The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump has apparently discovered a new form of climate policy: start an illegal war in the world’s oil choke point and let physics do the rest. His US-Israel adventure in Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz into a very expensive parking lot, choked off a fifth of global oil and gas exports, and sent fossil fuel prices soaring. The result? Governments are stampeding toward renewables, energy efficiency, and—because humans never miss a chance to be wrong—some extra coal on the side.

Gavin Newsom, doing his best "this is fine" impression during Climate Week, calls Trump the “greatest gift” to the environmental movement, because nothing says energy transition like a forever war in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, back home, the self-styled eco-warrior-in-chief is busy torching pollution limits on cars, trucks, and power plants; shoveling taxpayer cash and regulatory favors at oil and gas donors; and personally kneecapping wind and solar projects in blue states out of pure spite. He’s even weakened endangered species protections to the point where you can basically kill a protected animal as long as you pinky-swear it was an accident.

So yes, global emissions may drop 0.5% this year, and the peak of oil demand might arrive earlier than expected—not because of careful planning or responsible governance, but because an unhinged president treated the Middle East like his personal Risk board. The planet gets a brief reprieve; democracy, international law, and anyone living near a US military base get the usual Trump treatment. As always, the only thing he’s reliably conserving is the profit margins of his fossil fuel buddies and the constitutional crisis we wake up to every morning.

The Trump administration has decided that if you can't win the argument at the UN, you can always just ban the other side from entering the building. For the second year in a row, the State Department denied visas to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority delegation, then slapped on some sanctions for good measure, accusing them of undermining peace while Washington arms and shields the government currently turning Gaza into rubble. Hosting the United Nations comes with legal obligations, but the Trump team treats treaties the way Trump treats NDAs: something you wave around until they become inconvenient.

Abbas, barred from New York, had to beam himself into the General Assembly like a war-crimes Cassandra on Zoom, condemning Israel’s "malicious colonial plan" and warning against another Nakba, while outside hundreds of protesters filled Manhattan streets with "End the Genocide" signs and shirts demanding "Fund people not bombs". Inside the US government, however, the priority is crystal clear: protect Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-hour PR stopover, punish Palestinians for existing, and dare anyone to mention that preventing a UN member’s representatives from reaching UN headquarters is wildly inconsistent with US host-country obligations.

New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani briefly flirted with the radical idea that maybe a leader under ICC warrant shouldn’t get the red-carpet treatment, then dutifully walked it back to a safe "we respect the right to protest" stance, prompting Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon to complain that this was "too little and too late"—because nothing says moral clarity like demanding more aggressive hospitality for an accused war criminal. Meanwhile, Trump is busy in Washington hosting Xi Jinping, because why limit yourself to backing one authoritarian project when you can network.

Palestinian representatives are urging diplomatic missions to stage a walkout during Netanyahu’s speech to show they won’t be complicit in what they call genocide and war crimes. The Trump administration’s contribution to this grand moment of international diplomacy? Turning US soil into a gated community where only the right kind of occupiers get keycards, and the people warning about ethnic cleansing get hit with travel bans and lectures about "undermining peace".

Donald Trump finally met his very own US-approved Venezuelan president, Delcy Rodríguez, at the UN — a convenient upgrade who appeared right after US forces raided Caracas and physically removed Nicolás Maduro from power like a pesky tenant behind on the rent. Maduro is now sitting in a New York jail awaiting trial on drug trafficking and other charges, just a few kilometres away from where Trump is smiling for the cameras with the new management.

Rodríguez, who until five minutes ago was Maduro’s vice-president and under US sanctions, is now the proud signer of a deal handing a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 Venezuelan oilfields — more than 65 billion barrels of oil. Trump bragged it’s "the biggest oil deal in world history" and told the UN that the US and Venezuela now control "more than 60%" of the world’s oil, adding the kind of line you usually try to keep inside your head: "To the victor belong the spoils." Subtlety is for weaker empires.

While Trump, Marco Rubio, and Susie Wiles map out "cooperation" in energy, mining, and security, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado keeps getting blocked from even re-entering the country. Democracy, we’re told, has been restored — mostly for the US oil majors and whichever Venezuelan politicians are willing to sign away a century of national resources in exchange for Washington’s blessing. It’s nation-building, if by "nation" you mean "balance sheet."