Category: 2026

curated news excerpts & citations

James Eagle: Venezuela after Maduro: what the data says, not the headlines

Venezuela rarely disappears. It simply recedes, becoming a background problem until something forces it back into focus.

That moment arrived over the weekend. A sudden escalation involving the United States and the removal of Nicolás Maduro from power has returned Venezuela to the centre of geopolitical attention. The reaction has been loud and polarised, but the underlying conditions did not change overnight. They have been building quietly for years
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Bulwark: Trump Says We Have the “Hottest” Economy. Markets Tell a Different Story.

The U.S. economy entered 2025 as the “envy of the world.” It exited well behind its peers.

MANY OF US HAVE BEEN raising hue and cry about the irreversible damage Donald Trump has wreaked on the economy. Tariffs! Corporate shakedowns! Destruction of research institutions! Deletion of data! Politicization of the Federal Reserve! Alienation of our allies! Socialization of private companies!

And of course, the collapse of the rule of law.

All of these things should be terrible for the U.S. economy, especially in the long term. And yet to date, the stock market has seemingly shrugged it all off.

In fact, markets look somewhat ebullient. In 2025, the S&P 500 grew a solid 16 percent—far better than the average year, and better than many forecasts, particularly in the wake of Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

So what’s going on? Why aren’t investors pricing in all these risks?

Some of it may be that they believe there’s a huge, sustainable Trump boom just around the corner. It didn’t come by the end of 2025, but perhaps it’ll arrive this quarter . . . or next quarter . . . or the end of 2026, per the latest goalpost-moving forecasts from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

But there are other ways to interpret what’s going on. None of them are particularly assuring:

1. U.S. markets actually aren’t doing that great, when compared to our global competitors.
2. The lion’s share of growth here in the United States—in both financial markets and hard economic data—is driven by a single sector: A.I . . .
3. . . . which looks an awful lot like a bubble right now.

I find these explanations to be more persuasive than the hope that a new economic golden age is about to dawn. And to understand why, it’s worth recapping why you should worry about the long-term damage from Trump’s policies in the first place.
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Al Jazeera: Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro ‘captured’ after huge US military strikes

US says Venezuelan president will face drug-related charges in New York as Caracas decries Nicolas Maduro’s capture.
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Al Jazeera: US lawmakers react to attack on Venezuela, ‘capture’ of Nicolas Maduro

Sarah Burns: … Trump’s attack on Venezuela reflects Congress surrendering its decision-making powers

… This is regime change, and whether or not it has a positive impact on the United States, whether or not it has a positive impact on Venezuela, I think the likelihood is very low for both of those things being true.
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Daily Beast: Sleepless Trump, 79, Threatens New War in 3AM Rage Post

PEACEMAKER IN CHIEF?
The president, who has been lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, warned a foreign adversary that the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

President Donald Trump fired off a 3 a.m. social media post threatening to attack Iran after protests against the country’s supreme leader turned deadly.
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Brian Allen: Federal Judges Blow the Whistle on DOJ Deception: 35+ Cases of Lies and “Sham” Evidence

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The cleanest way to understand this is through the Goodman-led tracking work (published via Just Security) that compiles cases where judges themselves explicitly questioned the government’s truthfulness, accuracy, or good faith.

This matters because it is not punditry. It is not Twitter. It is not “some guy says.”

It is judges putting it in orders and on transcripts.

And the allegations are not all one flavor. They cluster into repeatable misconduct categories:

• False sworn declarations used to win emergency rulings
• Evidence problems judges call “sham,” “misleading,” or “unsupported”
• Noncompliance with court orders followed by legal gymnastics to justify it
• Agency narratives that fall apart under basic cross-checking

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Techno-Science: ⚠️ A robot, missing for 9 months, resurfaces with an alarming message

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The discovery is more alarming for the Denman Glacier. The profiler clearly identified the presence of a layer of warmer water circulating beneath its floating part. This water is already causing melting at the base. Scientists believe the configuration is precarious: a slight increase in the thickness of this warm water layer could significantly accelerate the disintegration process, committing the glacier to a potentially irreversible retreat.

The stakes are high. The Denman Glacier alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 5 feet (1.5 meters) if it were to melt completely. Combined with the Totten Glacier, whose potential is estimated at 11.5 feet (3.5 meters), these two giants of East Antarctica represent a major long-term threat. Their confirmed vulnerability to warm ocean water requires integrating these new parameters into sea level rise forecast models.
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