
Trump names ambassador to Panama after suggesting US control of Panama Canal
CNN
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his pick for US ambassador to Panama.
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced his pick for US ambassador to Panama. Trump named Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera as his choice for the post after suggesting that the US should take control of the Panama Canal – a proposal he first floated over the weekend while claiming that Panama is “ripping off” American ships that pass through the waterway. “I am pleased to announce that Kevin Marino Cabrera will serve as the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Panama, a Country that is ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams,” Trump said in a statement. The president-elect added Cabrera, who also worked for his presidential campaign in Florida, “will do a FANTASTIC job representing our Nation’s interests in Panama!” Trump on Wednesday continued to tease US territorial expansion in social media posts, criticizing the operation of the canal and doubling down on suggestions the US should absorb Canada and Greenland, a territory controlled by Denmark. In a sardonic Christmas message, Trump claimed Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal and reiterated his criticism that Panama is exploiting US vessels that use the waterway. “Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything,’” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

Hundreds of Border Patrol officers are mobilizing to bolster the president’s crackdown on immigration in snowy Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday, as tensions between federal law enforcement and local counterparts flare after an ICE-involved shooting last week left a mother of three dead.

Nationwide outcry over the killing of a Minneapolis woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent spilled into the streets of cities across the US on Saturday, with protesters demanding the removal of federal immigration authorities from their communities and justice for the slain Renee Good.

Since early December the US Coast Guard and other military branches have boarded and taken control of five oil ships that had previously been sanctioned, all either accused of being in the process of transporting Venezuelan oil or on their way to take on oil that has been subject to US sanctions since President Donald Trump began a pressure campaign against the leadership of the country during his first term.










