In a stunning, extrajudicial raid that bypassed Congress entirely, US special forces executed an overnight strike on Venezuelan soil—involving approximately 150 aircraft and helicopter-borne troops—arresting President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. While the Department of Justice points to a narco-terrorism indictment to justify the extraction, the Commander-in-Chief isn't mincing words about the real objective.​

"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," Donald Trump declared from Mar-a-Lago, effectively announcing the privatization of a sovereign nation. Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves—the largest on the planet.​

Yet here's what gets buried, Maduro was no democratic hero. His 2024 re-election was a documented fraud. Independent analyses by The Washington Post, Associated Press, and other election observers confirmed the theft. Under Maduro, Venezuela suffered 130,000% hyperinflation, arbitrary detentions documented by UN investigators, and the exodus of 7.7 million citizens.​

But stolen elections don't justify another country's military overthrow and subsequent pillaging of resources belonging to a state & its sovereign citizens.

Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay condemned the strikes as violating "basic principles of international law", while UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a "dangerous precedent".​

Both Maduro's authoritarianism and Trump's imperialism have received international condemnation.