President Donald Trump announced on Feb. 27 that the US government is revoking a special permit granted to energy giant Chevron to pump and export Venezuelan oil. The move, which reverses a 2022 decision by Biden to allow the company to bring Venezuelan oil to US markets by exempting it from economic sanctions, removes one of the South American country's few economic lifelines at a time of deepening crisis. In his post on TruthSocial, Trump claimed that the Venezuelan government had failed to keep up its side of the original bargain to meet "electoral conditions." He also charged that the "regime has not been transporting the violent criminals they sent into our Country...back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to." (NACLA Update)

An eight-year-old Venezuelan girl died and 20 survivors were rescued by Panamanian authorities from a Feb. 21 shipwreck during a journey from Panama's northern port of Llano Carti to the Colombian border.

The revised deal for US access to Ukraine's mineral wealth (with no security guarantees for Kyiv) collapsed in the unseemly Oval Office donnybrook, and European leaders now convene their own summit—faced with the prospect of supporting Ukraine without the US. But Hungary and Slovakia represent an authoritarian bloc that supports Ukraine's betrayal—and Romania could be next to defect to this Russia-aligned bloc. In Europe and America alike, elements of the "tankie" pseudo-left no longer even bother to hide their convergence with MAGA. In Episode 267 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a clean break at both the international and grassroots levels. Europe must realize that the Atlantic alliance is effectively dead, and there are no prospects of reviving it while Trump is in the White House; whether or not the rumors are true that he was recruited as a KGB agent in the '80s, he is on Putin's side. And progressives must repudiate pseudo-left misleaders who shill for Trump and and spread lies for Putin, and seek a new leadership that mobilizes to oppose them.

UN General Assembly members approved a resolution supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity on Feb. 24, the day marking the third anniversary of Russia's massive invasion of the country. The resolution won 93 votes in favor, with 18 votes against, with 65 abstentions. Washington sided with Russia, as well as Belarus, North Korea and Sudan, to vote against the measure. Hungary, Israel, Eritrea, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Nicaragua also voted against. China and Iran were among the abstentions. The US had declined to co-sponsor the resolution, instead pushing its own language that failed to blame Russia for the war or mention Ukraine's borders.

Trump's mounting threats to defy the growing court decisions against his dictatorial program recall Andrew Jackson's famous words of defiance following the Supreme Court's 1832 decision in Worcester v Georgia, which upheld the sovereign rights of the Cherokee Nation. Jackson's subsequent forced relocation of the Cherokee in the Trail of Tears is now echoed in Trump's hubristic and criminal plan to clear Gaza of Palestinians. On the 222nd anniversary of Marbury v Madison, in which it was established that the Supreme Court has the last word on what is and isn't constitutional, Bill Weinberg explores the historical parallel.

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened Feb. 17 to take Google to court if its map feature continues to show US-based users the label "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico." President Donald Trump's first day in office concluded with an executive order renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" as the "Gulf of America." Trump decreed of Jan. 20 stated that the name change is being made "in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation's economy and its people."

Three weeks after US President Donald Trump's order to freeze foreign aid, Syrians are already seeing medical clinics providing urgent assistance close, water distributions slow down, and bread distribution in many displacement camps grind to a halt. After nearly 14 years of war, the UN estimates that 16.5 million people across Syria need some sort of aid. While the December overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad is beginning to change the way aid works in the country, the need for widespread relief for those dealing with severe poverty, food insecurity, and mass internal displacement has been unrelenting.

In Episode 265 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines Trump's ultimatum to Ukraine to hand over a large share of its wealth in strategic minerals such as lithium in exchange for continued US military aid—and whether a race with China for control of the lithium and rare earth elements needed for Elon Musk's industrial interests might also be the agenda behind the Trump regime's annexationist designs on Greenland. Trump is meanwhile opening Native American lands in Nevada to lithium exploitation, while Musk's Tesla has sought to grab a share of Bolivia's lithium reserves—now also coveted by China.