The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 1
Jan. 5, 2025
Happy New Year to all of our readers!
This week:
- Trump’s uncharacteristic, Reaganesque week in foreign policy
- Tim Walz (D) abruptly drops out of his own reelection bid
- Democrats still have no one to challenge Kelly Ayotte (R) in New Hampshire
Foreign policy: American voters tend to ignore foreign policy, so it is not a topic upon which we frequently dwell. But this week has been an obvious exception, because President Trump may have just defined his legacy in this issue area — permanently, profoundly, and perhaps in a manner unexpected of his “America First” philosophy.
There has long been a tension between Trump’s anti-war, non-interventionist tendencies — a sharp contrast with the Republican leaders of yesteryear — and his “Peace Through Strength” rhetoric. That tension resolved itself over the weekend in favor of a foreign policy move that seemed a lot more Reagan or Bush than it was Trump. Trump’s surprising and sudden raid to arrest Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, which in retrospect had been strongly hinted at in his new National Security Strategy document, represents a triumph of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s vision within his administration over countervailing non-interventionist voices.
Right or wrong, this raid — which resulted in no U.S. casualties but 32 dead Cuban security-force members — is the most daring and successful special operation in modern American history, arguably surpassing the raid that assassinated Osama bin Laden.
To capture a man acting as head of state (the U.S. and many other countries do not recognize Maduro as an actual president), and without U.S. casualties or serious political consequences, is an astounding operational coup (no pun intended). Incredibly, the existing socialist regime seems almost certain to collapse in Maduro’s absence, without even an occupation or follow-up.
Further consequences: Among other things, this promises to give the U.S. access to Chinese and Russian military technology that Maduro had accepted, with military implications for both Ukraine and Taiwan.
What’s more, this comes at a moment when a vast number of longstanding foreign policy assumptions are suddenly up in the air. Within the last few years, Israel and the U.S. have neutralized most of Iran’s strongest proxy militias and temporarily crippled its nuclear program. And this week, just as its Venezuelan ally was arrested, Iran itself started going up in flames amid a popular uprising against its theocratic regime. Many believe the end is near for the ayatollah as well, and the notion that the U.S. is not heavily involved in fanning those flames iis, frankly, difficult to believe.
And so we are left with a paradox: The president who promised not to start wars — and who, to his credit, still has not gotten the U.S. involved in any conflicts longer than a day or so — could be the one to topple several U.S. enemies, starting with the weakest.
So far, Democrats don’t seem to know how to react. Some of those now criticizing the move had previously criticized Trump for not doing more about Maduro’s removal — albeit not explicitly calling for military force. They claim that Rubio and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth lied to them about their intentions.
Meanwhile, the move is proving extremely popular with Venezuelan-Americans and Venezuelans in general, nearly one-third of whom had been forced by a quarter-century of Chavez-Maduro socialism to flee their country to survive. The only protests in the streets are from the hard communist-Marxist left and their many well-funded organizations, which all live under the delusion that U.S. imperialism was the cause of Venezuela’s problems.
Conservative unease: Of course, the Trump administration’s legal justification may seem thin, but it does at least exist. The argument runs as follows: First, this was merely a drug enforcement action that just happens to have many of the same practical consequences trappings as a regime-change strike. Second, this is not a true change of regime, because Venezuela’s actual head of state, recognized by the U.S., was and still is Edmundo Gonzalez, who won the 2024 election only to have it stolen by Maduro.
Many conservatives are still uneasy with this strike because, unlike most of what Trump has done in office, it does not resonate well with his stated agenda or his foreign policy ideology. Equally unsettling is the fact that no one is quite sure what it means for the U.S. to “run the country” temporarily while Gonzalez’s installation is prepared for.
But only a handful of conservatives are speaking out against it. Most are generally loath to criticize Trump and feel especially hesitant to criticize him for removing such a cancer from the hemisphere. Even most Democrats acknowledge that the outcome is a good thing, even if the means are supposed to be bad, evil, or unconstitutional.
And that, in the end, is why Trump is likely to avoid any negative political consequences for this, so long as he resists any wider involvement, such as a military invasion.
Governor 2026
Minnesota: Local news was reporting last night that Gov. Tim Walz (D) is dropping out of his race for re-election as Minnesota’s governor as soon as today. This comes amid huge national interest in the rampant, multi-billion-dollar fraud occurring in his state’s health care, child-care, food-aid and elder-care programs, exposed over the holiday season.
(An aside: Most of the focus to date has been within Minnesota’s politically important Somali immigrant community, since it is inherently fascinating that people would travel so far to drill into the U.S. government budget in such a manner. But it should be emphasized that, according to Trump’s own CMS administrator, Mehmet Oz, the Somalis may only be the most artless of a vastly larger number of fraudsters. He said in a recent radio interview that the Cuban government and the Armenian and Russian mafias, among others, are actively stealing from almost all such programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, using less obvious schemes and in multiple states.)
Already, local media are reporting that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) is preparing a campaign. If she does not, this would have a huge effect on the state’s open-seat Senate race as well, since it would guarantee a contested primary in both. Either progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) or the more moderate Rep. Angie Craig (D) could view this as an opportunity to switch races and avoid a bitter ideological war in the coming primaries.
New Hampshire: The Granite state has an extremely late primary (Sept. 8, 2026), so there’s still lots of time to find a serious candidate. But it’s probably a bad sign that the Democrats’ only declared candidate to take on Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) at this point is the author of a book of dirty and otherwise offensive poems. Bear in mind that the governor’s race is the top of the ticket and could have spillover effects for the state’s competitive Senate race as well.
House 2026
Louisiana: Republicans hoping for a redistricting boost of one seat from Louisiana will have to wait until next election. The Supreme Court failed to issue its expected ruling on racial gerrymandering before the new year, and so the legislature has therefore decided against holding a special session for redistricting, meaning that the state will stick with its current 4R-2D congressional map for this cycle at least.
This, along with Indiana’s refusal to redistrict, shows there are some Republican lawmakers unwilling to comply completely with the Trump administration.
