Miller explicitly argued that if the United States were formally at war with Venezuela, the administration could again invoke the law to rapidly deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans whose temporary protected status had been revoked.

One former official said Miller viewed war as a way to “remove legal obstacles that courts had put in place.”

He told officials the law could be revived if the U.S. entered an actual war with Venezuela, effectively reframing migration enforcement as a wartime power rather than a civilian legal process.

Source: NYT

In early 2025, Cuban American Republicans urged President Trump to revoke Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela, arguing it helped sustain Maduro.

Trump resisted, viewing Chevron as the last U.S. foothold in Venezuela’s oil sector and a check on China. But in May 2025, as he pushed his “One Big Beautiful Bill” through Congress, lawmakers threatened to block it unless the license expired.

On May 27, Trump let Chevron’s waiver lapse. The move weakened U.S. leverage in Venezuela and intensified the administration’s shift toward harsher ways of confronting Caracas in the weeks that followed.

Source: NYT

The decision came as Maduro freed 10 American prisoners in exchange for more than 250 Venezuelans the Trump administration had sent to CECOT, El Salvador’s high-security prison.

Trump was also influenced by lobbying from Chevron’s chief executive, Mike Wirth, who argued the company’s presence in Venezuela served as a strategic bulwark against Chinese influence — a case that ultimately outweighed pressure from Republican hard-liners.

Source: NYT

China sees AI as vital to its economic and military future—but also as a political risk. Worried that chatbots could challenge Communist Party rule, Beijing is imposing strict controls to keep AI in line while still trying to stay competitive with the U.S.

New rules require chatbots to be trained on politically filtered data, pass ideological tests before launch, and label all AI-generated content so it can be traced. Authorities say they removed nearly 1 million pieces of “illegal or harmful” AI content in a recent crackdown and now list AI as a national security risk alongside disasters like earthquakes.

Source: WSJ