The Trump administration's exercise in armed regime change in Venezuela should have come as no surprise. The U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean and the attacks on defenseless boats off the Venezuelan coast - based on unproven allegations that they contained drug traffickers - had been underway for more than three months. By the end of December 2025, in fact, such strikes on boats near Venezuela (and in the Eastern Pacific) had already killed 115 people.
Most of the targets are U.N.-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labor and other issues that the Trump administration has categorized as catering to diversity and woke initiatives. The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation's sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity, the State Department said in a statement.
It might seem obvious enough, one year into Donald Trump's second term, that he will leave behind an enormously destructive-and plenty durable-domestic legacy. He is the president who urged on a violent insurrection, transformed a major political party into his personal cult, and yanked America in a far more nativist direction. The old free-trading Republicans are now full converts to Trump's manic tariff regime. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary are stacked with Trump appointees, validating his right-wing policy.
