive stance, there is a gesture of a different nature. This gesture comes from a country in the Global South that suffered a “century of humiliation” at the hands of Eurocentric powers – but recovered through a popular revolution, built a heterodox socialism, became the world’s largest economy and factory, and in recent years, a hub for high-tech development.

There are objective reasons to believe that the gesture is in good faith. Not only because China insistently affirms its preference for the Global South, but also because, in a certain sense, it needs to do so. The polarization that marked the Cold War is rearming itself again. Trump sees Beijing as his number one target. Europe bows to the US, even though it is despised. Trade and ideological barriers against China are being erected on both sides of the North Atlantic. The choice for the old “third world” is, above all, pragmatic.

Under what conditions could such a partnership occur? In the Brazilian case, this article explores possibilities. These involve the Amazon rainforest, the internet, overcoming the dollar’s weakness, industry, and defense, among other points. But it is, in essence, an invitation to include this topic on the country’s agenda for debate. Since World War II, alliances with Washington have been seen in Brazil as natural and almost unavoidable. Is there any harm in considering other paths, now that the Donroe Doctrine weighs heavily on us? Will we adopt the same stance as the “permanent visa crowd”?>

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