Trump indicates that Venezuela is responding to demands for ‘total access’ for US oil companies – US politics live

Opening summary

Donald Trump has said Venezuela will be “turning over” $2bn worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States, a flagship negotiation that would divert supplies from China while helping Venezuela avoid deeper oil production cuts.

Trump said in a post online:

This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!

Venezuelan government officials and state company PDVSA did not provide comment.

Venezuela has millions of barrels of oil loaded on tankers and in storage tanks that it has been unable to ship due to the blockade imposed by Trump, as part of the pressure campaign that culminated in the toppling of Nicolás Maduro who was seized from his country by US forces over the weekend.

Top Venezuelan officials have called Maduro’s capture a kidnapping and accused the US of trying to steal the country’s vast oil reserves, however Tuesday’s supposed agreement is a strong sign that the government is responding to Trump’s demand that they open up to US oil companies or risk more military intervention.

Meanwhile, Trump and his advisers have said they are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:

President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.

Leavitt’s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back against Trump’s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory. More on both of these stories in a moment, but first here are some other developments in US politics:

Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.
The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.
The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” of Greenland and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said. The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
The Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.

Updated at 04.02 EST

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Donald Trump doesn’t have any public events today, per his official schedule. He’ll sign executive orders at 2:30pm ET in the Oval Office, but that’s closed to the press as of now.

We will, however, hear from press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a White House briefing for reporters at 11am ET. We’ll bring you the latest lines as that happens.

The United States is attempting to seize a Venezuela-linked oil tanker after a more than two-week-long pursuit across the Atlantic, two US officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

The seizure, which could stoke tensions with Russia, came after the tanker, originally known as the Bella-1, slipped through a US maritime “blockade” of sanctioned tankers and rebuffed US Coast Guard efforts to board it.

The officials, who were speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the operation is being carried out by the Coast Guard and US military. They added that Russian military vessels were in the general vicinity when the operation took place, including a Russian submarine.

The tanker, now known as the Marinera and registered under a Russian flag, is the latest tanker targeted by the US Coast Guard since the start of US President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela.

Separately, the US Coast Guard has also intercepted another Venezuela-linked tanker in Latin American waters, US officials told Reuters, as the US continues enforcing a maritime “blockade” of sanctioned vessels from Venezuela.

White House says using US military is ‘always an option’ for seizing Greenland

Lauren Gambino

Donald Trump and his advisers are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.

“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Leavitt’s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back against Trump’s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory.

In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland.

“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

Greenland’s government said it had asked the US state department for an “urgent” meeting with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Greenland’s minister for foreign affairs and research, Vivian Motzfeldt, and the Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, to discuss “the US’s claims about our country”.

Rasmussen told the Danish public broadcaster DR that a meeting would give the Danes and Greenlanders a chance to correct some of Trump’s claims, including that there are a lot of Russian and Chinese ships around Greenland, and that China exerts great influence there through investments.

“We do not share this image that Greenland is plastered with Chinese investments … nor that there are Chinese warships up and down along Greenland,” he said, according to the broadcaster. Rasmussen spoke to reporters after an emergency session of Denmark’s foreign policy committee and defence ministry with just one item on the agenda: “The Kingdom’s relations with the United States.”

Updated at 07.54 EST

Lauren Aratani

Hours after Nicolás Maduro was captured by US special forces in Venezuela and indicted on drugs, weapons and “narco-terrorism” charges, Donald Trump spoke extensively about his plans for something else entirely: oil.

Venezuela’s oil reserves – reputedly the world’s largest – are set to be pumped by a parade of powerful US oil companies, according to the US president, most of whom have not operated in the country in decades.

“The oil companies are going to go in and rebuild their system,” Trump said on Sunday, describing oil’s nationalization in Venezuela as “the greatest theft in the history” of the US. “They took our oil away from us,” he declared.

US oil giants have been largely silent about Trump’s claim they will rush into Venezuela and invest billions of dollars in the process. Analysts are skeptical of the president’s vision of a significant increase in oil production in the country within 18 months. It’s far from the first time the industry has been at the center of global conflict.

Though Trump is expressing dreams of a US business takeover of Venezuela’s oil, such ousting of dictators from petrostates has not historically guaranteed a boom in production, according to data.

Guardian graphic. Source: US Energy Information AdministrationNotes: Annual average of barrels per day.Guardian graphic. Source: US Energy Information AdministrationNotes: Annual average of barrels per day.Share

Updated at 07.49 EST

Andrew Sparrow

UK prime minister Keir Starmer is speaking at the House of Commons in the weekly prime minister’s questions and has been asked about Ukraine.

Starmer says he spoke to President Donald Trump twice over the Christmas period about Ukraine and that there is no gap between the UK and the US on the Ukraine plan.

Updated at 07.23 EST

Earlier we reported on how the oil price is dropping today (read here), but below is the latest from the Guardian’s energy correspondent, Jillian Ambrose:

Global oil prices have fallen by more than 1% after Donald Trump said Venezuela would hand over 30m to 50m barrels of the country’s blockaded crude to the US.

The deal would give the US president the power to sell up to $3bn (£2.2bn) worth of Venezuelan crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities into an already oversupplied global market.

The move threatens to drag on oil prices, which last year recorded their steepest annual fall since the Covid pandemic and could plummet further as oil producers continue to pump more crude than needed by the global economy.

The international benchmark, Brent crude, fell to just over $60 a barrel on Wednesday, while the US oil price fell by 1.4%, to $56.44 a barrel.

The oil grab also raises the prospect of a disruption to Venezuela’s oil exports to China, which takes about 80% of its crude exports, potentially forcing Beijing to pay higher prices for its crude and increasing tensions with the White House.

China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Venezuela “enjoys full and permanent sovereignty over its natural resources and economic activities” and that US demands for the country to hand over its oil “violate international law, infringe upon Venezuela’s sovereignty, and harm the rights of the Venezuelan people”.

‘Astounding’ vaccine change puts US behind peer countries, experts warn

Melody Schreiber

The bombshell announcement that the Trump administration no longer fully recommends a third of childhood vaccines means the US moved from leading globally on vaccination to lagging behind other high-income nations in preventing disease, experts say.

The move is the latest and most significant escalation against vaccines from Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine skeptic and current secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“It’s the largest change in our vaccination schedule in modern American history,” said Jake Scott, infectious diseases specialist and clinical associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

It is an “astounding” decision made without scientific evidence or public input that will worsen vaccine access and increase disease outbreaks, said Daniel Jernigan, former director of the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

Robert F Kennedy, the health secretary, at the White House in December. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

US health officials, led by Kennedy, “want fewer vaccines”, Jernigan said, adding that they’re inflating the risks while burying the benefits of vaccines and “sowing confusion” for parents and providers.

Some shots are now only offered to “high-risk” groups – including hepatitis A, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), hepatitis B, and vaccines to prevent two types of meningitis. The dengue vaccine will continue to be recommended in high-risk areas only. Other vaccines are offered only under shared clinical decision-making, a previously rare designation that usually requires a doctor’s recommendation – including influenza, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B. Covid vaccines were limited in this way in November. The CDC will also recommend one dose of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine instead of two.

Health officials said in a press release that this will move the US closer to “peer, developed countries” as instructed by Donald Trump in December. Yet most other high-income countries have similar vaccine schedules to America’s now-jettisoned recommendations.

Updated at 06.46 EST

Ruaridh Nicoll

Ruaridh Nicoll has taken a look at whether Cuba’s bond with Venezuela can survive Donald Trump’s ousting of Nicolás Maduro. Havana’s long, fractious history with the US leaves it vulnerable if Caracas is forced to withdraw its support, he writes:

In Cuba, every discussion revolves around the implications of the US operation to capture Maduro. Can the island, already in financial crisis, survive the withdrawal of Venezuelan support? Does the US administration have a plan for Cuba? Are there people in the Cuban government willing to deal with the US? At the forefront, many Cubans are asking themselves: could it happen here?

“Anything seems possible after these events,” said Michael Bustamante, the chair of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. “But there are key differences between Venezuela and Cuba.”

In its attempts to oust the Venezuelan leadership, the US had already found itself in confrontation with Cuba. Havana has traditionally been shy about admitting its security and intelligence support of the Maduro regime, but it has had to acknowledge 32 Cubans died in the US military attack on Venezuela.

Explainer: Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Miranda Bryant

Miranda Bryant, the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, also has written this handy explainer on why Donald Trump is renewing calls for a takeover of Greenland:

Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Greenland has long been on Trump’s agenda but the reasons behind it have changed over time. In 2019, during his first term, he confirmed reports that he had been urging aides to find out how the US could buy the vast Arctic island, describing a sale as “essentially a large real estate deal”. Last January when Trump, then president-elect, said he needed control of Greenland he said it was for “economic security”. But in recent days he has said he needs Greenland “from the standpoint of national security” – despite the risk this would pose to the future of Nato.

Strategically positioned between the US and Russia, Greenland is viewed as increasingly important for defence and is emerging as a geopolitical battleground as the climate crisis worsens.

As well as oil and gas, Greenland’s supply of multiple in-demand raw materials for green technology is attracting interest from around the world – including from China, which dominates global rare earth production and has threatened to restrict the export of critical minerals. By acquiring Greenland, the US could keep China out.

The rapid melting of the island’s huge ice sheets and glaciers could open up oil drilling (although Greenland stopped granting exploration licences in 2021) and mining for essential minerals including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel.

Melting Arctic ice is also opening up new shipping routes, providing alternatives to the Suez canal through the Arctic that shorten the journey from western Europe to east Asia by almost half. China and Russia agreed in November to collaborate on developing new Arctic shipping routes.

Greenland is already an important military base for the US and its ballistic missile early warning system. The US has had a military base at Pituffik (previously Thule) since the cold war.

Updated at 06.08 EST

My colleague Jakub Krupa is reporting in more detail on the European reaction to Trump’s comments and potential plans for Greenland. You can follow that here:

Donald Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” Andrew Nixon, HHS spokesperson, said in a statement.

The Trump administration has threatened federal funding cuts to organizations and states over a number of issues since taking office – ranging from alleged fraud in programs of states governed by Democrats to diversity initiatives and pro-Palestinian university protests against US ally Israel’s assault on Gaza.

On Tuesday, HHS said it notified the five states, all with Democratic governors, that its freeze applied to the “Child Care and Development Fund” worth $2.4bn, the “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” worth $7.35bn and the “Social Services Block Grant” worth $869m.

In a statement, the department said the states’ access to those funds would be restricted pending further review. The administration has not laid out details of either the fraud claims or the widening plan to withhold funds, which was first reported by the New York Post.

Democrats condemned the freeze. “Our states should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said, adding the step was “vindictive” and “cruel”.

Jeremy Barr

Guardian US media and power reporter Jeremy Barr has witten an analysis on how Maga media stars back Trump on Venezuela … mostly. Here is a snippet:

But in the days since the US forcibly abducted Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, with dozens killed as part of the night-time operation, Donald Trump has instead received strong support from his media allies, with a few on-again, off-again backers expressing some reservations.

“Generally, the party is going to stand with him on this and conservative media is going to stand with him on this,” former Republican congressman and talk radio host Joe Walsh said.

The conservative radio and television host Mark Levin, one of Trump’s strongest media defenders, not only celebrated Trump’s military actions but on Sunday called those who questioned the legality of the incursion, including Senator Bernie Sanders and the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, “pure evil”.

The coverage among opinion hosts on Fox News has also been overwhelmingly positive. Fox News host Laura Ingraham called the capture of Maduro “quintessentially Maga”.

Not everyone is falling in line. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who now runs her own company and has a radio channel on SiriusXM, mocked the pro-Trump coverage on her former network, even as she re-affirmed her support for the president. “I turned on Fox News yesterday, and I’m sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda,” she said on her Monday show. She said:

There was nothing skeptical. It was all rah-rah cheerleading, yes, let’s go. And that’s fine. I love our military as much as anyone, and I believe in President Trump, but there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah-rah train.

She said Trump’s actions to depose Maduro were clearly about global oil dominance and not “this bullshit about law enforcement”.

ShareGraeme Wearden

Graeme Wearden tracks the latest world business, economic and financial news in our daily liveblog.

Donald Trump’s ambition to supercharge Venezuela’s oil production would damage the climate, and undermine efforts to limit dangerous global heating, experts have warned.

Even raising production to 1.5m barrels of oil a day from current levels of around 1m barrels would produce around 550m tons of carbon dioxide a year when the fuel is burned, according to Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is more carbon pollution than what is emitted annually by major economies such as the UK and Brazil.

A state-owned oil refining plant in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, pictured in November 2021. Photograph: Yuri Cortéz/AFP via Getty Images

“If there are millions of barrels a day of new oil, that will add quite a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and the people of Earth can’t afford that,” says John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Updated at 05.18 EST

Oil falls after Trump says Venezuela will send supply to US

Graeme Wearden

The aftermath of the US intervention in Venezuela is continuing to send ripples through the markets.

The oil price is dropping today, after Donald Trump declared that Venezuela will send the US between 30m and 50m barrels of oil, which will then be sold … with the president controlling the proceeds, which could be more than $2bn.

There are currently millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil stashed on tankers and in storage tanks due to the US blockage imposed by Trump. The news that this oil could soon follow president Nicolás Maduro in an unexpected journey to the US had an immediate impact on the oil market.

US crude has dropped by 1.6% to $56.21 a barrel, as traders anticipate more supply hitting the market, adding to Tuesday’s losses.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, has dropped by 1.2% – back below $60 a barrel at $59.97.

The move also has geopolitical implications; two sources have told Reuters that supplying the trapped crude to the US could initially require reallocating cargoes originally bound for China.

You can read more rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news in our business liveblog here:

US legislators spoke out against the idea of military action against Greenland on Tuesday.

In social media posts, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, vowed to introduce a resolution “to block Trump from invading Greenland,” saying the 79-year-old Republican simply “wants a giant island with his name on it. He wouldn’t think twice about putting our troops in danger if it makes him feel big and strong.”

In a sharp departure from the party’s typical partisanship, Republicans also pushed back against Trump’s military-backed expansionism, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

House speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, told reporters on Tuesday night that he did not think it was “appropriate” for Washington to take military action on Greenland, Politico reported.

Republican Senator Jerry Moran of the midwestern state of Kansas, who serves on the Senate intelligence committee, told HuffPost “it’s none of our business” and warned that the move would lead to “the demise of Nato.”

Nebraska Republican congressman Don Bacon put it even more bluntly in a post on X:

This is really dumb. Greenland and Denmark are our allies.

Trump administration escalates attack on Minnesota with more immigration agents

Rachel Leingang

The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.

“A 100% chance of ICE in the Twin Cities – our largest operation to date,” the official Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) account on X wrote on Tuesday afternoon. “If you’re a criminal illegal alien and/or you are engaged in fraud, expect a visit from ICE.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed on X that it is “surging to Minneapolis to root out fraud, arrest perpetrators and remove criminal illegal aliens”. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Newsmax that the agency has in the city “the largest immigration operation ever taking place right now”.

ICE agents detain an observer, who was later released, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 6 January 2026. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

CBS News reported on Monday that the administration would bring another 2,000 agents, both from ICE and homeland security investigations, into the state for 30 days. Lyons didn’t confirm the number of agents, but said it was an effort from both ICE and HSI. DHS wouldn’t confirm a number to the Guardian, but said that the agency has “surged law enforcement”.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, is in the state. She can be seen in a video produced by DHS of an arrest in Minneapolis of a man from Ecuador who the agency said is wanted for murder in his home country.

Operation Metro Surge, the agency’s name for its crackdown on Minnesota, has been under way since early December. Community members have fought back against ICE, protesting and impeding deportations, as some immigrants have stayed away from public life, avoiding grocery stores or medical care for fear of apprehension.

The fixation on Minnesota comes as the state grapples with several high-profile cases alleging fraud of social services, which have captured Trump’s attention and led to xenophobic comments from him about Somalis. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the US, and most Somalis in the state are US citizens.

The White House’s latest calls for a US takeover of Greenland come after the dark-of-night arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, on Saturday. The next day, Trump said that he needed Greenland “very badly”, prompting a ramping-up of tensions among the US, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and Europe.

Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US. The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland.

In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, the UK and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland.

In a private briefing on Capitol Hill, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Monday that the administration would prefer to buy the island from Denmark rather than invade it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Opening summary

Trump said in a post online:

Venezuelan government officials and state company PDVSA did not provide comment.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:

Trump’s administration is freezing more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said, citing what it called concerns about fraud and misuse.
The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.
The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations in what immigration officials are saying is the agency’s “largest operation to date”.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” of Greenland and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said. The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
The Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.

Updated at 04.02 EST

Trump indicates that Venezuela is responding to demands for ‘total access’ for US oil companies – US politics live | US news

Opening summary

White House says using US military is ‘always an option’ for seizing Greenland

‘Astounding’ vaccine change puts US behind peer countries, experts warn

Explainer: Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Oil falls after Trump says Venezuela will send supply to US

Trump administration escalates attack on Minnesota with more immigration agents

Opening summary

#RiseCelestialStudios

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Opening summary

White House says using US military is ‘always an option’ for seizing Greenland

‘Astounding’ vaccine change puts US behind peer countries, experts warn

Explainer: Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Why is Donald Trump so fixated with Greenland?

Oil falls after Trump says Venezuela will send supply to US

Trump administration escalates attack on Minnesota with more immigration agents

Opening summary

#RiseCelestialStudios

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