Trump indicates that Venezuela is responding to demands for ‘total access’ for US oil companies – US politics live | US news
Opening summary
Donald Trump has said Venezuela will be “turning over” $2bn worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, a flagship negotiation that would divert supplies from China while helping Venezuela avoid deeper oil production cuts.
Trump said in a post online:
This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!
Venezuelan government officials and state company PDVSA did not provide comment.
Venezuela has millions of barrels of oil loaded on tankers and in storage tanks that it has been unable to ship due to the blockade imposed by Trump, as part of the pressure campaign that culminated in the toppling of Nicolás Maduro who was seized from his country by US forces over the weekend.
Top Venezuelan officials have called Maduro’s capture a kidnapping and accused the US of trying to steal the country’s vast oil reserves, however Tuesday’s supposed agreement is a strong sign that the government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to US oil companies or risk more military intervention.
Meanwhile, Trump and his advisers have said they are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:
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. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.
Leavitt’s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back against Trump’s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory. More on both of these stories in a moment, but first here are some other developments in US politics:
-
Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.
-
The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.
-
The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.
-
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” of Greenland and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said. The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
-
The Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.
Key events
Ruaridh Nicoll
Ruaridh Nicoll has taken a look at whether Cuba’s bond with Venezuela can survive Donald Trump’s ousting of Nicolás Maduro. Havana’s long, fractious history with the US leaves it vulnerable if Caracas is forced to withdraw its support, he writes:
In Cuba, every discussion revolves around the implications of the US operation to capture Maduro. Can the island, already in financial crisis, survive the withdrawal of Venezuelan support? Does the US administration have a plan for Cuba? Are there people in the Cuban government willing to deal with the US? At the forefront, many Cubans are asking themselves: could it happen here?
“Anything seems possible after these events,” said Michael Bustamante, the chair of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. “But there are key differences between Venezuela and Cuba.”
In its attempts to oust the Venezuelan leadership, the US had already found itself in confrontation with Cuba. Havana has traditionally been shy about admitting its security and intelligence support of the Maduro regime, but it has had to acknowledge 32 Cubans died in the US military attack on Venezuela.
Explainer: Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?
Miranda Bryant
Miranda Bryant, the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, also has written this handy explainer on why Donald Trump is renewing calls for a takeover of Greenland:
Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?
Greenland has long been on Trump’s agenda but the reasons behind it have changed over time. In 2019, during his first term, he confirmed reports that he had been urging aides to find out how the US could buy the vast Arctic island, describing a sale as “essentially a large real estate deal”. Last January when Trump, then president-elect, said he needed control of Greenland he said it was for “economic security”. But in recent days he has said he needs Greenland “from the standpoint of national security” – despite the risk this would pose to the future of Nato.
Strategically positioned between the US and Russia, Greenland is viewed as increasingly important for defence and is emerging as a geopolitical battleground as the climate crisis worsens.
As well as oil and gas, Greenland’s supply of multiple in-demand raw materials for green technology is attracting interest from around the world – including from China, which dominates global rare earth production and has threatened to restrict the export of critical minerals. By acquiring Greenland, the US could keep China out.
The rapid melting of the island’s huge ice sheets and glaciers could open up oil drilling (although Greenland stopped granting exploration licences in 2021) and mining for essential minerals including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel.
Melting Arctic ice is also opening up new shipping routes, providing alternatives to the Suez canal through the Arctic that shorten the journey from western Europe to east Asia by almost half. China and Russia agreed in November to collaborate on developing new Arctic shipping routes.
Greenland is already an important military base for the US and its ballistic missile early warning system. The US has had a military base at Pituffik (previously Thule) since the cold war.
My colleague Jakub Krupa is reporting in more detail on the European reaction to Trump’s comments and potential plans for Greenland. You can follow that here:
Donald Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.
“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” Andrew Nixon, HHS spokesperson, said in a statement.
The Trump administration has threatened federal funding cuts to organizations and states over a number of issues since taking office – ranging from alleged fraud in programs of states governed by Democrats to diversity initiatives and pro-Palestinian university protests against US ally Israel’s assault on Gaza.
On Tuesday, HHS said it notified the five states, all with Democratic governors, that its freeze applied to the “Child Care and Development Fund” worth $2.4bn, the “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” worth $7.35bn and the “Social Services Block Grant” worth $869m.
In a statement, the department said the states’ access to those funds would be restricted pending further review. The administration has not laid out details of either the fraud claims or the widening plan to withhold funds, which was first reported by the New York Post.
Democrats condemned the freeze. “Our states should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said, adding the step was “vindictive” and “cruel”.
Jeremy Barr
Guardian US media and power reporter Jeremy Barr has witten an analysis on how Maga media stars back Trump on Venezuela … mostly. Here is a snippet:
But in the days since the US forcibly abducted Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, with dozens killed as part of the night-time operation, Donald Trump has instead received strong support from his media allies, with a few on-again, off-again backers expressing some reservations.
“Generally, the party is going to stand with him on this and conservative media is going to stand with him on this,” former Republican congressman and talk radio host Joe Walsh said.
The conservative radio and television host Mark Levin, one of Trump’s strongest media defenders, not only celebrated Trump’s military actions but on Sunday called those who questioned the legality of the incursion, including Senator Bernie Sanders and the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, “pure evil”.
The coverage among opinion hosts on Fox News has also been overwhelmingly positive. Fox News host Laura Ingraham called the capture of Maduro “quintessentially Maga”.
Not everyone is falling in line. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who now runs her own company and has a radio channel on SiriusXM, mocked the pro-Trump coverage on her former network, even as she re-affirmed her support for the president. “I turned on Fox News yesterday, and I’m sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda,” she said on her Monday show. She said:
There was nothing skeptical. It was all rah-rah cheerleading, yes, let’s go. And that’s fine. I love our military as much as anyone, and I believe in President Trump, but there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah-rah train.
She said Trump’s actions to depose Maduro were clearly about global oil dominance and not “this bullshit about law enforcement”.
Graeme Wearden
Graeme Wearden tracks the latest world business, economic and financial news in our daily liveblog.
Donald Trump’s ambition to supercharge Venezuela’s oil production would damage the climate, and undermine efforts to limit dangerous global heating, experts have warned.
Even raising production to 1.5m barrels of oil a day from current levels of around 1m barrels would produce around 550m tons of carbon dioxide a year when the fuel is burned, according to Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is more carbon pollution than what is emitted annually by major economies such as the UK and Brazil.
“If there are millions of barrels a day of new oil, that will add quite a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and the people of Earth can’t afford that,” says John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Oil falls after Trump says Venezuela will send supply to US
Graeme Wearden
The aftermath of the US intervention in Venezuela is continuing to send ripples through the markets.
The oil price is dropping today, after Donald Trump declared that Venezuela will send the US between 30m and 50m barrels of oil, which will then be sold … with the president controlling the proceeds, which could be more than $2bn.
There are currently millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil stashed on tankers and in storage tanks due to the US blockage imposed by Trump. The news that this oil could soon follow president Nicolás Maduro in an unexpected journey to the US had an immediate impact on the oil market.
US crude has dropped by 1.6% to $56.21 a barrel, as traders anticipate more supply hitting the market, adding to Tuesday’s losses.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, has dropped by 1.2% – back below $60 a barrel at $59.97.
The move also has geopolitical implications; two sources have told Reuters that supplying the trapped crude to the US could initially require reallocating cargoes originally bound for China.
You can read more rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news in our business liveblog here:
US legislators spoke out against the idea of military action against Greenland on Tuesday.
In social media posts, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, vowed to introduce a resolution “to block Trump from invading Greenland,” saying the 79-year-old Republican simply “wants a giant island with his name on it. He wouldn’t think twice about putting our troops in danger if it makes him feel big and strong.”
In a sharp departure from the party’s typical partisanship, Republicans also pushed back against Trump’s military-backed expansionism, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
House speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, told reporters on Tuesday night that he did not think it was “appropriate” for Washington to take military action on Greenland, Politico reported.
Republican Senator Jerry Moran of the midwestern state of Kansas, who serves on the Senate intelligence committee, told HuffPost “it’s none of our business” and warned that the move would lead to “the demise of Nato.”
Nebraska Republican congressman Don Bacon put it even more bluntly in a post on X:
This is really dumb. Greenland and Denmark are our allies.
Trump administration escalates attack on Minnesota with more immigration agents
Rachel Leingang
The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.
“A 100% chance of ICE in the Twin Cities – our largest operation to date,” the official Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) account on X wrote on Tuesday afternoon. “If you’re a criminal illegal alien and/or you are engaged in fraud, expect a visit from ICE.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed on X that it is “surging to Minneapolis to root out fraud, arrest perpetrators and remove criminal illegal aliens”. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Newsmax that the agency has in the city “the largest immigration operation ever taking place right now”.
CBS News reported on Monday that the administration would bring another 2,000 agents, both from ICE and homeland security investigations, into the state for 30 days. Lyons didn’t confirm the number of agents, but said it was an effort from both ICE and HSI. DHS wouldn’t confirm a number to the Guardian, but said that the agency has “surged law enforcement”.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, is in the state. She can be seen in a video produced by DHS of an arrest in Minneapolis of a man from Ecuador who the agency said is wanted for murder in his home country.
Operation Metro Surge, the agency’s name for its crackdown on Minnesota, has been under way since early December. Community members have fought back against ICE, protesting and impeding deportations, as some immigrants have stayed away from public life, avoiding grocery stores or medical care for fear of apprehension.
The fixation on Minnesota comes as the state grapples with several high-profile cases alleging fraud of social services, which have captured Trump’s attention and led to xenophobic comments from him about Somalis. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the US, and most Somalis in the state are US citizens.
The White House’s latest calls for a US takeover of Greenland come after the dark-of-night arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, on Saturday. The next day, Trump said that he needed Greenland “very badly”, prompting a ramping-up of tensions among the US, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and Europe.
Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US. The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland.
In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, the UK and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland.
In a private briefing on Capitol Hill, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Monday that the administration would prefer to buy the island from Denmark rather than invade it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Opening summary
Donald Trump has said Venezuela will be “turning over” $2bn worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, a flagship negotiation that would divert supplies from China while helping Venezuela avoid deeper oil production cuts.
Trump said in a post online:
This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!
Venezuelan government officials and state company PDVSA did not provide comment.
Venezuela has millions of barrels of oil loaded on tankers and in storage tanks that it has been unable to ship due to the blockade imposed by Trump, as part of the pressure campaign that culminated in the toppling of Nicolás Maduro who was seized from his country by US forces over the weekend.
Top Venezuelan officials have called Maduro’s capture a kidnapping and accused the US of trying to steal the country’s vast oil reserves, however Tuesday’s supposed agreement is a strong sign that the government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to US oil companies or risk more military intervention.
Meanwhile, Trump and his advisers have said they are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:
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. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.
Leavitt’s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back against Trump’s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory. More on both of these stories in a moment, but first here are some other developments in US politics:
-
Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.
-
The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.
-
The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.
-
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” of Greenland and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said. The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
-
The Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.
