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The elements behind Trump’s war on Venezuela are fourfold.

They center on the theft of Venezuela’s oil; the removal of Cuba’s primary lifeline; the protection of the dollar-based petrodollar; and Trump’s desperate need to deflect attention from the deepening quagmire that is the Epstein scandal.

And the ultimate question they raise is: will his blatantly illegal violation of U.S. and international law finally result in the impeachment and removal of Trump from the White House or the 2026 mid-term elections lead to an end of his destructive control of the U.S. government.

The lethal litany of reasons for Trump’s invasion is led by the U.S. seeking Venezuela’s huge reserves of oil—it supposedly has 303 billion barrels compared to the U.S. with but 45. After Venezuela is Saudi Arabia with 267 and Iran with 208 and then the list drops by 100.

While Trump pretends he is saving Latin America, Greenland, and other places where he wants to plant the US flag, and presumably his brand, his war on the poor in America has reached new, unconscionable extremes. In recent weeks he has blocked childcare funds from Minnesota, as he tried to exploit a welfare scam there which as crushed the career of Governor, and recent Vice-President candidate, Walz. Now he has taken all of this another tragic step forward and blocked both welfare and childcare funds from Minnesota, New York, California, Colorado, and Illinois, claiming scandal, while offering no proof or evidence of any such thing. This is just crazy.

TANF or the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families is a miserly program that renamed welfare assistance like AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in the Clinton presidency. One of the changes made these welfare payments block grants, allowing governors and legislators to divert fund away from the poorest American families to other ends or in some cases to not distribute the full amounts because of the Scrooge like policies.

Is this political? Heck, yes!

DHS lies.

They lied about Ayman Soliman. They lied about Venezuelans in Ohio, calling them gang members when they were not. They lied about Operation Buckeye in Columbus, where the overwhelming majority of the people arrested have no criminal history.

This article first appeared on Substack

I have spent most of my adult life working at the intersection of food, health, and public policy. I did not come to this work through ideology. I came to it through lived experience, long before I ever held a policy title.

My mother reversed severe, debilitating Crohn’s disease decades ago after being advised to undergo radical intestinal surgery. Doctors told her there were no other options. She refused to accept that verdict and changed what she ate. Through a whole food, plant-based approach, she regained her health. That decision reshaped our family’s relationship to food and planted the seed for my life’s work.

During Operation Buckeye, Mayor Ginther insisted Columbus police were ordered to not help ICE agents from apprehending immigrants, but emerging from that fateful week is a story of an ICE protestor who was arrested by Columbus police for simply exercising their right to free speech.

Now comes word out of Minneapolis that protestors felt as if their local police were there to protect ICE and not those they are sworn to protect. ICE murdered a protestor January 7, a young woman in Minneapolis. ICE turned 37-year-old Renee Good into a martyr.

By most standards Kevin Logan (pictured above) does not look like someone who would vehemently oppose ICE but looks can be deceiving. He's a tall middle-aged white guy with a beard. Standing well over 6-feet tall, the father of four daughters and one son has already lived a life which inspired him to care for those who have been marginalized because of their skin color.

Given up to foster care at birth, Logan spent much of his youth in "the system," with several years spent at the Buckeye Ranch in Grove City. This upbringing shaped and nurtured who he is, he says.

The U.S. grid is currently flooded with data center proposals that will never get built according to a recent whitepaper from Schneider Electric. The paper argues that only 10-20 percent of all proposed data centers will ever get beyond permitting. If true, the report argues, this may lessen the projected impact from load demand growth, but it makes it more difficult for utilities and grid operators to plan for the future.

Last year, RAND Corporation's "upper confidence" forecast projected 347 GW of AI-sector power consumption by 2030. But Schneider Electric called that prediction "extreme" and cited more modest forecasts of under 100 GW.

Such claims echo a 2018 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study that compared load forecasts and actual growth for 12 Western U.S. utilities in the mid-2000s and found most overestimated future demand.

Wednesday, January 7, 2026, 4-5pm
Zoom

Climate Justice Alliance member group Grassroots Global Justice Alliance is organizing a Social Movement Briefing to share analysis and strategy with International Allies from the Global South. 

Please join this urgent political briefing on the context, implications and calls to action in response to the US illegal occupation of Venezuela and military kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Hear from leaders from some of the largest social movements from Velezuela, the Caribbean and across the Americas alongside our own grassroots leaders here inside the US as we coordinate our collective response in defense of democracy, national sovereignty and self determination.

A Statement of Democratic Principles of AUDIT USA

We do not believe democratic societies are defined by perfection, moral purity, or the absence of abuse.

We believe they are defined by their capacity to detect error, correct abuse, and restore trust through evidence.

History shows that when power—whether governmental, institutional, or private—operates without transparency and independent verification, abuse becomes not only possible but predictable. This is not a claim about motives or ideology. It is a structural reality observed across time and systems.

Our work is grounded in three principles:

Skepticism is not cynicism.
Asking for evidence is not an accusation. It is a democratic responsibility.

Transparency is not exposure.
Protecting privacy and civil rights is compatible with public verification of outcomes.

Trust must be earned through systems, not personalities.
Good people operating inside opaque systems are still constrained by what the public can verify.

Monday, January 5, 2026, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Ohio Statehouse, 1 Capitol Square, Columbus in the Rotunda

Share a reading or song.  Let’s change priorities in 2026. 

Moral Mondays are recurring demonstrations, often led by the Ohio Poor People's Campaign, calling for an end to "policy violence" through prayer, advocacy, and protest, focusing on issues like poverty, healthcare access, and social justice, with events held in the Capitol Rotunda. These events, part of a larger national movement, gather faith leaders and impacted individuals to demand action from lawmakers