2026-01-05 07:06:44
Even some Republican lawmakers criticized the Trump administration’s assertion that it is engaging in a military campaign in Venezuela to block fentanyl trafficking into the US.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is resigning from Congress on Monday following a split from Trump, said on Sunday that the president should target Mexico if he wants to stop fentanyl.
“The majority of American fentanyl overdoses and deaths come from Mexico. Those are the Mexican cartels that are killing Americans,” Greene told NBC’s Meet the Press. “If this was really about narco-terrorists and about protecting Americans from cartels and drugs being brought into America, the Trump administration would be attacking the Mexican cartels.”
Greene compared the capture of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, to the US capturing Saddam Hussein and the war in Iraq, calling it the “same Washington playbook” that only “serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives.”
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, Mexico is the primary mass producer and exporter of fentanyl into the US, while China is a leading manufacturer.
The UN Office of Drugs and Crime World Drug Report from 2025 only considers Venezuela as a minor transit center for cocaine.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) also condemned the Trump administration’s narrative on Venezuelan drugs on Sunday. “Wake up MAGA. VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for,” Massie wrote on X.
But Vice President JD Vance defended Trump’s military operation, arguing that combating cocaine trafficking in Venezuela will weaken cartels.
“If you cut out the money from cocaine (or even reduce it) you substantially weaken the cartels overall,” Vance posted on X. “Also, cocaine is bad too!”
He also weakly maintained the link between Venezuela and fentanyl—“There is still fentanyl coming from Venezuela (or at least there was)”—and acknowledged Mexico’s role in fentanyl and considered it “a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.”
But pinning fentanyl on Venezuela avoids a broader point on health policy. My colleague, Julia Lurie, wrote in April that the Trump administration was using the “name of reducing fentanyl overdoses” to levy tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China and list cartels as terrorist organizations.
The dramatic proclamations gloss over a glaring reality: The administration is slashing funding for state and federal agencies that provide addiction treatment and overdose prevention programs. And these cuts are likely just the beginning.
And Julia was right.
Since then, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which provided coverage to about half of all non-elderly adults with opioid use disorder. Health care subsidies on Obamacare have also lapsed, more than doubling the average cost for health insurance premiums.
Trump’s attack on Venezuela is for himself and even his own party is beginning to realize it.
2026-01-05 04:47:17
The US attack on Venezuela relies on the same deception that justified the war in Iraq: the idea of self-financing wars with oil.
President Trump said Saturday that the US will run Venezuela following the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said at a Saturday press conference at Mar-a-Lago following news of the US attack. But we’ve been down this road before.
“There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed about Iraq in March 2003, the same month as the US invasion. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He said oil revenues could bring $50-100 billion over the first years of the invasion.
That wasn’t the case, and just like what would happen in Iraq, the military campaign in Venezuela is likely to have steep costs.
On Saturday, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the operation to capture Maduro and Flores using more than 150 aircraft from 20 different bases. Members of law enforcement were involved in the extraction force, and according to Trump, ran through scenarios in a replica building of Maduro’s safe house. At the Saturday press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the raid lasted less than 30 minutes—a smooth process following months of planning and preparation.
But, according to what a senior Venezuelan official told the New York Times, at least 80 people, including civilians and military personnel, were killed. The Times also reported that about half a dozen US soldiers were injured. Photos show massive damage from bombings in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas.
Removing Maduro from power could have been achieved by taking what then-vice president, and now-acting president Delcy Rodríguez and other senior Venezuelan government officials offered to the US as a “more acceptable” version to Maduro’s administration last year. According to an October 2025 report by the Miami Herald, Rodríguez would lead a peaceful transition by “preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.” The Trump administration rejected the proposal and continued to carry out deadly strikes on alleged drug boats, killing at least 115 people.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the US continues to “reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats.” He also suggested that Cuba could be the Trump administration’s next target.
Previously, US war planners vastly underestimated the cost of fixing Iraq’s oil infrastructure to fund its invasion and occupation. Linda Bilmes, a public policy professor at Harvard University, wrote in a 2013 research paper investigating the financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that one of the most significant challenges for future US national security policy “will not originate from any external threat” but “simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Bush’s economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, said that it may cost $100-200 billion. He was fired.
Lindsey was wrong, but in the opposite way than Bush anticipated—a more accurate number is around $2 trillion.
In her research, Bilmes pointed to long-term costs like medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans, and their families, as well as debt servicing of borrowed funds.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Sunday that the Senate will vote on whether to formally block Trump’s military campaign in Venezuela when Congress returns to session this week. But we are already paying dearly for the damage done.
2026-01-04 04:56:35
Democratic members of the Committee on Armed Services, which helps oversee the nation’s military, denounced President Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday that United States military forces struck Venezuela and captured the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Trump did not seek congressional authority for the attack and said at a press conference that the US is “going to run the country.” Trump’s decision to move ahead without congressional approval may be a violation of the US constitution and amount to a criminal act, according to legal experts.
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona and a veteran who served as a combat pilot and flew dozens of missions in the Gulf War with Iraq, said in a statement that Trump “doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.” Maduro, he added, “is a brutal, illegitimate dictator who deserves to face justice.”
“I want the people of Venezuela to be free to choose their own future,” Kelly continued, “but if we learned anything from the Iraq war, it’s that dropping bombs or toppling a leader doesn’t guarantee democracy, stability, or make Americans safer.”
In the early hours of Saturday, according to Trump, US military forces “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader” in an operation “done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” The operation included a strike on Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, in the middle of the night. Early reports from Venezuelan officials and journalists indicate that there were civilian casualties.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago hours later, President Trump said the US would not hesitate to attack again, and signaled an indefinite occupation of Venezuela. During that address, Trump defended his decision to skirt congressional approval, saying that “Congress has a tendency to leak.” He has also neglected to get approval from Congress for the dozens of known strikes in South American waters against boats that the administration says are filled with drug smugglers. Those strikes have killed at least 115 people.
Other Democratic senators on the Armed Services Committee decried the Trump administration’s latest escalation in their ongoing military operation against Venezuela.
“This is ludicrous,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. He added that no plan has been presented for what the costs the US will have to bear to “run” Venezuela, as Trump has described. Reed, a decorated veteran and former West Point faculty member, continued, “History offers no shortage of warnings about the costs – human, strategic, and moral—of assuming we can govern another nation by force.”
“President Trump’s unilateral military action to attack another country and seize Maduro—no matter how terrible a dictator he is—is unconstitutional and threatens to drag the U.S. into further conflicts in the region,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote on X.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, wrote on X that Trump’s “actions continue putting American troops, personnel and citizens at risk both in the region and around the globe.” “None of that,” the Illinois representative added, “serves our nation’s interests.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a series of posts on X, “Maduro is a cruel criminal dictator, but President Trump has never sought approval from Congress for war as the Constitution requires—& our military deserves.”
“If we’re starting another endless war, with no clear national security strategy or need,” Blumenthal, who enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves in 1970, began, “count me out.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also critiqued Maduro, calling him a “thuggish dictator.” But she also said the Constitution and international law are “not optional.” She called on the administration to justify this “act of war” to her committee and the American people.
According to the Trump administration, Maduro and his wife are en route to Manhattan to face several charges in an indictment filed with the Southern District of New York court by the Justice Department. The indictment, posted on social media by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, claims Maduro “allows cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members.” Amongst others allegations, he is being charged with narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
Since late summer, Trump has justified the US’s offensive against Venezuela as a way to curb the flow of drugs into the US, where fentanyl leads to the majority of overdose deaths. Yet the indictment doesn’t mention fentanyl. And, as the New York Times has reported, “Venezuela is not a major source of drugs in the United States.”
On Saturday, Trump repeated his claim about Venezuela playing an oversize role in the US drug trade. But he also spoke at length about obtaining control over oil in Venezuela—home to the largest known oil reserve in the world, which is currently controlled by a Venezuelan state-owned company.
Several Republican members of the Armed Services Committee on Saturday praised Trump’s decision to capture Maduro, without engaging with the likelihood that his actions may have violated the law.
Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a senator from Mississippi who served in the Air Force, said in a statement, “I commend President Trump for ordering a successful mission to arrest illegitimate Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and bring him to the United States to face justice.”
“It’s a reminder to adversaries around the world of what our military is capable of when we have a commander-in-chief with the strength and resolution to deploy that military when necessary to defend vital US national interests,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a veteran who served two combat tours, said during an interview with Fox News.
Sen. Jim Banks from Indiana, a Navy veteran who deployed to Afghanistan wrote on X: “Let this be a warning to every narcoterrorist in the Western Hemisphere. President Trump is doing exactly what Americans elected him to do, protect America and keep our people safe.”
During President Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he issued a similar warning. “All political and military figures must realize,” he began, “that what happened to Maduro can happen to them.”
2026-01-04 01:34:55
In a steep escalation in the United States’ ongoing military offensive in the region, President Donald Trump said early Saturday that the US had captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Trump did not seek congressional approval for this move.
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that the US had “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader” in an operation “done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” Later, he posted a photo that he said was of a captured Maduro, blindfolded.
During a Saturday morning press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said several times—without citing any international rule of law that would permit such an action—that the US was “going to run the country” until “we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” signaling an American occupation of Venezuela. The president, flanked by national security officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Stephen Miller, said the capture of Maduro and his wife was a “spectacular assault” like “people haven’t seen since WWII.”
Trump also warned that the US is prepared to attack Venezuela again if necessary, and claimed that if other leaders go against the US, they may face military action: “What happened to Maduro can happen to them,” he said.
In an earlier morning interview with Fox News, the president said that Maduro and Flores were taken to the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, one of the American warships that have been operating in the Caribbean. They are set to be taken to New York, where “he will face drugs and weapons charges in Manhattan federal court,” according to CNN.
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez addressed the US’s actions on a state-run television station, calling it a “brutal attack” and adding that she does not know the whereabouts of Maduro or his wife. Rodríguez, who is next in line to step into power, demanded “proof of life” from Trump.
The Trump administration’s announcement on Saturday came after months of military action in the region with the purported goal of stifling drugs coming into the US. Starting in the late summer, US forces conducted 35 known strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in South American waters, killing at least 115 people. Videos appearing to show these strikes—which also did not go through a congressional approval process—have been shared on social media by members of the Trump administration. The US has also seized multiple oil tankers off the country’s coast, conducted a CIA-led drone strike on a dock where drugs were allegedly being prepared for loading on boats, and, early on Saturday in connection with the capture operation, carried out several strikes throughout the Venezuelan capital.
During Trump’s Saturday interview with Fox News, he said the US is “going to be very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil reserves. The country is home to the largest known oil reserve in the world, controlled by a nationalized company called Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA. For the US, greater control over that industry could be a boon. Following one of the US seizures of tankers off Venezuela’s coast last year, Trump was asked what the US planned to do with the oil on board. He answered: “Well, we keep it, I guess.”
Several leaders from around the region condemned Saturday’s US operation in Venezuela. Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, accused Washington of carrying out a “criminal attack,” President Claudia Sheinbaum posted an article in the UN Charter on refraining from threat or use of force, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that these moves recall the “worst moments of interference” by the United States into Latin American politics.
Trump and others in his orbit have held that they do not need congressional approval for military actions in the region because they are part of a larger anti-drug operation. Yet, as the New York Times reports, “Venezuela is not a major source of drugs in the United States.” The nation “does not produce fentanyl” and the cocaine that passes through Venezuela “is grown and produced in Colombia, and then moves on to Europe.”
In a 2020 indictment in New York, the US charged President Maduro with participating in and supporting a narco-terrorism conspiracy. The investigation into him was overseen by Emil Bove III, a former criminal defense lawyer to President Trump. Per reporting from the Times, one of the prosecutors who was on that case, Amanda Houle, now leads the criminal division of the Southern District of New York—where Maduro and his wife’s current indictment will play out. Flores was not indicted in 2020.
In a scathing piece, the New York Times’ editorial board decried Saturday’s actions, saying Trump was violating US law. “We fear that the result of Mr. Trump’s adventurism is increased suffering for Venezuelans, rising regional instability and lasting damage for America’s interests around the world,” the board wrote, adding, “We know that Mr. Trump’s warmongering violates the law.”
2026-01-03 16:01:00
In 2023, Marlena Arjo adopted a one-eyed kitten with a penchant for destruction. She named him Otto, and over the next eight months, Otto grew into his own little chaotic personality.
“ He’s laying on houseplants, he’s tearing books out of the bookshelves, ripping the calendar off the wall…I wasn’t prepared for having a criminal in my home,” Arjo joked.
Within months, Otto got sick and stopped eating. Arjo rushed him to a vet and learned he had feline infectious peritonitis, better known as FIP, a disease that kills nearly all cats that contract it.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.The vet said there was nothing the clinic could do. But there was something Arjo could do.
“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Arjo recalled the vet telling her. “But by the way, you can get drugs for this if you go to this Facebook group.”
This week on Reveal, in partnership with the Hyperfixed podcast, we tell the story of the cat drug black market, why it was even necessary, and how cat lovers fought for big changes to make the black market obsolete.
2026-01-02 20:30:00
The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.
Whether it’s AI-generated music artists debuting on the Billboard charts, music labels courting TikTok virality, Grammy-nominated artists using AI to help write lyrics, or streaming services making it increasingly difficult to listen to full albums, watching the music industry slowly deteriorate has made me feel pessimistic about its future.
So in November, when Rosalía dropped her new song “Berghain”—a lush, operatic pop single sung in German, English, and Spanish and accompanied by a full symphony orchestra and choir—my interest was piqued. I became really invested watching an interview between the Spanish pop star and Zane Lowe about her fourth studio album, Lux. Rosalía told Lowe that the album was an excuse to do what she was craving most at the time: reading and studying about “spirituality and broadening my horizons of what spirituality is.” As she continued to speak with Lowe, it became clear just how much research went into making this album. And since Lux’s debut on Nov. 7, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the intricacies of her work.
Separated into four “movements,” like a classical symphony, Lux explores religion, femininity, celebrity, desire, forgiveness, heartbreak, and more over the course of 15 dynamic tracks of classically inflected pop. Throughout the project, she delivers a beautiful, at times haunting, vocal performance that paints a vivid picture even for listeners who don’t understand all 13 languages she sings in (among them: Spanish, Catalan, English, Ukrainian, and Arabic). With the help of the London Symphony Orchestra and Catalan choirs, along with a host of other performers including Bjork and Yves Tumor, Rosalía blends flamenco, folk, and classical traditions with her distinct electronic production, making classical music more accessible to a general audience.
Lux also has a cultural and historical specificity that extends its reach globally. In her lyrics, Rosalía blends her experiences with those of female saints and religious figures from around the world, such as Teresa de Jesús and Sun Bu’er. “I lost my tongue in Paris, / my time in LA / my heels in Milan, / my smile in the UK, / But my heart has never been mine / I always give it away,” Rosalía sings on “Reliquia.” While these lyrics could be simple metaphors for Rosalía’s vulnerability in love and fame, she said they’re also inspired by Saint Rose of Lima, whose relics were “scattered around the world.”
With each song, the album builds layer upon layer for listeners to engage with. Rosalía has described the album as maximalist; on it, she holds nothing back for her audience, doesn’t simplify, and instead invites them to explore the work on their own terms. Along with its critical acclaim, Lux debuted at No. 1 across five Billboard charts: Top Latin Albums, Top Latin Pop Albums, Classical Albums, Classical Crossover, and World Albums. The album also earned Rosalía her first top 10 on the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 4.
Rosalía’s Lux shows that the public is hungry for something more complex from its pop music. And while we probably won’t see people rushing to get music theory degrees, start researching the lives of saints, or even see more pop artists begin singing opera, I’ve found that for me, the album has been a catalyst to learn about so many different pieces of music and art history. Over Thanksgiving, it started a conversation with classically trained friends about Rosalía’s year-long translation process and the 12th-century mystic, poet, and composer Hildegard von Bingen. It was also how I discovered a 1976 Patti Smith interview, sampled on the song “La Yugular,” in which Smith speaks about her desire to push boundaries as an artist: “It’s just like going through one door. One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough. You have to go beyond.” It has also led me to explore opportunities locally to listen to orchestras and watch opera (currently, I’m considering whether to purchase tickets for an upcoming performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra, or to watch the Alabama Symphony Orchestra when I head home to see my family). Whichever show I attend, I’m glad that Lux exists to spark conversations and give me at least a little hope for the future of the music industry.
