Washington’s Venezuela “Compromise” Is Not Solomon's. It Is a High-Risk Transaction. Eduardo A. Gamarra The Trump administration’s Venezuela endgame is described by some as a Solomonic resolution: a clever compromise between two competing imperatives in U.S. policy. On one side stood the maximum-pressure camp, closely associated with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which insisted that Nicolás Maduro was not a legitimate head of state but a narco-terrorist presiding over a criminal enterprise. On the other stood a transactional, energy-first approach—often linked to Richard Grenell’s worldview—that sought to avoid an open-ended war while securing U.S. oil interests through leverage and deal-making. In the administration’s telling, both objectives have now been met. Maduro is in U.S. custody, treated not as a sovereign president but as a criminal defendant in a transnational organized crime case. Simultaneously, Washington has signaled a willingness to work with Delcy Rodríguez—Madur...
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Will Mass Deportation Take Place? What the Trump Administration Has Actually Done—and What It Means for U.S. Latinos Eduardo A. Gamarra A year ago, I wrote a piece with this same title. See my post from November 13, 2024, a few days following Donald Trump’s dramatic electoral victory. In this piece, I update what has occurred and what it means for Latinos in the United States. Few campaign promises have been as central to Donald Trump’s political identity as the pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States. During the campaign and after taking office, Trump and his closest advisors spoke openly of removing anywhere from two to twenty-five million people—an extraordinary range that reflected both ambition and imprecision. Former and current officials framed mass deportation as not only feasible but necessary to restore “law and order,” often emphasizing the removal of “dangerous criminals” as both justification and r...
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Washington Has Painted Itself Into a Corner on Venezuela Eduardo A Gamarra For much of the past year, U.S. policy toward Venezuela has oscillated between pressure and pragmatism, threats and talks, sanctions and selective waivers. But as 2025 draws to a close, that oscillation has largely ended. Washington has maneuvered itself into a narrow policy corridor in which limited military strikes now appear not only possible but increasingly likely—less because they are strategically optimal than because alternative paths have been politically foreclosed. This is a dangerous place to be. The United States faces three broad options in Venezuela today: a negotiated transition, a campaign of limited military strikes to catalyze regime collapse, or a far more consequential full-scale intervention. Of these, a negotiated settlement remains the most desirable outcome—for Venezuelans, for regional stability, and for U.S. interests. Yet it is also the least likely. Through a combination of max...
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How the Right Became What It Once Condemned Eduardo A. Gamarra When Donald Trump first rose to political prominence, his message was clear: America needed to be “free” again—from political correctness, from cancel culture, from the “woke” left that supposedly sought to police speech, rewrite history, and impose conformity in the name of inclusion. That promise of liberation from “woke tyranny” helped fuel a populist revolt that reshaped the Republican Party and brought Trump to the White House twice. Millions of Americans, many feeling culturally alienated, rallied behind a message that said: you can say Merry Christmas again, you don’t have to apologize for who you are, you can reject liberal orthodoxy without shame. But nearly a decade later, the promise of freedom has curdled into its opposite. Trump’s “anti-woke revolution” has produced what can only be called right-wing wokeism—a mirror image of the very excesses it once condemned. The new culture warriors are not liberating A...
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Supporting Fragile Reformers: Why Washington Must Stand with Milei — and with Bolivia’s New President By Eduardo A. Gamarra As Argentines head to the polls this Sunday, the future of President Javier Milei’s bold economic plan hangs in the balance. Elected on promises to rescue Argentina from persistent inflation and political deadlock, Milei has inherited one of the country's worst financial crises in modern history. His “shock therapy” strategy—rapid austerity, deregulation, and pursuit of dollarization—aims to fix decades of fiscal mismanagement. But as the midterm elections approach, Milei faces a tough choice: without widespread political support, even the clearest stabilization plan may fail. Milei’s problem is not with ideas but with governability. His coalition, La Libertad Avanza, holds only a minority in both chambers of Congress. Although he has some alliances with center-right groups, he still needs to negotiate with a hostile Peronist opposition that has blocked or eve...
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The End of Empathy and Venezuelan Immigrants: Takeaways from a Survey of Venezuelans in Florida Eduardo A Gamarra Hannah Arendt's reflections on empathy caution against a society's decline into barbarism when compassion yields to division and intolerance. This erosion of empathy is vividly illustrated by a recent survey of Venezuelans in Florida, which reveals significant internal divisions within the Venezuelan-American community itself. Historically, immigrant communities in the United States have often demonstrated solidarity, empathy, and mutual support. However, this survey reveals a troubling trend where empathy diminishes as immigrant communities become more established. Venezuelans who arrived earlier and secured citizenship or permanent residency show starkly different attitudes compared to recent arrivals, particularly those depending on temporary protections such as TPS or humanitarian parole. The survey conducted by the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida Inter...
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The End of Empathy in American Political Culture? Eduardo A Gamarra Hannah Arendt's critical reflections on compassion and empathy highlight a profound transformation in American political culture. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt characterizes compassion as a complex phenomenon that paradoxically "opens the heart of the sufferer to the suffering of others," but also risks depoliticizing and homogenizing experiences by "closing the sense of uniqueness in the sufferer." This nuanced understanding of empathy offers a powerful framework for examining the contemporary decline of empathy in American civic life. Historically, American political culture has embraced civic participation, collective welfare, and an empathetic approach toward social and economic inequalities, as articulated by Sidney Verba in his notion of Civic Culture. The New Deal consensus and the civil rights ideals of the Great Society era embodied structured and institutionalized empat...