The acting president has defended diplomatic engagement with the Trump administration. (Prensa Presidencial)
Caracas, January 16, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez expressed her willingness to “continue shaping energy cooperation” with the United States while “respecting international legality.”
Rodríguez delivered the “Memoria y Cuenta” address to the nation before the National Assembly on Thursday, having taken office following the January 3 US military attacks and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
In her speech, Rodríguez highlighted some of the country’s recent economic achievements amidst wide-reaching US sanctions, including a reported 19 consecutive quarters of economic growth and an expected 8.5 percent GDP growth in 2025.
The acting president likewise stated that the Caribbean nation had eliminated gasoline imports last year. Rodríguez went on to announce a reform of Venezuela’s Hydrocarbon Law in order to promote foreign investment. The proposal seeks to incorporate mechanisms established under the 2020 Anti-Blockade Law to circumvent unilateral sanctions.
Rodríguez focused her speech on the importance of diplomacy, stressing that Venezuela “has the right” to maintain ties with China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, as well as the US.
With the US government reportedly administering Venezuelan oil sales and the Trump administration vowing to control the industry for an “indefinite” period, Rodríguez reiterated that Caracas remains open to energy relations in which “all parties benefit.”
She also reaffirmed her willingness to strengthen bilateral relations with Washington without subordination, urging legislators not to “fear” diplomatic initiatives.
“The acting president is afraid because she is threatened; Venezuela is threatened—Venezuela as a whole,” she said. “That is why I call for national unity, so that with sovereignty as our guiding principle, we can wage the diplomatic battle.”
Rodríguez went on to affirm that if, as acting president, she were to travel to Washington, she would do so “standing upright, walking—never groveling.”
Diplomatic rapprochement
The acting president’s diplomatic focus came days after the Venezuelan government announced the start of an exploratory process with the US aimed at reopening the respective embassies in Caracas and Washington, DC. Venezuelan officials have defended the diplomatic rapprochement with the need to denounce Maduro and Flores’ kidnapping and offer consular support during their upcoming trial.
Caracas also reported the arrival of a US State Department delegation last week to evaluate conditions for the embassy reopening. The Maduro government broke diplomatic ties with the first Trump administration in 2019 after the latter recognized the self-proclaimed “interim government” headed by Juan Guaidó.
Rodríguez further revealed that on January 14 she held a “long and courteous” phone call with Trump, during which they discussed “a working agenda for the benefit of both peoples.” The US president confirmed the exchange, describing the conversation as “great” and calling Rodríguez “a wonderful person” with whom “it is very easy to work.”
On Thursday, the Venezuelan leader reportedly held a meeting with CIA Director John Ratcliffe at Maiquetía airport. According to the New York Times, the two discussed intelligence cooperation, with Ratcliffe emphasizing that Venezuela should cease to be an alleged “safe haven for America’s adversaries, especially narco-traffickers.” The Rodríguez administration has yet to comment on the meeting.
Additionally, the interim president dispatched Félix Plasencia—former foreign minister and ambassador to the UK—to hold meetings with US officials in Washington.
Plasencia’s visit coincided with a trip by opposition figure María Corina Machado, who held what the BBC described as a “brief and atypical” encounter with Trump at the White House. The far-right leader handed the US president her Nobel Peace Prize medal.
The gesture drew criticism from Norwegian experts and media outlets, who labeled it “incredibly shameful” and “damaging” to the award. The Nobel Committee’s decision to grant Machado the prize had likewise come under fire due to the far-right leader’s history of involvement in violent coup plots and calls for foreign intervention.
Trump, however, thanked Machado for the “gesture of respect,” though the White House later stated that the visit was just a “courtesy” with no influence on administration policy. Following the January 3 attacks, the US president dismissed Machado’s prospects of leading Venezuela, adding that she “did not have respect within the country.”
Meanwhile, agreements between Caracas and Washington continue to move forward, including the resumption of deportation flights from the US on Friday. The first such flight, operated by Eastern Air Express, departed from Phoenix, Arizona, and landed at Simón Bolívar International Airport with 199 Venezuelan migrants onboard.
The previous deportation flight had taken place on December 10. Two days later, the Venezuelan government announced that the Trump administration had unilaterally suspended the migrant repatriation program.
Edited and with additional reporting by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.
In the aftermath of the U.S. military strike that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has emphasized its desire for unfettered access to Venezuela’s oil more than conventional foreign policy objectives, such as combating drug trafficking or bolstering democracy and regional stability.
During his first news conference after the operation, President Trump claimed oil companies would play an important role and that the oil revenue would help fund any further intervention in Venezuela.
Soon after, “Fox & Friends” hosts asked Trump about this prediction.
As a historian of U.S.-Latin American relations, I’m not surprised that oil or any other commodity is playing a role in U.S. policy toward the region. What has taken me aback, though, is the Trump administration’s openness about how much oil is driving its policies toward Venezuela.
As I’ve detailed recently, U.S. military intervention in Latin America has largely been covert. And when the U.S. orchestrated the coup that ousted Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, the U.S. covered up the role that economic considerations played in that operation.
By the early 1950s, Guatemala had become a top source for the bananas Americans consumed, as it remains today.
The United Fruit Company, based in Boston, owned more than 550,000 acres of Guatemalan land, largely thanks to its deals with previous dictatorships. These holdings required the intense labor of impoverished farmworkers who were often forced from their traditional lands. Their pay was rarely stable, and they faced periodic layoffs and wage cuts.
The company’s seemingly unlimited clout in the countries where it operated gave rise to the stereotype of Central American nations as “banana republics.”
In Guatemala, a country historically marked by extreme inequality, a broad coalition formed in 1944 to overthrow its repressive dictatorship in a popular uprising. Inspired by the anti-fascistideals of World War II, the coalition sought to make the nation more democratic and its economy more fair.
After decades of repression, the nation democratically elected Juan José Arévalo and then Jacobo Árbenz, under whom, in 1952, Guatemala implemented a land reform program that gave landless farmworkers their own undeveloped plots. Guatemala’s government asserted that these policies would build a more equitable society for Guatemala’s impoverished, Indigenous majority.
United Fruit sought to enlist the U.S. government in its fight against the elected government’s policies. While its executives did complain that Guatemala’s reforms hurt its financial investments and labor costs, they also cast any interference in its operations as part of a broader communist plot.
United Fruit executives began to meet with officials in the Truman administration as early as 1945. Despite the support of sympathetic ambassadors, the U.S. government apparently wouldn’t intervene directly in Guatemala’s affairs.
The company turned to Congress.
It hired well connected lobbyists to portray Guatemala’s policies as part of a communist plot to destroy capitalism and the United States. In February 1949, multiple members of Congress denounced Guatemala’s labor reforms as communist.
Sen. Claude Pepper called the labor code “obviously intentionally discriminatory against this American company” and “a machine gun aimed at the head of this American company.”
Seventy-seven years later, we may see many echoes of past interventions, but now the U.S. government has dropped the veil: In his appearance after the strike that seized Maduro this month, Trump said “oil” 21 times.
Aaron Coy Moulton is an associate professor of Latin American history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and the author of “Caribbean Blood Pacts: Guatemala and the Cold War Struggle for Freedom.” This article was produced in collaboration with the Conversation.
It’s a measure of President Trump’s lack of self-awareness — a superpower, really, for authoritarian demagogues like him who otherwise would shrink from their worst impulses — that he apparently doesn’t see the evident contradiction in his simultaneous support for protesters in Iran and damnation of those in his own country.
For days, Trump has preened as the all-powerful protector of Iranian protesters against their nation’s repressive regime. (The supposedly “America First” president could strike their country at any moment, if he hasn’t already.) “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he posted Tuesday. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
But what was on the way to Minneapolis, he’d posted just an hour earlier, was “RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION.” Its citizens — his citizens — were demonstrating in growing numbers against the paramilitary that Trump has created among Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, one of whom last week killed a woman there, Renee Nicole Good. Trump counterproductively increased the ICE deployment in the city, already more than triple the size of the Minneapolis police force.
On Sunday night, Trump had justified Good’s slaying this way: “The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement.” This from the man who watched on TV for three hours on Jan. 6, 2021, as demonstrators at the U.S. Capitol disrespected law enforcement with chemical sprays, poles, planks, fists and bike racks. And he did nothing. Because they were pro-Trump protesters. Once back in office, he pardoned nearly 1,600 of them.
On the fifth anniversary of that Trump-incited insurrection, last week, the White House website rewrote history to obscure what Americans saw in real time — a falsification that truly disrespected law enforcement. In Trump’s version, the heroic Capitol Police were the culprits for “aggressively” firing “tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protestors.” Funny, not funny: That actually describes what ICE agents have been doing, as photos and numerousAmericans’ videosonsocialmediadocument, and not just in Minneapolis but in Chicago, Portland, Ore., Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans.
The “No Kings” rallies last fall? Trump, ever the brander, led his sycophants choir in Congress in renaming those events as “Hate America rallies,” and the 7 million peaceful protesters nationwide who attended them as communists and Marxists.
But here’s what makes the shameless contradictions in Trump’s stance on the right to protest even more nauseating in 2026: This is the year that the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the United States’ foundational act of anti-government protest.
It’s Americans’ bad fortune that such a man as Trump, a wannabe king, is the presider in chief for the yearlong commemorations of the rebellion that ultimately threw off a real king who’d met protesters with force and retribution.
Trump is so eager to be the semiquincentennial’s impresario that he’s already had the U.S. Mint produce a $1 coin with his likeness for the occasion. As if Americans needed a reminder that to Trump it’s all about him.
But he should take the time to actually read the document that this celebration commemorates. If he were self-aware, he’d see that he resembles the king the founders were opposing, and that his actions parallel those the founders cited as grounds for breaking away.
Their list of indictments of King George III include: “The establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Think of Trump’s dispatch of federal agents and National Guard troops into blue states and cities, and his threats to send the military, over the objections of their governors and mayors, state legislators and members of Congress.
Then there’s this passage: The king has “sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people.” And this: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” More: He is “protecting them … from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.”
Protecting officers from the consequences of alleged murders? In an all but unprecedented break with usual protocols after a law enforcement action as controversial as Good’s killing, Trump’s administration refuses to cooperate with Minnesota local and state officials in simply investigating the ICE officer who shot Good three times, and is denying them access to evidence. Trump’s Justice Department — and he’s made it his Justice Department — has ruled out the usual civil rights probe. Instead, the administration continues to blame the victim, Good, and is investigating her and her partner in the hope of finding some ties to activist groups.
Fortunately, there’s blowback, which truly does reflect the spirit of 1776.
On Tuesday, at least six federal prosecutors resigned in protest and others in Minnesota and Washington reportedly are expediting plans to quit. Lawyers nationwide condemned White House henchman Stephen Miller for his false, provocative claims that ICE agents have immunity for their acts. Polls show that by wide margins Americans believe Good’s shooting was unjustified. Support for ICE continues to decline; pluralities of Americans now oppose it.
But what has to worry Trump most of all: He’s lost Joe Rogan, uber-podcaster, especially to white males, and a past supporter. “You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up — many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” Rogan said on air this week. “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
Yes, it is. But as a consequence, protests are sure to continue, and build. What better year for that to be so: it’s not only the semiquincentennial but a midterm election year. As Trump likes to tell those he’s targeted — in Venezuela, Greenland and Iran — they can come around the easy way, or the hard way. The American people are giving him the same choice. He keeps choosing the hard way.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s photo portrait display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document U.S. history.
The wall text, which summarized Trump’s first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum’s “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.
The White House did not say whether it sought any changes. Nor did a Smithsonian statement in response to Associated Press questions. But Trump ordered in August that Smithsonian officials review all exhibits before the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. The Republican administration said the effort would “ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Trump’s original “portrait label,” as the Smithsonian calls it, notes Trump’s Supreme Court nominations and his administration’s development of COVID-19 vaccines. That section concludes: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.”
The text continues: “After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
Asked about the display, White House spokesman Davis Ingle celebrated the new photograph, which shows Trump, brow furrowed, leaning over his Oval Office desk. Ingle said it ensures that Trump’s “unmatched aura … will be felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”
The portrait was taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok, who is credited in the display that includes medallions noting Trump is the 45th and 47th president. Similar numerical medallions appear alongside other presidents’ painted portraits that also include the more extended biographical summaries such as what had been part of Trump’s display.
Sitting presidents are represented by photographs until their official paintings are commissioned and completed.
Ingle did not answer questions about whether Trump or a White House aide, on his behalf, asked for anything related to the portrait label.
The gallery said in a statement that it had previously rotated two photographs of Trump from its collection before putting up Torok’s work.
“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”
For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.
And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”
Trump has made clear his intentions to shape how the federal government documents U.S. history and culture. He has offered an especially harsh assessment of how the Smithsonian and other museums have featured chattel slavery as a seminal variable in the nation’s development but also taken steps to reshape how he and his contemporary rivals are depicted.
In the months before his order for a Smithsonian review, he fired the head archivist of the National Archives and said he was firing the National Portrait Gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, as part of his overhaul. Sajet maintained the backing of the Smithsonian’s governing board, but she ultimately resigned.
At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.
The White House said at the time that Trump was a primary author of the plaques. Trump’s two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden’s autopen stand-in describe the 46th president as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
Barrow and Johnson write for the Associated Press and reported from Atlanta and Washington, respectively.
A few months into President Trump’s second term, federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III — a conservative appointee of President Reagan — issued a scathing opinion denouncing what he found to be the Trump administration’s unlawful removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador, despite a previous court order barring it.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” Wilkinson wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Young ruled the cuts were “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore illegal. But he also said there was a “darker aspect” to the case that he had an “unflinching obligation” to call out — that the administration’s actions amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
“I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said, explaining a decision the Supreme Court later reversed. “Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
In the year since an aggrieved and combative Trump returned to the White House, his administration has strained the American legal system by testing and rejecting laws and other long-standing policies and defending those actions by arguing the president has a broad scope of authority under the U.S. Constitution.
Administration officials and Justice Department attorneys have argued that the executive branch is essentially the president’s to bend to his will. They have argued its employees are his to fire, its funds his to spend and its enforcement powers — to retaliate against his enemies, blast alleged drug-runners out of international waters or detain anyone agents believe looks, sounds and labors like a foreigner — all but unrestrained.
The approach has repeatedly been met by frustrated federal judges issuing repudiations of the administration’s actions, but also grave warnings about a broader threat they see to American jurisprudence and democracy.
When questioning administration attorneys in court, in stern written rulings at the district and appellate levels and in blistering dissents at the Supreme Court — which has often backed the administration, particularly with temporary orders on its emergency docket — federal judges have used remarkably strong language to call out what they see as a startling disregard for the rule of law.
In response, Trump and his supporters have articulated their own concerns with the legal system, accusing judges of siding with progressive groups to cement a liberal federal agenda despite the nation voting Trump back into office. Trump has labeled judges “lunatics” and called for at least one’s impeachment, which drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
After District Judge Brian E. Murphy temporarily blocked the administration from deporting eight men to South Sudan — a nation to which they had no connection, and which has a record of human rights abuses — Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, called the order “a lawless act of defiance” that ignored a recent Supreme Court ruling.
After District Judge James E. Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt investigation into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison despite Boasberg having previously ordered the planes turned back to the U.S., government attorneys said it portended a “circus” that threatened the separation of powers.
While more measured than the nation’s coarse political rhetoric, the legal exchanges have nonetheless been stunning by judicial standards — a sign of boiling anger among judges, rising indignation among administration officials and a wide gulf between them as to the limits of their respective legal powers.
“These judges, these Democrat activist judges, are the ones who are 100% at fault,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Republican lawyer and Trump ally who advocates for sweeping executive authority. “They are taking the country to the cliff.”
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg began pursuing a criminal contempt investigation into the actions of senior administration officials who continued flights deporting Venezuelan nationals to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
(Valerie Plesch / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The judges “see — and have articulated — an unprecedented threat to democracy,” said UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “They really are sounding the alarm.”
“What the American people should be deeply concerned about is the rampant increase in judicial activism from radical left-wing judges,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “If this trend continues it threatens to undermine the rule-of-law for all future presidencies.”
“Regardless of which side you’re on on these issues, the lasting impact is that people mistrust the courts and, quite frankly, do not understand the role that a strong, independent judiciary plays in the rule of law, in our democracy and in our economy,” said John A. Day, president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. “That is very, very troubling to anybody who looks at this with a shred of objectivity.”
California in the fight
Last month, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office’s 50th lawsuit against the Trump administration — an average of about one lawsuit per week since Trump’s inauguration.
The litigation has challenged a range of Trump administration policies, including his executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of many immigrants; his unilateral imposition of stiff tariffs around the world; the administration’s attempt to slash trillions of dollars in federal funding from states, and its deployment of National Guard troops to American cities.
The battles have produced some of the year’s most eye-popping legal exchanges.
In June, Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to federalize and deploy California National Guard troops in Los Angeles, after days of protest over immigration enforcement.
An attorney for the administration had argued that federal law gave Trump such authority in instances of domestic “rebellion” or when the president is unable to execute the nation’s laws with regular forces, and said the court had no authority to question Trump’s decisions.
But Breyer wasn’t buying it, ruling Trump’s authority was “of course limited.”
“I mean, that’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George,” he said from the bench. “This country was founded in response to a monarchy. And the Constitution is a document of limitations — frequent limitations — and enunciation of rights.”
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to federalize and deploy California National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
(Santiago Mejia / San Francisco Chronicle)
Francesca Gessner, Bonta’s acting chief deputy, said she took Breyer’s remarks as his way of telling Trump and his administration that “we don’t have kings in America” — which she said was “really remarkable to watch” in an American courtroom.
“I remember just sitting there thinking, wow, he’s right,” Gessner said.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently paused Breyer’s order, allowing the troops to remain in Trump’s control.
In early October, U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut barred the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland, finding that the conditions on the ground didn’t warrant such militarization. The next day, both Oregon and California asked her to expand that ruling to include California National Guard troops, after the Trump administration sent them to Portland in lieu of Oregon’s troops.
Before issuing a second restraining order barring deployments of any National Guard troops in Oregon, a frustrated Immergut laid into the Justice Department attorney defending the administration. “You’re an officer of the court,” she said. “Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order, which relies on the conditions in Portland?”
More recently, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration in a similar case out of Chicago, finding the administration lacked any legal justification for Guard deployments there. Trump subsequently announced he was pulling troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles and other Democratic-led cities, with California and other states that had resisted claiming a major victory.
Bonta said he’s been pleased to see judges pushing back against the president’s power grabs, including by using sharp language that makes their alarm clear.
U.S. District Court Judge Karin J. Immergut, shown at her 2018 confirmation hearing, barred the deployment of Oregon National Guard troops to Portland.
(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
“Generally, courts and judges are tempered and restrained,” Bonta said. “The statements that you’re seeing from them are carefully chosen to be commensurate with the extreme nature of the moment — the actions of the Trump administration that are so unlawful.”
Jackson, the White House spokesperson, and other Trump administration officials defended their actions to The Times, including by citing wins before the Supreme Court.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said the Justice Department “has spent the past year righting the wrongs of the previous administration” and “working tirelessly to successfully advance President Trump’s agenda and keep Americans safe.”
Sauer said it has won rulings “on key priorities of this administration, including stopping nationwide injunctions from lower courts, defending ICE’s ability to carry out law enforcement duties, and removing dangerous illegal aliens from our country,” and that those decisions “respect the role” of the courts, Trump’s “constitutional authority” and the “rule of law.”
‘Imperial executive’ or ‘imperial judiciary’?
Just after taking office, Trump said he was ending birthright citizenship. California and others sued, and several lower court judges blocked the order with nationwide or “universal” injunctions — with one calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
In response, the Trump administration filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court challenging the ability of district court judges to issue such sweeping injunctions. In June, the high court largely sided with the administration, ruling 6 to 3 that many such injunctions likely exceed the lower courts’ authority.
Trump’s policy remains on hold based on other litigation. But the case laid bare a stark divide on the high court.
In her opinion for the conservative majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that universal injunctions were not used in early English and U.S. history, and that while the president has a “duty to follow the law,” the judiciary “does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation.”
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett accused Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of pursuing a “startling line of attack” that unconstitutionally aggrandized the powers of judges at the expense of the president.
(Mario Tama / Getty Images)
In a dissent joined by fellow Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that enforcement of Trump’s order against even a single U.S.-born child would be an “assault on our constitutional order,” and that Barrett’s opinion was “not just egregiously wrong, it is also a travesty of law.”
Jackson, in her own dissent, wrote that the majority opinion created “a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, and where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.”
As a result, the president’s allies will fare well, the “wealthy and the well connected” will be able to hire lawyers and go to court to defend their rights, and the poor will have no such relief, Jackson wrote — creating a tiered system of justice “eerily echoing history’s horrors.”
Barrett accused Jackson of pursuing a “startling line of attack” that unconstitutionally aggrandized the powers of judges at the expense of the executive. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
Jackson questioned why the majority saw a “power grab” by the courts instead of by “a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution.”
What’s ahead?
Legal observers across the political spectrum said they see danger in the tumult.
“I never have been so afraid, or imagined being so afraid, for the future of democracy as I am right now,” Chemerinsky said.
He said Trump is “continually violating the Constitution and laws” in unprecedented ways to increase his own power and diminish the power of the other branches of government, and neither Republicans in Congress nor Trump’s cabinet are doing anything to stop him.
While the Supreme Court has also showed great deference to Trump, Chemerinsky said he is hoping it will begin reaffirming legal boundaries for him.
“Is the court just going to be a rubber stamp for Trump, or, at least in some areas, is it going to be a check?” he said.
Davis said Trump has faced “unprecedented, unrelenting lawfare from his Democrat opponents” for years, but now has “a broad electoral mandate to lead” and must be allowed to exercise his powers under Article II of the Constitution.
“These Democrat activist judges need to get the hell out of his way, because if they don’t, the federal judiciary is gonna lose its legitimacy,” Davis said. “And once it loses its legitimacy, it loses everything.”
Bonta said the Constitution is being “stress tested,” but he thinks it’s been “a good year for the rule of law” overall, thanks to lower court judges standing up to the administration’s excesses. “They have courage. They are doing their job.”
Day, of the American College of Trial Lawyers, said Trump “believes he is putting the country on the right path” and wants judges to get out of his way, while many Democrats feel “we’re going entirely in the wrong direction and that the Supreme Court is against them and bowing to the wishes of the executive.”
His advice to both, he said, is to keep faith in the nation’s legal system — which “is not very efficient, but was designed to work in the long run.”
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will withdraw from dozens of international organizations, including the U.N.’s population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations, as the U.S. further retreats from global cooperation.
President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 organizations, agencies and commissions following his instructions for his administration to review participation in and funding for all international organizations, including those affiliated with the United Nations, according to a White House statement on social media.
Most of the targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor and other issues that the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and “woke” initiatives, according to a partial list obtained by The Associated Press.
“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” the State Department said in a statement.
Trump’s decision to withdraw from organizations that foster cooperation among nations to address global challenges comes as his administration has launched military efforts or issued threats that have rattled allies and adversaries alike, including capturing autocratic Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and indicating an intention to take over Greenland.
This is the latest U.S. withdrawal from global agencies
The administration previously suspended support from agencies like the World Health Organization, the U.N. for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, the U.N. Human Rights Council and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as it has taken a larger, a-la-carte approach to paying its dues to the world body, picking which operations and agencies they believe align with Trump’s agenda and those which no longer serve U.S. interests.
“I think what we’re seeing is the crystallization of the U.S. approach to multilateralism, which is ‘my way or the highway,’” said Daniel Forti, head of U.N. affairs at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vision of wanting international cooperation on Washington’s own terms.”
It has marked a major shift from how previous administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have dealt with the U.N., and it has forced the world body, already undergoing its own internal reckoning, to respond with a series of staffing and program cuts.
Many independent nongovernmental agencies — some that work with the United Nations — have cited many project closures because of the U.S. administration’s decision last year to slash foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.
Despite the massive shift, the U.S. officials, including Trump himself, say they have seen the potential of the U.N. and want to instead focus taxpayer money on expanding American influence in many of the standard-setting U.N. initiatives where there is competition with China, like the International Telecommunications Union, the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization.
The global organizations from which the U.S. is departing
The withdrawal from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, is the latest effort by Trump and his allies to distance the U.S. from international organizations focused on climate and addressing climate change.
UNFCC, the 1992 agreement between 198 countries to financially support climate change activities in developing countries, is the underlying treaty for the landmark Paris climate agreement. Trump — who calls climate change a hoax — withdrew from that agreement soon after reclaiming the White House.
Mainstream scientists say climate change is behind increasing instances of deadly and costly extreme weather, including flooding, droughts, wildfires, intense rainfall events and dangerous heat.
The U.S. withdrawal could hinder global efforts to curb greenhouse gases because it “gives other nations the excuse to delay their own actions and commitments,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ carbon dioxide emissions.
It also will be difficult to achieve meaningful progress on climate change without cooperation from the U.S., one of the world’s largest emitters and economies, experts said.
The U.N.’s population agency, which provides sexual and reproductive health across the world, has long been a lightning rod for Republican opposition and Trump himself cut funding for the agency during his first term in office. He and other GOP officials have accused the agency of participating in “coercive abortion practices” in countries like China.
When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he restored funding for the agency. A State Department review conducted the following year found no evidence to support these claims.
Other organizations and agencies that the U.S. will quit include the Carbon Free Energy Compact, the United Nations University, the International Cotton Advisory Committee, the International Tropical Timber Organization, the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation, the Pan-American Institute for Geography and History, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies and the International Lead and Zinc Study Group.
The State Department said additional reviews are ongoing.
Lee and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from the United Nations. AP writer Tammy Webber reported from Fenton, Mich.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition supporters have long hoped for the day when Nicolás Maduro is no longer in power — a dream that was fulfilled when the U.S. military whisked the authoritarian leader away. But while Maduro is in jail in New York on drug trafficking charges, the leaders of his repressive administration remain in charge.
The nation’s opposition — backed by consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations in the U.S. — for years vowed to immediately replace Maduro with one of their own and restore democracy to the oil-rich country. But President Trump delivered them a heavy blow by allowing Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, to assume control.
Meanwhile, most opposition leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, are in exile or prison.
“They were clearly unimpressed by the sort of ethereal magical realism of the opposition, about how if they just gave Maduro a push, it would just be this instant move toward democracy,” David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades, said of the Trump administration.
The U.S. seized Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores in a military operation Saturday, removing them both from their home on a military base in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Hours later, Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and expressed skepticism that Machado could ever be its leader.
“She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” Trump told reporters. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Ironically, Machado’s unending praise for the American president, including dedicating her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and her backing of U.S. campaigns to deport Venezuelan migrants and attack alleged drug traffickers in international waters, has lost her some support at home.
The rightful winner of Venezuela’s presidential election
Machado rose to become Maduro’s strongest opponent in recent years, but his government barred her from running for office to prevent her from challenging — and likely beating — him in the 2024 presidential election. She chose retired ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia to represent her on the ballot.
Officials loyal to the ruling party declared Maduro the winner mere hours after the polls closed, but Machado’s well-organized campaign stunned the nation by collecting detailed tally sheets showing González had defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin.
The U.S. and other nations recognized González as the legitimate winner.
However, Venezuelans identify Machado, not González, as the winner, and the charismatic opposition leader has remained the voice of the campaign, pushing for international support and insisting her movement will replace Maduro.
In her first televised interview since Maduro’s capture, Machado effusively praised Trump and failed to acknowledge his snub of her opposition movement in the latest transition of power.
“I spoke with President Trump on Oct. 10, the same day the prize was announced, not since then,” she told Fox News on Monday. “What he has done as I said is historic, and it’s a huge step toward a democratic transition.”
Hopes for a new election
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday seemed to walk back Trump’s assertion that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela. In interviews, Rubio insisted that Washington will use control of Venezuela’s oil industry to force policy changes, and called its current government illegitimate. The country is home to the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves.
Neither Trump nor Rodríguez have said when, or if, elections might take place in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s constitution requires an election within 30 days whenever a president becomes “permanently unavailable” to serve. Reasons listed include death, resignation, removal from office or “abandonment” of duties as declared by the National Assembly. That electoral timeline was rigorously followed when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, died of cancer in 2013.
On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who traveled with the president on Air Force One on Sunday, said he believes an election will happen but did not specify when or how.
“We’re going to build the country up – infrastructure wise – crescendoing with an election that will be free,” the South Carolina Republican told reporters.
But Maduro loyalists in the high court Saturday, citing another provision of the constitution, declared Maduro’s absence “temporary” meaning there is no election requirement. Instead, the vice president — which is not an elected position — takes over for up to 90 days, with a provision to extend to six months if approved by the National Assembly, which is controlled by the ruling party.
Challenges lie ahead for the opposition
In its ruling, Venezuela’s Supreme Court made no mention of the 180-day limit, leading to speculation that Rodríguez could try to cling to power as she seeks to unite ruling party factions and shield it from what would certainly be a stiff electoral challenge.
Machado on Monday criticized Rodríguez as “one the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking … certainly not an individual that can be trusted by international investors.”
Even if an election takes place, Machado and González would first have to find a way back into Venezuela.
González has been in exile in Spain since September 2024 and Machado left Venezuela last month when she appeared in public for the first time in 11 months to receive her Nobel Prize in Norway.
Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory in Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario, said the Trump administration’s decision to work with Rodríguez could harm the nation’s “democratic spirit.”
“What the opposition did in the 2024 election was to unite with a desire to transform the situation in Venezuela through democratic means, and that is embodied by María Corina Machado and, obviously, Edmundo González Urrutia,” he said. “To disregard that is to belittle, almost to humiliate, Venezuelans.”
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ended the lease agreement for three public golf courses in Washington, a move that offers President Trump an additional opportunity to put his stamp on another piece of the nation’s capital.
The National Links Trust, the nonprofit that has operated Washington’s three public courses on federal land for the last five years, said Wednesday that the Department of the Interior had terminated its 50-year lease agreement. The Interior Department said it was terminating the lease because the nonprofit had not implemented required capital improvements and failed to meet the terms of the lease.
While it was unclear what the Trump administration’s plans are for the golf courses, the move gives Trump, whose private company has developed numerous golf courses in the U.S. and abroad, the chance to remake links overlooking the Potomac River and in Rock Creek Park and a site that is part of Black golf history.
Officials for the National Links Trust said in a statement that they were “devastated” by the decision to terminate the lease and defended their management of the courses. They said $8.5 million had gone toward capital improvements at the courses and that rounds played and revenue had more than doubled in their tenure managing the courses. The nonprofit has agreed to keep managing the courses for the time being, but long-term renovations will stop.
“While this termination is a major setback, we remain stubbornly hopeful that a path forward can be found that preserves affordable and accessible public golf in the nation’s capital for generations to come,” the officials added.
The Department of the Interior’s decision comes as Trump rebrands civic spaces in Washington and deploys National Guard members to the streets for public safety. The Kennedy Center added Trump’s name this month after the center’s board of trustees — made up of Trump appointees — voted to change the name of the performing arts space designated by Congress as a memorial to John F. Kennedy. Trump is also in the midst of a construction project to build a ballroom on the White House’s East Wing, and he has put his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Two years ago, a day after he decided to fire Alex Grinch as USC‘s defensive coordinator, Lincoln Riley made a promise to those concerned about the future of the Trojans’ defense.
“I have complete belief, conviction. We will play great defense here,” the coach said in November 2023. “It is going to happen. There’s not a reason in the world why it can’t.”
Two years later, another defensive coordinator is out the door at USC. The day after Grinch’s replacement, D’Anton Lynn, left to take the same job at Penn State, Riley stood in front of reporters, assuring everyone once again that soon enough, USC would be great on that side of the ball.
“The arrow,” he said Tuesday, “is pointing straight up.”
“The opportunity for us to make a hire, to continue to make us better and to go from being a very good defense to being a great defense is the goal.”
Yet patience on that promise is wearing thin, especially given how the season had ended less than an hour before. USC blew a 10-point lead in the final five minutes against Texas Christian on Tuesday, a team playing without its star quarterback, before missing four tackles on a third-and-20 walk-off touchdown in overtime. The disastrous Alamo Bowl defeat would serve as an especially sobering reminder that while USC made progress under Lynn, it’s still a ways from heeding Riley’s guarantee.
And now, the defense will have to start again, with a new direction, a new scheme and a new coordinator, who will be Riley’s third hire in five seasons at USC.
In spite of all that, Riley was upbeat when asked about the unit’s future Tuesday night. He felt “fantastic,” he said, about where USC’s defense was headed.
“We have the personnel,” Riley said of becoming a great defensive unit. “We’re on an upward trend. And, you know, there’s going to be a lot of interest in this job. I mean, this will be an extremely, extremely coveted job, and I can already tell by the nature of what my phone’s been like the last couple of days.”
Several potential candidates with deep experience, as well as close ties to USC athletics officials, are expected to be available.
Former Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, who worked at Washington under current USC athletic director Jennifer Cohen, was let go by the Longhorns earlier this month. Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Al Golden, meanwhile, worked closely with USC general manager Chad Bowden at Notre Dame and could be looking for a job as soon as next week.
Both coached college defenses that ranked in the top four in the nation in points allowed during the 2024 season.
USC appeared bound for a similar trajectory after Year 1 with Lynn. The Trojans allowed 10 fewer points per game, leaping from 121st in scoring defense under Grinch to 56th in his first season at USC. They got stingier on third down — 106th nationally to 21st — and in the red zone — 119th to 69th. Lynn was even named candidate for the Broyles Award, given to the nation’s top assistant.
In some respects, USC’s defense continued to take steps forward in Year 2 under Lynn. It gave up fewer points and fewer yards per game. The pass rush improved, adding 10 sacks to its season total in 2025.
But the personnel on defense was less proven this season — and more prone to mistakes. The secondary struggled through stretches. A thin group of linebackers was often overwhelmed. The defensive interior was manhandled for most of the season, and in each of their three regular-season losses, the Trojans were trampled on the ground.
Last month, when asked about the group’s inconsistency, Lynn said that USC’s youth forced him to “scale back” significantly on defense. He actually wondered, in the wake of USC’s loss to Oregon, if he shouldn’t have scaled back the defense even more this season.
“It’s different when you’re teaching an 18-year-old versus teaching a guy who has been at two to three schools who has already played a bunch of college ball,” Lynn said.
Lynn, nonetheless, leaves USC in a better place than when he arrived. The nation’s No. 1 recruiting class lands on campus next week, with plenty of highly ranked reinforcements on the way. Talented freshmen like defensive linemen Jahkeem Stewart and Floyd Boucard as well as defensive back Alex Graham are rising stars who should be ready to step into significant roles.
But USC will have to replace three starters in the secondary, including Kamari Ramsey, its best linebacker [Eric Gentry] and its top run stopper on the defensive line [Anthony Lucas]. Whomever takes over as coordinator will be expected to take a significant step forward immediately, up against one of the nation’s toughest schedules in what should be a decisive season for the program.
Then there’s the matter of Riley’s job security, which could make any available top coordinator queasy.
Yet as far as the coach is concerned, the path to finding a great coordinator and fielding a great defense isn’t that far off from what USC has now.
“I definitely don’t want to press reset,” Riley said. “I’m excited about the process, and I think it’s going to make us better, I know it will. So, we’ll wake up tomorrow morning and we’ll get on it.”
Listening to the usual legacy media suspects, one might think 2025 was an apocalyptic wasteland of sorts — an authoritarian fever dream brought on by the return of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office. The reality looked very different. This past year was, in many ways, a pretty great and clarifying one. Let’s take stock of what happened when our government remembered whom it serves, as well as what unfinished business remains as we flip the calendar.
First, the obvious: Political sanity was restored to the nation’s capital. After years of leftist elite-driven chaos — wide-open borders, hyper-vindictive lawfare, fecklessness on the world stage and more — the nation has begun to revert back to first principles: national sovereignty, law and order, and strong leadership abroad. Under Trump, the United States has once again acted like a real nation-state that pursues its real interests — not a nongovernmental organization with a nagging guilt complex.
That reorientation has paid huge dividends. On immigration, the Biden-era invasion at the southern border has tapered by more than 90%. On energy, a renewed embrace of domestic production has led to the lowest average national gas prices in nearly five years. Violent crime, thanks to Trump’s law enforcement operations and innovative use of the National Guard, has dramatically fallen: Murders decreased by nearly 20% from 2024, and robbery and burglary also saw double-digit percentage decreases. Abroad, allies and adversaries alike recalibrated to the reality that the White House once again means what it says.
Still, work always remains. Here, then, is my 2026 wish list.
Peace in Eastern Europe
The Russia-Ukraine war has gone on far, far too long. The Trump administration has exerted tremendous diplomatic effort trying to orchestrate a peace deal, which remains elusive. A durable peace — one that halts the senseless slaughter on both sides, respects Ukrainian sovereignty and accommodates legitimate Russian concerns, and avoids a wider great-power conflagration — should be a paramount Trump administration foreign policy goal in 2026. Russia is the invader and Vladimir Putin is the greater obstacle to a lasting peace, but both sides need to make painful — if, frustratingly, also painfully obvious — concessions.
Victory on birthright citizenship
Back home, a consequential legal battle now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Trump administration’s righteous challenge to the erroneous practice of constitutionally “required” birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of noncitizens. The notion that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, was meant to constitutionalize a global human trafficking magnet — granting automatic citizenship to all children born here, including those whose parents entered the country illegally — is indefensible as a matter of plain constitutional text, the congressional history in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and basic common sense. Indeed, birthright citizenship has been nothing short of ruinous for the United States. A Trump administration victory would restore Congress’s rightful authority over circumscribing citizenship and remove a longstanding incentive for illegal immigration.
Improved affordability and housing costs
Legal victories mean relatively little if ordinary Americans continue to feel like they are getting squeezed. Improved affordability must be front and center in 2026 — from the federal level down to states and localities. The cost of living is not an economic abstraction; it affects rent, groceries, child care and the difficulty of buying a first home. Housing, in particular, demands attention. Housing policy should reward supply, not suffocate it — cutting red tape and burdensome construction fees, reforming zoning incentives, and curtailing the inflationary spending that puts upward pressure on mortgage rates. A nation where young families cannot afford to put down roots is a nation courting decline — the very antithesis of Trumpian restoration.
Justice for Minnesota fraud scandal
The burgeoning fraud scandal over state and federal funds for child care in Minnesota, including at businesses run by Somali Americans — astonishing in scale — has become a test case for whether the rule of law still applies when politics get uncomfortable. Justice means following the facts wherever they lead: recovering stolen taxpayer dollars and holding wrongdoers and abettors legally accountable without fear or favor. To wit, on the subject of abettors: What did Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other prominent Minnesota politicians know, and when did they know it? Moreover, what did Kamala Harris — who picked Walz as her 2024 presidential running mate — know, and when did she know it? The Biden administration and the Walz administration began investigating these fraud allegations years ago, and the American people deserve answers to all these questions.
Tamed Communist China
Finally, no wish list can be complete without confronting the central geopolitical challenge of our age: that of Communist China. Simply put, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, who just presided over their largest live-fire military exercises around Taiwan, must be meaningfully deterred in the Indo-Pacific. That means maintaining a combative tariff posture, implementing as much economic decoupling as is feasible and emboldening key regional allies — such as Japan — who share America’s interest in freedom of maritime navigation and diminished Chinese hegemony. Decades from now, Trump’s presidential legacy will be partially defined by how he handled the China challenge. Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal.
This past year showed what is possible when Washington rejects the politics of managed decline and reembraces the best of the American tradition and way of life. Let us hope we will see more — a lot more — of that same success in this new year.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that the Constitution remains a sturdy pillar for the country, a message that comes after a tumultuous year in the nation’s judicial system with pivotal Supreme Court decisions on the horizon.
Roberts said the nation’s founding documents remain “firm and unshaken,” a reference to a century-old quote from President Coolidge. “True then; true now,” Roberts wrote in his annual letter to the judiciary.
The letter comes after a year in which legal scholars and Democrats raised fears of a possible constitutional crisis as President Trump’s supporters pushed back against rulings that slowed his far-reaching conservative agenda.
Roberts weighed in at one point, issuing a rare rebuke after Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who had ruled against him in a case over the deportation of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members.
The chief justice’s Wednesday letter was largely focused on the nation’s history, including an early 19th-century case establishing the principle that Congress shouldn’t remove judges over contentious rulings.
While the Trump administration faced pushback in the lower courts, it has scored a series of some two dozen wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. The court’s conservative majority has allowed Trump to move ahead for now with banning transgender people from the military, clawing back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, moving aggressively on immigration and firing the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.
The court also handed Trump a few defeats over the last year, including in his push to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities.
Other pivotal issues are ahead for the high court in 2026, including arguments over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship and a ruling on whether he can unilaterally impose tariffs on hundreds of countries.
Roberts’ letter contained few references to those issues. It opened with a history of the seminal 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense,” written by Thomas Paine, a “recent immigrant to Britain’s North American colonies,” and closed with Coolidge’s encouragement to “turn for solace” to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence “amid all the welter of partisan politics.”
