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It was shocking how quickly the psychopaths in power launched their vicious lies about Renée Good—"violent rioter," "domestic terrorist," "self-defense"—shot in the face for trying to drive away from ICE. It's all bullshit, proven by stunning new video from the killer's own phone. Bafflingly, JD Vance posted it, thinking it proved his smears. How sick is he? Good was "pure sunshine ...kindness radiated out of her," says her wife. "We stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns."
Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and widow of a veteran, was dropping off her youngest child, 6, at a Minneapolis school when she encountered an ICE raid at 34th Street and Portland Avenue; it was the second day of a 30-day "surge" of siccing America's Gestapo on the state's Somali-American population. On Instagram, Good described herself as "a poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado"; she and her wife Becca had recently moved there, finding what Becca called "a vibrant and welcoming community" with a strong sense of people "looking out for each other."
Horrific, widely viewed footage shows what happened next: The sirens and unmarked cars, masked thugs getting out, Good's car straddling the road, protesters shouting and then, suddenly, screaming as one goon approaches her window, yells "Get out of the fucking car," and fires off three shots through the windshield as Good's car careens wildly off and crashes. Multiple cellphone videos and eyewitness accounts concur: Good was trying to turn around, let one ICE car pass ahead, backed up slightly to turn to the right, pulled forward and around the agent - a few feet away - as he shot her three times in the face.
The horror kept coming. Witnesses said Good slumped in her car onto a blood-soaked air bag for up to 15 minutes with no medical attention as protesters yelled and wept. One man asked agents if he could check her pulse. They said no. "I'm a physician," he pleaded. "I don't care," said the thug, claiming "we have our own medics." "Where the fuck are they?" shrieked a distraught woman. Emergency responders finally arrived without a stretcher; they carried Good away, said one woman, "like a sack of potatoes." Mayor Jacob Frey was livid: "To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here."
Despite the clear, stark evidence, the fascist propaganda machine shot into high gear. In Texas, ICE Barbie, cosplaying in a ludicrous cowboy hat, proclaimed "an act of domestic terrorism...a woman attacked (ICE) and attempted to run them over." Dead-eyed DHS spokesbot Tricia McLaughlin raved about "a violent rioter” who "weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over law enforcement officers." Vance called Good "a deranged leftist." In an incendiary post, Trump ripped a "disorderly" woman "obstructing and resisting" who "then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer...It is hard to believe he is alive."
More to the point, it is hard to believe how brazenly, brutishly, remorselessly these motherfuckers can spew their fucking lies in the face of demonstrable, overwhelming reality, demanding we not see what we see or hear what we hear. Eventually, even Trump had to back down, slightly, after both the Washington Post and New York Times committed a rare act of journalism - the Times, to his face - and declared the video entirely contradicted his vile fantasy. Then, on Friday, the right-wing, Minnesota-based Alpha News released 47-second footage of the scene from the phone of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, Renée Good's murderer.
An Iraq War veteran, Ross has worked for ICE since 2015 and is also a firearms instructor and SWAT team member; he was injured last summer when he was dragged by the vehicle of a fleeing suspect. The footage shows Ross arriving and walking around Renée Good's red Honda recording with his phone; he circles back to her window as another agent curses and tries to open her door. Sitting behind the wheel, her dog in the back, Good smilingly tells the agent, "It's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you." Seconds later, shots ring out. Ross stands safely away as her car veers off. Audio catches a man muttering, "Fucking bitch."
Inexplicably, both Fox News and J.D. Vance posted the footage. "Watch this, as hard as it is," Vance wrote. "Many of you have been told (Ross) wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman." The footage, he said, proves Ross "fired in self-defense” when his "life was endangered” by Good. What the ever-loving fuck. Ross, he adds, "deserves a debt (sic) of gratitude. This is a guy who’s actually done a very important job for the United States of America." AOC speaks for us all: "I understand that Vance believes shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not... I do not believe the American people should be assassinated in the street."
Good was ICE's ninth victim. Her murder - a white woman, not a brown guy, it must be noted - has prompted nationwide outrage. “This is an execution plain and simple,” said journalist Krystal Ball. "If your Trump love or immigrant hatred has you justifying murder, please seek help.” "We're a Third World country now," said Jesse Ventura, citing the history of 1930s Germany. "That's what happens in a dictatorship - in comes the military." And on the "giddy sadism" we see daily, "All of us, citizens and immigrants alike, are being ruled by people who think life is a privilege bestowed by authority, and death is a fair penalty for disobedience."
Still, it goes on. They are still assaulting people, usually brown, sometimes citizens. In a clumsy, nasty encounter in North Carolina, they attacked two U.S. citizens in their car and only gave up when both guys kept filming the abuses. The lesson: "Film them. Always." In Minneapolis, they blithely moved on from murdering Renee Good to terrorize workers at a nearby childcare center and students at a high school, tackling people, handcuffing two staff members and firing teargas at bystanders until the schools were forced to shut down. "They're just animals," said one school official. "I've never seen people behave like this."
Meanwhile, Renée Nicole Good is being mourned, in the words of her mother, as "an amazing human being" and "one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.." On Friday, Renée's wife Becca Good released a moving statement thanking all the people who have reached out to support their family: "This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renée Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her...Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow."
She described moving to Minnesota, "like people have done across place and time...to make a better life for ourselves. Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever... We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renée lived this belief every day... We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love."
Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.
Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that "although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record," with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.
For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.
"Global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real," the report continues. "It is not a future threat, but a present-day reality."
"Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops," the researchers wrote. "Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world."
The WWA researchers' findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.
According to the WWA study:
This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.
The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of 1.5°C, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto—who is also an Imperial College London climate scientist—told the Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”
The WWA study's publication comes a month after this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.
Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that "2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
"Today’s report is a wake-up call," Alt continued. "Unfortunately, [US President Donald] Trump and Republicans controlling Congress spent the past year making climate denial official US policy and undermining progress to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. Their reckless polluters-first agenda rolled back critical climate protections and attacked and undermined the very agencies responsible for helping Americans prepare for and recover from increasingly dangerous disasters."
"Across the country, people are standing up and demanding their leaders do better to protect our families from climate change and extreme weather," Alt added. "It's time those in power started listening.”
"Tax the rich. Tax the rich. Tax the rich."
The chants broke out at City Hall in New York on Thursday as US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) addressed the crowd before swearing in Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who campaigned on a platform that prioritized NYC's working class.
"Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes is not radical. It is exactly the right thing to do," declared Sanders—who endorsed Mamdani even before his June primary victory over former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and "the billionaire-backed status quo."
The 34-year-old mayor on Thursday described Brooklyn-born Sanders—50 years his senior—as "the man whose leadership I seek most to emulate, who I am so grateful to be sworn in by today."
During the afternoon inauguration ceremony—which followed an early morning swearing-in at the abandoned subway station beneath City Hall—Mamdani also called for taxing the rich as he reiterated the agenda that secured him over 1.1 million votes in November.
"Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try," he said. "To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives."
"Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home," Mamdani vowed. "Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again, we will overcome the isolation that too many feel, and connect the people of this city to one another."
The mayor said that "the cost of childcare will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family, because we will deliver universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few. Those in rent-stabilized homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike, because we will freeze the rent."
"Getting on a bus without worrying about a fare hike or whether you'll be late to your destination will no longer be deemed a small miracle, because we will make buses fast and free," he continued. "These policies are not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom. For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that."
The ceremony also featured remarks from another early Mamdani supporter, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), as well as the swearing-in of Jumaane Williams for a third term as New York City's public advocate and Mark Levine, the new comptroller.
"New York, we have chosen courage over fear," said Ocasio-Cortez, whose district spans the Bronx and Queens. "We have chosen prosperity for the many over spoils for the few. And when the entrenched ways would rather have us dig in our feet and seek refuge in the past, we have chosen instead to turn towards making a new future for all of us."
AOC: New York City has chosen the ambitious pursuit of universal childcare, affordable rents and housing and clean and dignified public transit for all. We have chosen that over the distractions of bigotry and the barbarism of extreme income inequality
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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) January 1, 2026 at 1:47 PM
As NYC kicked off the new year with progressive city leadership, 2025 findings from the Bloomberg Billionaire Index sparked fresh wealth tax demands. According to the tracker, the world's 500 richest people added a record $2.2 trillion to their collective fortunes last year. About a quarter of that went to just eight Big Tech billionaires: Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg.
In New York, Mamdani has proposed raising the state corporate tax rate from 8.85% to 11.5% and hiking taxes for individuals who make more than $1 million a year. Achieving those goals would require cooperation from state legislators.
Mamdani acknowledged Thursday that for much of history, the response from City Hall to the question of who New York belongs to has been, "It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strain to capture the attention of those in power."
In the years ahead, he pledged, "City Hall will deliver an agenda of safety, affordability, and abundance, where government looks and lives like the people it represents, never flinches in the fight against corporate greed, and refuses to cower before challenges that others have deemed too complicated."
"Together, we will tell a new story of our city," the mayor said. "This will not be a tale of one city, governed only by the 1%. Nor will it be a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor. It will be a tale of 8.5 million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together."
As Donald Trump blows by Barack Obama's record for most countries bombed by a US president, progressive observers are fuming over Democratic leadership's inaction in response to the abduction of Venezuela's president and other illegal acts of war.
Congressional Democrats' reaction to Trump's brazen bombing and invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro—who faces dubious narco-terrorism charges in the US—ranged from open praise by members of the party's conservative wing like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), to fierce condemnation by Congressional Progressive Caucus Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other anti-war leftists including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
However, numerous observers have noted that, as Chris Lehmann wrote Tuesday for the Nation, senior Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, "are doing what they do best on Venezuela: Nothing."
Trump "staged an illegal coup," Lehmann argued. "Chuck Schumer's response? Empty words and meaningless parliamentary maneuvers."
Schumer did co-sponsor a war powers resolution aimed at blocking Trump from using military force in or against Venezuela. However, like nearly every other resolution ever introduced in a bid to force presidential compliance with the 1973 War Powers Act, it failed to muster enough votes to pass. Trump has now ordered attacks on 10 countries, compared with seven bombed under Obama and at least six under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
"The central complaint from Democratic leaders has been that the Trump White House didn’t properly consult Congress in advance of its crime spree. And even that grievance rings hollow," Lehmann said. "Thus far, Democrats have shown no inclination to pursue an impeachment resolution against the president—the clear constitutional remedy for such abuses—even as a growing chorus of lawmakers are calling for it, together with leaders of the party’s activist base."
"Sadly," he continued, "the party’s inert approach to illegitimate acts of war well predates Trump’s Venezuela rampage; leading Democrats sat on their hands while their own president backed a genocidal war in Gaza—a lockstep posture of complicity so deeply ingrained that the Democratic National Committee refused to let any Palestinian speaker take the stage at the party’s 2024 convention."
"Democrats likewise enthusiastically hailed Barack Obama’s raid in Pakistan to kidnap and execute Osama bin Laden with little thought that it would serve as a precedent for later imperial errands like Maduro’s ouster," Lehmann added.
Truthdig contributor Conor Lynch on Monday noted the stark contrast between the Democratic Party's left wing and its leadership in response to Trump's aggression, highlighting a warning from Graham Platner, a military veteran and progressive US Senate candidate from Maine, about politicians “on both sides of the aisle trying to convince us all that somehow this was justified.”
Lynch wrote that "more than two decades and countless deaths later, the party that led the US into disastrous quagmires in the Middle East is intent on leading the country into yet another war."
While there are more anti-war Democratic voices in Congress than there have been since the Vietnam War era, many senior Democrats in both chambers have a history of approving wars. Every current Democratic lawmaker who was in office in 2001 voted to authorize the so-called War on Terror, while Schumer, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and several House Democrats still in office assented the following year to the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.
"Most Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq," Lynch continued. "This was partly due to the initial public support for the war and the George W. Bush administration’s fabricated intelligence about [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein’s 'weapons of mass destruction' (much like the Trump administration’s fabricated claims about the Venezuelan government’s support for 'narco-terrorism')."
"Today there is no excuse for Democrats to stand by as another Republican president—this one historically unpopular—launches an illegal invasion in our own backyard," Lynch asserted. "Indeed, it is not only morally correct but politically smart to oppose the illegal attack on Venezuela, as there is little appetite for another regime change crusade among the American public."
"If there was ever a time for Democrats to grow a spine, it’s now," Lynch added. He pointed to Rep. Ro Khanna's (Calif.) declaration on Saturday that "if you cannot oppose this regime change war for oil, you don’t have the moral clarity or guts to lead our party or nation.'"
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) issued a similar call Sunday, urging members of Congress "to reject the shameful bipartisan complicity in this campaign of escalating aggression, and to replace it with a sound, sensible foreign policy grounded in diplomacy, human rights, and the self‑determination of all people, including the Venezuelan people."
"This is not foreign policy," PDA said of Trump's aggression. "This is militarized authoritarianism. We must act to stop it now, before it spreads to inflame the entire region, if not the entire globe in a dangerous, unnecessary conflict. We are outraged, but this moment demands more than outrage. It demands organized, coordinated resistance."
When Vice President JD Vance told reporters at a press briefing Thursday that Jonathan Ross, the federal immigration agent who was filmed fatally shooting Renee Good in Minneapolis, has "absolute immunity," he was not referring to any recognized statute in United States law, according to legal experts.
Instead, said Human Rights Campaign press secretary Brandon Wolf, "masked federal agents who can gun people down with 'absolute immunity' is called fascism."
Vance addressed reporters at the White House the day after Good was fatally shot at close range while serving as a legal observer of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) surge of federal agents in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration is targeting members of the Somali community in particular.
Widely available footage taken by onlookers shows ICE agents including Ross approaching the car and, according to at least one witness, giving her conflicting instructions, with one ordering her to leave the area and another telling her to get out of the car. The wheel of Good's car was seen turning as she began to drive away, just before Ross fired his weapon at least three times.
President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Vance immediately blamed Good for her death, saying she had committed an act of domestic terrorism and had tried to run Ross over with her car.
Vance doubled down on Thursday when a reporter asked him why state officials in Minnesota were being cut off from investigating Good's death—a fact that has left the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which had been planning to launch a probe, with few tools to bring a case to prosecutors.
The vice president said Minnesota prosecutors should instead investigate people who "are using their vehicles and other means" to interfere with ICE's operations before claiming that Ross is protected from being held accountable for his actions.
"That guy's protected by absolute immunity," said Vance. "He was doing his job. The idea that [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz and a bunch of radicals in Minneapolis are going to go after him and make this guy's life miserable because he was doing the job that he was asked to do is preposterous."
Vance: He is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job. The idea that Tim Walz and a bunch of radicals are going to go after him and make his life miserable because he was doing the job that he was asked to do is preposterous. pic.twitter.com/AfwpFvhLsC
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 8, 2026
Robert Bennett, a veteran lawyer in Minneapolis, told Mother Jones that he has worked on hundreds of cases regarding federal law enforcement misconduct.
"I’ve deposed thousands of police officers,” he said. “ICE agents do not have absolute immunity.”
He continued:
There’s plenty of case law that allows for the prosecution of federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE. And it’s clear under the law that a federal officer who shoots somebody in Minnesota and kills them is subject to a Minnesota investigation and Minnesota law.
Mary Moriarty, the Hennepin County attorney, whose jurisdiction includes Minneapolis, appeared incredulous Friday when asked about Vance's claim.
"I can't speak to why the Trump administration is doing what it's doing or says what it says," she told a reporter before adding unequivocally, "the ICE officer does not have complete immunity here."
Q: Is this ICE officer immune to charges?
HENNEPIN COUNTY ATTORNEY MORIARTY: I can't speak to why the Trump administration says what it says. I can say the ICE officer does not have complete immunity here. pic.twitter.com/N2ThNOun6w
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2026
Constitutional law expert Michael J.Z. Mannheimer of Northern Kentucky University told CNN that more than a century of legal precedent has shown that state prosecutors can file charges against federal officials for actions they take while completing their official duties.
“The idea that a federal agent has absolute immunity for crimes they commit on the job is absolutely ridiculous,” Mannheimer said.
Should the state take up the case, Ross could attempt to raise an immunity argument if he were able to move the case to a federal court, where a judge would then conduct a two-part analysis—determining whether Ross was acting in his official capacity and whether his action was "reasonable" considering all the facts on the ground, gathered from video evidence and eyewitness testimony.
While holding Ross accountable may be an uphill battle, former federal prosecutor Timothy Sini told CNN, "officers are not entitled to absolute immunity as a matter of law," contrary to Vance's claim.
Gun control advocate David Hogg called the vice president's comments "insanely dangerous."
"Just so you all understand what our vice tyrant is saying here this means ICE is allowed to shoot and kill Americans with ZERO consequences," said Hogg. "It’s important to note that absolute immunity is something that basically no cop gets. It goes even beyond qualified immunity."
Police officers are typically shielded from liability for civil damages by qualified immunity, provided they can prove their actions did not violate "clearly established" constitutional rights. "Absolute immunity" is typically applied to judges, prosecutors, and legislators who are acting within their official duties.
On Friday, US Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) announced they would introduce a bill aimed at stripping ICE officers of qualified immunity.
Goldman noted that under current law, it would be difficult to prosecute an ICE agent because the legal standard "allows for the officer’s own view to carry a lot of weight.”
"So what this bill does is only for civil enforcement officers—not criminal enforcement officers who are dealing with real bad guys, not moms driving cars—it would say that it’s an objective test,” he said on a podcast by the New Republic. “And if you are acting completely outside of your duties and responsibilities, you don’t have immunity from a civil lawsuit, and you don’t have a defense from a criminal charge.”
Goldman added that the bill would make clear that ICE agents' "only authority is to investigate and civilly arrest immigrants for immigration violations."
“And so they should have never been in the situation they were in, where they were trying to take a woman out of a car," he said. "That was not part of what they should be doing. They could ask her to move if they needed to. It doesn’t look like from the video that she was doing anything that was obstructing them.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has expressed outrage over Good's killing and demanded that ICE leave the city immediately, called Vance's claims about absolute immunity "pretty bizarre" and "extremely concerning" in comments to reporters on Friday, and called on the press to "get to a point where we're not trusting everything that [administration officials] are saying."
"That's not true in any law school in America, whether it's Yale or Villanova or anywhere else," said Frey. "That's not true. If you break the law, if you do things that are outside the outside the area of what your job responsibilities require, and this clearly seems to be at the very least, at the very least, this is gray... This is a problem and it should be investigated."
Frey: I think he also asserted that because you work at the federal government that you somehow have absolute immunity from committing crimes. That's not true in any law school in America, whether it's Yale or Villanova or anywhere else. That's not true pic.twitter.com/kqEwYdeVMI
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 9, 2026
Vance's comments, said political scientist Norman Ornstein, made clear that "we are in a police state."
"The notion expressed by Trump, Vance and Noem that there is absolute immunity for a cold blooded murder if it’s carried out by one of their agents is the final straw," he said. "If we do not turn this around, we are done for as a free society and a decent country."
Amid President Donald Trump's admission that his intervention in Venezuela could last years, US senators voted Thursday to advance legislation aimed at blocking the president's use of military forces against the oil-rich South American nation.
Senators voted 52-47 to advance a war powers resolution introduced last month by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "to block the use of the US armed forces to engage in hostilities within or against Venezuela unless authorized by Congress" as required by the 1973 War Powers Act.
The Senate will now continue debating the measure, which, if passed by both the upper chamber and the House of Representatives, would be subject to a likely veto by Trump—who has sunk two previous war powers resolutions unrelated to Venezuela.
In addition to Paul, four other GOP senators voted to advance the resolution: Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana. While lawmakers often assent during the procedural phase, only to cast ballots against legislation during final votes, at least one of the GOP senators signaled they will vote the same as they did Thursday.
"While I support the operation to seize [Venezuelan President] Nicolás Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional US forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization," Collins said in a statement, referring to Trump's threats to acquire the Danish territory by force if he deems it necessary. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) this week introduced a bill that would ban the president from any such action.
"I believe invoking the War Powers Act at this moment is necessary, given the president’s comments about the possibility of ‘boots on the ground’ and a sustained engagement ‘running’ Venezuela, with which I do not agree," added Collins, who is facing a serious challenge for her Senate seat from candidates including former Maine Gov. Janet Mills and progressive Graham Platner, both Democrats who oppose US military action in Venezuela.
At the time of bipartisan war powers resolution's introduction last month, Trump had not yet attacked Venezuelan territory, although he had threatened to do so, deployed warships and thousands of US troops to the region, authorized covert CIA action to topple Maduro, and ordered the bombing of boats the administration claimed—without evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
However, Trump dramatically escalated US intervention in Venezuela, first with a December drone strike on a port facility and then by bombing and invading the country and abducting Maduro and his wife.
Asked during a Wednesday interview with the New York Times whether the US intervention in Venezuela would last a year, or longer, Trump replied, "I would say much longer," explaining that "we will rebuild" the country "in a very profitable way," including by "taking oil" from it.
The specter of yet another US "forever war" like the ongoing open-ended War on Terror that's left nearly 1 million people dead in at least seven countries since 2001 has prompted the introduction of several congressional war powers resolutions. So far, none have passed.
“If there was ever a moment for the Senate to find its voice, it is now," Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday's vote. "Today, the Senate must assert the authority given to it on matters of war and peace. We must send Donald Trump a clear message on behalf of the American people: No more endless wars. Donald Trump’s ready for an endless war in Venezuela, and lord knows where else. The American people are not.”
Kaine made it clear during his pre-vote Senate floor remarks that the resolution does not challenge the "execution of a valid arrest warrant against Nicolás Maduro," which—despite experts concurring that the invasion and abduction were illegal—he called "good for America and good for Venezuela."
However, Kaine said, given that Trump's intervention "will go on for a long period of time," US troops "should not be used for hostilities in Venezuela without a vote of Congress as the Constitution requires.”
“No one has ever regretted a vote that just says, Mr. President, before you send our sons and daughters to war, come to Congress," he added.
However, such votes have very rarely succeeded in stopping any president from proceeding with military action.
In 2019 during Trump's first term, the House and Senate both passed a war powers resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to cut off US military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s atrocity-laden war on Yemen. Trump vetoed the measure, and senators lacked the two-thirds majority needed to override his move.
The following year, both houses of Congress passed another war powers resolution—this one introduced in the Senate by Kaine—to terminate military action against Iran. But Trump again vetoed the legislation, and the Senate could not muster the two-thirds majority required for an override. After returning to office last year, Trump ordered sweeping attacks on Iran—and is threatening to do so again.
While Trump took to his Truth Social network to blast the five Republican senators who voted to advance the war powers resolution on Thursday and Vice President JD Vance called the War Powers Act "fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law," progressive and anti-war advocacy groups hailed the advancement.
"With this historic, bipartisan vote to prevent further war in Venezuela, Congress has begun the long-overdue work of reasserting its constitutional role in decisions of war and peace," Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said in a statement.
"We commend the leadership of Sens. Kaine and Paul in forcing this vote, and we thank Sens. Collins, Young, Hawley, and Murkowski for their principled votes," Kharrazian continued. "Senators should move quickly to adopt the resolution to prevent further unauthorized military escalation and the House should follow suit."
"Congress should also make clear, using the full force of the law, that no president has the authority to unilaterally launch hostilities anywhere in the world," he added, "whether in Venezuela or against other countries the administration has openly threatened, including Cuba, Greenland, Colombia, and Iran.”
"The dam has broken." Afghanistan War Veteran Max Rose applauds the Senate’s bipartisan vote advancing the War Powers Resolution. He calls it a stunning rebuke of Trump’s unilateral wars, reminding the President that the military belongs to America, not him.
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— VoteVets (@votevets.org) January 8, 2026 at 9:05 AM
Jose Vasquez, executive director of Common Defense and an Army veteran, said, "The vote is a victory for the Constitution, the stability of the region, and for the veterans and military families who organized, spoke out, and refused to accept another reckless slide toward forever war."
"By drawing this vote, Congress sends an essential message that accountability still matters and that no one person or presidential administration can send Americans to war," he added. "Veterans will remain organized and vigilant, but today shows what is possible when Congress listens to the will of the people and leans toward peace rather than war."
One expert asserted that the House vote to subpoena Seth Harp "is clearly designed to chill and intimidate" journalists from reporting on government policies and practices.
Free press defenders voiced alarm and outrage following Wednesday's vote by a congressional committee to subpoena a journalist wrongly accused of "leaking classified intel" and "doxing" a US special forces commander involved in President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela and abduction of the South American nation's president and his wife.
Seth Harp is an investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and Iraq war veteran whose work focuses on links between the US military and organized crime. On January 4—the day after the US bombed and invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—Harp posted on X the name and photo of a commander in Delta Force, which played a key role in the attack.
Experts noted that Harp did not break any laws, with Freedom of the Press Foundation chief of advocacy Seth Stern pointing out that "reporters have a constitutional right to publish even classified leaks as long as they don’t commit crimes to obtain them."
“Harp merely published information that was publicly available about someone at the center of the world’s biggest news story," he added.
However, the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday approved in a voice vote a motion introduced the previous day by Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to subpoena Harper. Democrats on the committee backed the measure after Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) added an amendment to also subpoena co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein's estate, according to the Washington Post.
Responding to the committee vote, Harp told the Post:
The idea of a reporter "leaking classified intel" is a contradiction in terms. The First Amendment and ironclad Supreme Court precedent permit journalists to publish classified documents. We don’t work for the government and it’s our job to expose secrets, not protect them for the convenience of high-ranking officials. It’s not “doxing" to point out which high-ranking military officials are involved in breaking news events. That’s information that the public has a right to know.
Harp also took to social media to underscore that he's not the only journalist being targeted with dubious "doxing" claims.
The House lawmakers' vote drew widespread condemnation from press freedom advocates.
“Luna’s subpoena of investigative reporter Seth Harp is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US special forces," Defending Rights & Dissent policy director Chip Gibbons said in a statement.
"Harp did not share classified information about the US regime change operation in Venezuela. And even if he had, his actions would firmly be protected by the First Amendment," Gibbons added. "This is a dangerous assault on the press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee.”
PEN America Journalism and Disinformation program director Tim Richardson said Thursday that “any attempt to haul an investigative reporter before Congress for doing their job reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a free press."
"Seth Harp is an independent journalist, not a government official, and therefore cannot be accused of ‘leaking’ classified information in the way those entrusted with such material can," Richardson added. "The information at issue was publicly available, not secret or unlawfully obtained."
In a bid to protect reporters and their sources, House lawmakers in 2024 unanimously passed the PRESS Act, legislation prohibiting the federal government from compelling journalists and telecommunications companies to disclose certain information, with exceptions for imminent violence or terrorism. However, under pressure from Trump, the Senate declined to vote on the proposal.
"The bill died after Trump ordered the Senate to kill it on Truth Social," said Stern. "Apparently, so did the principles of Reps. Luna, Garcia, and their colleagues.”
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."
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."
The video comes "as close as you can get to conclusively disproving" the Trump administration's claims about Renee Good, said one observer.
WARNING: The following article includes graphic footage of the shooting that some people may find disturbing...
New footage taken from the phone of the federal immigration agent who killed Renee Good was released on Friday, and it offers the closest view so far of the deadly shooting that took place on Wednesday in Minneapolis.
In a video first published by Alpha News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross is seen exiting his vehicle and approaching Good's car.
As Ross circles the car while filming it with his phone, Good can be seen smiling at him and gently taunting him.
"It's fine, dude," she says as Ross passes by her on the driver's side window. "I'm not mad at you."
As Ross continues circling the car and captures its license plate, Good's wife, Becca Good, approaches him and tells him that "we don't change our license plates every morning, just so you know."
Becca Good also asks Ross if he was "going to come at us," and then recommends that he "go get yourself some lunch, big boy."
Shortly after this, other immigration officers begin moving aggressively toward Good's car, instructing her to exit the vehicle.
After this, Good can be seen turning her steering wheel completely to the right, which was away from the location where Ross was standing, and trying to drive away.
As the car drives past Ross, it is unclear if it makes any contact with him, although he remains on his feet the entire time and is able to take out his weapon and fire multiple shots at the vehicle.
A man can be heard calling Good a "fucking bitch" as her car crashes into a phone pole.
BREAKING: Alpha News has obtained cellphone footage showing perspective of federal agent at center of ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/p2wks0zew0
— Alpha News (@AlphaNews) January 9, 2026
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, argued on Bluesky that the video is "about as close as you can get to conclusively disproving the Trump [administration's] claims that she deliberately attempted to run down the officer."
Reichlin-Melnick cautioned, however, that this does not mean that prosecutors will be able to prove that Ross was guilty of murder when he opened fire on Good.
"The threshold for when police officers are allowed to use force is very low, so I'm not going to offer a definitive opinion," he explained. "And yes; what the law permits and what is justified are two different things entirely."
Appearing on MS Now, former FBI agent Michael Feinberg said that Ross' decision to film Good's vehicle with his phone while approaching her car was "the height of unprofessionalism."
"Why on Earth is a law enforcement officer filming an interaction with a civilian on his cellphone?" he asked. "They're not influencers, they're not social media posters. If you're there to do a job as an agent of the federal government, do the job. You don't need to be making content in the midst of it."
MSNBC's ex-FBI guest just dismissed a vehicular assault on ICE agents as "minor annoyance" and "sass" from a "lightly combative" activist.
In reaction to new video of the Minnesota shooting of anti-ICE activist Renee Good, Michael Feinberg calls it "law enforcement officers… pic.twitter.com/Gv5XL9B5CZ
— Media Lies (@MediasLies) January 9, 2026
Independent journalist Radley Balko noted that Alpha News, which first obtained the video, "is a far-right site run by the wife of the former head of the Minneapolis police union."
"Whoever leaked this to them thinks it makes Ross look good," Balko wrote. "Which is just astonishing."
Vice President JD Vance nonetheless declared in a post on X that the video showed "the reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense," even though the video makes it clear that Good was turning the car away from where Ross was standing.
Vance has also falsely claimed that ICE agents have "absolute immunity," which has been rebuked by legal experts including Reichlin-Melnick.