Trump seems to have started 2026 with a geopolitical analogue to his presidency-opening “flood the zone” flurry of executive orders. Following his kidnapping of Venezuela’s president Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, the Trump team has announced audacious plans to heist Venezuelan oil by controlling its sale, having the proceeds deposited in American banks, and then purportedly using the funds to buy American goods. As we will discussed, he has also escalated on the piracy front by capturing two tankers, the one the errant Bella-1, reflagged as the Russia Marinera. the second owned vessel M/T Sophia, allegedly carrying oil to China. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said the Russian crew members of the Marinera will be prosecuted. As we’ll unpack, Senator Lindsay Graham has also said Trump has agreed to sign the so-called maximum pressure sanctions on countries buying Russian oil, more formally called the Sanctioning of Russia Act 2025.1 To complete this picture of violence, on the domestic front, Trump is defending the murder-by-ICE of award-winning poet and Minneapolis resident Brenna Perez, where it appears ICE even barred medics from treating her after having shot her in the face.
And from the Independent:
U.S. officials say the Trump administration plans to control Venezuela’s oil indefinitely in order to force the country to act in America’s interests.
Energy Secretary Wright said the U.S. would market stored Venezuelan oil first and then sell future production indefinitely, with revenues deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S.President Donald Trump has also announced that Venezuela will only purchase “American-made” products with the money made from its oil deal with America.
According to the New York Times:
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, asked whether and how the U.S. will “run” Venezuela as President Trump has vowed, told reporters that the Trump administration was “in close coordination with” Venezuela’s interim authorities, and that “their decisions are going to be dictated by the United States of America.
However, as least so far, Venezuela is not on board. From the same Times live blog:
Later Monday, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, confirmed for the first time that it was negotiating the “sale” of crude oil to the United States. It said in a statement on social media that it was using “frameworks similar to those currently in effect with international companies, such as Chevron, and is based on a strictly commercial transaction.”
That means Venezuela’s position is that it is to be paid just as it was when Biden lifted the sanctions on Venezuela to allow the US to obtain heavy crude after its sanctions on Russia cut of that supply.
Consistent with that stance:
Venezuelan Acting Pres. Delcy Rodriguez: Venezuela was open to sell oil to USA but Trump demanded it for free! pic.twitter.com/EFtwuV4ByJ
— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) January 7, 2026
Note that if I have the sequence of events right, the meeting with ambassadors looks to be Venezuela thumbing its nose at yet another Trump Administration diktat:
Trump’s Impositions Will Implode Venezuela
The Trump administration has told Venezuela that it must expel representatives from China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba and sever economic ties with them before being allowed to increase oil production.
In addition, he warned that 30 to 50… pic.twitter.com/u4gD1eYKiH
— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) January 7, 2026
As the lawyers say, possession is nine-tenths of the law. There may be oil loaded on tankers contracted by Chevron at the docks where the oil has not yet been paid for where Venezuela may decide not to block their departure.2 But Chevron, right after the Maduro capture, issued a statement that effectively said it was mindful of the risk to the security of its 3,000 employees in Venezuela. They would be subject to arrest and prosecution if Chevron were to violate its agreements with the Venezuela government and make off with the oil.
And pray tell, how does oil not yet on board get loaded for export without the cooperation of Venezuela dock workers? Staff at the well heads? Venezuela has plenty of cards if it chooses to play them.
Remarks like this don’t create confidence in how far the Administration has thought things through:
Wait, they think that oil is actually shipped in barrels? The stagecoach is ready… pic.twitter.com/4aOdXw1l3y
— Peter Berezin (@PeterBerezinBCA) January 7, 2026
Congress is not keen about Trump’s planned heist either. From the New York Times again:
President Trump’s declaration that he would personally control the proceeds from oil produced in Venezuela drew instant condemnation on Wednesday from Democrats in Congress who noted that the president had no constitutional authority for such an undertaking.
“The president cannot grab Venezuela’s oil for his own slush fund. Period,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said on Wednesday.
But power-drunk Trump will, if his oil-theft gambit manages to succeed, depict the proceeds as justifying his planned massive military expansion:
In the meantime, we had reported that Celia Flores appeared in court and was visibly beaten up. We had also read that photos of her were circulating in Venezuela, eliciting anger. This is presumably indicative:
The reader who sent the image said her neck was bruised, consistent with having held in a stranglehold. I am not sure given the lighting and encourage reader input.
On the tanker front, the US has captured both the empty Marinera and the M/T Sophia. The apparent path of the Marinera:
You can see this was a long way from Venezula. The cost of the capture almost certainly exceeded the value of the ship.
Simplicius points out that the US is denying that the ship had been reflagged and was Russian:
Meanwhile, this statement from the US indicates the US does not consider the ship to be Russian:
The USA states that it does not consider the tanker “Marinera” to belong to Russia and that it does not belong to any country. The USA continues to claim that it believes it has the right to seize all tankers involved in transporting Venezuelan oil.
Armchair Warlord cautions against making too much of the seizure of the Marinera:
As much as certain people want an instant, decisive response from the Russians to this clear insult by the United States in seizing a Russian-flagged tanker, it’s worth taking a deep breath and applying some context.
Some thoughts:⬇️
1. It’s important to not attach a greater… pic.twitter.com/gNL5UEctHr
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) January 8, 2026
However, this is a clear violation of what is left of international law as well as laws of the sea. From RT:
US military breached UN maritime convention – Russia READ MORE: US military breached UN maritime convention – Russia
Moscow has acknowledged the capture of the vessel. The country’s Transport Ministry stated that the Marinera had received a temporary permit to fly the national flag on December 24. The ministry accused the US of violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which ensures freedom of navigation in international waters.
The US intends to prosecute the crew:
The crew of the hijacked vessel will be tried for violating federal laws.
The United Kingdom participated in the seizure of the Russian tanker.
The NATO partner used its aircraft for tracking and provided the US Air Force with its air bases. pic.twitter.com/IN1BoT8d7d
— big ben (@alternative_war) January 7, 2026
The official response leaves open the possibility that Russia citizens were on board and thus would be included in the prosecution:
BREAKING🚨 ‼️🇺🇸🇷🇺🇻🇪 – The US seized a Russian-flagged tanker Mainera (Bella 1) linked to Venezuela on Jan 7, 2026, after pursuit in North Atlantic. Russia condemned it and demanded humane treatment for crew. pic.twitter.com/TsYVpMgHaY
— Rebel_Warriors (@Rebel_Warriors) January 7, 2026
On the “maximum pressure” sanctions front:
After a very productive meeting today with President Trump on a variety of issues, he greenlit the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill that I have been working on for months with Senator Blumenthal and many others.
This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace…
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 7, 2026
Keep in mind that the bill, as you can see from the summary in the footnotes, does not obligate Trump to impose the sanctions but gives him the option. But Trump has effectively chambered a round. The South Florida Reporter summarized the intent:
In a significant shift toward “maximum pressure” on Moscow, President Donald Trump has officially “greenlit” a bipartisan sanctions package designed to economically cripple the Russian Federation. The move comes as the administration expresses growing frustration with President Vladimir Putin’s perceived lack of commitment to peace negotiations aimed at ending the four-year-old war in Ukraine….
“This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk,” Graham said in a statement. “This bill will allow President Trump to punish those countries who buy cheap Russian oil fueling Putin’s war machine.”
The legislation is among the most severe in U.S. history, proposing a 500% tariff on all goods and services imported from Russia. Crucially, it empowers the White House to impose secondary sanctions on third-party nations—specifically targeting major economies like China, India, and Brazil—to incentivize them to cease energy trades that currently provide the financial lifeblood for Russia’s military operations.
Recall that Trump tried imposing secondary sanctions for Russian oil on India and largely retreated. Despite some initial press reports otherwise, India has not reduced its Russian oil purchases. It seems inconceivable that Trump would be so self destructive as to impose them against China. China has already demonstrated it holds the whip hand from its responses to earlier Trump tariff escalations. Neither China nor India have pulled out their heavy weapons of threatening to cut pharmaceutical imports, which are clearly essential to Americans. But Trump seems to be so high on his sense of power that he may hazard secondary sanctions on certain categories of good out of an inability to contain himself.
Meanwhile on the Greenland front, Denmark is readying itself to be the mouse that roared:
A colleague who has a daughter who is a dual citizen of Denmark reports that Denmark has instated conscription, including of women.
But would Trump deploy the secondary sanctions against Europe as a way to block threat display with respect to annexing Greenland? The Guardian reported that Europe is still importing Russian LNG:
European governments have been accused of fuelling Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine as new data shows the Kremlin earned an estimated €7.2bn (£6.2bn) last year from exporting its liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU.
Brussels has pledged to ban imports of Russian LNG – natural gas that is supercooled to make it easier to transport – by 2027 but an analysis suggests there is yet to be any letup in the vast quantities being received at European ports from Russia’s LNG complex on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia.
More than 15m tonnes of Yamal LNG was transported through the Arctic ice to reach EU terminals in 2025, according to the human rights NGO Urgewald, earning the Kremlin an estimated €7.2bn.
While Europe has cut supplies of pipeline gas from Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU’s share of global shipments from Yamal increased in the last year, the fourth of the war in Ukraine, rising to 76.1%, up from 75.4% in 2024, the report said.
The imports remain legal and the EU has been reluctant to ban Russian shipments of LNG, particularly due to the dependency of central and eastern Europe on the energy source.
In further geopolitically anti-social behavior, Trump pulled out of a raft of international organizations yesterday:
Bloomberg points out that leaving 31 UN bodies will put them at “fiscal peril“.
And to round out this sorry list, a very brief take on the ICE murder in Minneapolis. Local officials are clearly up in arms; the police gave a briefing and released a video clearly showing the ICE officials shooting at least twice at the driver as she was trying to depart. And yes, that is undeniably illegal, or supposed to be.
This is one of the best, frame-by-frame breakdowns here by Brenna Perez of the Minnesota ICE shooting, proving without a doubt that ICE agent wasn’t in danger, and he murdered Renee Good.
Make sure everyone sees it.pic.twitter.com/qtWzy2ywdA
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) January 8, 2026
And a video of medics being denied access:
We pointed out yesterday that Daniel Davis on his Deep Dive show compared the timid European responses to Trump’s planned Greenland grab to appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s. Alexander Mercouris made a similar observation yesterday. Will Russia or China man up? Trump does go TACO when met with serious resistance, but someone needs to show some spine, or perhaps even steel.
_____
1 From Congress.gov:
Introduced in Senate (04/01/2025)
Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025
This bill imposes penalties on certain persons (individuals and entities) if the President determines that the Russian government or a person acting at Russia’s direction is involved with (1) refusing to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine; (2) violating a negotiated peace agreement; (3) initiating another invasion of Ukraine; or (4) overthrowing, dismantling, or seeking to subvert the Ukrainian government.
If the President makes such a determination, the bill requires certain actions including
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the President must impose visa- and property-blocking sanctions on specified persons such as the Russian president, certain Russian military commanders, and any foreign person that knowingly provides defense items to the Russian armed forces;
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the President must increase the rate of duty on all goods and services imported from Russia into the United States to at least 500% relative to the value of such goods and services;
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the President must increase the rate of duty on all goods and services imported into the United States from countries that knowingly engage in the exchange of Russian-origin uranium and petroleum products to at least 500% relative to the value of such goods and services;
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the Department of the Treasury must impose property-blocking sanctions on any financial institution organized under Russian law and owned wholly or partly by Russia, and any financial institution that engages in transactions with those entities; and
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the Department of Commerce must prohibit the export, reexport, or in-country transfer to or in Russia of any U.S.-produced energy or energy product.
2 Over my pay grade, but would it not be possible to damage their propellers?
