Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ pressure campaign on Venezuelacharges against a suspect in Australia’s Bondi Beach mass shooting, and abortion access across the European Union.
Going After Oil
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” on Tuesday of all sanctioned oil tankers carrying crude into or out of Venezuela, accusing the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of using oil revenue to finance “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States’ pressure campaign on Venezuelacharges against a suspect in Australia’s Bondi Beach mass shooting, and abortion access across the European Union.
Going After Oil
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” on Tuesday of all sanctioned oil tankers carrying crude into or out of Venezuela, accusing the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of using oil revenue to finance “Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”
It is unclear how Trump will impose the order, including whether he will deploy the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept vessels, as he did last week with the seizure of the Skippera previously sanctioned oil tanker falsely flying a Guyana flag.
The Trump administration has previously insisted that the ongoing U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific is aimed at countering drug trafficking to the United States. That effort began in early September, with a double-tap U.S. military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean that U.S. lawmakers and legal experts have suggested may have violated domestic and international law. Since then, the U.S. military has carried out 25 strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 95 people.
As part of this campaign, the White House has deployed thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier, to the region. In November, the U.S. State Department designated Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization, alleging that the network is engaged in drug trafficking and is personally overseen by Maduro. And on Nov. 27, Trump threatened to launch strikes on drug traffickers inside Venezuela “very soon.”
However, Trump’s statement on Tuesday announcing the blockade introduced a new rationale for the massive U.S. military buildup near Venezuela. “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The announcement added new fuel to accusations by experts and critics alike that the Trump administration’s true intention is to seek regime change in Caracas. Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, seemed to admit as much, telling Vanity Fair in a November interview that published on Tuesday that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”
“The administration has made clear its real interest is in starting a regime change war with Venezuela and going after its oil,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Choking off oil flows, the source of almost all of the Venezuelan government’s revenue, could be a backbreaker for President Nicolás Maduro’s rule,” FP’s Keith Johnson wrote on Wednesday, highlighting how the Skipper’s interdiction has already paralyzed Venezuela’s crude exports.
Critics now fear that the blockade is a step toward the United States declaring war on Caracas. “A naval blockade is unquestionably an act of war,” Rep. Joaquin Castro wrote on X on Tuesday. “A war that the Congress never authorized and the American people do not want.”
The Venezuelan government has denounced the blockade as a “grotesque threat,” adding to Maduro’s warning last week that “the world will rise up against piracy and oil plunder.” Already, crude prices have jumped more than 1 percent across several global markets in response.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Mass shooting charges. Australian authorities on Wednesday charged a suspected gunman in Sydney’s Bondi Beach mass shooting with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist attack. Authorities said that 24-year-old Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid, opened fire on worshippers at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, killing 15 people and injuring around 40 others. Sajid Akram was killed at the scene, but Naveed Akram was shot and placed in custody at a nearby hospital.
According to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the shooting was inspired by “Islamic State ideology.” Investigators believe that the pair traveled to the Philippines last month for military-style trainingand they said that two homemade Islamic State flags and improvised explosive devices were found in a vehicle registered to Naveed Akram.
This is evidence that the “radical perversion of Islam is absolutely a problem” in Australia and around the world, Albanese said, though he stressed that the suspects weren’t part of a wider cell. Australia’s domestic security agency had investigated Naveed Akram for six months in 2019 because of his suspected connections to two jailed extremists, though “no evidence” was found at the time to deem him a threat.
Abortion access. The European Parliament approved legislation on Wednesday that would allow people from nations restricting abortion access to terminate their pregnancies in other European Union member states for free. With a vote of 358-202 with 79 abstentions, the proposal now goes to the European Commission, which will decide in March whether to adopt the bill.
Under the proposed initiative, EU members would voluntarily opt-in to a financial mechanism that would help fund abortion care for people from nations with near-total bans on the procedure or places where abortion is hard to access. Several European countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, have moved to decriminalize abortion in recent years. However, many EU member states still restrict the procedure, including Poland (where abortion is outlawed in nearly all instances) and Italy (where access to abortion remains extremely limited).
Proponents of the policy argue that the initiative will reduce unsafe medical practices and move toward greater gender equality. However, critics say that the legislation interferes with national laws and threatens traditional Christian values.
Expanded travel ban. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it will expand travel restrictions to more than 20 countries and territories, beginning on Jan. 1, 2026. Five nations (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria) as well as people holding Palestinian Authority-issued travel documents now face full bans on travel to the United States. Another 15 countries (Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) are subject to new limits on U.S. entry.
The move is part of a White House effort to limit immigration from what the administration considers “high-risk” countries. Trump first announced a sweeping travel ban in June, issuing full bans on 12 nations and partial bans on seven others. “We don’t want them,” Trump said at the time, citing national security concerns. The administration has since said that Tuesday’s additions target countries with “widespread corruption, fraudulent or unreliable civil documents, and criminal records.”
However, rights groups maintain that the expanded travel ban is a thinly veiled attempt to discriminate against people from poorer, non-Western nations.
Odds and Ends
Those interested in ancient Egypt can now witness another example of the era’s incredible archaeological wonders. On Sunday, Egyptian officials unveiled the restoration of two colossal statues depicting Amenhotep III, a prominent pharaoh who ruled around 3,400 years ago. Reassembling the so-called Colossi of Memnon, located in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, took roughly two decades to complete and refurbishes a part of what experts believe is the largest and richest temple complex in Egypt.
