Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is expected to announce his withdrawal from the 2026 re-election campaign amid increasing scrutiny over fraud allegations, particularly concerning Medicaid programs and Covid-related relief efforts. This decision follows a meeting with Senator Amy Klobuchar and comes in the wake of intensified criticism from Republican lawmakers, who have called for his resignation due to claims of significant fraudulent activity. Federal action has also been triggered, with the SBA suspending thousands of loans linked to suspected fraud in Minnesota. As Walz prepares to address his political future, the implications of these controversies could reshape Minnesota’s political landscape moving forward.
Walz took office in 2019 and has faced allegations of inadequate responses to fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid-related programs, drawing national attention and criticism from political opponents.
Republican state legislators issued a joint statement urging Walz to resign, citing that at least half of the $18 billion paid through Minnesota’s Medicaid waiver programs since 2018 could be fraudulent, according to First Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson.
The SBA identified widespread suspected fraud involving 6,900 Minnesota borrowers connected to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, totaling approximately $400 million.
Following an exposé by independent reporter Nick Shirley, which highlighted alleged fraud at daycare centers operated by Somali communities, the Trump administration moved to halt certain federal funding to Minnesota related to childcare.
Prior fraud cases involving the Somali community have resulted in multiple convictions, where funds were allocated for feeding children during Covid without services being provided.
Cuba announced on Monday that 32 of its citizens were killed in combat during the U.S. raid on Venezuela.
The raid on Saturday, which saw U.S. forces arrest and extract Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to New York, reportedly saw a large part of his security team killed.
The Cubans were performing missions on behalf of the Cuban Armed Forces and interior ministry, the country’s presidential office said on Facebook.
“Faithful to their responsibilities with security and defense, our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroically and fell, after ferocious resistance, into direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombings of the facilities,” the statement said, according to a translation by Facebook.
Cuba also called the U.S. strikes a “criminal act of aggression and state terrorism,” and said the Cuban government will pay tribute to the dead.
The U.S. strikes came after weeks of military buildup in the region and threats by U.S. President Donald Trump against Maduro.
After the raid, Trump said that the U.S. was going to “run” Venezuela, “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. will use leverage gained from its oil blockade on the country and regional military buildup to achieve its policy aims.
“We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker.
Seperately, Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” that as the U.S. has a “quaratine” on Venezuelan oil.
“That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met, and that’s what we intend to do,” he added.
The U.S. in recent months has seized tankers associated with the country and moved military ships and warplanes into the Caribbean.
— CNBC’s Garrett Downs contributed to this report.
While Maduro played dictator and CNN ran humanitarian crisis segments, American money was flowing into Caracas. The objective was acquisition.
US foundations were buying Venezuelan bonds, debt, equity, gold, and oil. Pennies on the dollar while the country collapsed into starvation. Members of Congress with financial stakes through careful proxies. Through humanitarian language.
Through the same laundering networks that have operated for 50 years.
Two months earlier, President Trump had signed an executive order prohibiting transactions with Venezuela’s oil sector.
Standard sanctions on the surface. Financial guillotine underneath.
The order severed Congressional money. Cut foundation stakes. Killed portfolios belonging to American politicians who publicly condemned the regime they were privately invested in.
For seven years, the world watched Venezuela collapse and called it socialism’s failure.
China had poured $60 billion into Venezuela. Oil-for-loans, infrastructure for access. Same playbook that gave Beijing control over African minerals. The CCP expected to own the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil reserves while using Venezuela as a hemispheric beachhead for money laundering, intelligence operations, and strategic positioning.
China was installing governance infrastructure. Smart city platforms. Surveillance systems. Payment rails. AI-enabled administrative systems that would make Venezuelan sovereignty conditional on Chinese hardware, updates, and cloud access. Once embedded, extraction becomes nearly impossible. You can change leaders. You can rewrite constitutions. But you cannot easily remove an AI governance layer without collapsing basic state functions.
Trump’s sanctions prevented installation from completing.
While Trump’s first administration choked the regime, Samantha Power ran USAID like her personal State Department. She provided backdoor relief under a humanitarian banner that nullified Trump’s economic warfare. Keeping foundation investments viable. Maintaining Congressional stakes. Preserving CCP access through the same networks.
By 2025, Maduro was caught between colliding empires.
China viewing him as a failed investment. Russia treating him as an afterthought. Iran broke. USAID providing just enough relief to keep him breathing but not enough to save him.
Two choices: Continue serving masters who’d abandoned him, or flip.
He flipped.
Most people do not realize how much the world just changed.
March 2020. Southern District of New York unsealed: United States v. Nicolás Maduro Moros.
Twenty-five years cocaine trafficking. Thousands of tons imported. Diplomatic passports for traffickers. Money laundering through Mexico.
The indictment proves the predicate. Drug trafficking. Money laundering. State-sponsored narcoterrorism.
Indictments name the sellers while omitting the buyers.
For twenty-five years, billions in cocaine proceeds had to be washed. Integrated into global financial system. Turned into bonds, real estate, campaign contributions, foundation endowments.
Maduro is heading to deposition.
USS Iwo Jima. En route to SDNY. With filing cabinet.
Which foundations bought the bonds. When. Through which proxies. Which Congress members had indirect stakes. How much Petróleos money flowed to Washington. How USAID funds got laundered back while Samantha Power claimed humanitarian mission. How CCP money moved through the same networks purchasing Congressional influence and energy access simultaneously.
The evidence regarding voting systems created to produce altered election results in Venezuela for Hugo Chávez, then exported internationally.
The Dominion origin story Sidney Powell described in 2020?
All heading to Southern District of New York. Where Maduro’s indictment is already unsealed. Where foundation money becomes traceable. Where Congressional corruption becomes discoverable. Where CCP infiltration becomes documentable. Where everything becomes admissible.
If Venezuela was the CCP’s Western Hemisphere front door, Paraguay is the back door.
Cuba watching. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit,” Rubio said this morning.
Iran already threatened. Khamenei might need to be “saved.”
The machinery operating above governments.
Someone just dropped into that engine room with warrant and protective custody.
He stumped the chumps. The “chumps” in this case were the “blue-chip” academic and financial economists whose consensus forecast this time last year was of high inflation and low economic growth. Wrong on both counts.
As you’ve probably heard, the GDP growth for Q3 came in at a red-hot 4.3%, following 3.5% for the second quarter. Some 90% of professional economists got it wrong — all underestimating the strength of the Trump economy. QED: These weren’t random errors. These were “hate Trump” errors.
They also predicted inflation of above 3% for 2025. It’s going to come in at closer to 2.7%, with the last two months trending down to the Fed inflation target of 2%.
Starting in the second quarter, GDP has been nearly twice as high as predicted.
To quote the inimitable special agent Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much.”
This isn’t the first time the whiz kids whiffed on the Trump economy. These are the same Keynesian economists who warned at the start of Trump’s first term that we would see a stock market crash. The stock market is today at record highs on all three indices. Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics and wrote regularly for The New York Times for years, famously feared a second Great Depression if Trump policies took hold.
Krugman and others all thought Trump’s tariffs would ignite runaway inflation. There’s no doubt tariffs did cause a rise in aluminum, coffee and beef prices — commodities that got hit by tariffs as high as 50%. But the economic pundits failed to take account of the disinflationary effect of pro-growth Trump policies like deregulation, tax rate cuts, and pro-America energy policies. These counteracted the impact of tariffs on prices overall.
One would have thought that the academics and media would have learned from their mistakes of always underestimating Trump on the economy. But they seem incapable of self-correcting.
The latest blue-chip forecast for economic growth for 2026 is a measly 1.9% even though the economy has been growing 50% faster than that of late.
This raises the question: Why are they persistently wrong? It could be that they are so afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome that they can’t see or shoot straight. No one likes their theories and core beliefs proven wrong. It was John Maynard Keynes who once famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind — what do you do, sir?”
His disciples seem incapable of changing their minds.
If these blue-chippers had any integrity, they’d admit that they don’t know what they are talking about and send back their Ivy League PhDs.
Fat chance that will ever happen. Instead these prophets of doom will continue to give the entire economics profession a black eye. No wonder it is known as “the dismal science.”
President Donald Trump said the leader of the Venezuelan opposition doesn’t have the “respect” of the country to govern following the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. led a series of strikes in the South American country early Saturday, eventually capturing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and taking them to the U.S. to face narco-terrorism charges.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado celebrated the operation and capture in a statement, calling it the “hour of freedom.”
“As of today, Nicolás Maduro faces international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against the Venezuelan people and against citizens of many other nations. In light of his refusal to accept a negotiated solution, the Government of the United States has fulfilled its promise to uphold the rule of law,” Machado said.
Trump, who said he has not been in contact with Machado, said during a press conference on Saturday that he doesn’t believe she can assume the leadership role in Venezuela.
“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect,” Trump said.
Maria Corina Machado, laureate of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, speaks during a news conference in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 11, 2025.Lars Martin Hunstad/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado celebrated the operation and capture in a statement, calling it the “hour of freedom.”
“As of today, Nicolás Maduro faces international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against the Venezuelan people and against citizens of many other nations. In light of his refusal to accept a negotiated solution, the Government of the United States has fulfilled its promise to uphold the rule of law,” Machado said.
Trump, who said he has not been in contact with Machado, said during a press conference on Saturday that he doesn’t believe she can assume the leadership role in Venezuela.
“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect,” Trump said.
Maria Corina Machado, laureate of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, speaks during a news conference in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 11, 2025.Lars Martin Hunstad/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
Independent exit polls showed González Urrutia received two-thirds of the votes, and the U.S. said “overwhelming evidence” supported his victory, but Maduro claimed he won the election and did not cede power.
ABC News’ Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz told “Good Morning America Weekend” that it’s unclear how the military will respond to the ousting of Maduro and that the U.S. is keeping an eye on the situation.
“Today, we are ready to enforce our mandate and to take power. Let us remain vigilant, active, and organized until the Democratic Transition is achieved — a transition that requires each and every one of us.” Machado said.
Alarcón told ABC News Live that many Venezuelans are celebrating the downfall of Maduro but want to make sure his regime isn’t replaced by a similar one.
This includes not installing any of Maduro’s allies who are still in Venezuela or another figure who doesn’t respect the “democratic will of the Venezuelan people,” she explained.
People celebrate at the Bolivar square in Caracas on January 3, 2026, after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images
“What I would like to see is for those still in power in Venezuela to receive guarantees, to exit peacefully, and to give way to the liberty that so many Venezuelans here in Doral, where I live… were screaming and chanting and wanting and that means liberty from everyone and to see the country governed by those who we elected,” she said.
Venezuelan-American journalist José Enrique Arrioja, speaking to ABC News’ Gio Benitez, called the operation a “shocking series of events” and a “historical moment” for both Venezuela and Latin America.
Arrioja, who has been covering financial markets and politics in Latin America for more than two decades and is the managing editor of the magazine Americas Quarterly, said the operation showed a bold new strategy the Trump administration would be taking in the region.
“It has been a very [mixed] reaction. The situation in Caracas as we speak right now, Gio, is calm. People buying groceries, buying basic staples ahead of might be vary uncertain week, if not months, ahead,” Arrioja said.
“We have a regime that was widely unpopular since last year when they usurped power after the July 28 elections,” he continued. “It has been just dealing with an increased repression, more authoritarian regime.”
While many detractors celebrated Maduro’s capture, his supporters condemned the U.S. for carrying out the operation.
Venezuela Vice President Delcy Rodriguez addressed the nation on state television demanding the release of Maduro and saying he is the only president of the country.
“We had already warned that an aggression was underway under false excuses, under false pretexts, and that the masks had fallen and it had only one objective: regime change in Venezuela — and the capture of our energy, mineral, and natural resources,” she said in an address in Spanish. “That is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it.”
“We have convened this National Defense Council. … From here, we demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The only president of Venezuela: President Nicolas Maduro.”
Rodriguez called on civilians and armed forces across the country to mobilize and to defend the country.
United as a nation, the Venezuelan people will find a path of peace and calm. Those who resort to force, those who resort to violating international law — they do not have right or reason on their side,” she said. “We have historical right and moral right on our side, and we will stand firm in defending peace, calm, Venezuela’s future, the people’s claim to their homeland, and their right to hope and social well-being.”
Rodriguez’s comments demanding for the “immediate release” of Maduro contradict what Trump said she had told Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a “long” phone conversation held Saturday.
Trump claimed on Saturday that Rodriguez said she is ready to work with Washington and that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
ABC News’ Dada Jovanovic and Victoria Moll Rordriguez contributed to this report.
Socialists across Europe reacted with outrage over the Trump administration’s successful capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday morning.
In a pre-dawn series of strikes and raids ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump and led by the elite Delta Force army unit, Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and are set to face criminal charges in the United States over suspected narco-terrorism.
The toppling of Maduro will likely lead to the end of nearly three decades of socialist rule in Venezuela, during which time the oil-rich nation was reduced to one of the most impoverished countries in South America after previously standing as one of the most prosperous.
Despite a record of economic failure, countless alleged human rights violations, and accusations of using electoral fraud to remain in power, the regime in Caracas has long enjoyed the support of socialists in Europe, including former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who praised former socialist leader Hugo Chavéz upon his death in 2013 for having supposedly shown “that the poor matter and wealth can be shared.”
In response to the toppling of Maduro, Corbyn said: “The US has launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Venezuela. This is a brazen attempt to secure control over Venezuelan natural resources.It is an act of war that puts the lives of millions of people at risk — and should be condemned by anyone who believes in sovereignty and international law.”
Corbyn’s far-left Your Party co-leader Zarah Sultana added: “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves — and that’s no coincidence. This is naked U.S. imperialism: an illegal assault on Caracas aimed at overthrowing a sovereign government and plundering its resources. Starmer’s Labour government must condemn this unequivocally. Solidarity with the Venezuelan people.”
Far-left indignation was not contained to Britain. Across the Channel, former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose socialist La France Insoumise (France in Rebellion) party has been accused of aligning with radical Islamists, described the U.S. action as violating Venezuela’s “sovereignty with an archaic military intervention and the heinous kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife.”
Drug trafficking is now the pretext of the empire and its political and media agents to destroy what remains of the international order free from the law of the strongest. With Ukraine, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, invasion has become an operational mode once again. The peace of the entire world is at stake,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ines Schwerdtner, the co-leader of the German Die Linke (The Left) party, which is the direct descendant of the communist ruling party of the now-defunct East Germany during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, accused the Trump administration of “state terrorism”.
“Hands off Venezuela! Whoever violates international law and allows presidents to be kidnapped is engaging in brutal state terrorism. In the case of wars of aggression that violate international law, there must be no double standards. The federal government should immediately condemn the US attack,” Schwerdtner wrote on X.
In Spain, the leader of the far-left Podemos party, Ione Bellarra, demanded that Madrid cut off relations with the United States, which she accused of being a “danger to the world” and demonstrating “imperialist and terrorist aggression.”
Nicolás Maduro is a mafia boss, not a president, and the Venezuelan government is now a criminal enterprise with the power of a state. It poses a threat to democracies everywhere.
Pablo Escobar was elected alternate representative to the Congress of the Republic of Colombia in 1982. Upon receiving the news of his victory, he told his wife: “Get ready to be the First Lady . . . the doors of the presidential palace will open for us.” The most notorious drug trafficker in history dreamed of becoming president of his country.
To realize that dream, Escobar oversaw a reign of terror that included bombings, assassinations of judges, police, and presidential candidates, and mass kidnappings. The exact number of victims is unknown but estimated to be around 50,000. The Colombian drug baron aimed to bend the authority of the state, transforming it into both a shield and a platform for his business. Yet despite his efforts, he did not succeed. Colombia’s institutional framework acted as a bulwark against his incursions. The Supreme Court, armed forces, media, and citizens confronted Escobar and prevented organized crime from taking over their country. Democracy prevailed.
Forty years later, however, Escobar’s vision became reality in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro achieved what Pablo Escobar never could. On 25 July 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control identified the Venezuelan dictator as the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, a network of high-ranking military officers and officials that ships tons of cocaine abroad.
Maduro is the mafia boss in this story. He has succeeded in merging political power with criminal power into a single apparatus. He colonized the Venezuelan state and has bent it to serve international organized crime, destroying his country’s democracy along the way.
The Rise of Narco-Crime
The relationship between Chavismo-Madurismo and drug trafficking began more than two decades ago. It was inaugurated by Hugo Chávez, who created the institutional conditions that allowed the degradation of the Venezuelan state and placed it at the service of national and international organized crime.
Perhaps the most important step in this regard was the expulsion of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). On 5 August 2005, Hugo Chávez announced: “The DEA is using the fight against drug trafficking as a mask, to support drug trafficking and to carry out intelligence in Venezuela against the government.”
This event allowed Chávez to deepen his relationship with nonstate groups, especially Colombian ones such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Both Venezuelan and internationalsources reported the deployment of such groups in Venezuela and the coinciding increase in criminal activity along the border.
By 2020, these ties were consolidated. In March of that year, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Nicolás Maduro with narco-terrorism. He was accused of leading, along with fourteen other high-ranking officials, a network that had sent more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States since 1999.
In June 2025, Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, former head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, pled guilty in a New York federal court of conspiring to import cocaine and other related crimes. He acknowledged his role in the structure of the Cartel of the Suns and confirmed the involvement of the highest-ranking military officials in drug-trafficking operations on a continental scale.
One month later, in July 2025, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the Cartel of the Suns, connecting it to networks such as the Tren de Aragua and Sinaloa Cartel. In August, the U.S. government increased the reward for Maduro’s capture to US$50 million. This is the highest amount ever offered by the United States for the capture of a criminal. During the same period, the United States began escalating its military campaign against narcotrafficking operations linked to the Maduro regime: In August, the U.S. Southern Command began deploying warships, aircraft, and forces to the Caribbean, and since September 2, U.S. forces havestruckseveral alleged drug boats departing Venezuela, killing seventeen people.
Maduro’s Machine
Nicolás Maduro’s closest circle sits at the core of organized crime both in Venezuela and internationally. These ties have transformed formal state institutions into structures that enable the domestic and foreign operations of the Cartel of the Suns. Generals are overseeing trafficking routes and shipments; ministers and governors control ports, airports, and borders; intelligence officers safeguard operations and eliminate “obstacles,” and diplomats are facilitating connections with international criminal networks while providing political protection. But this is the most essential point: Nicolás Maduro has placed the Venezuelan state at the service of criminal organizations with global reach.
The case of the “narco-nephews” exposed this dynamic. In 2015, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, the nephews of First Lady Cilia Flores, were arrested in Haiti. DEA agents intercepted them as they attempted to smuggle more than 800 kilograms of cocaine to the United States.
The men were tried and convicted in New York in 2017. During the trial, they revealed how they used official facilities, diplomatic passports, and protection from the highest levels of government to carry out their operations.
This episode provided evidence of the direct connection between Maduro’s family circle and the drug-trafficking business. The incident left no room for doubt: Corruption and complicity reach the very core of Venezuela’s dictatorial power.
The Cartel of the Suns, a political-military-criminal corporation, has maritime, air, and land routes that operate securely and freely across different regions. Its shipments travel in vehicles bearing official Venezuelan state insignia.
The Venezuelan Navy guarantees the departure of the cartel’s shipments to the United States and Europe, and flights to Central America and Mexico take off from both regular and irregular airstrips operating under military protection. Ports, airports, river routes, and border areas have been militarized to facilitate criminal logistics. In this way, they function as safe havens for drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
The loss of territorial sovereignty is evident: Entire regions are under the influence of criminal networks associated with the state structure. The border areas and municipalities of the Mining Arc, in particular, stand out. In these spaces, Venezuelan law does not apply; instead, the rules imposed by the cocaine trade prevail. The country’s geography has become an open channel for the transit of drugs, weapons, and illicit capital.
Moreover, the impact of the Cartel of the Suns transcends borders. Its ability to coordinate with groups such as Tren de Aragua allows it to carry out violent operations in other regions. And in these operations, criminal practices such as kidnappings, extortion, and assassinations are intertwined with political motivations.
Take the assassination of 32-year-old Ronald Ojeda, a former Venezuela soldier. On 21 February 2024, a group of men posing as Chilean state-security officials broke into Ojeda’s home in Santiago, Chile, and kidnapped him. A few days later, the young man was found dead inside a suitcase that had been buried under a concrete slab. Subsequent investigations revealed that he had been tortured and buried alive, ultimately dying from asphyxiation.
The case shocked Chilean society. With witnesses testifying during the criminal investigation that Venezuelan authorities were behind the brutal murder, the violent reach of Maduro’s regime came into sharp relief along with the morbid culture of the mafia and drug cartels.
The investigation revealed four critical facts: First, the crime was politically motivated. Ojeda, an army lieutenant, had been expelled from the Bolivarian National Armed Forces in 2017 for allegedly participating in a military conspiracy to foment a coup d’état. Second, it was the Maduro regime’s second-in-command, Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace Diosdado Cabello, who ordered the assassination. Third, members of Tren de Aragua based in Chile carried out the killing. And finally, payment for the murder was made in Peru.
This illustrates the vast scope of the regime’s operations. Maduro’s narco-criminal dictatorship does not respect territorial boundaries and efficiently aligns political objectives with criminal mechanisms.
Each shipment that crosses the Atlantic and reaches Europe is an extension of the criminal threat. The Cartel of the Suns supplies mafias operating in Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, increasing urban violence, money laundering, and political corruption across the continent. For this reason, the tentacles of the Cartel of the Suns pose a serious security threat for Europe: Its ports and cities have been penetrated by a transnational crime ring backed by a Latin American state.
Western mechanisms to contain criminal-authoritarian expansion have clearly proven insufficient. The United States has, without ideological bias — because drug trafficking recognizes no ideology — taken the lead in pursuing and sanctioning those responsible. Most of the Americas, however, have shown limited capacity to respond, and Europe’s silence has effectively provided an escape route for Maduro and his associates, who have found ways to traffic drugs in Europe to bypass U.S. controls.
European Union countries should instead shut down the financial channels that Maduro’s regime uses for money laundering, strengthen judicial, police, and even military cooperation with Latin American countries, and support the formation of an alliance of Latin American armed forces to fight drug trafficking.
Moscow in Caracas
Nicolás Maduro’s narco-state counts the world’s autocracies, especially Russia, among its principal allies. The Cartel of the Suns maintains a direct relationship with Moscow, positioning Venezuela as its foremost enclave in Latin America.
Russia’s military, technological, and intelligence presence in Venezuela has at least three purposes: supplying the Maduro regime with weapons and tools that allow it to withstand Western pressure, providing strategic protection for its criminal operations, and integrating it into an international axis that grants it a place in the international community.
This relationship has turned Venezuela into a geopolitical platform for Moscow. From there, Vladimir Putin projects his growing influence over the Americas. On 5 May 2025 in Moscow, for example, Maduro and Putin signed a strategic cooperation agreement focused on energy.
The close ties between Moscow and Caracas are deep and visible. This is why NATO must turn its gaze toward Caracas, because the fight against drug trafficking and the defense of hemispheric security are one and the same battle. Without a doubt, recognizing this connection could serve as a crucial first step in containing a narco-authoritarian state allied with Vladimir Putin.
Hijacked Political Change
Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship is not a traditional autocracy. Every level of the regime’s hierarchy participates in a system in which the state serves the enterprise of drug trafficking. Public administration has been degraded to the point of becoming just another cog in the machinery of international criminal trade.
How does all this impact Venezuelans’ struggle for democracy? This is not a simple question, but in my view it is the one that must guide analyses of political change in the twenty-first century. The democratization theories of the past simply cannot meet today’s challenges.
The Venezuelan people, for their part, continued to build an electoral path toward democracy with an eye on elections in 2024 — despite the threats of Nicolás Maduro’s criminal regime. This decision was not naïve and was driven by at least two structural concerns.
First, Venezuelans are deeply committed to democracy and have a long record of peacefulness. In the late 1960s, when Latin America was a powder keg, the guerrilla forces in Venezuela voluntarily laid down their arms and joined political life in a successful peace process led by President Rafael Caldera.
Second, Venezuelans’ democratic commitment has fostered political work centered on political parties and elections. In our political culture, democracy is achieved through the vote. That is why Venezuelan citizens are prepared for electoral battles. And when such battles represent a real opportunity for change, we engage in them with special enthusiasm.
Thus, on 28 July 2024, Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly for political change and for the recovery of the republic. A majority of citizens elected Edmundo González Urrutia the legitimate president. That mandate, however, was denied and usurped by the Maduro dictatorship.
The popular will for change was suppressed by a power whose survival rests on the cocaine trade, money laundering, and protection of international criminal networks. The sovereign decision of the Venezuelan people was neutralized by a machinery that blends internal repression, propaganda, and alliances with organized crime.
Restoring democracy in Venezuela will not simply be a matter of dismantling a traditional autocracy or rebuilding institutions captured by a conventional political elite. The challenge will be to dismantle a system in which political power and criminal power have fused into a single framework. The type of transition that awaits will demand creativity and innovation if we are to definitively defeat transnational criminal actors with enormous capacity for violence and corruption. To cure the ills and confront the challenges presented by Venezuela’s gangster-style autocracy, we will have to devise completely new formulas.
The priority on the day after Maduro must be the comprehensive reconstruction of the state. This means restoring its essential capacities, especially the legitimate monopoly on violence. Without a military subordinated to civilian power and at the service of democracy, defeating organized crime and reasserting sovereign control over the territory will not be possible. Organized crime — narcotrafficking — is a cancer that can be eradicated only through the legitimate use of force. Before any process aimed at restoring democracy can begin, Venezuela must first bring our borders, ports, airports, and areas currently militarized for illicit purposes back under state authority. Without this step, every attempt at institutional reform or economic opening will be doomed to fail, as the state will remain hostage to criminal networks that operate under their own logic and contrary to the interests of a republic.
Venezuela must also heal the cultural and moral wounds left by this prolonged period of degradation. The narco-state has devastated both the economy and the state, while instilling cultural patterns based on impunity, corruption, and violence as means of social “advancement.” The country must undergo a profound process of moral regeneration so that we can relearn what it means to be citizens. Civic education, the reconstruction of the social fabric, and the creation of cultural “antibodies” against organized crime will be as important as legal, institutional, and economic reforms. Democracy endures only when citizens are conscious of their responsibility to defend the common good.
Finally, the challenges of political change in Venezuela transcend our borders. Our case is a warning of universal scope: When organized crime captures a state, it threatens the entire liberal order. The routes, the flows of capital, and the alliances that sustain Maduro’s regime know no territorial limits. Countries across the Americas and Europe have already felt the impact of these networks in the form of violence, corruption, and political destabilization. The democratic struggle in Venezuela is thus not merely a national cause but part of a global battle for democracy and international security.
Solidarity among free nations must therefore be deepened and translated into more effective mechanisms of expression. The construction of a new Venezuelan democracy will demand the will and sacrifice of its citizens, as well as the active commitment of international allies. Defeating its gangster-like autocracy will be both a victory for Venezuela and a triumph for all who believe that freedom, human dignity, and the rule of law are stronger than organized crime and its violence. The cause is urgent. And it belongs to us all.
Juan Miguel Matheus is a Venezuelan politician in exile and was professor of constitutional law at Monteávila University (Caracas). He is currently a senior research fellow at the University of Texas School of Law (Austin) and affiliate of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.
Bolivia’s Amazon forests are becoming scorched earth, with millions of acres lost each year to raging fires. Worse, this disaster is being caused by a government more interested in corrupt profits than protecting its people and wildlife.
Drug cartels possess the power of militaries, the profits of corporations, and the coercive capacity of a state. They will not be eliminated any time soon. But the region’s democracies can seek to raise their costs, limit their influence, and curb the violence.
His regime has hung onto power despite setbacks that would have toppled most democratic governments. Besides pure repression, Maduro has developed new autocratic tools that have kept Venezuela’s authoritarian state afloat.
Today begins a new era,” declared Zohran Mamdani upon his swearing in yesterday as New York City’s 112th mayor. “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”
Inaugural ceremonies aren’t usually a forum for deep deliberation and rational discourse. But a new leader’s words are rarely disconnected from his underlying philosophy. Mamdani’s inaugural comments therefore give us an idea of what to expect: claiming to represent “all” New Yorkers, the new mayor will work quickly to push through decisions unpopular at best, and harmful at worst.
The character of those decisions, too, is clear. In a line widely circulated on social media, Mamdani promised to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Audacious collectivism: that’s the Mamdani agenda.
The inauguration ceremony reveals a mayor with no shortage of good intentions. But those intentions don’t align with economic realities, or with a sound grasp of human incentives and motivations. Like other collectivists before him, Mamdani’s vision is likely to run up against reality.
The commitment to the collective was on full display even in the lead up to Mamdani’s big moment. First came a speech from his fellow democratic socialist, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In electing Mamdani, New York had “chosen prosperity for the many over spoils for the few,” she said. “Most importantly, Zohran will be a mayor for all of us!”
Then came the religious leaders, helmed by Imam Khalid Latif: “Let New York . . . continue to show that dignity, respect and compassion are no longer for the few but for all!” Then Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who declared that “systems entrenched at the top” are the reason why “so many New Yorkers have too little.”
Last came Senator Bernie Sanders, there to administer the oath of office to the new mayor. Sanders’s speech congratulated him for taking on “some enormously wealthy oligarchs, defeating them “in the biggest political upset in modern American history.”
The subtext is not very subtle. On January 1, 2026, New York became a city “for all”—not, as it had been, a city governed in the interests of a power elite of billionaires, real-estate “speculators,” financiers, and the like. Mamdani’s swearing in marks what he promises will be “a new era” of governance, in which the public will be enlightened by socialism and politicians will intervene to improve our lives. Indeed, Mamdani explicitly promised such intervention against the city’s landlords mere hours after his swearing in.
The anti-elite diagnosis, of course, is not completely off the mark. Many of the city’s current problems—high rents, crime, homelessness, and food prices—are the result of an elite’s abuse of power.
But it’s not the elite Mamdani campaigned against. Rather, it’s the elite of previous public officials, who also promised to “remake New York.” They, too, arrived touting good intentions and big expectations and saw their electoral majorities as mandates to pass laws to “improve New Yorkers’ lives.”
The results include: statutes outlawing denser housing construction in most of the city—compounded by rent-stabilization laws that push thousands of apartments into disrepair—and billions spent on homeless programs. All this has driven higher rent burdens across the city.
Good intentions also created childcare regulations stricter than in most other jurisdictions, absurd liability laws on construction that don’t exist elsewhere, and some of the nation’s highest taxes. The elite—old and new—offers the same solution: higher taxes on the “1 percent,” which many of the wealthy won’t pay: they’re already fleeing the city.
For those who believe that New York City should reward excellence and provide opportunities, not hand-outs, Mamdani’s inauguration was a bracing experience. But will his policies succeed—even by their own metrics?
“There are people who are rooting for New York to fail,” Williams said in his speech. “They want to be right in their cynicism more than they want us to succeed in our idealism.”
No one should root for New York to fail. Its residents, and even America, depend on its success. But it’s not cynicism to believe that Mamdani’s agenda—the same one the state’s leaders have been pursuing for over a decade—will only make things worse. That’s just realism.
The law triggers a mandated “right of first offer” period, giving pre-approved nonprofits up to 45 days to express interest and another 90 days to submit a bid, followed by a 15-day window to match any third-party offer if one emerges.
Failure to comply could result in civil penalties starting at 3% of the sale price, and nonprofits could seek court injunctions to block deals.
Many are calling it a blow to private property rights and free-market principles, that gives the government and non-profits—exclusive first dibs on purchasing properties before owners can sell them on the open market.
The bill, which passed with a 30-10 vote despite fierce opposition from landlord groups and real estate stakeholders, requires owners of distressed residential properties to notify the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) before even listing or accepting offers.
Supporters say the new law will preserve affordable housing as the city suffers from a housing shortage, but critics disagree saying it represents government overreach and will exacerbate the housing crisis by discouraging property maintenance and new development.
COPA’s rollout is phased.
In the first year (2026), it targets only the most severely distressed properties, such as those in HPD’s Alternative Enforcement Program, facing foreclosures, or with orders to fix the issues.
Starting in the second year, coverage widens to buildings with at least one open hazardous or immediately hazardous violation per unit, as well as those where affordability restrictions have expired within the past two years or are set to lapse soon.
Exemptions include one- to three-unit buildings, owner-occupied properties with five or fewer units, vacant lots, and purely commercial structures.
Conservatives say this plan ignores the root causes of New York’s housing crisis—decades of rent control, zoning restrictions, and high taxes that have lessened the supply and inflated costs for everyone.
In short: You can no longer sell property in New York City without first getting the permission of the government — on the price, and all the details of the sale.
Imagine being unable to sell your home without first getting permission from government authorities as to the price and the terms. Would you still feel like it’s your property? Would you still feel like you live in a free market, even a regulated one — or even in a free country, at all?
The government has, in effect, declared that it owns all private property in New York City. You can dispose of that property only with the government’s permission.
This is Communism. It’s evil — but it’s also poverty-inducing. When you stop people from acting rationally and in their own best interests economically, you force people into stupidity, bureaucracy and poverty as a way of life.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 