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    Why is Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘president of peace’, aiming to topple the Venezuelan regime?

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    It was a solemn pledge at the heart of Donald Trump’s “America first” appeal.A “Make America great again” (Maga) foreign policy would mean the end of military commitments that had in the past sucked the US into draining and drawn-out wars far from its own shores.Now an intense military buildup targeting the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is stretching that commitment to the breaking point, as the White House strikes a bellicose posture that seems to mock Trump’s self-proclaimed “president of peace” image.In recent weeks, US forces have carried out at least eight strikes, killing at least 38 people, against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast that Washington said were being used for drug trafficking. The latest strike, announced on Friday by Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, reportedly killed six people on a boat allegedly being used to smuggle drugs on what was said to be “a known narco-trafficking route”.Two further strikes in the Pacific this week killed at least five people as tensions also rose between the US and Colombia over the Trump administration’s tactics against alleged traffickers.But the main focus has been Venezuela amid a buildup that has seen nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and elite special operations forces deployed off the South American country’s shores.Trump this month signaled a further escalation by authorising the CIA to conduct operations inside the country, fuelling fears that the US was trying to foment a military coup against Maduro – whom it has designated a “narco-terrorist” and for whose arrest it has offered a $50m bounty – or even prepare a ground invasion.“Action on the ground would be the least preferred option, and it certainly wouldn’t be GI Joe – it would be special ops people,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst and national intelligence officer for Latin America.“With technology, you don’t need to invade any more. The whole idea, I believe, is to get the Venezuelans to take him out.”Some Venezuelan analysts say local support for a coup is thin.The policy has been shaped by a Trump administration power struggle that has seen Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser, triumph over Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy to Venezuela, who was sidelined after arguing for a pragmatic approach that would help secure oil deals.Maduro and other senior regime figures are said to have offered extensive concessions in an effort to end the confrontation with Washington, including offering the US a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil industry. The Trump administration has even eased some sanctions on Venezuelan oil, granting Chevron a licence to resume operating in the country and increase exports from Venezuela. But longstanding tensions have instead escalated further after Rubio pressed the case for a tough approach.“Trump had, in many conversations, meetings with different people emphasized that he really only cared about [Venezuela’s] oil,” said a US businessman with longstanding ties to Venezuela and close knowledge of the White House’s policy. “But Rubio was able to drum up this ‘narco-terrorist’ rhetoric and get Trump to pivot completely. The U-turn really reflects Rubio’s expanded influence in the administration.”Rubio, a longtime critic of Maduro’s socialist regime, won the support of Stephen Miller, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff, and Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, in persuading Trump.He did so partly by seizing on the administration’s designation of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang of Venezuelan origin, as a “foreign terrorist organisation” that had infiltrated the US and allegedly fuelled the influx of undocumented migrants fleeing Maduro’s regime.A White House proclamation last March further identified the gang as being in cahoots with the Cartel de los Soles, a shadowy grouping of Venezuelan military figures which the administration insists is headed by Maduro and is responsible for trafficking drugs to the US. Other sources have questioned that characterisation of the cartel and Maduro’s connections to it.Experts also question Venezuela’s significance as a drugs supplier. Although the country is a conduit for trafficking, it is not a primary source for most illegal substances entering the US. Fentanyl, which is responsible for most US drug-related deaths, is mainly sourced from Mexico.There are doubts over the legality of the boat strikes – which Rubio has vociferously justified – and the military escalation in the name of combating drugs.The White House insists the actions, believed to be led by the CIA, are legal under the 2001 USA Patriot Act – passed after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks – which affords scope for action against designated foreign terrorists, a category that now includes Maduro.William Brownfield, a former ambassador to Venezuela and ex-state department drugs and law enforcement czar, said the policy was unprecedented and vulnerable to legal challenge.“I never had anyone seriously suggest to me during my seven years as drugs and law enforcement chief that this issue could be addressed the way it is now,” he said. “I couldn’t even propose it because no one would even entertain the thought of using the military for a law enforcement mission.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnderlying Rubio’s drive may be a mixture of ideology and political ambition. The son of Cuban immigrants, he has long denounced Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, for the financial and oil support they have provided to Cuba’s communist regime.Observers say Rubio is eyeing the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 – when Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term and where adopting a hard line on Venezuela could help secure the Cuban ethnic vote in a close primary election.Tommy Pigott, a state department spokesman, played down Rubio’s role in shaping the policy, saying in a statement: “The president is the one who drives and determines our foreign policy. It is the job of the cabinet to implement. Secretary Rubio is honored to be a part of the president’s team.”He added: “Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela; he’s a fugitive of American justice who undermines regional security and poisons Americans and we want to see him brought to justice.”But there are also wider foreign policy considerations as the US tries to revive its historical habit of treating Latin America as its back yard.“Rubio’s position is that the United States was not paying sufficient attention to the Latin American region writ large and I actually agree with that,” said Brownfield. “The Trump administration is, in fact, being fairly clear when it says that the Maduro regime is a threat to basic democratic values throughout the western hemisphere.”Angelo Rivero Santos, a Latin American studies professor at Georgetown University and former diplomat in Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, said the Trump administration was reasserting the Monroe doctrine, devised in the 19th century and which saw the US claiming Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence.“It’s not only Venezuela,” he said. “When you look at their statements on the Panama canal, at the impositions of tariffs on Brazil, the latest spat with the Colombian government, not to mention the military presence in the Caribbean, you see a return of the Monroe doctrine.”One aim, Santos argued, was to install more Trump-friendly governments in the region similar to those of Javier Milei, Argentina’s president; Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador; and Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa.Another, said Armstrong, the former CIA analyst, was an “ultra-nationalist” projection of strength.“The message is: ‘We’re tough guys,’” he said. “Maduro, like the Cubans, has given the United States the finger and told us to go fuck ourselves, and we have failed with all of the so-called maximum pressure policy that started in Trump 1.0 and has continued and increased in Trump 2.0.”The result, he warned, could be an unpredictable sequence of events as the US tries to goad Maduro into retaliation, which could be used to engineer his downfall.“They can hit a naval target, say a coastal civilian facility, and that might be the provocation that gets Maduro to hit back and maybe do something dumb,” he said. “Then you go for big targets in Caracas, and get a form of chaos. If that doesn’t do it, you put a couple of guys in, special forces or Navy Seals, to do a snatch. Of course he’s not going to go alive. I don’t see a pretty solution.”Aram Roston contributed additional reporting More

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      US and Canada spar over ad of Reagan denouncing tariffs that led to derailed trade talks

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      After the US suspended all trade negotiations with Canada over a 1987 speech by Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs that appeared to spark Donald Trump’s ire, the premier of Ontario said he planned to run an ad featuring the speech again during the World Series on Friday.Doug Ford, whose government ran the Reagan ad in US markets this week, first posted on X that the two nations were “stronger together”, while Trump added his own string of social media posts trumpeting the supposed benefits of tariffs.“Canada and the United States are friends, neighbours and allies. President Ronald Reagan knew that we are stronger together,” Ford wrote on X alongside the Reagan video. “God bless Canada and God bless the United States.”Ford said the ad will run during the first game of the World Series, but, after speaking with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, Ford announced the campaign will end Monday.“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses,” Ford said. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached US audiences at the highest levels.”The quick breakdown in relationships apparently stems from a one-minute television advertisement featuring Reagan’s radio address declaring that “trade barriers hurt every American worker”.Trump responded on Truth Social without evidence that Canada had somehow run a “fraudulent” and “fake” advertisement, and announced that “all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated”.Rubio, the secretary of state, told reporters on Friday that Ford had aired commercials in the US which “took President Reagan’s words out of context”, adding that the Reagan Foundation had criticized the effort, too. “The President made his announcement that he suspended any trade talks with Canada for now,” Rubio said.The Reagan Foundation said on Thursday that the Ontario government’s advertisement “misrepresents” Reagan’s address, without elaborating how. It added that officials “did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks” and added that the organization was reviewing its legal options.It also encouraged people to watch the video of Reagan’s speech on its YouTube channel.Ford’s office responded by reposting the longer, five-minute excerpt, and said that the commercial uses “an unedited excerpt from one of Reagan’s public addresses, which is available through public domain”.Democratic lawmakers on the House ways and means committee jumped in to defend the Ontario advertisement. “This is the ad that drove Trump to cancel all trade talks with Canada,” the committee posted on social media. “Unlike Trump’s AI slop, this is real and uses Reagan’s own words on tariffs.”The dispute comes as both countries face critical deadlines in the next few weeks. Next week marks the cutoff for public comments on the scheduled review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which faces its mandatory six-year assessment in July 2026. The following day, 4 November, Carney, will deliver a federal budget expected to focus on reducing reliance on US markets.Then on 5 November the US supreme court will hear constitutional challenges to Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under emergency powers. A federal appeals court ruled in August that such sweeping duties exceed presidential authority, potentially undermining the legal foundation for the 35% tariffs now applied to Canadian steel, aluminum, timber and automobiles.Chris Sands, the director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, suggested the collapse in talks simply formalizes a dead-end process.“Can we stop trade talks? Yes, you can stop talks about steel, aluminum, energy, all of it,” he said.“But there was no evidence we were going anywhere anyway.”Sands noted the irony of Trump citing Reagan while reversing his trade legacy. “Reagan loved the country – he loved free trade. Maybe Donald Trump believes that, but it’s not what he’s selling now.”Washington imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports this spring, prompting retaliation from Ottawa before Trump raised duties to 35% in August. Ontario, heavily dependent on cross-border manufacturing and automotive trade, has been particularly affected. The breakdown ultimately leaves Carney navigating domestic pressure with a minority government.“Carney’s trying to keep all the provinces together,” Sands said. “He’s walking a tightrope between angry Canadians, an angry Trump, and premiers who are going off-script.”Before departing for Asia on Friday morning, Carney acknowledged the changed reality. “We can’t control the trade policy of the United States,” he told reporters, noting that US policy had fundamentally shifted from previous decades.But he emphasized Canada’s readiness to resume detailed negotiations on steel, aluminum and energy sectors, “when the Americans are ready to have those discussions, because it will be for the benefit of workers in the United States, workers in Canada and families in both of our countries.”For now, Carney said, Canada will focus on what it can control: building at home and “developing new partnerships and opportunities, including with the economic giants of Asia”. More

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      Trump vows to ‘take care of Chicago’ after backing off plan to send troops to San Francisco – live

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      Donald Trump continued his threats to send the national guard to Chicago.“They don’t have it under control,” Trump said. “It’s getting worse, so we’ll take care of as soon as we give the go ahead.”This comes as the administration filed an emergency appeal to the supreme court after a federal judge blocked the administration’s from deploying troops to the Chicago indefinitely.Speaking to reporters at City Hall, San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie elaborated on his Wednesday evening call with Donald Trump.Lurie said he had not reached out to Trump but that the president “picked up the phone and called me”. During the call, Lurie said he told Trump that crime was falling in San Francisco and the city was “on the rise”. Pressed on whether Trump sought any concessions from the city in exchange for calling off the “surge” Lurie said he “asked for nothing”. Lurie said he did not know if Trump’s decision extended to the rest of the Bay Area and acknowledged that the mercurial president could yet change his mind.“Our city remains prepared for any scenario,” Lurie said. “We have a plan in place that can be activated at any moment.”Asked if other Democratic mayors could learn from his approach, which has been notably less antagonistic than the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, Lurie demurred, suggesting that was more a question for the political chattering class than for a mayor “laser-focused” on his city.“Every day I’m focused on San Francisco,” he said. “Heads down. How do we keep our city safe?”Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has condemned a racist AI-generated ad posted – and then deleted – by Andrew Cuomo’s campaign depicting “criminals for Zohran Mamdani”.On Thursday, De Blasio wrote on X: “This is disqualifying. No candidate who approves a racist, disgusting ad like this can be allowed to govern. Bye, @andrewcuomo.”The ad which was shared on Cuomo’s official account on Wednesday featured Mamdani, the popular democratic socialist state assemblyman, eating rice with his hands before being supported by a Black man shoplifting while wearing a keffiyeh, a man abusing a woman, a sex trafficker and a drug dealer.In June, Mamdani, who if elected would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, accused donors of Cuomo’s campaign of “blatant Islamophobia” after an altered image of him in a mailer to voters depicted him with a visibly darkened and bushier beard.Outside of San Francisco’s city hall on Thursday afternoon, local leaders and organizers were grappling with the whiplash.“At this time, do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the National Guard. We don’t know if it’s ice, if it’s Border Patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood. “I also want to be clear that ICE, CBP, any federal agency deputized by Trump, to help him carry out his mass deportation plans, are absolutely not welcome in San Francisco.”Fielder also criticized Benihoff, Musk and other tech leaders who had voiced support for a National Guard deployment in the Bay Area. “I condemn every tech billionaire who supported this,” she said. “This city doesn’t belong to them.”Fielder and other leaders and organizers emphasized that even as the region awaits clarity on whether and where there will be a federal deployment, and the extent to which the administration plans to ramp up immigration enforcement in the city, local leaders are going to continue to mobilize rapid response networks, legal aid and other support systems for the residents most impacted.“We don’t need to get ready because we’ve been ready,” Fielder said. “This is not a time for panic. It is a time for power across this area.”Organizers urged residents to check in regularly with friends and family, and prepare for the possibility that they may be arrested by immigration officers, urging immigrants to entrust their full legal names and A-Numbers with trusted allies. “Without this information, it becomes very challenging, and it takes time to locate our loved ones,” said Sanika Mahajan, Director of Community Engagement and Organizing for the local advocacy group Mission Action. Organizers who had lent support during the militarized raids in Los Angeles this summer encouraged San Franciscans to store important documents at home, and let loved ones know where to find them.“Mexico is run by the cartels, I have great respect for the president”, Donald Trump just said near the end of the White House event to justify what he calls the success of his militarized war on drugs. “Mexico is run by the cartels and we have to defend ourselves from that”.After a first phase of the roundtable discussion, in which senior administration officials took turns praising Trump and claimed that the crackdown on drugs has been a spectacular success, the president then took questions from reporters invited to cover the event.Many of the correspondents he called on were from partisan, rightwing outlets who also laced their questions with praise for the president.Clearly aware that many of the correspondents he called on to ask questions were on his side, Trump even said “This is the kind of question I like” to Daniel Baldwin of the pro-Trump news channel One America News, before Baldwin even asked his question.When Trump did not recognize a correspondent, he asked them who they were with.And when he did call on a reporter he views as adversarial, Kaitlan Collins of CNN, he even made a point of joking that her question would be a bad one.No matter what the questions were, Trump repeated many of his familiar talking points, exaggerations, insults and lies, including that the Biden administration had “lost” hundreds of thousands of children.At one point, unprompted, he said: “Let me tell ya, Barack Hussein Obama was a lousy president.”Donald Trump was just asked about a call from Daniel Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, for the New York police department to arrest federal agents “who assault or detain New Yorkers without legal authority” during immigration raids or outside immigration courts in New York City.Goldman referred specifically to a woman who was hurled to the floor by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer outside a court.“Well, you know, I know Dan, and Dan’s a loser,” Trump replied. “It’s so ridiculous, a suggestion like that.”What Trump did not explain is that he no doubt knows Goldman primarily from his role as lead counsel in the first impeachment of Trump, over his attempt to force Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to open a sham investigation into Joe Biden in 2019 by withholding military aid.Rather than address the issue, Trump then pivoted to suggesting that Democrats were desperate for attention and even imitating him by cursing more in public. Goldman did not curse when he told reporters on Tuesday: “No one is above the law – not ICE, not CBP, and not Donald Trump. Federal agents who assault or detain New Yorkers without legal authority must be held accountable and the NYPD must protect our neighbors if the federal government refuses to.”Donald Trump was just asked by a French reporter about the vote in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on formal annexation of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967, where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers now live, in a violation of international law.He asked the reporter to repeat the question but louder. She did, in a distinct French accent.Trump asked Pam Bondi, seated next to him to answer, saying, “I cannot understand a word she’s saying”.When the question was then explained to him, the president told the reporter: “Don’t worry about the West Bank, Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank.”Earlier on Thursday, the vice-president, JD Vance, said that Israel would not annex the West Bank, the day after Israeli lawmakers voted to advance two bills paving the way for the territory’s annexation.“If it was a political stunt it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it,” Vance said on the tarmac as he wrapped up his visit in Israel.Israeli analysts have pointed out that Israel currently rules the entire West Bank, except for limited urban enclaves under Palestinian self-rule, as if it were formally part of its territory.As is customary of Trump’s public-facing events, he has spent much of his time speaking blaming the Biden administration for the country he inherited.“By the way, the cartels control large swaths of territory. They maintain vast arsenals of weapons and soldiers, and they used extortion, murder, kidnapping, to exercise political and economic control,” he said. “Thank you very much, Joe Biden, for allowing that to happen. Biden surrendered our country to the cartels.”Donald Trump continued his threats to send the national guard to Chicago.“They don’t have it under control,” Trump said. “It’s getting worse, so we’ll take care of as soon as we give the go ahead.”This comes as the administration filed an emergency appeal to the supreme court after a federal judge blocked the administration’s from deploying troops to the Chicago indefinitely.The president has spent his opening remarks claiming his administration’s efforts in curbing cartels had been successful.“These groups have unleashed more bloodshed and killing on American soil than all other terrorist groups combined. These are the worst of the worst. It should now be clear to the entire world that the cartels are the Isis of the western hemisphere,” he said.We’re waiting for Donald Trump to appear in the state dining room for an announcement on cartels and human trafficking. Several cabinet members are already seated. Including defense secretary Pete Hegseth, attorney general Pam Bondi, and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.It’s important to note that so far, Donald Trump has paid members of the military by ordering the Pentagon to use any unspent funds for the 2025 fiscal year. A move that experts and lawmakers alike say is squarely illegal.Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at Cato Institute, emphasized that Congress has the sole prerogative to authorize funding.“The executive can’t just look for money under the cushions. It’s not their money to spend,” Boccia said. “If Congress doesn’t step up and reclaim its spending authority, the administration here is potentially setting very dangerous new precedents for executive spending that was never envisioned by America’s founders.”She added that there is the option for the administration to repurpose “unobligated balances” using the rescissions process. However, this isn’t playing out in this case because it still requires Congress’s authorization.“What we’re witnessing is the executive taking unprecedented steps to repurpose funding unilaterally,” Boccia said.While today’s failed Senate vote might give Trump the “political justification” for inappropriate government spending, there was no “legal justification”.Pivoting back to the Senate, where lawmakers failed to pass a bill to keep certain government workers and members of the military paid during the government shutdown.As I noted earlier, only three Democrats broke ranks with their party to vote in favor of the legislation. Most Democratic lawmakers voted against the bill, arguing that it would give Donald Trump the ability to handpick which workers and departments get to receive paychecks. Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the bill a “ruse” that “doesn’t the pain of the shutdown” but “extends it”.Democrats also offered alternative pieces of legislation. This included the True Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay all roughly 700,000 furloughed federal employees, and inhibit the administration from carrying out any more mass layoffs while the government is shutdown. Senate Republicans, however, objected to their attempt to pass this bill by unanimous consent.John Thune, the upper chamber’s top Republican, said that Democrats are “playing a political game” by blocking today’s bill, in an attempt to appease their “far-left base”. On the Senate floor, Thune said that the failed legislation introduced by Republicans today would include the more than 300 federal workers at the Capitol who had to “work through the night and into the next day” during Oregon senator Jeff Merkley’s marathon speech lambasting the Trump administration, which lasted almost 23 hours. More

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      US revokes six foreigners’ visas over social media comments criticizing Charlie Kirk

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      Donald Trump’s US state department said on Tuesday it had revoked the visas of six foreigners over social media comments made about the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the state department said in a statement posted on X. “The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”The state department then listed six “examples of aliens who are no longer welcome in the US” in a thread on the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the Trump donor who called himself “a free speech absolutist” before buying the site formerly known as Twitter.The thread included screenshots and quotes from people identified as foreign nationals of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa.None of the individuals was identified by name, but the screenshots made it possible to trace the identities of two people, including one who had been singled out for abuse by conservatives on X.“Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero,” one of the comments posted on X read. “He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”The thread ended with a statement from the state department that Trump and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, “will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws. Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed.”Last month, a deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, urged social media users to send him posts critical of Kirk, saying he was “disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration has previously ramped up efforts to identify and potentially expel thousands of foreign students it accuses of participating in unrest in the form of protests against Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The administration has also required foreign visitors to make their social media accounts public so that they can be checked before they are allowed to enter the land of the free.In recent months, the administration has expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the US for comments critical of Trump, revoked a visa for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York and cancelled visas of the visas for British punk-rap duo Bob Vylan.The government has also said it is reviewing the status of the more than 55 million holders of visas to enter the US for potential violations of its standards.Those actions have been criticized by civil rights groups as blatant violations of constitutional protections for freedom of speech, which apply to anyone in the US, not just citizens. More

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      Trump dreams of ‘everlasting peace’ as acolytes drop heavy hints to Nobel committee

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      So to peace in our time. And why not? The Nobel committee is meeting in Oslo to divvy up its annual gongs and Donald Trump, convening his cabinet – and the media – in the White House had a good story to tell.After two years of death, destruction, starvation and captivity for Israeli hostages in Gaza, peace at last was at hand. Israel and Hamas were on the brink of a historic deal, brokered by the man in the Oval Office, who has made no secret of his desire to be known as the president of peace.The stakes in Gaza are so gravely baleful that it would be churlish to ascribe selfish motives to the cabinet meeting’s main theme.Yet the timing was, shall we say, serendipitous.Today is Thursday, tomorrow Friday – by coincidence, the day the winner of the Nobel will be announced.But Trump, whose previous expressions of desire for the same prize awarded to Barack Obama have bordered on the avaricious, was all decorum and restraint – at least on that narrow issue alone.In the course of a 70-minute meeting, the N word went unmentioned – apart from by one journalist near the end, whose question about Trump’s views on the prize went unanswered.There was going to be “peace in the Middle East”, he said portentously.“I think it’s going to be a lasting peace, hopefully an everlasting peace,” he added, no ambition being too great.“It will be a day of joy,” the president said, when the remaining living Israeli hostages – believed to be 20 in number – are released on Monday or Tuesday.“They’re dancing in the streets. They’re so happy. Everybody’s happy. They’re dancing in the streets of Arab countries, Muslim countries, I’ve never seen anything like it.”Everyone around him deserved credit, the president said magnanimously. “JD [Vance], you were fantastic. And Pete [Hegseth], you were great. Marco [Rubio] was fantastic. I mean, some of you were very much involved. I think almost everybody in this room was involved. Susie [Wiles, the White House chief of staff], I want to thank you very much. You were incredible … and then you have Steve Witkoff [his personal envoy].”But it fell to Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser, to supply the heavy hint to the Nobel committee in Norway.“I don’t know if the one day perhaps the entire story will be told about the events of yesterday, but suffice it to say – it’s not an exaggeration – that none of it would have been possible without the president. Without the president of the United States being involved,” enthused the man once disparaged by Trump as “little Marco”.That drew a round of applause from the cabinet – the second of the meeting, the first being for Trump’s announcement at the beginning that a national holiday on the second Monday of October would henceforth be known as Columbus Day.Rubio warmed to his theme. The achievement transcended dry geopolitics to encapsulate the person of Trump himself.“Yesterday was a human story,” he said. “And because of the work you put in. And honestly, not only is there no other leader in the world that could have put this together, Mr President, but frankly, I don’t know of any American president in the modern era that could have made this possible because of the actions you have taken unrelated to this, and because of who you are, and what you’ve done, and how you’re viewed.”But this was still a Trump cabinet meeting, and it would not have been complete without some dissonant notes.They were duly supplied by the jarring contrast between the promise of peace and harmony in the Middle East and the darkening prospect of war, or at least civil disharmony, in America.Trump only had good words to say about countries in the Middle East who were he said were on board with his peace deal – even Iran, a country which he recently bombed but now said he wanted to see rebuilt.But here at home an “enemy from within” had to be confronted. Troops were to be deployed onto the streets of US cities to show elected local Democratic mayors and governors who was boss.Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reported going to Portland and meeting the governor, mayor, chief of police and highway patrol superintendent.“They are all lying and disingenuous and dishonest people,” she declared, charitably, “because as soon as you leave the room, then they make the exact opposite response.” This presumably because the officials named depicted their city in somewhat more peaceful terms than the warzone of Noem et al’s fevered narrative.Yet taking the prize for low blows was JD Vance, who understood that the unifying theme of the meeting was Trump’s nascent success in ending bloodshed in the Middle East – yet failed to grasp that this call for a display of graciousness on his part.The vice-president has been known at cabinet gatherings to double up with contrived laughter at his boss’s jokes.This time he decided the best policy was to repurpose for his own use one of Trump’s tried-and-tested jibes – at the expense of Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate.“The one thing I would say is obviously the president of the United States, a New York real estate billionaire, one of the most famous New Yorkers in the world, has a lot of interaction with a lot of people who are very pro-Israel,” said Vance.Then, perhaps realizing that he could not reach the giddy heights of Rubio’s testimonial, he added: “He also, of course, knew one of the most famous Palestinians in the world, Chuck Schumer.”The crack provoked laughter. It is one of Trump’s cruelest taunts against Schumer, a fellow New Yorker who is proudly Jewish and a staunch supporter of Israel. Given the current backdrop, retreading it at this point struck a particularly discordant note.JD, it seems, has secret aspirations as a king of comedy. A calling missed, perhaps. But someone needs to tell him about timing – and context. More

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      GOP lawmaker pulls measure to allow Marco Rubio to revoke US passports

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      The chair of the House foreign affairs committee moved to cut a contentious provision from legislation that would have granted the secretary of state sweeping powers to revoke US citizens’ passports over allegations of supporting terrorism.Representative Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, filed an amendment to eliminate the measure from his department of state policy provisions act, a bill meant to reform the state department in the Trump administration’s image, after widespread criticism from civil liberties advocates, according to the Intercept.The original language would have given Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, the power to deny or revoke passports for individuals the department determines have provided “material support” to terrorist organizations. Given similar language employed by the Trump administration in other contexts, it is believed to have been intended to target pro-Palestinian activists specifically.Since Rubio became secretary of state, he has overseen efforts to deport pro-Palestinian international students and deploy an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” system to target foreign nationals government authorities allege support Hamas. The US also recently announced it will look for “anti-American” views when assessing visa applications.But the new measure would have significantly escalated these efforts by targeting US citizens. Mast had initially defended the broader legislation, saying it “ensures every dollar and every diplomat puts America First and is accountable to the president’s foreign policy” when the House foreign affairs committee introduced the package last week.However, a committee spokesperson told the Intercept the committee would not allow the passport revocation amendment to “overshadow the bipartisan effort to restore command and control of the State Department to the Secretary”.A committee spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Mast’s decision to remove the provision.Among other provisions, the bill package also includes a proposal to create a new “state sponsor of unlawful or wrongful detention” designation to penalize foreign governments that detain US nationals and require stronger accountability measures in those cases.The episode unfolded as Rubio wrapped a trip to Israel, Qatar and the UK to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, ahead of the UN general assembly meeting in New York next week.The amendment to remove the passport provision still requires approval at a committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday. Even without it, the broader state department reform package faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. More

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      Rubio calls Russian drones over Poland ‘unacceptable’ but declines to say it was intentional

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      The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Saturday said the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace this week was unacceptable but that it remained unclear whether Russia had deliberately sent the drones into Polish territory. Nato announced plans to beef up the defense of Europe’s eastern flank on Friday, after Poland shot down the drones that had violated its airspace, the first known shots fired by a member of the western alliance during Russia’s war in Ukraine.“We think it’s an unacceptable and unfortunate and dangerous development,” Rubio told reporters before departing on a trip to Israel and Britain.“No doubt about it: the drones were intentionally launched. The question is whether the drones were targeted to go into Poland specifically.“Rubio said that if the drones had been targeted at Poland, “if the evidence leads us there, then obviously that’ll be a highly escalatory move”.“There are a number of other possibilities as well, but I think we’d like to have all the facts and consult with our allies before we make specific determinations,” he added. On Friday, Poland rejected Donald Trump’s suggestion that the incursions could have been a mistake, a rare contradiction of the US president from one of Washington’s closest European allies. Its foreign minister told Reuters that Poland hoped Washington would take action to show solidarity with Warsaw. At the United Nations on Friday, the US called the airspace violations “alarming” and vowed to “defend every inch of NATO territory”.Russia has said its forces had been attacking Ukraine at the time of the drone incursions and that it had not intended to hit targets in Poland. More

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      US conducts ‘lethal strike’ against drug boat from Venezuela, Rubio says

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      The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.“Everything is hinging on where this strike took place,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow on Venezuela and Colombia from the Atlantic Council’s Latin America Centre.“If this strike took place in Venezuelan waters, I think that will trigger a massive escalation from the Venezuelan side. However, from what I’ve heard … this took place in international waters, and that suggests that ultimately this is about drug interdiction.”Ramsey added: “This is a target-rich environment, after all. There are plenty of go-fast boats transporting cocaine through the southern Caribbean, and I think ultimately Washington is more interested in signalling than in actually engaging in any kind of military action inside Venezuela territory.”Even so, the development will add to fears over a possible military clash between Venezuelan and US troops after the US sent war ships and marines into the Caribbean last month as part of what Trump allies touted as an attempt to force Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Officially, Trump’s naval buildup is part of US efforts to combat Latin American drug traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) which Trump officials accuse Maduro of leading.Last month the US announced a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture – twice the bounty once offered for Osama bin Laden. In July, Trump signed a secret directive greenlighting military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.Republican party hawks and Trump allies have celebrated those moves as proof the White House is determined to end Maduro’s 12-year rule. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declared recently, encouraging Maduro to flee to Moscow.Maduro’s allies have also claimed that a regime-change operation is afoot, with Maduro himself this week warning that White House hardliners were seeking to lead Trump into “a terrible war” that would harm the entire region.“Mr President Donald Trump, you need to take care because Marco Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood – with South American, Caribbean blood [and] Venezuelan blood. They want to lead you into a bloodbath … with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.But many experts are skeptical the US is planning a military intervention. “The idea of there being an invasion, I don’t believe to be true,” James Story, the US’s top diplomat for Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, said last week. He said Trump generally opposed “meddling militarily in the affairs of other countries”.Ramsey agreed. ”This is not a deployment focused on regime change. This may be an attempt to signal to disaffected elements of the military in Venezuela that now is the time to rise up against Maduro. But we’ve seen that approach be tried and ​fail repeatedly over ​the last 25 years.”Ramsey said the tough talk belied the fact that Trump had actually relaxed its stance towards Venezuela. Sanctions had been softened in recent weeks. The Trump administration was “actively coordinating with ​the Maduro regime on deportation flights”, about two of which are landing at Venezuela’s main international airport each week.​Ramsey believed that the military mobilization was partly an attempt “to throw some red meat to a part of Trump’s base that has been dissatisfied with the reality of sanctions relief” and what it perceived as his soft policy towards Maduro. More