This week, the Trump administration granted Chevron a limited carve-out from sanctions on Venezuela. This outcome, which replaces an arrangement that had allowed Chevron broader freedom to operate in the country, looks like a stalemate in an ongoing feud between Miami hawks and the MAGA activist Laura Loomer.
In the lead-up to the decision, Loomer made headlines in Miami for her attacks on the South Florida lawmakers Carlos Giménez, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart, whom she accused of engaging in a “Hispanic tit for tat over Maduro.” America’s national interest, she argued, would be served by engaging with Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and allowing US companies to exploit the country’s immense oil resources. In response, the neoconservative trio of Giménez, Salazar, and Díaz-Balart has continued to assure its constituents that Maduro’s downfall is just another package of sanctions away.
Loomer has attracted justifiable criticism for her more outlandish views. But when it comes to Venezuela, she’s right, and it’s the neoconservatives who are in fantasy-land. “Venezuela possesses vast untapped natural resources,” Loomer noted recently on X. “Why would we want China to gain access to those resources instead of the United States?” And indeed, most of Venezuela’s natural resources are currently being exported to China as a result of the sanctions demanded by Miami hawks. Yet these policies have resoundingly failed to weaken Maduro’s hold on power, serving only to immiserate average Venezuelans.
The neoconservative stance toward Venezuela is a failure on its own terms and an obstacle to key MAGA priorities—not just energy abundance, but immigration enforcement. Just days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Caracas acquiesced to the resumption of deportation flights carrying Venezuelan nationals in exchange for the routine renewal of the Chevron license. Unsurprisingly, the news that Trump had cut a deal with Maduro was received with scorn from the Miami hawks in Congress, who threatened to vote down a February budget agreement unless the administration reneged. The White House seemingly capitulated, announcing the termination of the Chevron carve-out on March 1, though it later granted an extension until April 3.
Caracas responded by announcing the immediate termination of repatriations from the United States. This, in turn, was part of what led the Trump administration to deport 238 supposed members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). The legal and political fallout of this move within the United States is still not entirely clear, but one thing is certain: It has been a propaganda boon for the tyrannical Maduro. At least 200 of the Venezuelans now confined to life inside the CECOT had no criminal records in the United States, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, or Chile. Thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets to protest Washington’s forced disappearances of their countrymen.
Amid the uproar over the CECOT deportations, the Venezuelan opposition’s inability to criticize its benefactors in Washington has dealt a crippling blow to its popular legitimacy. Opposition leader María Corina Machado has since humiliated herself by adopting the White House line that Maduro is conducting an “invasion” of the United States, using the Tren de Aragua gang as his foot soldiers. Making matters worse, some of the deportees sent to CECOT by Trump, such as the musician Arturo Suárez Trejo, were victims of past repression by the Maduro regime.
The White House subsequently performed yet another u-turn, renewing Chevron’s license and securing a renewed deportation deal with Caracas. Behind the scenes, Special Envoy Richard Grenell has continued negotiations with Maduro and recently secured the release of a US Air Force veteran, in addition to six other Americans released from Venezuelan custody in January. The stakes are high, given that the Trump administration hopes to deport the approximately 350,000 Venezuelans it recently stripped of the Temporary Protected Status granted to them by the Biden administration. Grenell is reportedly working on a broader deal with Maduro that would grant further oil and mining concessions to US companies. Loomer and Florida businessman Harry Sargeant have subsequently lobbied in support of the proposed deal by appealing to Trump’s commitment to energy abundance.
“Their votes in Congress give them the power to sink virtually any bill.”
But unfortunately for Loomer and other Venezuela realists in the MAGA camp, the Miami hawks occupy three seats in the two-seat-majority GOP-controlled House of Representatives, giving them significant leverage over the administration’s legislative agenda. In effect, their votes in Congress give them the power to sink virtually any bill. Given that, the fact that they failed to pressure Trump into cancelling the Chevron license altogether is mildly encouraging. But though the administration secured the trio’s support for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” in the end, any changes made by the Senate will inevitably send the legislation back to the House of Representatives. That means the MAGA civil war between immigration and energy hawks on one end and Miami neocons on the other could flare up again sooner rather than later.
Considering the damage that the CECOT deportations have done to the Venezuelan opposition, if its leaders had chosen to participate in Sunday’s local elections, Maduro’s regime may well have been competitive even without the use of outright election fraud. But the discrediting of the Washington-aligned elements of Venezuela’s opposition might have an upside if it leads to the rise of more credible leaders. Maduro’s opponents run the gamut from anti-regime communists to Catholic right-wingers, and the current conjecture could foster a renewal within the opposition that is less beholden to Washington. If Loomer and other MAGA realists also manage to reduce the influence of the Miami hawks, the results could benefit millions in and outside of Venezuela.