Trump Is Launching a Hostile Takeover of Puerto RicoOn Monday, August 4, President Donald Trump dismissed five of the seven members of the Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), the entity that, for all intents and purposes, governs Puerto Rico. The move likely signals the start of a Trumpian takeover of the island that will only intensify austerity, poverty, and the multifaceted crises afflicting the oldest colony in the world. No one should shed a tear for members of the board — or La Junta, as Puerto Ricans not-so-lovingly call it. The FOMB was created by federal law (PROMESA, signed by President Barack Obama in 2016) to address Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and oversee its debt restructuring process. It was given near-unlimited power by Congress to set Puerto Rico’s budget, veto local laws, and overrule the elected governor. For the past decade, the board has used that authority to implement a draconian austerity regime in Puerto Rico. It has slashed pensions, cut funding for public education, and pushed for privatization of the island’s electrical grid to companies that charge Puerto Ricans more money for a poorer service. While Puerto Ricans feel the pain, bondholders swim in profits. The board’s members, and its army of lawyers and consultants, are handsomely paid as well. Executive director Robert Mujica Jr, who was Andrew Cuomo’s former budget chief in New York, makes $625,000 a year — more than the president of the United States. As of 2022, McKinsey had raked in $120 million for consulting on the island’s debt restructuring. By now, that figure is surely higher. The Trump administration has cited the board’s profligacy and excess as cause for the five members’ dismissal, but that’s a cheap misdirection. First, because while the FOMB was created by Congress and its members are appointed by the president, all salaries and fees are paid for by Puerto Rico’s government. Few reasonable people will believe that the Trump administration is particularly concerned about the well-being of Puerto Ricans. Second, because the five members of the board dismissed by Trump were all appointed by Democrats. The two remaining members of the FOMB, John Nixon and Andrew Biggs, are Republicans.
https://jacobin.com/2025/08/puerto-rico-trump-takeover-fombTrump Is Sending Thousands of Troops to Latin America, but the Escalation Is About Far More than a “War on Drugs”The Department of Defense has ordered the deployment of air and naval forces to the southern Caribbean Sea. On August 15, CNN reported that Trump is deploying 4,000 U.S. sailors and Marines to Latin America, and that various military assets are being allocated to the U.S. Southern Command including a nuclear-powered attack submarine, several destroyers, and a guided missile cruiser. This operation comes after Donald Trump secretly signed an order last week directing the Pentagon to use the armed forces in the supposed “fight against drug cartels” in countries where groups declared “terrorist” exist, such as in Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, and Venezuela. The operation was confirmed by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio. This opens the door to armed interventions — seen in the case of Haiti — and once again places Venezuela at the center of accusations — and military aggression or coup threats. We are witnessing a major demonstration of military force, where behind the policy of supposedly combating drug trafficking lies the advance of imperialism as a regional police force. Since Trump returned to office he has increasingly pursued an aggressive policy toward Latin America, a region which is at the center of the growing U.S.-China rivalry. These recent military escalations are part of a larger strategy which seeks to revive the imperialist Monroe Doctrine as a way to curb China’s growing influence in Latin American markets and geopolitics. The military escalations come as Trump has also escalated economic threats against a variety of Latin American countries that have not fully assented to his plans to subordinate the region to the United States. These threats include an unprecedented feud with Brazil and cartoonishly delusional threats of regime change in Venezuela.
https://www.leftvoice.org/trump-is-sending-thousands-of-troops-to-latin-america-but-the-escalation-is-about-far-more-than-a-war-on-drugs/ Boris Kagarlitsky: From US hegemony to a ‘war of all against all’: Boris Kagarlitsky on Trump’s first 100 daysAfter his first 100 days in office, Trump registered the lowest presidential approval rating in US history since such measurements began. The number of dissatisfied citizens surged, while voter support dwindled. But the president and his inner circle remained undeterred, insisting that the US people would eventually recognise the accomplishments of his administration. To many observers, the situation appeared to be a triumph of arrogance and incompetence. Yet, even if one accepts such assessments, a fundamental question arises. How did such incompetent people come to lead the world’s greatest power?
In reality, it was Trump’s opponents who paved his way to power. For at least a decade and a half, starting with the 2008–10 economic crisis, when the flaws of neoliberal capitalism became fully exposed, US ruling circles (and to some extent Europe’s as well) invested enormous effort in preventing the emergence of any constructive alternative to the existing system. All political forces, particularly those on the left that were pushing for overdue and necessary reforms, were systematically marginalised or else corrupted and co-opted in exchange for abandoning any serious struggle for power. One must admit that Bernie Sanders3 and his supporters in the US resigned themselves to this situation and essentially started playing to lose, as if engaged in a game where defeat was the condition for participation. As a result, the only remaining alternative consisted of irresponsible, incompetent and uncooperative figures characterised as “loudmouths who could never actually come to power.” At first, this was so obvious that no one took their shouting seriously. Even Trump’s first presidency between 2016-20 failed to teach the establishment any lessons. What happened was not viewed as a systemic threat but a random glitch, one successfully corrected without serious consequences.4 After all, in 2020, Trump lost the election and left the White House, having fulfilled virtually none of his promises. Meanwhile, the situation continued to evolve, and not in the establishment’s favour. Regardless of what TV commentators, experts, intellectuals and political consultants had to say, the system’s internal contradictions revealed themselves, and unresolved problems kept accumulating, laying the groundwork for a new crisis, this time a political one. Problems piled up, but no one solved them. Hence, a new political crisis.
In 2024, the Democrats lost the election not because Trump’s ideas had become more convincing, but because the liberal establishment had worn out even its own supporters. At the last moment, realising the threat, the establishment tried to mobilise voters by scaring them with the horrors that would follow a Trump victory. But by then, the public’s disgust and contempt for the old political class, combined with the demoralisation of the moderate middle, had outweighed even the fear of a Trumpist experiment. The voters who could have stopped Trump simply did not show up. Some even voted Republican out of spite — after all, with Trump, at least things would be entertaining. And the fun began.
https://links.org.au/us-hegemony-war-all-against-all-boris-kagarlitsky-trumps-first-100-days