CovertAction Bulletin

Lessons From Iraq to Stop a War Against Iran

Is the U.S. government preparing to go to war with Iran? Leading up to talks set to happen towards the end of the week in Geneva, the Trump administration has also threatened Iran with war, saying the country has “10 to 15 days” as of February 20th to agree to a deal - putting Trump’s one-sided deadline somewhere in the first week of March.

In apparent preparation for military strikes, massive amounts of military equipment have been sent to the region, including dispatching the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the Arabian Sea near the Persian Gulf. At least 120 aircraft, including F-35 stealth strike fighters and F/A 18-E Super Hornets, have been sent to the region with the Ford, in addition to E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) used for command & control operations as well as surveillance. The Ford will be joining the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is already off the coast of Oman.

As we come up on the 23rd anniversary of the 2003 US war on Iraq as well as the 15th anniversary of the US-led NATO invasion of Libya, we’ll look back at what led up to them, the lessons learned from the anti-war movement of the period, and how we can stop the next war:

• Stand for self-determination and against imperialist aggression
• The primary responsibility of those in the US is to oppose their government’s actions
• Don’t fall into the trap of tailing the Democrats, the graveyard of social movements.

ICE Expands the Surveillance State

While border czar Tom Homan announced last week that the surge of federal agents in Minnesota could be winding down, he signaled that other cities could be next. “I’m hoping other sanctuary cities look at what happened,” he said, threatening cities that have various levels of protection for undocumented residents.

It’s unclear where ICE’s next moves might be, but they have also been ramping up their surveillance online. The Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to social media companies like Discord, Reddit, Google and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, trying to identify users who have posted about them over the last few months. The subpoenas request identifying information about users who may be using pseudonyms online - things like real names, phone numbers, email addresses and more. Because they are administrative and not judicial warrants, the companies aren’t generally required to blindly comply with the majority of these requests - but recent reporting shows that the social media giants seem to be more than happy to hand over data on their users who are engaging in protected free speech behavior.

While trying to unmask anonymous online users, DHS is also now enabling agents to engage in what it calls “masked engagement” - creating fake accounts and identities and using sophisticated tools to keep them straight and prevent them from being caught up in spam or fraud filters. Beyond simply viewing what’s publicly available online, agents are now able to directly connect with users on platforms by friending or liking them, giving them access to information that might not be shared with the public.

We also discuss the upcoming Senate vote on the SAVE Act, a major threat to the basic right to vote in the United States.

U.S. Hands Off the Caribbean: Let Cuba Live!

The situation in Cuba is dire as the Trump administration ramps up its campaign to destabilize the country and destroy its revolution. The island has not been able to import a single drop of oil all year, according to President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Tanker ships headed to Cuba from Venezuela were intercepted and seized by the U.S. military, which has been significantly building up its naval presence in the region with a blockade of both countries.

A January executive order targets the countries that supply Cuba with the majority of its oil - including Russia, Mexico and Venezuela - with significant tariffs. This would be an expansion of the sanctions regime that has tried and failed to cut off the island from the rest of the world for decades.

Without the ability to receive oil for energy, Cuban infrastructure faces a massive crisis. It produces 40% of the energy it needs and imports the rest. Without the ability to import oil, services as basic as hospitals and even water sanitation could be threatened.

These moves by the U.S. are certainly part of the so-called Donroe Doctrine of Donald Trump, but are also an extension of over 60 years of attempted regime change against the socialist nation that’s been able to provide much for its people and the world while struggling against imperialism just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Sign the Call to Conscience open letter at LetCubaLive.info

Get your ticket for our webinar Cuba & Venezuela in Crisis on February 24th at CovertActionMagazine.com

Power, Accountability and Justice: From Minneapolis to Epstein

As we reported last week, well over 100,000 people shut down Minneapolis on January 23rd in response to the terror of ICE and CBP agents. The next Friday, in response to a call that originated with the Somali Student Association at the University of Minnesota, businesses across the country shut down and people went to the streets in hundreds of cities, continuing the protest movement nationwide. 

Even the Trump administration has been forced to make moves in response, replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Hohman on the ground in Minnesota and with Kristi Noem making the weak promise that DHS officers starting in Minneapolis and then nationwide will get bodycams when funding is available. After the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were caught on multiple cameras, the suggestion that bodycams will solve ICE brutality isn’t fooling anyone. Half-measures and anything short of getting rid of ICE simply won’t cut it. On their website nationalshutdown.org, organizers promise that “this was just the beginning” and demand “ICE out of everywhere.”

And, we get into what the release of even more Epstein files really means. With so many rich, famous and influential figures named, what will it take to really get justice for their victims?

Minneapolis Shows the Way

Rachel was in Minneapolis last week where over 100,000 people took to the streets and reports on the mass action that happened Friday, shutting down businesses, schools and the city in response to the Trump administration’s deployment of ICE to Minneapolis and the brutal killing of Renee Nicole Good earlier this month. The next day, CBP agents killed Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, while he was pinned to the ground, firing 10 rounds in less than 5 seconds. Again the people of Minneapolis and beyond have risen up, with multiple mobilizations taking place over the weekend despite continued freezing cold temperatures. And a call for no business as usual on a national scale has come out of Minneapolis for this Friday, January 30th. High school students are preparing walkouts, and people all over the country are getting ready to shut it down for justice.

The ruling class is responding frantically to quell the mass sentiment. An open letter from dozens of Minnesota-based corporations like Target, 3M, Hormel and more calls for “an immediate deescalation of tensions.” The Trump administration has had calls they call productive with Democratic officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota governments. And Gregory Bovino, the “Commander-At-Large” of US Border Patrol, seems to be set to go back to California and slowly make his way to retirement. Even with rumored departures of some ICE and CBP forces from Minneapolis, these small changes and concessions are proving to not be enough for the masses of people.

Stop ICE Terror: Minneapolis Calls De Facto General Strike

Mass protests have taken place across the country after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, executing her in her car as she tried to drive away. The shooting has ignited an extraordinary wave of resistance. In the Twin Cities and beyond, students walked out of school on Monday in protest, refusing to sit in silence while federal immigration officers operate with impunity in their cities and refusing to accept state violence in their neighborhoods as normal.

People across the United States have taken to the streets demanding accountability and justice, that ICE agent Jonathan Ross be arrested and charged and that ICE terror be stopped immediately. As we’ve seen in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, this mass resistance has the power to effect great change. In response, Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed a “day of reckoning & retribution is coming” to Minnesota. Unions, faith groups, community organizations and more in Minnesota have called for a “day of truth and freedom” on Friday, January 23rd, asking people to refuse to work, to shop and to go to school - effectively calling for a general strike. “We are going to prove that people care for each other. That people love on one another. That community stands with and for each other,” said JaNaé Bates Imari, Auxiliary Minister of St. Paul's Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church. She went on, “Freedom is not just the freedom from constraints. It is the freedom to have safety, it is the freedom to have joy, it is the freedom to be able to thrive.”

ICE isn’t just going door-to-door terrorizing communities. It’s spying on entire neighborhoods and cities. Its operations are powered by data from multiple government sources including the IRS, Medicaid, the TSA as well as commercial location data, and the agency has contracted with surveillance company Palantir to build the so-called ImmigrationOS to target and prioritize immigration raids. Palantir has secured more than $900 million in federal contracts under the Trump administration.

Kidnapping Maduro is Gangster Imperialism

At his first court appearance in New York along with his wife Cilia Flores, Nicolás Maduro told the judge, “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.” He declared himself a prisoner of war and a political prisoner, and along with Flores pleaded not guilty to all of the ridiculous counts of narcoterrorism and gun charges against him. Outside the court on January 5th, supporters rallied and chanted, “no boots on the ground, no bombs in the air, U.S. out of everywhere.”

The attack on Venezuela that killed at least 80 people, the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores and the threats against Colombia, Mexico and Cuba are the implementation of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, laid out in the 2025 National Security Strategy. As the State Department simply and grotesquely put it in an X post, “This is our hemisphere” is the renewed focus of the U.S. empire.

It’s a very dynamic situation that calls for urgent action. Within hours of the news of the attack on Saturday, tens of thousands of people in over 100 cities in the United States took to the streets to condemn it and the further threats made by Trump and his administration. Many more in Venezuela and around the world have mobilized against this raw act of gangster imperialism.

This is a war on multiple fronts: military, economic, political and information - and disinformation intended to sow distrust and chaos has been spreading wildly.

PLUS: We bring you an interview with Jessica Plichta, who was arrested by Grand Rapids Police Department for speaking out against U.S. intervention in Venezuela.

Read the article we mentioned in Peoples Dispatch: Venezuela’s Revolution still stands: debunking Trump’s psyop

Read more coverage in CovertAction Magazine:
CIA Played Instrumental Role in Maduro Kidnapping
On The Ground in Caracas: Venezuelans Rally to Support Government in Face of Illegal Kidnapping of President

2025 In Review: Fighting Back Against Trump & the Right-Wing Agenda

As 2025 comes to an end and we enter a new year, we’re looking back on the past 12 months that sometimes feel like a never-ending cycle of bad news.

The year began with Trump’s inauguration,kicking off massive protests in cities and towns across the country that have continued throughout the year, spawning the No Kings movement as well as other national and local resistance. Instead of quietly letting the Trump administration implement Project 2025 and worse, peoples’ movements have taken action to defend education, workers’ rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights and more. 

It’s also been a year of fightback against war and imperialism. As Trump has had meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the last weekend of 2025, the U.S. is ramping up its attacks on Venezuela, including a possible CIA-run drone bombing earlier in December of a port facility. Even with a ceasefire agreement in place, Israel continues to bomb and displace Palestinians, and the solidarity movement continues to organize for an end to U.S. support for Israel and its genocide, connecting Palestine with Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen, Syria and the many other countries the U.S. has bombed this year.

Going into 2026, we’re not just reviewing what happened over the last year but looking at the lessons that movements need to learn for another year of oppression - and struggle.

Capitalism is the Real AI Slop

To protect the huge profits of unregulated AI companies, the Trump administration is trying to bring back a punishment that was stripped from this year’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. In a December 11th Executive Order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” individual states will lose access to the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program if they establish their own regulations around the use and development of Artificial Intelligence in many circumstances. BEAD provides $42.45 billion in federal grants to U.S. states and territories to build and enable access to critical high-speed Internet connections that many people still lack.

A national set of policy and legislation for artificial intelligence would make much more sense than dozens of competing policies at the state level, but such a development doesn’t seem likely. The Executive Order also makes it clear that “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance the United States’ global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI” and, harkening back to the Cold War and the race to space, lays out that the United States must win “the AI race.”

Trillions of dollars are being spent in the AI economy from NVIDIA’s advanced chips to massive datacenters, the salaries of engineers who build and train new models, and AI services being forced into seemingly every product we consume. But the huge expenditures of tech and AI giants are making investors nervous about an impending bursting of the AI bubble. OpenAI alone is going to spend $1.4 trillion in the next 8 years on AI infrastructure for the government, a move that could be seen as the government bailing out a giant company yet again.

NYT Shows Its Imperialist Hand

A recent op-ed by the New York Times Editorial Board calls for the U.S. military to reinvent itself and rearm itself in new ways in the face of the Western capitalist order losing its hegemony to rising powers across the world. The very idea of returning to a multipolar arrangement without the United States at the forefront terrifies the ruling class - including those elements who are at odds with the Trump administration on specific policies, tactics or details of how things are implemented.

The Times piece reinforces the newspaper’s long role as a mouthpiece for the capitalist class and for imperialism. The op-ed isn’t aimed at the average American, though it contains plenty of fearmongering about supposed threats from its favorite boogeymen China and Russia. It’s really aimed at restoring some sense of unity with those isolationist, so-called “America First” sectors. As the neoliberal order continues its collapse, the language - and urgency - actually help expose the mislogic of imperialism itself.