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President Donald Trump has frequently boasted about ending or preventing several wars when listing off the accomplishments of his second term, but according to a new analysis from the Washington Post, his focus on creating "flashy headlines" is causing these deals to fall apart.

The piece, written by Post columnist and veteran foreign correspondent Keith B. Richburg, highlighted a few notable conflicts Trump has claimed to have quelled via ceasefire agreements, including disputes between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Thailand and Cambodia, and Israel's ongoing war in Gaza.

Trump hosted a meeting between the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC, claiming "a new year of harmony and cooperation" had begun. However, as Richburg explained, "fighting raged on" between the two nations, with a Rwandan militia seizing the Congolese town of Uvira just days after the summit in Washington, D.C.

In October, Trump hosted a similar ceasefire signing event between leaders of Thailand and Cambodia, but just a few months later, in early December, fighting along the border between the two nations broke out. So far, 11 Thai troops and at least 11 Cambodian civilians have been killed as the two sides trade artillery fire, with over half a million displaced. Trump claimed that a ceasefire had been reached after calling the prime ministers of each country, but the two leaders said this was not true.

One of Trump's most heavily touted accomplishments of his second term was a peace plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza. Despite much hype, the disarmament of Hamas and the appointment of a Gaza peace board have failed to materialize, and Hamas has continued to assert its control in the area.

"The setbacks show that in the complicated business of peacemaking, signing a ceasefire deal before the cameras is usually just the beginning," Richburg wrote. "Changing the realities on the ground — and getting combatants to lay down their weapons — requires a more sustained level of follow-through and commitment."

The issues at play in these conflicts, Richburg explained, are deeply complex and steeped in decades of disputes. Fixing them requires long-term commitments to diplomacy, not Trump's favored tactic of deadlines and media-friendly ceasefire meetings.

"In all these conflicts, enmities run deep, and are passed on through generations," Richburg wrote. "They are not easily undone by handshakes in Washington, Kuala Lumpur or Cairo. And they defy quick and easy solutions. Trump fancies himself a peacemaker and a dealmaker. But solving historically complex conflicts is not like making a real estate deal, where everyone can walk away satisfied. Solving a war takes time, patient diplomacy and follow through. Artificial deadlines are meaningless."

In his interview with Politico on Monday, President Donald Trump threatened Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and wouldn't rule out sending American soldiers to fight in a ground war in the country. But according to six GOP lawmakers, Pentagon officials and White House advisers, the threats are empty.

According to a Wednesday report, the lawmakers and top officials told Politico that for all of Trump's tough talk, there's no real action behind it.

One person close to the White House and familiar with Trump's thinking said that it's nothing more than "a designed strategy to pressure Maduro to leave."

“This has a 99.9 percent chance of not happening,” said a second person close to the White House. “But leaving that .01 percent chance on the table will bring people to the table.”

“This is not the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, this is like the Monroe Doctrine 5.0,” claimed Steve Bannon, who worked briefly for Trump's first administration but remains an ally and influencer.

Trump recently moved the USS Gerald Ford, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, to the Caribbean, where it sat off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands for a week. It has since left the island of St. Thomas and headed southeast.

Bannon said that this naval buildup puts “additional pressure on Maduro to surrender and do what Trump wants him to do, which is to go to Turkey, leave the country. Because I think the negotiations are kind of down to that — where this guy ends up [and] most of the stuff there now is for pressure.”

Politico reported that the Ford is "capable of launching nearly 200 Tomahawk missiles at targets on land in the region, according to a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis."

But putting troops on the ground is another matter entirely.

“The United States does not have the ground forces needed for an invasion,” retired Marine Col. Mark Cancian told Politico. "The Venezuelan ground forces number some 90,000 including the army, marines and National Guard. The United States has only 2,200 Marines [nearby], and there’s no movement to reinforce them.”

"I don’t think we need them right now,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of ground troops.

“I’m not a supporter of ground troops,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) agreed in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m not a supporter of regime change forced by the United States. I mean, if Maduro decides to go of his own accord, fine. But I’ve never been a supporter of regime change.”

One Defense Department official explained, “This isn’t something you can just dial up and go.”

“The Trump administration was hoping to scare Maduro into departing Venezuela, but if that doesn’t work, the remaining military options are unappealing,” a second former defense official agreed. “And if Maduro does indeed depart, by choice or by force, then it leaves open the question of whether U.S. forces will be needed to secure the country, and for how long.”

Trump spent years campaigning by promising "America First" policies and pledging "We are ending the era of endless wars."

Trump announced in June that he believed it was not the job of Americans “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of."

Read the full report here.

When President Donald Trump came into office, Secretary of State Marco Rubio counseled him not to believe Vladimir Putin. Now, according to Semafor,Trump realizes Rubio was right all along.

Semafor reported Wednesday that a top official to the White House said that Trump may not admit it, but he knows he was wrong.

“A lot of that has obviously turned out to be true,” the official said of Rubio’s doubts about Putin, Semafor said. “And the president has recognized that … ‘[Putin will] talk nicely to me on the phone, but then he’ll go bomb the shit out of Ukraine that very same night.’”

During his 2024 campaign, Trump promised Americans he would end the war between Ukraine and Russia, perhaps even before taking the oath of office.

“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly. Quickly. I will get the problem solved and I will get it solved in rapid order and it will take me no longer than one day. I know exactly what to say to each of them," Trump proclaimed in a March 4, 2023 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The rhetoric continued as he repeated it again just a few weeks before the election.

“I had a lot of people from, very religious people, come up to me tonight, from Ukraine, and they’re asking me for help. So, so sad to see so many people have been killed in Ukraine, and we’re going to get it — we’re going to get it settled up if we win. As I’m president-elect, I’m going to get that done. I’m going to do it before we ever get there," Trump said at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York on October 17, 2024.

CNN captured 53 similar comments Trump made while running for office between Nov. 2022 and Nov. 2024.

Despite Trump realizing Rubio was right about Putin, the president pushed forward with a peace plan that would deliver on many elements Russia wanted, Reuters reported last month.

As of this week, Trump is still attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, alleging that he hadn't even read the peace plan proposal. On Tuesday, the pressure campaign continued as the U.S. tried to convince Zelenskyy to approve the proposal, Axios reported.

Zelenskyy is now slated to release his edits to the peace plan on Wednesday.

Rubio, Semafor explained, may have been right, but he must tread carefully.

"So, even as MAGA descends into an identity crisis, he’s managing to stay mostly on its good side," the report said.

Read the full piece here.

When conservative then-Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) announced, in 2018, that he wouldn't be seeking reelection, it reflected his dissatisfaction with Donald Trump's first presidency as well as his fear that Republicans would fare badly in the midterms. Flake's fears were justified: Democrats recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives that year, and a centrist then-Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, won his U.S. Senate seat when she defeated GOP nominee Martha McSally.

Flake's disdain for Trumpism continued when, in 2020, he endorsed Democrat Joe Biden — who appointed Flake U.S. ambassador to Turkey after winning the election.

But Trump, defeated in 2020 yet triumphant in 2024, returned to the White House on January 20, 2025 and is now ten and one-half months into his second presidency.

In an article published by The Atlantic on December 9, Flake offers a scathing critique of the Trump Administration's Venezuela policy.

Flake, an ally of the late conservative Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), is known for being hawkish on foreign policy. But he argues that the Trump Administration's military strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean violate the rules of combat.

"Under this program," Flake explains, "small vessels suspected of carrying drugs were hit with military-grade munitions, often without any attempt to detain or even warn those aboard. In at least one case, the strikes didn't end when the boat was destroyed. Survivors adrift on the wreckage in open water were killed in a second attack, a 'double tap' designed to finish the job."

Flake continues, "During my 18 years in the House and Senate, I sat through countless briefings on when and how lethal force could be used. Later, as ambassador to Turkey, I saw how closely the world watches when we choose to honor those limits — or choose not to do so. That perspective makes these boat strikes impossible to wave off as routine. They reflect choices that fall well outside the standards we have long claimed to uphold."

The conservative ex-senator calls for much greater transparency on Venezuela — something he says the Trump Administration is not offering.

"The (Trump) Administration has resisted releasing full video of these incidents, citing national security," Flake explains. "But the more plausible concern is political and moral. It knows what the public reaction would be. Americans have strong feelings about drug trafficking, but few believe that killing people as they attempt to stay alive in the ocean fits within the bounds of justifiable force. Once confronted with the footage, most Americans would question not only the legality of the operation, but the instinct behind it…. Death inflicted on the helpless is never an act of strength; it is what remains when strength forgets its purpose."

Flake adds, "That recognition seems to exist even among some in the administration. The reluctance to release the footage suggests an awareness of the moral intuition that they fear the public will follow. Americans may disagree on many things, but they still distinguish between necessary force and needless killing. They expect their government, even in dangerous work, to understand the difference."

Former Sen. Jeff Flake's (R-Arizona) full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

Europe's transatlantic alliance with the United States is history as President Donald Trump has unmistakably declared war on Europe, writes Ian Birrell in British media outlet The i Paper.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, Birrell writes, is succeeding in subverting democracy with the help of Trump.

"Putin’s assault on freedom — aided by his autocratic allies — could not be clearer," Birrell says. "It is now beyond doubt, however, that this ghastly regime is being assisted by the White House in its efforts to destroy Ukraine – and that the United States has declared war on Europe under its appalling President."

The recently released US National Security Strategy "sets this out in stark terms," he writes of the three-thousand-plus document that outlines a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy, focusing on domestic strength, economic nationalism and a "principled realism."

"It is a depressing document, which codifies the extremism, racism and venality of Donald Trump’s approach to Europe while claiming his culture wars as a strand of Washington’s security policy," Birrell writes.

This document, Birrell notes, "is the sequel to his Vice President’s disgraceful February speech at the Munich Security Conference, which downplayed Russia’s threat while lashing out at the supposed suppression of free speech and exclusion of far-right forces."

This new guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy, he writes, "means Europe has adversaries on both flanks seeking to corrode our societies and inflame malignant nationalism."

Trump's strategy is "hypocritical and offensive," he writes, talking "about wanting "Europe to remain European" and "cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations," implying support for hard-right populist forces such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany and Reform UK in Britain."

"And while Russia is no longer designated a direct threat, the only entity in the world seen as threatening free speech is the European Union," he adds.

Putin is thrilled by Trump's "embracing hard-right nationalists and promoting 'strategic stability' with Russia," Birrell explains.

"It's time for Europe to step in, he writes, and "try to help America 'correct its current trajectory' — just as this dismal document declares its intention for us – amid that country’s sinister slide into corruption, immorality and democratic subversion," Birrell says.

"But more fundamentally, our leaders must stop stroking Trump’s absurdly inflated ego and seize the initiative to defend our continent," he adds.

Serhiy, a retired Ukranian engineer offers what Birrell says are "wise words" that need to be heeded.

"We have to brace ourselves and push through. We cannot rely on the US while Trump is in power. But the Europeans must understand what they’re dealing with because Russia is a big threat for them that Europe must start taking seriously," Serhiy says.

"Do they want Ukraine to collapse, then be left alone against the enemy who grew even stronger? Europe must wake up, seriously wake up," he says.

In an extensive piece published Monday morning, the New York Times editorial board warned that President Donald Trump's military spending push will "magnify our weaknesses" in the face of a Chinese military that is already poised to outmatch its capabilities.

The piece cited a "multiyear" assessment of the U.S. military's capabilities against China in the event of an armed conflict over Taiwan, dubbed "Overmatch." China has reportedly set plans to invade and take full control of the island nation by 2027, and in the past, U.S. leaders from all sides of the political spectrum have pledged to protect it in such an event.

Based on the report's findings, the editorial board said that a Biden-era security official "paled," realizing that for "every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had redundancy after redundancy." Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also previously observed that in war game exercises conducted with China, the U.S. loses "every time."

The Trump administration is pushing for a $1 trillion increase in defense spending in 2026, but the NYT board warned that "much of that money will be squandered on capabilities that do more to magnify our weaknesses than to sharpen our strengths," on account of the military focusing too much on expensive weapons that are too easily countered.

"The [Overmatch] assessment shows something more worrying than the potential outcome of a war over Taiwan. It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically advanced ones," the editorial board's piece explained. "And it traces a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power."

The U.S. military's push for expensive hardware sets it up to be the most effective, primarily, "if you want to go to war with a relatively poor, weak country like, say, Venezuela." When put up against other advanced military powers with more inventive investments, it falls short.

The NYT board ultimately called for the U.S. miliary to "reinvent itself" with new ways of thinking and investing resources, blaming decades of traditional thinking in Congress and the Pentagon for the current predicament.

"Ultimately, a stronger U.S. national security depends less on enormous new budgets than on wiser investments," the piece continued. "Spending heavily on traditional symbols of might risks shortchanging the true sources of American strength: relentless innovation, rapid adaptability and a willingness to discard old assumptions."

Whether or not the Trump administration is up for this remains to be seen.

"Mr. Trump and his administration have received the latest warnings of the Overmatch brief," the piece concludes. "The need for change is urgent. The question is whether we will do so in time."

During former U.S. President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, the phrase "new Cold War" was often used to describe relations between the United States and Russia — especially after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine and Biden promised military aid to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

President Donald Trump, since returning to the White House, has been mildly critical of Putin at times. But on the whole, he has had a much friendlier tone with Putin and the Kremlin than the Biden Administration.

The Guardian's Shaun Walker, reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, examples U.S./Russia relations in an article published on December 7. And Walker notes that the Kremlin has "heaped praise on Donald Trump's latest national security strategy, calling it an encouraging change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking."

The praise, according to Walker, followed the release of a new 33-page document called "the National Security Strategy of the United States of America," which lays out the Trump Administration's foreign policy objectives — including its ideas on Europe, which Trump officials claim is in danger of "civilization erasure."

In a statement issued on December 7, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,

"The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision." And Peskov praised the Trump Administration for promoting "dialogue" and "good relations."

Peskov, sounding MAGA-like, argued that "the deep state" might try to undermine Trump's vision for U.S./Russian relations.

"It came as the White House's efforts to push through a peace deal in Ukraine enter a key phase," Walker notes. "U.S. officials claim they are in the final stage of reaching an agreement, but there is little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign the framework deal drawn up by Trump's negotiating team."

Read Shaun Walker's full article for The Guardian at this link.

In a newly released 33-page document called "the National Security Strategy of the United States of America," the Trump Administration details its foreign policy objectives — including its views on Europe, which Trump officials claim is in danger of "civilization erasure."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir analyzes the document in an article published on December 7, attacking the Trump White House's arguments as an "unhinged" and deeply racist blueprint for "making Europe white again."

O'Hehir draws a parallel between the arguments in the National Security Strategy (NSS) document and arguments of the Clairmont Institute, which was once a mainstream conservative think tank but has, in recent years, taken a far-right MAGA turn.

"To be fair, the poison-steeped Claremont Institute pseudo-intellectuals behind the Trump regime might well argue that their NSS is not contradictory in the least, since it can be boiled down to a straightforward message: Tyranny is awesome, but democracy sucks," O'Hehir warns. "OK, it doesn't actually say that, but it's hard to imagine how else to reconcile its Great Replacement-fueled fanboy enthusiasm for far-right parties in Europe and its high-minded refusal to lecture autocratic regimes in the Middle East and Asia about 'democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.' Understandably enough, it's the unhinged and unconcealed racist panic shoveled out in the Trump NSS that has generated international headlines."

The Salon journalist continues, "Europe, the document warns, is losing its historic cultural identity and faces the 'stark prospect of civilizational erasure.' Exactly what is meant here by 'identity' and 'civilization' is only barely left unsaid, and the Great Replacement rhetoric is not so much borrowed as copied and pasted: It is 'more than plausible,' we are told, that in coming decades, 'certain NATO members will become majority non-European,' and may no longer 'view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way' they used to."

The "point" of the NSS, O'Hehir laments, is to "rip the liberal democracies of the EU a new one for their perceived wokeness."

"If we try to map the NSS claims onto the realm of reality," O'Hehir writes, "they fall apart. But that's hardly the point: It is not, in fact, plausible that any European nation will have a Muslim-majority population, or a mostly nonwhite population, or anything close to that, in the foreseeable future. Second and far more important, what message is being sent when the government of a multiethnic democracy built on three centuries of immigration — roughly 99 percent of the U.S. population has ancestral ties to other continents — makes the official claim that 'immigrants will corrupt the values of the societies they move to,' as The Economist puts it?"

According to O'Hehir, the NSS "is dangerous because no American president, whether good, bad or indifferent, clear back to roughly the days of Andrew Jackson, would have published such blatant racist fiction as an official statement of U.S. foreign policy."

Andrew O'Hehir's full article for Salon is available at this link.

Thursday, December 4 on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arizona) — chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Republican Conference — aggressively defended the Trump Administration's Venezuela policy, including military strikes against Venezuelan boats that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claim are smuggling illegal drugs to the United States. Especially controversial is a second strike carried out on September 2 after two men on a boat were already shipwrecked, according to reports.

The following day, on Friday morning, December 5, Cotton continued to defend the Trump Administration's actions in Venezuela during an appearance on CNN.

Asked what "threat" the two men posed if they didn't have a radio, Cotton told CNN's John Berman, "Well, John, the threat they pose is the threat that the boat that was destroyed yesterday posed and that all of these other boats posed. They're running drugs in high volumes into the United States that have killed hundreds of Arkansans in recent years and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans."

Cotton added that U.S. Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley "said that they didn't have any intercepts of these two drug traffickers trying to radio or call for assistance."

The GOP senator continued, "That doesn't mean they weren't doing so. It doesn't mean they weren't trying to access communications equipment on the boat, or that they didn't have any of their drug trafficking pals trying to come pick them up because they were just off the waters or just off the coast of Venezuela. And that's a known area for drug cartels."

But Berman persisted, wanting to know if Cotton had any hard "evidence" of the two men "trying to use a radio" on September 2 to "call for assistance" from drug smugglers after the first strike.

Cotton told Berman, "No, I didn't, John. But they were clearly not incapacitated. They were not distressed. One guy took his t-shirt off like he was sunbathing. They were trying to get the boat back up and to continue their mission of spreading these drugs all across America… And that's why Admiral Bradley ordered the second strike…. No, they didn't, because we killed them, and we were right to kill them."

Berman continued to grill Cotton, asking if it would be "legal for police in Arkansas to kill suspected drug dealers in a boat in an overturned lake." But the senator never answered Berman's question, saying that Democrats "think the entire operation is not well-founded."

When Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, his foreign policy was a major departure from that of the Biden Administration. While former President Joe Biden aggressively championed an expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and was critical of far-right European parties, Trump isn't shy about praising far-right European figures like Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and France's Marine Le Pen. Trump also has a generally friendlier tone with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Articles published by Politico on December 5 — one by Laura Kayali, the other by Nahal Toosi — examine the hyper-nationalist approach Trump is bringing to U.S. foreign policy, including Europe, in a new 33-page document called the National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

Trump and his administration, Kayali stresses, "blame the EU (European Union) and migration for what they say is imminent, total cultural unravelling in Europe."

Kayali reports, "The explosive claim is made in the U.S. National Security Strategy, which notes Europe has economic problems, but says they are 'eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure' within the next 20 years…. That narrative is likely to resonate deeply among most of Europe's far-right parties, whose electoral programs are primarily based on criticism of the EU, demands for curbs on migration from Muslim-majority and non-European nations, and a patriotic push to overturn their countries' perceived declines."

This "new security strategy," according to Kayali, "offers a clear ideological alignment between" Trump's "populist MAGA movement and Europe's nationalist parties."

According to Kayali, "The U.S. administration — which has developed increasingly closer ties with far-right parties in countries such as Germany and Spain — appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties…. The document is a rare formal explanation of Trump's foreign policy worldview by his administration."

Meanwhile, in her article, Toosi notes that the National Security Strategy "appears in line with many of the moves" Trump has "taken in his second term, as well as the priorities of some of his aides."

"That includes deploying significantly more U.S. military prowess to the Western Hemisphere, taking numerous steps to reduce migration to America, pushing for a stronger industrial base in the U.S. and promoting 'Western identity,' including in Europe," Toosi reports. "The strategy even nods to so-called traditional values at times linked to the Christian Right, saying the (Trump) Administration wants 'the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health' and 'an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes.' It mentions the need to have 'growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.'"

The National Security Strategy, according to Toosi, "suggests the president's military buildup in the Western Hemisphere is not a temporary phenomenon."

"That buildup, which has included controversial military strikes against boats allegedly carrying drugs, has been cast by the administration as a way to fight cartels. But the administration also hopes the buildup could help pressure Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to step down," Toosi explains. "The strategy also specifically calls for 'a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.'"

Read Laura Kayali's full article for Politico at this link and Nahal Toosi's Politico reporting here.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday amplified an op-ed article calling for a Trump-backed regime change in Venezuela as administration continues to float the possibility of a ground war in the country.

The New York Post, a notably MAGA-friendly outlet often described as President Donald Trump's "favorite paper," published the piece Leavitt's official government X account shared on Wednesday. It was written María Corina Machado, an Venezuelan activist and leader of the country's opposition against President Nicolás Maduro. She was the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize, and has frequently praised Trump for his opposition to Maduro and attempted to court his help in removing the Venezuelan president from office.

Leavitt's account shared a link to the piece alongside its headline, "President Trump is a champion in the fight for ‘Venezuelan freedom.'"

"White House press secretary amplifies column calling for US-led regime change in Venezuela," Olivier Knox, a senior political reporter for U.S. News & World Report, wrote in comment responding to Leavitt's.

In the piece, Machado characterized the Maduro government as hijacking the country by way of a regime-backed drug cartel, Cartel de los Soles. The Trump administration recently designated the group as a terrorist organization, though critics have pointed out that the term "Cartel de los Soles" does not refer to a specific, distinct organization, but it rather used as a catch-all term for corrupt government officials involved in drug trafficking.

She further accuses the Maduro government of "crimes against humanity and other grave atrocities," and of running Venezuela "the way mobsters control territory: through fear, torture and the systematic destruction of the nation’s democratic pillars."

She also praises Trump's actions against Maduro as "decisive action" and dismisses criticisms that military intervention would destabilize Venezuela.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of seeking to gain access to Venezuelan oil fields by deposing Maduro, not pursuing regime change to support democracy. Machado has also been criticized overall for her enthusiastic support of Trump, raising concerns the country would become overly deferential to him with her in power.

Although President Donald Trump has threatened to remove citizens and legal immigrants from the United States, Bloomberg reporter Erik Larson says he's likely to face significant legal challenges in court.

"The Trump administration has unveiled plans to remove legal immigrants from the US, including by canceling green cards and “denaturalizing” some US citizens, after an Afghan national who entered the country in 2021 was accused of shooting two members of the West Virginia National Guard," Larson explains.

Following the shooting, Trump took to Truth Social to say, "Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation."

And while presidents have "wide latitude over immigration," Larson writes, "experts say that at least some of Trump’s new initiatives are likely to face significant legal challenges in court."

The "reverse migration" Trump mentioned is a non-legal term to describe the "process by which immigrants in the US voluntarily leave the country," Larson explains.

But what Trump is proposing, he writes, "is different: steps to ramp up removals by stripping immigrants of their legal status or denying their applications to stay in the US, essentially forcing them to leave."

"In a pair of Nov. 27 Truth Social posts that disparaged immigrants, Trump said he would 'remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country,' without providing detail," Larson notes.

Joseph Edlow, the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said that under Trump's orders, his agency was conducting “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.”

"A June presidential proclamation lists 19 countries the US considers “deficient with regards to screening and vetting” of its citizens, including Afghanistan, Haiti and Somalia," Larson explains.

Trump also said on social media that he would terminate what he called “illegal admissions” into the US under President Joe Biden, end federal benefits for non-citizens, and “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” which is, writes Larsen, "an outdated term for developing nations."

Without providing any details, Trump also posted that he would"denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility."

Although the president has "broad say over who gets admitted to the country" per the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, a power upheld repeatedly by the US Supreme Court, Larson says there are constitutional exceptions.

"Under the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, virtually all people in the US, regardless of immigration status, are entitled to due process, which has been interpreted to mean that individuals have the right to a fair trial to challenge a deportation order," he notes.

"Significant policy changes also must meet the requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which mandates that the public have a chance to comment on major rule changes by the executive branch and that the changes can’t be implemented in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner. It isn’t clear how Trump’s new policies would be implemented or what legal challenges if any might arise," he adds.

Under Trump's dubious proposals, Larson notes, "all types of legal status for immigrants and non-citizens appear to be at risk to some extent."

Immigration lawyer Michael Jarecki says they will also discourage "some immigrants from continuing their green card applications or otherwise attempting to remain in the US lawfully."

Millions of immigrants in the United States will get the message “that no one is in a stable immigration position, including naturalized US citizens," Jarecki says.

Larsen writes that although "naturalized US citizens can be stripped of their citizenship under certain established circumstances," "in each case, the Department of Homeland Security is required by law to conduct an investigation and refer the matter to the Justice Department."

The Justice Department, however, has had some problems in the past, Larsen notes.

"The Justice Department has admitted authorities made mistakes in several deportation cases, which could hinder future removal attempts," he adds.

A handful of MAGA influencers spent Thanksgiving on a press junket to Qatar where they marveled in the Middle Eastern nation's wealth and modernity, remarking that it made America look third world, according to The Bulwark's Will Sommer.

"The Gulf Arab monarchy is on a clear campaign to charm Donald Trump and those around him, starting with the 'gift' of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet (supposedly to the Air Force, not Trump) in May, and extending to the building of new facilities at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho (which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth inaccurately reported as a Qatari military base)," Sommer notes.

"The latest Qatari charm tactic has less to do with aviation than with recreation for some B-list MAGA social media personalities," he adds.

Among that B-list: Emily Wilson (better known as “Emily Saves America”), Turning Point Action's Caitlin Sinclair, and podcaster Rob Smith, Sommer notes.

The influencers, he writes, "documented their visits to luxe Doha restaurants, a nightclub, the Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix, and even an audience with Serena Williams. They posted videos of themselves walking the red carpet at the Formula 1 Paddock Club, where tickets can run into the mid-four figures."

They even had meetings with Qatari officials that, Sommer notes, "Smith robotically called ... mutually beneficial military and financial partnerships."

While Sommer says while it's not clear who paid for the trip, the influencers certainly didn't, and "the assumption that some Qatari group was behind their good times and Smith’s new pro-Qatar stance has roiled the right, with one Newsmax contributor calling it proof of a 'hostile subversion campaign.'"

So-called "MAGA Whisperer" and new member of the Pentagon press pool Laura Loomer "has been on a days-long meltdown over the trip, at one point declaring that she’d rather eat canned tuna and beans in her apartment than sell out to the Qatar lobby in such a way," Sommer writes.

Loomer criticized Smith, who is openly gay, for going to a country "where homosexual acts are outlawed."

Smith snapped back at Loomer, saying she was trying to get him killed by posting his sexuality online, Sommer notes.

"The influencers, by comparison, appear to have dined at Cipriani Doha, a place so fancy its online menu doesn’t even have prices," he adds.

Wilson has taken the most heat for the trip, Sommer reports, reminding of her involvement "as one part of the vicious influencer engagement ring drama earlier this year or for her stance that slavery should be legal on a state-by-state basis."

Wilson, who falls into the pro-Israel camp of MAGA influencers and took an "influencer trip" to Israel over the summer, was questioned by fellow conservative Seth Dillon, who asked, “Does Qatar pay better than Israel?”

“Guess Israel needs a non-compete clause!” cracked former InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, Sommer notes.

Wilson snapped back saying "it was cool to go to Qatar," and that she was a Formula 1 fan, Sommer reports.

She also found her foot in her mouth, Sommer says.

"Wilson used her trip to run down her comparatively clout-less homeland, the United States," he writes.

“Honestly it was amazing to finally feel safe and not be surrounded by homeless crackheads and criminals for once,” she wrote. “I could actually relax and enjoy myself.”

On her podcast, she praised Qatar for having “no black people on EBT going to Walmart to get fat” and “definitely no gay dudes rollerblading.”

“Wow, America’s like really third world compared to these places,” Wilson said.

Wilson also said she prefers Qatari Muslims to American.

"All the Muslims there are extremely smart, successful, and productive,” Wilson said on her podcast. “The ones [in the United States] and in the U.K. are the ones they don’t f——tolerate in their country, and they kick out — that’s why they suck and they’re pieces of s——.”

Sommer says these trips are increasingly common among MAGA influencers.

"As for Wilson, she appeared to offer a sort of list of potential junkets she’s interested in on her podcast, saying she’d also like to visit Japan and Russia. As someone once said, 'Russia, if you’re listening,'" he quips

In MAGA media outlets, the Trump Administration's Venezuela policy is repeatedly defended as a willingness to put American interests above "wokeness" — including a series of military strikes against Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean that U.S. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claim were being used to smuggle illegal drugs to the United States.

Hegseth insists that his priority is defending the U.S., not being "woke." But in a biting column published on December 4, the New York Times' David French counters that there is nothing "woke" about obeying the "rules of war" that the Pentagon has adhered to over the years.

"In their military campaign in South America," the Never Trump conservative explains, "Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth aren't just defying the Constitution and breaking the law. They are attacking the very character and identity of the American military.

French points to the July 2023 update of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual, which states that "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal" and that "it is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given."

"A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to kill every combatant, including prisoners, the sick and the wounded," French notes.

On September 2, two strikes were carried out against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean. The second strike, according to French, was illegal under Pentagon policy because: (1) the people on board the boat had been rendered shipwrecked by the first strike, and (2) targeting the two survivors for a second attack was a "no quarter" violation.

"There are now good reasons to believe that the United States military, under the command of President Trump and Hegseth, his secretary of defense, has blatantly violated the laws of war," Hegseth warns. "On November 28, the Washington Post reported that Hegseth issued a verbal order to 'kill everybody' the day that the United States launched its military campaign against suspected drug traffickers. According to the Post, the first strike on the targeted speedboat left two people alive in the water."

French continues, "The commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to kill the shipwrecked survivors, apparently — according to The Post — 'because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.' If that reporting is correct, then we have clear evidence of unequivocal war crimes — a no quarter order and a strike on the incapacitated crew of a burning boat."

The Never Trump conservative stresses that obeying the "rules of war" is vital to the U.S. Armed Forces' wellbeing.

"The laws of war aren't woke," French writes. "They're not virtue signaling. And they're not a sign that the West has forgotten how to fight. Instead, they provide the American military with a number of concrete benefits. First, complying with the laws of war can provide a battlefield advantage…. Second, the laws of war make war less savage and true peace possible."

David French's full New York Times column is available at this link.

Greatly influenced by Patrick Buchanan's American First ideology, President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are often described as "isolationists" who reject the hawkish foreign policy of past GOP presidents like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Trump and his allies, from "War Room" host Steve Bannon to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, are openly disdainful of neocons.

But in 2025, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are being increasingly confrontational with Venezuela — carrying out a series of military strikes against Venezuelan boats they claim were smuggling illegal drugs to the United States and reportedly pushing for regime change with leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

One of the attacks on a Venezuelan boat involved a fatal second strike after the people on board had already been shipwrecked because of a first strike. And according to Business Insider's Kelsey Baker, that reported second strike is a violation of the Pentagon's own guidelines.

"The Pentagon's manual on the law of war doesn't list every possible illegal order," Baker explains, "but on some points, it's explicit. 'Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked,' it says, 'would be clearly illegal.' The 1200-page manual repeatedly stresses that a combatant who is unable to continue fighting is entitled to fundamental protections. It uses shipwreck survivors as a key example — which is why a September 2 counter-narcotics strike in the Caribbean is drawing intense scrutiny."

Baker continues, "During the mission, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he watched live, the U.S. military struck a suspected drug-smuggling vessel twice. The first strike appeared to kill nine people on the vessel; then, the U.S. military launched a second strike on the stricken boat that killed the two remaining survivors, the Washington Post reported last week, citing seven people with knowledge of the strike."

Business Insider discussed the September 2 strikes with Ohio Northern University law professor and former U.S. Army judge Dan Maurer — who considers the second strike a "patent violation" of military law.

Maurer told Business Insider, "No one who is at all trained on the law of war would think that that's OK. Whether they're wounded or sick or a POW or shipwrecked at sea, unless they're shooting at you, they are not a threat, and they cannot be attacked. There's actually an affirmative duty to pick them up, to rescue them, so they don't drown."

Read Kelsey Baker's full article for Business Insider at this link.