There’s a new MAGA conspiracy theory afoot and it’s a doozy.:
There’s been no shortage of reasons why President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro over the weekend. But election deniers think the operation will finally expose a 2020 election plot involving rigged voting machines.
Dumb as it may be, the conspiracy theory stretches way back to the days after the 2020 election, when prominent Trump figures like Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell falsely claimed that voting machine vendors Dominion and Smartmatic were secretly Venezuelan companies.
Since Maduro’s capture, prominent right-wing figures like Alex Jones and Benny Johnson, as well as the Trump administration official Ed Martin, have been excitedly predicting that Maduro, desperate to please Trump, will confirm the conspiracy. Trump himself has posted videos on social media promoting false claims about Dominion voting machines since Maduro’s capture.
It actually goes deeper than this. They think that Trump may have already cleverly cut the deal with Maduro in advance which explains why there was little resistance to his abduction. No word on why Maduro would have agreed although there has been some speculation that money was exchanged. This is all seen as yet more evidence of Trump’s brilliance.
You will no doubt recall that Fox News was forced to pay almost a billion dollars to Dominion for spreading this disinformation. This one should be good.
The causes of this blue-collar downturn are multifaceted—manufacturing remains in structural decline amidst the slowdown in demand for durable goods and consumer electronics. The early-COVID homebuilding boom has ended as builders finish work on the large number of projects that began in 2021/2022. Employment in oil & gas extraction continues to drop as crude prices sink to the lowest level since 2021. Transportation and warehousing jobs are declining as the trucking sector struggles.
Yet recent federal policy moves have been counterproductive. Tariffs are hurting blue-collar employment by raising the costs of manufacturing inputs. Immigration raids are disproportionately hurting the construction sector. Cuts to industrial policy subsidies have helped push factory construction down more than 8% over the last year. The administration’s desired “blue-collar boom” is not happening; quite the opposite.
But at least the price of eggs has leveled off. That’s really all that matters.
Trump don’t need no stinking Constitution. (Someone with more skill can map Trump’s face onto Alfonso Bedoya’s.)
Mona Charen warns that under Trump 2.0 we’ve become the bad guys, the rogue state, the lawless, imperialist bullies. With a maniacal grin, Trump’s slavering White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, declares it proudly.
Rights? Rule of law? We don’t need no stinking rule of law. Or any rules-based international order.
Sure, our American record is hardly spotless. We are sinners. But we still look to the ideals in our Declaration and to the flawed Constitution we’ve worked to perfect for 250 years as a guide to who we as a nation aspire to be. Or we did before Trumpism, a gangsterish shakedown racket self-parodying as a nation of laws, not men.
… Trump and his people don’t leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest. Marco Rubio warned other leaders not to “F around” lest they find out what a bad hombre the president is. There were direct, bald threats against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and of course, Greenland.
Trump’s understanding of the world arrested its development in the late 1970s to early 1980s, as I’ve noted. Trump believes any country he dislikes is emptying its prisons and asylums and dumping them on our shores. Charen traces that Trumpish fixation to Castro’s 1980 Mariel Boatlift. So, yes.
Charen concludes:
The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.
The Western Hemisphere had better prepare for a taste of this.
🚨This video is terrifying, and it’s exactly why “just comply” does not protect you from ICE/Border Patrol agents, even as U.S. citizens, and why you always film them.
In North Carolina, ICE/Border Patrol agents illegally stopped two U.S. citizens. They questioned them without… pic.twitter.com/FNb1ZMoCPb
This video is terrifying, and it’s exactly why “just comply” does not protect you from ICE/Border Patrol agents, even as U.S. citizens, and why you always film them.
In North Carolina, ICE/Border Patrol agents illegally stopped two U.S. citizens. They questioned them without legal cause, took their licenses, and admitted on camera that the men were allowed to record.
And they were still attacked.
In the video, one man asks if he can film for his safety. The agent says yes, saying that he’ll “have to put his mask on.” The agents take their licenses, ask where they’re from, where they live, what they’re doing in the area, all without legal authority. The men cooperate anyway.
Then the situation turns dangerous.
Another agent suddenly tells the driver, “Turn off your video. You are being detained, so you are not free to record.”
That is false. Recording law enforcement in public is legal, including during detention.
The driver calmly refuses, keeps one hand on the steering wheel as instructed, and holds his phone in the other.
That’s when the agent lunges for the phone.
The agent throws himself into the car, trying to grab the device. When the driver moves it away, the agent assaults him.
The agent then illegally opens the car door, something the driver correctly points out they are not allowed to do.
The agents keep demanding the filming stop, as multiple agents keep reaching for the phone.
Then they escalate again.
They threaten arrest, grab the driver, and start hitting him and trying to drag him out of the car, even though he keeps saying, “We haven’t done anything wrong.” When they fail to pull him out, they back away, visibly angry.
They turn on the passenger next.
An agent grabs him, threatens handcuffs, and assaults him trying to force him out of the vehicle. When that doesn’t work, they start yelling conflicting commands, claiming the men are “interfering with an investigation.”
An investigation into what? Their own illegal stop.
At one point, an agent shouts that the men can’t interfere, while another tries… again… to grab the phone, almost certainly to stop or erase the recording.
Only after all of this do the agents finally release them. Because they are U.S. citizens. Because the stop was illegal. And because the camera was still rolling.
This is why you film ICE. This is why compliance doesn’t save you. This is why they hate cameras.
If this hadn’t been recorded, this would be another lie in a report, another “resisting” accusation, another abuse buried and denied.
Film them. Always.
Here’s another:
🚨BREAKING: ICE/Border Patrol agents are once again illegally arresting U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
In the video, you can hear the agent ask for ID AFTER he assaulted, tackled and handcuffed the man.
When the man asks why he’s being detained, the agent claims it’s because the… pic.twitter.com/Deee8DgowT
BREAKING: ICE/Border Patrol agents are once again illegally arresting U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
In the video, you can hear the agent ask for ID AFTER he assaulted, tackled and handcuffed the man.
When the man asks why he’s being detained, the agent claims it’s because the car is registered to an undocumented immigrant. The man responds, “What? I’m a U.S. citizen.” Despite this, the agent grabs his wallet and drags him toward an unmarked van… still without verifying his identity.
This isn’t law enforcement. This is reckless abuse of power.
If ICE can assault, arrest, and transport a U.S. citizen without confirming their identity, then no one is “safe” under this system.
This is what happens when agencies operate with impunity… and it’s exactly why these abuses must be documented, challenged, and stopped.
The courts are barely holding the line. Congress is asleep at the switch.
United States AG Pam Bondi at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
January 6 insurrectionists pardoned on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term took a “victory lap” in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the fifth anniversary of their violent attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. A few hundred Proud Boys, insurrectionists and supporters prayed outside the U.S. Capitol they defiled.
Not standing with them was Brian Cole Jr. , the man accused after a five-year manhunt of planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of both the nearby RNC and DNC the night before the Capitol riot. He remains in jail awaiting trial.
The White House has brushed off questions on the subject, but Justice Department prosecutors should be worried about this, and there were suggestions based off their briefs and statements in court last week that they already are. (The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.)
Trump’s proclamation commuted the sentences of 14 individuals and also granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” This immediately covered roughly 1,500 people, including hundreds of defendants who were charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement officers.
The wording of Trump’s original pardon comes into play, as does the Department of Justice’s prior extension of Trump’s broad pardon to people whose cases were merely pending at the time he signed it.
Oops
It gets better.
Moreover, the substantive scope of Trump’s pardon language is very broad, as the Justice Department’s own lawyers have maintained in other cases. If Cole is convicted, it is very possible that the presiding judge could ultimately rule (however begrudgingly) that his crimes were, in the language of Trump’s pardon, “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Last week, the Justice Department went out of its way during the court hearing to avoid using any phrases that might immediately connect Cole’s alleged crimes to Jan. 6, but prosecutors’ efforts were so obvious, that they had the effect of drawing more attention to it. The government’s pre-hearing brief also appears to have been designed to skirt this issue and put the most Trump-friendly spin on Cole’s motive for his alleged crimes — though ultimately not very convincingly.
This is the same Pamela Jo Bondi-run DOJ that last fall unlawfully appointed former Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan as lead federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. An insurance lawyer described as “a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience,” Halligan signed off on charges Trump demanded against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie in November agreed with Comey’s lawyer that the charges must be dismissed (NBC News):
“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment,” Currie wrote in finding that Halligan lacked the authority to present a case to a grand jury.
“All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside,” the judge wrote, describing the insurance lawyer as “a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience.”
She issued a separate, similar ruling dismissing the James case.
The statute of limitations on bringing the same charges expired in the interim.
More than six weeks after a judge threw out Halligan’s indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York state Attorney General Letitia James on the grounds that she was illegally serving as interim U.S. Attorney, Halligan is still signing indictments as the office’s lead prosecutor, according to a bombshell court filing.
Federal Judge David Novak, who was appointed by Trump, issued an order Tuesday demanding that Halligan “explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.”
Novak wrote that although the government had appealed the ruling that nullified Halligan’s appointment, the appeals court had not issued a stay in the case, meaning the original decision remained “binding precedent in this district” while the appeals process played out.
The Richmond-area judge also noted that he had issued the order of his own initiative, as opposed to at the request of a defense counsel, and gave Halligan seven days to respond.
These people expect to rule the entire Western Hemisphere.
You might have thought Trump would speak seriously about the big plan for Venezuela when he met with the House Republicans this morning. No such luck. (He doesn’t have one.) He spent 90 minutes just doing the usual. He did spend some time pleasuring himself with the tale of the mighty US military killing a bunch of people so that’s good.
As many in Washington were easing into the new year, there was a flurry of activity last week in the prosecution of Brian Cole Jr. — the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters the night before Jan. 6, 2021. The Justice Department obtained an indictment from a grand jury and, following a court hearing, persuaded a judge to keep Cole detained pending trial.
Last week, the Justice Department went out of its way during the court hearing to avoid using any phrases that might immediately connect Cole’s alleged crimes to Jan. 6, but prosecutors’ efforts were so obvious, that they had the effect of drawing more attention to it. The government’s pre-hearing brief also appears to have been designed to skirt this issue and put the most Trump-friendly spin on Cole’s motive for his alleged crimes — though ultimately not very convincingly.
I won’t be surprised to see Trump just go with this. Cole said that he was upset about the “stolen” election. That makes him someone who believed Trump and that’s all that matters.
Scarborough on what Trump told him during a phone call yesterday: "Joe, the the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil. To underline his point, Trump said his comments were no long on background." pic.twitter.com/Vfm4mrlSFL
He’ll be dead before the oil is truly flowing in Venezuela again. And despite his belief that America owns everything, the oil actually belongs to the Venezuelan people. Unless he truly plans to occupy the country (and all the others he is threatening with annexation) everything he says is nonsense.
But he may have no choice. It’s possible that this is just Rubio’s wet dream to “free” Cuba and the whole thing will fall by the wayside once that’s done and they will re-direct him to the next shiny object. I guess at this point that’s the best option.
But I think we do have to take seriously the idea that there is a movement a foot in the Republican Party that’s eagerly following the Stephen Miller line that says America is a superpower and we take what we want, just like the imperial powers of the 18th and 19th centuries. They see a fight for resources and technology — oil, “rare earth minerals”, AI etc., and the need for a huge military buildup to back up their ambitions.
They are rapidly throwing the old order into the garbage — the idea of a laws based international order, guaranteed by institutions and formal diplomatic and military alliances is rapidly becoming a relic of the past. You can see people accepting the idea that there is no need for even a pretense that might doesn’t make right anymore.
Maybe it was inevitable that 80 years after WWII the lessons of the 20th century and the nuclear age would become ancient history. I’m not sure I would have expected that the United States would be the country to empower a senile, ignorant, demagogue to lead the way but maybe I should have.
President Trump took decisive action to pardon January 6 defendants who were unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples. They were not protected by the leaders who failed them. They were punished to cover incompetence.
On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol—many mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ. He fully pardoned most, commuted sentences, and ordered immediate release of those still imprisoned, ending years of harsh solitary confinement, denied due process, and family separation for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Thousands of Americans paid the price for political failures they did not create.
Since January 6, 2021, Nancy Pelosi spent over 3 years and nearly $20 million in taxpayer funds on her partisan Select Committee, producing a scripted TV spectacle to fabricate an “insurrection” narrative and pin all blame on President Trump.
Video and audio recordings, including unaired HBO footage from her own daughter, show Nancy Pelosi repeatedly acknowledging responsibility for the catastrophic security failures—admitting “We have totally failed” and “I take full responsibility” for not having the National Guard pre-deployed, despite intelligence warnings and President Trump’s offers of troops that were ignored under her leadership as Speaker.
The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as “insurrectionists” and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power. This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.
What follows is a full interactive timeline that completely distorts what happened that day and what we all saw with our own eyes. I urge you to click over and take a look at it. It’s frankly shocking.
Here’s just a small piece:
I’ll just leave this here.
The American people electing Trump after he staged a coup attempt 5 years ago was a nail in the coffin of our democracy. You can rationalize it all you want – But inflation! But wokeness! – but ultimately it was a societal suicide attempt and probably the dumbest collective voting decision ever made
I will never, ever understand how Americans let this happen. And blaming the Democrats for not being good enough is fatuous nonsense. After what that orange cretin did, the people should have been ready to vote for anything other than him.
None of this should have come as a surprise. The series of boat strikes and murders on the high seas that have taken place in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September were a pretty clear sign that Donald Trump was planning to seize control of Venezuela, a sovereign nation, and depose its strongman president Nicolás Maduro. But after the success of the U.S. military’s Operation Absolute Resolve, which was launched in the wee hours of Saturday morning without congressional — legal — authorization and saw the arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and claims by Trump that the U.S. would run the country, the American president swiftly turned his attentions elsewhere.
Trump, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, made it clear that Cuba, which has a very close bond with Venezuela, is next on the agenda. The country, Trump said, is “ready to fall” and might not require U.S. intervention. But it’s certainly possible an assisted splendid little regime change could happen there as well.
Mexico is also a target. On Saturday, Trump said, “Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.” Administration officials told Zeteo that Trump is serious about sending in special forces. He followed up his threats in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday by claiming the country is run by drug cartels and saying Mexico should “get their act together.” Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s president, was unfazed. “This is just President Trump’s manner of speaking,” she said at a news conference.
“Colombia is very sick too — run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long,” Trump said of Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Asked if a military operation against the country would happen, Trump responded “it sounds good to me.”
Then there is the president’s perennial favorite: Greenland. The semiautonomous Danish territory is “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” Trump said. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.” His comments sent off an international firestorm, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederikson ordering the president to “stop the threats.” The U.S., she said, has “no right to annex” Greenland, and such a move would almost certainly throw NATO into crisis, of which Denmark is a member.
These threats come even as Trump hasn’t sorted out who is running Venezuela. But it’s clear that, despite running three presidential campaigns on a no-war pledge, the president’s “America First” agenda has nothing to do with anti-interventionism.
These threats come even as Trump hasn’t sorted out who is running Venezuela. But it’s clear that, despite running three presidential campaigns on a no-war pledge, the president’s “America First” agenda has nothing to do with anti-interventionism. (Actually, it never did.) In fact, even before the Venezuela operation, Trump has been on something of a spree. In the days before the Venezuelan operation, he had bombed Nigeria and Somalia, and threatened more military action in Iran. In December, he launched strikes on Syria, Iraq and Yemen. This comes amid his boasts of ending a varying number of wars. (His latest tally, which he provided at Saturday’s press availability, was “eight and a quarter.”)
Trump has insisted that American oil companies would shortly be swooping in to invest billions of dollars in the Venezuelan oil fields, which had been nationalized back in the 1970s and more recently were the subject of litigation when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, cancelled some of the contracts held by international companies. POLITICO reported that Trump has more or less threatened the companies that they will receive no compensation unless they agree to his plans, but they are reluctant to invest in a place in which the security and future are so uncertain.
This appeared to be the only “plan” Trump had in mind to “run the place.” One might have thought the administration would have had the transition mapped out. But unlike opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corinna Machado, who has produced a full agenda for a post-Maduro government, which includes oil sector reform, economic recovery, criminal justice, the role of the military and engagement with the international community, there is nothing but Trump blathering about oil.
Instead, Trump and Rubio have apparently decided to allow Maduro’s regime to stay in place and do as the U.S. orders — or else. Trump told the Atlantic that if Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who is now serving as president, “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.
You don’t have to be clairvoyant to read between those lines. He says he is prepared to order a “second wave” at a moment’s notice if need be.
Whether Rodríguez can deliver is another question. Trump said that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” The administration has brushed off her comments that Venezuela will never be a colony again as necessary to pacify her base of “Chávismo” followers of the socialist, populist, political movement started by Chávez. But even if one assumes she is willing, there are big questions about whether that’s even possible.
There are other players in the regime who may not prove as amenable. Maduro was an adept manager of the different power centers in and around the government, including the military, led by defense minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and the powerful interior minister Diosdado Cabello. The military is deeply entwined in the government, with generals in charge of various functions throughout society. And as a comprehensive CNN report made clear, “there are paramilitary groups that, according to the UN, participated in the cycle of opposition repression during the most intense social unrest of recent years, also play a central role.” They are heavily armed and serve as an extra judicial police force.
The first Trump administration ran war games on regime change in Venezuela that found a distinct possibility that the country could easily fall into chaos, and it’s not hard to imagine a dozen scenarios that would bring that about. Since the administration appears to have put such experts as Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller in charge, the odds are quite high that this could escalate quickly.
Trump and his team are all high on their own supply after this operation, and they appear to be already looking toward their next conquest. Who knows if they’ll be minding the store at all?
Determined to preserve the nation’s history, some 100 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have taken it upon themselves to memorialize the moment. For months, they’ve mounted poster board-style replicas of the Jan. 6 plaque outside their office doors, resulting in a Capitol complex awash with makeshift remembrances.
“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021,” reads the faux bronze stand-in for the real thing. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”
What small people these Republicans are. I think many of them know how petty this is. In a way that makes them even worse than the true MAGA sociopaths. They’re just worthless empty shells.
Trump will meet privately with House Republicans at the Kennedy Center, which the president has rebranded to carry his own name, for a policy forum. Democrats will hold a hearing with witnesses to the violence and later gather on the Capitol steps to mark the memory of what happened.
And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is staging a midday march retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath.
The Democrats are convening a hearing:
The Democratic leadership is reconvening the now defunct Jan. 6 committee to hear from police, elected officials and Americans about what they experienced that day…
Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.
“Other theories about what happened on January 6th?” Good luck with that.
On Jan. 6, 2021, 140 police officers were injured defending the U.S. Capitol from a violent mob of Trump supporters. Five years later, many still live with the physical and psychological damage from that day. NPR Investigations correspondent Tom Dreisbach sat down with two officers who defended the Capitol — Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges — to watch their police body camera footage from Jan. 6.
Both were subjected to some of the most brutal violence of the day, inside a tunnel where police were outnumbered by rioters armed with flagpoles, stun guns, crutches, stolen police shields and chemical sprays.
Fanone, Hodges and other officers say that Trump’s mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters has exacerbated the trauma of that day. Both Fanone and Hodges have received death threats, and been called “crisis actors.” But the footage from their body-cams shows the reality of what they experienced. B
oth videos come from NPR’s Jan. 6 archive, part of a long-term effort to preserve the historical record — a public database tracking every arrest, charge, verdict, and sentence related to the attack. In Dec. 2025, the archive expanded to include police bodycam, surveillance video and other courtroom evidence, making this material available for anyone to examine firsthand.
It’s hard to watch but it’s important to do it if you can. They cannot erase what they did.
