Oil Tanker Seized

Plus: What's up with consumer spending, that CECOT segment, and more...

President Donald Trump ordered a "complete blockade" last week of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela—a giant escalation in his pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The idea seems to be to cripple the country's oil-export-reliant economy, though official sanctions have not been imposed.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration seized two oil tankers.

On Saturday, U.S. forces boarded a Panamanian-flagged commercial vessel, owned by Hong Kong's Centuries Shipping, off the coast of Venezuela. They had no seizure warrant, which doesn't appear to have gotten in their way. "The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region," said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on X, along with footage of the raid. "We will find you, and we will stop you."

On Sunday, U.S. forces apparently intercepted another tanker—"a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela's illegal sanctions evasion" that is "flying a false flag"—according to anonymous officials. U.S. officials claimed that the vessel, reportedly called the Bella 1, was not flying a valid national flag, and that international law dictates that it could be boarded as a result. ("U.S. officials had obtained a seizure warrant for the Bella 1 based on its prior involvement in the Iranian oil trade, but officials said the ship refused to submit and sailed away," reports The New York Times. "The cargo it was scheduled to pick up had been purchased by a Panamanian businessman recently put under sanctions by the United States for ties to the Maduro family, according to data from Venezuela's state oil company.")

These two seizures followed an earlier interception. On December 10, before Trump announced the blockade, another oil tanker was boarded off the coast of Venezuela. "The U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia issued the seizure warrant for the Skipper, alleging it was used in an 'oil shipping network' supporting the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force," per The Washington Post. 

"Look, at any point in time, there are 20, 30 governments around the world that we don't like, that are either socialist or communist, or have human rights violations…but it isn't the job of the American soldier to be the policeman of the world," said Sen. Rand Paul on ABC's This Week, calling the U.S. government's actions "a provocation" and "a prelude to war."

"I'm not for confiscating these liners. I'm not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers. I'm not for any of this," continued Paul yesterday. "And neither was Donald Trump."

An estimated 20 percent of tankers worldwide "move oil from Iran, Venezuela, and Russia in violation of U.S. sanctions," reports the Times. "These ships often disguise their location and file false paperwork. The Bella 1, for instance, faked its location signal on a previous voyage. U.S. officials say they have identified other tankers carrying Venezuelan oil whose previous involvement in the Iranian oil trade makes them subject to U.S. sanctions."

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Scenes from New York: A school district in upstate New York, on the Canadian border, has come under fire for its seeming use of a wooden "timeout box" in elementary schools. (The government schools are not OK.)

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QUICK HITS

• A 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, the notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador, was slated to run over the weekend but was held. "Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," said the correspondent who had reported the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, according to The New York Times. "It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one." (Full Alfonsi statement here.) Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, said in a statement last night: "My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren't ready for whatever reason—that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices—happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it's ready." Until more information comes out, it's impossible to know for sure what's happening; so far, it appears that Weiss at minimum suggested the segment would be improved by getting an interview with Trump official Stephen Miller so that he could respond to the claims presented within the story. But this dynamic—in which any decision Weiss makes becomes a New York Times story and a Twitter scandal—will surely continue. ("For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called 'takeover,' than they have ever treated me before," claimed Trump on Truth Social just days ago. "If they are friends, I'd hate to see my enemies!")
• Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik is dropping out of the race for New York governor and has also declined to run for re-election in the U.S. House of Representatives next year.
• "Chinese President Xi Jinping installed new military leadership for its central and eastern regions amid an unprecedented purge of the top defense echelons," reports Bloomberg. "General Yang Zhibin has become commander of the Eastern Theater Command, responsible for Taiwan operations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The report also named General Han Shengyan as the new commander of the Central Theater Command, which is in charge of defense forces in the capital Beijing, Tianjin and five other provinces."
• It's Ted Cruz's world; we're just living in it.
• Are rich people propping up the whole economy via consumer spending, as the rest feel the squeeze this year? That's a popular narrative, but Amanda Mull casts doubt on it at Bloomberg Businessweek.