If the military operation to capture and arrest Venezuelan President and indicted drug lord Nicolas Maduro is any indication of what President Trump is up to for 2026, then it is going to be another monumental year for law and order and change across the world.
After Trump took office last year, every week brought new headlines about Trump upending the way America did business internally and externally. So much has happened in a year that people forget all the dire policies we got used to just having to accept. The skepticism Americans have felt towards bureaucratic institutions has been proven to be justified and, under Trump, reversed in many ways in one short year.
- The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion nonsense is being challenged and ended in public institutions, though more work needs to be done.
- Private companies that actively promote race-based hiring are losing government contracts.
- The border is closed without any new laws from Congress. Foreign aid through USAID has been cut drastically.
- The US Education Department is essentially eliminated.
- Pharmaceutical companies are having to provide similar pricing for Americans that they provide to foreign consumers.
- The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran has been stopped for the foreseeable future.
- The federal green energy subsidies are ending.
Trump is changing how America operates and what we tolerate from foreign countries and our own citizens. Trump’s policies, of course, have been challenged in court by the Leftists who benefited from the old ways. But in most cases, Trump has won those legal battles, his recent loss on the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago notwithstanding.
In the capture of Maduro, all reporting compares it to the capture of former Panamanian President Noriega, who in 1990 was captured and then convicted for drug running and money laundering. The question now is how Trump and his team “run” Venezuela, as he has said they will in the interim, and what precedent is there to do that.
Maduro was indicted by a federal court in 2020 and had a $50 million bounty. CNBC reported the following about the indictment:
A federal indictment charging Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, his wife and four other people with narco-terrorism conspiracy and other charges was unsealed and posted online by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Saturday morning after the couple’s dramatic capture by American forces in their own country.
“For over 25 years, leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States,” the indictment alleges.
The indictment was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. In addition to Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, the indictment also charges Maduro’s son, Nicolas Ernesto Maduoro Guerra, Diosado Cabello Rondon, Ramon Rodriguez Chachin, and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores. Read the indictment here.
But there is obviously more to the capture than just his indictment on federal drug charges. Maduro had invited U.S. foreign adversaries – Iran, China, and Cuba – into the region and that is even more dangerous to American security.
President Trump is now invoking the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, calling it the “Donroe Doctrine” and alleging the country was “hosting foreign adversaries” and “acquiring offensive weapons” and accused Venezuela of seizing and selling American oil assets,” as reported by USA Today.
Read more about the Monroe Doctrine HERE, which was articulated in President James Monroe’s seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest.”
For parents with children in high school and taking any sort of government class, it will be interesting to see how their teachers cover the capture of Maduro and the historical precedent for such.
While this story will capture the news cycle for a while, Democrat leaders in Minnesota shouldn’t think the attention is off the taxpayer fraud that happened on their watch. That story has legs, and the fraud there is likely happening elsewhere, including in Illinois.
Congress is calling in Minnesota officials for hearings. The Trump administration is freezing federal childcare funds to Minnesota. All 50 states must provide additional verification of providers of childcare services.
In Illinois, these childcare funds are often co-mingled with “Early Childhood Education” (ECE) funds, in which providers operate as both daycares and preschools. In that regard, in FY 2024, over $4.4 billion was spent on ECE, with most of the money, over $3 billion, coming from federal funds.
If you don’t think there’s fraud in our systems, then you haven’t been paying attention to all the other corruption going on across the state.