Trump oil lease sale is a pitiful bust

On a related note, Big Oil hasn't for the most part been doing what Trump wants in Venezuela. (The linked article's good, though the headline's misleading.)

The oil lease sale on (June 5) raised just $3.7 million, resulting in five leases between two small Alaskan companies, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). That’s less than the price of some Manhattan penthouses. While previous, successful lease sales in other BLM-managed areas of Alaska, New Mexico, and Texas suggested the oil industry remained interested in drilling on public lands, Big Oil snubbed this sale.

Environmental organizations and some Democratic lawmakers celebrated the blow to the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel-focused “Unleash American Energy” agenda. Still, they warned that the new leasing threatens to destroy globally significant wildlife habitat. - Gizmodo

U.S. sanctions on Venezuela are horrific, and criminal, and need to end

The correct description is "a crime against humanity." And given that sanctions, which fail to change governments or policies, but "succeed" at destroying the lives of millions who've done nothing wrong, have been an integral part of U.S. practice for a long time, it's not just Trumpers who are to blame.

Advocates for more a more humane U.S. foreign policy are urging President Joe Biden to embrace Rep. Jim McGovern's call for an end to "all secondary and sectoral sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Trump administration."

In a letter sent to Biden on Monday, McGovern (D-Mass.), chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, cited estimates that more than seven million Venezuelans are "in need of humanitarian assistance," and that the nation's poverty rate surged "from 48% in 2014 to 96% in 2019, with 80% in extreme poverty."

...Under former President Donald Trump, who sought to topple the elected government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. in August 2017 began to unilaterally impose sanctions on Venezuela in violation of international law as well as the charter of the Organization of American States and other international treaties the U.S. has signed.

While Trump's attempt to force a regime change in the South American country ultimately failed, U.S. economic sanctions "killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans in just their first year (2017–18), and almost certainly tens of thousands more since then," according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a progressive think tank based in D.C. - Common Dreams

The U.S. is behaving disgracefully in Colombia as well.