Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
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maripuerta.com
Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
@maripuerta.com
Venezuelan-American • PoliSci Adj Prof • Media Analyst • PhD in Cultural Studies • @UCarabobo • Democracy & Autocratization • She/Her/Ella • Reposts ≠ endorsement • Spread: joinspread.com/u/maria-isabel-puerta-riera •
www.maripuerta.com

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Thank you so much to the committee!
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
Investigators struggled to identify a suspect while the Brown gunman went on to kill again, a timeline shows.
Investigators struggled to identify suspect while Brown University gunman went on to kill again, timeline shows
The manhunt for the Brown University shooter was complicated by the early misidentification of a person of interest and limited, low-quality video footage.
cbsn.ws
December 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
The Justice Department released thousands of new photos and records on Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted.
Over 500 pages in Epstein files were entirely blacked out, CBS News finds
The Justice Department released thousands of new photos and records on Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted.
cbsn.ws
December 20, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
The chocolate milk lobby lost a true warrior.
December 20, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
one of four in a week

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/n...
December 20, 2025 at 6:09 AM
U.S. and Venezuela Jam Caribbean GPS Signals to Thwart Attacks, Raising Flight Hazard www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/w...
U.S. and Venezuela Jam Caribbean GPS Signals to Thwart Attacks, Raising Flight Hazard
www.nytimes.com
December 20, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
The MAGA movement wants fewer undocumented workers in America and more babies born to American mothers—but research suggests that those two goals are at odds, Olga Khazan argues:
The Truth About Immigration That MAGA Doesn’t Acknowledge
American families rely on immigrants to take care of their children.
bit.ly
December 19, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
J. D. Vance believes that immigrants are the prime driver of American anti-Semitism—but making anti-Semitism about your ideological enemies misses whole dimensions of the problem, @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social argues:
What J. D. Vance—And Many Others—Miss About American Anti-Semitism
Making anti-Semitism about your ideological enemies doesn’t help anyone understand, let alone solve, the problem.
bit.ly
December 19, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
"The conflict with Venezuela will probably play out differently than the Iraq War did—perhaps better, perhaps worse. But the moral basis upon which it is being waged is most certainly worse," @jonathanbchait.bsky.social argues:
A Nakedly Imperialistic President
After pretending the attacks on Venezuela were about drugs, Trump confirms it's about the oil.
bit.ly
December 19, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
Those who speculated wildly about the Brown shooter without knowing any facts got things wrong—and it is important that they lose their credibility because of it, Graeme Wood argues.
How to Treat Purveyors of Baseless Speculation
Don’t log off. Keep score.
bit.ly
December 19, 2025 at 10:20 PM
How Could Venezuela’s Military Respond to U.S. Threats? Here’s What to Know. www.nytimes.com/article/vene...
How Could Venezuela’s Military Respond to U.S. Threats? Here’s What to Know.
www.nytimes.com
December 19, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
It almost goes without saying, but this is illegal. The name "John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts" is established by law and the board doesn't have the power to change it. 20 USC 3 §§ 76h - 76s.
Kennedy Center to be renamed Trump-Kennedy Center —Karoline Leavitt x.com/PressSec/sta...
December 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
Inflation report for November just came out.

Headline rate: 2.7% over the year, down from 3%.
Core inflation: 2.6%.

Inflation is both slowing (this was an unexpectedly good report), yet still above the Fed's 2% target.
December 18, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
I keep saying this but no one is connecting the dots. The war is to satisfy legal preconditions for mass removal *domestically* of Latinos (i.e., suddenly a lot of people are going to be “Venezuelan” for purposes of removal). This is 100% Stephen Miller…oil claim is to make grandpa go along
There is no national security logic that would impel the US to want to do regime change in Venezuela. It's simply not that important. I'm not even sure wag the dog is the right metaphor for what's happening here. Seems like an insane misallocation of US national security assets and attention.
Trump: "Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled ... It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the USA all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."
December 17, 2025 at 12:47 AM
Trump Revised Chevron’s Venezuela Deal. Maduro’s Oil Trader Profited.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/w...
Trump Revised Chevron’s Venezuela Deal. Maduro’s Oil Trader Profited.
www.nytimes.com
December 17, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
NEW: Without USAID funding to help buy food for refugees, the World Food Program rushed to prioritize families based on need, determining that only half the population would get food.

Refugees learned which half they were in from a number stamped on the back of their ration card.
After Trump Officials Cut Food Aid to Kenya, Children Starved to Death
“Brutal and traumatizing”: Interviews and a trove of internal documents show government officials and aid workers desperately tried to warn Trump advisers about impending disaster and death.
www.propublica.org
December 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Maria I. Puerta Riera 🌻
ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived at either of the two Florida properties he claimed as principal residences in the 1990s.

Legal documents and other records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal
The Trump administration has argued that Fed board member Lisa Cook may have committed mortgage fraud by declaring more than one primary residence on her loans. We found Trump once did the very thing ...
www.propublica.org
December 17, 2025 at 2:30 AM
Coast Guard enacts policy calling swastikas, nooses ‘potentially divisive’
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
www.washingtonpost.com
December 16, 2025 at 9:23 PM
Claim your invite to Spread!
joinspread.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...
Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro
www.nytimes.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:21 PM