Outside the Beltway

Could Venezuelans in Houston be forced home after U.S. declares regime change? Here’s what to know.

Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 07:30

As I said yesterday.

Houston immigration attorneys said Venezuelans with valid asylum claims could see their cases dismissed amid assertions the South American country has been liberated following the ouster of former president Nicolás Maduro.

The attorneys argue the Trump administration should reinstate Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans until the future of the country becomes clearer, and while officials aligned with the Maduro regime still cling to power. (Fat chance)

Despite that turmoil, the attorneys say they worry that the U.S. removal of Maduro could lead immigration judges to rule that country safe enough for asylum seekers to return.

“If they have a claim for asylum, well, now all of those are going to fall off the grid because there’s no longer Maduro,” said Houston immigration lawyer Raed Gonzalez. “So, if the regime is completely changed, then they have no fear of returning.”

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Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 07:47

@Scott:

Long NYT Magazine article on Ukraine’s AI drone project Gift link

Key points: While humans maintain nominal control of the drone, once it arrives at its target, the drone acts autonomously, the drone no longer needs GPS to navigate and the Ukraine is close to widely deploying integrated drone swarms.

And the felon wants to build battleships.

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Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 07:51

Fifth anniversary of Jan 6th aka Treason Day.

A refresher history lesson from Heather Cox Richardson.

Letters from an American

Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, more than 2,000 rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the process of counting the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president of the United States. They tried to hunt down House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and chanted their intention to “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president. They fantasized that they were following in the footsteps of the American Founders, about to start a new nation. Newly elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6 she wrote: “Today is 1776.”

In fact, it was not 1776 but 1861, the year insurrectionists who had tried to overthrow the government in order to establish minority rule tried to break the U.S. The rioters wanted to take away the right at the center of American democracy—our right to determine our own destiny—in order to keep Donald J. Trump in the White House, making sure the power of elite white men could not be challenged. It was no accident that the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag.

Read the whole article.

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Why Houston’s refineries could be the biggest winners in Venezuela’s new oil industry

charontwo says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:08

@Scott:

It was no accident that the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag.

Some of them. Also seen, the pine tree “An Appeal to Heaven” flag, symbol of Mike Johnson’s New Apostolic Reformation/Seven Mountains Mandate movement.

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Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:10

As Michael Cain pointed out yesterday:

U.S. Special Forces captured and extradited Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Saturday in a move that President Donald Trump said was meant to usher American oil expertise and investment into the oil-rich South American nation.

But the real winners may be U.S. refiners along the Gulf of Mexico.

“If Venezuela turns into a bigger and more reliable source of supply, that can’t be anything but good for the refining complex,” said Dan Pickering, head of Houston investment firm Pickering Energy Partners.

The U.S. Gulf Coast houses the nation’s largest concentration of oil and gas refineries, accounting for thousands of jobs in the Houston area and responsible for processing crude for some of the global industry’s biggest hitters.

A number of those companies – including Chevron, Citgo, Exxon, Marathon, Phillips 66 and Valero – already operate refineries capable of processing the kind of heavy crude that comes from Venezuelan oil fields.

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charontwo says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:20

So, got around to reading the WaPo piece on Cuba, gift link:

“Gift”

Excerpts:

Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear over the weekend that the collapse of Cuba’s communist government was not only a likely side benefit of Maduro’s ouster but a goal.

“I don’t think we need [to take] any action,” Trump said as he flew back to Washington from his extended Florida holiday break. Without Maduro and the oil supplies Venezuela provided, he said, “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.”

Rubio went further, indicating that the United States might be willing to give it a push. “I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. But, he added, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Their words resonated with many in the Miami-centered exile community, where the struggle to free Cuba from communist rule has dominated politics for decades. On Saturday, South Florida Cuban exiles — some wearing red Trump hats and Cuban flags as capes — joined hundreds of revelers at spirited, impromptu celebrations from Little Havana to Doral, a city nicknamed “Doralezuela” because of its large population of Venezuelans. Cuban American leaders, most of them Republican, issued statements as Venezuela coverage dominated local TV stations.

Ghouls:

Juan Gonzalez, who served as Western Hemisphere director on the Biden administration’s national security staff, said that “cutting off the oil deliveries is going to put a huge squeeze on the humanitarian situation” in Cuba, which is already suffering regular electricity blackouts and food scarcities. “But I don’t think the regime is going to cry uncle.”

…

At their peak of about 100,000 barrels a day, Venezuelan oil shipments allowed Cuba to serve its own energy needs and sell refined petroleum products overseas for desperately needed cash. But as Venezuela dealt with sharp drops in output, due to U.S. sanctions and mismanagement, shipments dropped to about 30,000 barrels last year.

Those cuts, along with Cuba’s aging refineries, failing infrastructure and the occasional hurricane, led to at least five island-wide blackouts last year.

“They have to realize they can’t depend on foreign help anymore,” Alzugaray said. Russia and Mexico have supplied some oil, although Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to come under increasing U.S. pressure to cut off aid to Havana. China, which holds major Cuban debt, has shown little interest in helping.

…

As for Cubans themselves, Alzugaray said, “I wouldn’t think that people are so desperate that they will welcome an American intervention or a group of Miami Cubans taking over. What people want is the Cuban government to change,” he said, “but in Cuban terms, not imposed by the outside.”

The Cubans who fled to Miami way back when were mostly prosperous types like Rubio’s family, apparently not overly sympathetic to the plight of the people left behind.

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“Don’t Hold Back”: Swearing Improves Strength Through State Disinhibition

Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:21

Swearing, often dismissed as socially inappropriate, has been linked to increased physical performance. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. One proposed explanation is state disinhibition, a psychological state in which individuals are less likely to
restrain their behavior.
…
Although mediation analyses varied across individual experiments, the aggregated analysis demonstrated that psychological flow, distraction, and self-confidence significantly mediated the swearing effect. These findings suggest that swearing promotes psychological states conducive to maximizing effort and overcoming internal constraints. These effects have potential implications for athletic performance, rehabilitation, and contexts requiring courage or assertiveness. As such, swearing may represent a low-cost, widely accessible psychological intervention to help individuals “not hold back” when peak performance is needed.

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https://x.com/Yellowbull11/status/2007505384429191617

charontwo says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:34

Here is a piece describing the Venezuela oil situation in great detail:

Given many of you all’s aversion to following Xitter links, I’ll paste in the text:

There has been lots of talk about the current situation in Venezuela and what it could mean for global oil markets, so I just wanted to provide some nuance on this

When people say “Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves,” as you undoubtedly have seen being thrown around a lot on here, they are technically referring to a specific accounting definition, not to a stock of easy, cheap barrels ready to flood the market. To unpack that, you need to get into what those reserves are, how they behave in the subsurface, what it costs to turn them into marketable liquids, and how price, technology, and above-ground risk interact.

That’s a lot to cover, but let’s give it my best shot. On paper, Venezuela has roughly 300–303 billion barrels of proved reserves, about 17 % of the global total and slightly more than Saudi Arabia. The critical detail is that around three quarters of that booked volume is extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt in eastern Venezuela. These are bitumen-like oils with API gravity typically in the 8–14° range, extremely viscous at reservoir conditions and with high sulfur and metals content. So the statement “largest reserves” is really “largest booked volumes of very challenging heavy and extra-heavy oil.”

Technically recoverable versus economically recoverable is the first big distinction. The USGS has long estimated that the Orinoco Belt contains on the order of 900–1,400 billion barrels of heavy crude in place, with perhaps 380–650 billion barrels technically recoverable using existing technology.

Venezuela and OPEC only book a subset of that as “proved,” but even those proved numbers are sensitive to the assumed oil price and development concept. When prices were strong in the 2005–2014 window, a large portion of Orinoco volumes became economic on paper and were reclassified as proved, driving the headline reserves from ~80 to ~300 billion barrels.

Geology and fluid properties are the second big differentiator. Orinoco crudes are extra-heavy, with densities up around 934–1,050 kg/m³, high asphaltene content and sulfur on the order of 3–4 wt% or more, depending on the block. This is a completely different animal from a 33–40° API, low-sulfur Arab Light-style crude. In plain English, that means it’s much harder to handle at various stages and each step adds capex, opex and energy use.

In other words, the “barrel in the ground” in Venezuela is inherently worth less and depends on a narrower set of buyers.

Surface systems and institutional capacity are another constraint. Before the 2000s, PDVSA had a reputation as a technically capable NOC. Since then, you have had a combination of mass layoffs and politicization, under-investment, sanctions, corruption and brain drain. The result is decayed gathering systems, chronic power shortages, refinery fires and upgrader downtime.

Finally, integration with global refining and logistics matters for strategic value. Venezuela’s crude slate is optimized for complex “coking” refineries in the US Gulf Coast, parts of Asia and a few European plants. That’s a story for another time though, because the length of this analysis is getting out of hand.

So when you hear that Venezuela has “the world’s largest oil reserves,” the technically accurate part is that the country has extremely large volumes of extra-heavy oil in place, and a big subset of that was once judged economically recoverable at high price assumptions and booked as proved. The more relevant questions for energy strategy are how many of those barrels are genuinely economic under realistic long-term prices, how quickly they can be brought onstream given infrastructure and institutional constraints, what netback they deliver at the refinery gate, and how exposed they are to being left in the ground if demand peaks. On those metrics, Venezuelan barrels sit much further out on the cost and risk curve than the headline “largest reserves” soundbite suggests. I hope this provided some good context.

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charontwo says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:42

The above Xitter analysis of Venezuela oil was linked to in an even more detailed description posted at Adam Tooze substack. Link:

“Adam Tooze”

Many charts at the link, here are a couple:

“Chart 1”

“Chart 2”

Note the growth in “proved” reserves over the years, the amount of oil in place in the Orinoco belt did not change, though.

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https://apnews.com/article/arizona-former-lawmaker-sentenced-petition-signatures-000b469e3aa411cffdaf645fb1dbc378?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share

Daryl says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 08:45

Appropriate on J6.

A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures in a bid to qualify for a 2024 primary election.

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Make childhood diseases great again.

Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 09:20

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Kingdaddy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 09:59

Reason #789,033,121 to hate unregulated AI: a copycat site full of AI generated content is making life hell for the staff of the CU Boulder student newspaper.

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Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 10:04

@charontwo:

Given oil is trading at low prices lately, and how much money is required to increase production in Venezuela, there’s little interest from most oil companies to get involved.

So El Taco is going the capitalist route, by offering US tax payer money to fund the whole thing.

I don’t even mean the above sarcastically. That has been the pattern in the US, and other nominally free market economies, for decades now: public investment and private gain.

Here’s a thought: why not make the techbro oligarchs finance the Venezuelan oil extraction project, rather than the tax payers? If it’s fair that your money be used so you can buy gasoline at a markup, why not take money from people who have a surplus of it instead?

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Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 10:10

Just listened to the NYT The Daily on my morning dogs walk.

Basically, the podcast discussed internal Venezuela politics, power centers, etc.

It clarified a lot for me. Venezuela is corrupt to the core. The wealthy are in control. And therefore, totally in line with Trump and his corruption.

None of this high-minded nonsense about freedom. That’s for the gullible US population.

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Jen says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 10:16

Random bits and bobs:

GOP lawmaker Doug LaMalfa dies at 65 – California seat, which makes the GOP hold in the House even more tenuous than it already was.

Whiskey Pete is doing what he can to force women out of the military.

And, worth a read – The Extraordinary Military Career of Mark Kelly. I’m at the stage where I really, really hope this man is our next President.

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Joe says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 10:20

@charontwo:

at least five island-wide blackouts last year [in Cuba].

Having spent most of a week there last March, I can report daily blackouts for parts of the country, including Havana, are routine. Everyone in the tourist industry owns a generator (which also runs of petroleum).

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Scott says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 10:40

@Jen: And with a twin brother we can have some version of The Prince and the Pauper, Dave, or Heinlein’s Double Star.

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Only 33% of Americans approve of US strike on Venezuela, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

DK says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 11:11

@Scott:

None of this high-minded nonsense about freedom. That’s for the gullible US population.

Maybe not so much on this.

Nobody voted in 2024 to replace a Venezuelan dictator with the dictator’s same people, so Trump’s billionaire cronies can force US taxpayers to build out another country’s fossil fuel infrastructure, for oil that’ll take 10+ years to reach the US market. As Republicans tell Americans we can’t afford affordable housing, subsidized healthcare, debt relief, clean energy, or Ukraine aid. All while the right kills jobs and depresses the economy with mass deportation and inflationary tariff taxes.

Dems use Venezuela to hammer affordability issues at home (Politico)

“Ohioans are facing higher costs across the board and are desperate for leadership that will help deliver relief,” former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running to reclaim his seat, said on X. “We should be more focused on improving the lives of Ohioans – not Caracas.”

…“The problem Trump was already having was that he looked like he was focused on everything other than what matters in people’s daily life,” said longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, a former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “And now he’s just supercharged that.”

Trump won in 2024 largely by running on affordability, and his less interventionist “America First” approach helped him win over more isolationist voters who had been alienated by the neoconservative approach of the Republican Party in the Iraq War era.

…In Michigan, where the war in Gaza drew clear fissures between Democratic opponents, all three candidates sang the same domestically-focused tune.

“Americans have made themselves crystal clear: they don’t want to risk sliding into another costly war abroad. Families are struggling to buy groceries. People are skipping doctor’s visits because they can’t pay for healthcare,” state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said in a statement.

“Make no mistake, this is about enriching his oil executive donors who want access to Venezuela’s oil — not about democracy or Maduro or narcotics. Meanwhile, they tell us we can’t afford healthcare at home,” Abdul El Sayed, the former head of the Wayne County Department of Health, wrote on X.

“Taking over another country while Americans can’t afford their rent and groceries is unacceptable,” said Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

…“As of this week, millions of Americans are now paying thousands more for health insurance,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday. “If the President and Congressional GOP think Washington has the capacity to ‘run’ Venezuela right now, why won’t they fix the insurance cost crisis they’ve created here at home?”

Much better than the take-the-bait “Transpobia is trans people’s fault! Wokeness — a concept invented by black youth — is bad because racists say so! Let’s pretend toxic masculinity doesn’t exist!” culture war claptrap preferred by our weakest and dumbest sellouts.

Europe is light years ahead of us on healthcare and debt-free education. China is lapping us on clean energy. We are the world’s richest nation, but the only Western developed country sending huge swaths of its population to prison, struggling to keep huge swaths of its population housed, and where gun violence is the #1 killer of its children. We don’t need or care about Venezuelan oil.

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Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 11:26

@Kathy:

Over the weekend I saw an estimate at Politico, the industry person estimated it will take 10 years and $100M to get Venezuela fields pumping at capacity. Of course Venezuelan oil is only worth about 75% of the cost of the average barrel of oil.

No the oil execs want nothing to do with that oil.

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Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 11:51

@Sleeping Dog:

I’ve read reports of several billions. $100 million over ten years is like pocket change to most big oil companies.

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Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 12:12

So, last Sunday I made chilaquiles with chicken, and bean soup for a starter.

To save time, I cooked the chicken breast with the beans in the instant pot. On the stove I caramelized onions and mixed the sauce. It was late, I was tired, and I took shortcuts. Among other things, I forgot to mix a cup of chicken broth with the sauce. I did, however, remember to save some sauce before mixing in the chicken and tortilla chips.

The end result was a thicker sauce, naturally, but also one the chips don’t absorb as much as usual. This means that saving some sauce to add to the chilaquiles before nuking them might have been superfluous.

I’ll experiment some more along these lines.

Later. next week is air fryer meatloaf with a side of kasha, probably something quick like fries on the side. Or, if I don’t work on the weekend, I may try spaghetti in garlic and oil sauce with roasted vegetables.

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JohnSF says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 12:50

Regarding Venezuela
It’s still a bit early to reach conclusions but as of now:
– US is not actually placing occupation forces in Venezuela
– it seems the Chavista regime is being left in power; there are currently reports of arrests of know opposition supporters
– Trump is (as ever) an unrelaible source of information

What remains to be seen is was there an actual deal with Rodríguez ahead of time, or is the intent just to squeeze economically with a de facto blockade and threats of “rinse and repeat Maduro” if Venezuela govt does not bow?

The other major question, is what exactly is the position of the Cubans in this, who are deeply entwined with the Chavista security operations, and also massively dependant on Venezuelan oil?
Are they part of any putative deal, or if not, might they attempt to place a pro-Havana faction in power, if they don’t get a concession on oil deliveries?

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Mr. Prosser says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:05

@Sleeping Dog: The oil companies will do it if we pay for it. From the Guardian: Trump suggests US taxpayers could reimburse oil firms for Venezuela investment.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/06/trump-us-taxpayers-oil-firms-venezuela-investment

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Mr. Prosser says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:12

@JohnSF: It’s going to get more complicated very soon. From the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/06/maria-corina-machado-vows-return-venezuela-rejects-rule-maduro-deputy-delcy-rodriguez

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Matt says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:25

@Sleeping Dog: $100m would be an absolute steal.

Over 10 years I would expect that cost to be in the 10s of billions pushing into a 100something billion once issues with the locals and such are fully accounted for.

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gVOR10 says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:42

To the confusion of our enemies. From the Guardian,

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is suing its own charitable arm, the NRA Foundation, claiming that its leaders are trying to seize control of the gun rights organization and illegally “repurposing” $160m in donations to support their “thirst for power”.

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Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:43

@Kathy:

typo on my part, I meant a $100B

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Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 13:47

@Mr. Prosser:

Who’ll vote for that appropriation?

@Matt:

typo, my bad, meant $100B

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Mr. Prosser says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 14:12

@Sleeping Dog: Hopefully it wouldn’t be approved but they’ed sure as hell try. Spread it out over ten years and hope no one pays attention.

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Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 14:45

@Mr. Prosser:

Given the likelihood that Dems will take control of the House next year, the chance of funding is slim. There are what 25-30 R’s in the House that are retiring, none of them would vote for that foolishness and anyone running for reelection doesn’t want that dumbell hung around their neck, so nothing will be appropriated this year.

The oil companies want nothing to do with this, I can’t resist, tarbaby. This is the felon’s wet dream and any sentient individual knows that the chances of the US government following that commitment through to completion is slim and none. If the next prez is a Dem, it will be shut down and even if it is an R it likely won’t continue. Hell if fatso keeled over this afternoon, my bet is Vance would walk away from the project. Right now he’s being a good Nazi.

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Trump May Have Accidentally Pardoned the Jan. 6 Pipe Bomber

Sleeping Dog says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 15:06

Saw this earlier

Yup, the admin model is the three stooges.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/05/elon-musk-grok-ai-digitally-undress-images-of-women-children

Gustopher says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 16:08

@Kingdaddy:

Reason #789,033,121 to hate unregulated AI

Does that number include Grok being used to generate CSAM? Or digitally undress women?

If executives were prosecuted for distributing CSAM, I think a bit of this AI problem would go away.

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Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 16:26

@Gustopher:

“We were promised super-human intelligence. All we got was hallucinations and child pornography.”

I’ve given up finding a serious use for LLMs by now. Past feeding it story bits to summarize, I’ve found nothing.

On the bright side, you may recall I mentioned the course we took at work on the new federal acquisitions law included advice and examples of using AI on assembling proposals. While there was some curiosity and interest on the matter at the time, and I made a few basic experiments using Gemini, we’ve made near-zero use of AI during the first six weeks of Hell Week.

One coworker attempted to get Copilot to draft a difficult question for submission to a government agency. I did not see all his attempts nor chart what he did, but he commented it took like six or seven prompts. I did see his last prompt, and it was about 85% of the question the bot spat out as an end product.

Time and effort saving technologies that take more time and effort to use. Why can’t people find a use for that?

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dazedandconfused says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 16:42

@Scott: Saw Mike Johnson, who is probably about as well informed from this administration as anybody, say on the news last night that this is not regime-change behavior, it is behavior-changing of a regime.

That the US is not about freedom and democracy anymore is no secret, they are proud of it.

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CSK says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 16:51

Jen:

I knew Mark Kelly had had a distinguished career, but I didn’t realize it was quite that dazzling.

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Kathy says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 16:54

One her substack today, Anne Applebaum relates this anecdote (copied and pasted verbatim):

Nearly a year ago, I heard an American woman tell a large room full of people that the recently inaugurated US president was going to bring about world peace. Implying that she had special links to the new administration, she explained that Trump, Putin and Xi Jin Ping were going to divide the planet into three spheres of influence. The US would control the Western hemisphere, China would control Asia, Russia would control Europe. A pact between the three great powers would then prevent future war.

So, El Taco’s brilliant plan for world peace is to create Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.

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Mr. Prosser says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 17:04

@Sleeping Dog: I hope you’re correct on all counts. My problem is I’ve lost faith in our electoral system. I can’t help thinking there those planning right now how to ruin the mid-terms and those are people in power right now.

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Jen says:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026 at 17:23

@CSK: It’s amazing. He’s amazing. And it would be supremely amusing to watch Hegseth’s “order” get overturned by the next Sec Def, not that President Kelly would need it.

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