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Tracker Tallies Over $250M in Cancelled Grants From HHS Agency | MedPage Today
Saturday August 1st, 2026 at 2:43 PM

MedPageToday.com - medical news for physicians
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A new online tracking tool from AcademyHealth shows the sprawling scope of recent grant cancellations by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

More than 100 grants worth over $250 million have been canceled, according to the tracker, and those numbers are only expected to climb, Aaron Carroll, MD, MS, president and CEO of AcademyHealth, told MedPage Today.

AHRQ "just canceled a quarter of a billion dollars worth of grants, which are all focused on things Americans care about," Carroll said.

Indeed, more than $118 million was already invested in important research, which was based in dozens of states, the tracker showed. More than $136 million in committed funding has been lost with the cancellations.

"While we were keeping sort of a running tally for ourselves and talking to people about it, and just updating the numbers of what we were seeing each time, we realized that people would really benefit from just seeing online exactly what this is," Carroll said. "That we could update it as we get more information, but more importantly, it can tell a better story about what these projects actually cover, how varied across states they were ... what different foci they had, and how much they align with what this administration says are its priorities."

Carroll said AcademyHealth is uniquely positioned to compile data showing the collective impact to AHRQ grants.

"We had the contacts, we had the expertise, and so it's the kind of thing that an organization like AcademyHealth can pull together," he explained. "But it makes you wonder -- if we weren't, who would? And that's really the tragedy. There's no one really looking for all of this and pulling it all together so that you can actually tell the story that's necessary."

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MedPage Today.

Research affected by the canceled grants spans a wide variety of areas, including advancing diabetes care, tackling antibiotic resistance, and improving pediatric care, to name a few.

"Patients have been recruited, clinics have been signed up, hospitals have been enrolled," Carroll said. "People have been hired to work on this, they've been collecting data, doing important work. It's all in progress, and basically, they're saying, we think it's so important to cancel this that we don't care that we're just going to blow and lose $118 million."

"I don't understand it, and especially since this Congress, this House, and this Senate wrote a fiscal year 2026 budget, which appropriated all this money to AHRQ, and this president signed it," he added.

It's not as though researchers can quickly transition to other potential sources of funding -- "maybe in a couple years, you could replace some of this," Carroll said. "What are your employees supposed to do until then?"

The AHRQ grant cuts began earlier this month, when the agency started issuing what appeared to be batch termination notices to researchers.

Termination letters shared with MedPage Today and posted online noted that AHRQ "is adjusting its discretionary health services research award portfolio in order to better prioritize agency resources."

In many cases, funding had been stalled and researchers had been left in the dark about the status of their grants for a long period of time prior to receiving the notices.

AcademyHealth has been keeping a close eye on other changes at AHRQ, including challenges at the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, such as a work slowdown and cancelled meetings.

The group has also tracked other Trump administration changes, including the removal of federal public health webpages, which the nonprofit legally challenged.

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Because breathing wildfire smoke and tire particulates outside and offgassing and Covid bird flu inside can’t kill you if you don’t track it
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EXCLUSIVE: Congo’s Ebola epidemic started at least 4 months before it was detected
Saturday August 1st, 2026 at 12:07 PM

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Mysterious deaths that extinguished entire families. A cemetery unable to cope with the flood of dead bodies. Taxi drivers who refused to go to certain parts of town. Months before the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officially declared its latest Ebola outbreak on 15 May, the disease was already sowing fear and death in Mongbwalu, a gold mining town in Ituri province, an unpublished analysis by three researchers suggests.

After interviewing almost 100 people in and around Mongbwalu—including nurses and doctors, community leaders, survivors, grieving family members, coffinmakers, and cemetery caretakers—the team concluded the epidemic ignited in January, and perhaps even earlier, in Mongbwalu’s outskirts. A patient seeking care may have brought it to the city from a rural area.

By the time health authorities in the distant capital, Kinshasa, recognized the disease as Ebola, a “widespread, sprawling epidemic” was already underway, the team says in a PowerPoint presentation that is circulating in a WhatsApp group in the DRC and that Science obtained. One of the researchers, anthropologist Jules Villa, working for the World Health Organization (WHO), also presented the findings to a group of researchers on a Zoom call today, and Villa said the team is also submitting a correspondence piece to The Lancet.

“This could and probably should have been detected earlier,” says a former U.S. official who was involved in the response to the largest Ebola epidemic so far, between 2014 and ’16 in West Africa. The big question is why the disease was not recognized as Ebola much earlier, says the former official, who asked not to be named to speak freely about the DRC’s surveillance system. “Many in the community [knew] something serious was going on.”

The failure to raise the alarm has made controlling the epidemic much harder. With 3360 cases recorded since mid-May, including 1487 deaths, the epidemic is now about to become the second largest on record. “If the outbreak could have been contained in Mongbwalu, it would have been much easier to control,” says Manuel Albela, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who’s currently working in Mongbwalu.

Anecdotal reports of early cases had suggested the cradle of the epidemic was Mongbwalu, some 75 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital Bunia, where the epidemic exploded later. To investigate that theory, the team—which also included Roger Buju, a medical researcher at the University of Bunia, and Alain Alithum Bero, a social scientist working for a nongovernmental organization in Ituri—spent more than 1 month in the town, with funding from WHO. “This was not an attempt to find a ‘patient zero,’ but to gain a greater understanding of the outbreak from the perspective of the communities where it first began,” WHO said in a statement sent to Science.

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Investigations like this “are highly sensitive and require in-depth local knowledge, networks, and much caution,” says Emmanuelle Roth, an anthropologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich who has been involved in past Ebola outbreaks. During the 2018–20 Ebola outbreak in Kivu province, accusations of embezzlement and rumors that the virus had been released intentionally were rife, she says; in such a context, “Even talking, let alone asking, about Ebola, is suspicious.”

But the team in Mongbwalu managed to unearth a wealth of data. They interviewed 97 people and looked for likely Ebola cases by identifying households with at least two deaths within 21 days and symptoms suggesting Ebola. They also reviewed photos, WhatsApp messages, doctors’ notes, and even biographies read at funerals that mentioned the deceased’s symptoms. Everything pointed to widespread Ebola infections, they say.

One transmission chain started with a 50-year-old woman identified only as A who died on 25 January after vomiting blood. Her mother died 6 days later; her husband fell ill but recovered. On 11 February, A’s nephew died, bleeding profusely from facial orifices. He was buried the next day, during a funeral attended by many people. The nephew’s wife died a few days later, and then their child. Several more people in the family passed away. Others fell ill but recovered.

Altogether, the scientists identified more than 500 suspected cases between mid-January and 15 May. Medical staff were hit hard, as often happens early during Ebola outbreaks: Thirteen “front-line workers”—including nurses, midwives, and Red Cross first responders—died, and 42 others fell ill but recovered, Villa told researchers on today’s call. Some private health care facilities closed and health care workers fled. Mongbwalu’s cemetery was overstretched, with as many as 20 burials in a single day.

Until now, estimates about when the epidemic started had relied mostly on genetic evidence. Comparing the sequences of Ebola virus found in patients allows scientists to build a family tree and estimate the age of the earliest common ancestor. One such analysis, posted online in early July, suggested the earliest cases occurred in mid-March. But most of the genomes analyzed so far came from Bunia, where the disease erupted later. “I think January is plausible … because we don’t have many sequences from Mongbwalu,” says an author of the analysis, evolutionary biologist Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh.

But why, in a country that has seen 16 previous Ebola epidemics, didn’t anyone alert the government to the burgeoning catastrophe? The report suggests people in Mongbwalu had alternative explanations for the symptoms. “Theories included AIDS, tuberculosis, and the working conditions of artisanal gold miners, who inhale dust and use toxic substances,” Villa said at the Zoom meeting. “Mystical causes” were also invoked.

“A culture of secrecy” delayed the alert further, Villa said. Many Mongbwalu residents prefer private clinics over public hospitals, where “care is perceived as expensive and of poor quality,” he said. Those private facilities were afraid to report cases, fearing blame, fines, or even closure.

MSF was alerted by an anonymous group of physicians in early May, Albela says. By that time, “It was already all over Ituri province.”

As late as 8 May, the chief medical officer for the Mongbwalu health zone, Ruben Dedja Denyo, acknowledged “unusual occurrences” to a local newspaper but stressed “there is no epidemic, as the recorded cases do not present similar symptoms.” One week later, the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak.

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The U.S. Took Over Venezuela’s Oil Industry. Where Has All the Money Gone? | Council on Foreign Relations
Saturday August 1st, 2026 at 5:28 AM

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The American and Venezuelan people remain in the dark about how the Trump administration is controlling billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil revenue. Without accountability mechanisms or a clear democratic roadmap, the United States risks entrenching a corrupt successor regime.

<p>U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, and U.S. Charge d’Affaires to Venezuela Laura Dogu visit oil production facilities in Maturin, Monagas state, Venezuela, on February 12, 2026.</p> U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, and U.S. Charge d’Affaires to Venezuela Laura Dogu visit oil production facilities in Maturin, Monagas state, Venezuela, on February 12, 2026. Miraflores Palace/Reuters

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  • International Affairs Fellow in National Security, sponsored by Janine and J. Tomilson Hill

Roxanna Vigil previously served as a senior sanctions policy advisor at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Before that, she served as the director for Andean affairs at the National Security Council, where she handled foreign policy and national security issues for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3 military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

Based on tanker-tracking data from Bloomberg and reports on discounts applied to Venezuelan crude, the estimated value of U.S.-controlled oil exports has increased from $600 million in January (about 380,000 barrels per day) to about $3.7 billion in April alone (about 1.1 million barrels per day). The largest recipients of Venezuelan oil since January 3 have been the United States (43 percent), India (26 percent), and Spain (8 percent).

The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.

But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the U.S. Treasury accounts. It is not clear if the balance in either the Qatar or U.S. Treasury accounts has been shared with Congress.

Same corrupt regime, different leader

Rubio himself told Congress in January that “what you have in Venezuela is a corrupt and broken oil company run by the government” and that “the glue that held the regime together was corruption and graft.” Five months later, nothing has changed on the ground with regard to the ruling elites who remain in power in Venezuela. Notably, interim President Delcy Rodríguez retains control over the different Chavista factions as she complies with the narrow economic concessions demanded by Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump appears satisfied with the arrangement and has praised Rodríguez for doing a “great job.” Rubio also told Congress that Venezuela has agreed to submit monthly budget requests for State Department approval to receive its share of oil revenue.

Rodríguez is getting much of what she wants in return, including diplomatic recognition and sanctions relief. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States has legitimized her position and opened the door for Venezuela to restore ties with the international community that were severed in 2019. The Trump administration has issued temporary sanctions relief in the form of waivers (general licenses) that authorize U.S. companies and individuals to do business in various aspects of Venezuela’s oil, mining, and financial sectors. These waivers can be revoked at any time and have been issued in a policy vacuum.

Unlike the first Trump administration, which issued a framework outlining concrete steps the Venezuelan government would need to take to earn lasting sanctions relief, there is no plan specifying the actions required for such relief now. For any transition plan tied to the full lifting of U.S. sanctions to be credible, it would need to be negotiated by Venezuelans themselves and meet basic democratic benchmarks; this would include releasing all political prisoners (more than four hundred remain detained in Venezuela), holding free and fair elections, and establishing an independent legislature, judiciary, and electoral authority.

However, there is something Rodríguez wants but has not yet received: $5 billion in Special Drawing Rights at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which Venezuela has been unable to access since 2019. The United States should condition this access on Venezuela taking concrete steps toward a democratic transition. Ideally, this would be paired with a broader plan linking further sanctions relief to political concessions—something the Trump administration has yet to produce.

But it will take more than just economic pressure alone to facilitate a lasting democratic transition. The Trump administration’s decision to exclude the Venezuelan opposition and civil society from discussions with Rodríguez over the country’s future is a mistake. A successful transition will require the United States to exert significant pressure on Rodríguez to make meaningful political concessions and include the opposition and civil society at the negotiating table. The Venezuelan opposition’s May 29 “Panama Manifesto” carefully endorses the Trump administration’s three-phase plan while explicitly calling for presidential elections, political negotiations, and broader national dialogue.

No accountability, no answers

Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company, known as PDVSA, has not published oil revenue figures since 2016, and the Trump administration has not publicly disclosed the exact figures it controls. It is also unclear who within the administration oversees those funds. Trump said he would control the revenue when he announced the first fifty-million-barrel tranche on social media just days after Maduro’s ouster. However, Executive Order 14373, which establishes Foreign Government Deposit Funds as property of the Venezuelan government held in custody by the Treasury Department, indicates that the secretary of state will give the Treasury instructions for disbursements.

Except for a few details shared with Congress and in Executive Order 14373, the Trump administration has provided almost no information on the system it has established to sell Venezuelan oil, collect the revenue, and use the funds. The administration has also not released the written agreements it has entered into with the Venezuelan government, traders, buyers, banks, and other entities involved in the process. Both Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately committed to Congress to share a copy of the written agreements governing U.S. control of Venezuelan oil exports, though it is unclear whether those copies were delivered to Congress, and no copies have been made public.

Despite Rubio’s insistence before Congress that commodities trading companies Trafigura and Vitol were a “short-term fix” to quickly sell the first tranche of oil, both companies—each of which has a history of bribery schemes related to oil sales—remain involved in Venezuela five months later. A third trader, GE Warren, has since entered the picture, and the Trump administration has offered no explanation for their ongoing role. In mid-April, the State Department witness told Congress that accounting firm KPMG would conduct quarterly audits of how Venezuelan oil revenues are being spent, to include a retrospective audit “from the beginning,” but said he did not know when the reports would be available.

The system’s opacity is not limited to oil. The Trump administration is also controlling Venezuelan gold and other mineral exports. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, after leading a delegation of mining executives to Venezuela in March, indicated that he secured “$100 million of gold” and helped broker a deal for Venezuela to sell up to one thousand kilograms of gold to trader Trafigura. Based on the restrictions in the waivers published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control related to gold and other minerals, export revenue is also going into U.S. Treasury accounts under the same opaque system as the oil funds.

A closing window for change

Congress has raised concerns about the lack of transparency and the absence of a plan for a democratic transition in Venezuela. U.S. Democratic lawmakers sent a formal request [PDF] to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking it to audit the system the Trump administration has established to control Venezuela’s oil exports, and separately introduced legislation requiring an independent GAO audit of that system. While Republican lawmakers have largely remained silent on the issue, some have pressed the Trump administration for an election date in Venezuela and pushed back on Trump’s claim that Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, does not have popular support. Washington will need to respond to the opposition’s “Panama Manifesto” with its own concrete plan or face growing pressure from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who question whether it has aligned itself with Rodríguez at the cost of any real democratic process.

The United States has a narrow window to translate its influence in Venezuela into meaningful democratic progress by conditioning future sanctions relief and access to $5 billion at the IMF on concrete political concessions. Rather than Washington unilaterally deciding Venezuela’s future, the terms for a transition to democracy should be informed by U.S.-facilitated negotiations that include Rodríguez, the Venezuelan opposition, and civil society. In the absence of a clear plan that leads to a genuine democratic transition and includes transparency and accountability mechanisms, the United States risks propping up the same authoritarian regime responsible for the worst peacetime migration and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent history.

Data note: A $15 per barrel discount was applied to the monthly Brent spot price to account for crude quality across Venezuela’s export blends and trader intermediation costs, yielding a conservative estimate of the value of Venezuelan crude exports.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

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CDC report highlights mold disease, a worry after flooding | AP News
Friday July 31st, 2026 at 10:48 PM

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NEW YORK (AP) — A first-of-its-kind U.S. study suggests invasive mold infections may be an underappreciated — and potentially deadly — threat.

The researchers detected about 450 cases in Atlanta-area hospitals over five years. About a third of the patients died in the hospital.

The findings, published this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from an attempt to better gauge how common these kinds of illnesses are. The government does not require doctors to report the illnesses.

“It’s kind of the first time we’ve had an estimate like this,” said the CDC’s Dr. Jeremy Gold, the study’s senior author.

And it’s important to understand it now, because the problem may grow in the future, he added. Mold exposure is a recurring problem in the wake of hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters influenced by climate change, researchers have found.

“I agree that the frequency of fungal infections will likely increase with climate change,” said Dr. Jeffrey Jenks, an infectious disease researcher at Duke University.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing population of older people who are more susceptible to such illnesses, Gold said.

Invasive mold diseases are rare infections caused by certain species. Most people who get infected inhale mold spores, but they can also enter the body through cuts or wounds or from contaminated medical equipment.

The spores don’t cause health problems for most people, but they can be life-threatening to some, including the elderly, cancer patients and others with weakened immune systems.

Previously, CDC researchers estimated more than 15,000 hospitalizations a year could be tied to invasive mold disease.

To better understand how common cases might be at a local level, the research team worked with four Atlanta-area hospitals and their affiliated outpatient clinics to look for potential cases from 2020 to 2024.

They initially identified nearly 1,000 potential cases, but winnowed the number down to about 450 by ruling out patients who may have had signs of exposure but didn’t qualify as having invasive mold disease.

The researchers found that hospitals can expect to see 3 to 5 cases per year for every 100 inpatient beds. The rates were higher at larger academic hospitals that tend to see more complicated illnesses.

Most patients had impaired immune systems or — in a number of cases — were weakened after falling sick from COVID-19.

Mold exposures can occur in hospitals or other healthcare facilities, but the study did not try to determine where each patient was first exposed, Gold said.

It’s hard to generalize what was seen in the Atlanta area to other parts of the country where mold may be more or less of a problem, he said. But it should give hospital administrators at least a rough idea about whether the number of cases they see is what might be expected or whether it’s an outbreak, Gold added.

Jenks called the study’s findings “valuable,” but said “seeing results from similar studies done in different parts of the United States would be helpful.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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US looting of Venezuela continues amid earthquake disaster - World Socialist Web Site
Friday July 31st, 2026 at 10:35 PM

World Socialist Web Site (en)
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More than a month after the June 24 earthquakes devastated northern Venezuela, the confirmed death toll has risen to 5,546, with 16,740 injured. The United Nations fears that as many as 51,000 people may still be missing.

The widening humanitarian crisis has not stopped the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars from Venezuelan oil sales—with estimates as high as 96.5 percent of the revenue.

While US and Venezuelan troops patrol the streets to intimidate workers going without basic necessities, imperialist looting is taking place on a historic scale.

Demolition of damaged structures has now begun across the affected zone—in some cases over the bodies of the dead and even as families continue to dig for the remains of their relatives.

José Félix Valera, a social activist in La Guaira, told Truthdig that contractors, mainly American, are clearing land where families are still searching for relatives. “I saw people stop a building from being demolished, and three days later they found a young man alive,” Valera said.

The scale of the disaster is unfathomable. The Venezuelan government reports 190 buildings collapsed and 856 severely damaged, but NASA’s assessment puts the figure at 58,000 buildings destroyed or damaged.

The World Bank estimates $19.6 billion in direct damages but says the full cost of physical recovery—including debris clearance and rebuilding to modern standards—could reach $50 billion, close to half of Venezuela’s entire GDP.

According to official figures, some 18,000 people have lost their homes completely, and more than 23,000 remain in shelters. The UN humanitarian relief agency projects that 1.3 million people will require assistance over the next six months.

Conditions on the ground are deteriorating toward a secondary catastrophe. Dust from pulverized concrete hangs in the humid air on top of the smell of corpses. Garbage accumulates in the streets, as families camp outside buildings declared too dangerous to enter.

An estimated 1.2 million tons of debris must be managed, much of it contaminated with fuels, motor oil, paints, solvents and plastics released when the buildings came down.

Diego Díaz Martín of the environmental organization Vitalis warned the AP that seasonal rains could trigger landslides across earthquake-weakened hillsides, while many affected areas have not been assessed.

Safe drinking water is scarce. There are no guarantees the water in tanker trucks has been properly treated, the AP reports. Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation are already triggering disease outbreaks.

“Earthquakes do not cause outbreaks by themselves,” said Dr. Mauricio Cerpa, an epidemiologist with the Pan American Health Organization. “The risk comes from the post-disaster conditions.” He added that those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension face mounting danger due to the collapse of the healthcare system.

Against this mounting catastrophe, Washington has committed $386 million in assistance, and Venezuela secured a further $346 million in emergency financing from the IMF. Set against $50 billion in recovery costs, these sums are derisory.

Venezuela still under sanctions as oil revenue is seized

Meanwhile, sanctions remain in force and $22 billion in Venezuelan state assets remain frozen and billions more are being taken by US imperialism.

The financial mechanism at the center of this arrangement deserves the closest scrutiny.

Since the January 3 invasion that abducted President Nicolas Maduro, the United States has directly controlled the sale of Venezuelan crude. The Financial Times calculates that the Trump administration has collected more than $13 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales so far.

Washington has said almost nothing about where that money has gone, with an executive order describing the US role as “custodial.” Trump, for his part, boasted in June that the US had recovered the cost of the military operation in Venezuela “28 times” through oil, adding that the United States is “making a lot of money, too.”

The accounting available from Venezuelan sources exposes what these formulations conceal. Analysis published by Aporrea drawing on PDVSA, OPEC and Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) data finds that through the end of June, cumulative exports reached roughly 189 million barrels with an approximate value of $14.43 billion—of which approximately 96.5 percent remains retained by the U.S. Treasury.

Payments from buyers are deposited into US-controlled accounts, held for as long as Washington decides, and then released to Venezuela in whatever quantity Washington finds convenient.

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The paper trail is deliberately opaque. A first tranche in January 2026 was valued at roughly $500 million, but only $300 million was actually confirmed transferred by both Venezuelan and US officials; the remaining $200 million was reportedly held in an account in Qatar, with no confirmation from either side that it was ever released.

In late April, the State Department authorized approximately $2.5 billion in additional disbursements, for an unconfirmed January–June total of $3 billion. Officially, only around $300 million has entered the BCV.

There is no independent audit, no public ledger and no mechanism by which the Venezuelan population can determine what has become of its key natural resource. There is likewise no way of knowing what portion has found its way into the accounts of the Trump family and its business associates.

In order to safeguard this sacking operation, the US military occupation continues to deepen. Former Vice President Elías Jaua told Truthdig: “The United States has not only taken over the country’s main airport and seaport but also deployed 900 Marines in La Guaira and 2,000 across the entire operation.”

He added that US forces have conducted drone and helicopter mapping of the entire Venezuelan coastline, imposing de facto control over Venezuelan airspace and coastal waters from US bases in Puerto Rico, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago. American troops now patrol La Guaira accompanied by an Israeli military delegation.

The government of interim President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, functions entirely according to Trump’s demands. Caracas has announced its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, now a key target of US provocations. It lodged a diplomatic protest against Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for observing that “Iran is not Venezuela, where you take one person and everyone else gets scared and backs down.”

Caracas has removed Russia’s Rosneft from oil projects and halted oil shipments to China that had serviced Venezuelan debt. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is reported to be directly managing Venezuelan export allocations, sidelining European companies as well. Rodríguez has hosted an Israeli delegation and a US congressional delegation led by the fascistic Florida Republican Brian Mast, while moving to restore relations with the far-right governments in Chile and Peru.

Seven months after US special forces abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores—both of whom have pleaded not guilty to charges including drug trafficking conspiracy, with trial set for June 2027 —the transformation of Venezuela as a US protectorate is complete.

The metamorphosis of the Chavistas from proponents of “Socialism of the 21st Century” into the managers of US imperialist interests is the most damning refutation possible of the entire perspective of bourgeois nationalism and left reformism. It demonstrates that no nominally left or nationalist force operating within the framework of capitalism can secure national sovereignty or lasting social improvement.

This capitulation is being demanded with special ferocity precisely because US imperialism itself is in crisis—burdened by record debt and trade deficits, a weakening dollar and a losing economic contest with China. Its response is to squeeze Latin America dry through methods of direct colonial rule not seen in a century.

Just as workers and young people in the United States increasingly reject the myth of American capitalism as a land of opportunity and turn toward socialism, workers across Latin America can see that capitalism offers them neither social improvement nor physical safety. The radicalization now developing throughout the region requires a genuinely socialist political program and a revolutionary party.

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Drifting SpaceX rocket heading for accidental collision with moon | SpaceX | The Guardian
Friday July 31st, 2026 at 10:22 AM

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A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago.

The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on Wednesday, carving out a crater and sending up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists – and sky gazers – are eager to observe.

Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts an impact of 5,400mph (8,700km/h) – seven times the speed of sound – near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb. With the action unfolding in the wee hours of the morning for the US, the eastern portions of the US and Canada, and much of South America, should have the best views.

While scientists are not too concerned about this particular piece of space junk, it highlights the growing threat as more and more items cram into orbit.

“Things are getting crowded up there,” said Gray, who plans to view the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada.

It was never SpaceX’s intent to hit the moon. But space experts said the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun.

It will be the second dead rocket known to crash into the moon accidentally. A Chinese rocket segment dug out a pair of craters on the lunar far side in 2022.

The new smashup will occur on the moon’s near side, packing the equivalent energy of three tons of TNT explosives.

The impact flash, lasting less than a second, will probably be too dim to see from Earth, according to experts. But the stream of ejected material could stretch for several miles into space and remain visible to telescopes for tens of minutes.

“Gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,” said Los Alamos national laboratory’s Benjamin Fernando, who is encouraging observations by professionals and amateurs alike.

“Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts,” he added in an email.

Fernando anticipates an impact crater nearly 90ft across and 16ft deep (27 meters across and 5 meters deep), too small to see from Earth but visible to spacecraft.

Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will gather before-and-after shots of the crash scene.

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sarcozona
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Cool, trashing the moon now
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fancycwabs
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I can only assume he was trying to blow the Webb space telescope out of the sky and missed.
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