By Cecil Hoge

Just 3 days into the first month of 2026, The Trump Administration demonstrated that erasing immigration, fighting inflation, ducking scandals, pardoning vandals, promising prosperity, tariffing most nations on earth, changing cultural institutions, pumping Crypto, bombing Iran, securing a Ceasefire in Gaza, pursuing AI supremacy, readjusting state maps, promoting fossil fuels, firing Government workers, bowing out of climate agreements, cutting deals for family, friends, companies and governments, pursuing peace and real estate transactions around the world, threatening nations, companies and celebrities was just not enough.

President Trump decided that the time had come to remove the President of Venezuela, run that country and take over its oil production. To make his point clearer, President Trump later posted an altered image saying he was the “Acting President of Venezuela.

If you ask Gemini (Google’s new AI) when the U.S. first became an Empire, Gemini cites the year 1898. In that year, The Spanish American War began and ended and The Treaty of Paris was signed. Spain ceded Puerto Rico and Guam as “indemnity” – payment for the costs of the war. In the same treaty, Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. and relinquished all claims over the sovereignty of Cuba.

Even though the U.S. had technically won the Spanish American War, the U.S. did pay Spain 20 million dollars for the territories listed above.

So, 1898 was a pretty big year for the U.S. and surely, it was fair to say that is when we became an Empire.

Three years later Theodore Roosevelt became President on September 14th, 1901. The previous President, William McKinley, was assassinated on September 6th and died on September 14th. Teddy Roosevelt was an exuberant fellow who said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Teddy Roosevelt was the same guy who was responsible for building The Panama Canal. How Teddy did that is kind of interesting. At the time Panama was a province of the country of Columbia and apparently Columbia rejected the idea of letting the United States buy a section of their country and build a canal from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Teddy was not deterred. He did not bother Columbia with further negotiations. His solution was to support a group of Panamanian rebels with some nearby U.S. warships. The rebels won and Panama became an independent nation and as such, they signed a treaty giving the U.S. the rights to build the canal and the ownership of that strip of land.

As Teddy famously said, “I took the isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me.”

Apparently, that was what Teddy meant by “carrying a big stick”.

It should be noted that early on in the second Administration of the Trump Presidency, Donald Trump mentioned that the U.S. had foolishly given back the Panama Canal to Panama. The U.S. in fact did give back the Panama Canal at the end of 1999. That was agreed in a treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader, Omar Torrijos.

So it probably should not be surprising that our present President would also like to re-acquire The Panama Canal.

Whatever various thoughts are about the various goals of The Trump Administration, I think it can be safely said that the United States Government is now openly operating as an Empire.

In truth, whether you start at 1898 or you say after World War I or you say after World War II, the United States has always been an Empire from the year 1898 on. However, after World War II, known as The Big Red One, when quite a few people were killed or wounded or just died of starvation or disease, the leaders of The United States felt that maybe it was not the best time to jump and down and proclaim that we were the biggest, the greatest, the most powerful empire on earth.

So we, in Mr. Teddy Roosevelt’s words, continued to speak softly and carry a pretty big stick.

You may wonder why earlier American leaders were not so anxious to proclaim that we were now the greatest Empire on Earth. Well, there is something called history and whether you have studied it or not, there have been lots of empires. And the problem about that, if you look back at previous history, is that all of the empires that previously existed had collapsed and ceased to be a major influence on earth.

That includes the most recent Empire to have collapsed – our longtime ally – Britain – so perhaps, our earlier leaders felt we should not jump and down and say we were a new, imperishable empire that had now taken over.

Most MAGA voters (make America Great Again voters) remember Mr. Trump talking about emigration, instituting tariffs, reducing inflation and improving the economy. It came as something as a surprise that Mr. Trump starting talking, after he was elected to his second term, about making Canada the 51st State, taking back the Panama Canal, conquering Greenland, sending troops into Mexico to remove drug cartels and removing President Maduro of Venezuela and taking their oil.

So, for over 100 years The United States has spoken softly and carried a big stick. That policy has worked out pretty well for us over 100 years, but now we have a new President and he wants to talk loudly and still carry a big stick. And it must be said that Mr. Trump has some pretty big ideas for this old empire. Some of those ideas came as something of a surprise to the many voters who voted Mr. Trump into his second term.

When Mr. Trump sent 15,000 American personnel, the Aircraft Carrier Gerald Ford with over 75 aircraft and 10 other warships, including 5 destroyers to the Caribbean, most Americans thought this was a scare tactic. But after the American fleet arrived, we began blowing up suspected drug boats and Americans started to pay more attention to what was going on. And then, on January 3rd, the U.S. attacked Venezuela with the support of over 150 aircraft and 3 amphibious assault ships with marines and actually captured Maduro and his wife. It was then that a new awareness spread across America that something big had happened.

When MAGA voters and Democrats heard Mr. Trump bring up these new goals, they thought those were aspirational goals, nice to talk about, but never things that would actually happen.

The next day President Trump announced that the U.S. would run Venezuela and take control of that nation’s oil.

One might think that’s exciting enough for the first week of January, but on January 7th, an ICE agent shot to death Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The mother of 3 children, just 33 years old, was described by Kristi Noem, the director of Homeland Security, as terrorist who was trying to run over an ICE agent. That description, was later echoed by the President of the United States, who also said that Renee Goode as a terrorist and part of a left wing Radical Democratic cabal.

Almost immediately, the mayor of Minneapolis said this was untrue. Actually, he used somewhat stronger words. He said that description was “buffalo chips” and that Ice should get the heck out of Minneapolis. My description of his actual words are a little euphemistic. Yup, the mayor said really bad things that you only hear in the most popular movies these days.

The Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and former Vice Presidential Candidate also chimed in to say this is “not who we are”.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of excitement about this event and it has and is being widely covered ìn local, national and international media. Presently, 2 U.S. citizens have been shot and killed by ICE in the last three weeks of January.

But, if you thought that was only excitement surrounding the Trump Administration, you would be overlooking another excitable situation.

It was not too many days after the takeover of Venezuela and the shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Good that President Trump turned his attention to Greenland. He decided it would be a good idea to threaten 10% tariffs on European countries that sent troops to Greenland. This new threat was aimed at our longest standing allies in Europe along with the tiny country of Denmark and the quite larger island of Greenland as the principle target.

As you may guess, the announcement of the future imposition of actual tariffs caused quite a bit of concern among the European Nations slated to be tariffed. Fortunately, there was a meeting at Davos, Switzerland scheduled January 19th – 23rd, so there was opportunity for President Trump to get together those same European countries in the very week.

When President Trump’s men arrived in Davos, they found that European leaders were not very happy about President Trump announcing tariffs on European countries. They also found that European countries were not happy about President Trump’s idea of The United States taking over the ownership of Greenland. In turns out that the European countries considered threatening tariffs in order to acquire Greenland was a kind of attack on the sovereignty of Greenland, Denmark (the owner of Greenland) and all the other NATO countries.

President Trump was unconcerned and said he was sure they would agree that taking over Greenland was in the best interests of Greenland, Denmark and all the other NATO countries. However, when President Trump got to Davos and spoke directly to the leaders of the European countries involved, he also found out that Greenland, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and many other countries really, really did not like the idea of the U.S. slapping tariffs on them if they did not give the ownership of Greenland to the U.S.

Guess what, President Trump stepped back and dropped the idea of the 10% tariffs. After meeting with the leaders of European countries and Greenland, he announced that a new deal would come about whereby the United States could increase the number of troops and military facilities on Greenland. Strangely, it turned out, that by previous agreements, the United States always had the right to do that.

Phew! Glad that one has quieted down a bit.

Other issues were still percolating … the DOJ (aka The Department of Justice) released 3,000,000 pages of the Epstein files … the DOJ then said they had fulfilled the court order to release all Epstein files … Democrats and lawyers of the victims said the release was not complete … the war in Ukraine was still going on … U.S. diplomats, Steve Witkoff & Jared Kushner said negotiations for peace settlement of the Ukraine War were getting really, really close … Israel attacked Gaza and killed over 30 Palestinians … the U.S. Government was just entering “partial shutdown” … the smart money was betting that would go away on Monday, February 2nd. And last, but not least, an “Armada” – an aircraft carrier, 5 destroyers and assorted other boats and aircraft had arrived in the Middle East ready to attack Iran because Iran had reportedly killed over 30,000 protesters and was ignoring President Trump’s threats to attack that country.

You might naively think the happenings above in this blog were the only earthshaking events that occurred in the month of January, but again you would be wrong.

On January 30th, after rising to all time highs, the price of Gold per Troy ounce and the price of silver per ounce collapsed 9% in the case of gold and 26% in the case silver. Those were historically the largest single day declines of those two commodities in their history. On the same day, a small regional bank in Chicago, Illinois collapsed.

A supposed Chinese parable says “May you live in interesting times.”

Around 1627, Feng Menglong in China said, “Better to be a dog in a peaceful time than a human in a chaotic period.”