Tag: donald trump

Trump threatens to use US military to seize Greenland as White House issues extraordinary statement revealing plans to take Danish territory

The Trump administration has threatened to use the US military to seize Greenland in an extraordinary new statement escalating tensions with NATO ally Denmark.

Donald Trump and his top advisers are exploring plans including purchasing the Danish territory or taking charge of its defense, a senior administration official said.

The White House added menacingly that ‘utilizing the US military is always an option’ and warned that the issue is ‘not going away’ despite the protests of NATO leaders.

The statement will dismay America’s NATO allies who have rallied around Denmark in recent days as Trump has renewed his threats to invade Greenland following the successful capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. 

Trump has argued the US needs to control the island, which is more than three times the size of Texas, to ensure NATO security against rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: ‘President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland ‌is a national security priority ‌of the United States, and it’s vital ​to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region.

‘The ‍president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important ‌foreign policy goal, ⁠and of course, utilizing the ‌US military is ‍always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.’ 

Trump hinted on Sunday that a decision on Greenland may come ‘in about two months,’ once the situation in Venezuela has stabilized. 

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Venezuela issues 90-day order to ARREST anyone backing US attack as armed motorcycle gangs hunt down Trump supporters in Caracas

Gangs of armed men on motorcycles are patrolling the streets of Caracas, looking for supporters of Donald Trump and his military operation in Venezuela with the support of at least one key government official. 

The Colectivos are a group of paramilitary militias that still support deposed leader Nicolas Maduro and have been searching vehicles at checkpoints. 

The bikers, many of them masked and armed with Kalashnikovs, have searched phones and cars looking for evidence of people backing Trump’s action in Caracas as an unofficial tool of the state. 

In the wake of Maduro’s arrest, a 90-day state of emergency put in place by the Venezuelan government orders police to ‘immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States.’

They have already arrested 14 journalists, 11 of whom come from out of the country, while others remain missing, The Telegraph reported. 

Many of the members of Colectivos have been seen posing with Maduro’s Interior, Justice and Peace Minister Diosdado Cabello, who still clings tight to the notion that Maduro is the nation’s lawful president. 

‘Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations,’ Cabello said in a statement through the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

A video of Cabello – who has a bounty of $50million on his head in the US for drug trafficking – with the militia members that has circulated on social media sees them chanting a slogan that translates to: ‘Always loyal, never traitors.’

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Trump Says He Wants a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget

President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday that he wants a $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027, a 50% increase from his $1 trillion budget for 2026.

“After long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives, I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars,” the president said.

He added that $1.5 trillion would enable the US to build a “dream military” and claimed it would be possible thanks to his tariff policy.

“If it weren’t for the tremendous numbers being produced by Tariffs from other Countries, many of which, in the past, have ‘ripped off’ the United States at levels never seen before, I would stay at the $1 Trillion Dollar number but, because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring, amounts being generated, that would have been unthinkable in the past … we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar,” Trump wrote.

He also claimed that tariff revenue would also allow him to “pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”

When he first came into office in 2025, Trump suggested he could substantially cut military spending, but then went on to request the first-ever $1 trillion US military budget. He got it by combining the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress finalized at $901 billion, with a supplemental military spending bill worth about $150 billion that was included in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passed earlier in 2025.

While 2026 marks the first time the US had an official military budget over $1 trillion, the true cost of annual US military and national security spending has exceeded $1 trillion for many years, when taking into account factors such as the budgets for the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, and the national security share of the interest accrued on the US debt.

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Trump to Ban ‘Large Institutional Investors’ from Buying Up U.S. Homes

President Donald Trump is moving to ban “large institutional investors” from buying up United States homes meant for Americans, a move that is likely to be welcomed with bipartisan support.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he would be taking action to prevent corporations from buying single-family American homes — a growing trend that researchers have said has been a drag for first-time homebuyers, neighborhoods, and quality of life.

Trump said Congress ought to codify the ban into law so that a new administration cannot open the door for investors to buy single-family homes in the future.

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing,” Trump wrote in the post, “but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans.”

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Editorial Boards Cheer Trump Doctrine in Venezuela

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain allegedly quipped. On January 3, 1990, Panamanian Commander Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces, who carried him off to face drug charges. Thirty-six years to the day later, US forces swooped into Venezuela, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, following decades of hostility between the oil-rich socialist country and the United States. The pretext offered: Maduro had to be taken to the US to face drug charges.

The coincidence is a reminder that the US has a long history of both covert and military intervention in Latin America: President Donald Trump, as extreme as he might be, isn’t an outlier among American presidents in this regard. And despite the right’s attempt to paint Trump as some sort of peacenik (Compact, 4/7/23; X, 10/14/25), he is no less an imperialist than his predecessors.

And that’s precisely why many of the nation’s leading editorial pages are hailing Maduro’s capture.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board (1/3/26) called the abductions “an act of hemispheric hygiene,” a dehumanizing comparison of Venezuela’s leaders to germs needing to be cleansed.

For the Journal, the abductions were justified because they weren’t just a blow to Venezuela, but to the rest of America’s official enemies. “The dictator was also part of the axis of US adversaries that includes Russia, China, Cuba and Iran,” it said. It called Maduro’s “capture…a demonstration of Mr. Trump’s declaration to keep America’s enemies from spreading chaos in the Western Hemisphere.” It amplified Trump’s own rhetoric of adding on to the Roosevelt Corollary, saying “It’s the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine”—a nod to the long-standing imperial notion that the US more or less owns the Western Hemisphere.

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Trump: Venezuela to Turn over 30-50 Million Barrels of Oil to U.S.

President Donald Trump announced that the “interim authorities” in charge of Venezuela would be giving between 30 and 50 million “Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil” to the United States.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump explained that the oil would “be sold at its Market Price,” and that Trump would ensure the money from the sales would be “used to benefit the people of Venezuela” and the U.S.

“I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” Trump said. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

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Trump Rules Out Elections in Venezuela, Anticipates Sending Troops to Occupy Venezuela

President Donald Trump said the US had no plans to hold elections in Venezuela. He said elections are currently impossible, and the country must first be helped by the US. 

“We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” Trump said about the possibility of a vote in the next month. “No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health.”

The President explained that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and White House adviser Stephen Miller would be responsible for running Venezuela. 

While Trump is laying out a massive nation-building project, he insisted that the US was not at war with Venezuela. “No, we’re not [at war],” Trump said. “We’re at war with people that sell drugs. We’re at war with people that empty their prisons into our country and empty their drug addicts and empty their mental institutions into our country.”

Since returning to office, Trump has ordered extensive sanctions on Venezuela, the seizure of two oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, strikes on Caracas, and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, all acts of war. 

The President went on to say that he is anticipating sending US troops to occupy Venezuela and enforce his will on the country. The US continues to conduct surveillance flights near Venezuela. 

Trump believes the rebuilding of Venezuela will take about 18 months and come at a massive cost to US energy firms. “It’ll be a lot of money.” The President continued,  “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

Venezuela’s heavily contaminated crude oil is difficult to reach and expensive to refine. Oil prices need to exceed $100 per barrel to make for companies to see profits. Crude oil is currently under $58 per barrel. 

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New reports indicate that the US is considering “some intervention” in the ongoing Iran protests

Over the past several weeks, political dynamics in the Middle East and beyond have taken a dramatic turn, raising the possibility that the United States may move from diplomatic pressure to more direct involvement in Iran.

Reporting from The Jerusalem Post indicates that U.S. policymakers are now actively weighing forms of intervention aimed at supporting the growing protest movement inside the Islamic Republic — a development that reflects a notable shift in strategic thinking in both Washington and Jerusalem.

According to the report, this reassessment is closely linked to recent U.S. action in Venezuela. The sudden removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro reportedly forced Israeli and American officials to reconsider long-held assumptions about what might be achievable in Iran.

“Until the intervention by U.S. President Donald Trump in Caracas, most Israeli officials did not view the protests against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as necessarily approaching the volume necessary to achieve regime change,” the article states.

It further notes that the protests were largely seen by both Israel and the United States as “insufficient to topple Khamenei” without external assistance (The Jerusalem Post).

The success of the U.S. operation in Venezuela appears to have altered that outlook. Sources cited in the report suggest that American officials are exploring limited, targeted options designed to strengthen Iranian protestors rather than engage in a full-scale military invasion.

At the same time, Israeli officials are reportedly analyzing whether the precedent set by Venezuela could justify increased coordinated pressure against Tehran.

Intelligence operations have also taken center stage in this evolving situation.

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Senate confirms journalist Sara Carter as new Trump drug czar

he Senate confirmed journalist Sara Carter in a party-line vote Tuesday as the United States’ new “drug czar,” who will help with the administration’s efforts to curb the fentanyl crisis in the country.

President Donald Trump nominated Carter, an investigative journalist who has covered the fentanyl crisis and border security, for the post last year. She will officially serve as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Carter was confirmed in a 52-48 split. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul voted against the confirmation. 

The journalist has received multiple national awards for her coverage of national security issues, including the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for her coverage of the brutality of the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartel wars along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“My work in the frontlines wasn’t just about telling stories, it was about mapping the enemy,” Carter told senators in September, according to Politico. “I have seen these predatory criminal empires operate with impunity in our hemisphere. That impunity ends now. This is not just a public health crisis, it’s a chemical war being waged against the American people.”

Carter will now play a critical role in overseeing federal policy and funding related to drug trafficking, substance use prevention, treatment and recovery. 

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Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

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