SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
War & Peace
US Oil Piracy Continues as Fifth Tanker Tied to Venezuela Seized
The US has purloined over $300 million of oil in a month while enforcing a blockade, which UN experts say has "seriously undermined the human rights of the Venezuelan people."
Jan 09, 2026
As President Donald Trump geared up for a meeting with fossil fuel executives about plans for them to tap into the "tremendous wealth" of Venezuela's vast oil supply, the US military seized another oil tanker in the Caribbean off the coast of Trinidad on Friday morning.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted unclassified footage from US Southern Command of explosives being deployed and soldiers boarding the vessel Olina on social media.
"As another 'ghost fleet' tanker ship suspected of carrying embargoed oil, this vessel had departed Venezuela attempting to evade US forces," she said. "This is owning the sea."
Olina, which was reportedly carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude, is at least the fifth tanker seized by the military in recent weeks and the third in the last three days after the Trump administration imposed a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers leaving Venezuela in December, a move that has been credited with hastening the country's economic collapse.
Earlier this week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US plans to manage Venezuela's oil sales and revenues indefinitely following its illegal operation last weekend to topple and abduct President Nicolás Maduro.
According to the ship-tracking database TankerTrackers.com, the US has “seized five tankers and 6.15 million barrels in the span of a month, with the oil valued at over $300 million."
The US has described Olina and other ships it has seized as part of a "shadow fleet" that uses deceptive tactics—including flying false flags—to secretively transport oil for sanctioned countries, including Venezuela, Russia, and Iran.
The US has justified its blockade of Venezuela's oil, as well as the overthrow of Maduro generally, based on the claim that its government is part of an alleged foreign terrorist organization known as the "Cartel de los Soles."
In late December, a group of United Nations experts condemned the blockade and denounced this justification, stating that the alleged cartel does not exist. The US Department of Justice later acknowledged that the cartel was not an actual organization in its indictment of Maduro this week. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to US narco-terrorism charges.
The group of international experts, which included Ben Saul, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, and Gina Romero, the special rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly, described the blockade as "violating fundamental rules of international law."
“There is no right to enforce unilateral sanctions through an armed blockade,” the experts said, citing the United Nations Charter, which describes blockades without UN Security Council approval as illegal acts of aggression.
They added that “there are serious concerns that the sanctions are unlawful, disproportionate, and punitive under international law, and that they have seriously undermined the human rights of the Venezuelan people."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Vows to 'Do Something' With Greenland 'Whether They Like It or Not'
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up threats against Europe in the wake of its invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
Jan 09, 2026
President Donald Trump finished up a busy week by once again leveling threats against longtime allies over their refusal to hand Greenland over to US control.
While taking questions from reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump was asked about a reported plan to win over Greenlanders on joining the US by giving them annual $10,000 payments.
"I'm not talking about money for Greenland yet," the president replied. "I might talk about that, but right now we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not."
Trump: "We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not because if we don't, Russia or China will take over Greenland. If we don't do it the easy way we're gonna do it the hard way." pic.twitter.com/Pb29UqBzCC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2026
Trump then explained his purported rationale for making Greenland a US territory.
"If we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland," he said. "And we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor."
Neither Russia nor China have shown any indication that they want to take over Greenland, which is currently a self-governed Danish territory. Because Denmark is a founding member of NATO, an attack on its territory from Russia or China would trigger a counterattack by all other NATO members, theoretically including the US.
Trump then informed the press that he would "like to make a deal the easy way" to acquire Greenland, before adding that "if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way."
The president then claimed that he was a "fan of Denmark," even though seconds ago he hinted at using military force to seize their territory.
"The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land," Trump said. "I'm sure we had lots of boats go there also."
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up threats against Europe in the wake of its invasion of Venezuela and the US abduction of President Nicolás Maduro last week.
Top Trump aide Stephen Miller on Monday refused to rule out using the military to take Greenland, telling CNN host Jake Tapper that "we live in a world... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'I Don't Need International Law,' Trump Says, Adding That His 'Power' Is Limited Only By His 'Morality'
“This is the mind of a fascist,” said a former official of the first Trump administration.
Jan 09, 2026
As he uses the military to extort Venezuela and threatens to wage war against half a dozen other nations, President Donald Trump stated plainly this week that there are no restraints on his power to use force to dominate and subjugate any country on the planet besides his own will.
Asked by the New York Times whether there were any limits on his ability to use military force in his ambitions toward "American supremacy," and a return to 19th-century imperial conquest, he told the paper, which published excerpts from the interview Thursday: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro last weekend, his floating of military force to annex Greenland this week, and his repeated threats to bomb Iran in recent days have all been described as blatant affronts to international law and what remains of the “rules-based” global order.
The president told the Times, “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.” He seemed to backpedal momentarily when pressed about whether his administration needed to follow international law, saying, "I do." But the Times reports that the president "made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States."
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” Trump said.
If statements by other top officials are any guide, the administration's "definition" of international law is more akin to the law of the jungle than anything to do with treaties or UN Security Council resolutions.
In an interview earlier this week, senior adviser Stephen Miller, reportedly one of the architects of Trump's campaign of extrajudicial boat bombings in the Caribbean, laid out a view of the president's power that amounts to little more than "might makes right."
Speaking of Trump's supposed unquestioned right to use military force against Greenland and Venezuela, Miller told CNN anchor Jake Tapper: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
Miller added that “the future of the free world depends on America to be able to assert ourselves and our interests without an apology.”
The United Nations Charter expressly forbids "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
Yet in recent days, Trump has also threatened to carry out strikes against Colombia and Mexico, while his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, suggested a similar operation to the one that deposed Maduro could soon be carried out against Cuba's socialist government, which US presidents have sought to topple for nearly seven decades.
In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Trump stated that the US would "start now hitting land" in Mexico as part of operations against drug cartels. The nation's president, Claudia Sheinbaum—who has overseen a dramatic fall in cartel violence since she took office in 2024—has said that such strikes would violate Mexico's status as an "independent and sovereign country."
To Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Trump’s assertion of limitless authority sounded like “the dangerous words of a would-be dictator.”
"Trump says he is constrained not by the law but only by his 'own morality,'" Roth said. "Since he values self-aggrandizement above all else, he is describing an unbridled presidency guided only by his ego and whims."
In recent days, the White House has sought to punish those who suggest that members of the US military should not follow illegal orders given by the president.
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that he would seek to strip retirement pay from Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), a retired Navy captain who last year spoke in a video reminding active duty soldiers that their foremost duty is to the law rather than the president. Trump has referred to these comments as "seditious behavior" and called for Kelly and other members of Congress who took part in the video to be executed.
The White House has repeatedly asserted that because Trump is the commander-in-chief of the military, any orders he gives are legal by definition.
For Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term, the president's latest claim to hold unquestioned authority called to mind a warning from Gen. John Kelly, who also served in the first Trump White House as its chief of staff.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Kelly told The Atlantic that Trump fits the definition of "a fascist" and that the president would frequently complain that his generals were not more like “German generals,” who he said were “totally loyal” to Hitler.
"John Kelly was right," Turner said on Thursday. "This is the mind of a fascist."
While Trump's comments left her worried about a return to an "age of imperialism," Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, said that the president's sense of impunity is unsurprising given the recent toothlessness of international law in dealing with the actions of rogue states, specifically Israel's genocide in Gaza.
“International law cannot stop states from doing terrible things if they’re committed to doing them,” Satterthwaite told Al Jazeera. “And I think that the world is aware of all of the atrocities that have happened in Gaza recently, and despite efforts by many states and certainly by the UN to stop those atrocities, they continued. But I think we’re worse off if we don’t insist on the international law that does exist. We’ll simply be going down a much worse kind of slippery slope.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Meeting With Big Oil Underscores Venezuela Agenda: Enriching ‘Himself and His Fossil Fuel Donors’
"Today’s meeting is meant to ensure the future of Venezuela is being shaped in a way that maximizes Big Oil profits and Trump’s power."
Jan 09, 2026
US President Donald Trump is set to meet at the White House on Friday afternoon with executives from some of the world's largest fossil fuel companies to discuss the future of Venezuela's oil infrastructure, a gathering that critics said throws into stark relief the true aims of the administration's military assault on a sovereign nation and abduction of its president.
The meeting, scheduled for 2 pm ET, will come after Trump declared on social media early Friday that "at least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL," an industry that donated heavily to the president's 2024 campaign and inaugural fund. Attendees of Friday's White House meeting will reportedly include the CEOs of Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, and Shell.
Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources and major Trump donor, is also expected to attend. Hamm organized the now-infamous 2024 event where Trump asked oil executives for $1 billion in campaign donations in exchange for industry-friendly policies.
“American fossil fuel companies who’ve bought access to the Trump administration stand to benefit most from Trump’s illegal acts of aggression in Venezuela," Allie Rosenbluth, US program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement ahead of Friday's gathering.
"Today’s meeting is meant to ensure the future of Venezuela is being shaped in a way that maximizes Big Oil profits and Trump’s power," said Rosenbluth. "Trump’s aggression in Venezuela is leading us to a hotter, more polluted, and more dangerous world—all to enrich himself and his fossil fuel donors. Today’s meeting is proof of that. To protect our communities from climate disasters and more wars for oil, we need to reject extractive energy models and build democratic systems that prioritize community health and safety."
Despite Trump's lofty promises and suggestion of taxpayer reimbursement, major US oil companies have yet to make any concrete investment pledges related to Venezuela's oil infrastructure.
Earlier this week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Trump administration intends to manage Venezuela oil sales and revenue indefinitely. On Tuesday, Trump proclaimed that he himself would control the proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
While Venezuela's known oil reserves are the largest in the world, some leading oil executives have "privately expressed reservations about committing the kind of money it would take to meaningfully boost Venezuelan oil production," the New York Times reported Friday.
"Some oil companies have discussed the possibility of seeking some form of financial guarantee from the federal government before agreeing to establish or expand production in Venezuela," the Times added.
"Along with blocking further military action against Venezuela, Congress must act to ensure US taxpayers don’t subsidize Big Oil’s exploitation of Venezuela’s oil resources.”
The watchdog group Public Citizen noted in a report released Thursday that "Big Oil companies have a long history of demanding that taxpayers shoulder their risks, even when they choose to operate in politically volatile jurisdictions."
"They rake in billions in profit exploiting the natural resources from impoverished nations, then demand taxpayer compensation if those nations require them to clean up their pollution or if affected communities convince their governments to halt harmful projects," the group observed. "And so it seems likely that these companies are going to require their investments in Venezuela to have some sort of 'guarantees and conditions'—that’s the exact phrase [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio used on 'Face the Nation' on Monday."
Robert Weissman, Public Citizen's co-president, said in a statement that "the Trump administration’s shocking actions to use force to exploit Venezuela’s oil resources echo the imperial arrogance of the United States after the invasion of Iraq and a century of military intervention in Central and South America."
"Along with blocking further military action against Venezuela," said Weissman, "Congress must act to ensure US taxpayers don’t subsidize Big Oil’s exploitation of Venezuela’s oil resources.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular