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privatization
Under Pressure From Trump, Venezuela's Leader Signs Bill Opening Oil Industry to Privatization
"Trump is deploying drone and gunboat diplomacy to coerce Venezuela into serving up its oil resources to Big Oil," said one US watchdog group.
Jan 29, 2026
Venezuelan scholars and a US watchdog group were among those expressing concern on Thursday after Venezuela's government caved to pressure from President Donald Trump and signed a bill opening up the South American country's nationalized oil industry to privatization.
After US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—the Trump administration installed the deposed leader's former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as acting president.
On Thursday, Venezuela's National Assembly—which is led by the acting president's brother, Jorge Rodríguez—approved and Delcy Rodríguez signed legislation that "promises to give private companies control over the production and sale of oil and allow for independent arbitration of disputes," according to the Associated Press.
As AP reported:
Rodríguez's government expects the changes to serve as assurances for major US oil companies that have so far hesitated about returning to the volatile country. Some of those companies lost investments when the ruling party enacted the existing law two decades ago to favor Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.
The revised law would modify extraction taxes, setting a royalty cap rate of 30% and allowing the executive branch to set percentages for every project based on capital investment needs, competitiveness, and other factors.
It also removes the mandate for disputes to be settled only in Venezuelan courts, which are controlled by the ruling party. Foreign investors have long viewed the involvement of independent courts as crucial to guard against future expropriation.
Malfred Gerig, a sociologist from Central University of Venezuela, said on social media that the Rodríguez siblings' United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) "has just approved the most anti-nationalist and damaging oil law since, at least, 1943. The absolute surrender of the state as an oil producer and a sudden conversion of the property rights of the Venezuelan nation into private rights of foreign companies."
Victor Lovera, an economics professor at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas, said that "it must be really fucking tough for the Rodríguez siblings to end up as the empire's lapdogs and open up the oil sector, taking us back to the 1970s, before the nationalization of oil. All just to cling to power for a few more months."
Trump—who returned to office a year ago with help from Big Oil's campaign cash—has made clear that his aggressive policy toward Venezuela is focused on the country's petroleum reserves, which critics have blasted as a clear effort to further enrich his donors and himself.
"Trump is deploying drone and gunboat diplomacy to coerce Venezuela into serving up its oil resources to Big Oil," said Robert Weissman, co-president of the US watchdog group Public Citizen, in a Thursday statement.
"Imperfectly, Venezuela has for most of the last century sought to manage its oil and gas reserves to advance its national interest, rather than that of outside investors," he noted. "Brutal sanctions and the threat of still more military action from the Trump regime are now forcing Venezuela to turn from that history and make its oil available to Big Oil at discount rates and to agree that investor disputes should be resolved at corporate-friendly international tribunals."
"This is imperial policy to benefit Big Oil, not Americans—and certainly not Venezuelans," Weissman stressed. "Even still, US oil companies are likely to be reluctant to invest heavily in Venezuela without US government guarantees—a likely next step in Trump’s oil imperialism, unless Congress moves proactively to block it."
Both chambers of the US Congress are narrowly controlled by Trump's Republican Party, and they have so far failed to pass war powers resolutions aimed at stopping more military action in Venezuela and the administration's bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in international waters—all of which some American lawmakers and other experts have argued are illegal.
When Trump's secretary of state and acting national security adviser, Marco Rubio, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—on Wednesday, he insisted that the president wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela, but would take it, potentially without congressional authorization, in "self-defense."
Rubio also laid out how the United States intends to continue controlling Venezuelan oil and related profits, telling senators that Venezuela's government will submit periodic budgets, and as long as they comply with preset restrictions, the Trump administration will release funds from a US Treasury blocked account.
After the legislation passed Thursday, the Trump administration began easing sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry, with the Treasury issuing a general license authorizing certain activities involving Venezuelan-origin oil.
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Sanders Blasts Trump and His Billionaire Allies for Pushing ‘Two-Tier Education System’ That Harms Students
"Vouchers are being used to benefit private schools that reject students because they have a disability or because of their religion and benefit some of the wealthiest families in America."
Jan 28, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday released a report blasting what he described as President Donald Trump and his billionaire allies' plan to create "a two-tier education system in America."
The new report from Sanders (I-Vt.) focuses on the nationwide private school voucher program included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans last year. The report estimates the program could cost taxpayers up to $51 billion per year.
To put this total spending on vouchers into perspective, the report notes that it "is more than current federal spending on Title I-A to support students from low-income backgrounds ($18.4 billion) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) state grant program ($14.6 billion) to provide services to students with disabilities, combined."
In addition to potentially being a costly boondoggle, the report argues that the voucher program as it currently exists is likely to further widen inequality in the US.
"Without federal requirements or oversight, private schools can pick and choose which students to serve and turn away the highest need students to already under-resourced public schools, fueling a two-tiered education system," the report warns.
One major issue identified by the report is the high cost of tuition at many private schools that cannot be paid by many low-income families even with the assistance of vouchers. Unless this changes, the report finds "the vouchers could effectively function as a subsidy to the rich who can already afford to pay for private education."
Another reason the program is likely to widen inequality, the report says, is because of private schools' treatment of students with disabilities.
"Private schools systemically deny admission to students with disabilities outright, limit how many students with disabilities they serve, only serve children with certain types of disabilities, or charge extra tuition," notes the report. "Nearly half of analyzed private schools (48%) explicitly state that they choose not to provide some or all students with disabilities with the services, protections, and rights provided to those students in public schools under federal law."
Finally, the report raises questions about the quality of education students participating in the program will receive since "private schools often lack basic credentialing, accountability and transparency requirements related to ensuring students receive a quality education."
Commenting on the report, Sanders described the voucher program as yet another way that the wealthiest Americans are enriching themselves at US taxpayer expense.
"President Trump and his billionaire campaign contributors have been working overtime to create a two-tier education system in America," Sanders said, "private schools for the wealthy and well-connected and severely underfunded public schools for low-income and working-class students. That is unacceptable."
Sanders emphasized that "vouchers are being used to benefit private schools that reject students because they have a disability or because of their religion and benefit some of the wealthiest families in America," adding that the Trump program "will only make a bad situation even worse."
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Medicare Advantage, Privatized Medicaid Could Cost Americans $2 Trillion Extra Over Next Decade
"If the administration were serious about curbing waste and inefficiency, it would start by reducing the diversion of public funds to these corporate intermediaries," argues a new paper.
Nov 07, 2025
US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress took a sledgehammer to Medicaid over the summer, justifying the unprecedented cuts by falsely claiming the program that provides health coverage to tens of millions of low-income Americans is overrun with waste and abuse.
But a new paper published Friday in the journal Health Affairs argues that if the administration actually wanted to target waste, fraud, and abuse, it would have been much better off taking aim at Medicare Advantage (MA) and Medicaid privatization.
The paper's authors estimate that overpayments to MA plans—which are funded by the government and run by for-profit insurers—and private Medicaid managed care will likely cost US taxpayers a total of $1.92 trillion over the next 10 years.
"Ending that waste would inflict losses on private insurers' shareholders and executives (the CEO of the largest MA firm made $26.3 million last year). But patients, not just government coffers, might gain," wrote Adam Gaffney, Danny McCormick, Steffie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein.
"Even Congress' trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid and food assistance amount to little more than half of the potential savings from de-privatizing Medicaid and Medicare," they added. "Reclaiming those funds would require reversing the decades-long trend of outsourcing to profit-seeking intermediaries and restoring Medicare and Medicaid as efficiently administered public programs."
Far from aggressively taking on Medicare Advantage fraud, the Trump administration handed MA plans a major gift earlier this year by approving an average federal payment increase of roughly 5.1%—more than double the 2.2% increase proposed by the Biden administration in January.
The authors of the new paper noted that the huge raise for MA plans, which are notorious for denying necessary care in pursuit of ever-larger profits, will add $25 billion in waste to the US healthcare system next year alone.
"If the administration were serious about curbing waste and inefficiency," they wrote, "it would start by reducing the diversion of public funds to these corporate intermediaries."
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