Three days after sending the military to abduct Venezuela’s leader, the U.S. president said that he intends to seize at least 30 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, which “will be sold at market price, and that money will be controlled by me.” President Donald Trump announced the development on Tuesday evening as a deal he’s worked out with the “interim authorities in Venezuela.” According to Trump, the amount could rise to 50 million barrels. That much oil would be worth $1.8 billion to $3 billion, the New York Times reported, adding: “There was no immediate comment from the Venezuelan authorities.”

“I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately,” Trump said. “It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States” so that the president can personally “ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” Trump said in his post. 

Several legal experts noted online that Trump’s plan seems to openly violate Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that only “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” 

Others pointed to Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, also known as the foreign emoluments clause, which reads “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” 

Still others said that Trump’s plan appears to be an example of modern piracy enabled by the U.S. military, while other concerned Americans were more blunt still—observing, e.g., “Forget the impact on Venezuela, this is full-blown dictatorship in the USA.”

New: American Coast Guard and special forces have reportedly seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker (known as Marinera) trying to evade sanctions during a transit in the North Atlantic, Reuters and NBC News as well as TankerTrackers.com reported Wednesday morning. 

The tanker was originally known as the Bella-1 and slipped through the U.S. military’s Venezuelan blockade two weeks ago. U.S. Coast Guard forces have been attempting to board it, and were unsuccessful until Wednesday. 

“This appeared to be the first time in recent memory that the U.S. military has attempted to seize a Russian-flagged vessel,” Reuters reports. The U.S. interception marks the third sanctions-evading tanker seized since December. 

Russian officials released a statement of “concern” Tuesday, NBC News reports. And the Wall Street Journal reported Russia had dispatched a submarine to escort the tanker, though it appears the sub either did not reach the Marinera in time or its escort mission was ineffective. “For reasons that remain unclear to us, the Russian vessel is receiving heightened attention from U.S. and NATO military forces that is clearly disproportionate to its peaceful status,” Moscow’s foreign ministry said in that Tuesday statement.  

“At least three other sanctioned oil tankers that were operating near Venezuela in recent weeks have changed their flags to Russia,” including “the Malak, now renamed the Sintez; the Dianchi, now the Expander; and the Veronica, now the Galileo,” NBC reports. 

Also developing: One other oil tanker has also been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in Latin American waters, U.S. officials told Reuters, though it’s unclear just yet which vessel that is. 

Coverage continues below…

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Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1942, the submarine USS Pollack torpedoed a Japanese cargo ship in Japanese waters, the first victory for the Navy’s Pacific submarine force.

The Justice Department approved a memo authorizing Trump’s military operation to abduct Maduro, which allegedly killed at least 80 people and wounded at least a half-dozen U.S. troops. However, it’s unclear just yet what’s in that memo, the New York Times reported Tuesday evening. “But Attorney General Pam Bondi promised members of Congress in briefings this week that the administration would share the memo with lawmakers,” Charlie Savage of the Times writes. 

Reminder: The Trump administration says it did not need to notify lawmakers before the military helped abduct Maduro because that was a “law enforcement operation.” 

However, “That’s wrong on multiple counts,” argues Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice. “When U.S. military aircraft drop bombs on another country, killing 80 people in the process, that’s a use of military force, regardless of the intent. Even [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth described it as a ‘joint military and law enforcement raid’ rather than a pure law enforcement action. The only question is whether there is some inherent power under Article II of the Constitution for the president to use military force without congressional authorization when the purpose is to execute a criminal arrest warrant. The answer is no,” Goitein says. 

“If you need further convincing, imagine that another country flew war planes over the U.S., dropped bombs that killed 80 Americans, and captured two U.S. citizens who were wanted on criminal charges in that country…Would the U.S. government concede that the bombing of the United States by another country’s military was simply part of a law enforcement operation and constituted an act of ‘self-defense’? Or would we view it as an act of war?”

Goitein admits she was hesitant to even clarify these legal considerations, “because even engaging in this analysis risks dignifying the claim that the purpose of the military attack was merely to execute criminal arrest warrants. That might have been part of the purpose, but it plainly wasn’t the whole story.” Read the rest of her argument, here.  

She’s not alone. Three other legal experts at Just Security arrived at a similar conclusion, citing “the nature and location of the operations, the expected (and realized) risk of U.S. casualties, the known risks of escalation, the operation’s purpose of removal of a sitting head of State, the use of lethal force against two States’ security forces, and the context of other military actions (threats of force, naval blockade) before, during, and after the operation took place.” 

Following the administration’s classified briefing about the Maduro abduction with lawmakers on Monday, New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen said she has many more questions that were left unanswered. 

“What now must happen—and what the briefing lacked—is a clear, well-informed diplomatic roadmap with benchmarks for Venezuela to meet, clear timelines and the right tools to help develop and transition Venezuela following this military mission,” Shaheen said in a statement Tuesday. “I remain concerned that we are not there yet, and we will not get there by trading one authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro, for another illegitimate authoritarian leader who has served alongside him as part of his repressive regime.” 

“Amidst this uncertainty and instability, the President is threatening to further overextend our military by threatening action on other parts of the world and alienating our allies,” she said, and stressed, “The onus is on President Trump to explain to the American people what is truly going on in our own hemisphere and how he intends to keep our nation safe and secure.” The same day Shaheen attended that classified briefing, the president had already moved on—and reportedly asked aides for updated plans to acquire Greenland. 

Update: Trump is mulling options to acquire Greenland, including possible military operations, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” Leavitt said in a statement to multiple outlets Tuesday, including States Newsroom. 

“The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal,” Leavitt said. 

Greenland reax: Our country is “not something that can be annexed or taken over simply because someone feels like it,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement Tuesday evening. The leaders of Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom also issued a joint statement in support of Greenland’s sovereignty on Tuesday. Canada issued its own as well later in the day.  

SecState Rubio to lawmakers: Trump really just wants to buy Greenland, the Wall Street Journal reported after Rubio’s remarks to lawmakers Monday.  

Rewind: You may recall Trump has been eyeing Greenland since his first term in office. But during our own visit to Denmark in 2019, Danish officials told Defense One in a line they frequently repeated in public around that time, “Greenland is open for business, but not for sale.” There are no indications their position has changed. 

Expert reax: Given a defense agreement signed in 1951 by the U.S. and Denmark, “The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” Danish researcher Mikkel Runge Olesen told the Times on Tuesday. The Guardian has a bit more on that agreement, as well as the history of U.S. military bases in Greenland, here. 

U.S. lawmakers’ reax: “When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., co-chairs of the Senate’s NATO Observer Group, said in a statement Tuesday. They added, “Our alliances deter aggressors and share the burden of collective defense. We must stay focused on the real threats before us and work with our allies, not against them, to advance our shared security. As we confront the challenges of the 21st century, we do so alongside allies like Denmark who stand with us by choice, not by compulsion.”

Panning out: “The resources of the most powerful military in the world are being marshaled in service of making memes declaring, “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE,’” writes tech and media writer Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic, referencing a slew of online memes from the chronically-online members of the Trump administration, especially in the hours after the Maduro abduction. 

And that flood of social media content, which he argues is “not an actual form of governance, nor is it a kind of policy, but it is performative speech that’s supposed to signify action and, in the case of the Venezuela raid, strength” appears to be happening “because the country’s leaders think it’s good theater, and in a postliterate political era, the spectacle is propulsive.”

Additional reading: “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System,” from Stacie Goddard, a political scientist from Wellesley College, and Abraham Newman of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, writing in November for the Cambridge University Press. 

Related news developments: 

• “Trump warns Venezuela to cooperate or risk new U.S. military attack,” NBC reported Tuesday after Trump’s remarks to Republicans at the Kennedy Center in Washington; 
• “Fear grips Caracas as a new wave of repression is unleashed in Venezuela,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday; 
• “Only Denmark and Greenland can decide on island’s future, says Canada,” Reuters reported Tuesday from Ottawa; 
• “US, observers watch for cyber, disinformation campaigns in wake of Venezuela raid,” Nextgov reported Tuesday; 
• And “US factory sector contracts for 10th straight month in December” as input costs rose in response to Trump’s import tariffs, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Etc.

Now for something completely different, PBS aired a new episode in its American Experience series, this time focusing on the aftermath of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 entitled, “Bombshell.” 

The tease: “Eighty years after the devastating atomic bombings that ushered in the nuclear age, Bombshell explores how the U.S. government manipulated the narrative about the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through propaganda, censorship and the co-opting of the press, the government presented a benevolent picture of atomic power, minimizing the horrific human toll.” 

Catch the full 82-minute movie streaming on PBS, here. 

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calls acquiring the Danish territory an “important foreign policy goal.”

Disinformation operations have been spotted, but there are no signs the efforts are being coordinated by a foreign government, one observer said.

Developing: President Donald Trump said his Pentagon chief is among four people leading U.S. involvement in Venezuela for the foreseeable future. Speaking to NBC News on Monday, Trump listed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Vice President JD Vance. “It’s a group of all. They have all expertise, different expertise would also play a role,” Trump said. 

Who is ultimately in charge? “Me,” Trump replied. He also repeated his goal of convincing American oil firms to somehow rebuild Venezuela’s petroleum industry and infrastructure. 

“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” Trump said. That process, he speculated, could be complete in 18 months. 

For what it’s worth, billionaire investor and Trump-supporter Paul Singer is poised to benefit immensely from the president’s oil ambitions for Venezuela, Judd Legum of Popular Information noted Monday. “In November 2025, Singer acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company” for $5.9 billion, Lugum reports. The sale “was forced by creditors of Venezuela after the country defaulted on its bond payments.” 

Advisors for that sale “valued Citgo at $13 billion, while Venezuelan officials said the assets were worth as much as $18 billion,” Legum writes. “Maduro’s government was also seeking to appeal court approval of Singer’s bid for Citgo. Now that Maduro has been ousted, however, it seems unlikely that the appeal will continue.” Read more, here. 

Survey says: Just a third of Americans approve of Trump’s plan to attack Venezuela and abduct Maduro; a slightly larger percentage (34%) said they disapprove; and the remaining 33% did not have an opinion yet, according to Reuters polling published Monday.

In similar polling, the Washington Post found 40% of respondents approve versus 42% who disapprove of the abduction operation. 

Coverage continues below…

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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2021, a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, assaulting at least 174 law-enforcement officers, in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Donald Trump, who falsely claimed voter fraud.

New: Seven European nations unite against Trump’s threats over Greenland. The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and Denmark released a joint statement Tuesday emphasizing America’s role as an “essential partner” and NATO ally, “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” 

That statement comes in the wake of the U.S. military attack on Venezuela over the weekend, in which American troops reportedly killed at least 80 people during an operation to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and his wife in apparent violation of international law early Saturday in Caracas. 

The following day, U.S. President Donald Trump was asked if he expected “to take an action against Greenland” after the Venezuela operation, since he has openly speculated several times about the possibility since retaking office last year, despite not mentioning it at all during his campaign. Trump reiterated his position on Sunday, telling reporters, “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not gonna be able to do it, I can tell you.” He repeated that goal in a separate interview later in the day. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen released her own statement Sunday warning Trump against trying to annex Greenland or “any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom,” which also includes the Faroe Islands. 

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and the European Union needs us to have it, and they know that,” said Trump. 

The seven European leaders disagreed. “Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international and transatlantic security,” they said at the outset of their statement Tuesday. “NATO has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European Allies are stepping up. We and many other Allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries.”

However, they continued in a subtle rebuke emphasizing international law, “Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” the leaders said, and stressed, “These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them.” Read over the statement in full, here. 

At the United Nations on Monday, Russia and China demanded Maduro’s release while Secretary General António Guterres said the U.S. violated the UN’s charter, which delegates from Bahrain, Brazil and Mexico also echoed. Trump’s ambassador to the international body, Mike Waltz, insisted, “We are not occupying a country. This was a law enforcement operation.” 

Waltz: “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States, under the control of illegitimate leaders, and not benefiting the people of Venezuela, and stolen by a handful of oligarchs inside of Venezuela,” the U.S. ambassador said. 

Second opinions: Former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman described Waltz’s UN remarks as “One of most remarkable US presentations at [the] UN Security Council I’ve ever seen,” and noted his remarks about energy reserves as a justification is illegal. Former State Department counsel Brian Finacune asked that if, as Waltz says, “there’s no war with Venezuela (and hence no application of the law of war), does that mean that the US military killing Venezuelan and Cuban security personnel was just murder?”

Venezuela’s position: “If the kidnapping of a head of state and bombing are tolerated or downplayed, the message sent to the world is a devastating one, mainly that the law is optional and force is the true arbiter of international order,” Ambassador Samuel Moncada said. 

Expert reax: “Military force can topple a dictator, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy,” argues Monica Duffy Toft of Tufts University, whom we spoke with about the militarization of American foreign policy less than three years ago. Along with researcher Sidita Kushi, Toft is co-author of the “Military Intervention Project” documenting use cases throughout American history. 

“Removing a leader—even a brutal and incompetent one—is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order,” Toft wrote Monday for The Conversation. “By declaring its intent to govern Venezuela, the United States is creating a governance trap of its own making—one in which external force is mistakenly treated as a substitute for domestic legitimacy.”

The big problem: When violence becomes a substitute for full-spectrum action, including diplomacy and economics, “it tends to deepen instability rather than resolve it,” Toft warns. 

Consider as well, “In 2026, for every dollar the United States invests in the diplomatic ‘scalpel’ of the State Department to prevent conflict, it allocates $28 to the military ‘hammer’ of the Department of Defense, effectively ensuring that force becomes a first rather than last resort,” she writes. 

Another troubling possible second-order effect of Trump’s plan to “run” Venezuela: Its infrastructure is already in ruins. “If the United States assumes responsibility for governance, it will be blamed for every blackout, every food shortage and every bureaucratic failure. The liberator will quickly become the occupier,” Toft writes. (Tom Friedman of the New York Times echoed this sentiment, which traces back to Colin Powell as the “Pottery Barn rule,” when Friedman warned on the day of Maduro’s abduction, “You Break It, You Own It.”)

And beyond that is the message other nefarious leaders around the world could take: “The more the United States normalizes unilateral governance, the easier it becomes for rivals to dismiss American appeals to sovereignty as selective and self-serving, and the more difficult it becomes for allies to justify their ties to the U.S.,” says Toft. Read on, here. 

Developing: The U.S. military may be preparing to intercept a Russian-flagged crude oil tanker transiting the North Atlantic, The War Zone reported Monday after a flurry of open-source flight tracking data appeared online. The U.S. Coast Guard has so far been unable to intercept the vessel; the recent movement of C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets suggests U.S. special operations forces may try next. Details here. 

Additional reading/viewing: 

• “Venezuela latest: Security forces patrol streets as opposition calls for release of political prisoners,” the BBC reported Tuesday; 
• “Venezuela Braces for Economic Collapse From U.S. Blockade on Oil Exports,” the New York Times reported Monday evening; 
• “Ukraine’s allies meet in Paris but progress is uncertain with US focus on Venezuela and Greenland,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday; 
• “GOP fears Trump’s foray into nation-building in Venezuela,” The Hill reported Tuesday; 
• And ICYMI, a political organizer in Michigan was arrested mid-interview while speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela on Saturday. WZZM ABC13 out of Grand Rapids has video of the arrest. 

Around the Defense Department

Update: SecDef Hegseth has moved to downgrade Sen. Mark Kelly’s military rank over the lawmaker’s remarks discouraging troops from following unlawful orders, which is a sentiment Hegseth himself propagated ahead of Trump’s first term, though he backtracked during his confirmation hearing a year ago. In a Jan. 5 letter of censure, the defense secretary accused the senator of counseling disobedience, undermining the chain of command, and other charges by making videos urging troops to disobey illegal orders. Stateline has coverage, here.

Kelly responded with a statement, which read, in part: “Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way. It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”

Inside the Marine Corps’ hidden recruiting crisis. The only service to consistently meet its intake goals in recent years is doing so at great cost, Business Insider reports in a four-part investigative series. “You’re basically burning Marines in order to put more Marines in,” one recruiting sergeant in a Great Plains duty station said. “That is what recruiting is.”

The pressure to fill quotas is so great that some recruiter Marines are forging documents and even dying by suicide, the site reports. Read on, here.

Five years after Jan. 6

Several outlets have retrospectives on the attempted insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and its aftermath, including NPR, Lawfare, the New York Times, and more.

Former special prosecutor Jack Smith, in Dec. 17 Congressional testimony:  “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him.” The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of Smith’s deposition on Dec. 31.

Pardon update: “At least 33 pardoned insurrectionists have now been convicted of, charged with, or arrested for additional crimes since the violent attack on the Capitol,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and House Judiciary Committee Democrats announced in a new report Monday.

Trump and other Republicans have “engaged in a near-complete effort to rewrite the history of the day and erase it from the collective American memory,” reports the Guardian. “On his first day in office, Trump pardoned anyone involved in the attack, a move that affected some 1,500 people.”

Gregory Rosen, who led the Justice Department unit that prosecuted Jan. 6 cases: “But Americans remember that day for a simple reason – we watched it happen. And as long as we remember what it was – unadulterated mob violence – we can speak honestly about what it means for our democracy and our future.”

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U.S. captures Maduro, Trump vows to run Venezuela. An ensemble of CIA and Army special forces abducted Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife in a daring raid overnight early Saturday, sending shockwaves around the globe just hours before U.S. President Donald Trump praised the operation as an exciting opportunity for American oil companies while millions of Venezuelans were left in uncharted territory with no clear leader and a nearly unprecedented armada of American naval assets watching from the waters just outside their national border. On Saturday morning, Trump released a photo on his social media account showing a blind-folded Maduro aboard an aircraft bound for the U.S., where this week he’s expected to face new federal charges in a New York City courtroom. 

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said Saturday, without mentioning the man who beat Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 elections, former diplomat Edmundo González. “We don’t want to be involved with, uh, having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” Trump said. “So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

Who is running Venezuela today? It’s hard to say. González has said it’s himself. But 56-year-old Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and the country’s finance and oil minister, is now the country’s acting president. Reuters has a bit more on her bio. She released a cautious statement on Instagram after Maduro’s capture: “Our people and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. That has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s position, and it is the position of all Venezuelans right now,” she said, adding in what observers interpreted as a subtle rebuke of Trump, “Our country aspires to live without external threats.”

Trump declared Sunday night, “We’re in charge,” when asked directly if he had spoken with Rodríguez yet. He added, “No, I haven’t, but other people have,” and said “at the right time, I will” speak with her. 

In justifying the operation on Saturday, Trump alleged Maduro “personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans, the many, many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years, of Americans died because of him. Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.”

Trump on Venezuela’s oil: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

By the way: At least 16 sanctioned oil tankers are reportedly defying Trump’s naval blockade, “using fake ship names and misrepresenting their positions” via GPS spoofing, the New York Times reported Monday.

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It’s been two weeks since we last landed in your inbox, and there’s a lot of ground to cover. Welcome to our first D Brief of 2026. If you’re new here, this is a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1861, Star of the West sailed from New York with supplies for besieged Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The ship would be met with Confederate cannonballs, the first exchange of fire between North and South, though the Civil War would not begin for another four months.

Trump threatened further military action in Venezuela if things don’t go as he wants. “We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” he told reporters on Saturday. “We have a much bigger wave that we probably won’t have to do. This partnership of Venezuela with the United States of America, a country that everybody wants to be involved with because of what we’re able to do and accomplish, will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe,” Trump said. 

Worth noting: Trump did not consult Congress before the abduction in Caracas, which observers noted appeared to violate international law. Relatedly, former President George Bush also did not consult Congress before launching Operation Just Cause in late 1989, which eventually captured Panamanian ruler Gen. Manuel Noriega on the same day as Maduro’s abduction, Jan. 3. 

On Capitol Hill, the Senate is set to vote this week on a war powers resolution that could block Trump from taking additional military action inside Venezuela. In addition to co-sponsor Rand Paul, R-Ky., “Three more Republicans would need to vote for it to give it the 51 votes needed to pass,” The Hill reports. Those numbers strongly suggest the resolution would lack the veto-proof majority needed should it later advance through the House, which already failed to pass a similar resolution last month. 

Big-picture consideration: “The operation is less a challenge to international law than an instance of total disregard for it,” Graeme Wood of The Atlantic wrote on Saturday. “It is an indulgence in precisely the behavior that international law theoretically constrains, namely the crossing of borders and use of force to meddle in what could plausibly be considered another country’s internal affairs.”

After developments in Caracas, many around the world wonder who’s next in Trump’s sights. Perhaps the most vocal among those concerned is Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who released a statement on Sunday warning Trump against trying to seize Greenland—a threat he first issued just days after taking office for his second term last year. “It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the US needing to take over Greenland. The US has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom,” she said. 

• For what it’s worth, last Monday, the Pentagon’s arms-export agency announced the sale of three P-8A surveillance aircraft to Denmark for $1.8 billion.

But Trump again affirmed his imperial ambitions for Greenland, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he believes the U.S. must take control of it to enhance America’s national security. “It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not gonna be able to do it, I can tell you.” (He repeated this goal in a separate interview with The Atlantic on Sunday.) Nevertheless, “We’ll worry about Greenland in about two months. Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days,” Trump told reporters. 

Greenland’s prime minister took a sharper tone on Monday. “Threats, pressure and talk of annexation have no place between friends,” said Jens-Frederik Nielsen. “That is not how you speak to a people who have shown responsibility, stability and loyalty time and again. Enough is enough. No more pressure. No more innuendo. No more fantasies about annexation.” Finland’s president also threw his nation’s support behind Denmark and Greenland. “No one decides for Greenland and Denmark but Greenland and Denmark themselves,” President Alexander Stubb wrote on social media. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, too, threw his support behind Denmark and Greenland—emphasizing in his remarks with Sky News that Copenhagen plays a key role in the NATO alliance. 

Trump also said Colombia could be next. Colombia is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” Trump said regarding President Gustavo Petro. “He’s not going to be doing it for very long,” Trump told reporters. When asked if Trump may target Colombia like he did in Venezuela, he replied, “It sounds good to me.” Earlier on Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—told NBC that Cuba is the “next target” because the government there “is a huge problem.” However, Trump said later that day, “I don’t think we need any action” in Cuba. “It looks like it’s going down” at least in part because he said the Cubans “got all their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.”

Trump also threatened Iran with more U.S. military attacks as the country reels from protests over worsening economic conditions. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump said.  

Many Ukrainians saw a double-standard in Trump’s actions against Maduro, according to Andrew Kramer of the Times, reporting Sunday from Kyiv. After all, there was evidence Russian leader Vladimir Putin also rigged elections in his country, yet Trump had the U.S. military literally roll out the red carpet for Putin during his visit to a military base in Alaska this past August. 

Back in 2019, former National Security Council Senior Director Fiona Hill testified to Congress in 2019 regarding the Trump administration’s attention on Venezuela during his first term. Hill told investigators there seemed to have been an agreement in the works to leave Ukraine to Putin in exchange for inaction on Venezuela. “The Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill recounted in her testimony. “In other words,” she said, “to preempt what they were obviously taking to be some kind of U.S. military action, they were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe doctrine. You want us out of your backyard. Well, you know, we have our own version of this. You’re in our backyard in Ukraine. And we were getting that sent to us, you know, kind of informally through channels.” Obviously, no U.S. military action took place then. And it’d be another three years before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

For what it’s worth, the raid elicited a raft of false claims and AI-generated imagery on social media. The BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh rounded up as much as he could find of all that slop in a social media thread here. 

Also: The Maduro capture operation took place early on Jan. 3, which was also the legal deadline for the Justice Department to send Congress a written justification for redacting and withholding documents from the Epstein files. 

Boat strike update: There have been at least six more attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats since our last newsletter just before Christmas. Those strikes occurred on Dec. 29 (one boat destroyed), Dec. 30 (three destroyed) and Dec. 31 (two destroyed boats). 

Those strikes raised the U.S. military’s death toll in these strikes to at least 115 people, with an unspecified number of additional survivors reportedly left in the water during the Tuesday strikes, according to military officials at Southern Command. 

Additional reading: 

• “Cuba says 32 Cuban officers were killed in US operation in Venezuela,” the Associated Press reported Sunday from Havana;
• ICYMI the “C.I.A. Conducted [a] Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela,” the New York Times reported one week ago on what is believed to have been the first U.S. strike inside Venezuela;
• And don’t miss before the raid, “How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign,” also via the Times reporting Dec. 27.

Strikes in Nigeria

Gunmen kill dozens of villagers in Nigeria, a week after U.S. forces launched air strikes against alleged ISIS targets. NYT: “Dozens of people were killed and several abducted when unidentified gunmen attacked two neighboring villages in Nigeria, government officials said on Sunday.”

That followed Christmas Day strikes on what U.S. officials said were ISIS targets. More than a dozen Tomahawk missiles were fired at two alleged IS camps in an effort to protect Christians in Nigeria, U.S. officials told the NYT. Trump told Politico the following day that he had chosen the date. “They were going to do it earlier,” the president said. “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.’”

Update: At least one Tomahawk fell miles away from apparent terrorist activity, the Times reports from the northwest Nigerian village of Jabo.

The Trump administration carried out attacks in at least eight countries in 2025, journalist Wesley Morgan noted in a year-end tally posted to social media. That included more than 1,000 strikes inside Yemen—where a spat has broken out between Saudi Arabia and the UAE as their proxies fight over contested territory in the south.  

And ICYMI, nine capital cities around the world were attacked by other countries in 2025, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Paul Stares pointed out in our latest Defense One Radio podcast. Stares recently released CFR’s annual “Conflicts to Watch” forecast for 2026, which you can review here. 

Troops in US cities

SCOTUS rejects Trump on National Guard in Chicago. Two days before Christmas, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s argument over federalizing National Guard troops around Chicago. “At this preliminary stage,” the court said, “the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.” 

Expert reax: National security law professor Steve Vladeck called the SCOTUS National Guard decision “without question, the most significant setback for the Trump administration at the Supreme Court at least since the justices repudiated its effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for summary, mass removals back in April.” Read more from his analysis, here.

One week later, Trump announced that he ordered troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. However, he vowed, “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!” That same day (Dec. 31), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals returned control of 300 California National Guard troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

Notable: The National Guard is still deployed in Washington, New Orleans and Memphis.

Additional reading: 

• “64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz,” via the Guardian reporting Dec. 28; 
• “ICE plans $100 million ‘wartime recruitment’ push targeting gun shows, military fans for hires,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday; 
• And the “US removal of panels honoring Black soldiers at WWII cemetery in the Netherlands draws backlash,” AP reported Tuesday on location. 

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The Joint Chiefs chair described the “precise” and “unprecedented” military operation at a Saturday press conference.

The CIA helped locate the Venezuelan leader while others monitored electronic communications.

Regime-change operation bombed multiple sites, seized president early on Saturday.

The PLA is already testing technologies that range from widespread sensors to AI-enabled predictive planning, cargo drones, and tracked UGV mules.