trump

BREAKINGBREAKING,

US says two people were killed in strike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean, continuing a campaign denounced as illegal.

The United States military has said that it killed two people in its latest attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees US military operations in Latin America, said on Thursday that “two narco-terrorists were killed during this action”.

SOUTHCOM did not provide any evidence to support its claim that the vessel and the two victims were involved in drug trafficking.

US strikes on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean, which have killed at least 126 people in 34 attacks since the first recorded incident in September 2025, have been widely denounced as illegal under international law.

The latest strike appears to be the first conducted by the Trump administration in 2026, according to records of the strikes tabulated by the watchdog group Airwars.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.

With the Trump administration reportedly in talks to create an anti-fraud task force for California, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Thursday vehemently denounced what he described as the administration’s “reckless” and “false” rhetoric about fraud plaguing the state.

At a news conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, Bonta said the Trump administration’s claims that state programs are overrun by fraud and that its government was itself perpetrating or facilitating this fraud was “outrageous and ridiculous and without basis.”

Bonta said most states struggle with some fraud from outside actors, saying that “anywhere there’s money flowing there’s a risk” and that the state’s Department of Justice has thrown immense resources into cracking down on illicit activities and recovering funds for taxpayers.

As a politicized national fight over waste, fraud and abuse led by Republicans have targeted California and its Democratic leadership, Bonta and other state officials have moved swiftly to combat the claims.

In California, Bonta said, authorities have recovered nearly $2.7 billion through criminal and civil prosecutions since 2016, including some $740 million through Medi-Cal fraud related prosecutions, about $2 billion under the state’s False Claims Act, and an additional $108 million from a task force focused on rooting out tax fraud in the underground economy.

State authorities have frequently partnered with the federal government in the past on such investigations and welcome a good-faith partnership in the future, Bonta said.

CBS News reported on the creation of a California-focused fraud task force earlier this week, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the plans. The outlet, whose new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, has been aligned with Trump and spearheaded a major overhaul of the news organization, reported that the president plans to soon sign an executive order naming Vice President JD Vance as head of a group that would also include the head of the Federal Trade Commission as vice chairman.

Trump’s rhetoric fueled doubts about California programs and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership at the start of the year, when he declared that “the fraud investigation of California [had] begun.”

On the president’s social media platform, in formal letters and in recent news conferences, officials in the Trump administration have alleged fraud in child care, hospice funding and unemployment benefits.

Last week, the topic took center stage again when Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread hospice fraud in Los Angeles.

That viral video received more than 4.5 million views on X.

Oz’s video received fierce backlash from California politicians and the local Armenian community, who collectively alleged that it contained baseless and racially charged attacks on Armenians.

The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5-billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home-care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”

He also points to Armenian language signs, incorrectly referring to them as written in a cerulean script, and saying “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”

Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz on Jan. 29, asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the “racially charged and false public statements” made in the video.

On Monday, California Sen. Adam Schiff followed suit, demanding an independent review of Oz’s alleged targeting of Armenian American communities.

“To suggest markers of Armenian culture, language, and identity are indicative of criminality underscores a discriminatory motive that could taint any investigation into fraud and incite the further demonization of the community,” Schiff said in a statement.

Glendale City Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian said in an interview that Oz’s statements feed into the Trump administration’s playbook of using allegations of fraud to sow racial divisions.

“This time the focus just happens to be the Armenians,” he said. “In places like Minnesota, it’s the Somali community.”

California has been investigating healthcare fraud since a 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered widespread Medicare fraud in the state’s booming but loosely regulated hospice industry.

From 2010 to 2020, the county’s hospices multiplied sixfold, accounting for more than half of the state’s roughly 1,200 Medicare-certified providers, according to a Times analysis of federal healthcare data.

Scores of providers sprang up along a corridor stretching west from the San Gabriel Valley through the San Fernando Valley, which now has the highest concentration of hospices in the nation.

The state Department of Justice has charged more than 100 people with hospice-related fraud since 2021 and shuttered around 280 hospices in the last two years, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

But those shuttered hospices barely represent a dent in the massive hospice home healthcare industry. There are 468 hospice facilities in the Van Nuys area alone, according to the state database of medical facilities.

There are 197 licensed medical practices, including 89 licensed hospices, in a single two-story building located at 14545 Friar St. in Van Nuys — suggesting a concentration of fraudulent businesses.

When asked why the number of licensed medical practices in Van Nuys and at that address are so high, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said that the department is committed to fighting fraud and unable to comment on pending investigation.

Recent turmoil in Minnesota has demonstrated the potential ripple effects of allegations levied by the Trump administration.

Ahead of sending in thousands of immigration enforcement agents into the Midwest state, Trump had repeatedly cited a fraud case involving funds for a child nutrition program involving COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

He used the case, which involved a nonprofit where several Somali Americans worked, to vilify the immigrant community, even though the organization was run by a white woman. After the state became a lightning rod, Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection plans.

At Thursday’s news conference, Bonta described major cases in other states, such as $11.4 million healthcare fraud and wire fraud conspiracy involving a nursing assistant in Florida and a $88.3 million Medicaid fraud case in in Ohio involving over billing by a pharmacy benefit manager — to show abuse of state programs is not unique to California — or to blue states.

“We know Vance hails from Ohio, so maybe he should take a look in his own backyard before leading an unnecessary political stunt focused on California,” Bonta said. “We thought we should set the record straight.”

Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is facing the possibility it could run out of funding next week, as Democrats press for reforms to its immigration enforcement tactics.

But Republican leaders on Thursday pushed back against the Democratic proposals, rejecting them as moot.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for instance, called the demands “unrealistic and unserious”.

“This is not a blank check situation where Republicans just do agree to a list of Democrat demands,” Thune said, adding that the two parties appeared to be at an impasse.

“We aren’t anywhere close to having any sort of an agreement.”

Congress needs to pass funding legislation for the DHS by February 13, or else its programmes could be temporarily shuttered.

Ten demands from Democrats

Currently, Democrats are focused on changes to DHS’s immigration operations, particularly through programmes like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

But any funding shortfall stands to affect other Homeland Security functions as well, including the services offered by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which conducts security screenings at airports.

Top Democrats, however, have argued that a Homeland Security shutdown is necessary, given the abuses that have unfolded under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Just last month, two US citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, were killed at the hands of immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in incidents that were caught on bystander video.

Their shooting deaths have since gone viral, prompting international outrage. Other footage shows masked agents deploying chemical agents and beating civilians who were documenting their activities or protesting – activities protected under the US Constitution.

To protect civil liberties and avoid further bloodshed, Democrats on Wednesday night released a series of 10 demands.

Many pertain to agent transparency. One of the demands was a ban on immigration agents wearing face masks, and another would require them to prominently display their identification number and agency.

Body cameras would also be mandated, though the Democrats clarified that the footage obtained through such devices should only be used for accountability, not to track protesters.

Other proposed rules would codify use-of-force policies in the Homeland Security Department and prohibit entry into households without a judicial warrant, as has been common practice under US law. They would also outlaw racial profiling as a metric for conducting immigration stops and arrests.

Political battle over funding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was “astounded to hear” that Republicans considered the demands to be unreasonable.

“It’s about people’s basic rights. It’s about people’s safety,” Schumer said. He called on Republicans to “explain why” they objected to such standards.

In a joint statement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer appealed to members of both parties to coalesce around what he described as common-sense guardrails.

“Federal immigration agents cannot continue to cause chaos in our cities while using taxpayer money that should be used to make life more affordable for working families,” Schumer and Jeffries wrote.

“It is critical that we come together to impose common sense reforms and accountability measures that the American people are demanding.”

Already, Democrats succeeded in separating Homeland Security funding from a spending bill passed on Tuesday to prevent a partial government shutdown.

Some Democrats and Republicans have pushed for a second split in order to vote on funding for ICE and CBP separately from FEMA and TSA spending.

But Republican leaders have opposed holding separate votes on those agencies, with Thune arguing it would amount to giving Democrats the ability to “defund law enforcement”.

Thune added that he would encourage Democrats to submit their reforms in legislation separate from Homeland Security funding.

It remains to be seen whether the two parties can agree to a compromise before the February 13 deadline. Democrats, meanwhile, have continued to push for other measures, including the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Despite calling it earlier an ‘act of great stupidity’, Trump signals support of Starmer’s Chagos deal.

United States President Donald Trump appears to have endorsed the deal struck by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to hand over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, weeks after calling it a “great stupidity”.

Trump had last month described the United Kingdom’s decision to cede sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which includes a joint US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia, as an “act of great stupidity”.

The US president said he held productive talks with Starmer on Thursday and that the UK leader had made the “best deal he could make”.

But he also warned in a post on Truth Social that the US would retain the right to “militarily secure and reinforce” the US presence on the island of Diego Garcia if it were threatened.

The British government said in a statement that “the leaders agreed their governments would continue working closely to guarantee the future operation of the base and speak again soon”, the AFP news agency reported.

Under a deal agreed last May, the governments of the UK and Mauritius jointly announced that full sovereignty of the Chagos, a remote group of more than 60 islands, would again belong to Mauritius in exchange for guarantees that the US military base could continue operating there for the next 99 years.

Last year’s announcement stirred a range of emotions among the Chagossians, who were forced from their island home in the 1960s and 1970s and resettled in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK. For decades, they have campaigned to return to their ancestral lands freely, without any restrictions.

The Chagos Islands have been under British control since 1814. In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain forcibly evicted nearly 2,000 locals to make way for the US military base, which played a pivotal role in US military operations in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the US also acknowledged that the base had been used for covert rendition flights of “terrorism” suspects.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has faced questions from the United States Senate about President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to slash interest rates, despite concerns that such a move could turbo-charge inflation.

Bessent appeared on Thursday before the Senate’s Financial Stability Oversight Council.

There, he received a grilling from Democrats over rising consumer prices and concerns about Trump’s attempts to influence the Federal Reserve, the US central bank.

One of his early clashes came with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sought answers about a report in The Wall Street Journal that indicated Trump joked about suing his nominee for the Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, if he failed to comply with presidential demands.

“Mr Secretary, can you commit right here and now that Trump’s Fed nominee Kevin Warsh will not be sued, will not be investigated by the Department of Justice, if he doesn’t cut interest rates exactly the way that Donald Trump wants?” Warren asked.

Bessent evaded making such a commitment. “That is up to the president,” he replied.

Pressure on Federal Reserve members

Last week, Trump announced Warsh would be his pick to replace the current Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who has faced bitter criticism over his decision to lower interest rates gradually.

By contrast, Trump has repeatedly demanded that interest rates be chopped as low as possible, as soon as possible.

In December, for instance, he told The Wall Street Journal that he would like to see interest rates at “one percent and maybe lower than that”.

“We should have the lowest rate in the world,” he told the newspaper. Currently, the federal interest rate sits around 3.6 percent.

Experts say a sudden drop in that percentage could trigger a short-term market surge, as loans become cheaper and money floods the economy. But that excess cash could drive down the value of the dollar, leading to higher prices in the long term.

Traditionally, the Federal Reserve has served as an independent government agency, on the premise that monetary decisions for the country should be made without political interference or favour.

But Trump, a Republican, has sought to bring the Federal Reserve under his control, and his critics have accused him of using the threat of legal action to pressure Federal Reserve members to comply with his demands.

In August, for instance, he attempted to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook based on allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied.

Cook had been appointed to the central bank by Trump’s predecessor and rival, Democrat Joe Biden, and she has accused Trump of seeking her dismissal on political grounds. The Supreme Court is currently hearing the case.

Then, in early January, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Powell, echoing accusations Trump made, alleging that Powell had mismanaged renovations to the Federal Reserve building.

Powell issued a rare statement in response, accusing Trump of seeking to bully Federal Reserve leaders into compliance with his interest rate policy.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell wrote.

Bipartisan scrutiny of Powell probe

Given the string of aggressive actions against Powell and Cook, Trump’s joke about suing Warsh fuelled rumours that the Federal Reserve’s independence could be in peril.

Within hours of making the joke on January 31, Trump himself faced questions about how serious he might have been.

“It’s a roast. It’s a comedy thing,” Trump said of his remarks as he spoke to reporters on Air Force One. “It was all comedy.”

Warren, however, pressed Bessent about Trump’s remarks and chided the Treasury chief for not rejecting them.

“I don’t think the American people are laughing,” Warren told Bessent. “They’re the ones who were struggling with the affordability.”

The prospect of Trump exerting undue influence over the Federal Reserve even earned a measure of bipartisan criticism during Thursday’s council meeting.

Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, opened his remarks to Bessent with a statement denouncing the probe into Powell, even though he acknowledged he was “disappointed” with the current Fed chair.

Still, Tillis emphasised his belief that Powell committed no crime, and that the investigation would discourage transparency at future Senate hearings.

He imagined future government hearings becoming impeded by legal formalities, for fear of undue prosecution.

“They’re going to be flanked with attorneys, and anytime that they think that they’re in the middle of a perjury trap, they’re probably just going to say, ‘I’ll submit it to the record after consultation with my attorneys,’” Tillis said, sketching out the scenario.

“Is that really the way we want oversight to go in the future?”

For his part, Bessent indicated that he backed the Federal Reserve’s long-term goal to keep interest rates at about 2 percent.

“It is undesirable to completely eliminate inflation,” Bessent said. “What is desirable is to get back to the Fed’s 2 percent target, and for the past three months, we’ve been at 2.1 percent.”

Scrutinising the lawsuit against the IRS

As Thursday’s hearing continued, Bessent was forced to defend the Trump administration on several fronts, ranging from its sweeping tariff policy to its struggle to lower consumer prices.

But another element of Trump’s agenda took centre stage when Democrat Ruben Gallego of Arizona had his turn at the microphone.

Gallego sought to shine a light on the revelation in January that Trump had filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — part of his own executive branch.

Trump is seeking $10bn in damages for the leak of his tax returns during his first term as president. The IRS itself was not the source of the leak, but rather a former government contractor named Charles Littlejohn, who was sentenced to five years in prison.

Bessent was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, though he currently serves both as the Treasury secretary and the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

Critics have argued that Trump’s lawsuit amounts to self-dealing: He holds significant sway over the Justice Department, which would defend the federal government against such lawsuits, and he could therefore green-light his own settlement package.

In Thursday’s exchange with Gallego, Bessent acknowledged that any damages paid to Trump would come from taxpayer funds.

“ Where would that $10bn come from?” Gallego asked.

“ It would come from Treasury,” Bessent replied. He then underscored that Trump has indicated any money would go to charity and that the Treasury itself would not make the decision to award damages.

Still, Gallego pressed Bessent, pointing out that the Treasury would ultimately have to disburse the funds — and that Bessent would be in charge of that decision.

That circumstance, Gallego argued, creates a conflict of interest, since Bessent is Trump’s political appointee and can be fired by the president.

“Have you recused yourself from any decisions about paying the president on these claims?” Gallego asked.

Bessent sidestepped the question, answering instead, “I will follow the law.”

NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Thursday will launch TrumpRx, a website it says will help patients buy prescription drugs directly from manufacturers at a discounted rate at a time when health care and the cost of living are growing concerns for Americans.

The government-hosted website is not expected to be a platform for buying medication but instead set up as a facilitator, pointing Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites where they can make purchases.

The site’s unveiling, set for Thursday evening, was announced by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in a post on X called it “a state of the art website for Americans consumers to purchase low cost prescription drugs.”

She said President Trump will make the announcement alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Joe Gebbia, director of Trump’s National Design Studio.

The president first teased TrumpRx in September while announcing the first of his more than 15 deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations. He said in December the website would provide “massive discounts to all consumers” — though it’s unclear whether the prices available on drugmakers’ websites will routinely be any lower than what many consumers could get through their insurance coverage.

The website’s expected Thursday release comes after it faced multiple delays, for reasons the administration hasn’t publicly shared. Last fall, Oz told Trump the site would share prices for consumers before the end of the year. An expected launch in late January was also pushed back.

The president has spent the past several months seeking to spotlight his efforts to lower drug prices for Americans. He’s done that through deals with major pharmaceutical companies, including some of the biggest drugmakers like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck, which have agreed to lower prices of their Medicaid drugs to so-called “most favored nations” pricing. As part of the deals, many of the companies’ new drugs will also be launched at discounted rates for consumer markets through TrumpRx.

Many of the details of Trump’s deals with manufacturers remain unclear, and drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on many factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.

Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

Hello and happy Thursday. I’m Times columnist Anita Chabria, filling in for Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner. Today we are talking about circling the drain, and whether its possible to escape the flush after the swirl has started.

Yes, I’m talking about President Trump’s latest latest grab at the levers of power, and whether it will pull us all down. Trump floated the existentially disturbing idea recently that the federal government should “take over” elections.

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said Monday on a podcast, making no attempt to keep election integrity nonpartisan.

This came shortly after the federal government raided a Georgia election office, still doggedly pursuing the very fake conspiracy that the 2020 vote was rigged against Trump. Lurking in the background of photos of that abuse of power was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a longtime peddler of conspiracy theories including that Ukraine housed secret U.S. biolabs.

It’s not just possible but likely that Gabbard will find “evidence” of fraud in Georgia because she has been claiming election interference since at least 2016 and reality has seemingly never been an impediment to her beliefs.

So some sort of report or “proof” probably will appear in coming months that Trump was right all along and that Democrats have tricked us all by stealing votes across the country.

That will be the basis for Trump to demand Congress “secure” the midterm election, and we all know how good they are at standing up to him.

But before we go there, let’s do a quick refresher on how Democrats supposedly steal elections, because that’s at the heart of what comes next.

It’s the immigrants, stupid

Trump (drawing from preexisting conspiracy theories promoted by many folks he has now placed in powerful positions) blames undocumented immigrants for his loss in 2020.

Under a long-running conservative election fraud hoax, Democrats allegedly made some sort of secret deal to allow Black and brown immigrants to illegally enter the country, if they would then promise to illegally vote en masse for Democrats.

“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election,” Trump said on that same podcast. “These people were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally, and it is amazing that the Republicans are not tougher on it.”

This narrative has been proven false literally dozens if not hundreds of times in courts across the country, and by the rational minds of those who understand how impossible it would be for a conspiracy of this magnitude and complexity to go undetected — much less actually work.

Long before Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco Bay Area lawyer now demanding voter data as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, used her official power to pursue this false conspiracy, she spent years upon years filing lawsuits and doing media appearances making the same claims.

And time and again, she and others were swatted down by courts (and common sense and evidence) because illegal immigrants working in collusion with Democrats to steal the vote is not a real thing.

But now election deniers are in power, and the gravitational pull away from truth is accelerating. Conspiracy is reality as we get closer to the ballot box.

ICE them out

And if immigrants indeed are stealing elections in between raping our women and eating cats and dogs, there is an answer: ICE.

Who better to secure ballot boxes than a masked, terrifyingly unaccountable armed federal force of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that maybe answers only to Corey Lewandowski (the shadowy political operative always at Kristi Noem’s side) and Stephen Miller?

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Kavanaugh stops — basically stopping folks for living while brown or Black — are legal, these agents have probable cause galore. Add to that a new, legally unfounded directive that they can detain folks at will, without a warrant, and you have the perfect force to suppress an election.

Imagine if on election day, ICE roams the street in Democratic-leaning, nonwhite neighborhoods, stopping and even detaining folks as they go to polls. Demanding papers, dragging away dissenters.

“Your damn right,” Trump hanger-oner Steve Bannon said recently, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

Would you go to the polls in that scenario? Would you allow your 18-year-old to go or your elderly parent? I’d think twice, even as crucial as this vote is.

And here’s a bit of outrage you can aim at Democrats: Congressional leadership considered including a ban on ICE at polling places as part of their proposed deal to keep government funded — but didn’t. Once again, for those in the back, Democrats could have tried to stop this, but chose not to.

But wait! That’s not all!

Why can’t we just mail in our ballots, you ask. Well, that would be because changes by Trump to the U.S. Postal Service, and how ballots may be counted, are going to make it harder to ensure that mail-in ballots are received and counted as they traditionally have been handled. So mailing your ballot may work out fine, or may not.

And there you have it, that’s how a free and fair democracy spins into the vortex of authoritarianism, where elections are held, ballots are counted, but reality is lost.

You are antigravity

But folks, we are not there yet. Today is not that day!

There are things you can do, aside from peacefully protesting. People can start to make sure that their identification is in order (as Orwellian as that sounds) and help others to do so as well.

It’s likely that in some places at least, voter identification laws will make it harder to cast a ballot, and people will need to start getting birth certificates, Social Security cards or other paperwork now in order to comply with those rules. Ask who in your community needs that kind of help and how you can provide it.

People are going to need ways to vote in person and support doing it. If you are an employer, would you consider giving folks time off to vote, since poll lines may be long? Would you sign up to help those without transportation get to polls? Would you help with voter registration drives to get people signed up to vote?

And you can be certain that election conspiracy believers will be observing the vote, as they always do. Can you train now to be a responsible and fair poll watcher, to ensure there is balance and fairness in these observations?

The one thing we can’t do is believe Trump is unstoppable, that the point of no return has already passed, and democracy is flowing out the sewer pipes into the sea. In fact, we have 271 days to reverse this.

It will take mass participation on multiple levels — but it can be done.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Supreme Court, with no dissents, rejects GOP challenge to California’s new election map
The deep dive: Fulton County in Georgia Challenges the F.B.I.’s Seizure of 2020 Ballots
The L.A. Times Special: California doctor sent abortion pills to Texas woman. Under a new law, her boyfriend is suing

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Jeff Bezos Wednesday gutted his newspaper, the Washington Post. Its motto is “Democracy dies in darkness,” but also, democracy dies in layoffs by billionaires who can afford to send their wives into space for fun, but don’t want to pay for journalism that criticizes a dear leader.

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Feb. 5 (UPI) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump had a lengthy, far-reaching telephone conversation on Wednesday, in which the Asian leader warned his American counterpart that “the Taiwan question” was the most pressing issue in their countries’ relationship.

The self-governing, democratic island has increasingly become a focal point in U.S.-China relations amid growing concerns about an eventual Beijing invasion that have only been amplified since the Trump administration’s military operation last month in Venezuela that removed its authoritarian leader, Nicolas Madura.

Both Xi and Trump confirmed the Wednesday call, with the U.S. leader describing the conversation in a statement on his Truth Social platform as “excellent” and his relations with the Chinese head as “an extremely good one.”

He said they discussed the military, trade, the situation in Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war as well as Beijing considering buying U.S. agricultural products, including soybeans, which have been a sticking point for American farms. According to Trump, Beijing is considering increasing its U.S. soybean imports to 20 million metric tons.

A readout of the call from China’s foreign ministry made no mention of soybeans, but emphasized its claim to Taiwan in direct terms.

According to the ministry, Xi told Trump “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.”

“Taiwan is China’s territory. China must safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity and will never allow Taiwan to be separated,” Xi said, according to the ministry.

Despite Taiwan never having been part of the People’s Republic of China, which was founded in 1949, Beijing claims sovereignty over the island of some 23 million people under its One China policy. China views Taiwan as a rogue province that it has vowed to take by force if necessary.

The United States formally recognizes China’s claim to Taiwan, but maintains informal relations with Taipei, which has grown deeper over the last few years amid the Chinese threat of invasion.

Washington sells weapons to Taiwan. In December, the U.S. Congress approved a massive $11.1 billion arms deal with Taiwan, the largest ever between their two governments.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson sternly rebuked the arms deal in a statement that announced sanctions against 20 American military-related companies and 10 senior executives who have participated in arming Taiwan while warning that “anyone who attempts to cross the line and make provocations on the Taiwan question will be met with China’s firm response.”

The readout of the Xi-Trump call on Wednesday warned that “the U.S. must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”

According to Beijing, Trump told Xi that he understands how China feels about Taiwan.

Taiwan was only mentioned by Trump in a list of the “many important subjects” he discussed with Xi.

Trump is to visit Xi in Beijing in April.

Worries about a potential Chinese move against Taiwan have increased in recent weeks following the U.S. military abduction of Maduro, which some have suggested could be used by Beijing to support its claims to Taiwan.

In an interview with The New York Times last month, Trump, pressed on the issue, disregarded the comparison, stating China isn’t experiencing the same threat from Taiwan that the United States faced from Venezuela.

“It’s a source of pride for him. He considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him, what he’s going to be doing. But, you know, I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t,” he said.

Asked if he set a precedent with the military action in Venezuela, Trump replied: “He may do it after we have a different president, but I don’t think he’s going to do it with me as president.”

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s probe seen as latest effort by Trump administration to roll back diversity and inclusion policies.

Nike is being investigated in the United States over claims that it discriminated against white workers through its diversity and inclusion policies.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Wednesday that it had filed a court motion to compel Nike to produce information related to allegations of “intentional race discrimination” against white employees.

The allegations relate to a suspected pattern of discrimination in “hiring, promotion, demotion, or separation decisions, including selection for layoffs; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs”, the US government agency said.

The agency said it took the action after Nike had failed to respond to a subpoena for various information, including the criteria used in selecting employees for redundancies and setting executives’ pay.

EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, an ardent critic of racial diversity initiatives who was appointed last year by President Donald Trump, said US anti-discrimination law is “colour-blind” and protects employees of “all races”.

“Thanks to President Trump’s commitment to enforcing our nation’s civil rights laws, the EEOC has renewed its focus on even-handed enforcement of Title VII,” Lucas said in a statement, referring to a section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, colour, religion or sex.

Nike, based in Beaverton, Oregon, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EEOC’s action is seen as the latest move by the Trump administration to roll back policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace.

In one of his first acts upon returning to the White House, Trump signed an executive order to abolish “radical” and “wasteful” DEI initiatives introduced under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Like many corporate giants in the US, Nike publicly backed social justice causes such as Black Lives Matter prior to Trump’s re-election in 2024.

Between 2020 and 2021, Nike’s share of non-white employees rose more than four percentage points, the most among firms apart from healthcare provider Danaher, according to a Bloomberg analysis of company data reported to the EEOC.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A man convicted of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course in 2024 was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison after a federal prosecutor said his crime was unacceptable “in this country or anywhere.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pronounced Ryan Routh’s fate in the same Fort Pierce courtroom that erupted into chaos in September when he tried to stab himself shortly after jurors found him guilty on all counts.

“American democracy does not work when individuals take it into their own hands to eliminate candidates. That’s what this individual tried to do” Assistant U.S. Atty. John Shipley told the judge.

Routh’s new defense attorney, Martin L. Roth, argued that “at the moment of truth, he chose not to pull the trigger.”

The judge pushed back, noting Routh’s history of arrests, to which Roth said: “He’s a complex person, I’ll give the court that, but he has a very good core.”

Routh then read from a rambling, 20-page statement. Cannon broke in and said none of what he was saying was relevant, and gave him five more minutes to talk.

“I did everything I could and lived a good life,” Routh said, before the judge cut him off.

“Your plot to kill was deliberate and evil,” she said. “You are not a peaceful man. You are not a good man.”

She then issued his sentence: Life without parole, plus seven years on a gun charge. His sentences for his other three crimes will run concurrently.

Routh’s sentencing had initially been scheduled for December, but Cannon agreed to move the date back after Routh decided to use an attorney during the sentencing phase instead of representing himself as he did for most of the trial.

Routh was convicted of trying to assassinate a major presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm as a felon and using a gun with a defaced serial number.

“Routh remains unrepentant for his crimes, never apologized for the lives he put at risk, and his life demonstrates near-total disregard for law,” the prosecutors’ sentencing memo said.

His defense attorney had asked for 20 years plus the mandatory seven for the gun conviction.

“The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old,” Roth wrote in a filing. “A just punishment would provide a sentence long enough to impose sufficient but not excessive punishment, and to allow defendant to experience freedom again as opposed to dying in prison.”

Prosecutors said Routh spent weeks plotting to kill Trump before aiming a rifle through shrubbery as the Republican presidential candidate played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club.

At Routh’s trial, a Secret Service agent helping protect Trump on the golf course testified that he spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and run away without firing a shot.

In the motion requesting an attorney, Routh offered to trade his life in a prisoner swap with people unjustly held in other countries, and said an offer still stood for Trump to “take out his frustrations on my face.”

“Just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess forwards, but I always fail at everything (par for the course),” Routh wrote.

In her decision granting Routh an attorney, Cannon chastised the “disrespectful charade” of Routh’s motion, saying it made a mockery of the proceedings. But the judge, nominated by Trump in 2020, said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation.

Cannon signed off last summer on Routh’s request to represent himself at trial. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have the right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge they are competent to waive their right to be defended by an attorney.

Routh’s former federal public defenders served as standby counsel and were present during the trial.

Routh had multiple previous felony convictions, including possession of stolen goods, and a large online footprint demonstrating his disdain for Trump. In a self-published book, he encouraged Iran to assassinate him, and at one point wrote that as a Trump voter, he must take part of the blame for electing him.

Fischer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s repeated calls to “nationalize” elections drew swift resistance from California officials this week, who said they are ready to fight should the federal government attempt to assert control over the state’s voting system.

“We would win that on Day One,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times. “We would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours, because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

“We’re prepared to do whatever we have to do in California,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office recently fought off a Justice Department lawsuit demanding California’s voter rolls and other sensitive voter information.

Both Bonta and Weber said their offices are closely watching for any federal action that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia, or target the counting of mailed ballots, which Trump has baselessly alleged are a major source of fraud.

Weber said California plays an outsized role in the nation and is “the place that people want to beat,” including through illegitimate court challenges to undermine the state’s vote after elections, but California has fought off such challenges in the past and is ready to do it again.

“There’s a cadre of attorneys that are already, that are always prepared during our elections to hit the courts to defend anything that we’re doing,” she said. “Our election teams, they do cross the T’s, dot the I’s. They are on it.”

“We have attorneys ready to be deployed wherever there’s an issue,” Bonta said, noting that his office is in touch with local election officials to ensure a rapid response if necessary.

The standoff reflects an extraordinary deterioration of trust and cooperation in elections that has existed between state and federal officials for generations — and follows a remarkable doubling down by Trump after his initial remarks about taking over the elections raised alarm.

Trump has long alleged, without evidence and despite multiple independent reviews concluding the opposite, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He has alleged, again without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes were cast, including by non-citizen voters, and that blue states looked the other way to gain political advantage.

Last week, the Justice Department acted on those claims by raiding the Fulton County, Ga., elections hub and seizing 2020 ballots. The department also has sued states, including California, for their voter rolls, and is defending a Trump executive order purporting to end mail voting and add new proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote, which California and other states have sued to block.

On Monday, Trump further escalated his pressure campaign by saying on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting his party. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

On Tuesday morning, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to try to walk back Trump’s comments, saying he had been referring to the Save Act, a measure being pushed by Republicans in Congress to codify Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirements. However, Trump doubled down later that day, telling reporters that if states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Bonta said Trump’s comments were a serious escalation, not just bluster: “We always knew they were going to come after us on something, so this is just an affirmation of that — and maybe they are getting a step closer.”

Bonta said he will especially be monitoring races in the state’s swing congressional districts, which could play a role in determining control of Congress and therefore be a target of legal challenges.

“The strategy of going after California isn’t rational unless you’re going after a couple of congressional seats that you think will make a difference in the balance of power in the House,” Bonta said.

California Democrats in Congress have stressed that the state’s elections are safe and reliable, but also started to express unease about upcoming election interference by the administration.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said on Meet the Press last week that he believes the administration will try to use “every tool in their toolbox to try and interfere,” but that the American people will “overcome it by having a battalion of lawyers at the polls.”

California Sen. Adam Schiff this week said recent actions by the Trump administration — including the Fulton County raid, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put Trump on the phone with agents — were “wrong” and set off “alarm bells about their willingness to interfere in the next election.”

Democrats have called on their Republican colleagues to help push back against such interference.

“When he says that we should nationalize the elections and Republicans should take over, and you don’t make a peep? What is going on here?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “This is the path that has ruined many a democracy, and our democracy is deep and strong, but it requires — and allows — resistance to these things. Verbal resistance, electoral resistance. Where are you?”

Some Republicans have voiced their disagreement with Trump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday that he is “supportive of only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places,” but is “not in favor of federalizing elections,” which he called “a constitutional issue.”

“I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said.

However, other Republican leaders have commiserated with Trump over his qualms with state-run elections. House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, took aim at California’s system for counting mail-in ballots in the days following elections, questioning why such counting led to Republican leads in House races being “magically whittled away until their leads were lost.”

“It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream,” Johnson said. “But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system.”

Elections experts expressed dismay over Johnson’s comments, calling them baseless and illogical. The fact that candidates who are leading in votes can fall behind as more votes are counted is not magic but math, they said — with Democrats agreeing.

“Speaker Johnson seems to be confused, so let me break it down. California’s elections are safe and secure. The point of an election is to make sure *every* eligible vote cast is counted, not to count fast,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “We don’t just quit while we’re ahead. It’s called a democracy.”

Democrats have also expressed concern that the administration could use the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with counting mail-in ballots. They have specifically raised questions about a rule issued by the postal service last December that deems mail postmarked on the day it is processed by USPS, rather than the day it is received — which would impact mail-in ballots in places such as California, where ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to be counted.

“Election officials are already concerned and warning that this change could ultimately lead to higher mailed ballots being rejected,” Senate Democrats wrote to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner last month.

Some experts and state officials said voters should make a plan to vote early, and consider dropping their ballots in state ballot drop boxes or delivering them directly to voting centers.

Feb. 4 (UPI) — Ryan Routh, who was convicted for an attempted assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Florida, was sentenced to life in prison plus seven years Wednesday.

Before announcing the sentence, Judge Aileen Cannon called Routh an “evil” man.

Routh, 60, was convicted of hiding in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in September 2024. He pointed a military-grade SKS rifle toward Trump, who was then a candidate running for his second term, and a Secret Service agent.

He defended himself in the trial that ended in September. When the verdict was read, he stabbed himself in the neck with a pen.

Prosecutors argued in a court filing that Routh deserved a life sentence.

“Routh’s crimes undeniably warrant a life sentence — he took steps over the course of months to assassinate a major presidential candidate, demonstrated the will to kill anybody in the way, and has since expressed neither regret nor remorse to his victims.

“Routh’s crimes of conviction reflect careful plotting, extensive premeditation, and a cowardly disregard for human life,” prosecutors wrote. “Routh’s motive for his crimes was unconscionable — preventing the American people from electing the candidate of their choice for President. Routh’s gloss on his crimes has always been that anything he may have done was justified by events in Ukraine or American domestic politics.”

Since the conviction, Routh has been represented by court-appointed attorney Martin Roth. He requested a 27-year sentence and argued that he didn’t get a fair trial because he represented himself.

“Defendant recognizes that he was found guilty by the jury but asserts that the jury was misled by his inability to effectively confront witnesses, use exhibits, or affirmatively introduce impeachment evidence designed to prove his lack of intent to cause injury to anyone,” Roth wrote.

Routh had a psychiatric evaluation before the trial, which showed he had bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

His family submitted letters of support to the court.

Routh’s son Adam wrote that his father “wants to move forward in the right way and continue to be someone who contributes to our family and his community.” He said, “we still need him, and he still has people who love and support him.”

Routh’s sister Nancy Meyers asked the court to consider placing her brother in a prison in North Carolina. She said the family was devastated by his actions but “committed to assisting him with his rehabilitative efforts.”

ATLANTA — Georgia’s Fulton County has gone to federal court seeking the return of all ballots and other documents from the 2020 election that were seized by the FBI last week from a warehouse near Atlanta.

Its motion also asks for the unsealing of a law enforcement agent’s sworn statement that was presented to the judge who approved the search warrant, the county chairman, Robb Pitts, said Wednesday. The filing on behalf of Pitts and the county election board is not being made public because the case is under seal, he said.

The Jan. 28 search at Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election. Many Democrats have criticized what they see as the use of the FBI and the Justice Department to pursue President Trump’s political foes.

The Republican president and his allies have fixated on the heavily Democratic county, the state’s most populous, since the Republican narrowly lost the election in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden that year. Trump has long insisted without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in the state.

“The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” Pitts said. “And even if he had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.”

Pitts defended the county’s election practices and said Fulton has conducted 17 elections since 2020 without any issues.

“This case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation,” Pitts said, citing comments by Trump earlier this week on a podcast where he called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said the president was referring to legislative efforts.

A warrant cover sheet provided to the county includes a list of items that the agents were seeking related to the 2020 general election: all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.

The FBI drove away with hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents. County officials say they were not told why the federal government wanted the documents.

“What they’re doing with the ballots that they have now, we don’t know, but if they’re counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same,” Pitts said.

Andrew Bailey, the FBI’s co-deputy director, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, were seen on-site, at the time. Democrat in Congress have questioned the propriety of Gabbard’s presence because the search was a law enforcement, not intelligence, action.

In a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees Monday, she said Trump asked her to be there “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

New Delhi, India – When US President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with India on Monday this week, he declared that New Delhi would pivot away from Russian energy as part of the agreement.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump said, had promised to stop buying Russian oil, and instead buy crude from the United States and from Venezuela, whose president, Nicolas Maduro, was abducted by US special forces in early January. Since then, the US has effectively taken control of Venezuela’s mammoth oil industry.

In return, Trump dialled down trade tariffs on Indian goods from an overall 50 percent to just 18 percent. Half of that 50 percent tariff was levied last year as punishment for India buying Russian oil, which the White House maintains is financing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

But since Monday, India has not publicly confirmed that it has committed to either ceasing its purchase of Russian oil or embracing Venezuelan crude, analysts note. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters on Tuesday that Russia had received no indication of this from India, either.

And switching from Russian to Venezuelan oil will be far from straightforward. A cocktail of other factors – shocks to the energy market, costs, geography, and the characteristics of different kinds of oil – will complicate New Delhi’s decisions about its sourcing of oil, they say.

So, can India really dump Russian oil? And can Venezuelan crude replace it?

What is Trump’s plan?

Trump has been pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil for months. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the US and European Union placed an oil price cap on Russian crude in a bid to limit Russia’s ability to finance the war.

As a result, other countries including India began buying large quantities of cheap Russian oil. India, which before the war sourced only 2.5 percent of its oil from Russia, became the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China. It currently sources around 30 percent of its oil from Russia.

Last year, Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods from 25 percent to 50 percent as punishment for this. Later in the year, Trump also imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies – and threatened secondary sanctions against countries and entities that trade with these firms.

Since the abduction of Maduro by US forces in early January, Trump has effectively taken over the Venezuelan oil sector, controlling sales cash flows.

Venezuela also has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at 303 billion barrels, more than five times larger than those of the US, the world’s largest oil producer.

But while getting India to buy Venezuelan oil makes sense from the US’s perspective, analysts say this could be operationally messy.

How much oil does India import from Russia?

India currently imports nearly 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, according to analytics company Kpler. Under Trump’s mounting pressure, that is lower than the average 1.21 million bpd in December 2025 and more than 2 million bpd in mid-2025.

One barrel is equivalent to 159 litres (42 gallons) of crude oil. Once refined, a barrel typically produces about 73 litres (19 gallons) of petrol for a car. Oil is also refined to produce a wide variety of products, from jet fuel to household items including plastics and even lotions.

Has India stopped Russian oil purchases?

India has reduced the amount of oil it buys from Russia over the past year, but it has not stopped buying it altogether.

Under increasing pressure from Trump, last August, Indian officials called out the “hypocrisy” of the US and EU pressuring New Delhi to back off from Russian crude.

“In fact, India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict,” Randhir Jaiswal, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said then. He added that India’s decision to import Russian oil was “meant to ensure predictable and affordable energy costs to the Indian consumer”.

Despite this, Indian refiners, currently the second-largest group of buyers of Russian oil after China, are reportedly winding up their purchases after clearing current scheduled orders.

Major refiners like Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd (HMEL) halted purchasing from Russia following the US sanctions against Russian oil producers last year.

Other players like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and Reliance Industries will soon stop their purchases.

What happens if India suddenly stops buying Russian oil?

Even if India wanted to stop importing Russian oil altogether, analysts argue it would be extremely costly to do so.

In September last year, India’s oil and petroleum minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, told reporters that it would also sharply push up energy prices and fuel inflation. “The world will face serious consequences if the supplies are disrupted. The world can’t afford to keep Russia off the oil market,” Puri said.

Analysts tend to agree. “A complete cessation of Indian purchases of Russian oil would be a major disruption. An immediate halt would spike global prices and threaten India’s economic growth,” said George Voloshin, an independent energy analyst based in Paris.

Russian oil would likely be diverted more heavily towards China and into “shadow” fleets of tankers that deliver sanctioned oil secretly by flying false flags and switching off location equipment, Voloshin told Al Jazeera. “Mainstream tanker demand would shift toward the Atlantic Basin, most likely increasing global freight rates as a result,” he noted.

Sumit Pokharna, vice president at Kotak Securities, noted that Indian refineries have reported robust margins in the last two years, majorly benefitting from the discounted Russian crude.

“If they move to higher-costing, like the US or Venezuela, then raw material cost would increase, and that would squeeze their margins,” he told Al Jazeera. “If it goes beyond control, they may have to pass the excess onto consumers.”

Can India stop buying Russian oil altogether?

It may not be able to. One of India’s two private refiners, Nayara Energy, is majority-Russian-owned and under heavy Western sanctions. The Russian energy firm Rosneft holds a 49.13 percent stake in the company, which operates a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in India’s Gujarat, PM Modi’s home state.

Nayara is the second-largest importer of Russian crude, buying about 471,000 barrels per day in January this year, accounting for nearly 40 percent of Russian supplies to India.

Its plant has relied solely on Russian crude since European Union sanctions were imposed on the company last July.

Nayara is not planning to load Russian oil in April as it shuts its refinery for more than a month for maintenance from April 10, according to Reuters.

Pokharna said the future of Nayara hangs in the balance, with the US unlikely to grant India an overt exemption for the Russia-backed company to import crude.

Can India switch to Venezuelan oil?

India has been a major consumer of Venezuelan oil in the past. At its peak, in 2019, India imported $7.2bn of oil, accounting for just under 7 percent of total imports. That stopped after the US slapped sanctions on Venezuelan oil, but some officials of the government-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation are still stationed in the Latin American country.

Now, major Indian refiners have said they are open to receiving Venezuelan oil again, but only if it is a viable option.

For one thing, Venezuela is roughly twice as far from India as Russia and five times further than the Middle East, meaning much higher freight costs.

Venezuelan oil is more expensive as well. “Russian Urals [a medium-heavy crude blend] has been trading at a wide-ranging discount of about $10-20 per barrel to Brent, while Venezuelan Merey currently offers a smaller discount of around $5-8 per barrel,” Voloshin told Al Jazeera.

“Importing from Venezuela and forgoing the Russian discount would be a costly affair for India,” said Pokharna. “From transportation cost to forgoing discounts, it could cost India $6-8 more per barrel – and that is a huge increase in the importing bill.”

Overall, a complete pivot away from Russia could raise India’s import bill by $9bn to $11bn – an amount roughly equal to India’s federal health budget – per year, according to Kpler.

“Venezuelan crude must be discounted by at least $10 to $12 per barrel to be competitive,” argued Voloshin. “This deeper discount is necessary to offset the much higher freight costs, increased insurance premiums for the longer Atlantic voyage, and the somewhat higher operational expenses required to process Venezuela’s extra-heavy high-sulfur crude.”

Without deeper discounts, the longer journey and complex handling make Venezuelan oil more expensive on a delivered basis, he added.

Another major issue is that many Indian refiners simply do not have the facilities to process very heavy Venezuelan oil.

Venezuelan crude is a heavy, sour oil, thick and viscous like molasses, with a high sulphur content requiring complex, specialised refineries to process it into fuel. Only a small number of Indian refineries are equipped to handle it.

“[Venezuelan oil’s heaviness] makes it an option only for complex refineries, leaving out older and smaller refineries,” Pokharna told Al Jazeera. “The shift is operationally difficult and would require blending with more expensive light crudes.”

Then there is the question of availability. Today, Venezuela produces barely a million barrels per day when pushed to its limit. Even if all production was sent to India, it would not match the total Russian oil import.

Where else could India buy oil?

India’s Minister Puri has said that New Delhi is looking to diversify sourcing options from nearly 40 countries.

As India has reduced Russian imports, it has increased them from Middle Eastern nations and other countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Now, while Russia accounts for nearly 27 percent share in India’s oil imports, OPEC nations, led by Iraq and Saudi Arabia, contribute 53 percent.

Reeling from Trump’s trade war, India has also increased purchases of US oil. American crude imports to India rose by 92 percent from April to November in 2025 to nearly 13 million tons, compared to 7.1 million in the same period in 2024.

However, India would be competing for these supplies with the European Union, which has pledged to spend $750bn by 2028 on US energy and nuclear products.

Meanwhile, for Venezuela to return to higher production, Caracas needs political stability, changes in foreign investment and oil laws, and to clear debts. That will take time, experts say.

United States border security chief Tom Homan has announced that the administration of President Donald Trump will “draw down” 700 immigration enforcement personnel from Minnesota while promising to continue operations in the northern state.

The update on Wednesday was the latest indication of the Trump administration pivoting on its enforcement surge in the state following the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January.

Homan, who is officially called Trump’s “border czar”, said the decision came amid new cooperation agreements with local authorities, particularly related to detaining individuals at county jails. Details of those agreements were not immediately available.

About 3,000 immigration enforcement agents are currently believed to be in Minnesota as part of Trump’s enforcement operations.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced, effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people effective today – 700 law enforcement personnel,” Homan said.

The announcement comes after Homan was sent to Minnesota at the end of January in response to widespread protests over immigration enforcement and the killing of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and Alex Pretti on January 24 by a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, both in Minneapolis.

Homan said reforms made since his arrival have included consolidating ICE and CBP under a single chain of command.

He said Trump “fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country”.

Immigration rights observers have said the administration’s mass deportation approach has seen agents use increasingly “dragnet” tactics to meet large detention quotas, including randomly stopping individuals and asking for their papers. The administration has increasingly detained undocumented individuals with no criminal records, even US citizens and people who have legal status to live in the US.

Homan said agents would prioritise who they considered to be “public safety threats” but added, “Just because you prioritise public safety threats, don’t mean we forget about everybody else. We will continue to enforce the immigration laws in this country.”

The “drawdown”, he added, would not apply to what he described as “personnel providing security for our officers”.

“We will not draw down on personnel providing security and responding to hostile incidents until we see a change,” he said.

Critics have accused immigration enforcement officers, who do not receive the same level of crowd control training as most local police forces, of using excessive violence in responding to protesters and individuals legally monitoring their actions.

Trump administration officials have regularly blamed unrest on “agitators”. They accused both Good and Pretti of threatening officers before their killings although video evidence of the exchanges has contradicted that characterisation.

Last week, the administration announced it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into the killing of Pretti, who was fatally shot while he was pinned to the ground by immigration agents. That came moments after an agent removed a gun from Pretti’s body, which the 37-year-old had not drawn and was legally carrying.

Federal authorities have not opened a civil rights investigation into the killing of Good, who they have maintained sought to run over an ICE agent before she was fatally shot. Video evidence appeared to show Good trying to turn away from the agent.

On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis and other US cities amid calls for a federal strike in protest against the Trump administration’s deportation drive.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state and local officials have also challenged the immigration enforcement surge in the state, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the CBP, has been violating constitutional protections.

A federal judge last week said she will not halt the operations as a lawsuit progresses in court. Department of Justice lawyers have dismissed the suit as “legally frivolous”.

On Wednesday, a poll released by the Marquette Law School found wide-ranging disquiet over ICE’s approach, with 60 percent of US adults nationwide saying they disapproved of how the agency was conducting itself. The poll was conducted from January 21 to January 28, with many of the surveys conducted before Pretti’s killing.

The poll still found widespread support for ICE among Republicans, with about 80 percent approving of its work. Just 5 percent of Democrats voiced similar approval.

Perhaps most worryingly for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms in November, just 23 percent of independents – potential swing voters in the upcoming vote – approved of ICE’s actions.

MEXICO CITY — Historians and observers accused the Trump administration of trying to rewrite American history to justify its own foreign policy decisions toward Latin America by posting a “historically inaccurate” version of the Mexican-American war.

The Monday statement from the White House commemorating the anniversary of the war described the conflict as a “legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, reasserted American sovereignty, and expanded the promise of American independence across our majestic continent.” The statement drew parallels between the period in U.S. history and its own increasingly aggressive policies toward Latin America, which it said would “ensure the Hemisphere remains safe.”

“Guided by our victory on the fields of Mexico 178 years ago, I have spared no effort in defending our southern border against invasion, upholding the rule of law, and protecting our homeland from forces of evil, violence, and destruction,” the statement said, though it was unsigned.

In the post, the White House makes no mention of the key role slavery played in the war and glorifies the wider “Manifest Destiny” period, which resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from their land.

Sparking criticism

Alexander Aviña, Latin American history professor at Arizona State University, said the White House statement “underplays the massive amounts of violence that it took to expand” the U.S. to the Pacific shore at a time when the Trump administration has stuck its hand in Latin American affairs in a way not seen in decades, deposing Venezuela’s president, meddling in elections and threatening military action in Mexico and other countries.

“U.S. political leaders since then have seen this as an ugly aspect of U.S. history, this is a pretty clear instance of U.S. imperialism against its southern neighbor,” Aviña said. “The Trump administration is actually embracing this as a positive in U.S. history and framing it – inaccurately historically – as some sort of defensive measure to prevent the Mexico from invading them.”

On Tuesday, criticisms of the White House statement quickly rippled across social media.

Asked about the statement in her morning news briefing, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum guffawed, quipping and noting “we have to defend sovereignty.” Sheinbaum, who has walked a tight rope with the Trump administration, has responded to Trump with a balanced tone and occasionally with sarcasm, like when Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Historical sticking point

The Mexican-American war (1846–1848) was triggered by long-running border disputes between the U.S. and Mexico and the United States’ annexation of Texas in 1845. For years leading up to the war, Americans had gradually moved into the then-Mexican territory. Mexico had banned slavery and U.S. abolitionists feared the U.S. land grab was in part an attempt to add slave states.

After fighting broke out and successive U.S. victories, Mexico ceded more than 525,000 square miles of territory — including what now comprises Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah — to the U.S.

The moment turned Texas into a key chess piece during the U.S. Civil War and led former President Ulysses S. Grant to write later that the conflict with Mexico was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”

The Associated Press was formed when five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War — as it is sometimes known in the U.S. — north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.

The war continues to be a historical sticking point between the two countries, particularly as Sheinbaum repeatedly reminds Trump that her country is a sovereign nation whenever Trump openly weighs taking military action against Mexican cartels and pressures Mexico to bend to its will.

Rewriting history

The White House statement falls in line with wider actions taken by the Trump administration to mold the federal government’s language around its own creed, said Albert Camarillo, history professor at Stanford University, who described the statement as a “distorted, ahistorical, imperialist version” of the war.

Aviña said the statement serves “to assert rhetorically that the U.S. is justified in establishing its so-called ‘America First’ policy throughout the Americas,” regardless of the historical accuracy.

The Trump administration has ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution, saying it was “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”

The administration has scrubbed government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. Trump also ordered the government to remove any signs that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living,” including those making reference to slavery, destruction of Native American cultures and climate change.

“This statement is consistent with so many others that attempt to whitewash and reframe U.S. history and erase generations of historical scholarship,” Camarillo said.

Janetsky writes for the Associated Press.

When it was announced in the fall that Puerto Rican singer and rapper Bad Bunny was chosen to headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show, some folks took it personally.

Why not an American pop star (he is) who speaks English (he does) and likes the president (good luck, did you watch the Grammy Awards?)?! The right felt slighted, again, this time as the victim of a great left-wing conspiracy to turn football’s biggest night against them.

Then Turning Point USA — the conservative organization founded by Charlie Kirk and helmed by his wife, Erika Kirk, following his assassination — came up with an idea. They’d put on their own show in the barn, so to speak. Performers’ sets would be in English, unlike most of Bad Bunny’s material. And this great display of American-ness would take place during the Super Bowl, stealing away viewers and ratings from that other guy with the funny name.

On Monday, Turning Point finally announced the lineup for its counter-event, the “All-American Halftime Show.” Described by Fox News as a “star-studded alternative to the Super Bowl halftime show,” the roster’s brightest luminary is Kid Rock, who hasn’t had a hit song since Obama’s first year in office. The rest of the lineup consists of country artists you’ll likely have to Google to identify (Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett). Their sets will be streamed live on Sunday around 5 p.m., the same time Bad Bunny is slated to perform at Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium. It can be watched on Turning Point USA’s YouTube, X and Rumble channels, alongside conservative networks such as Daily Wire+, Real America’s Voice, TBN and OAN. Additional musical entertainers will be announced, the organization’s website says.

Kid Rock when he wasn’t wearing an American flag as a poncho.

(Pool Photo)

“We’re approaching this show like David and Goliath,” Kid Rock (aka Robert Ritchie) said in a statement. “Competing with the pro football machine and a global pop superstar is almost impossible … or is it?”

It is impossible, of course. Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is an American pop sensation who has conquered the globe with a vibrant mix of reggaeton, Latin pop, rap and R&B. The 31-year-old was Spotify’s most-streamed artist of 2025 and made history just a couple of days ago at the Grammy Awards when he became the first Spanish-language artist to win album of the year.

Sunday, he will reach an even wider audience as part of the country’s most-watched television event when the New England Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks.

But Kid Rock, 55, appears to have high hopes, with an opportunity to regain relevance likely at the top of his wish list. There’s no better way to gain attention than ripping on the most popular artist around. “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish?” said Kid Rock of Bad Bunny. “Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”

The “Bawitdaba” singer is familiar with right-wing outrage over a halftime show wardrobe choice, and knows what it’s like to have your patriotism questioned by primed mobs. In 2004, he was one of several performers flanking Super Bowl headliner Janet Jackson. He angered conservatives when he wore a defaced American flag as a poncho and later tossed the flag/garment into the crowd.

But that was then, this is now. There are windmills to slay, crises to fabricate, rings to kiss. And headlining a spite concert provides a great distraction from the real issues plaguing Trump’s presidency, be it the soaring cost of living, Americans killed by ICE agents under his watch, or the nausea-inducing contents of the Epstein files.

Are we still talking about those? Yes, we are. The New York Times identified more than 38,000 references to Trump, his family and his Mar-a-Lago Club in the latest batch of emails, government files, videos and other records released by the Justice Department. Previous installments of the Epstein files, which the department released late last year, included 130 files with Trump-related references.

No wonder his followers need a distraction.

Bad Bunny can take the heat. He used his acceptance speech at Sunday night’s Grammys ceremony in Los Angeles to condemn the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ‘ICE out,’” he said. “We’re not savages. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”

And also Super Bowl headliners.

Tulsi Gabbard’s political journey has been anything but straightforward.

As a teenager, she worked for her father, a prominent anti-gay activist, and his political organization, which opposed same-sex marriage. In 2002, she was elected to Hawaii’s House of Representatives, becoming — at age 21 — the youngest person to serve in the Legislature.

Gabbard was a Democrat and remained so for two decades, as she cycled from the statehouse to Honolulu’s City Council to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2020, she ran for president, renouncing her anti-LGBTQ views and apologizing for her earlier stance. She was a Bernie Sanders acolyte and a fierce critic of Donald Trump and, especially, his foreign policy. She denounced him at one point for “being Saudi Arabia’s bitch.”

Now, Gabbard is MAGA down to her stocking feet.

Despite no obvious qualifications — save for her fawning appearances on Fox News — Trump selected her to be the director of national intelligence, the nation’s spymaster-in-chief. Despite no earthly reason, Gabbard was present last week when the FBI conducted a heavy-handed raid at the Fulton County elections office in Georgia, pursuing a harebrained theory the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Instead of, say, poring over the latest intelligence gleanings from Ukraine or Gaza, Gabbard stood watch as a team of flak-jacketed agents carted off hundreds of boxes of ballots and other election materials.

That’ll keep the homeland safe.

But as bizarre and unaccountable as it was, Gabbard’s presence outside Atlanta did make a certain amount of sense. She’s a longtime dabbler in crackpot conspiracies. And she’ll bend, like a swaying palm, whichever way the prevailing winds blow.

Some refer to her as the “Manchurian candidate,” said John Hart, a communication professor at Hawaii Pacific University, referring to the malleable cipher in the famous political thriller. In a different world, he suggested, Gabbard might have been Sanders’ running mate.

“It does take a certain amount of flexibility to think that someone who could have been the Democratic VP is now in Trump’s cabinet,” Hart observed.

The job of the nation’s director of national intelligence — a position created to address some of the failings that led to the 9/11 attacks — is to act as the president’s top intelligence adviser, synthesizing voluminous amounts of foreign, military and domestic information to help defend the country and protect its interests abroad.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with re-litigating U.S. elections, or tending to the bruised feelings of an onion-skinned president.

The job is supposed to be nonpartisan and apolitical, which should go without saying. Except it needs to be said in this time when all roads (and the actions of each cabinet member) lead to Trump, his ego, his whims and his insecurities.

There were ample signs Gabbard was a spectacularly bad pick for intelligence chief.

She blamed NATO and the Biden administration for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She claimed the U.S. was funding dangerous biological laboratories in the country — “parroting fake Russian propaganda,” in the words of then-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

She opposed U.S. aid to the rebels fighting Bashar Assad, met with Syria’s then-dictator and defended him against allegations he used chemical weapons against his own people.

She defended Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who were indicted for masterminding two of the biggest leaks of intelligence secrets in U.S. history.

Still, Gabbard was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 52 to 48. The vote, almost entirely along party lines, was an inauspicious start and nothing since had dispelled lawmakers’ well-placed lack of confidence.

Trump brushed aside Gabbard’s congressional testimony on Iran’s nuclear capabilities — “I don’t care what she said” — and bombed the country’s nuclear facilities. The putative intelligence chief was apparently irrelevant in the administration’s ouster of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Her bizarre presence in Georgia — where Gabbard reportedly arranged for FBI agents to make a post-raid call to the president — looks like nothing more than a way to worm her way back into his good graces.

(Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that a U.S. intelligence official has filed a whistleblower complaint against Gabbard, which is caught up in wrangling over sharing details with Congress.)

California Sen. Adam Schiff said it’s “patently obvious to everyone Gabbard lacks the capability and credibility” to lead the country’s intelligence community.

“She has been sidelined by the White House, ignored by the agencies, and has zero credibility with Congress,” the Democrat wrote in an email. She’s responded by parroting Trump’s Big Lie “complete with cosplaying [a] secret agent in Fulton County and violating all norms and rules by connecting the President of the United States with line law enforcement officers executing a warrant. The only contribution that Tulsi Gabbard can make now would be to resign.”

Back in Hawaii, the former congresswoman has been in bad odor for years.

“It started with the criticism of President Obama” — a revered Hawaii native — over foreign policy “and a sense in Hawaii that she was more interested in appearing on the national media than working for the state,” said Colin Moore, a University of Hawaii political science professor and another longtime Gabbard watcher.

“Hawaii politicians have, with a few exceptions, tended to be kind of low-drama dealmakers, not the sort who attract national attention,” Moore said. “The goal is to rise in seniority and bring benefits back to the state. And that was never the model Tulsi followed.”

In recent years, as she sidled into Trump’s orbit, Hawaiian sightings of Gabbard have been few and far between, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, a statewide nonprofit news organization. Not that she’s been terribly missed in the deeply Democratic state.

“I’ve heard some less-charitable people say, ‘Don’t let the door hit your [rear end] on the way out,” said Hart.

But it’s not as though Gabbard’s ascension to director of intelligence was Hawaii’s loss and America’s gain. It’s been America’s loss, too.

Laura Farnsworth Dogu is not, at first glance, your typical Trump appointee.

A career diplomat with postings under the Obama and Biden administrations, she represents a branch of government President Trump has cut back and long vilified.

Yet her selection for Trump’s top envoy to Venezuela signals a rare strategic choice, leveraging her experience with authoritarian regimes at a moment when Washington is recalibrating its approach to Caracas after the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro.

“There are not very many cases in this administration where they have relied on a career diplomat,” says Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special representative for Venezuela in 2019. “This is actually an anomaly.”

Abrams suggests the appointment of Dogu — who met with the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, in Caracas on Monday — could reflect a desire for a seasoned expert to manage day-to-day diplomacy as the administration embarks on one of its most complex foreign policy undertakings.

“What he really needs is a professional to oversee the embassy and do the traditional diplomatic things while all policy is made in Washington,” Abrams said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Dogu, 62, arrived in Venezuela on Saturday to reopen the U.S. Embassy. She is recognized in Central America for her methodical, approachable style and deep understanding of Latin America’s political and cultural dynamics. However, her direct and outspoken approach has also led to controversy, with enraged officials in Honduras once wanting to declare her persona non grata.

Her new position as chargé d’affaires augments a career that includes senior roles in hostage recovery for the FBI and as ambassador to Nicaragua and Honduras during periods characterized by social and political volatility.

Before taking on her new position, she served as the foreign policy advisor to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the leader of the operation that targeted Maduro. Her office did not respond to a request for interview.

Her experience navigating authoritarian governments and fragmented opposition movements makes her a pragmatic choice for a volatile post-Maduro transition. In a Senate hearing on Jan. 28, Rubio stressed the post’s importance for restoring a limited U.S. mission to gather intelligence and engage with Venezuelan stakeholders.

Dogu will be tasked with navigating Venezuela’s fractured opposition, which includes leaders inside the country, exiles abroad and figures struggling for influence in a potential transition. Abrams, the veteran diplomat, said engaging opposition actors, such as Maria Corina Machado, is a core diplomatic responsibility, particularly in a country the United States does not recognize as having a legitimate government. At the same time, maintaining relations with the turbulent, divided government will be her responsibility as well.

Abrams also cautioned that Washington priorities will define Dogu’s mission, and those priorities might not always align neatly with democratic objectives.

“The question is how the administration defines the interests of the United States,” Abrams said. “Does it include a free and democratic Venezuela? I don’t think we really know the answer yet.”

A family ethos of public service

A Texas resident and the daughter of a career Navy officer, Dogu often traces her commitment to public service to her upbringing in a military family. That ethos shaped her diplomatic career and has been a defining thread across generations, with both of her sons also serving in the military.

She has received multiple State Department honors, speaks Spanish, Turkish and Arabic and served in Mexico, El Salvador, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco.

Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela have been suspended since 2019. She takes over from John McNamara, who had served as chargé d’affaires since February 2025 and traveled to Venezuela in January to discuss the potential reopening of the embassy.

According to a statement, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto, indicated that the two governments will hold discussions to establish a “roadmap on matters of bilateral interest” and resolve disagreements through mutual respect and diplomatic dialogue.

Dogu is no stranger to Venezuelan issues. During a 2024 news conference, while serving as ambassador to Honduras, she publicly criticized the participation of sanctioned Venezuelan officials in Honduran government events.

“It’s surprising for me to see [Honduran] government officials sitting with members of a cartel based in Venezuela,” Dogu said at the time, referring to a meeting between the government of President Xiomara Castro and Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López.

The United States has accused Padrino López of involvement in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and there is a $15-million reward for information resulting in his arrest or conviction.

Years earlier, Dogu had offered a blunt assessment of Venezuela’s economic collapse. Speaking in 2019 at Indiana University’s Latin American Studies program, she described Venezuela as “a very wealthy country, [with] huge oil supplies, but they’ve managed to drive their economy into the ground,” the Indiana Gazette reported.

Crisis and confrontations

Nominated by President Obama to serve as ambassador to Nicaragua in 2015, she said at her confirmation hearing that Obama had “rightly maintained” that “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.” She added: “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.”

Dogu left her Nicaragua post in October 2018 amid nationwide protests and a severe government crackdown that resulted in at least 355 deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. At the time, Dogu said she learned from authorities that paramilitary groups had targeted her for death.

In 2019, she linked the unrest in Nicaragua to the Cold War, citing an “unfortunate negative synergy” among Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. “We never left the Cold War in Latin America,” she said.

Nicaraguan opposition figures, many now exiled, remember Dogu as an accessible diplomat. Former presidential candidate Juan Sebastián Chamorro called her a “methodical and approachable official” who upheld State Department policy and democratic principles.

Lesther Alemán, then a student leader who frequently interacted with Dogu during the 2018 protests, described her as publicly blunt but privately empathetic. Alemán emphasized Dogu’s ability to engage “all sides of the coin,” making her effective with both the “authoritarian governments and with the opposition.”

Alemán said Dogu initially had a good relationship with the Nicaraguan government, including a personal friendship with then-first lady and current co-President Rosario Murillo. However, that relationship soured after Dogu publicly supported opposition groups during the political crisis.

Her experience in Honduras proved more contentious. After Dogu made her statements regarding Venezuela, Rasel Tomé, vice president of the National Congress and a senior figure in the governing Liberty and Refoundation Party, urged lawmakers to declare her “persona non grata.”

Tomé justified this request by accusing her of making “interventionist statements” directed at the government.

Criticism continued after Dogu’s departure from Honduras in 2025. An opinion column published by the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras argued that her relationship with the country had been marked by distrust.

“Although Ambassador Laura Dogu makes an effort to say goodbye amicably,” the piece read, “we all know that the relationship between her and Honduras was not sincere because it was disrespectful; it was not trustworthy because it was interventionist.”

This week, the U.S. Embassy posted online an upbeat video of showing Dogu entering the mission, meeting with Venezuelans and outlining plans for what she calls a “friendly, stable, prosperous and democratic” Venezuela. “Our presence marks a new chapter,” she says, “and I’m ready to get to work.”

Mojica Loaisiga is a special correspondent writing for The Times under the auspices of the International Center for Journalists.

US President Donald Trump lashed out at a journalist, calling her the ‘worst reporter’, after she questioned him about survivors of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files. He has not been accused of any crimes by Epstein’s victims and has denied any wrongdoing.