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Maduro Says US Pointing '1,200 Missiles' at Venezuela After Trump Sends More Warships
One anonymous American military official told Axios that the US seemed to be revving up for "Noriega part two," suggesting a regime change war may be on the horizon.
Sep 02, 2025
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said the United States was pointing "1,200 missiles" at his country during a news conference Monday, and issued a stark warning that he was prepared to "constitutionally declare a republic in arms" should the US attack.
The US is set to raise the number of military vessels deployed near Venezuela to eight this week, which Maduro described as "the greatest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years."
Following an authorization by Trump to use military force against Latin American drug cartels, the Associated Press and CBS News report that "the US Navy now has two Aegis guided-missile destroyers—the USS Gravely and the USS Jason Dunham—in the Caribbean, as well as the destroyer USS Sampson and the cruiser USS Lake Erie in the waters off Latin America."
This week, an anonymous Defense Department official told the AP that, "three amphibious assault ships—a force that encompasses more than 4,000 sailors and Marines—would be entering the region this week."
"In response to maximum military pressure," Maduro told the international press, "we have declared maximum readiness to defend Venezuela," adding that the country "will never give in to blackmail or threats of any kind."
Though the US has not made any public threats to invade Venezuela, an unnamed official told Axios Thursday that Trump was planning something akin to "Noriega part two," referring to the US-led invasion of Panama, which overthrew its leader, Manuel Noriega, in 1989.
"The president has asked for a menu of options," the official added, "and ultimately this is the president's decision about what to do next, but Maduro should be shitting bricks."
Trump has a long history of calling for US intervention to overthrow the South American nation's government.
During Trump's first term, he repeatedly suggested that the US should invade Venezuela to take Maduro out—an idea that his top aides rebuffed.
Trump instead dramatically escalated sanctions on Venezuela, which many studies have shown contributed to the nation's historic economic crisis. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explicitly acknowledged that the goal of these sanctions was to push the Venezuelan people to topple Maduro.
In 2023, following his first presidency, Trump lamented at a rally that the US had to purchase oil from Venezuela, saying that if he were in charge, "We would have taken [Venezuela] over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door."
According to Responsible Statecraft, lobbying groups in bed with Exxon Mobil have been leading the campaign for "maximum pressure" against Venezuela, with the goal of protecting the company's control of over 11 billion barrels of oil in neighboring Guyana, which has been referred to as a "petrostate" closely aligned with the oil giant.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made several posts in support of Guyana as it backed Trump's escalation with Venezuela.
As Joseph Bouchard and Nick Cleveland-Stout wrote:
Rubio has all but committed to a U.S. security guarantee for Guyana and Exxon. On a visit to Guyana in March, he warned Venezuela against attacking Exxon's oil fields. "It woultd be a very bad day for the Venezuelan regime if they were ever to attack Guyana or attack ExxonMobil," Rubio said then.
Prior to that, Rubio obliquely suggested in a Fox Business interview that there may be plans in the works to force Maduro out of power, saying the Venezuelan president was "going to have to be dealt with."
On Monday, Maduro said Rubio was leading Trump "into a bloodbath... with a massacre against the people of Venezuela."
Trump's deployment of warships to Venezuela is part of what he says is an effort to use military force against drug cartels, which his administration has dubbed terrorist groups.
Though Trump has named Maduro as a global drug kingpin and the leader of the Venezuelan Cartel de los Soles, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil disputed that accusation Monday, calling it a "false narrative."
He cited the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's 2025 World Drug Report, which says that Venezuela is not a major cocaine-producing or transit country.
This is backed up by data from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which has found that 84% of the cocaine seized in the US comes from Colombia.
According to UNODC, "the majority of Colombian cocaine is being trafficked north along the Pacific coast," rather than trafficked through Venezuela. Just 2% of all the cocaine seized by UNODC is in Venezuela, ranking it sixth among Latin American countries.
"For there to be a drug cartel, either you produce (the drugs), you process it, or you traffic it," Venezuelan congresswoman Blanca Eekhout told CNN. "If there is no cultivation, production, or drug trafficking in Venezuela, how can there be a cartel? It's unsustainable."
As Trump's military threats have revved up, Maduro has mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers and several warships to prepare for a possible invasion.
This weekend, the streets of Caracas filled up with demonstrators opposing US aggression and supporting Maduro's military recruitment efforts. They were joined by supporters across the globe in cities including London, Johannesburg, Sydney, and Mexico City.
(Video: Forbes)
Even members of Maduro's opposition have harshly criticized the idea of US intervention. Henrique Capriles, a frequent critic and one-time presidential opponent of Maduro, told the BBC that although he opposes Maduro's antidemocratic actions in the most recent election, he wants to see the tensions between Venezuela and the US solved through negotiations rather than gunfire.
"There are no good wars; they're all bad. That's my position, and I'm not afraid to express it publicly," Capriles said. "Most of the people who want a military solution and a US invasion don't live in Venezuela. They don't even consider the consequences. Human lives are lost."
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Lina Khan Slams Trump FTC for Giving Oil Executives a Free Pass After Price-Fixing Scandal
Khan accused the administration of "letting off the hook oil executives caught trying to collude with foreign countries to inflate how much people pay at the pump."
Jul 18, 2025
A ban imposed last year by top antitrust enforcer Lina Khan under the Biden administration had stopped two fossil fuel CEOs accused of colluding on oil prices from serving on powerful corporate boards, with the Federal Trade Commission saying at the time that the order would "help ensure American consumers benefit from lower prices at the pump."
But the Trump administration on Thursday signaled no interest in ensuring oil companies won't engage in price-fixing and collusion to boost profits at the expense of working families as the FTC overturned the order that prevented former Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield and Hess CEO John Hess from serving on the boards of ExxonMobil and Chevron, respectively.
Exxon bought Pioneer for $59.5 billion last year, while Chevron's purchase of Hess was announced Friday after months of arbitration proceedings.
The FTC, now led by pro-corporate Republican Andrew Ferguson, said the commission's complaints about Sheffield's and Hess's communications with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) did not "plead any antitrust law violation" or show that the acquisitions of the smaller companies and the CEO's positions on the boards "would be anticompetitive."
The decision, said Elyse Schupak, a policy advocate with Public Citizen's Climate Program, "undermines accountability for the CEOs accused of illegally colluding with OPEC to increase profits by driving up energy prices for American families and businesses."
Khan's investigation last year found the Sheffield had communicated with OPEC about slashing oil production and driving up consumer prices while claiming Biden administration policies were to blame, prompting U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) to say "jail time should seriously be considered" for the CEO.
"The FTC needs to be doing more to fully rout out Big Oil's anticompetitive behavior. But Ferguson has moved the FTC in the complete opposite direction."
The FTC also found that Hess "stressed the importance of oil market stability and inventory management and encouraged [OPEC] officials to take actions on these issues and speak about them at different events."
One analysis by Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project found that price-fixing schemes by corporations—not inflation—were to blame for 27% of the higher prices American families faced in 2021.
Khan on Thursday accused President Donald Trump's FTC of "letting off the hook oil executives caught trying to collude with foreign countries to inflate how much people pay at the pump."
The commission's three Republican members voted to allow Sheffield and Hess to serve on the boards—even as one of them, Commissioner Mark Meador, said that OPEC operates "as a de facto cartel" and warned the FTC "should not hesitate to bring enforcement actions against actual collusion."
Ferguson, meanwhile, claimed that banning Sheffield and Hess from the company boards "would damage the FTC's credibility and undermine its mission"—a statement that was denounced by the government watchdog Revolving Door Project.
"Banning a C-suite executive who tried to inflate oil prices isn't the move that 'damages' the FTC's credibility. It's Andrew Ferguson's willingness to absolve such actions that undermines the agency's mission to promote competition," said the group.
"The FTC needs to be doing more to fully rout out Big Oil's anticompetitive behavior," added Revolving Door Project. "But Ferguson has moved the FTC in the complete opposite direction—signaling to corporate America that they won't be held accountable for fleecing the public."
Schupak said that "while the Trump administration feigns interest in bringing energy prices down, its policies—fast-tracking export projects, rolling back regulatory safeguards, and halting enforcement actions for corporate wrongdoing—reveal the administration is far more interested in boosting the profitability of the oil and gas industry than providing Americans any relief or safeguarding them against corruption."
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Small Investment, Big Reward: Oil Giants Dumped $19 Million Into Trump's Inaugural Fund
"Every month that Donald Trump has been in power, we've seen a raft of anti-climate measures come out which are music to the fossil fuel industry's ears," said one investigator.
Jul 09, 2025
Oil, gas, and coal companies and individuals linked to the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry contributed more than $19 million to U.S. President Donald Trump's second inaugural fund, an analysis by a leading international environmental and human rights group revealed Wednesday.
Scouring itemized U.S Federal Election Commission data, Global Witness identified 47 individual donations to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee between November 2024 and January 2025 totaling $19,151,933. Using an artificial intelligence tool developed by Global Witness to identify corporate lobbyists, the group's researchers were able to automatically determine each donor's ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Global Witness said the $19.15 million figure "is likely an underestimate, as we did not count donations from diversified investors and businesses who couldn't be said to primarily represent the fossil fuel industry," and individuals with common names that couldn't be identified were not included in the final report.
According to the analysis:
The list of donors includes individuals who were given ambassadorships or key positions in the Trump Cabinet.
For example, billionaire Warren Stephens donated $4 million on December 2, 2024, the same day Trump nominated him to be U.S. ambassador to the U.K. Stephens has extensive links to the oil and gas industry but also invests in other sectors and wasn't included in our calculations of fossil fuel industry donors.
Trump also nominated Melinda Hildebrand—who donated $500,000 to the president's inaugural fund—to be U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica.
Hildebrand is the vice president of Hilcorp Ventures, which claims to be of the largest privately owned oil and gas producers in the U.S. Her husband, founder and chairman of Hilcorp, donated another $500,000.
Among fossil fuel corporations, Chevron was by far the largest contributor to Trump's inauguration fund, giving $2 million. Other companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental Petroleum each donated $1 million.
Overall, Big Oil gave $445 million to Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle.
Trump, who ran on a "drill, baby, drill" energy policy, has signed a series of executive orders aimed at boosting fossil fuel production, including by declaring a fake "energy emergency" in a push to fast-track permit approvals. He also tapped former fossil fuel executives to head the Department of Energy and Interior Department, which have pursued a policy of opening up more public lands and waters for fossil fuel development.
At the same time, the Trump administration dropped out of the Paris climate agreement for the second time and moved to roll back the modest climate progress achieved under former President Joe Biden.
"It's no surprise the oil and gas industry handed millions to Donald Trump for his inauguration, and they seem to have reaped a huge return on their investment," Global Witness senior data investigator Nicu Calcea said in a statement Wednesday.
"Every month that Donald Trump has been in power, we've seen a raft of anti-climate measures come out which are music to the fossil fuel industry's ears," Calcea continued. "From plans to steamroll through dirty new coal plants, to the attempted quashing of 'polluter pays' laws that would hold oil giants accountable, it's clear where his political priorities lie."
"While Trump sides with his friends in oil and gas, we must keep up the fight for a fair, green future—that means pushing for wind and solar where we live, backing polluters pay bills, and resisting the development of oil, gas and coal projects across the country," he added.
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