01/21/26
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, January 21st.
International Sweatpants Day
OMG… yes please. Can every single day be sweatpants day?
And now, the news.
Venezuelan Tanker Captured
Starting with Venezuela (to keep you on your toes! Hey, guess what? We’re doing a lot of bad stuff… you never know where we’re going to start!)
Starting with Venezuela, but in the Caribbean Sea, where the United States has seized its seventh oil tanker with links to the country.
As a reminder, because I know there is a lot to pay attention to right now, here is where things stand with Venezuela:
Currently, Delcy Rodríguez has named herself the new leader of the country after Maduro was taken out of the country. Just as Maduro called himself the president, but he was never elected and in fact lost, by a large margin, the last election – Rodríguez did, in fact, call herself the Vice President but that’s not accurate. Can’t be a legit Veep when the president isn’t legitimate.
She is trying to paint herself as a moderate but make no mistake – she is just as bad as Maduro.
On the other side of things is María Corina Machado, who won the primary in 2023 but was banned from running for office in 2024 (because that is how Maduro did things in Venezuela). Edmundo Gonźalez ran in her place and won in a landslide, but Maduro refused to concede that win and never left office.
As I said – Maduro is not the president of Venezuela.
Now that he has been removed, Machado has stated that she intends to return to Venezuela and run for president.
The issue, however, is that Trump (who put his own picture on Wikipedia as the acting president of Venezuela so I’m glad we’re all taking this seriously) has a big problem with Machado. The problem?
She won the Nobel Peace Prize and he, a white supremacist insurrectionist who has been found liable for sexual assault and was best friends with one of the most prolific child sex traffickers in history… somehow didn’t.
It evades imagination as to how that one slipped through the cracks.
Trump has literally said that if Machado had said she couldn’t accept her Nobel Peace Prize and that it should go to Trump, she would be the president of Venezuela right now.
Machado loves her country so much that she actually went to Trump last week and gave him the Nobel Peace Prize! (Technically it can’t be transferred but not in that dum dums mind. He thinks he’s got it now.)
He posted about it on social media, saying:
“Maria presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you Maria!”
Moron.
And snake. Because while they were meeting, Trump’s CIA director was meeting with Delcy Rodríguez. So it remains TBD on whether a formal conversation was had about those potential elections but like… what else do we think they were talking about?
As for that Nobel Peace Prize, Karoline Leavitt says: “It does not solve the problem and he’s still worthy of actually being the recipient of the reward.”
Lol the problem
I, personally, wouldn’t say that’s the problem I see what this White House but whatever… these people are insufferable. Truly.
Iranian Protests
-via NY Times
And over to Iran, where protests have slowed but the crackdown continues.
It all started when their currency plunged in late December and university students started to protest. Those protests grew into more of a general protest against the government, with protestors seen chanting things like “Death to the dictator” and “Iranians, raise your voice, shout out for your rights.”
Iran, famously cool with stuff like that, began to arrest protestors en masse, as well as use violence to suppress the protests.
What’s happening is genuinely very hard to know because the government is blocking information from coming out – literally. They cut the internet and cell phone lines, although they are now perhaps starting to come back online. Slowly. Very slowly. And still at the hands of the government.
But in this, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says they believe at least 3,900 protesters and about 180 security forces have been killed.
An absolutely devastating number on its own, however the agency is still working to verify the more than 9,000 other reported deaths. Witnesses report security forces shooting and killing unarmed demonstrators at close range, while others say snipers are shooting into crowds from rooftops.
There have been no large-scale protests since Sunday.
During all of this, ever the helper, Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene, militarily, to protect protestors. You know how Trump is always trying to help protestors. “More protests!” That’s his motto.
Iran’s supreme leader has accused the US, as well as Israel, of instigating the protests.
Trump has recently back off his threats, seeing signs that the killing has stopped. That’s his words, at least.
As the internet comes back online, we’ll see where things go from here.
Minnesota
-via NPR
In Minnesota, as protests continue there as well, the DOJ announced that it is opening investigations into six state and local officials, with subpoenas sent to the offices of Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties.
In response to the subpoena, Mayor Frey said: "We shouldn't have to live in a country where people fear that federal law enforcement will be used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with.”
To which Trump said – that is literally the only kind of country I want to live in.
Trump and Davos
-via AP News
And what of Greenland? Trump makes no friends wherever he goes (I wonder what kind of country we’d be right now if he’d made a friend in elementary school…), and he’s certainly not about to make them in Davos today.
That’s right, Trump is scheduled to make a speech at the World Economic Forum today and, um… we’ll see I guess?
Because amongst the attendees are a whole bunch of European leaders who are not thrilled, or even 2% happy, with Trump’s threats to take Greenland by hook or by trade.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron said: “It’s a shift towards a world without rules. Where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest, and imperial ambitions are resurfacing.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said: “Great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not,” adding, “We stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.”
Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said: “We either stand together or we will stand divided, and if we are divided, there is the end of an era, of 80 years of Atlanticism, really drawing to a close.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this about the trade deals between the US and EU: “If this change is permanent, then Europe must change permanently too. It is time to seize this opportunity and build a new independent Europe. We consider the people of the United States not just our allies, but our friends. And plunging us into a downward spiral would only aid the very adversaries we are both so committed to keeping out of the strategic landscape.”
And that is the energy that Trump will be stepping into today.
Fear not, his treasury secretary Scott Bessent tee’d him up real good and smoothed things over for him. Saying: “I think our relations have never been closer. Calm down the hysteria. Take a deep breath.”
Good read on the room Scott!
We’ll see what today’s speech brings.