Trump’s pursuit of Greenland is becoming increasingly unpopular: Denmark, Greenland, many NATO allies, and even some Republican lawmakers are in direct opposition. Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said there is a “fundamental disagreement” with the Trump administration after he and his Greenland counterpart met with JD Vance and Marco Rubio at the White House on Wednesday. “Ideas that would not respect territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the right of self-determination of the Greenlandic people are, of course, totally unacceptable,” Rasmussen continued. But they agreed to try to “accommodate the concerns of the president while we at the same time respect the red lines of the Kingdom of Denmark.” Some GOP senators criticized the Trump administration’s actions toward Greenland on Wednesday.  “I have yet to hear from this Administration a single thing we need from Greenland that this sovereign people is not already willing to grant us,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “The proposition at hand today is very straightforward: incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.” A bipartisan group of senators also introduced a bill on Tuesday to prevent Trump from using Defense Department or State Department funding to occupy, annex, or otherwise assert control over Greenland without congressional approval.  “The mere notion that America would use our vast resources against our allies is deeply troubling and must be wholly rejected by Congress in statute,” Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) said in a statement. Earlier on Wednesday, in a Truth Social post, the president insisted that NATO should be “leading the way” to help the US get Greenland, otherwise Russia or China would take the island. He added that the US getting Greenland would make NATO’s military might “far more formidable and effective.”  Following the meeting, Trump repeated the importance of acquiring Greenland for national security and to protect the territory and the Arctic region: “There’s not a thing that Denmark can do about it if Russia or China wants to occupy Greenland, but there’s everything we can do.” But as former American military and diplomatic officials told the Wall Street Journal in a Monday report, the US already has a dominant group of overseas military bases—121 foreign bases in at least 51 countries—without taking over other land. There is also no evidence of a Russian or Chinese military presence just off Greenland’s coast.  In response to pressure from the Trump administration, Denmark’s defense ministry announced an increased Danish military presence—including receiving NATO-allied troops, bringing in ships, and deploying fighter jets—in and around Greenland, noting rising “security tensions.”  “Danish military units have a duty to defend Danish territory if it is subjected to an armed attack, including by taking immediate defensive action if required,” Tobias Roed Jensen, spokesperson for the Danish Defense Command, told The Intercept, referencing a 1952 royal decree that applies to the entire Kingdom of Denmark, including Greenland. Denmark’s defense ministry confirmed that the directive is still in effect.  Sweden Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Wednesday that several officers of their armed forces would be arriving in Greenland that same day as part of a multinational allied group to prepare for Denmark’s increased military presence. Germany will send 13 soldiers to Greenland on Thursday and Norway’s defense minister said they have already sent two military personnel.  The Trump administration’s threats make all of these moves necessary.

In Iran, millions of protesters have taken to the streets to protest the repressive religious regime that has ruled the country for more than four decades. The response of the government, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been swift and brutal, with thousands of protesters reportedly killed. All over the world, onlookers are cheering the courage of the Iranian people who are risking their lives to fight for their freedom. In a video posted on X, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who led the country for 38 years until he was ousted by the current regime in 1979, vowed, “We will completely bring the Islamic Republic and its worn-out, fragile apparatus of repression to its knees.” In a Tuesday post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump encouraged the Iranian people to “KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” But for some Christians, the Iranian protests are more than just a popular uprising; they are the fulfillment of ancient Biblical prophecies that foretell the second coming of the Messiah. Last June, shortly after the United States bombed Iran, I wrote about the US evangelicals who were cheering that move: > Broadly speaking—though there are certainly exceptions—many of the most ardent > supporters of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran identify as Christian Zionists, a > group that believes that Israel and the Jewish people will play a key role in > bringing about the second coming of the Messiah. As Christians, they are > called to hasten this scenario, says Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the > Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author > of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening > Our Democracy. “The mission, so to speak, is to get the Jews back to Israel > and to establish themselves within Israel,” he says. “Then you fulfill the > preconditions, or one of the preconditions, for the second coming.” The dark side of this theology, Taylor added, is that in this version of the end times, once the Messiah comes, the Jews will either convert to Christianity or perish. Ben Lorber, a senior research associate with the far-right monitoring group Political Research Associates, explained via email this week that for Christian Zionists, Iran is “an embodiment of the satanic force of fundamentalist Islam, arrayed in a ‘clash of civilizations’ against the Judeo-Christian West, represented by America and Israel.” The uprising, therefore, is a good thing—but not only because of liberation from an oppressive regime. “An apocalyptic war between these players is often seen as a precondition and sure sign of the End Times,” and by extension, the second coming. Christian Zionists agree on those broad strokes, but they’re a little fuzzier on the details—there is some disagreement as to exactly what part of the Bible predicts the current geopolitical situation. Some believe that God is using President Trump to protect Israel from Iran. As I wrote in June:   > Hours before news of the bombing broke, Lance Wallnau, an influential > [charismatic Christian] leader with robust ties to the Trump > administration—last year, he hosted a Pennsylvania campaign event for JD > Vance—warned his 129,000 followers on X, “Satan would love to crush Israel, > humiliate the United States, destroy President Trump’s hope of recovery for > America, and plunge the world into war.” But then he reassured them: “That’s > not going to happen. Why? I was reminded again just a few moments ago what the > Lord told me about Donald Trump in 2015.” He explained that he had received a > message from God that Trump was a “modern-day Cyrus,” an Old Testament Persian > king whom God used to free the Jews, his chosen people. In a video posted two > days after the bombing, Wallnau concluded that the prophecy was coming true. > “Jesus is coming back, and I believe this is all part of him setting the stage > for his return,” he said. For other evangelicals, current events echo the Old Testament book of Daniel, in which Michael, Israel’s guardian angel, battles a demon named the Prince of Persia. After a long period of suffering and much turmoil, God ultimately wins. Others see yet another Bible story playing out—but with the same outcome. Last week, the Christian Zionist news site Israel365 News ran a story laying out the details of the prophecy. This particular prophecy can be found in the book of Jeremiah, in which God promises to wipe out the brutal military forces in the Iranian city of Elam before restoring order there. Israel365’s article focuses on Marziyeh Amirizadeh, an Iranian Christian who fled to the United States when she was imprisoned and sentenced to death for her conversion. In it, she describes a 2009 dream she had when she was in prison. “God said that He is giving a chance to these people to repent, and if they do not, He will destroy them all,” she explains. And now, with the protests, “God’s justice against the evil rulers of Iran has already started, and he will destroy them all to restore his kingdom through Jesus.” “The Bible can open the eyes of Iranians to the truth,” she adds. “Therefore, inviting Iranians to Christianity is very important because the majority of Iranians have turned their back on Islam and do not want to be Muslims anymore.” > “Inviting Iranians to Christianity is very important because the majority of > Iranians have turned their back on Islam and do not want to be Muslims > anymore.” Her remarks refer to widespread claims that Muslims in Iran are converting to Islam in droves. In an article last year, for example, the Christian Broadcasting Network reported that “millions” of Iranian Muslims had recently converted to Christianity and that most of the country’s mosques had closed as a result. The claims of the extent of the conversions are impossible to verify—there is scant hard evidence of a dramatic uptick in them. Practicing Christianity is illegal in Iran, and converts can face the death penalty. But believers remain convinced that the uprising is part of a cosmic plan. Sean Feucht, a Christian nationalist musician who organizes prayer rallies at state capital buildings, told his 205,000 followers on X last week, “While they build mosques across Texas, they are burning them down in Iran!” He added a lion emoji, which some evangelical Christians use to symbolize Jesus. In a blog post on Tuesday, Colorado evangelist Dutch Sheets, a key figure in the campaign to overturn the 2020 election and the lead-up to January 6, offered a prayer asking God to free the Iranian people “from Iran’s tyrannical government and the evil principality that controls it,” adding a plea for “an earth-shaking revival.”  Tim Ballard, who has been accused of sexual misconduct and is the leader of an anti-trafficking group, posted to his 166,000 followers earlier this month, “Jesus is also making a move in Iran.” Over the last few days, Trad West, an anonymous account on X with 430,000 followers, has repeatedly posted “Iran will be Christian.” As the protests wear on, the government’s retaliation is intensifying. With information on the crackdown tightly controlled by the regime, and strictly curtailed citizen access to the internet, the precise death toll so far is unclear. According to reporting from CBS, the UK government estimates that 2,000 protesters have been killed, while some activists believe the total could be as much as 10 times that figure.      “Revolution is inevitable in Iran,” Feucht, the Christian musician, said in another tweet. “It’s prophecy, and it is going to happen.”

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The middle-of-the-night kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world on Saturday. Military helicopters bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as U.S. special forces breached Maduro’s residence, captured him, and flew him to New York to stand trial on unproven charges of narcoterrorism. President Donald Trump has offered several justifications for Maduro’s ouster, including the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry. But the very conditions Trump has been pointing to were exacerbated by the actions of past US presidents—including Trump himself. If the Venezuelan oil industry is in tatters, it’s at least partially because of US policies dating back at least a decade.  On Wednesday, Trump’s Department of Energy put out a “fact sheet” stipulating that the US is “selectively rolling back sanctions to enable the transport and sale of Venezuelan crude and oil products to global markets.” This outcome is doubly ironic because U.S. sanctions are one of the reasons the Venezuelan oil industry is diminished in the first place. The announcement also states that the US will market Venezuelan oil, bank the proceeds, and disburse the revenue “for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the US government.” > “They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been > pumping.” Maduro first drew the ire of President Trump in 2017 after the Venezuelan government stripped powers from the opposition-controlled legislature and violently suppressed mass protests. Trump responded by imposing sanctions on Maduro, several senior officials, and Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, significantly broadening the targeted sanctions that the Obama administration first imposed in 2015. Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that August, Trump said he would not rule out a “military option” in Venezuela. Two years later, after Maduro secured a second term in a contested election, the Trump administration dramatically escalated its pressure campaign, announcing a full oil embargo on the country. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces a kind of heavy crude used to make diesel fuel and petrochemicals. At the time, the United States received roughly 40 percent of Venezuelan oil exports. The embargo severed not only that trade but also exports to European Union countries, India, and other US allies. Suddenly, Venezuela was largely cut off from global markets. By the time sanctions kicked in, Venezuela’s oil production was already slipping. Low oil prices in the early 2010s caused instability for an industry that had long been plagued by mismanagement, corruption, and underinvestment. But the sanctions delivered a devastating blow.  “When they cut off the ability of the government to export their oil and access international finance, it was all downhill from there,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, an economic policy think tank. “It was economic violence to punish Venezuelans.” Even as global oil prices rose again, the sanctions had limited Venezuelan exports and prevented the country from rebuilding its oil sector. With few buyers and little access to financing or technology, oil output collapsed by nearly 80 percent by the end of the decade, compared to its 2012 peak. Most of those sanctions remained in place under the Biden administration, and experts say the cumulative effect was the near-total collapse of Venezuelan oil production—damage that President Trump is now using as justification for his military strike against the country this week.  While the Trump administration’s precise motivations are not entirely clear, the president has described Venezuela’s oil industry as a “total bust” in interviews following the US capture of Maduro. “They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place,” Trump said on Saturday. He added that US oil companies will spend billions of dollars to “fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” But there are few signs that oil companies are eager to return. For one, prices are hovering around $60 a barrel, which is roughly the break-even point for many companies. And without political stability, oil majors are unlikely to commit the billions of dollars necessary to restart production in Venezuela’s oil fields. The Trump administration has reportedly scheduled a meeting with oil companies for later this week to discuss a possible reentry. For now, Chevron is the only US company with active operations in the country. The sanctions reshaped the global flow of oil. When the United States banned Venezuelan oil, the US Gulf Coast refiners who specialize in heavy crude turned to new suppliers in Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. Elsewhere, countries that had depended on Venezuelan oil increasingly turned to Russia. Other oil-producing countries also increased their production to make up for the declining exports from Venezuela. The sanctions also had ripple effects far beyond the oil sector. By cutting off Venezuela’s ability to access international finance, they dealt a huge blow to an economy highly dependent on imports. Unable to borrow, the country struggled to purchase basic necessities such as food and medicine. At the same time, the oil embargo blocked the export of its most profitable asset. The result was a stranglehold on the country’s economy that drove poverty and deaths. Patients with HIV, diabetes, and hypertension were not able to access life-saving drugs. One study at the time estimated that some 40,000 additional deaths could be attributed to the economic conditions caused by the sanctions. “When you can’t get the things that you need to produce electricity and clean water, all kinds of diseases get worse,” said Weisbrot. Even before the latest attacks against Venezuela, the United States’ sanctions against the country were described as “economic warfare” by a former United Nations rapporteur and other international law experts. While it’s unclear how the Trump administration plans to proceed, restoring the semblance of a functional economy in Venezuela and undoing the damage of past US policy may take decades.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US’s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures. In a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday, Trump withdrew from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, calling them “contrary to the interests of the United States”. The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international cooperation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992. Trump has, however, routinely ridiculed climate science as a “scam” and a “hoax” and has actively hobbled clean energy projects and other climate policies as president, attempting to force the US and other countries to stay wedded to the fossil fuels that are driving disastrous heatwaves, storms, droughts and conflicts that imperils billions of people around the world. Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief and executive secretary of the UNFCCC, described the move as a “colossal own goal.” He said: “While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse. It is a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous.” “This is a shortsighted, embarrassing and foolish decision,” said Gina McCarthy, who was a top climate adviser to Joe Biden’s White House. “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of US climate change leadership and global collaboration. This administration is forfeiting our country’s ability to influence trillions of dollars in investments, policies and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country.” Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s decision to exit the UNFCCC is an “unforced error” and “self-defeating” as it will further hamper the US’s ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world’s burgeoning clean energy technology industries. “While the Trump administration is abdicating the United States of America’s global leadership, the rest of the world is continuing to shift to cleaner power sources and take climate action,” Bapna said. “The Trump administration is ceding the trillions of dollars in investment that the clean energy transition brings to nations willing to follow the science and embrace the cleanest, cheapest sources of energy.” Underscoring the administration’s hostility to any measure to deal with a climate that is now hotter than at any point in human civilization, the White House memo also states that the US will pull out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s top climate science body, as well as an assortment of other international environmental organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Last year, Trump said the US would exit the Paris climate deal, in which countries agreed to limit dangerous global heating, while the administration also declined to send a delegation to UN climate talks in Brazil. As the UNFCCC treaty was ratified by the Senate, it is unclear whether Trump can unilaterally scrap it, or whether a future president will be able to rejoin the framework without a further Senate vote. “Letting this lawless move stand could shut the US out of climate diplomacy forever,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said in a statement that the agreements jettisoned by the administration on Wednesday are “often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests.” The climate crisis is, in fact, a matter of scientific consensus and is already taking a measurable and growing toll upon economies and people’s lives. In the US, record numbers of major extreme weather disasters are forcing insurers to flee states, undermining the country’s property market. Scientists have warned that global temperatures are set to breach previously agreed thresholds, which will trigger further worsened calamities. “On the one-year anniversary of the wildfires that stole dozens of lives, thousands of homes and the sense of safety for millions as it reduced Los Angeles communities to ash, Trump is making it clear he has no interest in protecting Americans from the rapidly increasing impacts on our health and safety of the worsening climate crisis,” said Loren Blackford, executive director of the Sierra Club. “This is not leadership. It is cowardice.” Al Gore, the former US vice-president and climate activist, told the Guardian: “The Trump Administration has been turning its back on the climate crisis since day one, removing the United States from the Paris Agreement, dismantling America’s scientific infrastructure, curbing access to greenhouse gas emissions data, and ending essential investments in the clean energy transition.”

The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6—these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want. In each episode, the Trump administration has employed or embraced violence that seemingly violates the law and extends beyond ordinary state powers. The US military attack on Caracas and kidnapping of its repressive and fraudulently elected president, Nicolás Maduro, violated the Constitution and international law. Absent an imminent threat from Venezuela—and none existed—Trump did not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally launch an act of war against the country. Yet he deployed the tremendous force of the United States’ war machine to dethrone and abduct Maduro, contending that he was some sort of drug lord. But that’s not a legitimate justification for a military attack. > This was more than a hint: Mess with ICE, and this could happen to you. The horrific killing in Minneapolis of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was unwarranted and arguably criminal. The initial videos make it look like murder. Yet the Department of Homeland Security, before it could investigate, quickly defended and justified the officer’s actions. It claimed that Good was one of a group of “violent rioters” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted to “run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.” The department called this “an act of domestic terrorism” and maintained the ICE officer, “fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.” In other words, this was right thing to do. On those videos, though, it did not seem like Good was aiming to mow down ICE officers with her car. She was trying to flee the ICE agents. When the officer shot at her, the car was moving away from him. Initial reporting indicated the officer did not follow ICE protocol. Still, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem praised the officer for acting so fast and stated, “This goes to show the assaults that our ICE officers and law enforcement are under every single day.” That is, well done, sir. Trump affirmed the sentiment in a social media post in which he falsely stated the victim was “a professional agitator” who “viciously ran over the ICE officer” and blamed the shooting on the “Radical Left.” Neither Noem nor Trump expressed any concern or any sympathy for Good. They were saying that ICE had the authority and justification to use lethal force in this situation. It was more than a hint: Mess with ICE, and this could happen to you. The day before the ICE shooting, the Trump White House honored—yes, honored—the January 6 rioters. It unveiled an official White House website that ranks as one of the most excessive acts of government gaslighting in modern American history. The site hails Trump for issuing “sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans” who were in the mob that assaulted the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. The site denounces Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the House select committee that investigated the riot for having fabricated “an ‘insurrection’ narrative” and pinning “all blame” on Trump. This site is loaded with absurd falsehoods about January 6. It maintains that the “Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump…In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election.” And it presents an utterly phony timeline of the day, asserting that when peaceful “patriots” marched to the Capitol, police officers responded with “provocative tactics” and “violent force” that “turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos”—and that Trump repeatedly called for calm. None of that is true. In fact, once the melee began, 187 minutes passed before Trump urged his supporters to withdraw from the Capitol. The website is a laughable fraud. But it’s troubling beyond being an Orwellian assault on the truth. This site signals that Trump and his team not only accept the violence of that day; they celebrate the domestic terrorists who were part of the marauding horde. These are our people, the White House is declaring. These violent thugs are with us—and we’re with them. The Trump gang’s embrace of violence is not subtle. On Monday night, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, spelled it out on CNN. Asked by host Jake Tapper if the Trump administration might use military force to seize Greenland, he refused to rule it out, and remarked, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” He then shared what might be called the Trump Doctrine: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” In short, might makes right. This was a not-too-veiled threat against…well, everyone, including foreign governments and all people within the United States. If the Trump administration has the power to do something, it will. Implied in this stance is the exercise of violence. Either in Greenland or in the homeland. Those who do not bend to Trump’s will—or Miller’s—can expect to feel their violent wrath. In those two sentences, Miller was saying that there is no rule of law. The world, instead, is governed only by force. That means violence. This ugly and dark stance is an attack on the fundamental concept of rules-based civilization. It is profoundly anti-democratic. It ignores such niggling matters as rights, societal order, and the public good. All that counts is who has the bigger or better club to swing. An essential element of a police state is the excessive use and threat of violence, and in the past few days the nation has seen such displays. As Trump reaches the end of the first year of his return to power, he and his lieutenants are demonstrating their willingness to deploy force beyond its legitimate use to achieve their aims. The warning is clear and intentional: We are violent. Beware. If you appreciated this article, please check out David Corn’s Our Land newsletter at davidcorn.com.

President Trump’s plans for Venezuela’s oil industry, insofar as there are concrete plans, appear to be solidifying. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright indicated that the United States will control the flow of Venezuelan oil “indefinitely.” The announcement came hours after President Trump revealed that Venezuela would be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of oil to the US, with revenue he intended to personally control. “The Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” he wrote on social media. With oil trading at roughly $56 per barrel, the initial sale could be worth up to $2.8 billion. Speaking at an energy event hosted by Goldman Sachs, Wright said that the US will first sell Venezuela’s stored oil—stuck in the country in part due to the US sanctions on its exports—and then market all oil coming out of Venezuela moving forward. The revenue from those sales will then be “deposited into accounts controlled by the US government” and then “flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people.”  “We’ll enable the importing of parts and equipment and services to kind of prevent the industry from collapsing, stabilize the production, and then as quickly as possible, start to see it growing again,” Wright explained. The plan signals a stark contrast to the strict US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil before the capture of Maduro. The dual announcements came as the US military on Wednesday seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker and apprehended a “stateless” tanker it accused of “conducting illicit activities in the Caribbean Sea.” Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Exxon Mobil—the three largest US oil companies—are reportedly scheduled to meet Trump on Friday to discuss how to invest in Venezuela. (For context, according to the US Energy Information Administration, the US produced about 13 million barrels of oil per day in 2023, and world oil consumption was around 103 million barrels per day in 2024.)  Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is escalating Trump’s vision to take over Greenland despite international warnings to drop the threats, reportedly telling lawmakers on Monday that Trump intends to buy the territory. As I reported on Tuesday, European leaders have repeatedly defended Greenland in the wake of Maduro’s capture, writing that the country “belongs to its people.” Their joint statement, released Tuesday, named the United States as a NATO ally that must uphold “principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty.” But in Venezuela, the EU has largely been quiet. A joint statement issued on Sunday stopped short of condemning the Trump administration and even upheld its justification for attacking Venezuela: “The EU shares the priority of combating transnational organised crime and drug trafficking, which pose a significant security threat worldwide.”  So why the tepid response in regards to Venezuela? Read my colleague Inae Oh’s conversation with Abe Newman about neo-royalism for a potential answer.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicolás Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, has taken his “drill, baby, drill” mantra global. Achieving the president’s dream of supercharging the country’s oil production would be financially challenging—and if fulfilled, would be “terrible for the climate”, experts say. Trump has aggressively sought to boost oil and gas production within the US. Now, after the capture and arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, he is seeking to orchestrate a ramp-up of drilling in Venezuela, which has the largest known reserves of oil in the world—equivalent to about 300bn barrels, according to research firm the Energy Institute. “The oil companies are going to go in, they are going to spend money, we are going to take back the oil, frankly, we should’ve taken back a long time ago,” the US president said after Maduro’s extraction from Caracas. “A lot of money is coming out of the ground, we are going to be reimbursed for everything we spend.” Source: The Oil & Gas Journal. Note: China and Taiwan and Sudan and South Sudan are combined in the data. *Estimates for the Saudi Arabian-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone are divided equally between the two countries.Guardian US oil companies will “spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure… and start making money for the country,” Trump added, with his administration pressing Venezuela’s interim government to delete a law requiring oil projects to be half-owned by the state. > A 50 percent boost in Venezuelan oil production would result in more carbon > pollution than major economies like the UK and Brazil emit. Leading US oil businesses such as Exxon and Chevron have so far remained silent on whether they would spend the huge sums required to enact the president’s vision for Venezuela. But should Venezuela ramp up output to near its 1970s peak of 3.7 million barrels a day—more than triple current levels—it would further undermine the already faltering global effort to limit dangerous global heating. Even raising production to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from current levels of around 1 million barrels would produce around 550 million tons of carbon dioxide a year when the fuel is burned, according to Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is more carbon pollution than what is emitted annually by major economies such as the UK and Brazil. “If there are millions of barrels a day of new oil, that will add quite a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and the people of Earth can’t afford that,” said John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The climate costs would be especially high because Venezuela produces some of the world’s most carbon-intensive oil. Its vast reserves of extra-heavy crude are particularly dirty, and its other reserves are “also quite carbon- and methane-intensive,” Mahdavi said. The world is close to breaching agreed temperature increase limits – already suffering more severe heatwaves, storms and droughts as a result. Increased Venezuelan drilling would further lower global oil prices and slow the needed momentum towards renewable energy and electric cars, Sterman added. “If oil production goes up, climate change will get worse sooner, and everybody loses, including the people of Venezuela,” he said. “The climate damages suffered by Venezuela, along with other countries, will almost certainly outweigh any short-term economic benefit of selling a bit more oil.” During his first year back in the White House, Trump has demanded the world remain running on fossil fuels rather than “scam” renewables and has threatened the annexation of Canada, a major oil-producing country, and Greenland, an Arctic island rich with mineral resources. Critics have accused Trump of a fossil fuel-driven “imperialism” that threatens to further destabilize the world’s climate, as well as upend international politics. “The US must stop treating Latin America as a resource colony,” said Elizabeth Bast, the executive director of Oil Change International. “The Venezuelan people, not US oil executives, must shape their country’s future.” Patrick Galey, head of fossil fuel investigations at the climate and justice NGO Global Witness, said Trump’s aggression in Venezuela is “yet another conflict fuelled by fossil fuels, which are overwhelmingly controlled by some of the world’s most despotic regimes.” “So long as governments continue to rely on fossil fuels in energy systems, their constituents will be hostage to the whims of autocrats,” he said. Oil rigs at Maracaibo Lake in Venezuela’s Zulia state.Leslie Mazoch/AP Though the president’s stated vision is for US-based oil companies to tap Venezuela’s oil reserves for profit, making good on that promise may be complicated by economic, historical and geological factors, experts say. Oil companies may not be “eager to invest what’s needed because it will take a lot longer than the three years of President Trump’s term”, said Sterman. “That’s a lot of risk—political risk, project risk,” he said. “It seems very tricky.” Upping production is “also just a bad bet generally”, said Galey. “Any meaningful increase in current production would require tens of billions of investment in things like repairs, upgrades and replacing creaking infrastructure,” he said. “That’s not even taking into account the dire security situation.” > “The heavy Venezuelan crude that could be refined in US Gulf coast > installations is likely going to undercut domestic producers.” Venezuela’s oil production has fallen dramatically from its historical highs—a decline experts blame on both mismanagement and US sanctions imposed by Barack Obama and escalated by Trump. By 2018, the country was producing just 1.3m barrels a day—roughly half of what it produced when Maduro took office in 2013, just over a third of what it produced in the 1990s, and about a third of its peak production in the 1970s. Trump has said US companies will revive production levels and be “reimbursed” for the costs of doing so. But the economics of that expansion may not entice energy majors, and even if they choose to play along, it would take years to meaningful boost extraction, experts say. Boosting Venezuela’s oil output by 500,000 barrels a day would cost about $10bn and take roughly two years, according to Energy Aspects. Production could reach between 2 million and 2.5 million barrels a day within a decade by tapping medium crude reserves, Mahdavi said. But returning to peak output would require developing the Orinoco Belt, whose heavy, sulfur-rich crude is far more costly and difficult to extract, transport and refine. Returning to 2 million barrels per day by the early 2030s would require about $110 billion in investment, according to Rystad Energy, an industry consultancy. “That is going to take much more time and much more money, to be able to get at or close to maybe 3, 4 or 5 million barrels a day of production,” said Mahdavi. Increasing Venezuelan extraction amid booming US production may also be a hard sell. “The heavy Venezuelan crude that could be refined in US Gulf coast installations is likely going to undercut domestic producers, who until Trump kidnapped Maduro had been vocally supportive of sanctions on Venezuelan oil,” said Galey. Some firms may be willing to “eat that uncertainty” because the US plans to provide companies with financial support to drill in Venezuela, said Mahdavi. “If you’re willing to deal with the challenges…you are looking still at relatively cheap crude that will get you a higher profit margin than what you can do in the United States,” he said. “That’s why they’re still interested: It’s way more expensive to drill in, say, the US’s Permian Basin.” Some US oil majors may be more receptive to Trump’s Venezuela strategy. Chevron, the only US company operating in the country, may be poised scale up production faster than its rivals. And ExxonMobil, which has invested heavily in oil production within neighboring Guyana, could benefit from the removal of Maduro, who staunchly opposes that expansion. Overall, however, it remains unclear how US oil majors will respond to Trump’s plans of regime change and increased oil extraction in Venezuela. What is much clearer is that any expansion would be “terrible for the climate, terrible for the environment,” said Mahdavi.

European leaders argued for Greenland’s sovereignty Tuesday amid President Trump’s continued threat to take over the island following his military operation in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.  Greenland is an autonomous territory in Denmark. Citizens of Greenland are also citizens of Denmark and the European Union.  In a joint statement released Tuesday, more than half a dozen European leaders wrote that “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”  The leaders asserted that security in the Arctic region must be “achieved collectively”—which includes NATO allies like the United States—by upholding the UN Charter that establishes “sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders.”  Since the US captured Maduro, Trump has threatened Colombia, Mexico, Greenland, Iran, and Cuba. The president has repeatedly called for the US to take over Greenland since his first term. On Sunday, Trump noted that Greenland was a strategic territory for the US in regards to national security.  “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” Trump said.  The joint statement also comes after Katie Miller sent a post on X on Saturday that went viral, which showed a map of Greenland covered in the American flag. She captioned the image “SOON!” Miller, of course, is a conservative podcast host, former Trump administration official, and wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, who has a significant role in pushing Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants. On Tuesday, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen thanked the European leaders for their joint statement and urged the US to “seek respectful dialogue through the correct diplomatic and political channels” instead of making threats. He added that “very basic international principles are being challenged” as Greenland’s sovereignty is “rooted in international law.”  So why is Trump so fixated on Greenland? As Inside Climate News reported, in collaboration with Climate Desk, Trump has listed critical minerals, untapped oil reserves, military positioning, and new international trade routes as reasons for annexing Greenland. And as Sophie Hurwitz wrote for Mother Jones last January, Ronald Lauder, a billionaire working in the cosmetics company Estée Lauder, reportedly introduced the idea of buying Greenland to Trump in 2019. While Lauder’s motives are still unclear, in 2021, Trump explained the idea as “not so different” from his method of real estate development in New York City. “I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’ You take a look at a map. I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building.” 

This story was originally published by Popular Information, a substack publication to which you can subscribe here. In a Saturday morning military raid ordered by President Trump, US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. After Maduro was apprehended and transported to New York to face criminal charges, Trump announced that the United States would “run” Venezuela for the indefinite future. The extraordinary attack, which legal experts said violated US and international law, has set up a potential windfall for a prominent Trump-supporting billionaire, investor Paul Singer. In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. He donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition. This past June, when Trump sought funds to bankroll a primary challenger to Thomas Massie (R-KY), who had raised his ire by supporting the release of the Epstein Files, Singer contributed $1 million, the largest contribution. Since Trump was first elected in 2016, Singer has met personally with Trump at least four times. “Paul just left and he’s given us his total support,” Trump declared after meeting with Singer at the White House in February 2017. “I want to thank Paul Singer for being here and for coming up to the office. He was a very strong opponent, and now he’s a very strong ally.” (Singer had initially supported Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s Secretary of State.) In November 2025, Singer acquired Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Singer, through his private investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, bought Citgo for $5.9 billion. The sale to Amber Energy, a subsidiary of Elliott Investment Management, was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments. Elliott Investment Management is known as a “vulture” fund because it specializes in buying distressed assets at rock bottom prices. Citgo owns three major refineries on the Gulf Coast, 43 oil terminals, and a network of over 4,000 independently owned gas stations. By all accounts, Singer acquired these assets at a major discount. Advisors to the court that oversaw the sale valued Citgo at $13 billion, while Venezuelan officials said the assets were worth as much as $18 billion. Maduro’s government had sought to appeal the court’s approval of Singer’s bid for Citgo. But now that Maduro has been ousted, it seems unlikely that appeal will continue. Singer acquired Citgo at a bargain price in large part due to the embargo, with limited exceptions, on Venezuela oil imports to the United States. Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable. Trump has sought to justify military action against Venezuela as an effort to disrupt narcotics trafficking. But Venezuela produces no fentanyl and is a minor source of cocaine that reaches the United States. Trump also recently pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking. Further, Trump has long made clear that he was interested in Venezuela for the oil. In remarks to the North Carolina Republican Party in 2023, Trump said that when he left office in 2021, Venezuela was “ready to collapse.” Trump said, had he remained in office, the US “would have taken [Venezuela] over” and “gotten all that oil.” In remarks on Fox News Saturday, Trump made clear that one of the motivations for Saturday’s attack was to increase the production and export of Venezuelan oil. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of crude oil in the world. Trump said that, moving forward, the US would be “very strongly involved“ with the Venezuelan oil industry. Industry observers anticipate “a rapid rerouting of Venezuelan oil exports, re-establishing the US as the major buyer of the country’s volumes.” Jaime Brito, an oil analyst at OPIS, said access to Venezuelan oil imports “will be a game changer for US Gulf Coast…refiners in terms of profitability.” If that happens, Paul Singer, thanks to a well-timed transaction, will be one of the largest beneficiaries.

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. President Donald Trump has made it clear: His vision for Venezuela’s future involves the US profiting from its oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies—the biggest anywhere in the world—go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” the president told reporters at a news conference Saturday, following the shocking capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife. But experts caution that a number of realities—including international oil prices and longer-term questions of stability in the country—are likely to make this oil revolution much harder to execute than Trump seems to think. > Trump seems to view the situation almost like “a Settlers of Catan board—you > kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the > oil.” “The disconnect between the Trump administration and what’s really going on in the oil world, and what American companies want, is huge,” says Lorne Stockman, an analyst with Oil Change International, a clean energy and fossil fuels research and advocacy organization. Venezuela sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. But production of oil there has plummeted since the mid 1990s, after President Hugo Chávez nationalized much of the industry. The country was producing just 1.3 million barrels of oil each day in 2018, down from a high of more than 3 million barrels each day in the late 1990s. (The US, the top producer of crude oil in the world, produced an average of 21.7 million barrels each day in 2023.) Sanctions placed on Venezuela during the first Trump administration, meanwhile, have driven production even further down. Trump has repeatedly implied that freeing up all that oil and increasing production would be a boon for the oil and gas industry—and that he expects American oil companies to take the lead. This kind of thinking—a natural offshoot of his “drill, baby, drill” philosophy—is typical for the president. One of Trump’s main critiques of the Iraq war, which he first voiced years before he ran for office, was that the US did not “take the oil” from the region to “reimburse ourselves” for the war. The president views energy geopolitics “almost like the world is a Settlers of Catan board—you kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the oil,” says Rory Johnston, a Canadian oil market researcher. “I do think he legitimately, to a degree, believes that. It’s not true, but I think that’s an important frame for how he’s justifying and driving the momentum of his policy.” Some Trump administration policies that were intended to boost American oil and gas have actually hurt the industry. US oil producers have repeatedly voiced concerns about how tariffs and a volatile market have contributed to a dramatic decline in global oil prices, which fell 20 percent in 2025—the biggest losses since 2020. Oil and gas companies, like most big industries with a lot of capital invested in infrastructure, value long-term political and financial stability. Any more big, unpredictable shakeups—in supply, regulatory environments, tariffs, or otherwise—could not come at a worse time for American oil. “Right now the oil market’s somewhat oversupplied,” Stockman says. “That’s hurting American companies. The last thing they want is for a massive oil reserve to suddenly be opened up.” A number of both short- and long-term decisions could affect how the US invasion of Venezuela plays out for American oil. First there’s the question of what happens to all the oil Venezuela is currently sitting on. Over the past few months, the administration has significantly ramped up sanctions and blockades on Venezuela, creating a massive glut of oil that hasn’t been able to find its way out of the country. If Trump decides to totally lift sanctions on Venezuela, that surplus could enter the wider market. The most likely buyers are US oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, which are close by and equipped to handle the type of oil produced in Venezuela. This could create investment opportunities for oil companies based there. When it comes to developing even more of Venezuela’s oil capacity, things get trickier. While it’s tempting to draw direct lines between the Iraq invasion and Trump’s move against Maduro, the economic conditions for oil, both in the US and abroad, are much different than they were in 2002. Oil supply was tight when the US invaded Iraq, and the shale revolution—which flooded the market with cheap fracked gas and oil from American producers—was still several years away. Now, with oil prices sitting almost as low as they were in the pandemic, most big producers are not drilling with abandon, but picking and choosing where they spend their money. Renewable energy, meanwhile, has become astronomically cheaper than it was in the early 2000s. > “Lots of corruption, poor governance, nationalization… [It’s] gonna take time > for companies to trust again.” “We are entering a world where oil demand growth is slowing,” Stockman says. “Despite what the Trump administration wants, we are in the midst of a transition. No matter where you believe the peak is, whether it’s 2030 or beyond, the peak is coming.” It’s not clear if restarting production in Venezuela will see a guaranteed return on investment for many years. Venezuela’s oil reserves are extra-heavy, requiring extra processing—and cost—to make the oil light enough for transport. Meanwhile, the infrastructure used to produce oil in Venezuela is falling apart after decades of disrepair and neglect. Significantly ramping up production in these circumstances, experts say, will likely take years and tens of millions of dollars. Some major American companies seem poised to profit more immediately from a regime change. Chevron, the only company still operating in Venezuela, could have enough of a foothold to more quickly expand production. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, has poured money into oil fields in nearby Guyana; American control in Venezuela could be helpful in stabilizing those investments over the long term. But as a whole, the industry has shown initial hesitation to a possibly open playing field in Venezuela. Politico reported Saturday that the Trump administration has told oil companies that it expects them to pour money into the country—but industry has been cautious. “The infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable,” an energy insider told Politico. And oil reserves in a specific region don’t guarantee a stable environment for a massive influx of investment cash—and American oil employees. The New York Times reported Saturday that the Trump administration has for weeks eyed Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez to replace Maduro, based partly on her management of the oil industry since she was named the nation’s oil minister in 2020. But it’s far from clear if this administration will be able to control a regime change in a way that creates a stable investing environment for big oil companies for the next few decades. That initial plan appears to be unraveling already. On Saturday, Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader, denounced US actions there and said that Maduro is the country’s “only president.” Sunday morning, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on ABC’s This Week that Rodríguez is not the “legitimate” president of Venezuela. “Ultimately,” he said, “legitimacy for their system of government will come about through a period of transition and real elections, which they have not had.” “There’s a lot of history, and I mean that in, like, a capital H kind of weight to it, History,” says Johnston. “Lots of corruption, poor governance, nationalization…That is gonna take time for companies to trust again if they don’t have to. Step one is: Who is now president of Venezuela? We have no idea at this point.” Still, there’s a chance some companies may choose to play ball in the short term. Investors have learned that acceding to Trump’s interests can present financial and regulatory wins, even when the market is not necessarily behind those decisions; companies that don’t follow along, by contrast, could face consequences. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of hedge fund officials and asset managers were already planning a trip to Venezuela to explore investment opportunities, including ones in energy. “I think there’s going to be a lot of that,” Johnston says. “Is that window dressing for investments, or is that window dressing for the White House? I think there’s gonna be a lot of people wanting to please Trump and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s our oil industry now.’”