Donald Trump on January 6, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE Wall Street Journal has delivered its share of idiocies over the past few years, but its response to the capture of Nicolás Maduro has set a new standard. Calling the military intervention “justified” because Venezuela had allied with “Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran,” the board then declared triumphantly that “Mr. Trump is pursuing the Bush freedom agenda, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Are we all neocons now?”
Also living in a dream world is Sen. John Fetterman, who told Fox News that “We all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here.” Fetterman then offered a benediction, saying that he just wanted to “remind everybody that America is a force of good order and democracy, and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys.”
That’s delusional, and I say that as someone who believed in humanitarian interventions abroad, who supported the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the bombing of Serbia, and the invasion of Grenada. American power has been used for bad ends at times (the Mexican War was unadulterated aggression), but it’s hard to think of a country that has more often extended itself for good purposes around the globe. We had losses and failures—South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya—but tens of millions of people in places like Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Bosnia, and, yes, Iraq owe their freedom and prosperity to American arms. Hundreds of millions more live free from oppression only because the United States armed them against aggressors or threatened to use force if they were attacked. Damn right we were the good guys! As Colin Powell put it in 2003: “We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in.”
To imagine that Trump is doing anything remotely like those interventions in Venezuela is risible. “Good order and democracy”? At his strutting press conference, Trump mentioned the country’s oil more than twenty times and democracy not at all. Asked later whether the United States would encourage elections, Trump dismissed the idea: “We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote.” Would a “freedom agenda” president beat his chest and roar that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again”?
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That press conference was not about democracy or human rights or even capitalism. It was about straight up plunder undergirded by threats. The country’s oil, Trump announced, would be pumped by American oil companies for American oil companies—not even for American taxpayers. The welfare of Venezuelans is, at best, an afterthought, if that. Trump’s eyes sparkle at the prospect of looting another country’s natural resources. His lone complaint about the first Gulf War was that we failed to “take the oil.” He has shaken down Ukraine for its rare earth minerals, and he is casting lascivious glances Greenland’s way. But sure, it’s a freedom agenda.
Venezuela was—and is—worthy of rescue. Once the wealthiest nation in South America, and among the wealthiest in the world, populist leftist governments under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have reduced it to a basket case in which 91 percent live in poverty (67 percent in extreme poverty) and a quarter of the population has fled. Chávez came to power promising to share the nation’s oil wealth with the poor and middle class, but instead delivered poverty to nearly everyone. And not just poverty, but corruption, crime, repression, and torture.
In the past, when the United States has toppled dictators, it has sought plausible leaders from among the democratic opposition, and sometimes settled for less than inspiring choices like Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki. But as Larry Diamond noted, “Despite the viciousness of the Venezuelan regime, the country’s political opposition has repeatedly mobilized, against daunting odds, for a peaceful transition to democracy.” Not only is the Venezuelan opposition unusually united and organized; not only does it have a legitimate president in Edmundo Gonzàlez; but it has a clear leader in María Corina Machado, who happens to be a global heroine and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
As Machado recounted in her Nobel acceptance speech, the opposition was particularly inspired in 2024:
600,000 volunteers across 30,000 polling stations; apps to scan QR codes, digital platforms, diaspora call centers. We deployed scanners, Starlink antennas, and laptops hidden inside fruit trucks to the furthest corners of Venezuela. Technology became a tool for freedom.
Secret training sessions were held at dawn in church backrooms, kitchens, and basements, using printed materials moved across Venezuela like contraband. . . .
And then the electoral tally sheets—the famous actas, the sacred proof of the people’s will—began to appear: first by phone, then WhatsApp, then photographed, then scanned, and finally carried by hand, by mule, even by canoe.
They arrived from everywhere, an eruption of truth, because thousands of citizens risked their freedom to protect them.
The opposition won that election with two-thirds of the vote, though Maduro refused to recognize his loss (sound familiar?) and held on to power. There is no need to search for plausible democratic leaders. They are right there, in plain sight, begging to reclaim their nation. But Trump has no interest in that. He dismissed Machado as unable to lead. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
How can the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others credit the idea that Trump is pursuing some sort of freedom agenda when he has rejected the clear democratic leader of the country and the winner of the last election, and instead chosen to work with Maduro’s Marxist vice president, Delcy Rodríguez?
Well, “work with” needs some clarification. He has chosen to designate a strongman (woman, in this case) whom he can push around. Rodríguez, he told reporters, is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” And if not? “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Maduro was kidnapped and imprisoned, so “bigger” than that fate would seem to be a death threat. Still think we’re the good guys, Sen. Fetterman?
And while we’re on the subject of virtue, Trump and his people don’t leave any doubt that they are in the business of intimidation and possible conquest. Marco Rubio warned other leaders not to “F around” lest they find out what a bad hombre the president is. There were direct, bald threats against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and of course, Greenland.
Trump has hardly bothered to offer a reason for his intervention in Venezuela, and when his team has come up with some, they don’t bear scrutiny. Was it drugs? That seems unlikely since Trump just issued a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug running. Was it communism? Not if Trump is content to leave the regime intact. Was it immigration? Not when the Trump camp is forgoing a clear chance to restore democratic stability in that country, which would reduce emigration.
The sheer pleasure of bullying seems to be the likeliest explanation, but here again, Trumpland is another planet. None of the reasons that Venezuela is truly guilty seem to interest Trump, but he’s obsessed with the fantasy that they somehow emptied their prisons and insane asylums and shipped the inmates to America.
Back in 1980, when Trump was just a novice charlatan, Fidel Castro did something like that during the Mariel Boatlift. Trump got that idea stuck in his brain and spews it about every country he dislikes. During the 2024 campaign, he falsely claimed that Venezuela’s crime rate had dropped because they dumped all of their criminals in the United States. It’s deranged.
The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.
I have mixed feelings about some of The Bulwark’s writers but they have correctly recognized the moment in a way which mainstream journalism largely has not.
The Wyoming Supreme Court knocked down two abortion restrictions Tuesday — one of which is the nation’s first targeted ban of abortion pills — finding that they violate the state constitution.
Specifically, the 4-1 majority found that the laws violated the constitution’s “right of health care access” provision: “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
Voters passed that amendment in 2012 to gird against real or imagined facets of the Affordable Care Act: the concern that patients wouldn’t be able to choose their own doctors, that “death panels” would deny coverage to older and disabled patients and that Wyoming would become part of a single-payer system. The Wyoming attorney general called it a “message” amendment to express “the state’s displeasure with the controversial federal Affordable Care Act.”
On Tuesday, that anti-Obamacare amendment saved abortion care in the state.
Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden wrote for the majority that the amendment requires the anti-abortion laws to survive strict scrutiny — they must be as narrowly tailored as possible to serve a legitimate state interest. The state hardly tried to show that the bans were narrowly tailored, she wrote, instead arguing that abortion isn’t health care, that getting an abortion isn’t a woman’s own medical decision and that the laws shouldn’t be subject to strict scrutiny. The majority disagreed on all counts.
Boomgaarden was particularly dismissive of Wyoming’s argument that the laws would actually protect women, a common anti-abortion refrain.
“The state claimed the provisions served the compelling state interest of protecting women’s health, but it did not present evidence showing the restrictions actually protected women’s health when an abortion was necessary to save a woman’s life,” she wrote. “Instead, the laws unnecessarily burdened women’s rights to obtain timely life-saving abortions.”
That’s particularly true in the case of pregnant women with mental illnesses, which the bans would not have exempted. She wrote that the laws “could place a woman with a diagnosed mental health condition in mortal peril by not allowing her to exercise her fundamental right to make her own health care decision to have an abortion.”
Justice John Fenn wrote a concurrence, siding with the majority’s findings but breaking with its decision to review the laws under strict scrutiny. Justice Kari Jo Gray dissented.
Tuesday’s is the latest episode in a common storyline since Dobbs: red state constitutions thwarting abortion restrictions passed by their largely Republican legislatures. The Kansas Supreme Court has knocked down abortion restrictions repeatedly, finding them in violation of the constitution’s guarantee of personal autonomy.
Some states, including Montana and Missouri, shored up that constitutional safeguard after Dobbs, passing amendments that explicitly guarantee the right to abortion.
Wyoming’s constitutional amendment, while passed as a rebuke to a Democratic president’s signature legislation, has inadvertently become a similarly effective shield against abortion restrictions in the state.
A private development company is investing $150 million in an ambitious plan to harvest groundwater beneath sprawling northern Colorado ranches to serve fast-growing towns along the Interstate 25 corridor.
FrontRange H2O, backed by a Texas oil and real estate company, is behind the venture. The firm has been operating in Colorado for more than 20 years, treating and delivering wastewater from oil wells for industry reuse on the Western Slope, and overseeing extensive real estate holdings in Denver and elsewhere, according to Brent Waller, who is president of the Loveland-based company.
This Fresh Water News story is a collaboration between The Colorado Sun and Water Education Colorado. It also appears at wateredco.org.
“We were recycling produced water before it was cool,” Waller said. Produced water describes wastewater that is generated through oil production.
Experts say the large-scale, private urban water development is the first of its kind in Colorado and could help thirsty towns like Fort Collins and Loveland shore up their water systems.
But others worry that the privatization of water in the state could lead to price hikes and might also deplete aquifers that are critical to the state’s future water security.
Still, FrontRange H2O believes its system will deliver water at less cost and sooner than other government-backed projects.
Brent N. Waller, president of FrontRange H2O, holds a diagram near the proposed location of the Vita H2O Project’s water treatment plant Oct. 7 in Weld County. (Tanya Fabian, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Pressure to tap underground aquifers is rising
Until now, Colorado communities have relied on water that is captured, stored and treated by public, nonprofit water utilities, such as Denver Water. The agency is an independent entity governed by commissioners who are appointed by the Denver mayor. In other cases, cities operate their own water systems. Public entities such as these are required by law to regulate water rates, to issue bonds to finance their work, and they are subject to oversight by elected or appointed bodies.
But FrontRange H2O is a private company that is using millions of dollars in private financing to secure the water rights, obtain state permission to drill the groundwater wells and to build a water treatment system and pipeline to carry the water. Although it must obtain state permission to drill the wells and build the water treatment plant, it is not subject to the same public oversight as a public government system would be.
“This kind of thing is common in Texas and Arizona, particularly with groundwater, but it is unique in Colorado,” said Adam Jokerst, Rocky Mountain regional director for WestWater Research, based in Fort Collins. Jokerst is a groundwater expert who has consulted with Front Range H2O on its northern Colorado plans.
Stainless steel well screens for ground water wells are stacked on the site of the Vita H2O project. (Tanya Fabian, Special to The Colorado Sun)
FrontRange H2O refers to its current project as VitaH2O. Nine wells drilled into the aquifer are expected to generate up to 5,000 acre-feet of water initially, Waller said. It will be treated at a new plant north of Nunn and then delivered down to Cobb Lake, a reservoir owned by the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water, enough to serve two to four urban households a year.
The district was in the news earlier this year when it opted out of a large-scale water and reservoir project run by Northern Water known as NISP, the Northern Integrated Supply Project. It will instead partner with VitaH2O.
As the project moves forward, Waller said the Fort Collins-Loveland district will contribute an additional $150 million to help complete the new water supply project. Chris Pletcher, general manager of the district, declined an interview request. The water district was NISP’s largest customer and was on track to pay $400 million to help build the giant system.
Most water consumed in Colorado derives from melting snows that fill its streams and rivers, but large swaths of the state, including Douglas County, rely heavily on wells drilled deep into aquifers, many of which are not recharged through rain and snow.
As the state grows, the pressure to tap these nonrenewable waters is growing as well.
The development is occurring in the northern end of the Denver Basin near the Wyoming border, tapping an area included in the Laramie-Fox Hills formation.
According to the Colorado Division of Water Resources, interest in drilling high-producing groundwater wells in northern Colorado is growing.
“There has been more activity in this area in the last 10 years,” said Tracy Kosloff, deputy state engineer at Colorado’s Division of Water Resources.
Major players in the area include Front Range H2O and the city of Greeley, among others.
Some cities are already trying to wean from nonrenewable groundwater
The interest in nonrenewable groundwater worries people like Steve Boand, a former Douglas County commissioner and water consultant who has watched his region’s nonrenewable groundwater supplies shrink as they are used by fast-growing towns like Parker and Castle Rock.
Any project that relies on nonrenewable groundwater is problematic, Boand said.
“In general, sustainable water supplies are the preferred source,” Boand said, noting that Douglas County water providers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to recycle water and tap rivers and streams to wean themselves off nonrenewable groundwater. Their hope is, eventually, to use their aquifers only in drought years when surface supplies are scarce.
And that is part of the plan with VitaH2O, Waller said. The project will use surface supplies that the Fort Collins-Loveland district already owns to recharge the aquifers they plan to withdraw water from, in hopes that the treated water being pumped back into the ground in wet years will extend the life of the nonrenewable aquifers.
Under Colorado water law, groundwater can be drilled by whomever owns the land above the aquifer, but they must demonstrate that they are extracting water gradually and must prove it will last at least 100 years.
Waller said he believes the surface water that VitaH2O will inject back into the aquifers in wet years will extend the life of the system beyond 100 years, to 300 years or more.
Just east of Waller’s development, the city of Greeley has already invested $85 million in developing an aquifer system under the Terry Ranch that will supply water in drought years and will also store treated water, according to Sean Chambers, Greeley’s director of water and sewer utilities.
“What you are seeing now is a new approach to diversifying surface water supplies with this deep aquifer, nonrenewable groundwater … and there is a rush on that,” Chambers said.
Looming in the background is Northern Water’s NISP project. It was originally designed to serve 15 entities, but three have already pulled out, including the largest, the Fort Collins-Loveland district. Waller said he is in talks with several other communities, including Wellington and Eaton, who are looking for an alternative to the costly $2.7 billion NISP, which will rely on renewable water supplies from the Poudre and South Platte rivers.
Brad Wind, general manager of Northern Water, said NISP’s growing cost is prompting long-time supporters to rethink their participation and that some will inevitably go with other providers, such as VitaH2O.
“People have some hard choices to make,” Wind said.
FrontRange H2O president Brent Waller points to a map of his proposed wells, water treatment plant and pipeline. (Tanya Fabian, Special to The Colorado Sun)
How much water is available to be drawn from these aquifers isn’t clear yet, though developers such as Waller and Greeley have invested heavily in doing the hydrological analysis that gives them an estimate of what is available.
But overuse is a major concern and Chambers says that is a key issue Greeley is addressing as it develops its system.
“Collectively we will have to find ways over time to make sure that northern Colorado and other communities that rely on this water don’t just mine it to extinction. … Greeley goes into this effort with our eyes very wide open about that,” Chambers said.
“This is a resource that should last for 10 generations or longer and provide a runway for public officials to figure out how to build resilience into all of our sources of supply,” he said.
A handful of Colorado communities, such as Highlands Ranch, are already doing aquifer recharge. But Boand isn’t convinced that the recharge technologies and state rules designed to make the water last longer are going to be enough to protect the aquifers.
“Recharge has been somewhat successful, but everybody has talked about it as if it is the great salvation, even though it is very much in the testing phase,” Boand said. “And it takes the same attention to detail that running a nuclear power plant takes … lots of engineers and lots of scientists.”
Another concern with having a private company develop a major public water supply is the stability of the company and the water system if the company should fail.
Waller says his company’s contracts provide protection for that possibility.
“If we go belly up, five years or 10 years down the road, the water districts and participants have the right to step in and take over the system. There are controls in place,” Waller said. They expect to deliver water in the first quarter of 2029.
As with most new water projects, developers go through a special court review where they must prove their water estimates are accurate and that their water use won’t harm others. Waller said his company’s water court application was filed in October.
And it is being closely watched.
Chambers, with the city of Greeley, is concerned that the VitaH2O project may impact the Terry Ranch wells, which are nearby. How the new project may impact existing wells and the overall health of the aquifer isn’t clear yet. But Chambers said he expects to fight to defend Greeley’s water rights and will object to anything he sees as threatening.
“We intend to be an objector in the water court process to protect our decree and our investments,” he said.
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