U.S. Presidents have been known for their wealth. George Washington was one of the wealthiest men of his day and a slave owner. The vast estate of Mt. Vernon accounts for a considerable amount of wealth for his day. When the current price of land and livestock is added, it is difficult to ascertain. However, reliable sources say that George Washington’s assets upon entering the presidency, adjusted for inflation, were approximately $594 million in today’s money. About the only good thing one can say about this vast estate is that one part did not wish to be counted, and that was due to Ona Judge, who refused to be his slave and escaped to New Hampshire. They say Washington’s salary alone was approximately worth 2% of the national budget. In terms of relativity, it would amount to billions of dollars.
Perhaps Donald Trump is a little better than George Washington. No, he did not dispatch the Secretary of the Treasury to bring back an escaped slave. Yet he presides over a nation with a minimum wage of $7.25, at a time when the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment ranges from $1,510 to $1,642. Many readers believe fast-food workers work 40 hours a week, when in reality many only work 30 hours, and some only work during lunch time for only 15 hours. Perhaps this is the modern-day version of chattel slavery. But reports vary: some say Trump’s personal fortune has risen from $1 billion to $4 billion. Some reporting estimates even more.
In an article by Jenny Smyth, Trump entered his first term of office with a net worth of $2.3 billion, and now has a net worth of $6.5 billion. Perhaps it was due to his aggressive purloining of Venezuelan oil. If it didn’t go to China, it had to go somewhere, right? Maybe it was due to his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, perfect management of his affairs… However, it seems that the President has used investment brokers.
While Donald Trump, according to U.S. law, has every right to trade on the U.S. market, this right seems to smack of gross immorality given his enormous cuts to SNAP and social security. People are earning less, and with DEI on the President’s hit list, African Americans appear to be targeted for further wage cuts. He seems to have no respect for the law or humanity. He has increased the ferocity of the Cuban blockade and has threatened military action against her. I suppose Greenland had to make a deal. Trump appeared to make some political profit for his billionaire alliance. While, according to the Western media, he has not made any profit in Greenland, his billionaire colleagues Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have invested in Greenlandic mining operations. This is not nearly as lucrative as the gift of the luxury jet from the Qatar government. The opulent Boeing 747-8 will undergo modifications at L3Harris Technologies before entering service for presidential (Trump’s) use. The plane is said to be scheduled to make its debut on the Fourth of July in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday.
However, the president’s latest financial maneuvers have left a good portion of the public aghast. It seems the president has made active stock trades influenced, or at least guided, by his governmental decisions. According to Wion, the disclosures show around 3,600 to 3,700 stock and ETF transactions from January to March. The reported value of these transactions ranges from $220 milion to $750 million, all this while there is massive hunger and deprivation suffered by the working class—in particular minority groups—within the United States of America.
Many of the stocks were made by the government for defense, government private contracts, and other concerns that required direct government involvement. For example, NBC News said in February and March that the president purchased stock seven times. On January 12, President Trump purchased $100,000 to $250,000 worth of Oracle stock on the same day he finalized a U.S.-backed deal for a stake in TikTok. From January through March, President Trump purchased DoorDash stock twelve times, around the same time he held an event with a DoorDash representative being praised at the White House. On January 6, the President purchased $500,000 of Nvidia Stock, and shortly after, on January 14, he approved a US-backed deal for Nvidia to sell chips to China. The president invested heavily in Palantir Industries, a defense contractor that builds AI-driven strategies for defense from “space to mud.” The stock has dropped 25% while the President has urged investors to buy on Truth Social.
While the President has the right to purchase, the cry has grown louder for stricter controls to prevent insider trading and self-profit and gain by influential politicians. There is an imbalance in the system. The President cannot be allowed to make billions while many of his fellow Americans starve.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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US President Donald Trump points out a member of the press during an event on maternal healthcare in the Oval Office of the White House on May 11, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“Trump’s true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters,” said one journalist. “Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences.”
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is considering trying to annex Venezuela and make it a US state in an imperialist effort to seize more of its oil wealth.
It’s one of nearly half a dozen nations or territories Trump has threatened to use US military might to illegally conquer and add to the US during his term, including Greenland, Canada, Cuba, and Panama.
According to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, Trump said in a phone call that he was “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state,” citing the Latin American nation’s possession of tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil.
“They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run,” Trump recently told Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson. “The oil that’s coming out is enormous, the biggest in many years. And the Big Oil companies are going in with the biggest, most beautiful rigs you’ve ever seen.”
Trump: “Cuba, Venezuela, they all voted for me…Venezuela is a very happy country right now. They were miserable, and now they are happy.
One poll from the Venezuelan firm Meganálisis in March found that while the public was initially happy to be rid of their autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro—who was abducted by US forces in January—the majority now feel that Trump’s action had little to do with democracy or the well-being of the Venezuelan people and more to do with handing control of the country’s nationalized oil reserves to American companies, which Trump stated as his primary objective after ousting Maduro.
Trump left Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in place as Venezuela’s interim leader with the promise that she’d act as a pliant collaborator with the US, whom she allowed to declare control over Venezuela’s oil resources “indefinitely” amid market transitions.
The environmental activist group Global Witness has estimated that over the next 10 years, as much as $150 billion in oil revenue that was expected to go to the Venezuelan treasury, which could have funded projects to develop the impoverished country, instead may flow into the coffers of foreign companies.
Q: You said today you would like to take Iran's oil, but Americans want US forces home–
TRUMP: Correct. I'm a businessman first. With Venezuela, the war was over in about 45 minutes. We've taken hundreds of millions of barrels. To the winner belong the spoils. Why don't we use… pic.twitter.com/ivDbC5zmTD
Trump has spoken about the idea of Venezuela becoming the 51st state before, including after the country defeated Italy in the World Baseball Classic in March, when he posted on Truth Social: “STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE?”
Last month, during a discussion about his desire to “take” Iran’s oil, Trump described his takeover of Venezuela as something akin to the resource-hungry imperial conquests of centuries past.
“I’m a businessman first,” he told reporters during a press briefing. “We’ve taken hundreds of millions of barrels [of oil], hundreds of millions… and paid for that war many, many times over. You know the old days, ‘to the winner belong the spoils.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t we use that?’ We haven’t had that in this country probably in 100 years.” He then went on to lament the US-led efforts to “rebuild” Germany after World War II.
While the US has lifted personal sanctions on Rodríguez and some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil and banking sectors, most of the sanctions that have contributed to the country’s economic collapse remain in place. “Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored,” explained Roger D. Harris from the Task Force on the Americas and the US Peace Council in Common Dreams last week.
Actually adding Venezuela as a US state would require approval from both Congress and Venezuela itself—and Trump does not appear to have the latter.
Issuing a rare rebuke of the US on Monday, Rodríguez responded that becoming the 51st state “would never have been considered” by Venezuela.
“If there is one thing we Venezuelan men and women have, it is that we love our independence process, we love our heroes and heroines of independence,” the interim leader said.
Though wars of conquest are expressly forbidden under international law, it’s not clear what leverage Rodríguez would have to resist if Trump attempted to make good on his goal of expanding US territory.
Argemino Barro, a Spanish political journalist and author, said the possibility that he’s serious can’t be dismissed.
“Yes, of course, we can dismiss it as provocation or delusion, say that it’s impracticable for XYZ reasons, etc. But this kind of comment is a window into the mindset of a man who fabricates his own reality, and not only that, but imposes it on others,” Barro said. “Trump wants to build the world’s largest triumphal arch right in the middle of Washington, overshadowing the Lincoln Memorial; he wants his face on coins and passports; his name appears on institutions, one airport. Annexing Venezuela, in his mind, fits 100%.”
“I think Trump’s true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters. To enter the league of Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, and Genghis Khan,” he added. “Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences.”
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In Nuuk, Greenlanders protested against Trump’s threats to annexe the island | Alessandro Rampazzo/AFP via Getty Images
“If the United States takes over and annexes Greenland, what legal rights will they have to try to stop Putin in Ukraine?”
That was the question posed by Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s former deputy prime minister, when we met over coffee in central Copenhagen last week. “Which legal rights will they have to try to defend Taiwan, if China wants Taiwan?” he continued. “Trump [is] just the same person as Putin. Trump wants to own Greenland. He wants to make the US bigger.”
Three weeks before our conversation, Frederiksen had addressed 30,000 Danes and Greenlanders as they gathered in the Danish capital to oppose Donald Trump’s threat to invade Greenland some 3,550 kilometres away. The strategically important island, two-thirds of which lies within the Arctic Circle, has been a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark for more than 70 years, and a Danish colony for 140 years before that.
One crucial dividing line in Greenlandic politics is independence. When the country was fully integrated into the Danish state in 1953, it established its own Parliament, constitution and introduced a host of electoral reforms. But in recent years, polls suggest around two-thirds of Greenlanders want to break away from Denmark, not least due to long-running issues such as pay inequality and the legacy of colonialism. For now, though, the threat from the US has prompted a renewed sense of unity with Denmark and Europe, with a poll from last month finding only 6% of Greenland’s adult population wants to join the US.
“I would say that everybody has been agreeing that Greenland will be independent at some point, and the disagreements were on when,” said Camilla Siezing of Kalaallit Peqatigiiffiisa Kattuffiat Inuit, an organisation that represents Greenlanders living in Denmark. “But this situation has moved back a lot of things in this regard, because I think Greenland realised how fragile we are. A lot of the discussion for independence has been on the economic and social parts. But now we also have to think about the international security issue.”
The US has had extensive access to and a military presence in Greenland since 1951, when it signed the US-Denmark Defence Agreement as the Cold War intensified. The treaty granted it operational rights on the island, including over construction, logistics, military activity and mining. Earlier this year, the concession of Greenland’s Tanbreez mining project was sold to New York-based Critical Metals Corp.
For Trump, though, the agreement is no longer enough. He began signalling his expansionist aims towards Greenland in his first presidency, initially arguing that the White House should be able to buy the island from Denmark. Earlier this year, he upped the ante, claiming US annexation of the island is necessary to secure his “golden dome” defence system, in which the Pentagon would use Greenland to launch its air defences against a hypothetical missile attack from Russia.
Similarly, as the Arctic becomes a high-pressure region in terms of security and resources, the US president says he is also concerned by China’s expansionist aims. With Greenland, he says, he could better defend his country against any eastern aggression.
Defence experts say Trump’s logic is flawed. “The US falsely claimed that there has been an increase in Russian and Chinese presence in and around Greenland,” wrote Rachel Ellehus of the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defence and security think tank, last month. “Actually, there has been little to no Chinese and Russian military activity around Greenland over the last decade.” This was echoed days later by Spenser A Warren, the Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, who branded Trump’s national security claims “grossly overblown” in the War on the Rocks blog.
There is a more extractive motivation behind the US’s interest in the Arctic. Greenland is rich in mineral wealth, including much-coveted rare earth minerals essential for technologies such as phones and the growing AI industry. Seizing Greenland would give the US access to the minerals and mining territories desired by its government and its billionaire class.
“To some of Trump’s supporters, some of the tech billionaires, Greenland has become a new territory from where the US can expand and enlarge,” said Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, when we met in her book-lined office in Copenhagen.
Greenland is not an empty island, existing only to provide minerals and military bases – despite how some members of the US right have sought to portray it in recent months. It’s home to 70,000 people, and has a diaspora of around 18,000 in Denmark.
Its population includes an Indigenous community with a close relationship with nature and the land, who “live in ways that are not only organised around capitalist markets and profits”, said Danish trade unionist, writer, campaigner and Red-Green Alliance member Bjarke Friborg. “Many people still hunt and fish, share food within families and communities, and plan their time around seasons, weather and ice conditions. When you depend directly on nature like that, it shapes how you think about work, time and what really matters.”
While Friborg is clear that the “Indigenous people have been subject to colonisation and domination from Denmark,” he warned against “how the US has treated its native populations. Greenlanders know this, too, and they are not encouraged.” Greenland’s Inuit people, he added, fear what a US annexation would mean for their wellbeing and safety.
Former deputy PM Frederiksen is a member of Greenland’s historically unionist Democrats Party, which has in recent years shifted its stance to support independence in the long term, as part of a gradual process that starts with increased self-determination. He pointed out that Greenlanders, like residents in Denmark, are entitled to free healthcare, receive payments to support their education, and a generous welfare system – which he fears could all be lost under US control.
“Look at Alaska, look at Puerto Rico,” he said, adding: “Our people are incredibly anxious. We are anxious about our country, our families, our own lives. We are anxious about all the connections we have. And it’s all just because a bully wants our country for his own ‘psychological welfare.’”
These anxieties have also led politicians on the island to put aside their differences, said Frederiksen. “Greenland’s political parties, at this time, realised they have to stand up together. You couldn’t imagine that three, four months before that they should work together. And I was so proud, because I think it was a very, very strong signal to send to all the world that we don’t want to be a part of the United States.”
The signal was particularly loud and clear when 30,000 people marched in Copenhagen. Anders Franssen, one of the co-founders of the Hands Off Greenland campaign group, told openDemocracy he knew he had to do something after Trump’s vice president, J D Vance, visited Greenland in March last year.
“We all know what that visit meant,” Franssen told openDemocracy. “It meant they were going to try to convert the Greenlandic people to look more positively on Trump and the Trump administration. “I called up the police, and I said, I’m going [to organise] a demonstration. He said, ‘How many people are gonna show?’ I said, it’s going to be me, then two cops, it’ll be three of us. We ended up being 3,500.”
A child watches the Hands off Greenland protest | Provided by Jens B Frederiksen
Since then, the Hands Off Greenland protests have grown in size and number, with several large marches held in Danish cities and Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.
Like their cause, the protests transcend traditional politics, said Siezing, whose organisation is non-political but joined one of the many demonstrations that took place across Denmark. “It was really emotional because it was so peaceful, and everybody just got together. There were a lot of Danish people there, and they just supported the demonstrations. Greenland has been shown a lot of support.”
“I think the demonstration showed that we are all together,” said Franssen.
Frederiksen agreed. “I really feel like it was we were united,” he said. “I’m the first person who had a speech in Greenlandic at that place in the middle of Copenhagen. At one point, I shouted to the crowd, ‘Greenland is not for sale,’ and thousands of people shouted it back. It was really powerful, a really amazing feeling.”
European security
Earlier this year, Denmark’s European allies sent troops to Greenland in response to Trumpian aggression – a display of solidarity with the embattled country. The move did not come without cost. In response, Trump tried to escalate his trade war against the region, though he later reversed a threat to increase tariffs on the UK and the EU.
This increased military presence has created, said Friborg, a “new and dynamic situation” that is forcing the Danish and Greenlandic left to ask new questions about its approach to independence, military force, NATO and international security.
“Our traditional policy in the Red-Green Alliance is that the Arctic should be a low-tension area and preferably demilitarised,” said Friborg. “But for the time being, this is just wishful thinking. When faced with classical imperialist and open imperialist behavior like we see from Trump, then the military presence is a way of supporting the people of Greenland. You could say it is also a way of keeping Danish unity, but in a situation where Greenland actually has increasing autonomy and positive attention.”
It’s a question of Western solidarity, too. What happens in Greenland does not stay in Greenland. Trump’s actions, said Fribog, who is also the Red-Green Alliance project manager for Ukraine, “is an encouragement to other imperialists such as Russia and China, saying it is okay to annex other countries, it is okay to try to dominate other countries, whatever the wishes of the local population.”
Russia’s pro-government media praised Trump’s ambitions for Greenland, with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta writing: “If Trump annexes Greenland by July 4 2026, when America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he will go down in history as a figure who asserted the greatness of the United States.”
In Beijing, the reaction has been more circumspect, with Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, telling a regular news briefing, “We have no intention of competing for influence with any country, nor would we ever do so.”
Annexing Greenland also risks European security and the future of NATO. The defence organisation’s Article 5 states that if one member state is attacked, others will come to its aid – a protocol invoked only once, when European soldiers, including from Denmark, joined the US in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. In January, as Trump escalated his demands against Denmark, it seemed possible that its second invocation would lead to the end of the alliance, as it’s hard to imagine it surviving a scenario in which one NATO member attacked another.
For this reason, insisted Frederiksen, “this is not only for Greenland. It’s not only for Denmark. It’s not only for the kingdom. This is about the world order. It’s about the international laws we have. It’s about NATO. ”
The impact on European security has served, said Banke, who leads the foreign policy and diplomacy research unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies, as a “wake-up call to Europeans” who are having to confront the reality that the region can no longer rely on the US as an ally.
“Now it’s time that we as Europeans take care of our own security,” she told openDemocracy. While she believes that Europe “cannot be completely independent of the Americans”, Trump’s threats combined with a combative US national security strategy must prompt “Europe to be much stronger in security and defence. We have to see European countries developing their own and stronger defence, and we have to see this moving as fast as possible.”
The US president’s meeting with NATO’s secretary general Mark Rutte in Switzerland last month pointed towards a framework that recognises both US and European priorities in the island – details of which have not yet been confirmed. But, said Camilla Siezing, “I am not calm yet.” She, and others, recognise that Trump can renew his threats at any time.
“There’s a dialogue and diplomacy is working,” said Banke. “But one issue of the Trump administration is its unpredictability. You cannot be sure of what you’re dealing with, and that’s a big change from the very tight transatlantic relationship we have had.”
Trump’s administration, Banke said, “doesn’t respect that Greenland is part of the kingdom. They don’t respect people’s rights, and national sovereignties. These are all very fundamental principles for Europe and are fundamental in the multilateral framework developed after the Second World War.”
For now, Trump has withdrawn his threats. Some of the European troops that headed north have gone home. But the future is still uncertain, with Greenlanders still hoping for peace and a more self-determined future. “I think the only thing that we hope for is just to have some peace and quiet, leave us alone and just let us be,” said Siezing.
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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
Dozens of cities in Italy organized actions in solidarity with Venezuela, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores
One month after the US attack on Venezuela, dozens of Italian cities once again took to the streets in support of the Bolivarian process, demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. Organized under the international slogan “Bring them home!”, the decentralized actions represent a stepping stone toward a national assembly in Rome on Sunday, February 8, as well as permanent mobilization against war and rearmament.
Students and youth made up a significant portion of participants in Tuesday’s demonstrations. “In response to the United States’ military action, a clear expression of its desire to reassert control over the continent, we once again stand alongside the Bolivarian Revolution […] against US imperialism and to demand the immediate release of Maduro and Flores,” the organizations Cambiare Rotta and OSA wrote on the day.
Left groups also denounced the Trump administration’s threats and attacks against other countries in Latin America, particularly Cuba and Colombia, warning that the strategy is rooted in a model of imperialism that harms people all over the world. Marta Collot, spokesperson for the left party Potere al Popolo, emphasized that the protests were also aimed at opposing a “model based on extractivism that seeks to seize the resources of other countries.”
“The ambitions of the US are not limited to Venezuela, but extend to all the countries of Nuestra América, which are to be turned into mere territories for resource extraction, from oil to rare earths, from vast freshwater reserves to a ‘disposable’ workforce,” Potere al Popolo wrote ahead of the protests. Venezuela, with its socialist transformation, “has always been a thorn in their [the West] side, against which they have directed all weapons of hybrid warfare, from economic and military aggression to cognitive warfare,” the party added.
Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
“We condemn this attack, which was not only an attempt to seize Venezuela’s oil, a nationalized oil, but also an effort to restore US hegemony over Latin America, which the US continues to regard as its backyard,” activists from Potere al Popolo Turin said on the day.
“But Latin America does not bow to US imperialist ambitions,” they added. “It resists, as shown by the massive crowds in Caracas, where the Venezuelan people are not celebrating, as our subservient media would have us believe, but are instead fighting loudly for the release of President Maduro and the primera combatiente.”
“We are here to say it once again: hands off Venezuela,” Collot said. “Today we are facing a paradox in which Trump not only allows himself to kidnap President Maduro, but also threatens half the world, from socialist Cuba to Iran, Colombia, and even Greenland.”
“All of this must end,” she concluded. “We need to reverse course and focus on policies that genuinely support workers and peoples, promote solidarity, and oppose the war-driven agenda that is pushing us toward the brink of World War III.”
Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
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.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.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.
Greenpeace activists demonstrate against US fossil fuel imports to Europe on January 26, 2026 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)
“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability.”
As the European Parliament debates the trade agreement reached last year by President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, more than 120 civil society groups from across Europe and the globe on Thursday warned that the demands Trump has made on the bloc and his “contempt for international law” have made clear that the US is currently “no longer a good-faith partner.”
In solidarity with countries that have been directly threatened with Trump’s “fossil-fueled imperialism”—Venezuela and Greenland—the EU must reduce its reliance on US fossil fuels and cancel the negotiation and implementation of the trade deal, said Oil Change International, one of the signatories of the open letter that was sent to von der Leyen and other top EU officials.
The letter notes that Trump has already shown that in a deal with the US, the EU will be pressured to “dilute its own climate commitments” and “enrich US fossil fuel companies” at the bloc’s expense.
“His administration has attacked the EU’s methane regulation and its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, seeking to weaken Europe’s ability to hold corporations accountable for climate and human rights harms,” reads the letter, which was also signed by Coal Action Network in the UK, Urgewald in Germany, and a number of US-based groups including Public Citizen.
Von der Leyen agreed to the deal last July after Trump threatened the bloc with “economically devastating tariffs,” the groups wrote, ensuring the EU would import $750 billion in US energy products including liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Those imports will “contaminate the air and water of nearby communities, increasing their risk of cancers, asthma, and other serious health harms,” warns the letter, while also being projected to raise energy costs for households across Europe.
Up to 1 in 4 homes in the EU already struggle to adequately heat, cool, or light their homes, wrote the groups.
James Hiatt, executive director of the US group For a Better Bayou, called on EU leaders to “side with communities like mine, not the fossil fuel executives bankrolling Trump, by ending its reliance on US gas.”
“There’s nothing clean about US LNG,” said Hiatt. “This industry has destroyed wetlands, damaged fishermen’s livelihoods, and condemned Gulf South communities like mine to higher rates of heart conditions, asthma, and cancer. We’re also on the frontlines of hurricanes and flooding made worse by continued fossil-fuel dependency Europe keeps importing.”
The groups wrote that “every euro spent on US non-renewable energy, and every fossil fuel investment made by European companies and banks in the United States, fuels Trump’s authoritarian agenda at home and his imperial ambitions abroad.”
“The only way Europe can reach energy independence and free itself from outside pressures is by implementing a just transition away from fossil fuels and relying on energy sufficiency/efficiency and homegrown renewable energy,” reads the letter. “Done well, this can support decent jobs and sound local economies.”
By ratifying the deal with the US, the groups added, the EU will only be “switching one dangerous dependency for another,” following its phase-out of oil imports from Russia.
The bloc will also be “giving up its sovereignty bit by bit, losing the competitiveness battle, deepening the climate crisis which will be putting its own people’s lives at even higher risk from extreme weather, and jeopardizing its ambitions to be seen as a global climate leader,” reads the letter.
Trump’s threat to seize Greenland from the Danish kingdom and his illegal strikes on Venezuela—aimed, his administration has admitted, at taking control of its oil—have shown how willing the president is to violate international law if it serves his own interests, the groups suggested.
The groups made specific demands of EU leaders, calling on them to:
Stand in solidarity with Latin American nations threatened by the US, including Venezuela, and with Greenland, affirming that “it is up to its people, and only them, to decide on their future”;
Put forward a motion at the United Nations condemning the Trump administration’s “blatant violations of international law”;
Immediately cancel negotiations and implementation of the US-EU trade deal;
Engage with EU member states to renew the European Green Deal and establish a binding roadmap for the phase-out of fossil gas, in particular US LNG;
Defend the existing EU Methane Regulation and ensure it is applied to imports; and
Support the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, organized by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.
“Under Trump, the US has become a rogue state that violates international law and bullies sovereign nations into submitting to its ‘energy dominance’ agenda,” said Myriam Douo, false solutions senior campaigner for Oil Change International. “The EU must stop wasting money on risky, expensive US fossil fuels, which threaten climate goals, put people at greater risk of climate disasters, and harm communities with toxic pollution.”
“The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability,” said Douo. “It can save billions, build a resilient economy, and ensure its long-term energy security and independence through a just transition to renewable energy.”
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.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.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.
