What is the Trump government’s conflict with Venezuela really about? Trump claims that the US is combating drug smuggling, and thus saving a zillion US lives by bombing small boats and killing more than 100 people. Mainstream media and opinion is now questioning this, pointing out that the drugs Trump is talking about come from Mexico (or China or Colombia), but not Venezuela. And some commentators go so far as to point out that the murders on the high seas are not legal, but simply murder. And Serious Critics point out that Venezuela has more oil under its land than any other country in the world. Is this a US war for oil, like the war against Iraq?
Yesterday, in an in-depth analysis linked below, The New York Times put forth evidence that a key element of the Trump administration’s escalation of hostilities toward Venezuela is the need for a legal basis on which to deport thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States. According to The Times, the Trump administration’s main player in the terror-deportations of immigrants, Mark Miller, played a significant role in US Venezuela policy. Otherwise lacking a legal basis for deportations (as ruled by several courts), by engaging in a “war” with Venezuela, immigrants from that country might be deportable via the 1798 “Enemy Aliens Act.” While historians have shown that the domestic roots of wars and foreign adventures is a well-trodden path, starting a war in order to deport immigrants is (I believe) a first of its kind.
Most Americans now oppose US military action against Venezuela. International opinion is overwhelmingly critical. Trump now appears to be using economic aggression – seizing oil tankers and the like – to weaken the Venezuela government; but it has repeatedly stated that military action against the (land) territory of Venezuela is on the near-term agenda. Such a war would likely be a disaster, perhaps engulfing much of Latin America while killing many Venezuelans. We have to stand against this and take what actions we can. Work for peace.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS WEEK
How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign
By Edward Wong, et al., New York Times [December 27, 2025]
---- [In late May], Mr. Trump signed a secret directive ordering the Pentagon to carry out military operations against Latin American drug cartels and specifically calling for maritime strikes. Though the justification was drugs in general, the operation would concentrate enormous naval firepower off the coast of Venezuela. The result has been an increasingly militarized pressure campaign intended to remove Mr. Maduro from power. It has been marked by U.S. strikes that have killed at least 105 people on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, a quasi-blockade of oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuelan ports and threats by Mr. Trump to carry out land strikes in Venezuela. It reflects overlapping drives by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Miller, who have worked in tandem on policies against Mr. Maduro. Each has come to it with a focus on long-held goals: for Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, a chance to topple or cripple the governments of Venezuela and its ally, Cuba; and for Mr. Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration policies, the opportunity to further his goal of mass deportations and to hit criminal groups in Latin America. [Read More] FOR MORE INFORMATION - The Center for Economic and Policy Research has daily updates on the US aggression/threat toward Venezuela [Link].
As expected, Netanyahu back demanding more war with Iran
By Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft [December 21, 2025]
---- NBC News reports that Netanyahu’s key ask in his upcoming Dec 29 meeting with Trump is to convince the US to join Israel in restarting war with Iran. As I wrote in August, Israel was poised to resume the conflict since it didn’t achieve its key objectives during its first attack. The significant impact of Iran’s missile strikes compelled Israel to seek a ceasefire after only nine days—a stark contrast to the months and even years it previously took to pressure Israel into ceasefires with Hamas and Hezbollah. The June war resulted in mutual deterrence, a situation Iran can accept, but one that is intolerable for Netanyahu and his legacy. Ultimately, the conflict was neither a victory for Israel nor for Iran. It is precisely this balance of terror that prompts Israel to seek a new round - Israel’s military doctrine does not allow for any of its regional foes to deter it or challenge its military dominance. Iran’s missile program currently does exactly that. [Read More]
Trump’s Strike on Nigeria
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 27, 2025]
---- The Trump administration’s strike on Sokoto State in the far northwest of Nigeria had no legal basis in U.S. law. The United States is not at war with Nigeria, and Congress hasn’t authorized any such actions, as is required by Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Resolution. Ironically, the strike was fully supported by the Muslim president of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and coordinated with the federal military. … Trump’s attempt to configure the action as a Christian strike in defense of Christians (for his Evangelical base) is a stretch. He seems actually to have worked hand in glove with Tinibu and the Nigerian Muslim elite to hit a mutual problem. Although parts of Nigeria, especially the northeast, are poor and conflict-ridden, there is no evidence that Christians suffer worse from this violence than Muslims — people from both communities have been kidnapped, brutalized, and killed by forces such as Boko Haram. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST IS “Facts Clash With Trump Claim of Hitting ISIS and Shielding Nigerian Christians,” New York Times [December 26, 2025] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Australia’s recent Bondi Beach massacres prompts another look at gun violence in the USA. In “Americans Aren’t Traumatized Enough by Gun Violence,” journalist Sonalil Kolhatkar notes that “In 2023, the latest year for which statistics are available, more than 45,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives as a result of gun violence, which is also the leading cause of death for children and teenagers.” That is an average of 125 people killed each day in gun violence. She also notes that there were (so far) 392 mass shootings in 2025. The Gun Violence Archive updates its horrifying statistics daily. This is truly crazy.
“Affordability” bothering you? As an article in the current Jacobin Magazine notes, “The US Military Will Enjoy a Record-Breaking Budget in 2026.” In a nutshell, “the military” will get more than $1 trillion in 2026. It is interesting to learn than “only 1 in 10 American voters supports greater spending on the military.” People with good memories will recall that all the Westchester congressional representatives – Latimer, Schumer, and Gillibrand – voted YES for more military spending. Jacobin also notes that “the United States already spends more on its military than the next nine nations combined.” Personally, I am sick of “liberal” organizations and spokespeople bemoaning our (true) affordability crisis without mentioning the need to cut military spending by a lot.
Gideon Levy is a columnist for the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Recently, Levy wrote an article titled “This Hero’s Act of Protest Reflects the Solidarity Arab Israelis Feel Toward Their Gaza Relatives” [Link]. He describes “an unidentified woman in black” in a Tel Aviv mall who “With a hijab on her head, a purse on one arm and a cellphone in her other hand, approached the menorah and blew out the four candles in a single breath.” He describes this woman as “the Palestinian Rosa Parks.” Of course the woman is being hunted by the police and will probably be severely punished. Everyday resistance: something we all can do.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
(Video) Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir at the Hollywood Bowl
By Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping [December 25, 2025]
---- This week’s Reward for stalwart newsletter readers is a fun-filled program from Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir. This half-hour show opened for Neil Young’s “Love Earth” tour in September The theme of the performance is the climate crisis and our efforts to right the wrongs we/humans have done to the planet. Reverend Billy has been a stalwart for peace and justice for years; and for those who don’t know him, check out his many fabulous videos (short & long) from the Church of Stop Shopping here. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Mohammed Ibrahim’s Stolen Year
By Jasper Nathaniel, Infinite Jaz [December 26, 2025]
[FB - Journalist Jasper Nathaniel grew up in Hastings and now has a Substack platform for his reporting about what’s happening in the West Bank (Israel/Palestine). His reporting about the kidnapped 15-year-old Palestinian-American Mohammad Ibrahim supported an eventually successful campaign to free him from an Israel prison after many months of suffering. The report below describes Jasper Nathaniel’s visit to Mohammad’s family home in Florida after he gained his freedom.]
---- Mohammed seems to be recovering quite well. After a week of struggling to eat, he is now ravenous and has begun to put weight back on. They are indoctrinating him in their pickleball obsession. He is happy, eager to resume something like the life he had before his imprisonment. For Palestinians, this kind of rupture is grimly routine. No family has been spared from Israel’s brutality. Their suffering is ordinary and human. So is the anger, visibly smoldering in some as Mohammed described his treatment in prison. But the resilience is learned, passed down, and continually reforged. Mohammed has absorbed from his family and loved ones that he has to feel the pain and then go on with his life. “Just look at Gaza,” they often say. “What choice do they have?” [Read More]
Redacting Our Reality, One Epstein at a Time
By Katleen Wallace, Counterpunch [December 25, 2025]
---- The fact that an inordinate number of women have come forward to tell of their horrific experiences when they were children doesn’t seem to be enough for many to believe. There have been lives ruined by the activities of a small group of entitled and deranged men. The Venn diagram intersects in all the wrong places. Intelligence agencies, genocidal governments—they all seem to play into this disgusting drama. At this point, it takes an actual conspiracy theorist to fail to connect the dots to the life-draining misery going on planet-wide. The common theme is stealing the autonomy of others and placing oneself above all others, including the health of the planet. No wonder they enjoy terrorizing children. These are the same people who take delight in stealing land, in ruining natural environments. … The question isn’t when will the perpetrators give us the evidence we need; the question is when will we simply trust ourselves and use clear eyes when we witness predators doing what predators do? And what will we do about it? [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Feminism Versus Trump and Epstein,” by Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency [December 20, 2025] [Link].
(Video) Arundhati Roy on New Memoir “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” Gaza & Authoritarianism from India to U.S.
From Democracy Now! [December 26, 2025]
[FB – Dozens of copies in the WLS library system. Check it out!]
---- In this holiday special, we speak to the acclaimed Indian writer Arundhati Roy on her new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me. The book focuses on her mother Mary Roy and how Arundhati was shaped by her, both as a source of terror and of inspiration. We also talk to Arundhati about Gaza and the rise of authoritarianism from India to the United States. [See the Program]
Is a New “New Deal” About to Wipe Out the Old Political Order?
By Thom Hartmann [December 22, 2025]
---- The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found:
“A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election.
“51% of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17% are not sure.
“Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57% want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election.
“Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, 78% would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election.”
The exploding popularity of progressive politicians from Zorhan Mamdani to Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t an anomaly; they’re a signpost to both electoral and governing success for the next generation of genuinely progressive Democratic politicians. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Palestinian factions have come together to thwart Israeli plans in Gaza, for now
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [December 26, 2025]
---- The United States seems to be poised to reevaluate its tactics in implementing President Donald Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip. It seems they are considering installing a Palestinian technocrat government and Palestinian police force before assembling their International Stabilization Force (ISF), which they are finding no country wants to be part of. While this remains very far from acknowledging the rights of the Palestinian people, and even farther from realizing those rights in practice, it is a real vindication for the strategic decisions that the assortment of Palestinian factions — not only Hamas — made in the wake of the diminishment of Israel’s genocide in October. … On paper, that all seems to amount to a minor victory at best, but digging deeper, we can see it vindicates the strategy the Palestinians have pursued to end Israel’s genocide and avoid the total surrender that Israel has pursued as the price for ending that horror. [Read More]
Hamas Is Proud of Its ‘Achievements’ but Hasn’t Convinced the Gazans Who Pay the Price
By Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [December 27, 2025]
---- In a self-congratulatory document that the group published to mark the two-year anniversary of its October 7 attack, Hamas doesn’t explain how the armed struggle that it says is necessary has never stopped colonialist Israel, as it defines it. … Just like well-run institutions – governmental or nongovernmental – that submit periodic reports on their activities and performance, Hamas has just published an assessment of its October 7 attack and the aftermath up to the cease-fire that was sealed two years later. … In conversations with friends and family, but not for publication or discussion with the Israeli media, even loyal Hamas supporters in the enclave have questions about the attack and the considerations behind it. They aren’t getting answers. Those who aren’t supporters of Hamas in Gaza, people who demand that Hamas take stock of itself, won’t find a hint of this in the text. [Read More]
Illegal settlement expansion: How Israel is redrawing occupied West Bank
By Yashraj Sharma, Aljazeera [December 22, 2025]
---- The Israeli security cabinet has approved 19 new settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank as the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves to prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state. As Netanyahu’s government has made the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory a priority, the United Nations has said Israeli settlement expansions in 2025 have reached their highest level since 2017. “These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually from 2017 to 2022. Under the current far-right government, the number of settlement and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent – from 141 in 2022 to 210 now. An outpost is built without government authorisation while a settlement is authorised by the Israeli government. Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population of 7.7 million people lives in these settlements, which are considered illegal under international law. Here’s everything you need to know about the newly approved settlements and what they mean for the future of Palestinian statehood. [Read More]
WAR ON IRAN?
Iran and the Price of Sovereignty: What It Takes Not to Be a Client State
By Behrooz Ghamari Tabrizi, Counterpunch [December 25, 2025]
---- On June 12, 2025, for the first time after more than twenty years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors passed a resolution declaring that Tehran was breaching its non-proliferation obligations. The day after, on June 13, Israeli warplanes began a campaign of bombing Tehran and other major Iranian cities. With the help of their proxies inside the country, they assassinated top military commanders, killed leading nuclear scientists at their residence along with their families, bombed the cabinet meeting in Tehran, wounding the President, indiscriminately shelled urban residential areas, and even targeted Evin prison where most political prisoners are incarcerated. The U.S. offered intelligence, refueled their jet fighters in mid-air, and finally entered the war directly by bombing the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites with bunker buster weapons. This unprovoked Israeli attack happened in the midst of seemingly constructive negotiations between Iran and the U.S. in Rome and Muscat. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The Clock Is Ticking: Invest in the Planet, Not the Pentagon
By Alliyah Lusuegro, Otherwords [December 17, 2025]
---- Ten years ago as of December 2025, nearly every country in the world made a promise. By signing the Paris Agreement, governments committed to limit global temperature rises to no more than 2°C — and ideally 1.5°C — to avoid the most devastating impacts of a warming planet. Recognizing their historic responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, the Paris Agreement called on wealthier countries like the United States to contribute funding to help poorer countries adapt. And it envisioned the economic and social transformations needed to keep the planet from overheating to unlivable levels. In practice, that means phasing out fossil fuels, scaling up renewable energy, and investing in sustainable systems — from agriculture to transportation — to keep our world powered and going. Unfortunately, that’s not what our leaders are doing. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’: The 5 Words That Will Determine the Fate of Birthright Citizenship
By Bill Blum, TruthDig [December 22, 2025]
“When I use a word” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.“
— Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking Glass“
---- When Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160 on Jan. 20, declaring an end to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of undocumented aliens, constitutional scholars laughed at him. They had also laughed in 2018, when he first threatened, but ultimately declined, to issue the decree. The idea that a president could gut a constitutional right by personal fiat seemed too crazy, too culled straight from the lunatic fringe, if not the imagination of Lewis Carroll, to actually happen. No one is laughing anymore. On Dec. 5, the Supreme Court granted the administration’s request to review the order’s constitutionality, marking the second time this year the panel has agreed to examine the birthright edict. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Whatever Happened to Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ for American Workers?
By Lawrence S. Wittner, Znet [December 26, 2025]
---- Although Donald Trump’s Department of Labor announced in April 2025 that “Trump’s Golden Age puts American workers first,” that contention is contradicted by the facts. Indeed, Trump has taken the lead in reducing workers’ incomes. One of his key actions along these lines occurred on March 14, 2025, when he issued an executive order that scrapped a Biden-era regulation raising the minimum wage for employees of private companies with federal contracts. Some 327,300 workers had benefited from Biden’s measure, which produced an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. With Trump’s reversal of policy, they became ripe for pay cuts of up to 25 percent. … Not surprisingly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on December 18, 2025 that, from November 2024 to November 2025, the annual growth of the real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) of American workers had fallen to 0.8 percent. Trump’s policies have also fostered unemployment. [Read More]
In 2025, Educators Didn’t Just Endure Repression. They Built Resistance.
By Jesse Hagopian, Truthout, [December 26, 2025]
---- Public education has always been a battleground over national memory, but in 2025 the assault on honest teaching greatly intensified. The Trump administration launched a coordinated campaign to punish instruction that names systemic injustice, moving to abolish the Department of Education and roll back civil-rights protections that safeguard Title I and special-education funding. Executive orders threatening to defund schools that teach about racism, gender, or colonialism — and dismantling DEI programs across federal agencies — have sent a chilling message to districts nationwide. The campaign extended well beyond classrooms, with Trump attacking the Smithsonian for teaching about slavery and ordering the removal of historical material — including images documenting the brutality of enslavement — from national parks, making the administration’s objective unmistakable: to transform public education and public memory into instruments of authoritarian control. Yet even in a year defined by escalating repression, 2025 delivered something unexpected: cracks in the censorship machine. At the ballot box, the public began pushing back. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
“SNCC: The New Abolitionists” by Howard Zinn – [The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee]
By Raghav Kaushik, Znet [December 25, 2025]
---- Howard Zinn’s book on SNCC was written in 1964. Yet, here I am writing a review in 2025, a good 60 years later. It feels appropriate to do so. There is of course the usual wisdom about paying attention to history for its relevance today, especially the history of social movements. There is also the fact that the MAGA movement has as its primary goal undoing the victories of the civil rights movement. But most of all, there is the inspiration to be drawn. The segregation era was one of the darkest eras of American history, and if it could be defeated, then so can MAGA. Zinn opens his book with these powerful words. “For the first time in our history a major social movement, shaking the nation to its bones, is being led by youngsters.” The pathway lit up by the Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott “flared into a national excitement with the sit-ins by college students that started the decade of the 1960s. And since then, those same youngsters, hardened by countless jailings and beatings, now out of school and living in ramshackle headquarters all over the Deep South, have been striking the sparks, again and again, for that fire of change spreading through the South and searing the whole country. These young rebels call themselves the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.” Zinn refers to these young rebels as the new abolitionists, referring to the original abolitionists fighting slavery. Although the civil rights movement was not as non-violent as is usually believed, it was surely more non-violent than the anti-slavery movement. Also unlike the original abolitionists, the new abolitionists were disproportionately young. [Read More]
(Video) A Tribute to Blacklisted Lyricist Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz
From Democracy Now! [December 25, 2025]
---- His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz, the movie that inspired the hit Broadway musical and now Hollywood blockbuster, Wicked. Born into poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Harburg always included a strong social and political component to his work, fighting racism and poverty. A lifelong socialist, Harburg was blacklisted and hounded throughout much of his life. We speak with Harburg’s son, Ernie Harburg, about the music and politics of his father. Then we take an in-depth look at The Wizard of Oz, and hear a medley of Harburg’s Broadway songs and the politics of the times in which they were created. [See the Program]
