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    Trump says Maduro’s days are numbered but ‘doubts’ US will go to war with Venezuela

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    Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about potential US intervention in Venezuela, playing down concerns of imminent war against the South American nation but saying its leader Nicolás Maduro’s days were numbered.The president’s remarks, made during a CBS interview released on Sunday, come as the US amasses military units in the Caribbean and has conducted multiple strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels, killing dozens.Asked during the 60 Minutes program if the US was going to war against Venezuela, Trump said: “I doubt it. I don’t think so.” However, when asked if Maduro’s days as president were numbered, he replied: “I would say yeah. I think so, yeah.”Maduro, who faces indictment on drug charges in the US, has accused Washington of using drug trafficking as a pretext for “imposing regime change” in Caracas to seize Venezuelan oil.More than 15 US strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific have killed at least 65 people in recent weeks, with the latest taking place on Saturday, prompting criticism from governments in the region.Washington has yet to make public any evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the US.In the same interview, Trump alleged countries including Russia and China had conducted underground nuclear tests unknown to the public, and that the US would test “like other countries do”.“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” he told 60 Minutes.“I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he said, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing their arsenals.Confusion has surrounded Trump’s order that the US begin testing, particularly if he meant conducting the country’s first nuclear explosion since 1992.Trump first made his surprise announcement in a social media post on Thursday, minutes before entering a summit with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in South Korea, saying he had “instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis”.The announcement came after Russia said it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, and a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone.Asked directly if he planned for the US to detonate a nuclear weapon for the first time in more than three decades, Trump told CBS: “I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes.”No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades. Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively.Pressed on the topic, Trump said: “They test way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration.”However, Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, on Sunday downplayed any possible tests by the US, telling Fox News on Sunday: “I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions.”The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.Other topics addressed in the interview included:

    Trump said he “won’t be extorted” by Democrats to reopen the government, making clear that he has no plans to negotiate as the government shutdown will soon enter its sixth week.

    Asked to clarify whether he would try to run for a third term, which is barred by the constitution, Trump said: “I don’t even think about it,”

    Trump said immigration enforcement officials hadn’t gone far enough in deporting people who were in the country without legal authorisation.
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      Trump’s military pressure on Maduro evokes Latin America’s coup-ridden past

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      The ghosts of sometimes deadly Latin American coups of the past are being evoked by Donald Trump’s relentless military buildup targeting Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s autocratic socialist leader, whom Washington has branded a narco-terrorist.Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of Chile toppled in a military coup in 1973, and Rafael Trujillo, the longstanding dictator of the Dominican Republic who was assassinated in 1961 in an ambush organized by political opponents, are just two regional leaders whose fates serve as a warning to Maduro.Allende is believed to have killed himself, although some doubt that explanation, as troops stormed the presidential palace in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in a coup – fomented by then president Richard Nixon’s administration – that ushered in the brutally repressive military regime of Gen Augusto Pinochet.The CIA is believed to have supplied the weapons used to kill Trujillo.Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, escaped into exile after being overthrown in a 1954 coup also instigated by the CIA. But the event triggered a 30-year civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people and resulted in 50,000 disappearances.The agency is also thought to have made at least eight unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s communist regime, which is still in power and is closely allied to Maduro.The plot to depose Castro also included the failed Bay of Pigs invasion carried out by Cuban exiles and organized by the CIA in the early months of John F Kennedy’s presidency in 1961, but which was defeated by Cuba’s armed forces.Now, as the US stages its biggest naval buildup in the region since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, some believe Maduro’s life is equally at risk.Washington is preparing to carry out military strikes imminently inside Venezuela on already pinpointed targets that have been identified as military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to reports.US officials are leaving little doubt that this could lead to fatal consequences for Maduro.“Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the Miami Herald quoted a source with close knowledge of US military planning as saying. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”The Trump administration has offered a $50m bounty for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan leader, after announcing in August that it was doubling the $25m reward initially offered during Trump’s first presidency.Explaining his decision this month to authorize covert CIA actions against Venezuela, Trump pointedly refused to say whether US forces were authorized to “take out” Maduro. However, Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA Latin America analyst, said the intense security surrounding the Venezuelan leader in effect rendered the reward a “dead or alive” proposition, meaning any attempt to snatch him is likely to result in his death.“Anybody who’s going to try to take him is going to be so heavily armed that any defense that he put up would lead to them pulling triggers,” said Armstrong.“Let’s say it’s locals and they want the bounty. Most of them will assume that they’ll get the bounty dead or alive. Our forces would be a little bit more disciplined, but then imagine the adrenaline that anybody trying to do a snatch would have coursing through their veins. They’re going to be trigger-happy.“Only a fool would think that they can go in there and say, ‘OK, let me put handcuffs on you and escort you to the car.’ That’s not how it’s going to work.”Maduro has survived at least one apparent attempt on his life, when two drones exploded as he was speaking at a military parade in Caracas in 2018. Television footage shows several members of his security team rushing to his side to shield him after the explosions.Maduro accused neighboring Colombia of being responsible, although some opponents suggested the episode was a false flag operation staged to win sympathy.In May 2020, Venezuelan security forces foiled an attempt by about 60 dissidents, accompanied by two former US Green Berets, to capture and oust him in a plot that involved infiltrating the country by sea. The episode was afterwards dubbed the “Bay of Piglets” in mocking reference to the botched plot against Castro.But a fresh sign of Washington’s determination to get its hands on Maduro emerged this week when the Associated Press reported that a US agent, working for the Department of Homeland Security, had unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Venezuelan president’s pilot into diverting his plane to enable American authorities to capture him.The Trump administration has deployed a daunting array of military hardware off the Venezuelan coast in what appears to be an intimidating statement of intent to bring about regime change in the country.Last week, the Pentagon announced that the USS Gerald Ford, the biggest aircraft carrier in the US navy, would sail from Europe to join a military force consisting of destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-1 and B-52 bombers, and special forces helicopters.At least 57 people have been killed in more than a dozen US military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Washington has accused Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials of being at the head of a cartel smuggling drugs into the US. Maduro denies the charge and experts dispute the significance of Venezuela’s role in the illegal drug trade.Trump has intensified the pressure further by authorizing the CIA to carry out covert activities inside Venezuela, although the contents of his instructions are classified and unknown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArmstrong argued that Trump was aware that his policy could prove fatal for Maduro.“What person wouldn’t be aware of that potential because you’re trying to take out a head of state, a tenacious head of state,” he said.“We do assassinations on a routine basis of people that we suspect of not even being senior members of groups that we consider to be terrorists. If we’re authorizing the assassination of regular combatants in the war on terror, how crazy is it to think that the administration would authorize the use of lethal means, if necessary, to snatch the head of a cartel.”Another former CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their previous involvement in targeted assassinations in the Middle East, said decisions to authorize such killings were normally taken with great care and based on threat severity.“It is very specific and usually because there is a lethal threat to America and our allies. They are done super carefully,” the former agent said.“The president and the [national security council] come up with the plan, and then they decide who’s going to take the shot … Is it going to be the military [or some other agency], will it lead to war?”High-profile assassinations in recent times include Osama bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in 2011; Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods force, killed by a drone strike ordered by Trump in 2020; and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s former deputy in al-Qaida, who was killed by a drone in Afghanistan in 2022 during Joe Biden’s presidency.“Bin Laden was an easy decision – he killed thousands of Americans, and even before the 9/11 attacks he had done lesser stuff,” said the ex-officer. “Suleimani, too, was easy because he had killed so many Americans.”Maduro, however, presents a less clearcut target, even though Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has described the Venezuelan regime as “the al-Qaida of the western hemisphere”.“The idea of going after a guy, Maduro, who is a sitting leader of a sovereign country, whether we like the country or not, just seems really strange and disproportionate,” the former agent continued. “Maduro is not Hitler. Bin Laden, Suleimani and al-Zawahiri were not heads of countries.“If you look at our history, even in the last 40 or 50, years, we’ve been staying away from going after world leaders.”Disclosures about the CIA’s role in backing coups and assassination attempts on foreign leaders during the 1950s and 1960s led to committees being established in Congress to oversee the agency’s activities.While there is no evidence that Trump has authorized Maduro’s assassination, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, told senators during his confirmation hearings that he would make the agency less risk averse and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president.Armstrong suggested the administration’s preferred course was to goad Maduro’s opponents in the Venezuelan military and other parts of society to topple him in a coup, setting the scene for a democratic transition while precluding the need for direct US action.But some analysts believe such a scenario would probably spawn a replacement loyal to the leftist movement spearheaded by Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chávez – with a full-blown democratic transformation potentially taking years to bear fruit.Angelo Rivero Santos, a former Venezuelan diplomat in the country’s US embassy and now an academic at Georgetown University, said the chances of a coup were likely to be dashed by domestic realities and the fact that even Maduro’s critics have rallied around the flag in response to recent US pressure. .“The year 2025 is not 1973,” he said, referring to the coup that deposed Chile’s Allende. “Statements from the opposition show that this is not heavily supported inside the country.” More

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      Trump is threatening Venezuela. But his own country looks a lot like it | Daniel Mendiola

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      Here in the Americas, we have a peculiar tradition. Every time there is a major election, prominent figures on the right find themselves compelled to repeat some version of the vaguely menacing prediction: if the candidate for the left wins, we will become “the next Venezuela”.Whether Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia or Ecuador, countries throughout the western hemisphere keep this tradition. Donald Trump has also participated in this ritual, proclaiming during the 2024 election cycle that if Kamala Harris won, our country would become “Venezuela on steroids”.Oddly spoken with disdain.Harris, of course, lost the election, so we will never know how Venezuela-esque her version of the US might have been. But we are seeing Trump’s America, and the reality is: it’s looking a lot like Venezuela.Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez – a charismatic yet polarizing leftwing figure – political discourses have shrouded Venezuela in conflicting layers of partisan caricature, often making it difficult to parse what is actually happening. At this point, however, there is no doubt that the country is in crisis.Migration statistics alone provide compelling evidence. Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency estimate that nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014 – as much as 25% of the population. Hyperinflation and food shortages have driven this exodus, compounded by authoritarianism and increasing repression under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, who has held on to power since 2013 through elections with overwhelming evidence of fraud.Significantly, the US has hardly been an innocent bystander. Not only have we frequently doled out reprehensible treatment to Venezuelan asylum seekers, but we have also played a role in creating the conditions that are forcing people to migrate in the first place. The US has maintained a belligerent stance toward Venezuela for more than two decades – for example, supporting a short-lived coup to overthrow Chávez in 2002, as well as hitting the country with sanctions – and the Trump administration has recently escalated the conflict by ordering a series of deadly strikes on civilian boats suspected of smuggling drugs off the Venezuelan the coast. Reports also indicate that Trump is considering an intervention to depose Maduro, and the CIA may already be carrying out covert operations in the country.Journalists and legal analysts have done excellent work explaining how these strikes are illegal according to US and international law, in addition to being murderously cruel. There has also been great coverage of how the demonization of Venezuelan immigrants – including a steady stream of propaganda painting Venezuelan immigrants as gang members and terrorists – has long been a centerpiece of Trump’s platform.These actions are disgraceful on their own terms. But they are also bitterly ironic: even while terrorizing Venezuelans in the name of defending democracy, Trump has, in fact, been running a strikingly similar authoritarian playbook. Noteworthy parallels include dismantling constitutional limits on presidential authority, manipulating electoral districts to inflate his party’s representation in Congress, and using state power to repress political opponents.In Venezuela’s case, the story begins with a fraught referendum. Immediately upon taking office in 1999, Chávez decreed a new executive power: the ability to call for a referendum on writing a new constitution. The legality of the claim was dubious given that the Venezuelan legal system already had mechanisms for updating the constitution, and a simple majority popular vote was not one of them. Nonetheless, the Venezuelan supreme court relented, and when the referendum passed, Chávez asserted a heavy hand in creating the process for how a constitutional assembly would work. Moreover, he unilaterally gave this assembly outsized powers to govern, suspending Congress and the supreme court in the meantime. Unsurprisingly, the resulting constitution of 1999 expanded executive authority considerably, and the entire process established a precedent to continue using these largely hand-picked constitutional assemblies to overrule congress whenever the opposition gained ground.While there are, likewise, calls for a constitutional convention coming from Trump allies that could function in a similar way, this hasn’t actually been necessary in the US. Rather, the conservative supermajority on the supreme court has managed to effectively do the same thing on its own: repeatedly ignoring plain text as well as its own precedent in order to assign new powers to the presidency while at the same time eviscerating longstanding checks from other branches of government and independent agencies alike. In short, even without literally rewriting the constitution, the supreme court has in practice served as a comparable constitutional assembly, fundamentally reshaping constitutional norms to create a “unitary executive” with fewer checks on executive power than ever before.Taking this comparison even deeper, there are also important parallels in Trump’s efforts to stack Congress through “gerrymandering”: a trick that hinges on exploiting the mathematical quirks of single-member, winner-take-all districts. For example, in a system where every district has an isolated winner-take-all race, even if one party gets 49% of the vote across the country, that does not mean that it will end up having 49% of the representation in Congress. In fact, if each district is a perfect microcosm of society with 49% of voters supporting this party, it could actually end up with zero seats in congress, despite representing roughly half the population.In short, single-member, winner-take-all districts have the potential to massively inflate or deflate a party’s overall electoral showing, depending on how the voters are distributed among the districts. And if the party in power gets to redraw the districts, they can easily rig the game. Knowing full well the consequences, the US supreme court blessed this approach during Trump’s first term, and now at a time when Republicans have a clear advantage in controlling redistricting, the justices are poised to make it even easier. Within this context, Trump is pushing Republican-governed states to capitalize.Significantly, Chávez’s early efforts to consolidate power used a similar mechanism. Though under-appreciated now, Venezuela’s earlier election system under its 1961 constitution actually included a clause guaranteeing minority representation, and officials developed a clever method to allocate seats roughly proportional to a party’s overall support. This made gerrymandering impossible, limiting the ability of the ruling party to press their advantage by further manipulating districts. In 1999, however, Chávez’s constitutional assembly eliminated this system, changing the rules so that most congressional seats would instead come from winner-take-all districts. The effect – at least in the short term while Chávez consolidated power – was to considerably inflate his party’s congressional representation.Along with expanding executive power and manipulating congressional elections, a third commonality – repression of political opponents – needs little explanation. Even before Maduro apparently resorted to overt election fraud, the Chávez government faced accusations of intimidating judges and arresting opposition candidates. Vocal critics of the government have also reported heavy-handed tactics from formal military and paramilitary forces alike.As we now watch Trump deploy troops in Democratic-led cities across the country; turn federal agencies such as Ice and into personal secret police who operate with impunity; and push to systematically arrest political opponents, the parallels are obvious.Ultimately, while there is every reason to believe that Venezuela is in crisis, there is no reason to believe that Trump’s military aggression will have any benefit for the people of either country. The bottom line: the Trump administration has demonstrated time and time again that it has no qualms about wreaking havoc on Venezuelan civilians – nor on its own. Trump’s abuses of power at home and in the Caribbean are two sides of the same coin. We must condemn both.

      Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College More

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      Trump claims Maduro willing to give ‘everything’ to ease US tensions

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      Donald Trump used an expletive to threaten the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, claiming that the leftist autocrat had offered major concessions to appease the US.The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday during a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Asked about reports that Maduro offered “everything in his country, all the natural resources” to ease tensions, Trump agreed: “He’s offered everything; you’re right. You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”Maduro, who came to power in 2013, has recently shored up his security powers and deployed tens of thousands of troops around the country. He also accused Trump of seeking regime change, an allegation the US president has downplayed.Last week the New York Times reported that Maduro offered a stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in recent months to stave off mounting pressure from the US.Meanwhile, Venezuelan government officials are said to have floated a plan in which Maduro would eventually leave office. The Miami Herald newspaper reported that Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the national assembly, had funneled proposals through intermediaries in Qatar to present themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative.The US has acknowledged carrying out at least five strikes on vessels near Venezuela that it says were transporting drugs, killing at least 27 people.A sixth strike targeted a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean on Thursday, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, who were reportedly rescued and are being held on a navy ship.One source told Reuters that the vessel struck on Thursday moved below the water and was possibly a semi-submersible, which is a submarine-like vessel used by drug traffickers to avoid detection.Trump confirmed to reporters: “We attacked a submarine. That was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs – just so you understand.”He added: “This was not an innocent group of people. I don’t know too many people that have submarines and that was an attack on a drug-carrying loaded-up submarine.”The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was also present, did not dispute that there were survivors and repeatedly said details would be forthcoming.The US has described some of the victims in the first five strikes as Venezuelans, while the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, has suggested some were from his country. In Trinidad, family members of one man believed killed in a strike this week have demanded proof he was a drug trafficker.Venezuela’s government has said the strikes are illegal, amount to murder and are an aggression against the country.Trump has justified the strikes by asserting that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, relying on the same legal authority used by the George W Bush administration when it declared a war on terror after the September 11 attacks.But legal scholars have warned that the president’s use of overwhelming military force to combat the cartels, along with his authorisation of covert action inside Venezuela, possibly to oust Maduro, stretches the bounds of international law.Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said the attacks violated international human rights law and amounted to extrajudicial executions.“The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, or with alleged criminal groups involved. Under human rights law standards, officials engaging in law enforcement must seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury,” she said.The strikes have caused unease among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, with some Republicans saying they had not received sufficient information on how the strikes were being conducted.Friday’s outburst was not the first that Trump has peppered the language of diplomacy with profanities. In June, frustrated with Israel and Iran attacking each other after a ceasefire, he told a group of reporters that the countries had “been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”. More

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      Trump confirms that he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela

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      Donald Trump confirmed reports on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing US officials familiar with the decision.The US president said he authorized the action for two main reasons.First, he claimed Venezuela had been releasing large numbers of prisoners, including individuals from mental health facilities, into the United States, often crossing the border due to what he described as an open border policy. Trump did not specify which border they were crossing.The second reason, he said, was the large amount of drugs entering the US from Venezuela, much of it trafficked by sea.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” Trump added, but declined to answer when asked if the CIA had the authority to execute Maduro. More

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      Venezuela on edge over Trump regime change whispers: ‘If it does happen we are ready’

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      The mayor of Caracas had come to one of her city’s busiest tube stations wearing a camouflage T-shirt declaring herself a card-carrying combatant – and with a message to match.“They think they’re the owners of the world,” Carmen Meléndez complained of the Trump administration and its pressure campaign against Venezuela’s government. “But if they dare [to invade] we’ll be waiting for them here.”Meléndez said she hoped a US invasion was not on the horizon, even though they had shown themselves to be “a bunch of crazies, who are capable of anything”. “But if it does happen we are ready,” she added, “and we will use all of the weapons we have to defend the homeland.”Mayor Meléndez was at La Rinconada station to supervise an early morning drill: a practice response to fictitious cyberattack on the Caracas underground that had brought its trains to a halt.The rehearse evacuation, ordered by President Nicolás Maduro as part of a nationwide “civil protection and preparation of the people” exercise, came as Donald Trump turned the heat up on Venezuela’s leader to levels rarely seen before.Since early August, when Trump signed a secret directive authorizing military action against Latin America drug cartels, the US president has labelled Maduro a “narco-terrorist” fugitive and advertised a $50m reward for his arrest; deployed marines and warships off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast; and ordered at least four deadly strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats which have killed at least 21.Last week Trump again upped the ante, declaring a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels whose members were now considered “unlawful combatants”.View image in fullscreenWashington has justified its strikes as part of a crackdown on Venezuelan narco-traffickers who the US accuses of flooding its streets with drugs, supposedly at Maduro’s behest. “They’re the enemies of all humanity,” Trump told the UN last month, vowing to blow such “terrorist thugs … out of existence”.But many observers suspect Trump’s counter-narcotics crusade is really a pretext to depose Maduro, either by sparking an internal rebellion against Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian heir or perhaps through direct military intervention within Venezuela itself.Speaking to the New York Times last month, Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she was convinced one of Trump’s “strategic objectives” was “what they call ‘regime change’”. “We will never handover our homeland!” Rodríguez vowed as she announced that Maduro would declare a state of emergency in the event of a US attack.Rodríguez and Meléndez are not the only Maduro allies talking tough in the face of US pressure. One recent evening, the interior minister Diosdado Cabello, appeared on television clutching a heavily annotated copy of a book about the “military thinking” of the Vietnamese revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh. The message was clear: any attempt to topple Maduro’s regime would suck US troops into a bloody quagmire such as the one that unfolded in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and nearly 60,000 American soldiers.Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for Crisis Group, doubted Trump had immediate plans to target Fort Tiuna, the military base where Maduro is thought to live.But Gunson did think Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June had left Venezuela’s leaders genuinely alarmed. In a recent letter to Trump, Maduro tried to defuse the situation, writing: “I respectfully invite you, President, to promote peace through constructive dialogue and mutual understanding throughout the hemisphere.”View image in fullscreen“What Trump did to Iran was a wake up call to the people in government here,” said Gunson. “A lot of analysts thought that wasn’t going to happen … But they did it – and the Iranians had no response. And I think that that was quite sobering for the Chavistas.”The idea of a US intervention is music to the ears of some of Maduro’s political foes, who are desperate to end his 12-year rule during which Venezuela’s economy and democracy have crumbled and millions have fled abroad.In a recent interview, the prominent conservative politician María Corina Machado – whose ally, Edmundo González, is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in last year’s election – hailed Trump’s “visionary” stance. “I totally support his strategy … I’m in favour of the US dismantling this criminal structure,” Machado, who is in hiding in Venezuela, told the Sunday Times.The exiled opposition leader Leopoldo López has said their movement supports “any scenario that helps us transition to democracy”.Robert Evan Ellis, a Latin America specialist who advised the state department on Venezuela policy during Trump’s first administration, saw a “50-50” chance of the opposition’s wish coming true.Trump’s failure to unseat Maduro with a “maximum pressure” campaign during his first term, made it more likely the US president would try to finish the job now, Evan Ellis said. “I think there’s … a certain determination not to essentially feel that he loses this time around as well – so I think that creates incentive,” he said.After the Caribbean boat strikes, Evan Ellis anticipated a “graduated escalation” of US pressure – perhaps air strikes against “narco-planes” or “narco-leaders” on Venezuelan soil: “You don’t just unnecessarily jump from blowing up a couple of ships to pulling the trigger on a major air-land campaign.”View image in fullscreenBut Evan Ellis did not rule out a large-scale “multi-pronged attack”, involving F-35 fighter jets destroying Venezuela’s aerial defences before troops “grab[bed] Maduro wherever he is, based on probably good insider intelligence” and took him to the US. On Thursday, Venezuela’s defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, said five US “combat aircraft” had been detected flying off his country’s coast.Four days later, on Monday, another key Maduro ally, the national assembly president, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that he had informed US and European authorities of plans for an alleged “false flag operation” attack on the US embassy in Caracas. Rodríguez claimed right-wing extremists had been plotting to target the building with “lethal explosives”.The prospect of a US intervention fills many Venezuelans – even those opposed to Maduro – with dread. “If there’s a war, what will we do?” said Naide González, 58, a cleaner from 23 de Enero, a working class community in Caracas long considered a stronghold of Chavismo.In a recent Guardian interview, Juan González, the White House’s top Latin America official under Joe Biden, called Trump’s military buildup “political theatre” designed to convince Maga voters that he was taking a hard line on drugs and migrants coming from South America. But González feared that if Maduro was deposed, the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war, involving a variety of armed groups including government-linked paramilitaries, criminal organizations and Colombian rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN).“The conditions are ripe here for some kind of protracted low-intensity conflict, if the US gets it wrong – which they may well,” Gunson warned. “This country is absolutely packed from end to end with armed groups of various kinds, none of whom has any incentive to just surrender or stop doing what they’re doing.”David Smilde, a Tulane University Venezuela specialist, said neoconservative Trump officials and hard-line members of Venezuela’s opposition seemed convinced by the “absolutely absurd” idea that Maduro was “hanging on by threads” and that regime change could be achieved “with just a few limited strikes”.“This is the mentality that thought that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a house of cards and Iraq would be a cakewalk once you got rid of Saddam Hussein or took Baghdad,” Smilde added.At La Rinconada, government supporters vowed to resist any foreign intervention as commuters streamed out of the underground into a sunny Caracas morning.Amelia Contreras, a 68-year-old seamstress who is part of Maduro’s Bolivarian militia volunteer group, said she had been receiving first aid and firearms training in preparation for a possible attack. In the event of an incursion, Contreras had been tasked with defending Caracas’s electricity pylons. “We don’t want anyone coming along and interfering here – we won’t allow it,” she said.Kristian Laborín, a 48-year-old member of Maduro’s socialist party, had spent the last three Saturdays undergoing military training but still hoped the US would recoil. “President Trump, there’s still time for us to continue building friendly ties between our peoples,” Laborín said.But if the US president insisted on attacking, Laborín’s comrades would have no choice but to fight back. Parroting a government propaganda line, he said: “You’d be talking about a Hundred Years’ War!” More

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      Trump administration doubles reward for arrest of Venezuela’s president to $50m

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      The Trump administration is doubling to $50m a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narcotraffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Thursday in a video statement announcing the reward.Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15m reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25m – the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden in 2001, after the September 11attacks.Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.The prisoner swap sparked controversy, as one of the Americans freed in the exchange is an ex-US soldier who was convicted of killing three people in Spain in 2016. Dahud Hanid Ortiz, found guilty in Venezuela last year, was flown to Texas alongside the other nine freed Americans, whom rights groups had deemed “political prisoners”.Bondi said the justice department has seized more than $700m in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7m tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.In her announcement, Bondi repeated claims linking Maduro to Tren de Aragua (TdA), the Venezuelan gang, saying: “Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA … to bring deadly violence to our country … He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security.”Some experts have cast doubts on the Trump administration’s claims that TdA is “invading America”. The narrative that TdA is a state-sponsored terrorist group wreaking havoc on the US has been used to fuel the president’s aggressive and broad attacks on Venezuelan immigrants, with policies that advocates say have trampled on people’s due-process rights. In one high-profile case, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay asylum seeker, was expelled to El Salvador after the US claimed his tattoos were proof he was a TdA member and “security threat”.Experts have noted that the Venezuelan government had previously protected TdA, but it was unlikely the gang was acting “at the direction” of the Maduro regime, as the White House has claimed.The Washington Post reported in April that a National Intelligence Council assessment concluded there were some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and TdA, but said the gang was not commanded by Venezuela’s leader.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      What is Tren de Aragua and has the group ‘invaded’ the United States?

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      The Trump administration has fixated on portraying a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, or TdA, as a state-sponsored international terrorist organization that has invaded the US.Donald Trump uses the argument to justify extreme enforcement measures against Venezuelan immigrants and cast a cloud across the Venezuelan diaspora, especially communities in the US.The US president claims the criminal group “is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare” here, which in turn should allow agents to arrest Venezuelans and exile them to Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador’s Cecot prison without even a court hearing.Yet experts say the claims do not reflect reality and, instead, Donald Trump has concocted a bogeyman to fuel his extreme immigration crackdown.What is Tren de Aragua?TdA is a gang that originated in Venezuela but has since expanded its reach to other countries in Latin America, alongside a more general mass diaspora of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans fleeing autocratic rule under the president, Nicolás Maduro.Some scholars track the group’s early days to 2005, when a trade union’s members started to embezzle funds and extort contractors while working on a railroad project – hence the “tren”, or “train”, in the Aragua region.TdA then took off in Venezuela’s Aragua state around 2014, within the Tocorón prison, where members had access to restaurants, a swimming pool, a zoo, a nightclub and other amenities atypical of a lock-up. The penitentiary became TdA’s headquarters – where leaders on the inside directed criminal activity on the outside – until 2023, when the Venezuelan government raided Tocorón and the gang began to fragment.One scholar wrote: “The TdA is of modest prominence and is nowhere near as established as other gangs in Central and South America.” Some of those more influential criminal organizations, such as MS-13 and Mexico’s cartels, have long had a foothold in – or even have their origins in – the US.That said, TdA has been powerful enough to torment and exploit other Venezuelans at home and abroad, preying particularly on vulnerable women, who are forced into the sex industry to pay off their debt after the gang smuggles them to nearby countries such as Chile, Colombia or Peru.TdA members have also started working with Mexican cartels, infiltrating groups of immigrants and then colluding with Mexico’s organized crime networks to extort them.Has Tren de Aragua ‘invaded’ the US?Tren de Aragua does have a presence in the US, but that presence is diffuse, uncoordinated, and on a smaller scale than the Trump administration’s repeatedly sounding the alarm and citing TdA in immigration-related arrests might make it seem. Three experts put it bluntly when they wrote for the New York Times: “Tren de Aragua is not invading America.”That’s not to say that individual TdA members – or people purporting to be TdA members for clout – haven’t caused real harm and suffering for many communities across the US. In Miami, a former Venezuelan police officer was reportedly abducted and murdered by a TdA member. Another supposed gang member allegedly shot two New York police officers. And the criminal organization has seemingly imported its sex-trafficking model, exploiting Venezuelan women who owe them for transportation into the US.Even so, InSight Crime, a thinktank that studies organized crime across the Americas, has said that TdA is growing weaker, not stronger, and “now operates more as a loose collection of franchises than a cohesive organization”.Earlier this month, US authorities revealed federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, firearm offenses and robbery against 27 alleged current or alleged former TdA members and associates, indictments and arrests that attorney general Pam Bondi said would “devastate TdA’s infrastructure”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy late last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was looking into more than 600 immigrants in the US suspected of having some connection to TdA, though whether they were victims, witnesses or gang members remained unclear.That number represents fewer than 0.09% of the 700,000 Venezuelans who have resettled in the US, many of whom feel they are being smeared.The criteria cited as justification for alleging detainees or people being removed from the US without due process are TdA members include suspects making hand signs, wearing Chicago Bulls paraphernalia or similar, or having certain tattoos, which prominent researchers of gangs have said are not strong indicators, or indicia at all, of gang membership.Meanwhile, several federal judges say essentially that Trump’s using the AEA and claims of “war” and “invasion” are invalid, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed lawsuits across the country challenging its use to skirt due process.Is Tren de Aragua working with Venezuela’s government?Trump is relying on highly controversial measures, chiefly the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, to summarily deport people the administration alleges are TdA members, many of whom have not been charged with crimes. His justification is that the gang is acting “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela”.That’s unlikely. TdA was protected by the Venezuelan government in the past, according to InSight Crime. But that agreement no longer stands, with the raid on the criminal organization’s prison headquarters a case in point.The Washington Post reports that a recent National Intelligence Council internal assessment – which relied on information from the US’s 18 intelligence agencies – determined that while TdA has some low-level contacts in Maduro’s government, it is in no way commanded by Maduro. This makes Trump’s using the invasion argument to bypass due process flimsy – and contrary to the US supreme court’s insistence of the right for individuals to challenge the government. More

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      Venezuelan immigrants deported from US to Venezuela via Honduras

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      A group of Venezuelan immigrants have been deported from the US to Honduras and then sent on to Venezuela, after an apparent deal between the three countries.The flights came one day after a Venezuelan government official announced on social media it would resume accepting deportees from the US. Deportations from the US to Venezuela, which have rarely taken place, have been a point of dispute for the Trump administration.Sunday’s indirect deportation flight to Venezuela comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela, and an increase in operations targeting Venezuelan immigrants in the US.The Venezuelan government official’s announcement also alluded to the highly contentious expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last week.“Migrating is not a crime, and we will not rest until we accomplish the return of all who need it, and until we rescue our brothers that are kidnapped in El Salvador,” said Jorge Rodríguez Gomez, the president of the Venezuelan national assembly.The Honduran foreign minister announced on Sunday night that 199 Venezuelans were deported from the US to a military base in Honduras on Sunday. From there, the migrants were placed on Venezuelan planes and returned to Venezuela.“This process shows us again the positive cooperation between the government of Honduras, the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Enrique Reina said on X.According to the US state department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Trump administration expects to see “a consistent flow of deportation flights to Venezuela going forward”.Since the Trump administration took office two months ago, there has been heightened pressure and aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In early February, the Venezuelan government sent two planes to the US to pick up deportees and returned them to Venezuela. At the time, the two flights were seen as a breakthrough in relations between the US and Venezuela.However, scheduled flights were again placed on hold by the Venezuelan government, after Donald Trump reversed the 2022 license given to Chevron to operate in Venezuela. Last week, secretary of state Marco Rubio threatened “new, severe, and escalating sanctions” on Venezuela if it did not accept deportations.On Monday, the treasury department published a license authorizing the wind down of Chevron’s work in Venezuela.The first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras took place last month, when the US deported 177 Venezuelan immigrants previously detained at the Guantánamo Bay naval base. The US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Honduran foreign minister at the time both announced that deportation.The Honduran government has strong diplomatic relations with Venezuela and their involvement in the transfer of Venezuelan deportees raises questions about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Trump administration and the two Latin American governments. Before the US president took office, Honduran leftwing president Xiomara Castro had threatened to expel the US military from a base in the Central American country, in response to Trump’s threats to engage in mass deportations.But after February’s first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras, Reina confirmed that Castro’s husband – former president reformist Manuel Zelaya– had coordinated with Trump envoys Mauricio Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell for the transfer of the migrants.In a shakeup to US and Honduran relations, Castro’s brother-in-law and Zelaya’s brother, was previously accused in a US federal court of collaborating with drug traffickers. Her predecessor Juan Orland0 Hernández was convicted and sentenced in New York of drug trafficking.All of this comes amid heightened US aggression towards the Venezuelan government. Earlier this year, before Trump assumed the presidency, the US state department announced a reward of up to $25m, for information leading to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In March 2020, under Trump’s first presidency, Maduro and other top officials were indicted in a New York federal court of drug trafficking and related crimes.On Monday, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on any country that purchases oil from Venezuela, saying the country “has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse”.When announcing the secondary tariffs, Trump added, without proof, that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent to the US, tens of thousands of “undercover” gang members. In late February, the state department designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization. The Trump administration has continually, also without proof, claimed that many Venezuelan immigrants in the US belong to the gang, and have been sent by the Venezuelan government.Last week, the Trump administration quickly, and without due process, expelled 238 Venezuelan migrants from the US to El Salvador after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. When invoking the Act, Trump said that the Tren de Aragua gang “is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the Maduro regime”.The Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a high-security “terrorism” prison, run by the rightwing Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele.In the days that followed, news organizations began publishing details of the operation, including that some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Trump administration continues to say that the rendition operation was legal, and that all Venezuelans expelled in the operation were gang members. A federal judge blocked the administration from expelling people via the Alien Enemies Act, and on Monday, he ruled migrants are entitled to individual hearings before being expelled.Despite the Trump administration claiming that alleged Tren de Aragua members were sent by the Venezuelan government, an intelligence document suggests otherwise. Reporting from the New York Times last Thursday revealed that the CIA and the National Security Agency contradict Trump’s claims of the Venezuelan government’s ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, raising questions about Trump’s invocation of the war-time Alien Enemies Act. The justice department announced a criminal investigation into the source of the New York Times’ reporting. More