How Trump Can Pressure Congress To Fix The ‘Temporary Protected Status’ Mess
'Temporary Protected Status' has drifted far from the finite relief Congress envisioned into a programmatic and political circus.'Temporary Protected Status' has drifted far from the finite relief Congress envisioned into a programmatic and political circus.America First — or American Empire? Trump’s aggressive global moves signal a new doctrine
President Donald Trump spent years campaigning against the failures of American foreign policy — but not necessarily against American power itself.
Which is why Trump’s bold global moves suggest a doctrine that rejects nation-building and ideological crusades in favor of something far simpler: an America First approach to global dominance.
“It’s only March, but already it’s proven to be a pretty remarkably action-packed year. You know, just three days in, Trump successfully plucks up Nicolas Maduro from his bed in Venezuela, extradites him back to the United States, where he’s facing numerous felony charges stemming from involvement in narco-terrorism,” John Doyle explains.
“Then, the end of February, Trump launches Operation Epic Fury, of course, a military campaign to destroy Iran’s offensive capabilities,” he continues.
“On Tuesday, though, the U.S. and Ecuador launched a joint military operation against narcoterrorists in the South American country,” he adds.
But it appears that Trump is only getting started.
“A lot of analysts, I’ve been seeing this, are saying that Trump is perhaps planning an intervention in Cuba. ... In his second term, he’s floated the idea of, you know, a friendly takeover. We can guess how friendly such a takeover would actually be. But Trump’s clearly trying to frame Cuba as a failing state, which it is,” Doyle says.
And while many Americans are skeptical of Trump’s recent actions, particularly Operation Epic Fury, Doyle points out that Trump is “doing what he thinks is best for America, not what’s best for abstractions like liberal democracy, not what’s best for transgender people in Timbuktu, what is best for America.”
“He does think in terms of empire. All of his criticism about American Empire has not been so much on the empire itself, but more on the people managing it. What does he say? ‘Our leaders are stupid,’” Doyle explains.
“His problem with us going into Iraq was not that we went into Iraq necessarily, but that we went in to pursue a nation-building project, and we didn’t even take the oil. He said this as it was going on. He said this on the debate stage in 2016. This is pretty consistent for Donald Trump,” he says.
“And, of course, it’s true that Trump won the election in 2016 by denouncing, again, certain aspects of the American Empire — you know, our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan. But it is incorrect ultimately to characterize Trump as opposed to empire itself,” he continues.
“In fact, if anything, the American Empire is actually doing a lot better with Trump at the helm,” he adds.
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Trump and Rubio are playing ‘the art of the squeal’ in Cuba
Commentators keep treating President Trump’s moves against Venezuela and Iran as random, emotional, or “impulsive.” They aren’t. They read like strategic actions aimed at the real peer adversary — China — which now finds itself short roughly 20% of a key commodity that powers everything from industrial output to military operations: oil.
Orange Man Bad managed to hit another long-term communist adversary at the same time: Cuba.
Trump isn’t sending Marines to Havana. He’s squeezing the regime into an economic takeover.
After the Maduro snatch-and-bag operation — and after Washington threatened heavy tariffs on Mexico if it kept shipping petroleum products to Cuba — Havana’s fuel supply has reportedly fallen to roughly 35% of its monthly needs.
In 2025, Cuba imported about 13.7 million barrels of oil — roughly 112,000 barrels per day of crude and refined petroleum products — supplied primarily by Venezuela (about 61% of imports) and Mexico (about 25%), with Russia and Algeria covering most of the rest.
Trump’s executive order in late January authorized heavy tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba. Mexico suspended shipments to avoid U.S. retaliation. At the same time, a de facto maritime quarantine has targeted “ghost tankers” attempting to evade sanctions. Even Russian deliveries have run into trouble. Reports say the tanker Sea Horse, carrying roughly 200,000 barrels of Russian gas and oil, diverted in late February to avoid seizure or sanctions risk.
Cuba now faces a severe fuel crunch.
International observers — including U.N.-linked agencies — have described the situation as catastrophic. The island’s power grid has slid toward collapse, and the global fuel spike tied to U.S. action in Iran has only tightened the vise.
The petroleum deficit has reportedly cut national electricity generation capacity by about 65%. That leaves roughly one-third of needed power available at any given time. In Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, residents report blackouts lasting more than 20 hours a day. In Havana, scheduled cuts reportedly jumped from four hours to as many as 18 hours a day. Hospitals have reportedly performed surgeries by cellphone light. Water systems that rely on electric pumps have failed across large areas. Garbage collection in Havana has stalled because the trucks are out of gas.
The communist government has responded with wartime austerity measures. Major airports have suspended refueling for international flights. Airlines such as Air Canada and Air France have canceled or rerouted flights, gutting tourism — one of the regime’s few remaining sources of cash. State companies have shifted to reduced schedules to conserve power.
RELATED: Iran, China, and Trump’s ‘art of the squeal’
Washington has offered one narrow escape valve. On February 25, the U.S. issued a limited license allowing American companies to sell oil to Cuba’s emerging private sector. Analysts have described it as “a drop in the bucket.” It isn’t enough to run the heavy thermoelectric plants the national grid needs.
Last week, Trump publicly floated the idea of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. The phrase stays diplomatically vague, but the surrounding actions and rhetoric suggest a specific approach. Trump described Cuba as a failing nation because it has “no money. They have no anything right now.”
He isn’t going to send a Marine expeditionary force to Havana. He’s pressuring the regime to cut a deal that looks like gently coerced economic integration: end the communist monopoly over banking and energy, allow U.S. firms to buy and operate failing infrastructure (telecom, ports, the power grid), and expand the private sector until the Communist Party can’t enforce centralized control.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has echoed that direction. He has argued that Cuba needs a “different economic model” and said the U.S. would welcome reforms that open space for economic and political freedom. Reports also suggest back-channel contact, though the administration has not confirmed details.
Cuba’s current leader, Communist Party chief Miguel Díaz-Canel, now sits in the position of a man about to get a colonoscopy. He should pray Orange Man Bad feels generous with the sedation — or he’ll learn the hard way what “the art of the squeal” means.
How To Stay Sane And Not Look Stupid When Talking About The Iran War
Besides adopting general thoughtfulness, there are practical ways you can protect yourself from stupid while you monitor the Iran situation.Iran, China, and Trump’s ‘art of the squeal’
The combined bombing campaign that began in Iran Saturday morning, decapitating senior leadership and hammering military targets across the map, may look like a massive undertaking.
And it is — for Israel.
Iran looks like an existential threat.
It is — for Israel.
An invasion does not run on slogans. It runs on fuel.
For the United States, the existential threat sits elsewhere. Iran has financed and fueled anti-American violence for 47 years — from the 1979 hostage crisis to the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983, from Hezbollah and the Houthis to the IED pipeline that chewed up Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Trump on Saturday morning laid out a clean rationale for turning the mullahs’ war machine into mulch and ending, once and for all, Tehran’s nuclear obsession.
Still, the bigger strategic picture points east — to China.
Beijing’s global ambitions rise and fall on one commodity that keeps modern economies alive and modern militaries moving: oil. If you want to understand why pressure on Iran matters beyond the Middle East, start with the tankers.
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for Taiwan by 2027. Call it an invasion timeline or call it a readiness deadline — the intent reads the same.
China has spent years preparing the battlefield: artificial islands to extend maritime control, relentless air and naval exercises that rehearse the encirclement of Taiwan, and a missile force built to hunt U.S. ships and push America back behind the horizon.
That missile layer — DF-21s and DF-26s — supports the bigger concept: anti-access/area denial. China wants to make U.S. intervention costly, slow, and uncertain. It wants American commanders staring at a clock they cannot beat.
Washington answered with its own doctrine and its own race against time. The U.S. built concepts like AirSea Battle doctrine and pushed Agile Combat Employment — a dispersed, resilient approach designed to survive missile salvos and keep aircraft flying. The Air Force started rehabilitating old Pacific airfields and expanding access across Guam, Saipan, and especially Tinian, because the next war in the Pacific will punish concentration.
Then Orange Man Bad made two moves in two months that hit Xi exactly where he lives. Not more nasty rhetoric on Truth Social or posturing. Logistics.
First, the United States seized Nicolás Maduro and dumped him in a Brooklyn jail. That operation did more than embarrass a dictator. It jolted the real-world flow of Venezuelan crude — and with it, a slice of China’s import stream that Beijing prefers to keep quiet, rebranded, and discounted. Analysts peg Venezuela’s contribution to China’s seaborne crude imports in the low single digits, roughly 3% to 5% depending on the year and the counting method. In Beijing’s world, even “small” percentages matter when the margin for error narrows.
Second, the joint strike campaign against Iran instantly put a hand on another lever: Iranian exports.
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China buys the bulk of Iran’s shipped oil. Various trackers place Iranian barrels at roughly 10% to 15% of China’s seaborne crude imports in recent years. Tehran sells because it needs the cash. Beijing buys because it wants the discount. Trump’s move did not need to “block” every barrel to land the message. It only needed to introduce uncertainty, disruption, rerouting, insurance spikes, interdiction risk, and political friction. Oil markets react to fear faster than to facts.
Put the two together, and the math starts to hurt: a meaningful share of China’s oil — not symbolic, not academic — now sits under pressure from U.S. action in Venezuela and Iran.
That creates a Taiwan problem.
An invasion does not run on slogans. It runs on fuel. It runs on shipping. It runs on industrial output. It runs on a domestic economy that stays stable while the military gambles. Xi can build missiles all day long, but he cannot launch an island war on an economy gasping for discounted crude.
So yes, the current Iran campaign matters for the obvious reasons: international terrorism, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the nuclear program. Those are legitimate reasons for “Epic Fury.”
Trump’s larger play hits the supply lines that make China’s invasion timetable plausible.
In only two months, Trump has put Xi in the position of a man getting a testicular palpation from a recalcitrant physician in a hurry.
Do not distract him. He might clench.
I think Trump wrote a book about it, or he should. Call it “The Art of the Squeal.”
Every attendee who was awarded by Trump during the State of the Union
President Donald Trump awarded several honors and medals during his historic State of the Union Tuesday night. Here is every honor Trump awarded during the joint address.
'He was a legend long before this evening.'
1. Connor Hellebuyck, Presidential Medal of Freedom
As goalie, Connor Hellebuyck played an integral role on the USA men's hockey team that brought home the gold for the first time in 46 years. Trump hosted the team at the White House on Tuesday, just days after their historic victory, later inviting them to attend the State of the Union.
During his joint address, Trump announced that he would bestow Hellebuyck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. Trump also noted that he took a vote from the team members in the Oval Office as to whether he should award Hellebuyck the medal, and they unanimously supported the idea.
Trump's address was a beacon of patriotism, and this moment was no exception.
"What special champions you are," Trump said.
2. Andrew Wolfe, Purple Heart
Andrew Wolfe was one of the two National Guardsmen who were ambushed and shot, allegedly by an Afghan national, just feet from the White House in November. Wolfe was not expected to survive, but he miraculously pulled through and appeared at the State of the Union alongside his mother.
To commend his service, Trump awarded Wolfe the Purple Heart.
"It was a solemn and unforgettable moment, one that ensured their courage and sacrifice were honored not only by West Virginia but also before the entire nation," West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) said in a statement.
3. Sarah Beckstrom, Purple Heart
Sarah Beckstrom was the second National Guardsman recognized at the State of the Union and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. Beckstrom was serving alongside Wolfe when she was ambushed and fatally shot in November at just 20 years old.
Beckstrom's parents accepted the award on behalf of their late daughter Tuesday night, marking a solemn moment.
“West Virginia will never forget their service, their bravery, or their sacrifice," Morrisey said.
4. Scott Ruskan, Legion of Merit
Scott Ruskan, an aviation survival technician and rescue swimmer for the United States Coast Guard, was recognized for saving nearly 170 people during the floods that devastated central Texas back in July. Those rescued included children attending Camp Mystic.
Trump awarded Ruskan the Legion of Merit for his "extraordinary heroism."
Ruskan accepted the award alongside 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond, one of the girls he rescued from Camp Mystic.
"As the waters threatened to sweep her away, 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond closed her eyes and prayed to God," Trump said. "She thought she was going to die. Those prayers were answered when Coast Guard rescue swimmer Scott Ruskan descended from a helicopter above ... and he lifted not just Milly Cate but 164 others to safety."
5. Eric Slover, Medal of Honor
Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover was recognized for his role in capturing Venezuelan ex-dictator Nicolas Maduro in January, successfully piloting the Chinook mission despite being shot several times and sustaining severe injuries to his legs.
Despite being severely wounded, Slover stood up in a walker to accept the highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor.
"Chief Warrant Officer Slover is still recovering from his serious wounds," Trump said, "but I'm thrilled to say that he is here tonight with his wife, Amy."
"The success of the entire mission and the lives of his fellow warriors hinged on Eric's ability to take the searing pain. It was unbelievable, what's happened to his legs," he continued.
6. Royce Williams, Medal of Honor
Retired Navy Captain Royce Williams was also awarded the Medal of Honor Tuesday night, commending the 100-year-old veteran's service in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. First lady Melania Trump, who sat beside Williams, bestowed the award on the war hero during the address.
In 1952, Williams found himself in a 35-minute dogfight against the Soviets, where he downed four enemy aircraft, survived a 37mm cannon, and still returned to the deck of the USS Oriskany just off the coast of North Korea. His fellow servicemen later counted 263 holes in the frame of his F9F-5 Panther.
"Tonight, at 100 years old, this brave Navy captain is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He was a legend long before this evening," Trump said.
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