↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign

New details of deliberations show how aides with overlapping agendas drove the United States toward a militarized confrontation with Venezuela.

© Eric Lee for The New York Times

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, have been key players, alongside the presidential adviser Stephen Miller, in President Trump’s escalating conflict in Venezuela.
  •  

Trump Pursues His Legacy One Name at a Time

In attaching his name to buildings and programs while still president, Donald Trump is walking a path paved by conquerors and autocrats.

© Eric Lee for The New York Times

President Trump announcing the Navy’s new “Trump Class” battleships.
  •  

A Dancing Dictator and Bankers in Chains: The Other Venezuela Blockade

A crisis more than a century ago involved U.S. aims to assert military supremacy, a hard-partying dictator and frictions among the great powers.

© Library of Congress

Cipriano Castro, who ruled Venezuela from 1899 to 1908. Known as the “Lion of the Andes,” he defied the great powers of the era.
  •  

Another Front in the Trump Immigration Crackdown: Import Warehouses

Workers at facilities that stock shipped goods say customs officers who inspect merchandise are helping immigration agents arrest migrants.

© Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Immigration officials raided the Savino Del Bene warehouse in Avenel, N.J., which moves fashion and luxury goods.
  •  

Trump is shamelessly covering America in his name | Mohamad Bazzi

Using the presidency as a branding opportunity, Trump is slapping his name on buildings, monuments and projects

In 2011, Donald Trump published a book with the self-help guru Robert Kiyosaki titled Midas Touch. It’s a typical self-empowerment manual in which the pair expound on the secrets of entrepreneurial success while drawing on their personal experiences. At one point, they write: “Building a brand may be more important than building a business.”

That was certainly Trump’s approach to business: he was the New York real estate tycoon who turned his fame into a brand that symbolized luxury and savvy strategy – even if his companies filed for bankruptcy six times. Trump spent decades trying to use his name to turn a profit: he owned an airline and a university, and slapped his moniker on vodka, steaks, neckties, board games and even bottled water. Leveraging the fame he gained from the Apprentice TV show, he expanded to licensing Trump-branded global real estate projects built by other developers. In many of these ventures, Trump collected licensing fees, rather than investing his own money, ensuring that he profited even if the businesses collapsed.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Doug Mills/AP

© Photograph: Doug Mills/AP

© Photograph: Doug Mills/AP

  •  

US capitalism casts millions of citizens aside, yet Badenoch and Farage still laud it | Phillip Inman

Rightwing parties want to follow in US’s footsteps of minimal government intervention, but at what cost?

Next month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.

Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

© Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

© Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

  •  

Kennedy Center president demands $1m from musician who canceled Christmas Eve show

Drummer Chuck Redd decided to cancel his yearly Jazz Jam after Donald Trump added his name to the venue

The president of the Kennedy Center has demanded $1m in damages and fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with the Associated Press.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

  •  

The year in patriarchy: Taylor Swift, Trump 2.0 and the Epstein files | Arwa Mahdawi

The year 2025 saw a Swift engagement, a rapid rollback of rights and a slow release of the heavily redacted Epstein files

The year 2025 would have been far better if we could have sent a few billionaires and world leaders into intergalactic exile. Instead, we had to make do with Katy Perry spending 11 minutes on the edge of space as part of Blue Origin’s all-female crewed mission. Perry promised us all that, in service of women’s empowerment, the crew would “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut” and “make space and science glam”. Truly, one giant leap for womankind!

Space may have got glam, but it was another glum year for many on Earth. The war in Ukraine continued, with increasing numbers of women volunteering to fight. The civil war in Sudan raged on, with the UN urging the world not to ignore harrowing details of targeted sexual violence, torture, and abductions from the region. The slaughter in Sudan is so extreme that the blood can even be seen from space. Although I’m not sure the billionaires and celebs doing celestial joyrides in their expensive rockets are particularly bothered by that view.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Xavi Torrent/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

© Photograph: Xavi Torrent/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

© Photograph: Xavi Torrent/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

  •