The vice-president went ballistic against the media and the left - a version of Trump with even more menaceIt was James David Vance's pitch to his boss: don't forget me!The vice-president was nowhere to be seen last weekend when US special forces swept into Venezuela and snatched its leader, Nicolas Maduro. Instead Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and a potential rival to Vance in the 2028 presidential election, grabbed all the Maga glory. Continue reading...
Donald Trump's Venezuela policy confirms he has no time for rules or process. America's allies must find new ways to guarantee their own interestsOccasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. And sometimes, as the former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in the New Statesman, history unfolds in a series of flashes and bangs". In Caracas last weekend, Donald Trump's forces did this in spectacular style. In the process, the US brushed aside more of what remains of the so-called rules-based order with which it tried to shape the west after 1945.The capture of Venezuela's former president Nicolas Maduro has precedents in US policy. But discerning a wider new pattern from the kidnapping is not easy, especially at this early stage. As our columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has argued this week, the abduction can be seen as a assertion of American power, but also as little more than a chaotic asset grab.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
by Rory Carroll, Tiago Rogero and agencies on (#72NWF)
US president says Delcy Rodriguez's interim administration is doing everything that we feel is necessary'The US is receiving full cooperation from Venezuela's regime and will control the country and its vast oil reserves for years, Donald Trump has claimed.Caracas was giving Washington everything that we feel is necessary" and the US would remain a political overlord there for an indefinite period, the US president said. Continue reading...
Lloyd's List analysis suggests 40 suspicious vessels joined Russian registry last year, with 17 reflagged last monthForty ships accused of belonging to a large shadow fleet" moving sanctioned oil for Venezuela and others were reflagged to Russia last year in an apparent attempt to gain Kremlin protection from American seizure.Analysis by the shipping intelligence publication Lloyd's List suggests that of those, at least 17 suspicious vessels joined the Russian registry over the past month, compared with 15 ships in the previous five months of 2025. Continue reading...
Police close murder case of Alys Eberhardt after confession from Richard Cottingham, known as the Torso Killer'Richard Cottingham, a US serial killer widely known as the Torso Killer", has confessed to the 1965 killing of an 18-year-old woman in New Jersey.On Tuesday, New Jersey police announced the closure of the murder case of Alys Eberhardt after Cottingham, 79, admitted to killing her nearly six decades ago. Eberhardt, then a nursing student, was found brutally beaten and dead in her family home in Fair Lawn. Continue reading...
An almost admiring feeling pervaded the early coverage - and not just among right-leaning outletsIf you believe the early public opinion polls, Americans are uncertain about last weekend's raid on Venezuela and the seizure of leader Nicolas Maduro.But many in the media seem to be trying to move that wavering needle to approval.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...
Jessica Plichta faces misdemeanor charges, which locals say is a tactic of Grand Rapids, Michigan, police to suppress protestsJessica Plichta was arrested on 3 January after a live interview with a local news station about a Grand Rapids, Michigan, protest against the Trump administration's seizure of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's president, in an attack with a reported death toll of 100. The clip went immediately viral, racking up millions of views across social media. While the headlines focused on Plichta's age (22) and that she's a preschool teacher, Plichta believes the reason for her arrest - seemingly the only one among roughly 200 protesters - went beyond the day's events.Plichta, who recently co-founded local group Grand Rapids Opponents of War, which helped organize Saturday's protest, had visited the Venezuelan capital of Caracas just last month, amid the Trump administration's blockade. She was a part of a delegation to the International People's Assembly for Sovereignty and Peace of Our Americas. Activists from dozens of groups planned to attend. But after Trump ordered that Venezuelan airspace be closed in its entirety" on 29 November, many canceled their trips. Continue reading...
Democrat sets stage for what many view as audition for future White House runJosh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor once considered a frontrunner to be Kamala Harris's running mate, announced he will seek a second term in office, setting the stage for what many Democrats view as an audition for a future White House run.The 52-year-old Democrat, who has governed the crucial swing state since January 2023, made the announcement Thursday with planned events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Continue reading...
In New York, it's progressives versus the party machine - and the city's queen of tabloids offers some unexpected insightIf, like me, you're a faithful reader of the New York Post, the election of Zohran Mamdani as the new mayor of Gotham was the best thing to happen to my native city - and to journalism - in a very long time. All through the run up to Zoh's" remarkable victory, the queen of tabloids outdid itself in hysterical brilliance - to such an extent that I and apparently tens of thousands of other New Yorkers were left excitedly panting for more, unable to share in the mourning that overtook rightwing commentators and pro-Trump operatives all across the land. Moreover, whether or not you voted for the Ugandan-born Muslim progressive/socialist, his improbable triumph furnished a great political education for anyone who bothered to pay attention, even if you weren't a Post reader. Now, with Mamdani inaugurated and the unofficial municipal host of Nicolas Maduro, the deposed Venezuelan president, and his wife - jailed in Brooklyn and arraigned in federal court just a stone's throw from city hall in Manhattan - Donald Trump's newspaper mouthpiece is also an excellent way to make sense of the growing fissure inside the Democratic party about everything Mamdani represents.I didn't say that the Post's political reporting during the final month of the campaign was worth reading because it was accurate. Beginning with Miranda Devine's 8 October column, whose headline proclaimed The Dems are letting Antifa take over their cities", the paper's leading lights made analytical hash of what was really going on inside the Democratic party. Portland and Chicago are emerging as the epicenter of anti-Trump resistance," she warned. [Governor JB Pritzker] and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are endangering the lives of ICE and Border Patrol personnel," apparently taking their cue from the antifa militants" of the first Trump term who terrorized" the country during the riots that followed the killing of George Floyd. It will be a relief," wrote Devine, to find out who has been funding these violent groups that appear for all the world to be Dem street militia. How else to explain years of Democrats gaslighting us and Democrat governors and mayors covering for Antifa." Continue reading...
In 1934 and 1978, Fifa's big event was given over to authoritarian aims. There's no more doubt that 2026 will be the sameBy 1934, it was entirely evident what Benito Mussolini was up to. Italy's dictator had already consolidated power, colonized Libya and annexed the city of Rijeka. He nevertheless got to stage the second-ever World Cup, managing it with a heavy hand and even supplanting the Jules Rimet trophy with a far larger one. Hosting and winning that World Cup didn't sate his expansionist appetites. By the end of decade, Mussolini would take Ethiopia, annex Albania and back Francisco Franco in the Spanish civil war.It was equally well established in 1978 in Argentina that General Jorge Rafael Videla's military junta, which had taken over two years earlier, was maintaining its grip on power through systematic detention, torture and murder. Still, protestations from other nations were ignored and the World Cup kicked off.Leander Schaerlaeckens' book on the United States men's national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on May 12. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University. Continue reading...
An agent shot a woman in Minneapolis, causing vast and needless grief. Our country is diseased - but that is not the only truthA woman in Minneapolis has died as her neighbors fought Donald Trump's mass deportation operation. On Wednesday morning, a group of local civilian protesters gathered around a site where several ICE agents were attempting to abduct migrants. The agents were part of a surge of roughly 2,000 deportation officers who have been sent to Minneapolis as part of Trump's effort to persecute the Somali community there. In a disturbing incident caught on video by multiple onlookers, a woman driving in an SUV covered in bumper stickers blocked traffic on the residential road - perhaps as part of an effort to keep ICE vehicles from passing. In the videos, an ICE agent approaches the SUV, yelling: Get out of the car. Get out of the fucking car." He stands at the driver's side, with his feet clear of the vehicle, and reaches into where the woman is driving. She begins to drive away, and an officer fires three shots, the last from behind the vehicle as the car pulls away from him. The SUV then crashes into a parked vehicle as onlookers scream in distress. You did a murder, for what?" one of the protesters calls out to the agents.The driver, a US citizen who was described by Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar as a legal observer", was declared dead. She died less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. Her name was Renee Nicole Good, and she was 37.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Crowds gathered in Minneapolis on Wednesday to protest and hold a vigil for a woman killed during the Trump administration's latest immigration crackdown.The Minneapolis motorist was shot during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in the city in what federal officials claimed was an act of self-defence by an officer, but which the city's mayor described as 'reckless' and unnecessary
President Gustavo Petro announced on Wednesday that he had agreed to meet Donald Trump after calling for Colombians to take to the streets in a 'day of national mobilisation' against the US president's military threats. Anger mounted in Colombia after the US intervention in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro last week. On Sunday, when asked if there would be a US operation in Colombia, Trump replied: 'Sounds good to me. You know why? Because they kill a lot of people.'
Trump's actions at home tell a different story - and they parallel many of Maduro's own repressive movesWhatever else the US attack on Venezuela is ostensibly about - oil, drugs, communism - it's not about the freedom of the Venezuelan people.If Trump cared about that, he would not have lifted the temporary protective status of the roughly 600,000 Venezuelan refugees in the US, the very people fleeing the tyranny and economic instability he is now supposedly liberating them from.Judith Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism Continue reading...
Before shooting of Renee Nicole Good, 37, agents had been grabbing people at stores, gyms, homes and schoolsIn the days before a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration said it was launching what would be the agency's largest operation to date" in the Twin Cities.Since early December, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations - many of them masked and brandishing rifles - have grabbed people at hardware stores and gyms, or outside homes and schools around the cities. They have violently tackled undocumented immigrants as well as US citizens, including advocates and protestors. Continue reading...
Health department's decision to freeze money for childcare and for families in need could lead to disaster, experts sayThe Trump administration's sudden decision to freeze $10bn worth of federal funding for childcare and needy families has not only already thrown the US childcare system into mass confusion, but could also lead to disaster for hundreds of thousands of families within weeks, experts say.The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced late on Tuesday it would block California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York from drawing down money from three major social safety programs over serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs". In order to access the funding, the Democratic-run states must provide the Trump administration with extensive documentation to allay the fears of fraud. Continue reading...
In the early fray of foreign interventions, evidence is largely circumstantial. But here the circumstances tell a powerful storyAs late as Saturday afternoon, fires continued to smolder in parts of Caracas. Residents throughout the city, stunned and anxious, filled grocery stores and gas stations, stocking up before a future unknown. Everywhere the question hung in the air like the smoke still clouding Venezuela's capital: what next?After months of military buildup, deadly strikes at sea and a looming ground war, the United States made good on its threats to attack Venezuela in a dramatic overnight raid that ended with Nicolas Maduro in a New York City jail cell. Yet 48 hours later, little else appeared different in Caracas: Maduro's inner circle remained in place; state institutions remained in their control; streets were calm, if tense, while authorities called on people to return to their daily lives. In other words: move along, nothing to see here.Alejandro Velasco is an associate professor of history at New York University Continue reading...
Given his rise during the ego joyride of the 1980s, it's no shock that Trump's foreign policy is to emulate that decade's belligerent cinemaThe box office barnstormer of 2026 arrived early this year. A sleazy banana-republic dictator flooding the American streets with blow. The over-the-border Delta Force extraction squad sent to pluck this schmo out of his impregnable fortress. The bronzed tough-talker who's firing an RPG up the tailpipe of the international rules-based order - but who gets the job done. Call it: Caracas Thunder.Sounds like a bit of a throwback, you might be thinking. But, judging by his press conference after the US military's abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump seemed to have finally achieved his dream of directing his own 80s action movie. Continue reading...
The postseason consistently serves up enthralling football. But there are ways to make it even more compellingNo legitimate Super Bowl champion should have a losing record in the regular season. The Panthers, crowned NFC South champions at 8-9, are not an outlier. Since 2010, five teams with losing records have made the postseason. The 2022 Bucs were the first team to make the dance with a losing record since the league instituted a 17-game schedule. This season, the NFC South has done it again. Continue reading...
by All images by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images on (#72P08)
Images from the Eaton fire, which began on the evening of 7 January in the Altadena community of Los Angeles - and what remains a year later. The fire was one of several that tore through the county in a disaster that killed at least 31 people
A federal enforcement operation ended with a woman dead and the facts contested. The NBA cannot treat state violence in a residential neighborhood as background noiseThe SUV sat motionless against a tree on a south Minneapolis street, its engine quiet, angled as if it had simply run out of gas. Except the windshield bore a small shattered star, delicate and sharp, like a snowflake pressed into glass. Cold Minnesota air leaked through the fracture, settling over the still body inside. The car became a sealed room, a thin shell holding death in place, surrounded by the stuffed animals of the woman's children.In the street, witnesses screamed. Not in words, but in sounds that come before language, as reality breaks faster than thought. Continue reading...
Dozens of people were attending a funeral inside the church as the shooting happened, police saidTwo people were killed and several injured in a shooting outside a church in Salt Lake City, Utah police said on Wednesday.The shooting took place in the parking lot of a meetinghouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church. Continue reading...
The US president's grotesque theatrics on the world stage are an opportunistic distraction from his falling domestic ratingsOf all the commandments for living under Donald Trump, the first is always this: don't believe him. Nothing he says can be taken at face value; everything should be fed into a polygraph. Those of scrupulous courtesy can wrap it up in red ribbon, or uncork that aphorism about how the man must be taken seriously but never literally. All the same, scratch a Trump promise and underneath will glint a pretext. Scrutinise his grand plans and you find only shabby tactics.The Manhattan Democrat turns into a Florida-dwelling Republican; the troll who demanded Barack Obama's birth certificate will hem and haw over releasing the Epstein files. From real-estate deals to Trump University, all that this guy swears is solid gold soon settles into so much bullshit.Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The president has vowed to kill off woke' in his second term in office, and the venerable cultural institution a few blocks from the White House is in his sightsOn 30 May last year, Kim Sajet was working in her office in the grandly porticoed National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. The gallery is one of the most important branches of the Smithsonian Institution, the complex of national museums that, for almost 200 years, has told the story of the nation. The director's suite, large enough to host a small party, has a grandeur befitting the museum's role as the keeper of portraits of the United States' most significant historical figures. Sajet was working beneath the gaze of artworks from the collection, including a striking 1952 painting of Mary Mills, a military-uniformed, African American nurse, and a bronze head of jazz and blues singer Ethel Waters.It seemed like an ordinary Friday. Until, that is, an anxious colleague came in to tell Sajet that the president of the United States had personally denounced her on social media. Upon the request and recommendation of many people I am herby [sic] terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery," Donald Trump had posted on Truth Social. According to the post, Sajet was a highly partisan person" and a strong supporter" of diversity and inclusion programmes, which by an executive order on his inauguration day, 20 January, he had eradicated from federal agencies. Her replacement will be named shortly," continued the message. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Continue reading...
Operations mark latest demonstration of brazen US military power and reach - key US politics stories from 7 January 2026US European Command said on Wednesday that it had boarded the Marinera, a Russian-flagged oil tanker, over alleged sanctions violations, bringing to an end a dramatic two-week pursuit that began in the Caribbean and concluded in the Atlantic.Separately on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard announced it had intercepted another dark-fleet tanker that is under sanctions, the M Sophia, in a pre-dawn operation in the Caribbean. Continue reading...
Pratt, who lost home in Palisades fire and has been vocal critic of city leaders, says system is fundamentally broken'Reality television personality Spencer Pratt is running to be the next mayor of Los Angeles.Pratt announced his campaign on Wednesday at a rally to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Palisades fire. Continue reading...
Networks brought on former federal and police officials, with varying reactions and responses to Minneapolis killingCable news networks sprung into action on Wednesday to cover the breaking news of a woman killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, rushing correspondents to the scene and bringing on former government officials and legal analysts to offer commentary.The three main cable networks' on-screen graphics framed the incident slightly differently. Fox News referred to it as a Deadly ICE-involved Shooting", while CNN said more plainly: ICE Officer Kills Woman in Minneapolis." Continue reading...
Democrats Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer decried the forcible capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, while Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth defended the military operation. Speaking on Wednesday after briefing US senators on the Trump administration's plan for the Latin American country, Rubio said the US is about to execute on a deal to take all the oil that is stuck in Venezuela".
President says he wants to raise military budget to $1.5tn and accuses US defense companies of delivery failuresDonald Trump has claimed he plans to crack down on executive compensation and shareholder payouts at military defense contractors, as his administration looks to dramatically ramp up spending on the armed forces.In a series of posts on social media, the US president said he wants to increase the military budget to $1.5tn - and complained that defense giants had been failing to swiftly deliver vital" equipment to the US and its allies across the world. Continue reading...
Footage supplied to the Guardian appears to capture the moment a federal immigration agent shoots and kills the female driver of a dark red SUV in Minneapolis on Wednesday. The incident occurred during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey disputed federal officials' account of the shooting, and demanded ICE agents leave the city.
Newspaper's closure follows two decades of financial losses totaling over $350m and legal ruling favoring its unionThe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has announced it will cease operations, with its final edition scheduled for 3 May.The decision to shutter the newspaper - with its origins dating back to 1786 - was disclosed on Wednesday by Block Communications, the newspaper's parent company based in Toledo, Ohio. Continue reading...
Footage posted by US Southern Command and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, appears to show the US military intercepting a Venezuela-linked tanker in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday. It was released on the same day US forces also intercepted and seized the Russian-flagged Marinera in the north Atlantic
by Lucy Hough, Pjotr Sauer Bryony Moore Natalie Gegan on (#72NJD)
The US has dramatically seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker between the UK and Iceland, with the support of the UK government. The operation comes after US attacks on Venezuela, the abduction of Nicolas Maduro, and threats against Greenland.Lucy Hough speaks to the Russian affairs correspondent Pjotr Sauer Continue reading...
Median sale price was at $410,800 last year, according to the Census Bureau, even as Trump campaigned on affordabilityDonald Trump said his administration was moving to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes in a bid to reduce home prices.In a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, the US president said he will be asking Congress to codify the measure and will be discussing additional housing and affordability proposals in a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum. Continue reading...
Top Trump officials briefed 100 US senators on weekend raid while defending military operation and US presidentTop officials from the Trump administration arrived on Capitol Hill this morning to defend one of the most audacious military operations in recent US history: the forcible capture of a sitting head of state from his own capital.Secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, attorney general Pam Bondi, CIA director John Ratcliffe and Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, briefed all 100 US senators on Operation Absolute Resolve, the lightning raid that plucked the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, from his Caracas residence and deposited him in a New York City jail cell. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Letter decries stunning abdication of basic responsibilities' and demands to know how many officers divertedThe Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.Ruben Gallego of Arizona, along with 28 other Democratic senators and one independent, wrote to the president, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday demanding that federal officials provide a full accounting" of officers who have been redirected to immigration enforcement and a list of all investigations affected by the reassignments. Continue reading...
US to remove some sanctions to allow it to keep selling country's supplies after laying claim to blockaded crudeBusiness live - latest updatesThe US plans to control Venezuela's oil sales indefinitely" after laying claim to 50m barrels of blockaded crude and seizing a Russian oil tanker linked to the South American country.The White House already plans to sell up to $3bn (2.2bn) worth of Venezuelan crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities into the oversupplied global market after the American military's capture of Nicolas Maduro. Continue reading...
By the expansionist logic of the president and his advisers, the US is entitled to annex just about anywhereWe do need Greenland, absolutely," Donald Trump told the Atlantic on 5 January, with the hand-wavy follow-up, We need it for defence." His adviser Stephen Miller was more aggressive still in an interview with CNN, saying: The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? ... The US is the power of Nato ... obviously Greenland should be part of the United States." His wife, Katie Miller, posted an image on X of a map of the country papered over with the US flag, with the caption soon". It's hard to orientate sensibly towards things that happen on X these days: if she had posted a Grok-generated image of Greenland in a bikini, would that be more or less concerning?Still, we're right to be concerned. There is no comfort to be had from old-era ideas such as: Maybe they're just sabre-rattling about Greenland to distract from the matter of Venezuela", or surely the foundational principles of Nato, a defensive alliance, will prevent the US from any act of aggression towards its own allies?"Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
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