"No, imperialists, we have absolutely no fear of you... and we don't like to be threatened," said Cuba's president.
By Jessica Corbett
A day after receiving the remains of the 32 Cubans killed during the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its leader, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, addressed thousands gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana on Friday.
“The current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism,” Díaz-Canel declared to a massive crowd protesting the recent killings and demanding the US release Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Participants in the “anti-imperialist” action, including members of the armed forces, waved Cuban and Venezuelan flags, and held signs honoring the 32 people who were killed while carrying out missions representing Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior.
“No one here surrenders,” the Cuban leader said Friday, according to the Associated Press. “The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven’t stopped threatening me.”
While the Biden administrationaimed to remove Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, President Donald Trumpreversed that decision after returning to office last January and restored a list of “restricted entities” created during his first term. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also expanded a visa restriction policy that targets Cuba’s medical missions around the world.
Since US forces slaughtered dozens of Cubans while seizing Maduro, Trump and Rubio have warned that Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia could also be targeted by the US military. Trump has also urged the Cuban government to make a deal with him and pledged to prevent oil and other resources from reaching the island nation, which has been subjected to US sanctions for decades.
“No, imperialists, we have absolutely no fear of you... and we don’t like to be threatened,” Díaz-Canel said Friday, waving his finger at the embassy, according to Reuters. “You will not intimidate us.”
“Cuba does not have to make any political concessions, and that will never be on the table for negotiations aimed at reaching an understanding between Cuba and the United States,” he asserted. “It is important that they understand this. We will always be open to dialogue and improving relations between our two countries, but only on equal terms and based on mutual respect.”
The demonstration in Havana came a day after Venezuelan workersled a march through Caracas, chanting, “Free Maduro!”
“He is our president and we want him back, we are in the streets, and we will not rest,” said labor leader Anais Herrera. “The president prepared us for this, and that is why we are in combat, in the streets with the Venezuelan working class.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were brought to New York City after their abduction. They were arraigned last week, and both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges. At the time, Maduro said in Spanish that “I am the president of Venezuela, and I consider myself a prisoner of war.”
At the arraignment, Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said that he “is the head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office... In addition, there are issues about the legality of his military abduction.”
Federal prosecutors and Trump have given no indications that they are willing to free Maduro or Flores. The US administration is also continuing its efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil resources.
"It’s not safe to be an OB-GYN in red states, so they are turning to robots to care for pregnant woman. This is not an innovation success story."
By Julia Conley
Alabama is among the states that have seen a significant drop in the number of obstetrician-gynecologists working there since Roe v. Wadewas overturned and cleared the way for states to ban abortion, resulting in doctors being unable to provide standard care and in a number of cases, placing patients in serious and even deadly danger.
On Friday, at a White House roundtable on healthcare in rural areas—some of the hardest-hit by the lack of OB-GYN care in states with abortion bans—one of President Donald Trump’s top health officials suggested the exodus of doctors from Alabama and other crises in healthcare access have resulted in positive innovations as care is outsourced to “robots.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said that since Alabama “has no OB-GYNs in many of their counties,” the state is “doing something pretty cool.”
“They’re actually having robots do ultrasounds on these pregnant moms,” said Oz.
CMS, which oversees the new Office of Rural Health Transformation, recently highlighted in a report about rural healthcare Alabama’s Maternal and Fetal Health Initiative, which it said “provides digital maternity care by using telerobotic ultrasound devices and labor and delivery carts to rural hospitals.”
Oz asserted that robotic ultrasounds will help to reduce Alabama’s maternal mortality rate, which is the highest in the United States, as medical centers will be able to detect health issues and abnormalities.
But observers said that praising an outcome of the dearth of maternal healthcare in the state—which has been at least partially caused by Trump’s push to overturn Roe and Republicans’ efforts to ban abortion—was “horrific.”
“The severe lack of OB-GYNs,” said the labor-focused media group More Perfect Union, “is a crisis, especially in rural America.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, added: “It’s not safe to be an OB-GYN in red states, so they are turning to robots to care for pregnant woman. This is not an innovation success story. It’s a dystopian horror story.”
A 2024 analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that in the year following the US Supreme Court’sDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, applicants for OB-GYN residency programs plummeted 21.2%.
The ruling allowed Alabama’s near-total abortion ban—which has only one ostensible “exception” for cases in which a pregnant person faces a serious health risk—to go into effect. Rights groups said that the law, one of the most extreme bans in the US, had been passed by the state’s Republican legislature as part of an effort to force the court to reconsider Roe.
Robin Marty, executive director of WAWC Healthcare in the state, told the Alabama Reflector in 2024 that “when it comes to, especially, OB-GYN residencies, nobody wants to come out here because we can’t fulfill all of the requirements, which include being able to do abortions and manage miscarriage.”
There had also been a 13.1% drop in applicants for OB-GYN programs in 2019-20 after the approval of the state’s Sanctity of Life Act, which recognized “the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life.”
“Legislative interference that imposes restrictions on full-scope reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, discourages medical students from pursuing residency training in states with restrictions, directly hurting patients by reducing the physician workforce in the communities that often need clinicians the most,” AnnaMarie Connolly, chief of education and academic affairs of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), told the Alabama Reflector.
In addition to the state’s abortion ban, the worsening lack of prenatal care in rural Alabama has also driven the state’s decision to turn to robotics to provide some aspects of healthcare.
Since 2020, more than 100 rural hospitals across the nation have stopped delivering babies; at least three of them have been in Alabama, where just 30% of rural health centers have labor and delivery units. Hospitals have cited staffing shortages and low Medicaid reimbursement payments—which were worsened by the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act—as reasons for closing obstetric care units. Closures have left many families traveling an hour or more to receive prenatal care, and can worsen maternal mortality rates.
Regarding the robotic ultrasounds heralded by Oz, political analyst Drew Savicki said: “That is interesting but it represents a very small fraction of what an OB-GYN does. What is an ultrasound robot going to do for a woman who is coming in for her post-childbirth examination?”
In his comments, Oz unwittingly described the crisis the Trump administration has helped to make worse: “We have the best healthcare, if you can get to it.”
One observer suggested Trump’s healthcare officials “explain why no OB-GYNs want to work in Alabama, rather than bragging about robots.”
Advocates warned wage garnishment "would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt."
By Jake Johnson
Billionaire US Education Secretary Linda McMahon has temporarily suspended the Trump administration’s plan to resume garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers, a reversal that came after advocates warned the pay seizures would have had devastating economic consequences for people across the country amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
McMahon, who is actively working to dismantle her department from within, told reporters earlier this week that wage garnishment efforts have “been put on pause for a bit,” without providing specifics. The Trump administration, which last summer ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the start of the Covid-19pandemic, was reportedly set to begin notifying defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages last week.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday that “after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks simply for falling behind on their student loans.”
“Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt,” Canchola Bañez added. “Earlier this month, a coalition of partners sent an urgent letter to ED urging them to do just this. We are pleased to see they have heeded our calls.”
That letter—sent on January 7 by Protect Borrowers, the American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, and other groups—called the administration’s earlier decision to resume wage garnishment “calloused and unnecessary,” warning that it came at a time when “struggling borrowers have been forced to wait amidst a nearly 1 million application backlog to enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, and as mass layoffs at the department have made it even harder for borrowers to get help with their student loans or if they are experiencing issues with their student loan servicer.”
According to an analysis by Protect Borrowers, 3.6 million new student loan borrowers fell into default during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. That’s one new default every nine seconds.
“Nearly two-thirds of the borrowers who defaulted during the Trump administration—more than 2.6 million people—live in states that President Trump won in the 2024 election,” the analysis found.
Under federal law, the Education Department can withhold up to 15% of a borrower’s after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. The Trump administration has already begun seizing income tax refunds from student borrowers in default.
"Cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," said one witness.
By Brad Reed
Several Democratic lawmakers on Friday convened a hearing in Minnesota to hear testimony from local officials and residents about the impact that the surge of federal immigration agents in the state has had on their lives.
The hearing, which was organized by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), featured elected leaders such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as testimony from US citizens who had been taken into custody by federal agents.
Patty O’Keefe, a 36-year-old US citizen, told lawmakers that her encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began when she and a friend had received a report that legal observers in her neighborhood were being pepper sprayed.
She said they found the agents and began following them in their car while honking their horn and blowing whistles to alert others in the area to their presence.
The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car’s windows and dragged out both O’Keefe and her friend.
O’Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, “You guys got to stop obstructing us, that’s why this lesbian bitch is dead,” an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.
O’Keefe said this comment left her feeling “rage and sadness,” while also asking why anyone would say something like that about the victim of a horrific killing.
“Then I remembered that cruelty and humiliation were probably the point,” she said.
O’Keefe was then taken to the BH Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul, where she was put into leg shackles and placed in a detention area that had been reserved for US citizens.
While in detention for eight hours at the building, she said she saw people being subjected to inhumane conditions.
“I saw holding cells with over a dozen people each, and a large holding cell of between 40 to 50 people,” she said. “Most of the people there were Hispanic and East African, both women and men. Some cells had no room for people to sit or lay down. Most people I saw were staring straight ahead, not talking, despondent and grief stricken. I know I’ll never forget their faces.”
Mubashir, a 20-year-old US citizen of Somali descent, recounted his detention by federal immigration agents in December, when officers tackled him and took him into custody even though he offered to show them his identification proving his citizenship.
“I repeated, ‘I’m a citizen, I have an ID,’ the agent kept saying, ‘That don’t matter,’” Mubashir explained.
Like O’Keefe, Mubashir was taken to the St. Paul ICE detention facility, where he was shackled. Unlike O’Keefe, however, he was told that he was going to be deported despite having proof of his legal status.
Eventually, Mubashir was able to show a photo of his passport card to an official at the facility who instructed officers to release him from custody.
“It is difficult to believe this happened to me,” he said. “I knew the president had made statements about Somali people and there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities... But I did not think this would happen to me or someone in my family. We are all United States citizens, so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE.”
Mubashir also emphasized that “my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents.”
"Where is the ceasefire?" asked the father of a teenage girl killed in an Israeli strike on their family home.
By Brett Wilkins
Authorities in Gaza said Friday that Israeli forces killed or wounded dozens of Palestinians within the past 24 hours amid widespread skepticism over the Trump administration’s announcement that the second phase of what many in the coastal strip say is essentially a sham ceasefire has begun.
The newly formed Gaza Administration Committee met Friday for the first time in Cairo, where members discussed immediate humanitarian relief and reconstruction plans for the obliterated strip. The body is an integral part of Phase 2 of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which US special envoy Steve Witkoff said began on Wednesday.
Trump said Thursday that his so-called Board of Peace to oversee Gaza has also been formed. In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump touted the body as “the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.”
The Gaza Administration Committee is chaired by former Deputy Palestinian Planning Minister Ali Shaath, who said during a Friday press conference that “our goal is to give the Palestinian people hope that there is a future” and bring “smiles to the faces of Gaza’s children, women, and men.”
However, Israeli bombs and bullets continued to claim Palestinian lives across the strip, including women and children, in the latest of what Gaza officials say are more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire. At least 463 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,250 others wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
“Where is the ceasefire?” asked the father of a teenage girl killed in an Israeli strike on their family’s home in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. “We are civilians in our homes, and we are dying.”
Another Gaza resident, Jaber Mohammed, called the ceasefire process “all lies.”
“We’ve been suffering for two years and now starting the third,” Mohammed toldAl Jazeera Friday. “We’re suffering from the lack of food and drink, and from high prices.”
Yet another Gazan, Fayeq al-Helou, said: “They haven’t even started the first phase yet. How can they start the second?”
“We don’t want it to be like every other time, just words on paper,” he added.
In addition to ongoing air and ground strikes, Israel has continued to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, where widespread hunger and illness are rampant among the nearly 2 million forcibly displaced Palestinians, many of whom are living in tents and other makeshift shelters unfit for human habitation. Gaza’s Interior Ministry says that at least 31 people—some of them children and infants—have died in the strip due to exposure to cold, flooding, and shelter collapse amid winter storms.
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing.
Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, said Thursday that it welcomes the new administration committee. Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, said that “the ball is now in the court” of the United States.
Trump said Thursday that Hamas must “immediately” return the body of the final Israeli hostage abducted in October 2023 “and proceed without delay to full demilitarization.”
“They can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” the president added.
Hamas has committed to dissolving Gaza’s existing government and yield to the administration committee, although the group has been vague about how and when it would disarm, and maintains its “right to resist” Israel’s occupation.
"Latin America is a zone of peace. The obligation to resolve conflicts peacefully and in accordance with international law must be respected."
By Jake Johnson
A group of United Nations experts on Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s deadly assault on Venezuela, abduction of its president, and efforts to control its government and natural resources as profound violations of international law that cannot be allowed to stand without accountability.
“It is gravely concerning that, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this marks the second time in four years that a permanent member of the Security Council has carried out an armed attack in flagrant violation of the UN Charter,” the experts, including around two dozen UN special rapporteurs, said in a joint statement.
The UN Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
“The prohibition against violating national sovereignty through unprovoked armed attacks applies even in the context of serious human rights violations and restrictions on freedoms such as those documented in Venezuela,” the experts added. “Latin America is a zone of peace. The obligation to resolve conflicts peacefully and in accordance with international law must be respected.”
Their statement came days after US President Donald Trumpexpressed contempt for international law in an interview with the New York Times, saying, “I don’t need international law.”
Trump added that his “own morality” is “the only thing that can stop” him.
Top administration officials have been similarly dismissive of any legal restraints on the ability of the US to invade nations and seize their resources whenever it pleases.
“We’re a superpower, and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” top White House adviser Stephen Millersaid in a CNN appearance last week. “It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said in a separate statement on Thursday that the Trump administration has engaged in “excessive and unlawful use of lethal force” at home and abroad, including in Venezuela and on the high seas.
“International law does not allow States to kill on the basis of labels, perceptions of how someone appears, or allegations of wrongdoing,” Tidball-Binz said. “Whether at sea, abroad, or at home, the use of lethal force must be strictly limited by the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, and precaution, and may be used only as a last resort to protect life.”
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The coalition is planning to lobby states to pass laws similar to the so-called “millionaires tax” in Massachusetts that has raised billions in revenue to fund schools, mass transit, and other important public goods.
Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said during the press briefing that the Bay State’s law has proven to be such a success that it should be a model for states across the US.
“In 2022 we won a constitutional amendment that allows a four penny surtax on annual income over $1 million,” said Page. “This past year alone, Fair Share brought in $3 billion from just 25,000 households in a state of 8 million people. That is how concentrated wealth is in the state of Massachusetts.”
Campaigners noted that laws similar to the Massachusetts law are now being proposed in Rhode Island, Michigan, and California, and they planned to push other states to follow their lead in the coming year to avoid facing major revenue shortages caused by the GOP’s budget law.
Liz Perlman, executive cirector of AFSCME 3299, argued that California in particular could benefit from such a law, which has drawn opposition from Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“California has about 200 people who hold roughly $2.1 trillion in wealth,” said Perlman. “That is about a quarter of all billionaire wealth in the United States, concentrated in a single state. A billionaire tax is not radical. It is a necessary response to a crisis made worse by federal decisions.”
Vonda McDaniel, President of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, argued that Democratic strongholds such as California and Massachusetts shouldn’t be the only ones pushing for tax hikes on the ultrawealthy, arguing that GOP-led states such as Tennessee should be adopting them as well.
“A working mother in Memphis faces a combined sales tax on groceries that can approach or exceed 9%,” McDaniel explained. “Meanwhile, the Tennessee Department of Revenue has reported more than 60% of corporations are paying zero in state corporate income tax.”
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Tuesday held a town hall event in Portland, Maine to help promote legislation written by Democratic state Rep. Ann Matlack (43) to change the state’s income brackets to place more burden on the wealthiest households.
“For us to build the future that we want, it begins with a more equitable tax system,” Platner said during the event, according to local news station WMTW. “And it begins with us thinking about healthcare as a public good and not as something that deserves the profit motive.”
“People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again,” said a campaigner for the Working Families Party.
US Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) looks into the hearing room in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The WFP, an independent party that often supports Democrats with a populist economic agenda, backed Fetterman’s 2022 Senate bid when he ran in the general election as a champion of many progressive causes. But the group now says he “sold out working Pennsylvanians” after pivoting hard to the right on key issues.
It launched the campaign to oust him in November after he voted with Republicans to reopen the government without an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which is expected to spike health insurance premiums for over 22 million Americans this year.
“While Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is supporting Trump’s use of American tax dollars to ‘run’ Venezuela or buy Greenland, 500,000 Pennsylvanians are about to see their healthcare premiums rise because of the Republican budget bill he supported,” said Nick Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families Party and a former Fetterman staffer. “People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again. We need new leadership.”
The website provides past Fetterman donors who feel betrayed by the senator with a form letter to “request a refund” of past contributions from the campaign. It also contains a “Sell-out Tracker,” which seeks to “track every bad position” he has taken.
In addition to his vote to reopen the government, the group notes that Fetterman has voted to confirm 50% of Trump’s Cabinet picks. He was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and one of the very few to vote in favor of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
It also accuses him of “betraying vulnerable people” by supporting Republican legislation that eliminates due process for undocumented immigrants, cheering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid its mass deportation crusade, and giving full-throated support to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and Trump’s strikes on Iran.
The site also highlights Fetterman’s tendency to neglect the basic duties of his job as a senator, which he has admitted he skips to spend more time with his family and because he finds them “overwhelmingly procedural.”
Fetterman has one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, having missed over 100 votes since April 2024 and skipped 44 out of 45 meetings for committees he was assigned to between January and May 2025.
He has also said he hosts very few town halls in order to avoid protesters, who have shown up to voice their discontent with his support for Israel, among other controversial positions.
As the site points out, while some other Democrats fought tooth and nail in a losing effort to stop Republicans from passing massive safety-net cuts in this summer’s budget reconciliation package, Fetterman toldPolitico, “I just want to go home” and complained that he’d missed his family’s trip to the beach.
So far, no prominent Pennsylvania Democrats have offered themselves up as potential primary challengers for Fetterman, who comes up for reelection in 2028.
Top names, including former Rep. Conor Lamb, who ran against Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic primary, and Philadelphia area Rep. Madeleine Dean have said they would not challenge Fetterman if he ran for another term.
Meanwhile, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who called Fetterman “Trump’s favorite Democrat” last year, told NOTUS he’d be open to running against him.
The Pennsylvania Working Families Party said it is collecting donations that it will use to help “identify, recruit, and elect a real working class champion to replace Fetterman in the US Senate.”
The group toldNBC News that it has already amassed more than 425 people interested in either running against Fetterman themselves or volunteering their time or donating to help the effort to unseat him.
“Double whammy! Trump wants to raise prices on Americans to help invade Greenland, which we don’t want.”
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on January 16, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump on Friday suggested that he would expand his legally contested and costly tariff regime to target any countries that don’t support his plan to conquer Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory opposed to a US takeover.
While he was supposed to be speaking about rural healthcare at the White House, Trump recalled threatening Europe with tariffs on pharmaceuticals and said that “I may do that for Greenland too. I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that.”
Responding to a clip of Trump’s remarks on social media, journalist Adam Cochran cited multiple federal laws and called his comments “impeachable.”
Meidas Touch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski called the president “the Mad King.”
Congressman Darren Soto (D-Fla.) wrote: “Double whammy! Trump wants to raise prices on Americans to help invade Greenland, which we don’t want.”
Polling has shown that the US seizing Greenland is unpopular with not only Greenlanders but also Americans. As Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Denmark and Greenland’s foreign ministers met earlier this week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that just 4% of US voters think it would be a “good idea” for Trump to take the territory by military force, and only 17% of approve of the president’s push to acquire it by any means.
Other countries have rallied around Greenland and Denmark amid Trump’s threats, and troops from several nations that have long been allied with the United States—includingFrance, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—arrived at the Arctic island this week.
The European Union’s defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, said Monday that he agreed with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s assessment that a US takeover of Greenland “will be the end of” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers was in Copenhagen on Friday to meet with Danish and Greenlandic leaders, including Frederiksen. The Associated Pressreported that the delegation leader, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), thanked the hosts for “225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner,” and said that “we had a strong and robust dialog about how we extend that into the future.”
The only Republicans to join the delegation were Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (NC), who isn’t seeking reelection. Murkowski told journalists, “Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation.”
“I think it is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75%, will say we do not think that is a good idea,” Murkowski added, according toReuters. “This senator from Alaska does not think it is a good idea.”
A Republican senator who requested anonymity said Trump’s talk of taking over Greenland has generated more opposition from Republicans in Congress because of the dire implications such an aggressive move would have for the future of NATO.
“You see, more than in other incidents, pushback by Republican senators on this topic,” the lawmaker said.
“I have no understanding how this is an idea to begin with,” the senator added with exasperation, warning that taking Greenland will undermine NATO and put Ukraine at greater risk.
On Thursday, after another bipartisan meeting with Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that “what I thought was remarkable is that they talked to us about how the entirety of Greenland and the entirety of Denmark right now is focused on whether there is an invasion coming from the United States.”
“This would be a cataclysm, the United States going to war with Europe,” he warned. “We’re trying to show Denmark that they have support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, but we need our Republican colleagues to speak up right now.”
We taxpayers fund ICE, the Border Patrol, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s salary (and her two jets). Without congressional action by the end of January, funding for ICE will lapse.
The existence of this profoundly unaccountable, overtly fascist military apparatus poses a structural danger to our democracy. This is why "Abolish ICE" is an extremely moderate position.
By Aaron Regunberg
ICE and other federal officers remove a woman from her vehicle near an area where ICE was operating in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 13, 2026.
(Photo by Octavio JONES / AFP via Getty Images)
On Tuesday ofthis week, The Economist and YouGov released a poll finding, for the first time, that more Americans want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than don’t.
According to the poll, 46 percent of people support getting rid of ICE, compared to 43 percent who oppose its abolition. This represents a major shift in public opinion—this same polling outfit found only 27 percent support for abolishing ICE as recently as July. Today’s survey also found that most Americans believe ICE is making them less, not more safe, by a margin of 47 percent to 34 percent.
In perfect form, this morning the centrist advocacy group Third Way released a memo warning Democrats not to call for dismantling ICE, arguing that “politically, it is lethal.” Their evidence includes a focus group they conducted in October, which…is dumb. ICE’s execution of Renee Nicole Good has broken through—69 percent of Americans report having seen video of the shooting. This has clearly impacted public opinion in a way that makes information from months ago significantly irrelevant.
We cannot let the Third Ways of the world—the centrist establishment muckety mucks whose version of the Democratic Party already lost to Trump, twice—win this debate. It’s simply too important.
There are lots of reasons to dismantle ICE. There’s a functional argument: We do not need ICE to enforce immigration laws; the U.S. handled this just fine for 227 years prior to the creation of this specific agency. There’s a fiscal argument: ICE is now larger than every other federal law enforcement agency combined. It’s larger than the militaries of all but 15 countries in the world! It’s annual budget, $37.5 billion, could pay for the health insurance of every needy child in the country!
But the core reason for abolishing ICE is that it poses a structural threat to American democracy. This is an unaccountable agency, by design. ICE is not subject to the rules governing local or state police departments; there are no laws barring ICE agents from wearing masks, driving in unmarked cars, and operating in plainclothes. ICE was designed after 9/11 to support the FBI’s domestic terrorism efforts, with almost nothing in the way of transparency or guardrails. So what happens when domestic terrorism gets defined as expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,” as Trump’s NSPM-7 directive and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent memo to the FBI do?
Well, what happens is everything that we are seeing from ICE today—a federal agency operating quite explicitly as Trump’s personal militia. Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler had his SS, and Trump has ICE—an army of ideologically motivated MAGA loyalist chuds whose new members owe their employment not to the state (being largely unqualified for positions in legitimate law enforcement agencies) but rather to Trump’s personal patronage.
The existence of this profoundly unaccountable, overtly fascist military apparatus poses a structural danger to our democracy. Structural dangers like this can’t be reformed—they need to be dismantled. “We shouldn’t have a Gestapo in this country” isn’t a radical position. It’s actually the only non-radical position you can take on the question. That’s long been true morally. And today’s polling shows it’s true politically, as well. In every way, abolishing ICE is now the moderate position.
So email your Democratic elected officials, call their offices, speak up at their town halls. Tell our Democratic representatives and senators that they need to use every tool at their disposal—including, in the near term, the Congressional appropriations process—to stand up to this rogue militia. And help our Democratic leaders understand—if we are so lucky, come 2028, to get a second chance at resetting our democracy—that getting rid of Trump’s SS is nonnegotiable.
If climate change isn’t reason enough to break the political power of this industry, its role in incentivizing war and conflict is another.
A detail of a statue on the subject of oil is seen in Caracas, Venezuela.
(Photo by Javier Campos/picture alliance via Getty Images)
If climate change isn’t reason enough to break the political power of this industry, its role in incentivizing war and conflict is another.
By Basav Sen
Is the illegal US invasion of Venezuela, and kidnapping of its president, a “war for oil”?
To some extent, this is a reductionist debate. There are often multiple motivations for war, and there clearly are several here. Some in the administration are stuck in Cold War ideology and will use any pretext to undermine and even overthrow governments they perceive as left-leaning, as seen from President Donald Trump’s threats against Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.
Beyond those governments, the latest Trump National Security Strategy proclaims a desire to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”
We may eventually see US oil companies grab some of the largest oil reserves in the world, with huge direct public subsidies in the form of investment reimbursements, and indirect subsidies in the form of the US military acting as their free private security force.
There are reasonable doubts about whether US oil companies would be willing to invest in Venezuela. The poor state of the country’s oil infrastructure would necessitate major investments to upgrade it. It’s estimated to cost $110 billion to restore production to mid-2010s levels, and there’s a high likelihood of political instability in the country over the next few years.
Reportedly, many US oil companies are reluctant to invest in Venezuela despite pressure from the US government. Either way, the web of business interests that benefit, directly or indirectly, from the oil and gas industry still stand to come out ahead—and in some ways are already benefiting—from Trump’s aggression.
Stock prices for US refiners (such as Chevron and Valero Energy) and oilfield services companies (such as Halliburton) have soared in response to the US attack, with an immediate spike on the first trading day after the attack. While prices have decreased since, they remain at their highest levels in recent weeks.
Oil companies can benefit directly, even if they don’t invest in Venezuela. Crude oil prices have been on a downward trajectory over the last year due to oversupply.
There’s always the possibility that Trump could use US control of Venezuela to reduce itsoil production.
After all, the administration has always been friendly to the interests of the fossil fuel industry, whose leaders were among Trump’s major backers. If the US clamps down on oil production in Venezuela, that would at least somewhat alleviate the downward pressure on oil prices, benefiting the industry.
Finally, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that the administration will offer enough sweeteners to make investment in Venezuela lucrative for the industry. The administration has already signaled that it may be willing to reimburse oil companies for their investment and escalate US military intervention to provide security for the US oil and gas industry. That essentially kicks the cost of production to US taxpayers.
This may not be enough to persuade the industry to invest in Venezuela. If it is, we may eventually see US oil companies grab some of the largest oil reserves in the world, with huge direct public subsidies in the form of investment reimbursements, and indirect subsidies in the form of the US military acting as their free private security force.
Setting aside the limiting debate about whether this is a “war for oil,” it’s clear that fossil fuel capitalism is already profiting from the attack on Venezuela—and may profit more in the future. If climate change isn’t reason enough to break the political power of this industry, its role in incentivizing war and conflict is another.
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