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War & Peace
'Yankees Go Home!' Colombians Demand at Mass Protests Against Trump Threats
Thousands of people across the country expressed support for their president, Gustavo Petro, who spoke to President Donald Trump ahead of the rallies and struck a diplomatic but defiant tone.
Jan 08, 2026
Colombian President Gustavo Petro struck a relatively diplomatic tone Wednesday at a rally in Bogotá, where he spoke about the Trump administration's threats to launch military strikes against his country—but thousands of people who gathered in the Colombian capital and across the country were happy to say exactly what they thought of US President Donald Trump's recent attack on neighboring Venezuela and his saber-rattling across Latin America.
"He’s a maniac,” 67-year-old José Silva told the Guardian at a march in the border city of Cúcuta. “The US Congress needs to do something to get him out of the presidency... He’s a thug.”
“Trump is the devil," another marcher, Janet Chacón, told the outlet.
And demonstrators held English-language signs proclaiming, "Yankees Go Home!" as well as banners reading, “Fuera los yanquis!" or "Out with the Yanks!"
Colombians were rallying after Petro called for a mass mobilization days after Trump ordered a military attack in Venezuela, including a bombing and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores have pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a court in New York City, while Trump and other White House officials have made clear in recent days that their objective in Venezuela is not to stop drug trafficking—a crime in which the country is not significantly involved—but to take control of its oil reserves.
Colombians marched together with Venezuelans in Cúcuta, with one man telling Reuters, "If they kidnap your president, they kidnap the entire homeland."
Protesters gathered at the Simon Bolivar Bridge in Cucuta, Colombia, to demonstrate against US President Donald Trump, responding to a call by Colombian President Gustavo Petro under the slogan 'Colombia is free and sovereign' pic.twitter.com/y5FIMweCbN
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 8, 2026
Soon after invading Venezuela, Trump and other officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested they could soon attack other Latin Amercian countries and try to overthrow their leaders.
Officials in Cuba's socialist government, said Rubio, are "in a lot of trouble," while Trump said the US is "going to have to do something" about drug cartels operating in Mexico.
Regarding Colombia, Trump cited no evidence as he accused the left-wing Petro of "making cocaine and selling it to the United States" and said an invasion of the country "sounds good to me." Petro has not been linked to the drug trade in Colombia.
Petro has vehemently condemned Trump's escalation in Latin America in recent months and has accused the president of murder in the Caribbean, where the US has bombed dozens of boats and killed more than 100 people since September, accusing them of drug trafficking without releasing any evidence.
After the Venezuela attack and the threats toward other countries in the region, Petro warned that Trump had awakened a "jaguar," referring to the opposition of the public in Colombia and across Latin American regarding US imperialism.
After calling on Colombians to take to the streets, Petro spoke to Trump on the phone at the US president's request and accepted an invitation to the White House. Trump said it was "a great honor" to speak with the Colombian leader.
Petro told protesters in Bogotá that the speech he had planned to give had been "quite harsh."
“For 34 years, peace has been my priority,” he said. “And I know that peace is found through dialogue. That is why I accept President Trump’s proposal to talk.”
"If there is no dialogue, there is war. The history of Colombia has taught us that," the president added.
But he also made clear to thousands of supporters, many of whom carried placards with pictures of Petro, that “what happened in Venezuela was, in my opinion, illegal."
"We cannot lower our guard," he said. “Words need to be followed by deeds."
In Cúcuta, a teacher named Marta Jiménez denounced a number of European leaders who have refused to clearly condemn Trump's invasion of Venezuela's neighbor, even as legal scholars have said it was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter.
“They are leaving him to fly, free as a bird over every single country, to do whatever he likes," she said, expressing concern that Trump's next target "might be Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru—any of them."
En Colombia, la sociedad salió masivamente en 12 ciudades, para rechazar la injerencia y las amenazas del presidente de EEUU. Se trató de una jornada con mensajes en favor de la unidad de los pueblos de Nuestra América y El Caribe. @teleSURtv @TobarteleSUR @petrogustavo pic.twitter.com/0RD4QvjHsu
— teleSUR Colombia (@teleSURColombia) January 8, 2026
Protests were also held this week in countries including Argentina and Brazil, with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the rest of Latin America in light of Trump's threats and attacks.
“The message from the people of Latin America is: ‘Donald Trump, get your hands off Latin America,'" Brazilian Congressman Reimont Otoni said at a rally outside the US consulate in Rio de Janeiro. "Latin America isn’t the [United States'] backyard."
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Former US Ethics Officials File Complaint Over DOJ Role in 'Wholly Illegal' Venezuela Assault
A trio of ex-officials filed a formal complaint demanding an investigation into the Justice Department lawyers who authored the legal rationale justifying the US abduction of Venezuela's president.
Jan 08, 2026
A group of former US ethics officials filed a complaint Wednesday demanding an investigation into the Justice Department lawyers who crafted the legal rationale justifying the Trump administration's patently unlawful assault on Venezuela and ongoing effort to plunder the country's natural resources.
The trio of ex-officials, who worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents, specifically called for an immediate ethics probe into whether attorneys at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "violated their professional legal responsibilities in providing guidance justifying the recent invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, as well as legal advice that has apparently been given by the Department to President Trump to justify his recent threats to take additional military action against Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba, Iran, and Denmark."
"Such unilateral use of military force absent an imminent threat to the United States violates international law and furthermore unconstitutionally intrudes on the power that rests with Congress alone to declare war," wrote Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, and Virginia Canter in their complaint. "In sum, the president and the Department of Defense, presumably relying on yet another confidential and classified memorandum from OLC, or perhaps more than one memorandum, have engaged in illegal acts of war and threats of illegal acts of war against sovereign nations."
The complaint was announced after Trump administration officials reportedly told US lawmakers in closed-door meetings this week that the Justice Department developed a new legal opinion in an attempt to justify the abduction of Maduro, an operation that killed at least 100 people, according to Venezuelan officials.
US Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he believes the OLC opinion will declare the deadly military assault on Venezuela legal "because it was assisting a law-enforcement action."
BREAKING: Trump & enablers may THINK they can get away with invading Venezuela to seize its oil
But we @DDFund_ are not going to let them
Our push for legal accountability starts with our ethics complaint against the lawyers authorizing this illegality 👇
Much more to come... pic.twitter.com/ZJYgPb0GVM
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) January 8, 2026
The former ethics officials behind the new complaint against the Trump Justice Department said they are also filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding that the OLC memo on the Venezuela assault be made public.
"Even before the weekend’s outrageous events, that illegality was on sharp display through Trump’s attempted escalation into a conflict with Venezuela through dozens of illegal strikes on alleged drug smugglers in international waters," the former ethics officials wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "But the invasion of Venezuela represents a new—and wholly illegal—escalation."
The ex-officials emphasized that their push for transparency is just part of what must be an all-hands-on-deck effort to stop the administration's military assault on Venezuela and potentially other sovereign nations.
"Congress must look at other vehicles to limit the president’s unlawful aggression, perhaps with terms in spending bills that he could not so easily veto. The responsibility now lies with Congress to stop Trump," the former officials wrote, noting that GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate are likely to vote down War Powers Resolutions aimed at constraining the lawless president.
"But it does not end there," they added. "Others must step up as well, and that is why we are launching our dual legal actions of an ethics complaint and a FOIA demand. The cost of inaction against Trump’s forays into foreign wars is too high, and the window for safeguarding our nation from his illegal and corrupt blood for oil adventurism is narrowing."
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Watchdog Demands to Know If Trump Admin Colluded With Big Oil in Lead-Up to Venezuela Attack
"When government actions tied to foreign resources are preceded and followed by closed-door meetings with the world’s largest oil companies, transparency is not optional—it is essential."
Jan 07, 2026
A legal watchdog group is demanding information about the extent to which the Trump administration planned its attack on Venezuela last weekend with American oil companies, which are expected to profit royally from the takeover of the South American nation's oil reserves.
The group Democracy Forward filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on Monday seeking records and information about the role of US oil companies in the planning of the attack, which killed an estimated 75 people and led to the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
President Donald Trump did not inform Congress of the operation, which is required under the War Powers Act of 1973, but he told reporters on Sunday that he'd tipped off oil company executives both "before and after" the strike.
According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, he informed executives roughly a month before the strike to "get ready" because big changes were coming to the country, which had long held state control over the largest oil reserves in the world.
Since toppling Maduro, in an operation that international law experts have widely described as illegal, Trump has said his goal is to "get the oil flowing" to American oil companies to start "taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
On Tuesday, Trump said Venezuela's interim leaders—who he's threatened with more attacks if they don't do what he says—have agreed to hand over 30-50 million barrels of oil to be sold by the US, which will control how the profits are dispersed.
Trump and several members of his Cabinet, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, are expected to meet with oil executives on Friday at the White House to discuss "security guarantees" for their new spoils.
Democracy Forward has requested information about communications between senior officials at the US departments of Energy and the Interior and executives at top oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips, prior to the attack. This includes emails, attachments, and calendar invitations exchanged since December 2025.
The group has said it will seek to determine whether these companies were given "privileged access or influence" over the administration's policy toward Venezuela.
“The president couldn’t find time to brief members of Congress before kidnapping a foreign head of state, but appears to have prioritized discussions with Big Oil. When government actions tied to foreign resources are preceded and followed by closed-door meetings with the world’s largest oil companies, transparency is not optional—it is essential,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “The public deserves to know what interests are shaping decisions that have enormous consequences for global energy markets and democratic accountability.”
FOIA, which was passed in 1967, allows members of the public to request records from any federal agency. However, agencies have broad discretion to deny FOIA requests, including in cases involving national security or interagency communications.
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'This Is an Insane Plan': Democrats Fume After Briefing on Trump Plot to Steal Venezuela's Oil
The Trump administration "is going to be spending just as much time running Venezuela as they are running America," Sen. Chris Murphy said in an address to voters. "That's terrible news for you."
Jan 07, 2026
Democratic lawmakers were stunned as they emerged from a briefing Wednesday with Trump administration officials on the White House's plan for Venezuela following the US invasion last week—a meeting that marked the first time all members of the US Senate and House were briefed on the details of the attack and President Donald Trump's intentions going forward in the South American country.
"We learned a lot, I'm glad we had the briefing," a visibly shaken Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters. "But this is going to be a very rough ride for the United States."
The senators and later members of the House were briefed by officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine.
As Rubio told the press after the meeting, the lawmakers learned about a three-step process the White House is planning, starting with an effort to "stabilize" Venezuela by seizing and selling 30-50 million barrels of oil and then controlling how the proceeds are dispersed.
The US will then ensure “American, Western, and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market in a way that’s fair” before ensuring that the third step is "one of transition," claimed Rubio.
Murphy said the proposal amounts to "stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of time, undefined, as leverage to micromanage the country."
Murphy: "This is an insane plan. They are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gun point for an undefined period of time as leverage to micromanage the country. The scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning…This is going to be a very rough ride for the U.S." pic.twitter.com/0fQ2KryJTS
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) January 7, 2026
"This is an insane plan," he said after the briefing. "The scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning."
In a video he posted on social media, Murphy spoke directly to US voters about how Trump's plan represents not only "corruption" that will benefit the president's "energy industry and Wall Street friends" and a "failure to learn lessons" from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also an abandonment of working families across the US.
"This is going to be a multi-billion-dollar effort which is going to take money—your money—but also enormous time," said the senator. "Donald Trump, the White House, everybody there is going to be spending just as much time running Venezuela as they are running America. That's terrible news for you, for the American taxpayer. Because there's huge problems here at home. Healthcare premiums, prices going up, and now the United States government is going to be spending most of its time on many days running the country of Venezuela."
The Senate finally got briefed by the Trump Administration on Venezuela today - and I'm going to share with you what I can.
The bottom line is this - their plan is insane: take Venezuela's oil at gunpoint and use it run the country from DC. America is nation building again. pic.twitter.com/yEqaCTlNtl
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 7, 2026
At a press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt elaborated on Rubio's comments, saying that the decisions of Venezuela's interim authorities—including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed power after President Nicolás Maduro was abducted by US forces last week—"are going to be dictated by the United States of America.” She added that it is premature to discuss elections in the country.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) told reporters after the House's classified briefing that "there has to be a timeline for elections,” while Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said, “It’s like they’ll wave a magic wand and things will turn out the way they want.”
Numerous polls have shown that Trump's escalation against Venezuela, which has also included dozens of boat bombings since September that have killed more than 100 people whom the White House claimed were trafficking drugs to the US, is broadly unpopular with Americans. Nearly two-thirds of respondents to a Quinnipiac University survey said last month that they opposed US military operations in Venezuela.
“Across America, people are just saying, what the hell is going on?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said after the briefing. “We need answers as to how long this is going to last. We need answers to how many troops, how much money, are there guardrails, things we don’t do, and a number of things that we had talked about were very troubling.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among the lawmakers who said the White House briefing made clear that Congress must hold public hearings on the Trump administration's operations in Venezuela, adding that oil companies—who Trump openly said on Sunday were informed of the military strike and capture of Maduro before they happened—"seem to know more about Trump's secret plan to 'run' Venezuela than the American people."
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) added that the US is "four months into a sustained military operation" and has killed more than 200 so-called "enemies."
"American troops have been injured," he said. "We have the US forces arranged around Venezuela. Yet neither the House nor the Senate have been willing to hold a single public hearing."
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