Trump’s hyper-imperialism

 

Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions against Iran, Venezuela and Cuba over the last year have few parallels in modern history. They have to be seen as marking a new stage. As such they call for a reevaluation of analysis and strategy on the part of the Left.

Trump’s repeated threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages where they belong” is unmatched by the rhetoric of even the most notorious and brutal heads of state over the recent past. Decapitating the entire leadership of a country to compel total submission, as Washington and Tel Aviv have done in Iran, is also a novelty in war strategy. 

The kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and First Lady as a first step in attempting to establish a colonial relationship by taking complete control of the country’s principal source of revenue, namely petroleum, represents a throwback to practices associated with centuries-old imperial rule

These are examples of “hyper-imperialism,” a concept theorized by Samir Amin to describe the United States “as the sole capitalist superpower.” More recently, the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has observed that U.S. hyper-imperialism persists despite a marked erosion of its economic and, though to a lesser extent, financial power. Its military supremacy is not only unrivaled, but is complemented by hybrid warfare, most notably “hyper-sanctions” and the use of lawfare.

What needs to be added to the concept of hyper-imperialism, particularly Trump’s version of it, is its sui generis nature. To find a parallel for the kind of hegemony the United States now exercises – highlighted by the continuous indiscriminate use of force and the threat of it – one would have to look back to the Roman empire or even earlier. 

One of Trump’s innovations is his deployment of the military to reinforce the system of economic sanctions, examples being the interdiction of oil tankers, the quarantine of Cuban oil, and full-scale war against Iran.

Trump II’s foreign policy hardly represents a complete break from the past. The groundwork was laid by past Democratic and Republican administrations. However, his actions force the Left not only to reformulate strategies, but to reconsider past evaluations and analyses of nations of the Global South subjected to extreme forms of imperialist aggression. 

The resistance to U.S. aggression must be given greater weight when evaluating governments. In addition, the popular desperation and exhaustion that erode revolutionary fervor and distance people from those same governments should be understood in light of the daily trauma people endure as a direct result of imperialist actions.

What Trump’s hyper-imperialism tells us

The starting point is to recognize that since Trump’s return to the White House, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba have been in a de facto state of war, which is an escalation of the multiple forms of hostility and aggression of past years. This is key to how all three nations should be judged. While the Left’s commitment to democracy needs to remain unquestionable and unwavering, in these cases primary responsibility for democracy’s somewhat uncertain prospects lies with the siege imposed by imperialist powers. No one other than James Madison said “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded.”

The encirclement imposed by hyper-imperialism on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela illuminates salient features of imperialism going back in time: first, Washington has honed the sanctions regime into a powerful tool, sometimes inflicting damage comparable to armed intervention; second, imperialism is the principal driver of the pressing economic problems facing the three nations; third, the justification for the actions taken against the three nations does not hold up under scrutiny; and fourth the brutality of the sanctions system underscores the need for its complete elimination. The discussion below looks at these points.

Tehran’s response to Operation Epic Fury underscores the crushing impact of sanctions. The nation’s leaders have made clear that the lifting of sanctions – as well as “international guarantees of U.S. non-interference” in the nation’s internal affairs – is a non-negotiable condition for ending the current conflict. That is to say, the Iranian leaders place the destruction caused by the sanctions on a similar footing as the bombs.

In the case of Venezuela, the events leading up to the abduction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026, reveal the far-reaching and highly coordinated machinery underpinning the sanctions regime. The second Trump administration’s tracking of the “ghost fleet” carrying Venezuela’s sanctioned oil—and its interdiction of several of those vessels— underscores how far Washington has gone in perfecting sanctions enforcement since the early years of the Cuban Revolution.

The first Trump administration pioneered in promoting “overcompliance” in which Washington’s well-publicized monitoring was designed to assure that companies and financial institutions world-wide would shun all transactions with Venezuela, even ones not specifically targeted by the sanctions. 

The aim was to impose a veritable blockade. Mike Pompeyo and Elliot Abrams spearheaded a campaign – drawing on the FBI, the Treasury, U.S. embassies, and the intelligence community – to scrutinize the dealings of companies worldwide with Venezuela, in what amounted to a warning shot to companies throughout the world. Even firms that engaged in oil-for-food swaps, which were not proscribed by the sanction regime, were warned that they ran risks. Companies under investigation were likewise told that penalties could be suspended if they halted all dealings with Venezuela.

A retrospective look at the first Trump administration’s sweeping enforcement measures and their devastating impact reinforces the argument that the sanctions have been so harmful that they need to be dismantled unconditionally and entirely. This position contrasts with that of liberals such as the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which criticized the sanctions against Venezuela yet called for using “negotiations to flexible financial and oil sanctions” as leverage to secure concessions. Indeed, power brokers in Washington also favored sanctions relief as a bargaining tool to push the Maduro government to enact market-oriented reforms to the benefit of U.S. capital.

A full grasp of the scale and severity of Washington’s “war” on Venezuela undercuts the notion upheld by some on the left who argue that the sanctions were no more to blame for the nation’s pressing problems than government mismanagement. An even harsher position on the left affirms that the sanctions “do not explain the root causes of the societal collapse we have lived through.”

Likewise, the forcible removal of Maduro and Flores demonstrates that Washington was intent on dismantling a government whose example and policies ran counter to U.S. interests. Prior to the January 3 kidnapping, some on the left in Venezuela and elsewhere denied that Washington sought to remove Maduro from power because they were convinced that he had effectively sold out. 

But they were wrong insofar as Washington clearly wanted Maduro out. Pedro Eusse, a leading member of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which broke with the Maduro government in 2020, wrote in July 2025, “Everything indicates that the true intention of the US and its allies’ policy of aggression toward the Venezuelan government has not been its overthrow, but its subordination.”

In the case of Cuba, the extreme measures of the Trump II administration against the nation also shine light on the cruelty and effectiveness of the system of sanctions per se. Trump’s navy-enforced quarantine on oil shipments is a first for the nation since the October 1962 missile crisis. The result has been recurring 16-hour blackouts that have disrupted water delivery, hospital operations, food production, and garbage collection.

The quarantine spotlights Cuba’s near total dependence on oil, in contrast to nearby Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, which generate a significant share of their electricity from coal and natural gas. The dependence stems precisely from the sanctions, which impeded imports and pushed Cuba into relying almost entirely on Venezuelan oil—only for Trump to cut off that supply too.

Indeed, the quarantine underscores Cuba’s reliance on Venezuelan oil and the reciprocal solidarity that saw fuel exchanged for Cuban medical personnel. That’s a plus for Maduro. The program undercuts the claim of some on the left that Maduro’s foreign policy, in the words of the PCV, never moved beyond an “anti-imperialist rhetoric” without substance.

The Washington-crafted narrative on Cuba and the reaction to it by the mainstream media and the Left are curious. In contrast to the demonization directed at Venezuela and Iran, Washington’s condemnation of Cuba has been relatively hollow and has gained little traction in mainstream outlets or left-leaning circles. The anti-Cuba vilification—driven by hardline anti-Communism—remains largely confined to the far right, epi-centered in Miami. 

The official rhetoric is a departure from the wording in 1982 when the State Department designated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism due to “its long history of providing advice, safe haven, communications, training, and financial support to guerrilla groups and individual terrorists.” Now the Trump administration’s justification for the same designation is that the Cuban government grants “safe harbor to terrorists” and refuses to extradite them.

As false as the narco-terrorism case against Maduro is, it nonetheless offered a rationale that undoubtedly resonated with at least a slice of public opinion. Compare that to Marco Rubio’s line on Cuba which flatly denies the catastrophic effects of the oil quarantine. Rubio claims “we’ve done nothing punitive against the Cuban regime” and adds, the blackouts “have nothing to do with us.” Instead Rubio faults the Cuban leadership on grounds that “they want to control everything.” A classic case of victim-blaming, but with few buying into it. A YouGov survey in March found that only 28 percent of U.S. adults support the U.S.’s blocking of oil shipments to Cuba, as opposed to 46 percent opposed.

In addition, Rubio’s assertion that the only novelty is that Cuba is “not getting free Venezuelan oil anymore” is blatantly fallacious. Rubio is well aware of Venezuela’s swap with Cuba involving the latter’s International Medical Brigades, which maintain a sizeable presence in Venezuela and elsewhere. This is precisely why Rubio has vigorously attempted to sabotage the program throughout the region, unfortunately with a degree of success.

If the oil quarantine demonstrates anything it’s that the hardships facing the Cuban people are rooted in Washington’s war on Cuba, now going on 65 years. Criticism of Cuban government policies, or of socialism itself, comes in a distant second place.

The Trump II disaster should be an eye-opener

Trump’s bullying offensive abroad has fueled mounting opposition to interventionism and has even fostered anti-imperialist sentiment in the United States. Just one week into the 2026 Iranian bombings, 53 percent of the U.S. population opposed the strikes, in sharp contrast to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, which enjoyed large majority support at the outset. That the former editor of The New Republic called the U.S. war on Iran imperialistic is telling. In a New York Times op-ed, Peter Beinart wrote “Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision is imperialism.”

One lesson of recent events is particularly relevant for the Left: the demonization of heads of state is a sine qua non for military intervention. In the case of Iran and Venezuela, the discrediting combines some fact with a large dosage of fake news. In the case of Maduro, the demonization which dates back to shortly after he assumed office in 2013, was taken to higher levels as a result of the controversial presidential election of July 28, 2024, which the opposition claimed was fraudulent. 

Subsequently the corporate media consistently tagged the word “autocrat” and “dictator” onto Maduro’s name. Six months later, Trump was in office and the vilification escalated to a new pitch. Indeed, the branding of Maduro as a narco-terrorist was an indispensable prelude to the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the subsequent kidnappings – notwithstanding the doubts raised by some media outlets regarding the veracity of the claim.

The takeaway is that the Left needs to distinguish between criticism and demonization and take cognizance of the possible dire consequences of the latter.

The demonization of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his inner circle also set the stage for imperialist actions, but, of course, his government could not be placed in the same category as those of Cuba and Venezuela. The Iranian government is theocratic, not leftist, and it actively defends patriarchal values. Furthermore, the level of lethal repression unleashed during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022—and in the demonstrations that erupted beginning late last year—has no parallel in Venezuela or Cuba.

Nevertheless, the U.S.-imposed stranglehold on Iran makes a peaceful path to democratization highly unlikely. Furthermore, as in Venezuela and Cuba, harsh sanctions have been conducive to shadow economies, clientelist networks, and fraudulent dealings, patterns well documented in numerous studies on sanctions throughout the world.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a prolific scholar on Iran who is highly critical of the government, told Jacobin “While the Islamic Republic is paranoid, it is also very much under siege from all sides.” He also notes the intrinsic relationship between the sanctions and the nation’s pressing problems: “Sanctions and structural weaknesses of the Iranian economy feed off one another — there’s a symbiotic relationship between them.”

In short, any serious reading of Iran must foreground the role of sanctions—an approach that inevitably tempers the tendency to cast its leadership in purely demonizing terms.

The lessons of July 28, 2024

The issue of the accurateness of the July 28, 2024, election tallies in Venezuela needs to be reframed. Those elections could not have been democratic, regardless of the announced results, because Venezuelan voters had a gun pointed at their heads: reelect Maduro and the sanctions continue; elect an opposition candidate and the sanctions will be lifted.

The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans knew full well what was at stake. Luis Vicente León – the nation’s leading pollster, himself a member of the opposition – reported that 92 percent of the population believed that the sanctions negatively impacted the economy, and most characterized the effect as “very negative.” (The poll puts the lie to the State Department’s repeated claim that the sanctions only harm government officials.)

A similar scenario played out in the Nicaraguan presidential elections of 1990 when opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro upset the Sandinistas in the midst of a devastating, U.S.-promoted civil war. But there was a fundamental difference. Far from demonizing the Sandinistas, Chamorro accepted a power-sharing transition agreement with them. In contrast, for over a decade prior to the July 28 elections the opposition’s main leader, María Corina Machado, had ruled out negotiations with those who had allegedly violated human rights. 

She never tired of voicing the slogans “no immunity, no to amnesty,” “no agreements with criminals,” often with specific reference to the Chavistas and to Maduro himself. Maduro and his followers had every reason to fear the type of repression that the opposition initiated during the two-day abortive coup it staged in April 2002 against the Chavista government. Even opposition pollster León admitted that the fear was well-founded.

Marta Harnecker, the renowned leftist theoretician, wrote that the Sandinistas erred in holding the 1990 elections amid U.S.-promoted violence and sabotage. Harnecker labeled the decision to organize elections “on terrain shaped by the counterrevolution” a “strategic error.”

A reevaluation and reinterpretation of the July 28 elections is instructive. The hard-core Chavistas accept the official results which showed Maduro winning with nearly 52 percent of the vote. The opposition refutes that claim. A third position is defended by supporters of Maduro who nevertheless express skepticism and point out that because of a massive hacking attack from outside the country, it may be impossible to ever know the true count.

The debate about the accuracy of the official results of July 28 sidesteps the overriding issue of whether the elections should have been held in the first place. Indeed, the idea of conditioning elections on the lifting of sanctions was not far-fetched. A year before the elections, Maduro, in a reference to the United States, declared: “If they want free elections, we want elections free of sanctions.” 

Subsequently, Elvis Amoroso, the Chavista head of the nation’s electoral council, tied the participation of European Union electoral observers to its lifting of sanctions. At the same time, the Biden administration indicated its willingness to bargain with the Venezuelan government along those lines.

Carlos Ron, a former vice-minister and currently an analyst for Tricontinental, told me that the Chavista leadership ruled out delaying the elections in order to demonstrate its democratic credentials in the face of the international smear campaign. Ron said “At that moment, greater importance was placed on the need to defend the democratic character of the Bolivarian political process and its continuity, and abide by the Constitution, in the face of imperialist pressures.”

Maduro’s intentions may have been commendable. But the decision overlooked one compelling reason to suspend the electoral process. Tying the holding of elections to the removal of the sanctions would have placed the entire blame for setbacks to democracy where it belonged: U.S. intervention in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

In defense of democracy

As a rule, the Left has always championed the defense of democracy. In this sense, the Left’s vision compares favorably with U.S.-style “liberal democracy,” shaped by the influence of big money and other inherently undemocratic practices such as gerrymandering, the Electoral College and voter suppression.

Historically, however, the Left has faced formidable obstacles on this front. For instance, it has come to power in countries like Russia, China and Cuba that were lacking in democratic tradition. That, however, was the least of the problem. Its main problem has been, and continues to be, imperialist hostility which limits options.

Precisely for that reason, the Left needs to tread cautiously in the way it frames the issue of democracy in nations that are in the crosshairs of imperialism. In the three countries discussed in this article, the Left can’t deny that democracy has been infringed upon. The Maduro government, for instance, stripped the PCV – the country’s oldest political party, forged in a history of militant struggle including two periods of clandestine resistance and armed struggle in the 1950s and 1960s – of its legal status, transferring recognition to a marginal breakaway faction that appropriated its name and symbols.

Nor can it deny that discontent is currently widespread in the three nations, which became most evident in the Iranian “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests and those of the first days of this year. In Cuba and Venezuela, protests reflect widespread disillusionment, even while the mobilizations have been manipulated and financed from abroad.

One troubling sign in Venezuela is that the disturbances have spread out from upper-middle class neighborhoods where they were confined during the 4-month protests (the “guarimba”) of 2014 and, albeit less so, during those of 2017. The two days following the July 28, 2024 elections, for instance, protests were registered in Caracas barrios such as Petare, the city’s largest. Reflecting on the protests, long-standing Caracas resident and international commentator Phil Gunson reported “Petare is a traditionally Chavista zone, but ever since a few years ago, people have been distancing themselves from the government.”

The Left can’t turn its back on this reality. But nor can it join mainstream voices that channel dissatisfaction into blanket vilification of governments under imperial siege. Rather its line has to be basically: “What do you expect!” In the face of hyper-imperialist aggression these countries are at war, figuratively and in some cases literally speaking. Criticism needs to be framed within this context.

Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism – the principle designed to guide the internal workings of his political party – is instructive. In his writing throughout his political career, party democracy remained a constant, but the degree of centralism depended on the political climate in the nation. Along similar lines, the Left’s adherence to democracy can never be minimized. However, valid criticism of undemocratic practices in countries like Venezuela and Cuba in which the Left is in power needs to be viewed as overreactions to imperialist aggression.

In this era of intensified hyper-imperialism, the Left is compelled to stand behind nations like Cuba and Venezuela and recognize that the real blame for backsliding including violation of democratic norms lies with imperialism. The barbaric actions of Trump II are making this imperative clearer than ever.

Steve Ellner is a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela where he lived for over 40 years and is currently Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books on Latin American politics and history. In 2018 he spoke in over twenty cities in the U.S. and Canada as part of a Venezuelan solidarity tour.

 

Senators voted 52-47 to advance a war powers resolution

Amid President Donald Trump’s admission that his intervention in Venezuela could last years, US senators voted Thursday to advance legislation aimed at blocking the president’s use of military forces against the oil-rich South American nation.

Senators voted 52-47 to advance a war powers resolution introduced last month by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “to block the use of the US armed forces to engage in hostilities within or against Venezuela unless authorized by Congress” as required by the 1973 War Powers Act.

The Senate will now continue debating the measure, which, if passed by both the upper chamber and the House of Representatives, would be subject to a likely veto by Trump—who has sunk two previous war powers resolutions unrelated to Venezuela.

In addition to Paul, four other GOP senators voted to advance the resolution: Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana. While lawmakers often assent during the procedural phase, only to cast ballots against legislation during final votes, at least one of the GOP senators signaled they will vote the same as they did Thursday.

“While I support the operation to seize [Venezuelan President] Nicolás Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional US forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization,” Collins said in a statement, referring to Trump’s threats to acquire the Danish territory by force if he deems it necessary. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) this week introduced a bill that would ban the president from any such action.

“I believe invoking the War Powers Act at this moment is necessary, given the president’s comments about the possibility of ‘boots on the ground’ and a sustained engagement ‘running’ Venezuela, with which I do not agree,” added Collins, who is facing a serious challenge for her Senate seat from candidates including former Maine Gov. Janet Mills and progressive Graham Platner, both Democrats who oppose US military action in Venezuela.

At the time of bipartisan war powers resolution’s introduction last month, Trump had not yet attacked Venezuelan territory, although he had threatened to do so, deployed warships and thousands of US troops to the region, authorized covert CIA action to topple Maduro, and ordered the bombing of boats the administration claimed—without evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

However, Trump dramatically escalated US intervention in Venezuela, first with a December drone strike on a port facility and then by bombing and invading the country and abducting Maduro and his wife. Asked during a Wednesday interview with the New York Times whether the US intervention in Venezuela would last a year, or longer, Trump replied, “I would say much longer,” explaining that “we will rebuild” the country “in a very profitable way,” including by “taking oil” from it.

The specter of yet another US “forever war” like the ongoing open-ended War on Terror that’s left nearly 1 million people dead in at least seven countries since 2001 has prompted the introduction of several congressional war powers resolutions. So far, none have passed.

“If there was ever a moment for the Senate to find its voice, it is now,” Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday’s vote. “Today, the Senate must assert the authority given to it on matters of war and peace. We must send Donald Trump a clear message on behalf of the American people: No more endless wars. Donald Trump’s ready for an endless war in Venezuela, and lord knows where else. The American people are not.”

Kaine made it clear during his pre-vote Senate floor remarks that the resolution does not challenge the “execution of a valid arrest warrant against Nicolás Maduro,” which—despite experts concurring that the invasion and abduction were illegal—he called “good for America and good for Venezuela.”

However, Kaine said, given that Trump’s intervention “will go on for a long period of time,” US troops “should not be used for hostilities in Venezuela without a vote of Congress as the Constitution requires.” “No one has ever regretted a vote that just says, Mr. President, before you send our sons and daughters to war, come to Congress,” he added. However, such votes have very rarely succeeded in stopping any president from proceeding with military action.

In 2019 during Trump’s first term, the House and Senate both passed a war powers resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to cut off US military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s atrocity-laden war on Yemen. Trump vetoed the measure, and senators lacked the two-thirds majority needed to override his move.

The following year, both houses of Congress passed another war powers resolution—this one introduced in the Senate by Kaine—to terminate military action against Iran. But Trump again vetoed the legislation, and the Senate could not muster the two-thirds majority required for an override. After returning to office last year, Trump ordered sweeping attacks on Iran—and is threatening to do so again.

While Trump took to his Truth Social network to blast the five Republican senators who voted to advance the war powers resolution on Thursday and Vice President JD Vance called the War Powers Act “fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law,” progressive and anti-war advocacy groups hailed the advancement. “With this historic, bipartisan vote to prevent further war in Venezuela, Congress has begun the long-overdue work of reasserting its constitutional role in decisions of war and peace,” Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said in a statement.

“We commend the leadership of Sens. Kaine and Paul in forcing this vote, and we thank Sens. Collins, Young, Hawley, and Murkowski for their principled votes,” Kharrazian continued. “Senators should move quickly to adopt the resolution to prevent further unauthorized military escalation and the House should follow suit.”

“Congress should also make clear, using the full force of the law, that no president has the authority to unilaterally launch hostilities anywhere in the world,” he added, “whether in Venezuela or against other countries the administration has openly threatened, including Cuba, Greenland, Colombia, and Iran.”

Jose Vasquez, executive director of Common Defense and an Army veteran, said, “The vote is a victory for the Constitution, the stability of the region, and for the veterans and military families who organized, spoke out, and refused to accept another reckless slide toward forever war.”

“By drawing this vote, Congress sends an essential message that accountability still matters and that no one person or presidential administration can send Americans to war,” he added. “Veterans will remain organized and vigilant but today shows what is possible when Congress listens to the will of the people and leans toward peace rather than war.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

"What is at stake is not Greenland itself. It is the precedent its treatment sets"

 

In the recent Atlantic interview, Donald Trump reiterated that the United States “absolutely needs Greenland,” effectively renewing his push for American control or influence over the Danish territory, a stance drawing sharp criticism from Denmark and Greenland’s leaders, and which many had hoped had gone away. As Thucydides—more accustomed to the warm waters of the Mediterranean than to the icebergs of the Greenland Sea—once observed, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” 

Trump, only a few days earlier, had reasserted his desire to take Greenland, stating that the United States “has to have” it for national security reasons, though it is no secret to say he also likes its potential for recoverable rare earths.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats, was pugnacious in her New Year’s speech. “Wanting to take over another country, other people. As if it were something you could buy and own. It doesn’t belong anywhere,” she said, adding ominously: “Never before have we increased our military strength so significantly.

So quickly.” Since the US action in Venezuela, Katie Miller, the wife of Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted a provocative image on X showing a map of Greenland colored with the US flag and captioned it simply: ‘SOON.’ What baffles Danes most is the sense of pleasure that seems to be taken by Americans in all this.

As part of this renewed and worrying push, Trump has appointed Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as special envoy. Landry insists the United States is not seeking to “conquer” Greenland but merely to engage with Greenlanders.

Yet he publicly posted the following publicly to Trump: “It’s an honor [sic] to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland part of the US.” French president Emmanuel Macron offered a characteristically Gallic shrug: “Greenland belongs to its people. Denmark stands as its guarantor.”

Landry’s professional background is overwhelmingly domestic. He has served as a hardline conservative governor since 2024, previously as Louisiana’s attorney general, and before that as a combative member of Congress. He has no evident experience in foreign policy, Arctic security, or diplomatic negotiation with NATO allies.

For critics, this makes his selection seem bizarre. Supporters point instead to his loyalty to the president. The appointment fits a broader pattern in which political allegiance is valued over diplomatic competence. Trump’s daughter Tiffany’s businessman father-in-law has been described as a senior adviser for Africa. A son-in-law and a real-estate associate have both handled Russia.

Meanwhile, the US consulate in Nuuk is reportedly seeking unpaid interns to manage its communications channels, with the listing stating that the role involves communicating “US foreign policy priorities to a Greenlandic audience.” The symbolism is hard to miss.

Denmark has rejected the premise of Landry’s appointment outright and has indicated it will summon the US ambassador to register its objections. Do not expect a celebratory shot of Aalborg Akvavit at the meeting. Danish officials see the move as further erosion of respect for sovereignty, and it is unlikely to unfold in a convivial spirit.

Greenland’s government has also firmly rejected talk of annexation. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has stressed that decisions about Greenland are made in Greenland, reflecting its autonomy within the Kingdom of Denmark. Leaders in Nuuk and Copenhagen have spoken with one voice in dismissing any suggestion that Greenland’s status is somehow up for negotiation. Rarely have Greenland and Denmark appeared so closely aligned.

Yes, Greenland has long had a strong but cautious independence movement. For many Greenlanders, full sovereignty remains a long-term goal rather than an immediate demand. What has changed is not the debate itself, but the way it is now being conducted.

Recent events in Venezuela show just how fast political expectations can fall apart. Greenland is not Venezuela. Its institutions are stronger, and its alliances are stable. The point is not that the situations are the same, but that change can happen fast.

When powerful countries suggest that long-standing rules are open to change, smaller ones are forced to adjust faster than they would like. Washington’s blunt approach has had an unexpected result. It has pushed Nuuk and Copenhagen closer together, not further apart.

European leaders have been broadly supportive of Denmark’s position. Echoing a principle articulated centuries ago by Emer de Vattel—that small states are no less sovereign than great powers—senior EU figures, including Spain’s prime minister, vocal about Venezuela, and European Commission leadership, less so, have publicly defended Danish sovereignty, and criticized Washington’s bullish approach.

This has not, however, halted defense cooperation. The US State Department has just approved a potential sale of advanced air-to-air missiles to Denmark. These are valued at up to $951 million.

On the natural minerals front, the Trump administration insists its stance on Greenland reflects security concerns rather than resource ambition—a claim Danish and Greenlandic leaders strongly contest. Even if legitimate security concerns do exist, as surely, they might, the manner in which Washington has chosen to pursue them has generated suspicion rather than reassurance.

The larger question is how all this affects NATO in 2026. Not in formal treaty terms, but in trust upon which alliances depend. A cynic might see this as an opportunity for the US to weaken its involvement in an organization that some, including Elon Musk, have already suggested Washington should leave. Even without annexation, Greenland is likely to see an expanded US military presence.

The effects reach beyond Denmark. Russia is unlikely to confront NATO directly over Greenland, but it may use the dispute to portray the US as acting in an imperial manner, as it has already done in Venezuela. The situation could also be used to justify further military build-up along Russia’s Arctic coast—another example of pressure that falls short of triggering NATO’s collective defense clause.

China, meanwhile, may benefit by positioning itself as a champion of sovereignty and restraint, quietly re-engaging in Arctic scientific and economic discussions even if major investments remain out of reach. Beijing does not need bases in Greenland. Like Russia, it may simply welcome NATO disunity. Or, in China’s case, European goodwill.

The Arctic Council is likely to remain limited by Russia’s isolation and by Western countries moving security discussions to other forums. Military cooperation will increasingly happen through NATO or bilateral agreements, while environmental and Indigenous issues risk losing attention despite recent progress.

What is at stake is not Greenland itself. It is the precedent its treatment sets. Venezuela showed how quickly assumptions about sovereignty can erode once powerful states decide the rules are flexible. When that logic is applied elsewhere, pressure replaces principle and trust surrenders to suspicion. Greenland may remain Danish, autonomous, and unannexed, but the damage to the assumptions that once made such outcomes secure may be much, much harder to contain. “Stop the threats,” said Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen.

CounterPunch, Peter Bach lives in London.

 

"A lawless world of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy"

 

   

The ruling class of the United States, severed from a fact-based universe and blinded by idiocy, greed and hubris, has immolated the internal mechanisms that prevent dictatorship, and the external mechanisms designed to protect against a lawless world of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy.     

Our democratic institutions are moribund. They are unable or unwilling to restrain our ruling gangster class. The lobby-infested Congress is a useless appendage. It surrendered its Constitutional authority, including the right to declare war and pass legislation, long ago. It sent a paltry 38 bills to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law last year. 

Most were “disapproval” resolutions rolling back regulations enacted during the Biden administration. Trump governs by imperial decree through Executive Orders. The media, owned by corporations and oligarchs, from Jeff Bezos to Larry Ellison, is an echo chamber for the crimes of state, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, attacks on Iran, Yemen and Venezuela, and the pillage by the billionaire class. Our money-saturated elections are a burlesque. 

The diplomatic corps, tasked with negotiating treaties and agreements, preventing war and building alliances, has been dismantled. The courts, despite some rulings by courageous judges, including blocking National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, are lackeys to corporate power and overseen by a Department of Justice whose primary function is silencing Trump’s political enemies.

The corporate-indentured Democratic Party, our purported opposition, blocks the only mechanism that can save us — popular mass movements and strikes — knowing its corrupt and despised party leadership will be swept aside. Democratic Party leaders treat New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a flicker of light in the darkness — as if he has leprosy. Better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their status and privilege.

Dictatorships are one-dimensional. They reduce politics to its simplest form: Do what I say or I will destroy you. Nuance, complexity, compromise, and of course empathy and understanding, are beyond the tiny emotional bandwidth of gangsters, including the Gangster-in-Chief.

Dictatorships are a thug’s paradise. Gangsters, whether on Wall Street, Silicon Valley or in the White House, cannibalize their own country and pillage the natural resources of other countries. Dictatorships invert the social order. Honesty, hard work, compassion, solidarity, self-sacrifice are negative qualities. Those who embody these qualities are marginalized and persecuted. The heartless, corrupt, mendacious, cruel and mediocre thrive.

Dictatorships empower goons to keep their victims — at home and abroad — immobilized. Goons from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Goons from Delta Force, Navy Seals and Black Ops CIA teams, which as any Iraqi or Afghan can tell you are the most lethal death squads on the planet. Goons from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — seen escorting a hand-cuffed President Nicolás Maduro in New York — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and police departments.

Can anyone seriously make the argument that the U.S. is a democracy? Are there any democratic institutions that function? Is there any check on state power? Is there any mechanism that can enforce the rule of law at home, where legal residents are snatched by masked thugs from our streets, where a phantom “radical left” is an excuse to criminalize dissent, where the highest court in the land bestows king-like power and immunity on Trump? 

Can anyone pretend that with the demolition of environmental agencies and laws — which should help us confront the looming ecocide, the gravest threat to human existence — there is any concern for the common good? Can anyone make the argument that the U.S. is the defender of human rights, democracy, a rule-based order and the “virtues” of Western civilization?

Our reigning gangsters will accelerate the decline. They will steal as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The Trump family has pocketed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts since the 2024 re-election. They do so as they mock the rule of law and tighten their vice-like grip. The walls are closing in. Free speech is abolished on college campuses and the airwaves. Those who decry the genocide lose their jobs or are deported. 

Journalists are slandered and censored. ICE, powered by Palantir — with a budget of $170 billion over four years — is laying the foundations for a police state. It has expanded the number of its agents by 120 percent. It is building a nationwide complex of detention centers. Not solely for the undocumented. But for us. Those outside the gates of the empire will fare no better with a $1 trillion budget for the war machine.

And this brings me to Venezuela where a head of state and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped and spirited to New York in open violation of international law and the U.N. Charter. We have not declared war on Venezuela, but then there was no declared war when we bombed Iran and Yemen. Congress did not approve the kidnapping and bombing of military facilities in Caracas because Congress was not informed.

The Trump administration dressed up the crime — which took the lives of 80 people — as a drug raid and, most bizarrely, as a violation of U.S. firearms statutes: “possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.”

These charges are as absurd as attempting to legitimize the genocide in Gaza as Israel’s “right to defend itself.” If this was about drugs, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández would not have been pardoned by Trump last month, after he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to distribute over 400 tons of cocaine in the U.S., a conviction that was justified with far greater evidence than that which supports the charges levied against Maduro.

But drugs are the pretext. Flush with success, there is already talk by Trump and his officials about Iran, Cuba, Greenland and perhaps Colombia, Mexico and Canada. Absolute power at home and absolute power abroad expands. It feeds off of each lawless act. It snowballs into totalitarianism and disastrous military adventurism. By the time people realize what has happened, it is too late.

Who will rule Venezuela? Who will rule Gaza? Does it matter?

If nations and people do not bow before the great Moloch in Washington, they are bombed. This is not about establishing legitimate rule. It is not about fair elections. It is about using the threat of death and destruction to procure total subservience.

Trump made this clear when he warned interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Maduro’s kidnapping was not carried out because of drug trafficking or possession of machine guns. This is about oil. It is, as Trump said, so the U.S. can “run” Venezuela.

“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, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a press conference Saturday.

Iraqis, a million of whom were killed during the U.S. war and occupation, know what comes next. The infrastructure, modern and efficient under Saddam Hussein — I reported from Iraq under Hussein so can attest to this truth — was destroyed. The Iraqi puppets installed by the U.S. had no interest in governance and reportedly stole some $150 billion in oil revenues.

The U.S., in the end, was booted out of Iraq, although controls Iraqi oil revenues which are funneled to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The government in Baghdad is allied with Iran. Its military includes Iran-backed militias in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, the UAE, India and Turkey.

The debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, which cost the American public anywhere from $4 to $6 trillion, were the most expensive in U.S. history. None of the architects of these fiascos have been held to account.

Countries singled out for “regime change” implode, as in Haiti, where the U.S., Canada and France overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004. The overthrow ushered in societal and government collapse, gang warfare and exacerbated poverty. The same happened in Honduras when a 2009 U.S-backed coup removed Manuel Zelaya. 

The recently pardoned Hernández became president in 2014 and transformed Honduras into a narco-state, as did U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, who oversaw the production of 90 percent of the world’s heroin. And then there is Libya, another country with vast oil reserves. When Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by NATO during the Obama administration in 2011, Libya splintered into enclaves led by rival warlords and militias.

The list of disastrous attempts by the U.S. at “regime change” is exhaustive, including in Kosovo, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. All are examples of the folly of imperial overreach. All predict where we are headed.

The U.S. has targeted Venezuela since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez. It was behind a failed coup in 2002. It imposed punishing sanctions over two decades. It tried to anoint opposition politician Juan Guaidó, as “interim president” although he was never elected to the presidency. When this did not work, Guaidó was dumped as callously as Trump abandoned opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado. In 2020, we staged a Keystone Cops attempt by ill-trained mercenaries to trigger a popular uprising. None of it worked.

The kidnapping of Maduro begins another debacle. Trump and his minions are no more competent, and probably less so than officials from previous administrations, who tried to bend the world to their will. 

Our decaying empire stumbles forward like a wounded beast, unable to learn from its disasters, crippled by arrogance and incompetence, torching the rule of law and fantasizing that indiscriminate industrial violence will regain a lost hegemony. Able to project devastating military force, its initial success lead inevitably to self-defeating and costly quagmires. The tragedy is not that the American empire is dying, it is that it is taking down so many innocents with it.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Trump adviser testimony claims Russia offered to "swap" Venezuela for Ukraine in 2019

 

During U.S. President Donald Trump's first term, Russian officials signaled they would be willing to let Washington pursue its interests freely in Venezuela if the U.S. let Moscow do the same in Ukraine, former Trump adviser Fiona Hill said in a 2019 congressional hearing. 

Hill's comments have gained widespread attention in the aftermath of Trump's Jan. 3 attack on Venezuela and capture of dictator Nicolas Maduro, a Kremlin ally.

Years before the Venezuela attack, and before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin in April 2019 floated the possibility of giving up its influence in Venezuela for unimpeded control of Ukraine, according to Hill, then a senior adviser to Trump.

Russian officials "were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine," Hill told lawmakers during a hearing in November 2019.

Moscow's overtures were "informal," Hill said, but the message was clear: "You know, you have your Monroe Doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You're in our backyard in Ukraine."

Hill said she was sent to Russia to reject the proposal. However, seven years later, Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine — an assertion that the U.S. has the right to economic domination of the Western Hemisphere — to justify his attack on Venezuela and the U.S. takeover of the country's oil industry.

Trump has claimed that the U.S. will now "run" Venezuela and commandeer its oil assets. Trump then announced on Jan. 6 that Venezuela would hand over up to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the U.S.

"This oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me," Trump wrote on social media.

Trump has also demanded that Venezuela expel Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba, cutting economic ties with these nations before being allowed to pump more oil, according to sources who spoke to ABC News.

The White House has not responded to the Kyiv Independent's request for comment on these reports. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the U.S. attack on Venezuela, though the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement to the United Nations condemning U.S. aggression. Still, Moscow has done little to materially aid Venezuela in the wake of Maduro's capture. Analysts have pointed out that Putin might be willing to exchange his influence in Latin America for the ability to expand his ambitions in Europe.

Abbey Fenbert, Senior News Editor

Abbey Fenbert is a senior news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She is a freelance writer, editor, and playwright with an MFA from Boston University. Abbey served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine from 2008-2011.

 

No Wars! No Kings! Congress Must Act!

 

The Trump regime's weekend attack on Venezuela, taking of President Maduro, and declaration that the US will "run" that country until some indeterminate date in the future was wildly irresponsible, wholly immoral, and can only lead to disaster, unless Congress acts.

No one voted for another war. No one voted for an authoritarian regime that puts service members and the American public at risk. No one voted for placing the oil wealth of a few oligarchs above international law, the Constitution, and common sense. No one voted for a king. 

As Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg said in a statement on Saturday: The power to declare war belongs to Congress and the American people. Trump has once again taken power that's not his. He is attempting to drag the country into war by decree, all while treating the presidency like a throne. Congress must act immediately to stop these illegal strikes and hold the Trump regime accountable. No Kings, No War.

The regime's been telegraphing the weekend's actions since Hegseth’s “Department of War” first launched strikes on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean last fall, then moved on to attacking and seizing Venezuelan oil tankers. The excuses have been paper thin and fluid, one day focused on a supposed "invasion" by Venezuelan gang members, the next on Fentanyl trafficking (despite expert opinion the Venezuela plays virtually no role in Fentanyl trafficking into the US), and over the weekend, concern for the Venezuelan economy. 

But Trump gave the game away by mentioning oil 25 times at Saturday's Mar-a-Lago press conference. This is about Venezuelan oil, billionaire corruption, and Trump's aspirations to be America's first dictator, even as he and the GOP ignore skyrocketing healthcare costs and unaffordable grocery bills here at home. We can't let him succeed. 

WHAT YOU CAN DO: We need to make it crystal clear to Congress: This lawless violence must stop.

First: Use our scripts and call tools to place a call to your Members of Congress. Trump must not be allowed to drag the country into yet more chaos. Saturday's military operation may be over, but Trump is talking about keeping US forces on the ground in Venezuela indefinitely, and explicitly threatening other countries in Latin America. Click here to call your senators, and click here to call your representative.

Next: Use our email tool to drive the point home. Click here to email your Members of Congress to demand an end to military action against Venezuela.

Then: Register for the Healthcare Not Warfare grassroots call we're hosting with MoveOn, the Working Families Party, Win Without War, and Public Citizen, this Wednesday, January 7, at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT. We'll be joined by Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Greg Casar and other leaders in the fight against fascism and want to be sure you're there with us. None of us is alone; the more we work together, the stronger we'll be. Trump wants to be a wartime king. We the people demand: No War, No Kings.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

“Congress must do the right thing by voting to stop this obvious catastrophe"

 

President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is generating fresh calls for his impeachment and removal from office. Shortly after the US military bombed the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, many experts on international law argued that the president’s actions were completely illegal.

In an interview with the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway said that she didn’t believe there “is a legal basis for what we’re seeing in Venezuela,” while adding that the arguments the Trump administration will likely make simply “don’t hold water.”

For instance, Hathaway noted that while the United Nations charter allows nations to use military force in self-defense against military aggression, the administration’s claims that attacking Maduro was a defensive measure intended to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the US was completely outside the scope of traditional self-defense.

“If drug trafficking is a reasonable justification, then a whole range of possible arguments can be made that basically mean that self-defense is no longer a real exception,” she argued. “It’s the new rule. Why couldn’t you make the same argument about communicable diseases? There’s bird flu coming from a country, and therefore we have a legal justification for the use of military force. Once we start going down that road, the idea that there’s any limit evaporates.”

Hathaway also said that Trump’s militaristic ambitions seem to have grown throughout his second term, and she warned they could lead to a long and bloody US military occupation of Venezuela.

“In his press conference, Trump said that the United States would ‘run the country,’” she said. “And he made it clear that he was not ‘afraid’ to put boots on the ground—for years, if necessary... it’s nothing like anything Trump has done before today. His previous illegal uses of force were all over shortly after they began. The scale of the operation that will be required is massive, and it means putting US soldiers at long-term risk.”

Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith wrote a lengthy analysis after the attack on Venezuela and also concluded that it violated the UN charter. What’s more, Goldsmith argued that Trump’s state plan to seize Venezuela’s oil would likely run afoul of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which limits actions that occupying powers can take on the countries they are overseeing.

“There are a lot of international law rules and restrictions that purport to govern what the United States can do as an occupying power,” he explained. “I don’t have space here to review them but suffice it to say that these rules will touch on President Trump’s stated aim of ‘tak[ing] back the oil’ and ‘get[ting] reimbursed.’ We will see if the administration takes these rules seriously.”

Many Trump critics also argued that, legality aside, toppling a foreign head of state and vowing to seize their nation’s natural resources was morally wrong and deserving of impeachment.

“This is the behavior of a mob boss—but with nuclear weapons and the world’s strongest military,” argued Zeteo editor-in-chief Medhi Hassan. “None of this is legal. Trump should be impeached by Congress and indicted at The Hague.”

Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, denounced Trump’s attack on Venezuela as “wildly illegal, immoral, and irresponsible,” and urged the US Congress to exercise its powers to stop the president from further escalation.

“The power to declare war belongs to Congress and the American people,” Greenberg said. “Trump has once again taken power that’s not his. He is attempting to drag the country into war by decree, all while treating the presidency like a throne. Congress must act immediately to stop these illegal strikes and hold the Trump regime accountable. No Kings, No War.”

Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy adviser for Demand Progress, demanded congressional action to “stop this reckless, unconstitutional act of war.” “We have seen what happens when the White House invents a pretext to launch a regime change war with an oil-rich nation: disaster and suffering for innocent civilians, our troops and their families, all while costing the American taxpayer a fortune as well,” said Kharrazian. “Congress must do the right thing by voting to stop this obvious catastrophe.”

Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic candidate for US Congress in Illinois, wrote on Bluesky that the time for Democratic politicians to issue mealy-mouthed statements about Trump’s actions was over. “Democrats need to grow a fucking spine,” she wrote. “No more strongly worded letters. It’s time to draft articles of impeachment. Impeach. Convict. Remove.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) also demanded that members of his party take a strong stance against Trump’s illegal Venezuela attack. “The silence from many media-hyped 2028 contenders today is shocking,” he wrote on X. “If you cannot oppose this regime change war for oil, you don’t have the moral clarity or guts to lead our party or nation.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams

If we had a functional Constitution, we wouldn’t have an illegal war

Donald Trump’s unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Venezuela demolished any notion that we live in a rules-based, constitutional democracy. If the Constitution—which explicitly grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war—were operative, lawmakers would have been briefed before the operation, robust debate would have ensued, and Congress would have voted (or not) to go to war. Instead, without legal justification, Trump blithely killed scores of civilians on boats, launched an illegal war on Venezuela (killing more civilians), kidnapped its president, and declared he wants to take its oil and “run” a sovereign country. (Aside from its constitutional defects, an unprovoked war to extract oil is a moral disgrace, depriving us of moral standing to contest others’ nations’ wars of aggression.) While egregious, this is not an isolated assault on the rule of law. Under Trump’s regime, the Constitution has begun to resemble Swiss cheese, or perhaps the redacted Epstein files—displaying more blacked out sections than text. The sections in Article I that establish Congress’s powers have all but been eliminated. In the words of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, MAGA Republicans “have abolished the Congress.” She accurately observed, “They just do what the president insists that they do.” Specifically, MAGA lackeys in Congress have allowed Trump to abscond with, among other things, the powers to declare war and make rules regulating the military (e.g., allowing Trump to violate the prohibition on murder of shipwrecked civilians), enact tariffs, establish uniform rules of naturalization (Trump now claims the power to “de-naturalize” enemies), and coin money (no pennies!). Trump’s stooges have also ceded the power to appropriate money from the Treasury (by condoning rescission), and to legislate for the District of Columbia (making a mockery of home rule). The MAGA Senate gave away its power to confirm “officers of the United States” (e.g., U.S. attorneys), leaving it up to litigants such as James Comey and Letitia James to defend the Senate’s advice and consent role. As for Cabinet officials, MAGA senators have refused to render independent judgment on nominees they know to be unfit, including Pam Bondi, RFK, Jr., and Pete Hegseth. (In acquitting Trump for the insurrection that he staged 5 years ago, MAGA senators put a stake through the heart of the impeachment power.) The erasure of the Framers’ handiwork does not stop there. The president’s Article II obligation to faithfully execute the law has been deleted as he repeatedly ignores court orders and now contemptuously rejects the notion that our obligations under the United Nations are binding on the U.S. He runs roughshod over First Amendment protections for speech, press, and association, and has attempted to brush aside the 14th Amendment (affirming birthright citizenship and disqualifying insurrectionists from federal office). Certainly, the overthrow of our constitutional order could have been stopped by minimally responsible House and Senate Republican majorities. But we cannot ignore the Supreme Court’s responsibility for wrecking the Constitution. Despite Chief Justice John Roberts’s preposterous ode to the “rule of law” in his year-end report, he and fellow partisan hacks on the Supreme Court have made mincemeat of the Constitution. (In declaring our founding documents to be “firm and unshaken,” he reminds us that “hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue.”) Roberts’ 2024 majority opinion, devoid of textual or historical legitimacy, granted Trump immunity for virtually all crimes while in office, thereby ushering in his return to office, unprecedented executive overreach, reign of domestic terror, and now an unconstitutional and shameful war for oil. No chief justice has done more to destroy the “rule of law” than Roberts. Since Trump’s return, Roberts and the other robed-MAGA functionaries have continued to hack away at Article I by bestowing on Trump unilateral power to destroy congressionally enacted departments and override statues (which, for example, establish independent regulatory bodies and mandate spending). Arrogantly disregarding the need for briefing or explanation, the MAGA justices summarily have overturned numerous decisions of lower courts to greenlight Trump’s executive overreach. It would be useful if members and judges such as Roberts aligning themselves with the “Federalist Society” would actually read the Federalist Papers, which cautioned about the very outcome Trump achieved. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47. Madison’s notion that “the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct” now sounds quaint, archaic and foreign. Before the 2024 election, Protect Democracy warned: Authoritarian projects cannot succeed without the cooperation or acquiescence of legislatures, courts, and other institutions designed to provide checks and balances. In some cases, authoritarians explicitly rewrite the rules to strengthen executive power and weaken legislatures, while in others they simply stack these competing institutions with lackeys and compliant allies or engage in “constitutional hardball” by manipulating existing loopholes or pushing boundaries of existing laws. Authoritarians also often justify the expansion of executive power with cults of personality and aggrandizement of the trappings of office, while denigrating checks and balances as corrupt obstacles to the popular will. Put differently, the “Constitution” as drafted and amended over more than two centuries is unrecognizable, and concepts such as “rule of law,” “separations of powers,” and “checks and balances” have become meaningless platitudes. We are left with a wholesale obliteration of checks and balance, which in turn resulted in an illegal war with uncertain consequences. However, while Trump and his MAGA acolytes certainly have made considerable headway in destroying the exoskeleton of our democracy (a written constitution in which power is divided to thwart tyranny), done incalculable damage to our democracy, ruined countless lives (e.g., fired civil servants, deported hard-working immigrants), endangered our troops, and destroyed our moral standing in the world, we should not conclude the Constitution is gone for good. We can begin to restore constitutional order with sustained, robust, and peaceful protest to educate the public and hold Republicans responsible for serial outrages. Democrats should be encouraged to use every device to stop the slide into fascism and focus on Trump’s multiple outrages and broken promises. (Prices are up, corruption is at unprecedented levels, and a new illegitimate war is underway.) With that predicate, Democrats then must run up the score in the midterms, the essential mechanism to halt further constitutional vandalism and set the predicate for democracy’s revival. The latter will require curtailing president powers through elections, legislation, constitutional amendment, and/or judicial decisions; electing a Congress that fulfills its constitutional obligations; and reforming an anti-constitutional Supreme Court by limiting justices’ terms, expanding the court, and shrinking its appellate jurisdiction. In sum, we must be honest about the constitutional wreckage, the culprits responsible, and the work that we must undertake. If Americans rise to the occasion, they can deliver an historic rebuke to scads of Republicans, allowing the hard work of repair to begin. Our failure to do so would spell catastrophe for democratic recovery. The Contrarian is reader-supported. 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