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US reportedly ready for next phase of Venezuela military operations
Trump has been escalating pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and has now labelled him and government allies as members of a foreign terrorist organization.
That designation is another step towards criminalizing Maduro – analysts say it could pressure Maduro into stepping down with the threat of military force.
It also potentially gives the US expanded military options for striking within the country, US media is reporting.
The exact timing or scope of the new operations is unknown, and it’s not clear either whether Trump has made a final decision to act, Reuters reported.
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US and Ukraine negotiators continue hammering out peace plan in Geneva
And let’s turn to the latest on Ukraine – talks are continuing in Geneva today between US and Ukrainian representatives following a weekend where there was “significant progress made”, according to Marco Rubio, but the specifics remain vague.
The US had blindsided Kyiv and European countries with a 28-point peace plan last week, giving Ukraine until Thursday to agree to a framework.
Washington and Kyiv said in a joint statement on Sunday they had drafted a “refined peace framework” after a first day of talks, but disclosed no detail on what the refinements were, or if any concessions had been made on the key sticking points.
These include territorial concessions and security guarantees for Ukraine against Russian threats in the future.
Doge quietly disbanded ahead of schedule
Back to some domestic news and the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has apparently been dissolved with eight months still remaining on its contract, ending a drawn-out campaign of invading federal agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.
“That doesn’t exist,” office of personnel management (OPM) director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about Doge’s status, adding that it was no longer a “centralized entity”.
The statement confirmed longstanding suspicions that Doge, created by an executive order that Donald Trump signed on his first day, was on its way out. The tech billionaire Elon Musk and the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped to lead the effort and were expected to drive “large scale structural reform” through 24 July 2026.
“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said about the department back in February, ignoring the fact that Doge agents refused to identify themselves in many cases, slashed agency spending often without consulting the agencies, and did not transparently provide a public accounting of its work. “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.”
Suspicions that Doge may have been disbanded began to surface earlier this summer, after Politico reported in June that staffers had “packed up their clothes and bedding” at the department’s headquarters, where they had been sleeping since February, and looked for new homes.
Maduro warned Trump against 'forever war'
amid growing tensions with the US. Photograph: Miguel Gutiérrez/EPA
Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has accused the US of seeking to “bomb and invade” the South American country.
Just 10 days ago, he warned Trump to not lead the US into an Afghanistan-style “forever war”. The comments came after the US Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest, arrived in the region.
Speaking to CNN outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas on 14 November, Maduro called on Trump to make peace, not war.
“No more forever wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan. Long live peace,” Maduro, 62, said as he pushed his way through crowds of supporters.
Earlier that week he had announced what he called a a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off his country’s coast.
A timely opinion piece from Daniel Mendiola, a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College this morning on the situation currently playing out around Venezuela.
For the last two months, US forces have amassed outside Venezuela and carried out a series of lethal strikes on civilian boats. The Trump White House has ordered these actions in the name of fighting “narco-terrorists” – a label apparently applicable to anyone suspected of participating in drug trafficking near Latin American coastlines.
More than 80 people have already been killed in these pre-emptive strikes, and war hawks are calling for expanded military action to depose the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
While on the surface Trump’s second term has been characterized by a disorienting barrage of executive orders and culture war polemics, the administration has in fact been running a cohesive authoritarian playbook aimed at conferring near limitless powers to the presidency. These concerted efforts have played out in numerous policy arenas from immigration, to higher education, to economics, to even determining who is a citizen.
Consistent with this pattern, Trump is asserting the same unchecked authority over the violent capacities of the US military.
The Trump White House is similarly asserting the unencumbered right to define “terrorist”, along with the corresponding right to take deadly action with virtually no outside oversight.
In public statements, Trump has defended treating drug smugglers as terrorists by citing the harm done by drug overdoses, in effect suggesting that drug traffickers are directly killing US citizens. Ignoring the fact that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl, the main driver of overdoses in the US, Trump has even gone so far as to float the mathematically impossible claim that each boat strike has saved 25,000 lives. Of course, officials have provided zero public evidence that the boats attacked were carrying drugs at all, much less tried to explain how blowing up boats would have any impact at all on drug abuse in the US.
But again, why would they? The whole point of the argument is that such facts don’t matter because Trump simply has the unchecked authority to use lethal force.
US reportedly ready for next phase of Venezuela military operations
Trump has been escalating pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and has now labelled him and government allies as members of a foreign terrorist organization.
That designation is another step towards criminalizing Maduro – analysts say it could pressure Maduro into stepping down with the threat of military force.
It also potentially gives the US expanded military options for striking within the country, US media is reporting.
The exact timing or scope of the new operations is unknown, and it’s not clear either whether Trump has made a final decision to act, Reuters reported.
Good morning
And welcome to our US politics live blog. I’m Frances Mao and I’ll be taking you through the major developments these next few hours.
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The US and Ukraine say they have made progress in talks on ending the war with Russia, with Marco Rubio announcing amendments to a “refined” draft agreement.
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However Donald Trump has lashed out at Ukraine’s leadership, saying Kyiv has shown “zero gratitude”.
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His administration has also designated Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as a member of a foreign terrorist organisation, which could allow for the hit of new sanctions. Reports also emerged on the weekend that the US military could be set to move into a new phase of operations in the Caribbean this week. More on this soon.
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The resignation of Maga loyalist turned rebel Marjorie Taylor Greene is a warning sign to Trump, analysts say. The Georgian congresswoman had once been one of Trump’s most vocal allies but she announced an exit on Friday, following a public spat over the Epstein files, saying she refused to be a “battered wife”.
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And Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – famously run by Elon Musk for a few months – has disbanded with eight months left on its mandate, ending a highly-publicised initiative that had been a symbol of Trump’s pledge to slash the government’s size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.
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