China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Sun Lei, addresses a UN Security Council meeting on Venezuela on January 5, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Wang Fan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)
Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the US abduction of Nicolás Maduro “seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations.”
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from US custody and condemned the Trump administration’s trampling of international law.
“The US disregards President Maduro’s status as head of state, blatantly prosecutes him, and puts him on a so-called ‘trial’ in a domestic court,” Lin Jian wrote in a social media post. “This seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations.”
“No country should put its domestic rules above international law,” Lin added. “China calls on the US to release President Maduro and his wife at once and ensure their personal safety.”
The U.S. disregards President Maduro’s status as head of state, blatantly prosecutes him and puts him on a so-called “trial” in a domestic court. This seriously violates Venezuela’s national sovereignty and destabilizes international relations.
The Chinese official’s remarks came a day after Maduro said Monday during his first appearance before a federal court in New York City that he is “still president” of Venezuela—a sentiment echoed by the country’s interim leader—and considers himself a “prisoner of war.” Maduro pleaded not guilty to narcoterrorism conspiracy and other charges pursued by the Trump Justice Department.
During a press conference on Monday, Lin called the US abduction of Maduro a “clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” expressing a view widely held by legal experts.
“China calls on the US to ensure the personal safety of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation,” said Lin.
Under international law, sitting heads of state are immune from prosecution in other countries’ courts. The Trump administration argues Maduro’s leadership was illegitimate. But President Donald Trump, in his social media post announcing the weekend attack on Venezuela, described Maduro as president of the South American country.
“If the Justice Department plans to argue that Nicolás Maduro is not protected by head of state immunity,” asked Francisco Rodríguez, a senior fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “then why did President Trump announce his capture referring to him as ‘President Maduro’—a designation that the US government had stopped using in 2019?”
An unsealed US indictment against Maduro characterizes him as “previously the president of Venezuela.”
Chimène Keitner, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, wrote Tuesday that the Trump administration “appears to feel that its military and economic superiority allow it to act unilaterally in violation of international law, and that cooperation and alliances are overrated.”
“That might seem appealing in the short term, but the world has already seen where unchecked expansionism and claimed spheres of influence lead,” wrote Keitner. “The benefits of following agreed-upon rules have often been recognized only after significant harm caused by their disregard.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Jessica Plichta is arrested on camera on January 5, 2026 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during a TV news interview about her participation in a nonviolent protest against President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. (Photo: screenshot/WZZM13)
Jessica Plichta told a reporter that it is “the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime” just before she was arrested.
A 22-year-old woman who was detained for several hours by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday after speaking out against President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela had allegedly “obstructed a roadway” and failed to obey officers—but she described an arrest in which the authorities appeared to be suspicious of her for protesting at all.
Jessica Plichta, a preschool teacher and organizer, toldZeteo on Monday that police officers repeatedly asked her why she was at a protest in Grand Rapids’ Rosa Parks Circle, where hundreds of demonstrators spoke out against the US military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—a violation of international law that has garnered worldwide condemnation.
Plichta had just finished speaking to a reporter with local ABC News affiliate WZZMabout her opposition to the US invasion of Venezuela when two city police officers came up behind her and placed her under arrest.
It is “the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the US and against people in Venezuela,” said Plichta just before the officers appeared on camera behind her.
Grand Rapids police arrest an antiwar activist live on air while taking an interview denouncing US military aggression in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Zm16aFRDxq
Plichta told Zeteo, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested—the only person arrested out of 200 people.”
She told the officers she was “not resisting arrest” as they led her toward a police car. A bystander approached and asked the police what Plichta was being detained for.
The officers replied that she had been “obstructing a roadway” and was accused of “failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer.”
BREAKING: IN GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, at approximately 5:30pm today, GRPD arrested local organizer Jessica Plichta on camera during a post-march press interview. Plichta was sought out and targeted specifically by GRPD for helping lead a U.S. Out Of Venezuela rally at Rosa Parks… pic.twitter.com/Uj6fLVba80
Plichta told Zeteo that the police drove her away from WZZM‘s cameras and then took her out of the car, patted her down, and confiscated her belongings. The officers told her she had been “making a scene” and asked her about her involvement in the protest: whether she was Venezuelan, “what she had to do with Venezuela,” and what she was doing at the protest.
She also told Zeteo that the police asked her for the names of other demonstrators.
She was asked again what her connection to Venezuela was after she was taken to Kent County Correctional Facility, where she was held for about three hours and released after outcry from her fellow organizers.
“We are so accustomed to, and used to, repression when we speak out on anti-war topics,” Plichta told the outlet. “When we speak out for Venezuela, when we speak out for Palestine, we expect the police to want to shut that down.”
A spokesperson for the Grand Rapids Police Department told Zeteo that protesters had “refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended,” and said Plichta “was positively identified by officers,” allowing for her arrest.
Though Plichta remained calm when she was arrested and suggested that she had taken her detention relatively in stride, supporters expressed shock that she had been targeted for speaking out against Trump’s attack on Venezuela—which is broadly unpopular across the United States.
“What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?” asked Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official.
Friedman pointed out that among elected Democrats, there appeared to be little if any outcry over Plichta’s arrest for participating in a peaceful protest.
If this happened to a conservative organizer, Republicans would make her a hero, a household name and a congressional candidate.Elected Democrats just pretend it isn't happening.
“Protesting in this country is sacred,” Plichta told Zeteo, “and so it is important that our rights are protected and that we are not criminalized for peacefully protesting in a world full of escalating violence.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Protesters rally towards the American embassy in Kolkata, India, on January 5, 2026, against the USA’s attack on Venezuela and the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. They stage a demonstration and burn an effigy of Donald Trump during the protest. (Photo by Debarchan Chatterjee/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Insane rulers rarely stop themselves: they’re stopped when the people around them decide the country matters more than the crown.
When Louise and I lived in Germany in the 1980s, we visited Neuschwanstein Castle, the fantasy palace perched on a Bavarian cliff that looks like it escaped from a fairy tale. Tour guides will tell you about its beauty and its role as an inspiration for Disney, but they’ll also share a more unsettling story that today echoes Donald Trump.
Neuschwanstein was built by King Ludwig II, a ruler who withdrew from reality, governed through spectacle instead of policy, ignored his ministers, and bankrupted Bavaria by indulging his own grandiosity and a never-ending stream of construction and renovation projects. (Neuschwanstein was only one of three castles he built.) Bavaria eventually dealt with Mad King Ludwig: his own government declared him mentally unfit to rule and removed him from the throne.
That memory of Ludwig and his architectural obsessions has been haunting me lately, and it’s frankly astonishing that more people in the media aren’t asking the same question I’m bringing up here (and people are constantly calling into my radio/TV show about): “Is Trump losing his sanity?”
I’m not talking about his well-documented lifelong narcissism, his sociopathic inability to feel or even understand the pain of other people, his bullying, or even his compulsive lying, greed, and lechery; this is about whether he’s fit for the job he’s holding or is losing his touch with reality in a way that endangers both our nation and world peace.
When Trump held his press conference announcing the invasion of Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, a reporter asked the most basic question imaginable: Who is running Venezuela now and going forward?
Trump first claimed that he was in charge, but then when other reporters asked for details he waved his hand toward the men standing behind him and said, “They are.” Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, General Dan Caine, and Pete Hegseth.
The expressions on their faces told the real story: Surprise, confusion, and even alarm. This was clearly, visibly news to them. Shocking news, even.
Did he just decide to BS his way through the press conference like he’s done so much of his life? Didn’t he realize this was a violation of both international law and the US Constitution? Did he think for a moment that he’s the king of the Americas? Or the world?
The next day we discovered the truth their expressions revealed; there was no plan for governing Venezuela, or even trying to via an occupation Iraq-style. There was no congressional authorization; in fact, he told the oil companies before the raid but didn’t bother to inform Congress until yesterday. (Although the oil companies now say he’s lying.)
There was no public debate and no involvement of any visible constitutional process involved in this invasion and body-snatch. Under our federal system, the president doesn’t get to just improvise an occupation or administration of a foreign nation from a podium.
Even Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush didn’t try to pull that off; all sought congressional authorizations for their wars and each gave explanations that at least gave a hat-tip to the traditional American values of democracy, peace, and the rule of law.
Congress, after all, declares war under our Constitution, as well as controlling the purse that makes that war possible. Even the idea of “running” another country would require massive legal, diplomatic, and military frameworks, and now we discover that none of that stuff existed. Instead, apparently, Trump had an impulsive thought or idea and just blurted it out.
That moment should have set off loud alarms throughout Washington and should have shot across our media like a meteorite. Instead, it drifted by as simply another strange episode in a presidency that’s taught us to pretend the abnormal is now normal.
Democrats (and a few Republicans) condemned Trump’s claim that he was running Venezuela; Republican politicians are now twisting themselves into pretzels to try to justify it. Reporters were simply confused. It’s nuts.
And in just the few days since then, Trump has openly threatened to seize Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, even Mexico. These aren’t policy proposals. They also aren’t rooted in American or international law, military or political strategy, or diplomacy.
They are, instead, Mad King Ludwig-like expressions of personal fantasy, of imperial imagination, of a man who appears increasingly convinced — who actually believes — that all power in America and perhaps around the world flows from his will alone.
And then there’s Trump’s bizarre online behavior, like posting over 100 times a night, and promoting a tweet saying that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had hired a hit on State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, close personal friends of Walz’s.
Or his refusal to consider the last Venezuelan election winner, María Corina Machado, to run the country because she “stole” the Nobel prize from him.
Rachel Maddow last night on her television program suggested that the real reason Trump invaded Venezuela was simply because he could. Like a child, or a mad king, he wanted to play with his soldiers, watch them kill people and blow things up, and he doesn’t want anybody to tell him that he can’t.
And, I would add, eventually he plans to turn them on people like you and me. Once he’s made sure they’ll do anything he demands, no matter how bizarre, no matter how wrong, no matter how illegal. That’s why he’s now going after Senator Mark Kelly and other members of Congress for telling soldiers they don’t have to follow illegal orders.
Lev Parnas, who once worked closely with Trump and still hears from people inside his orbit, writes that Trump is receiving regular intravenous infusions of a new Alzheimer’s medication, administered through veins in his hands, whose known side effects include “sleepiness” during the day, “poor judgment,” and “impaired impulse control.” It could explain the bruises, the CT scans and MRIs, and the regular cognitive tests that the medication requires.
Not to mention the increasingly bizarre and grandiose behavior.
I’m not diagnosing Trump, but I am watching — a shocked world is watching — a pattern of behavior that is becoming more erratic, more impulsive, and more detached from constitutional reality week by painful week.
This also isn’t a partisan observation; I’m describing precisely the scenario the Framers and a later Congress worried about when they designed safeguards for presidential incapacity. The 25th Amendment wasn’t written for removing villains but rather for those moments when a president can’t or won’t reliably discharge the duties of his office but doesn’t have the good grace, insight, or ability to step down himself.
But constitutional tools are only as strong as the people willing to use them.
Bavaria in the nineteenth century had fewer options than we do. It had no elections to depose Mad King Ludwig, and no amendment laying out a clear procedure for replacing him.
For years, Ludwig had ministers serving him who watched how crazy he’d become but nonetheless delayed, rationalized, and hoped the problem would solve itself. It wasn’t until the damage became so great, as the state trembled on the verge of bankruptcy, that it was impossible to ignore any longer.
Modern America, on the other hand, has elections, courts, and a theoretically independent Congress. And we have the 25th Amendment. What we lack right now, however, is courage in the GOP and Trump’s cabinet.
Republican members of Congress know that a president can’t unilaterally invade or administer foreign nations on his own whim or impulse. They know that threatening annexation destabilizes the entire world, and Trump’s handed both Putin, Netanyahu, and Xi the rationalizations they all crave to expand their own empires.
Even Republicans know that governing by impulse isn’t strength but, instead, represents a very real danger to our republic. And yet they remain silent, calculating that confronting Trump is riskier to their careers than indulging him is to the country.
That GOP calculation is the real threat.
Trump’s love of military spectacle also fits perfectly — and dangerously — into this pattern. Like Ludwig staging operas and medieval fantasies in his version of the Kennedy Center, Trump treats America’s armed forces as props in his own pathetic personal drama. Rallies, salutes, parades, flyovers, and dramatic announcements substitute for deliberation, applause substitutes for legitimacy, and the human costs, the constitutional limits, and the long-term consequences are all fading into the background.
Neuschwanstein still stands today, beautiful and empty, a monument to what happens when fantasy replaces governance. Bavaria survived despite Ludwig, not because of him. Twenty-first century America, however, doesn’t have the luxury of turning its current ruler into a picturesque lesson (complete with a Ludwig-style ballroom) after the damage is done. A nuclear-armed superpower can’t afford indulgence that’s pretending to be patience.
The Constitution isn’t self-enforcing and doesn’t rise up on its own when norms are trampled. It instead relies on people in positions of authority to choose responsibility over fear; that’s why federal officials and our soldiers pledge their allegiance to our Constitution rather than to our government or any particular administration or person.
We hold the rulebook sacred, not the rulers.
If Republicans continue to refuse to even acknowledge the danger in front of them, history suggests the reckoning will come anyway, just at a far higher cost.
Bavaria eventually acted, not because it was easy but because delay had become more dangerous than dealing with a psychologically incapacitated and emotionally stunted ruler. The question facing the United States today is whether we’ll learn from that history or insist on repeating it.
Mad kings rarely stop themselves: they’re stopped when the people around them decide the country matters more than the crown.
Let your elected officials, particularly the Republicans, know your thoughts on the issue. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121. And pass it along…
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Independent British MP Jeremy Corbyn addresses demonstrators outside Downing Street protesting against the US military attack on Venezuela in London on January 5, 2026. (Photo by Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“He is choosing to desecrate the meaning of international law to avoid upsetting Donald Trump.”
Independent British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday accused United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer of “cowardice” for refusing to condemn the US bombing of Venezuela and abduction of its president, acts that experts agree were flagrant violations of international law.
Hours after the US attack—as leaders in the region and worldwide voiced horror and outrage—Starmer issued a statement welcoming Nicolás Maduro’s ouster, declaring that “we regarded Maduro as an illegitimate president and we shed no tears about the end of his regime.”
Starmer later insisted, as the Trump administration laid out plans to control the Venezuelan government indefinitely, that the situation was “complicated,” adding that it was “for the U.S. to justify the action that it has taken.”
Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party now helmed by Starmer, countered in Tribune magazine that “it’s really not that complicated: Bombing a sovereign nation and abducting its head of state is illegal.”
“It is absolutely staggering that a prime minister with a background in law cannot bring himself to say something so obvious,” Corbyn wrote. “It’s not that he doesn’t understand. He understands full well. That is the true abomination: He is choosing to desecrate the meaning of international law to avoid upsetting Donald Trump. This is the true meaning of the so-called ‘special relationship’ that government ministers are so desperate to protect: one where the United States tells us to jump, and we ask how high.”
“Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to cement the UK’s status as a vassal of the United States.”
The UK, according to the government’s foreign secretary, has been in close contact with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the role it can play in Venezuela, citing the “work we have done over many years to build up relationships and dialogue with Venezuelan opposition parties and with the current authorities in the regime and of course our relationship with the US.”
Corbyn argued that the government’s approach is in some ways reminiscent of its conduct in the lead-up to the disastrous and illegal US invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago.
“Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to cement the UK’s status as a vassal of the United States,” Corbyn wrote. “Unlike Iraq, the UK says it is not involved in the bombing of Venezuela. Like Iraq, however, the UK is proving once again that it has no interest in standing up for international law.”
Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost-of-living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net.
An analysis released Friday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the top 15 US billionaires saw the largest wealth gains last year, with their collective fortune growing from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. That 33% gain was more than double the S&P 500’s 16% increase in 2025.
What IPS describes as the “elite group” of US billionaires includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; and Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison.
IPS emphasized that “these staggering combined billionaire wealth totals come as the Trump-GOP budget bill passed in 2025 defunded health insurance, food stamps, and other vital anti-poverty safety net programs, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and budget increases for militarism and mass deportations.”
“The affordability crisis is hitting ordinary Americans particularly hard as we head into the new year, but not everyone is feeling the pain: Billionaires are raking in staggering profits off the backs of ordinary workers,” Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, said in a statement.
“These extreme concentrations of wealth and power,” Collins added, “undermine our daily lives and further rig our economy in favor of the ultra-rich and corporations, while ordinary Americans get a raw deal once again.”
IPS released its analysis days after Bloomberg reported, based on its Billionaires Index, that the world’s 500 richest people gained a record $2.2 trillion in wealth last year.
Omar Ocampo, an IPS researcher, said that in the US, billionaires are “paying far less in taxes compared to the huge amount of wealth they amass,” allowing them to continue accumulating vast fortunes, supercharging inequality, and using their wealth and influence to subvert reform efforts.
“Not only are a small number of Americans holding more wealth than the rest of America, but they’re also not paying their fair share in taxes,” said Ocampo.
The new report comes as families across the US struggle to make ends meet amid high and still-rising prices for groceries, housing, and other necessities. A Century Foundation survey released last month found that “roughly three in 10 voters delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost, while nearly two-thirds switched to cheaper groceries or bought less food altogether.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
