Nation

WASHINGTON — Merely two weeks had passed since the Iran war began when Gen. Randy George, the Army’s highest-ranking officer, began sounding an alarm.

Touring a weapons depot in North Carolina, George warned lawmakers present that the conflict’s vast and ever-growing list of targets was straining U.S. capacity — “depleting our stockpiles faster than we can replace them,” as one congressman recalled. Since assuming Army leadership, George had made it his mission to strengthen the nation’s industrial base in anticipation of precisely this moment, when the United States would be engaged in a major war with a formidable adversary.

On Thursday, in a brief phone call, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired George. No reason was given, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told The Times.

The forced departure of George in the middle of a war created yet another blow to morale inside the Pentagon, where multiple officials expressed dismay over the state of the department’s leadership. Over the last year, Hegseth has fired five sitting members of the joint chiefs of staff, with only two holdovers remaining in their posts.

“Whenever you have a change in leadership, military or otherwise, there is bound to be some churn in information management,” one U.S. official said, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “So what you’re doing, in the middle of a war, as we are taking U.S. casualties, is you’re taking out the general in charge of making sure the right people and equipment are flowing into the Middle East.”

Inside the building, officials believe that Hegseth’s next target is Dan Driscoll, the Army secretary and an ally to President Trump. Driscoll has been seen by Hegseth’s aides as outshining the Defense secretary on prominent policy initiatives.

Gen. Randy George, U.S. Army chief of staff, speaks with soldiers during training exercises at Lightning Academy at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu on Nov. 10, 2025.

(Christopher Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It is a purge that Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill fear could have tangible, detrimental effects on the war effort. Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa, all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have expressed private concerns over George’s firing, a second U.S. official said.

Forcing out Army leadership responsible for training and equipping its soldiers, and for ensuring weapons stockpiles continue to meet demand, risks bureaucratic chaos and despair in the ranks at a time when the Trump administration is openly considering a ground operation in Iran.

Others in the Pentagon have raised concern over the U.S. military stockpile, including Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who last month warned at a defense conference that munitions shortages were a concern even before the war began.

“It was something that we were concerned about even before the operation,” Meink said. “It has just been the fact that we couldn’t see the threat evolving and what we’re facing. So we definitely have to improve on that.”

Trump has denied that the United States faces weapons shortages, even after meeting with the nation’s top contractors last month in a push for them to increase — and on some products, quadruple — their output.

“What interceptors we have for Iran is because of Randy George,” the first U.S. official countered. “He continued to work that problem set up through [Thursday]. It’s a problem set he was working in real time.”

Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for the Industrial Base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said U.S. forces have reached a stage in the war where they can pivot away from standoff weapons systems. With Iran’s air defenses largely degraded, they can instead rely on weapons such as laser-guided bombs, helping ease pressure on stockpiles.

But Iran’s downing of two U.S. aircraft on Friday suggests that longer-range weapons may still be necessary.

“When the stockpile is stressed, as it was after Ukraine and then now with Iran, any surge in need leads to a backlog as they try to replenish,” McGinn said.

“The three things they’ve been using a whole lot of are Tomahawks, [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] and Patriots, and those inventories were already somewhat depleted after Midnight Hammer last summer,” McGinn added. “You can’t crank those out very fast.”

Beyond his role tending to the nation’s “magazine depth” — making sure the military isn’t firing more weapons than it is able to replenish — George also led the Pentagon’s effort to set up a joint task force last year aimed at speeding up the U.S. military’s ability to counter small unmanned aircraft systems, or drones.

The program has proved critical in the war effort. Tehran now relies heavily on its Shahed drones, with its missile production and launch capacity severely diminished.

Acknowledging the Pentagon expulsions, Iran’s embassy in South Africa posted photos on social media Friday x-ing out portraits of several top U.S. military officials fired in recent months.

“Regime change happened successfully,” the Iranians wrote.

Union members scuffled with reporters and then banned the media entirely from the Communications Workers of America convention floor in a dispute springing from NBC’s labor troubles. Three Democratic presidential hopefuls–Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson–addressed the Miami Beach convention despite the controversy. The media ban by the union, which represents nearly 700,000 workers in the telecommunications and publishing industries and in the public sector, stemmed from a federal court order demanding that the union permit NBC into the convention hall if it allowed any reporters.

WASHINGTON — Melania Trump on Tuesday called on nations to work together to improve access to education and technology for children around the world, delivering her plea as she addressed a gathering of her counterparts from more than 40 countries.

The first lady’s Fostering the Future Together initiative, which she announced last year, and an inaugural two-day summit that she opened Tuesday are examples of how Melania Trump has expanded her portfolio to embrace global issues.

“As people we dream. As leaders we progress. As nations we will build,” she said in opening remarks. “Beginning today, let’s accelerate our new global alliance, this bond, to positively impact the progress of our children.”

She called on participants to host regional meetings, conduct research studies, begin new partnerships and collaborate with another member country “to cultivate the skills young people need to be successful in this rapidly evolving world.”

She said the goal of empowering children will be achieved by creating innovative programs, advocating for supportive education policies, sponsoring tech-focused legislation and building strong public-private partnerships.

“This room is filled with extraordinary human capital,” the first lady said. She urged the leaders seated around a large U-shaped table in a State Department auditorium to “harness it to elevate your children, to empower your people and to accelerate your economies.”

The gathering included technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and OpenAI.

Among those participating were Olena Zelenska, the spouse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The first lady announced the Fostering the Future Together initiative during the U.N. General Assembly session last fall.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Live Nation, the ticketing giant that reached a tentative settlement with the Department of Justice last week, remains under fire.

A coalition of more than 30 states that had joined the original lawsuit filed in 2024 is refusing to accept the $200-million settlement, causing the trial to resume this week in Manhattan’s Federal Court.

The settlement with the Justice Department requires Beverly Hills-based Live Nation to open Ticketmaster to rival ticket sellers, force the company to open select venues to competing promoters and cap service fees at 15%. California is one of the key states still involved in the trial.

But those steps fall short, critics say.

“It’s clear that Live Nation has manipulated the market and made itself untouchable by competitors, hurting artists, hurting fans, hurting venues, all the while, raking in the cash,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta at the Capitol Forum conference last week. “Not because it’s a better service or product, because it acted illegally and created a monopoly.”

U.S. senators have also chimed in. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar recently introduced the Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act to strengthen the review of antitrust settlements. Klobuchar said in a release that it’s “clear the American people got the raw end of the deal.”

And Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal released a report that provides new details into the inner workings of Ticketmaster and urges attorneys general across the nation to reject the settlement.

Blumenthal said that the Trump administration’s settlement with Live Nation will keep consumers vulnerable to Ticketmaster’s “anticompetitive practices” and ultimately push “concert tickets farther out of reach for fans.”

The senator’s report, entitled “So Casually Cruel: How Ticketmaster’s Monopoly Supercharges Prices and Fees,” examined over 100,000 documents and Ticketmaster’s revenue data. The report argues that the company leveraged its market control to make tickets available on the resale market before they were available to the general public in an effort to hike prices and boost profits.

“The ticketing market is broken,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

In its own statement, Ticketmaster said Blumenthal’s report “misrepresents how the live events industry works” and that the problem lies in the secondary ticketing industry.

“This is why we’ve long called for industry resale reform, including price caps, while also developing tools to empower artists and protect fans,” Ticketmaster said in a statement.

Recently, Ticketmaster has backed ticketing bills like AB-1349 and advocated to Congress for an industry-wide resale cap.

Sens. Blumenthal and Klobuchar are among many industry experts who say the settlement doesn’t adequately address anticompetitive practices and falls short of protecting consumers from high ticket prices.

Under Klobuchar’s new bill, courts could have 90 days to review public comments and government responses.

“When the government prosecutes antitrust violations, the goal should be to uphold the law, lower prices, and protect consumers and small businesses,” Klobuchar said in the statement.

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the economic policy nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, said the settlement will end up being “incredibly costly for concertgoers, performers, and independent venues.”

“California and 35 other states are standing up for Americans who are sick and tired of being ripped off and having to scrimp and save to enjoy a night out,” Owens said in a statement.

This ongoing trial is one of several major legal battles the ticketing giant is facing. The company is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission and is dealing with a handful of class-action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked federal health officials from cutting the number of vaccines recommended for every child, and said U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likely violated federal procedures in revamping a key vaccine advisory committee.

The decision halts an order by Kennedy — announced in January — to end broad recommendations for all children to be vaccinated against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV.

A number of leading medical groups raised alarms that the vaccine recommendation changes made under Kennedy would undermine protections against a half-dozen diseases. And the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other groups amended a lawsuit they had filed in July, asking the judge to stop the scaling back of the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule.

The original lawsuit, in federal court in Boston, focused on Kennedy’s decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women.

The suit was updated as Kennedy took more steps that alarmed medical societies, causing the plaintiffs to ask Judge Brian E. Murphy to take steps to address those policy changes too. For example, the amended complaint asked the court to look at Kennedy’s actions concerning the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises public health officials on what vaccines to recommend to doctors and patients.

Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel last year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.

Murphy, who was nominated to the bench by President Biden, said Kennedy’s reconstitution of ACIP likely violated federal law. He ordered the appointments — and all decisions made by the reformed committee — put on hold.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said: “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing.”

ACIP was scheduled to meet this week to discuss COVID-19 vaccines, among other issues, but that gathering was being postponed.

“ACIP as currently constituted cannot meet,” said Richard Hughes IV, an attorney representing the AAP. “How can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?”

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

Speaking at the Oval office, US President Donald Trump stated that Somalia is a “fourth world nation” while repeating claims without evidence that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar had illegally entered the country by marrying her brother. Omar has consistently denied the “sick” allegations.

As the war US-Israeli war on Iran enters its third week, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that his country has shown it is ready to take the war “as far as necessary” and that the conflict must end in a way “that our enemies will never again consider repeating these attacks”.

Israel’s attack, echoing similar carnage it wrought in Gaza, kills doctors, paramedics and nurses who were on duty.

An Israeli strike on a health centre in southern Lebanon has killed 12 medical workers, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said, as its devastating assault continued amid a wider regional war launched by the United States and Israel on Iran 15 days ago.

The attack late on Friday occurred in the village of Burj Qalaouiyah in the Bint Jbeil District, and killed doctors, paramedics and nurses who were on duty, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

The carnage echoed Israel’s constant targeting of medics and hospitals that decimated Gaza’s healthcare system during its genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave and which contravenes international humanitarian law.

Israeli strikes have so far killed 18 paramedics among 773 people reported killed in Lebanon since fighting between Hezbollah and Israel reignited March 2, after a US-Israeli assault on Iran began on February 28, with the conflict now embroiling much of the region.

According to Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from Beirut, the toll of medics was preliminary as rescue teams continued searching for missing people.

“You can see how deadly some of these individual air strikes have been, not just across the south, but of course, we are seeing air strikes hitting across the capital, Beirut,” said Pett.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said it was the second attack on the health sector within hours, after another Israeli strike on the southern village of Souaneh killed two paramedics and wounded five others when it hit a paramedic centre.

The ministry condemned the attack and denounced what it called as continued violence against health workers.

At least four people were also killed in an Israeli air raid on Taamir Haret Saida in the country’s south, the Lebanese News Agency (NNA) said.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah overnight claimed it fired suicide drones against Israeli troops in the northern town of Ya’ara inside Israel.

It was the 24th military operation announced by the group on Friday.

The Lebanese armed group also said it launched rocket attacks targeting Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, one in the town of Kfar Kila, and the other in the city of Khiam.

Late on Friday, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said his group is ready for a “long confrontation” with Israel as the war continues.

“This is an existential battle, not a limited or simple battle,” he said.

Damage in Israel from Iranian ‘cluster missiles’

Meanwhile, Iran’s retaliatory attacks against Israel continued.

Rocket and missile strikes early on Saturday targeted the Upper Galilee region of northern Israel, Channel 12 reported.

The news outlet said that a “limited number of launches” were either “intercepted” or exploded in open areas.

A post on X from Israel’s public broadcaster KAN featured several vehicles damaged in the strikes.

Alarms were raised for suspected rocket and missile fire in Manara, Margaliot, Kfar Giladi, Misgav Am, Tel Hai, Metula, Kfar Giladi and Kfar Yuval throughout the early morning on Saturday.

“A lot of the damage that we are being told about at the moment seems to be coming from these cluster missiles that Iran has been launching pretty much consistently for the last week at least and they scatter over a large area,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Amman, Jordan.

“They disperse these submunitions bomblets. Each of those has about 2.5 kilogrammes (5.5 pounds) of explosives in them. You can see why that does quite some damage when it scatters and hasn’t been intercepted by the Israeli air defence.”

TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas town known for its prisons is allowing a shuttered private prison to reopen and house immigrants detained for living in the U.S. illegally after a nearly yearlong legal fight amid a massive national push for new detention centers.

The City Commission in Leavenworth on Tuesday approved a permit to private prison operator CoreCivic. Members voted 4 to 1 to approve a three-year permit with conditions that set minimum staffing levels, ban the housing of minors and provide for a city oversight committee.

“If they don’t follow those guidelines, we can pull the permit,” Mayor Nancy Bauder said before the vote.

The 1,104-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center is 10 miles west of the Kansas City International Airport. CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators, said the center will generate $60 million annually once it’s fully open.

Leavenworth, Kan., sued CoreCivic after it tried to reopen the shuttered prison without city officials signing off on the deal.

The legal battle played out in state and federal courts, with the Department of Justice siding with CoreCivic in legal filings. The department argued that the city was engaged in an “aggressive and unlawful effort” to “interfere with federal immigration enforcement.”

It appears to be the only such legal battle nationally to delay a private prison from opening amid President Trump’s push for mass deportations. The city argued that requiring a permit would prevent future problems, while CoreCivic maintained that it didn’t need a permit and the process would take too long.

Leavenworth was an unlikely foe because the GOP-leaning city’s name alone evokes a shorthand for serving hard time. Prisons employ hundreds of workers locally at two military facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail, all within six miles of City Hall.

CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service in its Leavenworth facility in 2021 after then-President Joe Biden called on the Justice Department to curb the use of private prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders said inmates’ rights had been violated and there were stabbings, suicides and even one homicide.

The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment and accused CoreCivic of impeding city police force investigations of sexual assaults and other violent crimes.

Almost four dozen people spoke in opposition to the permit before the commission’s vote. Bauder admonished the crowd several times for being too noisy, and police removed a protester who yelled vulgar comments.

“We, we the people of Leavenworth, are not fooled and we don’t care about their money,” David Benitez, a city resident, told the commission.

Some backers of the permit cited the potential boost to the local economy. Two CoreCivic employees argued for approval, and one of them, Charles Johnson, of Kansas City, Kan., said his job gave him purpose and allowed his family to get off of state assistance.

“The people I work alongside are caring, professional and committed to doing things the right way,” he said, his comments drawing boos from critics outside the commission’s meeting room.

City Commissioner Holly Pittman said because the city “stood firm,” it could negotiate conditions on the permit. She said denying it would risk a potentially expensive lawsuit.

“I will not gamble the financial stability of this city,” she said before voting yes. “Let me be clear: Approval does not mean endorsement.”

Hollingsworth and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kan.

President Trump was uncommonly lucky in his first term, neither inheriting nor provoking a crisis of the sort that tests U.S. presidents, until COVID struck in his final 10 months. (He failed that test, contributing to his 2020 reelection defeat.) Trump 1.0 was bequeathed a growing economy from President Obama, and the incoming president assembled a roster of capable advisors who often acted to prevent him from doing nutty things at home and abroad.

Trump 2.0 made sure that no such human guardrails populated his second Cabinet, only genuflecting enablers. Unrestrained, he has presided over one crisis on top of another, all of his own making. Tariff mayhem and high prices. Armed agents and troops in American cities. Repeated violations of court orders. Demolition at federal agencies and the White House.

And now Trump has taken the nation to war against Iran in league with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. Depending on the moment and the audience, a contradictory Trump is either claiming the war is “very complete” or that much remains to be done to “decimate” Iran. On Wednesday he blithely told Axios, “Any time I want it to end, it will end,” even as U.S. officials planned further actions.

In any case, Trump’s war of choice and the killing of the supreme leader of Iran’s terroristic theocracy now has spawned another potential crisis, counterterrorism experts warn: the risks of retaliatory terrorist threats at home. And that is a threat, whether from homegrown extremists or sleeper cells of the sort that came alive for 9/11, that is likely greater because of the initial self-induced crisis of Trump’s second term: his whacking of the federal government.

Trump authorized Elon Musk’s destruction of the bureaucracy in the name of “government efficiency” and continues to exact retribution against any federal employee who had anything to do with investigating and prosecuting him during his interregnum. Longtime agents and operatives have been eliminated at the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, CIA and elsewhere. Especially at the FBI, counterterrorism experts with centuries of collective experience are gone and many who remain have been diverted to Trump’s top priority: mass deportations.

Consequently, the president who promised to “Make America Safe Again” has arguably made Americans less safe.

I raised this scary prospect just over a year ago as Trump’s teardown of the purported Deep State was underway. And now a Mideast war that Trump promised never to start has further incentivized Iran and its jihadi proxies to hit back, just as he’s diminished the nation’s early-warning systems.

Enough intelligence remains, however, that even in the days before Trump ordered the first strikes against Tehran, government analysts were picking up “worrisome signs” of Iranian plotting against U.S. targets, the New York Times reported. After the U.S.-Israel onslaught and death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, the government intercepted a possible Iranian “operational trigger” to “sleeper assets” outside Iran, according to ABC News.

Counterterrorism expert Colin P. Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, which focuses on global security and transnational terrorism, wrote this week in the Atlantic that U.S. agencies’ record of disrupting Iranian-backed plots in America was in jeopardy given the recent changes in funding, personnel and priorities. “Because of this,” he concluded, “the U.S. homeland is arguably more vulnerable than it has been in a long time.”

In a follow-up exchange of emails, Clarke told me, “Many of this administration’s moves have been myopic — shifting counterterrorism resources to immigration, firing FBI agents working counterintelligence, etc. A week before the U.S. went to war with Iran, the FBI Director Kash Patel was off gallivanting in Milan at the Olympics [where he struggled to chug a Michelob Ultra, a firing offense in its own right] when he should have been preparing for the potential for an Iranian response on U.S. soil.”

Patel’s preposterous partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team while war-planning was underway in Washington was widely, justifiably mocked. But it stands as a metaphor for the entire Trump administration’s cavalier attitude toward homeland security. Its abusive focus on both migrants and citizens protesting on the migrants’ behalf is a distraction from actual threats to the country.

Patel, like his boss at the Justice Department, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, has made plain in words and actions that the president’s political enemies are the real public enemies No. 1. One of Bondi’s first acts was creation of a “weaponization working group” to identify, fire or prosecute those in her department who’d investigated and prosecuted Trump, many of whom also had experience in domestic and transnational terrorism. The association representing FBI agents called her purges “dangerous distractions” from the work “to make America safe again.”

Days after starting the Iran war, when homeland security should have been on red alert, Trump fired his secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. Her costly cosplaying as the homeland’s heroine on horseback in anti-migrant videos, along with her penchant for luxury jets allegedly to transport deportees, was too much even for him.

Yet all three “national security” officials — Noem, Bondi and Patel — simply reflect Trump’s own warped approach and blasé attitude toward the homefront.

When Time magazine last week asked the commander in chief whether Americans should be worried about potential terrorist strikes at home, he replied, “I guess.”

“We plan for it,” he added. “But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”

The administration is planning for it all right. An extraordinary number of senior Trump officials have taken up residence in houses on military bases, including Bondi, Noem, the secretaries of State and Defense, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, and White House consigliere Stephen Miller.

The rest of us just have to keep our fingers crossed. I guess.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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On our recent delegation to Venezuela, one quote echoed again and again — a warning written nearly two centuries ago by Simón Bolívar in 1829:

“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

For many Venezuelans, that line no longer feels like history. It feels like the present.

The January 3 U.S. military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores marked a dramatic escalation in a conflict that Venezuelans describe not as sudden but as cumulative — the culmination of decades of pressure, sanctions, and attempts at isolation. “We still haven’t totally processed what happened on January 3,” sanctions expert William Castillo told us. “But it was the culmination of over 25 years of aggression and 11 years of resisting devastating sanctions. A 20-year-old today has lived half his life in a blockaded country.”

Carlos Ron, former deputy foreign minister and now with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, described the buildup to the invasion as the result of a carefully constructed narrative. “First there was the dangerous rhetoric describing Venezuelans in the United States as criminals,” he said. “Then endless references to the Tren de Aragua gang. Then the boat strikes blowing up alleged smugglers. Then the oil tanker seizures and naval blockade. The pressure wasn’t working, so they escalated to the January 3 invasion and kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of over 100 people.”

While in the United States the events of January 3 have largely been forgotten, replaced by a devastating war with Iran, in Venezuela the reminders are everywhere. Huge banners draped from apartment buildings demand: “Bring them home.” Weekly protests call for their release.

In the Tiuna neighborhood of Caracas, we met Mileidy Chirinos, who lives in an apartment complex overlooking the site where Maduro was captured. From her rooftop, she told us about that dreadful night, when the sky lit up with explosions so loud her building shook and everyone ran outside screaming.

“Have your children ever woken up terrified to the sound of bombs?” she asked.

We shook our heads.

“Ours have,” she said. “And they are U.S. bombs. Now we understand what Palestinians in Gaza feel every day.”

She told us psychologists now visit weekly to help residents cope with the trauma.

Within days of the U.S. invasion, the National Assembly swore in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. President Trump publicly praised Rodríguez for “doing a good job,” emphasizing his strong relationship with her. But from the beginning, she has been negotiating with the United States with a gun to her head. She was told that any refusal to compromise would result not in the kidnapping of her and her team, but death and the continued bombing of Venezuela.

The presence of U.S. power looms large. Nuclear submarines still patrol offshore. Thousands of troops remain positioned nearby. Every statement and decision made by the government is scrutinized. And on February 2, despite Trump’s praise for Delcy Rodríguez, he renewed the 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security.

The visits from the heads of the CIA and Southern Command have undoubtedly been difficult for the government to swallow. Delcy’s revolutionary father was tortured to death in 1976 by a Venezuelan government that worked closely with the CIA. The U.S. Southern Command coordinated the January 3 attack.

But the government is not without leverage.

“The United States thought the state was weak, that it didn’t have popular support, that the military was divided,” said Tania Díaz of the ruling PSUV party. “January 3rd could have triggered looting, military defections, or widespread destabilization. None of that happened.”

The United States has overwhelming military dominance, but it was also aware that millions of Venezuelans signed up to be part of the people’s militia. This militia, along with the army that remained loyal to the government, gave Washington pause about launching a prolonged war and attempting to replace Delcy Rodríguez with opposition leader María Corina Machado. 

While Machado enjoys enthusiastic support among Venezuelan exiles in Miami and the Trump administration recognized her movement as the winner of the 2024 election, the picture inside Venezuela is very different.  The opposition remains deeply divided and Trump realized there was no viable faction ready to assume power.

Besides, as William Castillo put it bluntly: “Trump does not care about elections or human rights or political prisoners. He cares about three other things: oil, oil, and oil.” To that, we can add gold, where the U.S. just pushed Venezuela to provide direct access to gold exports and investment opportunities in the country’s gold and mineral sector, 

Certainly, under the circumstances, the Venezuelan leadership has had little choice but to grant the United States significant influence over its oil exports. But while Trump boasts that this is the fruit of his “spectacular assault,” Maduro had long been open to cooperation with U.S. oil companies.

“Maduro was well aware that Venezuela needed investment in its oil facilities,” Castillo told us, “but the lack of investment is because of U.S. sanctions, not because of Maduro. Venezuela never stopped selling to the U.S.; it is the U.S. that stopped buying. And it also stopped selling spare parts needed to repair the infrastructure. So the U.S. started the fire that decimated our oil industry and now acts as if it’s the firefighter coming to the rescue.”

In any case, the easing of oil sanctions — the only sanctions that have been partially lifted — is already bringing an infusion of much-needed dollars, and the government has been able to use these funds to support social programs.

But in Venezuela the conflict is not seen as simply about oil. Blanca Eekhout, head of the Simon Bolivar Institute, says U.S. actions represent a brazen return to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine originally warned European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, but over time it became a justification for repeated U.S. interventions across the region. 

“We have gone back 200 years,” she said. “All rules of sovereignty have been violated. But while the Trump administration thinks it can control the hemisphere by force, it can’t.”

The historical contradiction is stark. In 1823, the young United States declared Latin America its sphere of influence. A year earlier, Bolívar envisioned a powerful, sovereign Latin America capable of charting its own destiny. That tension still echoes through the present.

Bolívar’s dream is also being battered by the resurgence of the right across the region. The left in Latin America is far weaker than during the days of Hugo Chávez. Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have been replaced by conservative leaders. Cuba remains under a suffocating U.S. siege. Progressive regional institutions like CELAC and ALBA have faded, and the vision of Latin American unity that once seemed within reach now feels far more fragile.

In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.

As Blanca told us before we left:

“They thought we would fall apart. But we are still here.”

And in the background, Bolívar’s warning continues to drift through the air — like a storm that never quite passes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Source: Code Pink

The US president repeats claims that Cuba is ready to negotiate as it faces a spiralling energy and economic crisis.

United States President Donald Trump has signalled that his administration is still pursuing a government overthrow in Cuba even as the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its second week.

Trump said on Monday that the US Department of State is still focused on Cuba, where plans by the White House may or may not include “a friendly takeover” of the island, according to the Reuters news agency.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is “dealing” with Cuba, the president told reporters in Florida.

“He’s dealing [with it], and it may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. Wouldn’t really matter because they’re really down to … as they say, fumes. They have no energy, they have no money,” Trump said.

“They are going to make either a deal or we’ll do it just as easy, anyway,” he said.

Cuba has been grappling with an energy crisis since January, when US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and halted fuel exports from Caracas to Havana, cutting the country off from one of its few allies and a key source of oil for the Cuban economy.

White House officials have suggested that Cuba is facing an economic collapse and that its government is ready to negotiate with Washington.

Trump has said on multiple occasions that Cuba’s government is ready to “fall” and that its leaders want to “make a deal” with Washington, according to NBC News.

Cuba has denied reports of high-level talks, according to Reuters, but it has not “outright” denied US media reports of “informal talks” between Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raul Castro, and US officials.

Cuba has been in the crosshairs of the US for decades, but Trump is the first US president since the Cold War to openly discuss and pursue a government change in Havana.

Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and Cuba are in line with his revival of the “Monroe Doctrine”, a 19th-century policy that states the Western Hemisphere should be solely under the sway of the US and no other foreign power.

Trump first raised the notion of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba in February.

Live Nation has reached a settlement with the Justice Department in an antitrust case that put the entertainment giant at risk of being separated from Ticketmaster.

The ticket vendor’s settlement offer was announced, in a court hearing on Monday, less than a week after the long-awaited trial began. With pending approval from the judge, Live Nation will have to pay damages to the suing states and allow competitors to sell tickets on its platform. Media reports have said the company agreed to pay more than $200 million as part of the settlement.

The settlement caught Judge Arun Subramanian off guard. He said no one informed him of the tentative deal until late Sunday, even though a term sheet for a possible settlement was signed on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

A 12-person jury was seated last Tuesday in a Manhattan federal courthouse and the trial had reached witness testimony by the end of last week. The complaint was filed in 2024, when the federal government, 39 states including California and the District of Columbia, alleged that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have monopolies in various aspects of the live music industry, such as concert promotion, venue operations, artist management and ticketing services.

Live Nation could not immediately be reached for a comment.

Many of the large monopoly claims were thrown out during a pretrial hearing last month, including an allegation that Live Nation’s industry power raises ticket prices and harms consumers. But the new settlement offers major structural changes to the company’s ticketing services.

If the trial judge approves the settlement, the Beverly Hills-based company will have to open parts of its platform to rival ticketing operators. This means third-party sellers like SeatGeek could list tickets and have access to Ticketmaster’s technology.

Another key claim in the lawsuit concerned Ticketmaster’s alleged exclusivity contracts, which required artists who booked Live Nation-owned venues to also use its ticketing services. The settlement now limits these contracts to four years and allows venues to place a number of its tickets on competing platforms.

The original lawsuit also argued that Live Nation manages more than 400 artists and controls more than 265 venues in North America — all while Ticketmaster simultaneously controls around 80% of the primary ticket marketplace and is increasing its involvement in the resale market. Under the pending legal agreement, Live Nation would have to divest more than 10 of its venues and Ticketmaster would also have to cap service fees at 15%.

Serona Elton, attorney and interim vice dean at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, said this outcome can be understood in two ways — it’s either a win that addresses anti-competitive behaviors or a deal that does not go far enough.

“It is important to understand that it is not illegal to be a monopoly and control a large portion of the market,” said Elton in a statement. “What is illegal is the use of anti-competitive tactics. In analyzing the settlement, the question to ask is if it does enough to address the alleged tactics and the harm they may have caused.”

Elton added that venues could benefit from these adjustments, but “music fans should not think this is going to bring ticket prices down to an affordable level as there are other causes behind the sky-high ticket prices.”

Stephen Parker, the executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, similarly expressed some skepticism about the potential settlement.

“The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals,” he said in a statement.

“Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them,” Parker added . “If these facts are true, NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system.”

A settlement could mark the potential end to one of the major legal battles Live Nation is facing. The company is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission and is dealing with a handful of class-action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

After the news of the settlement broke, Live Nation’s stock jumped over 5% to $164.03.