Table of Contents:
1) Events and Appeals
2) Current News
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1) Events and Appeals
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EMAIL THE PORT AUTHORITY TO DEMAND AN OAKLAND ARMS EMBARGO🚨
SEND AN EMAIL NOW: armsembargonow.com
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Help World-Outlook Win New Subscribers
(the subscription is free of charge)
Dear reader,
Over the last month, World-Outlook and its sister publication in Spanish Panorama-Mundial have published unique coverage of U.S. and world events.
This includes the three-part interview with Cuban historian and writer Ernesto Limia Díaz, ‘Cuba Is the Moral and Political Compass of the World.’ A related article by Mark Satinoff, World Votes with Cuba to Demand an End to U.S. Blockade, included information on the campaign to send medical aid to Cuba in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa and was shared widely by the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee and other Cuba solidarity groups.
A number of readers sent their appreciation for Cathleen Gutekanst’s article Chicago Residents Fight ICE Abductions, Deportations, which provided a compelling, eyewitness account of this example of working-class resistance to the Trump administration’s war on undocumented immigrants. Some readers shared it widely on social media platforms.
The news analysis Bigotry, Jew Hatred Take Center Stage in GOP Mainstream also generated interest. It is part of World-Outlook’s consistent analysis of the danger of the rise of incipient fascism that Trumpism has posed for the working class and its allies in the U.S. and the world.
Most recently, another article by Mark Satinoff, ‘From Ceasefire to a Just Peace’ in Israel and Occupied Territories, was promoted by Friends of Standing Together (FOST NY/NJ) on the group’s website. Alon-Lee Green and Sally Abed — the two Standing Together leaders featured at the November 12 event in Brooklyn, New York, that Mark’s article covered — and Israelis for Peace sent their thanks to Mark for his accurate reporting.
This is a small sample of the news coverage and political analysis World-Outlook offers.
We ask you to use this information to try to convince at least one of your acquaintances, colleagues, friends, fellow students, neighbors, or relatives to subscribe to World-Outlook. As you know, the subscription is free of charge. Increasing World-Outlook’s subscription base will widen the site’s reach. It will also provide new impetus to improve our coverage. Comments and reactions from subscribers, or initiatives from readers to cover events in their areas, often result in unexpectedly invaluable articles or opinion columns clarifying important political questions.
Feel free to share this letter, or part of its contents, with those you are asking to subscribe. And keep World-Outlookinformed about the reactions you get from potential new readers.
In solidarity,
World-Outlook editors
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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2) Current News
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1) As Israeli Settlements Get Bigger, Palestinian Hikes Grow Shorter
With Israelis rapidly building in the West Bank, Palestinian hikers are increasingly unable to walk across the land.
By Fatima AbdulKarim, Dec. 16, 2025
Fatima AbdulKarim walked with a Palestinian hiking group through the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Hikers outside the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank. Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times
It was just after dawn, and the hills outside Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, glowed in the soft morning light.
A small group of Palestinian hikers, boots crunching the gravel underfoot and jackets zipped against the chill, prepared to head down a dirt track, toward a spring used for centuries by Palestinian farmers.
Then they spotted the tent in the distance, close to their path. Two Israeli settlers, recognizable by their skullcaps and long sidelocks, emerged from the tent, marching straight for the hikers.
Scared, the hikers changed course and pivoted to the northwest, skirting any confrontation, but shortening the hoped-for walk.
It was a familiar experience: While Palestinian hikers once walked linear routes for miles, they now — fearing attacks by settlers — often use circular routes sticking closer to their villages.
“We used to roam for hours,” said Jamal Aruri, 61, a retired photographer and experienced hiker at the front of the group. “Now, we walk in circles.”
As Israeli settlers build more encampments across the valleys of the West Bank, the hiking trails that Mr. Aruri has walked since childhood are, one by one, being turned into dead ends.
The war in Gaza distracted international attention from Israel’s expanded settlement activity in the West Bank. But the cease-fire has renewed scrutiny of tensions in the West Bank, where unauthorized construction by settlers is visibly transforming the landscape day by day and violent attacks are prompting small Palestinian communities to dwindle in size and even to pull up stakes entirely.
Settler outposts — often small clusters of tents or trailers or simple farmsteads with animal sheds — are increasingly cutting off Palestinians from the land. It’s a process that has been happening since Israel captured the territory from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. But it has accelerated since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office in late 2022, with several longtime settler leaders in his coalition.
Since then, settlers have built over 130 outposts — more than in the previous two decades combined — that are technically unauthorized but usually protected and provided with crucial infrastructure by the Israeli government. Because of the risk of confrontation with armed settlers or Israeli soldiers if Palestinians draw near, each outpost effectively renders the surrounding land off-limits to Palestinians in many cases.
As a result, according to the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous administration that oversees parts of the West Bank, these new settler projects have since 2023 allowed settlers to exert control over an extra 123,000 acres.
Palestinian herding communities have borne the brunt of this expansion. Intimidated and pressured by the settlers’ encroaching presence, at least 38 herding communities have abandoned their hamlets since 2023, according to records compiled by B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group.
Palestinian hikers have also been badly affected. The West Bank is a land of terraced hills, steep valleys and ancient olive trees, where generations of Palestinians have walked the footpaths between villages. Now, new roads — built by settlers to connect their outposts to Israeli highways — are effectively blocking off well-known trails to Palestinian hikers leery of confrontations with settlers using the roads.
Mr. Aruri’s hikes tell the story of this slow-motion takeover.
After steering clear of the two settlers, Mr. Aruri’s group suddenly encountered another obstacle — a freshly opened dirt road, cut across the hillside.
There were no official signs, no markings, just the quiet assertion of a new reality. This was a settler road, built by Israelis living in outposts considered illegal not only by most of the international community, but also not even authorized by their own government.
The hikers exchanged glances. They knew that proceeding farther risked a violent encounter. Without a word, Mr. Aruri turned in a different direction, cutting about a kilometer from their planned journey.
“This is what hiking has become in the West Bank: a series of advances and retreats, always circling back,” said Shawkat Sarsour, 55, an agricultural expert.
Before heading out, hikers in the West Bank have a checklist similar to those anywhere, making sure they have the right footwear, clothing, snacks and other gear for the day. But hiking here now requires a different kind of preparation, unique to the West Bank: Routes must be scouted in advance for new blockades or military patrols.
And while hikers elsewhere may stay alert for signs of dangerous animals, here, people keep an eye out for drones, buzzing like mechanical wasps, which are often a warning that settlers or soldiers are near, Mr. Aruri explained.
For all the changes in recent years, the most noticeable shift is in the distances hiked. Where the journeys once stretched 20 kilometers — about 12 miles — across open valleys, many now loop back within eight miles.
“It’s not fear,” Mr. Aruri said. “It’s simple math. The land left to us is shrinking.”
For decades, Mr. Aruri’s photography documented wars and uprisings.
Now, he trains his lens on the land itself — wild irises pushing through cracked bedrock or the gnarled trunks of olive trees that have stood for centuries. His photography book, “Secrets of the Caves,” documents the grottoes where Palestinians once hid during wars.
“These caves are our archives,” he said, but many of them are now off-limits.
The hikers who regularly join Mr. Aruri are an unlikely coalition — university students, workers at nonprofits, businesspeople, farmers and their children.
After the coronavirus lockdowns in 2020, the group swelled. “People were desperate for open air,” Mr. Aruri recalled. “And we realized: Walking is a way to maintain physical and mental health.”
But to minimize risk, Mr. Aruri now limits his groups to no more than 12 people.
In the past, his group often changed its routes according to the season: springtime trails through wild anemones, summer routes near grape farms and late autumn walks among carob and fig trees. In December, they venture into warmer parts to the northeast. “We wanted to walk with the land, not just on it,” Mr. Aruri said.
But it is increasingly hard to do that. He avoids trails near recently established outposts, especially in the northern West Bank, where attacks have spiked. Some trails that he used to love — routes passing through lush meadows near the village of Ein al-Beida or near springs in the South Hebron Hills — are now no-go zones.
“Some of the trails have vanished completely,” Mr. Aruri said. “We walk at the edges of cities,” he added, since the more remote areas “are taken over by settlers.”
Still, he’s determined to continue. “If we stop walking, we let go,” he says. “And I’m not ready to let go.”
“Every walk is a way of saying we are here,” he added, “even when we can’t reach every spring or cave we once knew.”
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2) Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro
In public, the White House says it is confronting Venezuela to curb drug trafficking. Behind the scenes, gaining access to the country’s vast oil reserves is a priority.
By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, Dec. 16, 2025
The reporters have covered President Trump’s military operations and pressure campaign against Venezuela throughout the year.
Oil drilling equipment in Cabimas, Venezuela. The country has about 17 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, nearly four times the amount in the United States. Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
The Nobel Peace Prize winner made her pitch by live video to a business conference in Miami attended by American executives and politicians, including President Trump.
“I am talking about a $1.7 trillion opportunity,” María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s main opposition leader, said last month, weeks after winning the peace prize for challenging Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic leader.
She highlighted Venezuela’s enormous oil and gas reserves — “We will open all, upstream, midstream, downstream, to all companies” — as well as its minerals and power infrastructure. Her message has been unwavering since early this year, when she boasted of her country’s “infinite potential” for U.S. companies on a podcast hosted by the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
She has had a receptive audience.
The president and his aides have insisted publicly that their lethal military operations around Venezuela and pressure campaign against Mr. Maduro are mainly aimed at protecting Americans from drug trafficking. But Venezuela is not a drug producer, and narcotics smuggled through the country mostly go to Europe.
Behind the scenes, administration officials have also focused intently on Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
Their importance is evident in secret negotiations between U.S. officials and Mr. Maduro about oil, and in conversations that Mr. Trump’s aides and allies have had with Ms. Machado and other Venezuelan opposition figures.
Mr. Trump has publicly made clear his interest in control of Venezuela’s reserves. In a speech to Republicans in North Carolina in 2023, four years after he backed efforts during his first term to oust Mr. Maduro, Mr. Trump said, “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door.”
The role of oil in the soaring tensions between Mr. Maduro and Mr. Trump was underscored by the dramatic U.S. seizure on Wednesday of a tanker that was traveling across the Caribbean Sea carrying crude for Cuba and China. Mr. Trump said he would keep the cargo, though his legal authority to do that is questionable.
The action was a sharp escalation in Mr. Trump’s monthslong campaign against Mr. Maduro, which has included 25 attacks on boats that have killed at least 95 people, acts that many legal experts say are illegal.
Venezuela and its oil lie at the nexus of two of Mr. Trump’s stated national security priorities: dominance of energy resources and control of the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela has about 17 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, or more than 300 billion barrels, nearly four times the amount in the United States. And no nation has a bigger foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry than China, the superpower whose immense trade presence in the Western Hemisphere the Trump administration aims to curb.
“When President Trump has talked about Venezuela and other comparable countries, he has always emphasized the importance of having the U.S. have access to those oil resources,” said Francisco R. Rodríguez, a professor at the University of Denver who studies the political economy of Venezuela.
Mr. Trump has spoken repeatedly about getting oil and other natural resources as a reward for U.S. military intervention on foreign soil. “I’ve always said take the oil” was a favorite line in his 2016 presidential campaign.
In his first term, he said he would “keep the oil” in Syria because of U.S. troops there. He has said the United States should have taken oil from Iraq and Libya as payment for military interventions that toppled those governments.
In 2019, Mr. Trump ordered his aides to have Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader at the time, commit to giving the United States access to his country’s oil and shutting out China and Russia if Mr. Guaidó wrested power from Mr. Maduro in a U.S.-backed effort, according to a memoir by John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser. Mr. Bolton called it “vast overreaching.”
Mr. Maduro sees Venezuela’s oil as an important geopolitical tool as well.
The country’s leaders rely on China’s oil purchases as a bulwark against economic sanctions imposed by the first Trump administration and kept on by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In April, Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president of Venezuela, asked Chinese leaders during a visit to Beijing to make greater investments in her country’s oil industry and to buy more crude. China already accounts for 80 percent of Venezuelan oil purchases.
Oil Under Duress
In recent months, Mr. Trump’s aides have debated how to get greater access to Venezuela’s oil for American companies, given Mr. Maduro’s hostility and China’s presence, current and former officials say.
Richard Grenell, a special envoy dealing with Venezuela and the president of the Kennedy Center, has led talks aimed at reaching a grand bargain with Mr. Maduro. The Venezuelan leader made an offer to Mr. Trump that included opening up the country’s oil industry to Americans, beyond the limited access given to Chevron, which operates there with a newly extended confidential license from the U.S. government.
Mr. Trump has rejected that offer, because other top aides have successfully argued that Mr. Maduro cannot be trusted and is playing for time. That camp, led by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, has pushed for forcefully ousting Mr. Maduro. They argue that a conservative, free-market-oriented leader — namely Ms. Machado — would favor U.S. companies and limit Chinese investment.
Mr. Trump suggested to Mr. Maduro in a phone call last month that he leave office. Mr. Maduro has refused to give up power anytime soon, despite the buildup of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean and Mr. Trump’s repeated threat of going beyond boat strikes to hitting targets inside Venezuela.
The seizure of the tanker and new sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector are aimed at shaking Mr. Maduro’s stubbornness by demonstrating that the United States is willing to choke off the country’s greatest source of income, current and former officials said.
The United States is likely to seize more tankers carrying Venezuelan oil soon, U.S. officials said. As it did last week, the U.S. government could justify any future seizures by citing a history of the tankers’ carrying oil from Iran, which is under a stricter set of sanctions than Venezuela.
The United States has seized only a handful of oil tankers in recent years. All those actions have been based on suspicion of Iranian oil's being used to finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian military that the first Trump administration designated a foreign terrorist organization, said Edward Fishman, a former sanctions specialist at the State Department.
A few more U.S. seizures of tankers carrying Venezuelan oil could lead to companies’ deciding to avoid the country and a subsequent loss of oil revenues, said Tom Warrick, a former State Department official who also worked as an oil industry lawyer.
“The Trump administration strategy is now revealed as very clearly targeting that cash flow,” he said. “Venezuela has a fairly small amount of cash on hand, so losing that tanker will start to hurt fairly quickly.”
Mr. Trump has not spoken publicly about helping American companies get a bigger share of Venezuela’s oil as a goal of that campaign. But he has often mentioned it privately, said people familiar with the conversations.
In talks this year, U.S. officials negotiated with Mr. Maduro on potential arrangements to push Chinese and Russian oil companies out of Venezuela and to open up a bigger role for American companies.
China has curbed its direct investment in Venezuela’s industry in recent years. Mr. Maduro appeared interested in attracting greater American investment, U.S. officials said. But he remained adamant about holding onto power, so the talks stalled.
Drilling in Wartime
Mr. Trump has authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, and he could decide to oust Mr. Maduro violently, using the agency as the spearhead or the U.S. military or both.
However, many experts on Venezuela expect the aftermath of such an action to be chaotic. U.S. officials from several agencies in the first Trump administration reached that conclusion in war games in 2019.
Turmoil in a post-Maduro Venezuela could complicate the desire and ability of American companies to expand their presence there.
No major Western oil companies immediately entered Iraq or Libya after the U.S. military interventions there that brought down the governments and ignited civil wars. It took years for bigger companies to start operations in those countries. By contrast, Chinese oil companies signed contracts to operate in Iraq’s southern fields during the civil war, and they have generally had a much greater risk tolerance for being in conflict zones.
The appetite of large U.S. companies for entering the Venezuelan industry could well depend on whether the U.S. pressure campaign and any military operations result in chaos or stability.
“American oil companies work in some pretty dangerous neighborhoods, but what they are going to be interested in is the bottom line,” said Oliver B. John, who worked as a U.S. diplomat on economic issues in Gulf Arab nations.
Chevron has operated in Venezuela for a century and is the one American company that stuck it out in the country as the Venezuelan government forced Western firms decades ago to become minority partners in joint ventures with the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA.
American companies were a major presence in the industry until the 1970s. That decade, Venezuelan leaders put the industry under state control, creating PDVSA, in a popular action that was a hallmark of the country’s democratic and nationalist movements. Hugo Chávez, the socialist leader, enshrined that in the Constitution after he came to power in 1999.
Ms. Machado has talked in general terms about how she would reshape the industry if she were to take power. She said in a video talk in June with the Council of the Americas, a business group in New York, that she would enact a “process of privatization” and have a national agency open the sector to private investment. The goal would be for Venezuela to produce about three million barrels per day of oil within 10 years, triple the current production rate, she said.
However, a nationalized industry is popular with Venezuelans because of its historical roots, and “privatizing Venezuela’s oil industry would be controversial in many senses,” Mr. Rodríguez said.
The struggles of the industry intensified after the first Trump administration imposed sanctions on it. Those hobbled operations throughout the country, including refineries that can process oil with high sulfur content, typical of Venezuelan crude. Chevron’s joint venture in Venezuela has used oil refineries along the Gulf Coast of the United States, and other U.S. companies expanding into Venezuela could take advantage of that capacity.
The largest foreign company with investments and operations in the Venezuelan industry is China National Petroleum Corporation, or CNPC, a state-owned enterprise that does joint ventures with PDVSA. But since 2019, it has taken a more passive role in Venezuela to avoid violating U.S. sanctions. Last year, a private Chinese company, China Concord Resources Corporation, signed a 20-year contract with PDVSA to invest more than $1 billion to develop Venezuelan oil fields.
These days, Venezuelan oil going to China is a result of purchases by Chinese private companies, Mr. Rodríguez said.
Chinese national energy companies were receiving Venezuelan oil as a result of Chinese state-owned banks’ taking oil as payment for loans to the Venezuelan government. But Venezuela faltered in making payments years ago — the debt was $19 billion in 2020 — and China has stopped lending to it.
Chinese officials and executives have become more cautious when engaging with Venezuela, while still looking for ways to work with Mr. Maduro’s government, said Margaret Myers, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University who studies China’s relations with Latin America.
“There has been growing disillusionment on the part of China,” she said. “But they remain committed to generally staying put.”
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3) Trump Orders Blockade of Some Oil Tankers to and From Venezuela
The move is an escalation of military operations and a pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader. But its scope and economic impact are not clear.
By Edward Wong, Simon Romero, Charlie Savage and Julian E. Barnes, Published Dec. 16, 2025
Updated Dec. 17, 2025
Reporting from Washington and Bogotá, Colombia
“Behind the scenes, Trump administration officials have also focused intently on Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. … Mr. Trump also wrote that the U.S. operation would continue until Venezuela returned to the United States ‘all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.’ Mr. Trump did not define what he meant by those assets. He might have been referring to the changes in Venezuela’s oil industry after leaders there put it under state control in the 1970s. American oil companies had been prominent players in the industry for decades before that. During nationalization, Exxon, Mobil, Shell and Gulf Oil lost $5 billion in assets and were compensated only $1 billion, according to a New York Times article from that time. Until then, foreign companies accounted for 70 percent of the oil production in Venezuela. … Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, referred to the history of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela when he wrote on social media: ‘American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/politics/trump-blockade-venezuela-oil-tankers.html
Oil tankers anchored in Punto Fijo, Venezuela, in 2021. Venezuela relies entirely on tankers to export its oil to world markets. Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
President Trump on Tuesday ordered a “complete blockade” on sanctioned oil tankers going to and from Venezuela, an escalation of his administration’s monthslong pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
The move could hobble Venezuela’s oil exports, which are the lifeblood of the country’s economy. Venezuela relies entirely on tankers to export its oil to world markets. There were more than 30 vessels operating in Venezuela earlier this month that had been sanctioned by the United States, according to the independent tracking service Tanker Trackers.
Last Wednesday, the United States seized a tanker in the Caribbean Sea that was carrying Venezuelan oil for Cuba and China. A federal judge had issued a warrant for the seizure based on the fact that the tanker had recently transported oil from Iran.
The U.S. military has been building up a large naval force in the Caribbean in recent months, and Mr. Trump has threatened strikes inside Venezuela. Since September, the U.S. military has been carrying out airstrikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, many of them near Venezuela, in a campaign that has killed at least 95 people in 25 attacks.
Mr. Trump has said those attacks are aimed at stopping drug trafficking to the United States. But Venezuela is not a drug producer, and the cocaine that transits through the country and the waters around it is generally bound for Europe. Many legal experts say that the attacks are illegal and that the military is killing civilians.
Behind the scenes, Trump administration officials have also focused intently on Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
In his social media announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote in all capital letters that he was ordering a “a total and complete blockade,” which by itself would have been a substantial step. In international law, a blockade prevents all vessels from entering and leaving the ports of an enemy country during an armed conflict. But Mr. Trump added the qualifier “of all sanctioned oil vessels,” which changed the meaning.
Mr. Trump appeared to be threatening to enforce existing sanctions against some of the tankers exporting oil. If the U.S. Navy continues to allow most vessels to freely enter and leave Venezuelan ports, it is not a real blockade.
Still, any threat of seizure may be enough to scare off many companies that transport Venezuelan oil.
Mr. Trump also wrote that the U.S. operation would continue until Venezuela returned to the United States “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Some American companies re-entered the industry in the 1990s during a period of loosening by Caracas. But they were later forced by Hugo Chávez, who became leader of Venezuela in 1999, to limit their investments to minority shares in joint ventures with the main state-owned enterprise, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA. Almost all American companies chose to leave.
Chevron is the one American company that stayed in Venezuela through all those decades and through the recent era of U.S. sanctions, and it continues to operate there with a newly extended confidential license from the U.S. government. Mr. Trump’s announcement of a blockade is not expected to have an effect on Chevron, the company said.
“Chevron’s operations in Venezuela continue without disruption and in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable to its business, as well as the sanctions frameworks provided for by the U.S. government,” Bill Turenne, a spokesman for Chevron, said in a statement. “Any questions about the security situation in Venezuela should be directed to the appropriate authorities in the U.S. government.”
On Wednesday morning, Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, referred to the history of U.S. oil companies in Venezuela when he wrote on social media: “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
After the tanker seizure last Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he planned to keep the oil, though it is unclear what legal authority gives him the right to do so.
Since at least 2019, when Mr. Trump supported an effort to oust Mr. Maduro, he has said both privately and publicly that the United States should take Venezuela’s oil. Earlier this year, Mr. Trump sent an envoy to negotiate with Mr. Maduro over access to Venezuela’s oil. And the main opposition leader in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, has promised Mr. Trump’s aides and allies that if she were to take power, she would open up the industry to American investment.
Even before Mr. Trump’s announcement of a blockade, a U.S. official said the administration had made plans to seize more tankers that were carrying Venezuelan oil or going to pick it up.
The Treasury Department generally puts a tanker on a sanctions list when U.S. officials conclude the vessel has violated sanctions that the United States has imposed on a country’s oil industry.
In recent years, the United States has seized only a handful of oil tankers in international waters. In all those cases, the tankers had a history of carrying Iranian oil, which the U.S. government considers to be a resource that helps finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian military designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization.
Like the seizure last Wednesday, future efforts by the United States to board and seize tankers carrying Venezuelan oil could be based on warrants issued in a U.S. federal court that cite a history of transporting Iranian oil.
In his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the Venezuelan government had been designated a foreign terrorist organization. That appeared to refer to announcements this year by the Treasury Department and State Department that they were making the designation on a group in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles.
But experts on Venezuela say the term does not refer to a literal organization; instead, it is a figure of speech in Venezuela, dating back to the 1990s, for Venezuelan military officials corrupted by drug money.
In any case, the Trump administration has yet to seize a tanker using a federal warrant based on an argument that the vessel is carrying oil that finances the organization.
China buys about 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil. Those purchases are made by Chinese private companies, said Francisco Rodríguez, a professor at Denver University who studies Venezuela’s political economy. The other 20 percent of the country’s oil exports go to a variety of other nations, including Cuba, which relies on some of the Venezuelan oil for energy needs but sells most of it to China.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting from Washington.
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4) Trump Revised Chevron’s Venezuela Deal. Maduro’s Oil Trader Profited.
A firm controlled by a businessman tied to a seized tanker carrying Venezuelan oil has sold millions of barrels from a Chevron-operated oil field.
By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Tyler Pager, Reporting from Washington, Dec. 17, 2025
The Greece-flagged oil tanker Minerva Astra, in the distance, chartered by Chevron, departing after loading heavy crude for export at the port of Bajo Grande, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Credit...Isaac Urrutia/Reuters
Republicans criticized the Biden administration for years for allowing Chevron to export oil from Venezuela, arguing that it helped finance President Nicolás Maduro’s totalitarian and corrupt government.
After returning to power, President Trump halted and then changed the terms of Chevron’s operations in Venezuela, contending that it minimizes the company’s financial transfers to the country. Rather than funneling dollars into Venezuela directly, Chevron now hands part of the oil it produces to the Venezuelan government, which continues to own the oil fields.
But, data shows, the biggest beneficiary of the new arrangement has been a businessman the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on for working with the Maduro family.
Internal data from Venezuela’s state oil company, known as PDVSA, shows that an oil trading company linked to the sanctioned businessman has sold all of the crude that the Venezuelan government has received from Chevron’s largest oil field since the Trump administration allowed the company to resume exporting from Venezuela this summer.
Since July, the trading company connected to the businessman, a Panamanian named Ramón Carretero, has sold roughly $500 million worth of crude from the Petroboscán oil field, the data shows.
The Trump administration appears to be aware of the potential windfall for the Maduro regime and moved on Tuesday to cut it off. Mr. Trump on Tuesday night declared that he was imposing a “blockade’’ on sanctioned oil tankers moving into or out of Venezuela.
Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department applied sanctions on Mr. Carretero for working “on behalf of the Venezuelan government.”
The businessman has “engaged in lucrative contracts with the Maduro regime and has had various business dealings with the Maduro-Flores family, including partnering in several companies together,” the agency said in a statement, referring to Mr. Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores.
“The administration has been consistent in denying any funding the Maduro regime uses to oppress the Venezuelan people,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Treasury said they closely monitor the sanctions programs and take claims of violations seriously.
The White House and Treasury both said they cannot comment on specific licenses. The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Carretero, through a legal representative, declined to comment.
Chevron, in a statement in response to questions for this article, said its “operations in Venezuela continue in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable to its business, as well as the sanctions frameworks provided for by the U.S. government.”
Mr. Carretero’s oil trade underlines the conflicting tactics pursued by the Trump administration in its escalating standoff with Mr. Maduro, whom it has labeled a “narco-terrorist.”
On the one hand, the Trump administration has moved to cut off Mr. Maduro’s funding and isolate his government, including seizing a tanker last week tied to Mr. Carretero.
On the other, the White House has allowed Chevron to continue working in Venezuela to preserve the United States’ footprint in a country with vast natural reserves, according to people close to the administration.
This has put Chevron in the position of having to simultaneously meet the legal demands of Washington and Caracas.
Chevron produces about 240,000 barrels of oil in Venezuela — more than a fifth of the country’s total — and represents a major part of the country’s economy. Last year, under its previous arrangement with the Biden administration, Chevron funneled nearly $2.4 billion into the Venezuelan economy, about a third of Venezuela’s entire legal hard currency supply that year.
Venezuela’s oil industry has been under U.S. sanctions since 2019, when Mr. Trump had an earlier standoff with Mr. Maduro during his first White House term. He banned American entities from working with PDVSA in an effort to pressure Mr. Maduro to leave office.
To work in Venezuela, Western firms need to obtain special licenses from the U.S. Treasury.
Despite claims by Republicans and the Venezuelan opposition, the license issued to Chevron by the Biden administration in 2022 directed funds to channels outside the direct control of Venezuela’s government.
Chevron sold the oil that it produced in Venezuela to the United States and deposited the share of the proceeds it owed the Venezuelan government in dollars into designated private Venezuelan banks. Those banks then sold the dollars directly to businesses that used them to import goods and make investments, propelling the country’s modest recent economic recovery.
Bypassing the government, the arrangement was meant to benefit American businesses and improve living conditions for Venezuelans.
The deal was also meant to reduce Venezuela’s economic reliance on China, by offering the country a legal pathway to sell its natural resources, through Chevron, to the United States, according to former and current U.S. officials.
Shortly after returning to office in January, Mr. Trump scrapped Chevron’s license, calling the deal a concession to Mr. Maduro by “Crooked Joe Biden.” He ordered the company to begin winding down operations in Venezuela.
“Oil is maybe the only thing they have left under this, you know, regime,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, said in a podcast with the Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, in February, shortly after the president announced he was canceling the license. “And Maduro’s cronies are sitting on it, they’re profiteering from it, they’re skimming from it.”
“Hopefully this is something that pulls that card away from him,” Donald Trump Jr. said, referring to Mr. Maduro.
Ms. Machado, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, supported the cancellation. “Maduro has to understand that President Trump is serious,” she told Donald Trump Jr. in the podcast.
The hiatus in Chevron’s operations proved short lived. Following a lobbying effort, which included several conversations between Mr. Trump and Mike Wirth, Chevron’s chief executive, the Treasury Department issued the company a new license in July, according to U.S. and Venezuelan officials, and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry.
Under the new license, which has not been made public, the company was no longer to pay royalties through private banks, but instead had to give PDVSA its share of the oil as an in-kind payment.
Some Republicans argued that the change would not benefit Mr. Maduro, even though the Venezuelan state would now directly receive part of Chevron’s production.
“No matter what the Maduro regime says, they will receive no benefits,” Mario Díaz-Balart, a Republican Representative from Florida, wrote on X after news reports of Chevron’s new license. “There is no greater friend of the cause of freedom for the Venezuelan people than President Trump.”
Mr. Díaz-Balart’s office did not respond to request for comment.
“This outcome was clear from the start,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Democratic Representative from Florida, who has criticized the terms of the new of the new Chevron license. “PDVSA is the financial backbone of Venezuela’s regime. Any deal that runs through it, without strict and enforceable democratic conditions, will in turn strengthen the regime.”
PDVSA data shows that the main direct financial beneficiaries of Chevron’s current license has been a trading firm controlled by Mr. Carretero, the businessman now under sanctions for ties to Mr. Maduro.
The data shows that the firm, Shineful Energy, has won all the contracts to export PDVSA’s share of the crude from Petroboscán since July. Those contracts add up to nearly 11 million barrels.
That oil is owned and distributed by PDVSA, and Chevron plays no part in its sale.
Shineful exports Venezuelan oil almost exclusively to China, in complex transactions involving cryptocurrency, according to people inside Venezuela’s oil industry, who discussed sensitive topics on condition of anonymity.
The people said it is unclear where that revenue goes, but added that it does not stream directly into Venezuela’s economy. The amount of hard currency entering Venezuela’s formal economy this year has actually fallen significantly, even as the country’s oil exports have risen, economic data shows.
Under the Biden administration deal, Chevron had exported all the oil that it produced in Venezuela and delivered it to refineries in the United States through its in-house trading arm, the PDVSA data shows.
Shipping data shows that Chevron has continued exporting its contractual share of crude oil production in Venezuela after the Trump administration seized the oil tanker, which is called Skipper and was heading toward Asia. That ship carried oil owned by another company tied to Mr. Carretero.
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5) South Africa Arrests Workers Processing U.S. Refugee Applications
Seven Kenyans were detained for working in the country illegally, officials said. The arrests came amid rising tensions after the United States prioritized white Afrikaners seeking asylum.
By Lynsey Chutel, Dec. 17, 2025
South Africans rallying in support of President Trump outside the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, in February. Credit...Joao Silva/The New York Times
The authorities in South Africa said on Wednesday that they had arrested and would deport seven Kenyan nationals who were working illegally at a center processing refugee applications for the United States.
President Trump has drastically cut the number of refugees that the United States will accept but has prioritized white Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers to South Africa, after falsely claiming that they were victims of a genocide.
South African law enforcement officials on Tuesday arrested the Kenyans in an operation at a processing center in Johannesburg, the Department of Home Affairs said in a statement. It said that they had entered South Africa on tourist visas and were working illegally “at a center processing the applications of so-called ‘refugees’ to the United States.” The seven Kenyans will not be allowed to return to South Africa for five years.
The Department of Home Affairs added that their applications to work in South Africa had previously been rejected and that no American officials had been detained.
The arrests come as relations between South Africa and the Trump administration have plunged over its policy of prioritizing Afrikaners. Mr. Trump has used his claim that they are facing racial persecution to punish South Africa, imposing high tariffs, cutting aid and making Afrikaners one of the only groups allowed to seek refugee status in the United States.
In November, the president refused to attend the Group of 20 summit in South Africa because of the Afrikaner issue, and he has said the country will not be welcome when the United States hosts the event next year.
“We are seeking immediate clarification from the South African government and expect full cooperation and accountability,” Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement.
“Interfering in our refugee operations is unacceptable,” he added.
South African authorities said they arrested the Kenyans as part of its efforts to curb illegal immigration. Over the past year, the government has increased a crackdown on undocumented migrants, and politicians from across the spectrum have zeroed in on immigration to appeal to voters.
The Department of Home Affairs said the raid showed South Africa’s shared commitment with the United States in “combating illegal immigration and visa abuse in all its forms.”
“The presence of foreign officials apparently coordinating with undocumented workers naturally raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol,” it added.
Zimasa Matiwane and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
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6) The Movie I Was Afraid to See
By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 17, 2025
Yara Nardi/Reuters
I was afraid to see “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” I knew that the movie is based on the recordings of a 5-year-old Gazan girl, trapped in a car with the bodies of her family members, speaking with rescue workers. I knew that the girl — Hind Rajab — was eventually killed, too. And I knew that the film was made by Kaouther Ben Hania, the Tunisian director who has invented ways to mix documentary and fiction filmmaking that make it impossible to look away.
The movie isn’t suspenseful, in the sense that you know how the story ends. And it is eerily kind to the viewer, who never has to see the little girl stuck in the car, the little girl terrified of being killed, the little girl dying. All you see are the rescue-center workers at their office in Ramallah (the film was actually shot on a set in Tunisia) — computers, glass partitions, a soaring but sterile view of the sky. Their task is to coordinate: to get clearance for an ambulance in Gaza to pick up the child. It’s an eight-minute drive for the ambulance, but the car can’t set off until its mission and route are approved — we never know exactly by whom. Eventually, as I knew going in, the ambulance would be shelled by Israeli forces and everyone would die.
What I didn’t realize when I resisted seeing the movie was that these deaths were not its subject. The subject of the movie is the moral injury inflicted on people who became implicated in these deaths, even as they tried to prevent them. Had I known, I might have been even more scared of seeing “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” because this focus hits even closer to home.
The most important word in this film is “coordination.” This word is whispered and yelled, mouthed with desperate need, shouted with disdain, and called forth as though it were a magic spell.
Coordination is the process by which rescue workers arrange for a safe route for an ambulance. At one point, Mahdi, one of the four central characters in the film, explains the process: He calls the Red Cross in Jerusalem; the Red Cross calls a unit of the Israeli Defense Ministry called COGAT, which stands for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories; COGAT and troops on the ground agree on a route, which is communicated to the Red Cross, which sends it to Mahdi — who said, “But receiving the route doesn’t mean we have the green light. The green light to deploy the ambulance is another step from A to Z. I have to follow this procedure to the letter, because if we don’t, they could shoot at our ambulance and say it’s our fault.”
It’s a long process, and like any bureaucratic process, it consists primarily of waiting. Omar, another rescue worker, who has been speaking to Hind directly, finds the waiting intolerable. He wants to bypass coordination and dispatch the ambulance directly. But Mahdi can’t risk the lives of the rescue workers on the ground.
The word “coordination” jumped out at me because this word — Gleichschaltung in German — had a special meaning in 1930s Germany. It was used to describe the process of people and institutions falling in line: universities adopting Nazi policies, prominent entrepreneurs and academics swearing allegiance to Hitler or wearing Nazi symbols. Some people “coordinated” because they believed in the Nazi project, others coordinated because they felt it would advance their careers or bring profits to their businesses, and still others coordinated because they felt they had no choice.
(Ben Hania, the director, told me by email that she was not aware of that resonance. “In the film, the term ‘coordination’ is the direct translation” of the Arabic word “tanseeq,” she wrote. “Any resemblance to other historical uses of the term is purely coincidental and was not part of my intention or reference while making the film.”)
The people in this film have no choice but to coordinate, but their relationships to coordination are different. Mahdi seems to see it as his duty to follow the rules, because that will keep the maximum number of people alive. Omar sees himself and his colleagues as becoming complicit in inflicting fear, injury and ultimately death on the little girl. Mahdi points to photographs of Gazan rescue workers who have died: He is struggling to protect those who remain. Omar yells at him. “How can you coordinate with the army who killed them and all those people?” he asks. Eventually, they come to blows. Omar curses about green lights and coordination, and shouts, “It’s because of people like you that we’re occupied.”
A couple of years ago, I spent several months reporting on an underground network of Russian volunteers who were doing similar work, getting people out of occupied or besieged parts of Ukraine. The people I interviewed were opposed to the war, but their work involved a seemingly endless series of compromises, big and small. The hardest cases — very sick or elderly people who needed to be evacuated by ambulance, for example — required the volunteers to work with the Russian military, the same military that was reducing Ukrainian towns to rubble, the rubble from underneath which people had to be rescued. I was told that sometimes, after people were rescued, Russian propaganda outlets would use them to illustrate the supposed cruelty of Ukrainians and the humanity of the Russian state. The volunteers continued their work, at great personal risk, because they had decided that they cared about saving lives more than they cared about being used by the propaganda machine.
At one point in “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Omar proposes that the Palestinian Ministry of Health call the Israeli military to pitch the idea that they rescue Hind and use her for propaganda purposes. The people in the room seem stunned at the suggestion. It may sound brilliant, but it would not work. An unspoken understanding hangs in the air — Palestinians have been so thoroughly dehumanized by the Israeli media that it’s unimaginable that even a 5-year-old girl could be seen as anything but the enemy.
Eventually, there is an approved route, but still no “green light.” The little girl, of course, cannot understand how it is that adults are failing to help her. One of the women rescue workers, Rana, tries to explain that the rescue workers are like a big family, and that “my brothers and sisters at the Red Crescent are coordinating,” adding, “I swear, we are doing what we can.”
She repeats: “We need to coordinate to get there.” It has been more than two hours.
One of the last times we hear the word, it’s Hind’s mother who is speaking. She has been patched in so she can speak with her child. She wants to know whether the team has coordinated. The rescue workers assure her they have.
They were about 200 feet from Hind when the ambulance was shelled. She lived for at least an hour after that.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and took the Grand Jury Prize, the second-highest honor. A few days later, it was screened to great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival. High-profile U.S. distribution companies came calling. But then, the producers Odessa Rae and Elizabeth Woodward told me, one by one the companies peeled off. In the end, Woodward, who has a small distribution company, put together something akin to self-distribution. The movie opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday. Elsewhere in the world this film, shortlisted for the Oscar for best foreign movie, has major distributors — but not in the United States or Israel. That’s a kind of coordination, too.
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7) The Secret Trial of the General Who Refused to Attack Tiananmen Square
In 1989, Gen. Xu Qinxian defied orders to crush the pro-democracy protests in Beijing. Now, leaked video from his court-martial is on YouTube.
By Chris Buckley, Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan, Dec. 17, 2025
A six-hour video from the secret 1990 court-martial of Xu Qinxian, a Chinese general who refused to take part in what became a massacre in Beijing, has been leaked and posted online. Credit...YouTube
When China’s rulers ordered tens of thousands of soldiers to crush pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989, Gen. Xu Qinxian was the commander who famously said no.
He refused to lead his troops into the capital to help clear the protesters in Tiananmen Square by armed force. For decades, the story of his defiance remained murky.
Now, a leaked video of his secret court-martial has shed a rare light on General Xu, and on the tensions inside the military as Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader at the time, prepared to send the soldiers into Beijing. That deployment culminated in the killing of hundreds — by some estimates, thousands — of unarmed people on June 3 and 4 as soldiers fired on protesters and bystanders.
In the trial footage, General Xu explains that he refused the order as a matter of individual conscience and professional judgment. He tells judges that sending armed troops against civilians would lead to chaos and bloodshed, saying that a commander who carried out martial law poorly would go down as “a sinner in history.”
General Xu had risen from a family of small-time vendors to command the 38th Group Army, one of the military’s most prestigious units. But by the time of his court-martial in 1990, captured in the video, he had been stripped of his command, charged with disobeying martial law orders, and brought before the judges to defend the decision that abruptly ended his career.
The six-hour video of the trial shows General Xu, in drab civilian clothes, entering a courtroom, guarded by three soldiers. Three judges gaze down from a podium. The courtroom is devoid of spectators.
General Xu does not beg for mercy. Instead, he tersely lays out why he refused to comply.
“I said that whoever carries this out well could be a hero,” he tells the judges, “and I said that whoever carries this out poorly would become a sinner in history.”
It is almost unheard of for such footage, describing internal decision-making and dissent within the Chinese military, to become public, and discussion of the 1989 crackdown is still heavily censored in China. The video, which has been shared on YouTube, a platform blocked in China, has drawn intense interest, with more than a million views on one channel alone.
“It is one thing to read about General Xu taking a stand and following his conscience. It is another to see him sitting in such a vulnerable position in court,” said Jeremy Brown, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada who wrote a history of the Tiananmen protests and crackdown. “To see Xu explain how he decided to refuse to follow a bad order from his well-informed military perspective forces the observer to think: ‘What would I do in this situation?’”
General Xu tells the judges that he was speaking only for himself, not for the 38th Army, in refusing the order.
His account, along with the testimony of other generals cited by the judges and prosecutor at his trial, provides new insights into how Chinese leaders secretively developed and conveyed the plans for martial law and tried to stifle misgivings in the People’s Liberation Army.
General Xu, perhaps like other generals, was summoned individually to hear the orders. It may have been an effort to prevent them from sharing any concerns, said Wu Renhua, an independent historian from China who now lives in Taiwan. Mr. Wu, who has written several studies of the 1989 pro-democracy uprising and crackdown, also noted that General Xu’s trial showed how the martial law orders were delivered orally, leaving no paper trail.
“This counts as the most important material I have come across in over 30 years of collecting material on June 4,” Mr. Wu said of the trial video.
“General Xu Qinxian’s insubordination was a pivotal event in the June Fourth events, but many details remained unclear before this footage emerged,” said Mr. Wu, who as a young scholar in Beijing went to Tiananmen Square in 1989 to join the protests.
Mr. Wu was among the people who posted the video online, but said he did so only after seeing that others had. He said he had been given the video by a trustworthy source, whose identity he declined to reveal, and that he checked details carefully to confirm that the footage was authentic. Professor Brown and another historian of the Tiananmen protests, Timothy Brook, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, also said they saw no reason to doubt the authenticity of the video.
The trial centers on a tense meeting between General Xu and his commanders on May 18, 1989. For weeks, students had occupied Tiananmen Square, demanding political liberalization. China’s top leader, Deng, wanted a decisive end to the tumult.
General Xu was in a hospital, recovering from a kidney stone, when he was summoned to the Beijing Military Region headquarters. China’s leaders had decided to impose martial law, and General Xu was being ordered to send about 15,000 armed troops from the 38th Army — an elite force based about 90 miles from Beijing — to be part of an initial force of 50,000.
“I said that I had disagreements about this,” General Xu told the court, referring to the martial law order. The protests should be resolved mainly through political means, not by force, he said. If the central government ordered troops in, they should be deployed only to Beijing’s outskirts.
General Xu acknowledged that the 38th Army would have to comply. But he did not want to be part of the operation, he told the commanders.
“I said to them that my superiors can appoint me, and they can also dismiss me,” he recounted in court, seeming to indicate that he was willing to lose his job over his decision.
One of the generals at the meeting, Dai Jingsheng, told investigators that he and his colleagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed General Xu’s defiance. “Nobody expected words like this from Xu,” said General Dai, according to the testimony.
Under questioning, General Xu acknowledged that the military answered to China’s Communist Party leaders. But he suggested that it should also be subject to a broader authority.
He told the commanders that an order so momentous should first be discussed more widely among senior party and government officials and — crucially, perhaps — by the National People’s Congress, the legislature that some moderates in the party also hoped would step in to halt the slide toward carnage.
To support his case, General Xu said the People’s Liberation Army had been “incorporated into the state system” and so answered not only to party leaders, but to the government and lawmakers. (Communist Party leaders, especially Xi Jinping, have since condemned the idea of a “national” military as a threat to the party’s control of the armed forces.)
General Xu “seemed to believe that there was a possibility that his expression of concern would go up the food chain to higher levels that would essentially pump the brakes on martial law,” said Joseph Torigian, a historian of the Chinese Communist Party at American University in Washington who has examined the trial video.
“The trial reveals, I think, that there was a sense even within the military that conversation, dialogue, to try to win over the students — that option had not been exhausted,” Mr. Torigian said.
General Xu seemed to wrestle with how far to take his dissent.
Pressured by his commanders during the Beijing meeting, he relayed the martial law orders to a 38th Army colleague in a phone call, but also told him that he did not want to participate. He later called one of the commanders who had passed on the orders, repeating that he did not want to be involved. The next day, after a 38th Army officer beseeched General Xu to stay with the army if it went into Beijing, he said he would. But by then, it was too late to change course.
“This is intolerable,” one vice chairman of the Chinese military said of General Xu’s actions, according to the trial testimony. Senior leaders cut off his contact with 38th Army officers, and he was later detained.
Under a new commander, the 38th Army became notorious for its bloody advance into Beijing, shooting bystanders as well as people who resisted.
General Xu was sentenced to five years in prison, and he died in 2021 at 85. Parts of his story surfaced in books and news reports. In 2011, he told a Hong Kong newspaper that he had no regrets about his decision.
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8) For Hegseth, There Is One Boat Strike He Doesn’t Want the Public to See
The Pentagon has released plenty of video clips that show American missiles blowing boats suspected of carrying drugs out of the water. But the “double tap” strike on Sept. 2 is being kept under wraps.
By David E. Sanger, Dec. 17, 2025
David E. Sanger has covered five presidents in more than four decades at The Times, writing often about national security and issues of superpower conflict.
“Mr. Trump suggested the real objective was to get Venezuela to return ‘all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.’”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth briefed senators on Tuesday. Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
One of the many oddities of the huge buildup of American forces off Venezuela is the speed at which the Pentagon has released short clips of what it has identified as drug boats being struck and destroyed by American missiles — part deterrence, part bravado, and, to the many legal scholars questioning the legality of the operation, part evidence of extrajudicial killings.
So it was striking that on Tuesday, just as the Pentagon released three more videos, bringing the known death toll on the boats to 95, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there was one the public would never see. It is the video of the now-famous “second strike” on a boat in September that killed two survivors clinging to the remains of an overturned vessel.
“We’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” he told reporters after a classified Senate hearing, citing “longstanding Department of War policy.”
It would hardly be the first time national security was invoked by the government to withhold something that might prove embarrassing, or even legally incriminating. Some members of Congress who have seen the full video have called it shocking, while others describe it as grotesque.
But Mr. Hegseth’s decision, weeks after President Trump said he had “no problem” with releasing the video, only to backtrack, is a glimpse into the depth of the administration’s concern that becoming too transparent about what is happening on the high seas could turn the American public against the strikes. Mr. Hegseth’s critics argue it suggests a coverup underway.
“Pete Hegseth happily releases a video after each strike,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “He recognizes when the American people see this video, they will be repulsed. It is basically the summary execution of two people clinging to wreckage.”
The Pentagon has refused to say why, after the release of roughly two dozen videos of boats being struck in the Caribbean and the Pacific, there is a national security concern about this one. Video of the first strike was released hours after the incident happened; at the time, the Pentagon made no mention of the fact that it had seen two survivors, or that they had been killed in a follow-up strike. Both international law and the military’s own code prohibit killing survivors who no longer pose a threat or are clinging to a shipwreck.
In briefings for select members of Congress a few weeks ago, senior military officials suggested that the two survivors may have remained in the fight, and were waving, either to a nearby boat or to a plane or drone above. It is possible that Mr. Hegseth is basing his national security concern on that set of acts, though it is unclear whether an adversary would learn anything from watching the survivors appealing to be rescued. In the video, they are killed by an American missile just moments after waving for help.
More likely, members of Congress who viewed the video say, the concern is that the two survivors can be seen close up, perhaps from video taken by a nearby drone. “It’s very personal,” said Senator Chris Coons, the Delaware Democrat who has been highly critical of the Pentagon’s changing story about the second strike, and its refusal to make the video public. “We need to all pause and reflect on what is being done on our name.”
“It’s pretty striking that a secretary of defense who has posted, gleefully, video of strikes of drug boats, now says we cannot post a strike of a drug boat,” he concluded.
The government has released shifting information on the boat strikes, about issues big and small.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that every boat destroyed saves 25,000 lives in the United States, which has experienced a wave of fentanyl-related fatalities in recent years. The White House has offered no basis for that conclusion. Heroin is trafficked out of Venezuela, but not fentanyl, which this year is expected to be the cause of roughly 75,000 American deaths. Clearly, the numbers don’t add up.
In the case of the early September strike, the government’s description of the boat’s route has changed. Original accounts suggested it was headed to the United States, perhaps via a Caribbean island. Now officials say it was headed to Suriname, which is southeast of Venezuela. From there the suspected drugs would have likely gone to Africa or Europe, intelligence officials have told Congress.
And now the same is happening with the administration’s statements of its strategic objectives as the president tightens the noose on Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro. Last week, Mr. Trump declared that the reason for the American military buildup was the country’s release of “killers” into the United States. At other moments, he has said the mission was about drugs.
Apparently Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, didn’t believe those explanations. She suggested in a profile in Vanity Fair published this week that the chief motive was regime change. “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” she told Chris Whipple, who has written extensively on occupants of her office.
And then, on Tuesday night, hours after Mr. Hegseth defiantly declared the video of the boat strike would never be made public, Mr. Trump suggested the real objective was to get Venezuela to return “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
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9) They Thought They Had ‘Made It.’ Now They Can’t Afford Food.
New Yorkers in the so-called “missing middle,” who may make too much for food benefits, say it’s still hard to find enough money for groceries.
By Sarah Maslin Nir, Dec. 18, 2025
Jessica Fuentes with her children at the Community Kitchen in West Harlem in December. Ms. Fuentes said she was struggling to keep up with the costs of all of her necessities, like food. Credit...Jackie Molloy for The New York Times
One is a mother of three from Queens, going through a divorce. Another is living on his own for the first time in the Bronx. A third is trying to hold on to an apartment in the Harlem neighborhood where she grew up.
They all work full-time jobs — some more than one. And all of them say they no longer earn enough to keep food on the table.
Blisteringly high rents and rising prices for necessities like child care, transportation and food are pushing New Yorkers to the limit, and beyond. But the pain has been felt not just by the city’s poorest, but even by people far above the federal poverty line, according to a new study by Columbia University and Robin Hood, an anti-poverty group. Last year, more than one in three New Yorkers reported needing more money for food, up from about a quarter before the coronavirus pandemic, the study found. When it came to families with children, the struggling portion was even higher, at 42 percent.
Hundreds of thousands more residents now face a shortfall in their food budgets than did before the pandemic, including an additional 440,000 adults and 70,000 families with children, the study said.
Among them are an increasing number of people who fall into what the study calls “the missing middle” — fully employed people who may make too much to be eligible for public assistance at the grocery store checkout, but not enough to make ends meet at dinnertime.
On a recent day, a 50-year-old woman from Harlem ate a free lunch of corn and rice at Community Kitchen, a food pantry on West 116th Street. She was dressed in the neat office wear she had put on that morning for her 9-to-5 job as an administrative assistant at a financial literacy nonprofit. The woman, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her privacy on a sensitive topic, said she earned $50,000 a year — more than double what a single person her age may earn while remaining eligible for food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
But two months ago, with the bulk of her take-home pay going toward the $2,500 monthly rent for her one-bedroom apartment, she said she felt compelled to seek out food pantries. “I came when I had to start putting stuff back on the grocery store shelves” because it was too expensive, she said.
For a single person who is eligible for SNAP, the maximum monthly benefit is $298; for a family of four, it’s $994 a month.
Food costs in the city increased by about 30 percent from 2013 to 2023, according to the Poverty Tracker from Robin Hood and Columbia University. A report by the state comptroller’s office found that grocery prices in New York City rose even more during the same time period, by 65.8 percent — far more than the national average of about 49 percent.
As the Harlem woman nibbled on a bagel, she said she felt deep guilt for taking resources she believes should be left for those needier than she is, and pain for feeling like she has somehow failed despite holding down a full-time job for years. “It’s a slap in the face,” she said.
This year, for the first time ever, she added, she is not putting up a Christmas tree. “I cannot afford to participate,” she said.
Such experiences are increasingly common, said Chymeka Olfonse, the managing director of adult and household support at Robin Hood, who pointed out that the study covers only 2024. With new tariffs and steadily increasing rents, the real number of people in this situation right now is most likely higher,. “It is surprising when you see all income levels that are struggling,” she said. “It’s not just those who are perceived to be poor.”
For many people, it is also deeply demoralizing, she said. “You feel like, ‘I’ve made it,’ and then you realize: ‘I haven’t made it; I’m still struggling. What am I doing wrong?’” she said. “But their earnings are simply not keeping pace with the rising cost of food.”
And the pain points are likely to worsen as new rules introduced by President Trump’s budget bill will limit who is eligible for SNAP: About 300,000 people in New York State could lose access to the benefit.
Jessica Fuentes, 33, works seven days a week: Monday through Friday as a sales representative for a door and window company, and then the weekend shift at a Five Guys restaurant near her home. She has three children, who are 4, 9 and 11 years old, and she is raising them mostly alone, while she is separating from their father.
A full paycheck from one job, she said, goes toward rent. And still, Ms. Fuentes makes too much to qualify for SNAP, and she said she had even been turned away at food pantries, some of which require proof of income.
She has had to be resourceful and humble: After meetings of the parent-teacher association at her children’s school, she asks the janitor for bottles to recycle. She needs the extra $20 from deposits to buy milk for her 4-year-old. It’s one of the few things he will drink.
“They say, ‘If you are above this income, you don’t qualify’” for SNAP and other benefits, she said. “But it’s not fair, because they don’t see that I am a mother, and that I pay $2,250 in rent by myself,” she said. “And I do this all for my kids.”
Three-quarters of families in New York State with annual incomes below $100,000 have faced higher living costs over the past year, according to a recent study by Hunger Free America, an anti-hunger policy and direct service nonprofit that receives funding from Robin Hood. Half of those families said that affording the quality of food their household needed had become harder.
“You can’t pay less in rent or you are homeless; you can’t refuse to pay your medical bills or you don’t get treatment,” said Joel Berg, the chief executive of Hunger Free America. “If you add up all the unavoidable costs of living, there is not enough money for food.”
The implication of such food insecurity for those well above what the federal government considers poverty looms large, Mr. Berg said. “This issue is the canary in the coal mine for the collapse of the society,” he added. “If people can’t afford the basic costs of living in what were previously middle-class jobs, society is failing in fundamental ways.”
At Part of the Solution, a soup kitchen, food pantry and community center in the Bronx, 3,000 of the 10,000 households it serves each year do not receive food stamps, said Christina Hanson, the executive director. In fact, some of the nonprofit’s own staff members said they, too, had needed to use the food pantry. Ramon Sanchez, 37, who said he earns $44,000 at the center and cleans houses on the side for extra income, and receives SNAP, is one of them.
“The joy of Christmas is gone, because you can no longer afford the dinner and the gift,” Mr. Sanchez said. “It’s either-or.”
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10) Is It About the Oil?
We look at what President Trump is trying to achieve in Venezuela.
By Sam Sifton, I am the host of this newsletter, Dec. 18, 2025
“…Trump remembers a past when South and Central America were open markets. Before Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, foreign companies accounted for 70 percent of production there. American drillers like Exxon, Mobil and Gulf Oil were major players. (Today, only one American company, Chevron, still operates in Venezuela.) … Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, recalled that bygone era on social media. … ‘American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,’ he wrote. ‘Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.’”
Petrostate
Yesterday, Venezuela said its military would escort oil tankers heading to Asia to stop the United States from seizing them. Washington spent the fall punishing and pressuring the Caribbean nation in an ostensible campaign against drugs. Now we may have a glimpse of where this conflict is going.
Venezuela, which once welcomed American energy companies, has the world’s largest oil reserves. President Trump wants access to them again. He wrote on social media that U.S. operations there would continue until the country returned to the United States “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
That helps explain the last three months.
An escalation
The campaign began on Sept. 2, with military strikes on small speedboats that the Trump administration claimed, without offering evidence, were trafficking drugs. Then the strikes continued, again and again. There have been 26 so far, killing 99 people across the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, acts that legal experts say may amount to war crimes.
Then the campaign escalated. Trump authorized planning for covert C.I.A. action and deployed the largest naval force in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The military positioned warships off Venezuela’s coast, sent bombers to fly just offshore and dispatched troops and sensitive radar equipment to Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation just a few miles away.
These moves didn’t always make sense. Officials explained each development as an effort to stop the flow of drugs from Venezuela to the United States. They call the country a narcostate and its president, Nicolás Maduro, a cartel leader.
But Venezuela is not a drug producer, and most narcotics smuggled through the country are headed for Europe, not the United States. U.S. officials say it’s about dislodging Maduro from power. Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair.
Why? Developments in the last week offered another rationale.
Liquid gold
In the last week, the United States has seized a Venezuelan oil tanker and promised to blockade “ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS” going to and from the country. Officially, these boats are trading crude in violation of U.S. sanctions on Iran, as they’ve done for many years, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
But there’s more, as my colleagues Edward Wong and Julian Barnes put it:
Venezuela and its oil lie at the nexus of two of Mr. Trump’s stated national security priorities: dominance of energy resources and control of the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela has about 17 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, or more than 300 billion barrels, nearly four times the amount in the United States. And no nation has a bigger foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry than China, the superpower whose immense trade presence in the Western Hemisphere the Trump administration aims to curb.
Trump wants that oil for the United States. He has wanted it for years. During his first term, he backed attempts to oust Maduro. After he left office, he lamented their failure. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse,” he said in a 2023 speech. “We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil.”
This time, Edward and Julian report, he’s pushing harder. In secret negotiations with the Trump administration, Maduro offered to open Venezuela’s oil industry to American companies. But that would have left Maduro in charge of dispensing it. The White House said no deal.
Prospecting
Acquiring oil is not the administration’s only argument for a sudden and fierce Venezuela policy. The U.S. strikes have also targeted boats off Colombia, suggesting the attacks are not entirely about Maduro. Additionally, much of Venezuela’s oil trade violates U.S. sanctions — and props up governments like Cuba’s.
But Trump remembers a past when South and Central America were open markets. Before Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, foreign companies accounted for 70 percent of production there. American drillers like Exxon, Mobil and Gulf Oil were major players. (Today, only one American company, Chevron, still operates in Venezuela.) In the early 1960s, my colleague Simon Romero explains, Venezuela had the largest American expatriate community in the world.
Yesterday, Stephen Miller, the White House homeland security adviser, recalled that bygone era on social media. His post, a political gambit filled with misrepresentations, read like the beginning of a mission statement. It was an explanation of all that had come before, from the boat strikes to the military buildup to the threat of a blockade. It read like a prologue.
“American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” he wrote. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
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