“Terror & Fear”: Trump Moves to Denaturalize Citizens, End Birthright Citizenship, Halt Visa Lottery

By Mae Ngai, Amy Goodman 

December 20, 2025

Source: Democracy Now!

The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, with The New York Times reporting that officials are seeking 100 to 200 cases per month. The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship.

“During the first Trump administration, they had 25 [denaturalization] cases per year, and … for the 15 years before the first Trump administration, they had fewer than 15 cases per year,” says Mae Ngai, professor of Asian American studies and history at Columbia University. “So this is an incredible escalation.”

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship. That’s according to a report in The New York Times, which found internal guidance issued this week to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices asked that they supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month in the next fiscal year. The Times reports it would represent a “massive escalation of denaturalization in the modern era.”

The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship.

To talk about all of this, as well as the latest threat by the Trump administration, that was issued last night, to end the visa diversity program, which leads to a green card for so many, we’re joined now by Mae Ngai, professor of Asian American studies and history at Columbia University. Much of her work focuses on immigration, citizenship and nationalism.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor Ngai. It’s great to have you with us. Let’s start off —

MAE NGAI: Thanks for having me, Amy. Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain for people who don’t quite understand: What is it to be a naturalized citizen? And then, what does it mean that the Trump administration wants to revoke that citizenship from 100 to 200 people a month?

MAE NGAI: The United States has two kinds of citizens: those who are born in this country, who are automatically citizens by birth — that’s what we call birthright citizenship — and naturalized citizens, those people who are immigrants who can apply to become a citizen after they’ve been here for five years, take a test on civics, have no criminal record, etc.

The Constitution treats both kinds of citizens equally. Birthright citizens and naturalized citizens are treated the same under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. And we have naturalized close to 10 million people in the last 10 years, so there’s a large number of foreign-born Americans who are citizens of this country. Now, to give you some context —

AMY GOODMAN: The mayor-elect —

MAE NGAI: — on what does it mean to — yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: The mayor-elect of New York — right? — Zohran Mamdani, is a naturalized citizen. He was born in Uganda.

MAE NGAI: That’s right, and Trump has explicitly threatened to strip Mamdani of his citizenship.

AMY GOODMAN: So, keep going with your explanation now.

MAE NGAI: OK. So, to give you some context, what does it mean to say they want 100 to 200 cases per month? During the first Trump administration, they had 25 cases per year, and before that, for the 15 years before the first Trump administration, they had fewer than 15 cases per year. So this is an incredible escalation.

I want to say that it’s doubtful that they can actually do this, that they can bring that many cases, or that they can successfully prosecute that many cases. But it’s like the mass deportation program. You know, they have no way to reach their goal of 3,000 ICE arrests per month, but they have spread terror and fear throughout immigrant communities, and now that is going to spread to our fellow citizens who are naturalized.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how does this happen? How does it start? If I were a naturalized citizen, I get a notice that I am going to lose my citizenship?

MAE NGAI: No, they can’t do that. DHS or Citizen Immigration Services cannot unilaterally revoke your citizenship. They have to go to a U.S. attorney, and they — the U.S. Attorney’s Office has to file a suit, a civil suit, in federal court, and it has to go before a judge. So it’s a long process. Every individual case has to be tried.

And let me say, Amy, the grounds to denaturalize a citizen are very, very narrow, very narrow indeed. You have to show that the citizen lied on their application in a way that was meaningful to the outcome. So, for example, we mostly know about people who were war criminals, who hid their past, people who were members of the Nazi Party during World War II. Those are the most famous cases. So, you have to have misrepresented yourself and hidden or committed fraud on your application about something that would have been consequential.

Now, in June, the Trump administration expanded the list of reasons why they could revoke somebody’s naturalization. These include association with gangs or cartels, people who have been involved in human trafficking, people who have committed financial fraud against the government or private individuals or entities. That’s an interesting one. And so, they have expanded the grounds considerably.

And speaking of Mamdani, I think one of the things we have to be very concerned about is their use of political difference with the Trump administration. I can imagine that they will selectively try to prosecute American citizens who are naturalized who have spoken out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. You know, Mamdani has been accused of being, you know, a Hamas supporter, which is not true, but he does support Palestine. So, this is going to be, I think, a new ground upon which we see the struggle for political speech.

AMY GOODMAN: You say that both birthright citizenship and naturalized citizenship are protected by the 14th Amendment. So, go now to birthright citizenship and what’s going before the Supreme Court.

MAE NGAI: On day one of Trump taking office, he declared he was going to deny birthright citizenship to babies born to undocumented migrants and temporary immigrants, people like foreign students or guest workers. Now, this has been challenged in the courts, it’s been turned down by several circuit courts, and now it’s before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear it. And this is something that has over a hundred years of precedence in our country, and this would be a terrible blow if Trump were to — or, if the Supreme Court were to uphold Trump’s executive order.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what birthright citizenship is.

MAE NGAI: It simply means that any person born on the soil of the United States, save for those who are born to foreign diplomats or an invading army, which we don’t have that circumstance, but anybody born on U.S. soil is, by that fact, a citizen of the United States. And there are, I think, some 300,000 babies born every year to people who are undocumented or temporary immigrants, who have citizenship.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to — 

MAE NGAI: I’m a birthright citizen, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain. Explain, Professor Ngai.

MAE NGAI: My friends were immigrants.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain, Professor Ngai.

MAE NGAI: But I’m a birthright — well, I was born in this country. I was born in the Bronx. My parents were immigrants. They had come from China. And they later became naturalized citizens, but the time I was born, they were immigrants. And I was born here, and so I’m a citizen.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to President Trump speaking from the White House in June about his plans to end birthright citizenship.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis. And some of the cases we’re talking about would be ending birthright citizenship, which now comes to the fore. That was meant for the babies of slaves. It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation. This was — in fact, it was the same date, the exact same date, the end of the Civil War. It was meant for the babies of slaves. And it’s so clean and so obvious. But this lets us go there and finally win that case, because hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn’t meant for that reason.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what it’s meant for, Professor Ngai.

MAE NGAI: Well, it was originally meant for the babies of the former slaves, that is true. But it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898 in a Chinese case called Wong Kim Ark. And the court said that it applied to the children of immigrants, as well, including Chinese immigrants, which the court had no great love for. And at that time, the court said, if we eliminate birthright citizenship for the Chinese, the citizenship of all the children of all the Europeans who’ve come here would be in jeopardy. So the court knew that this was a far-reaching provision of the Constitution, and it upheld it. And it’s been upheld, you know, ever since.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go what happened just last night. The Trump administration has suspended the diversity visa lottery program in the wake of the mass shooting at Brown University and the murder of the MIT physics professor Nuno Loureiro. The suspect, which seems to be the same person in both cases, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility, a self-inflicted wound, named Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. He entered the country on a student visa in 2000. He went to Brown, apparently, as a physics graduate student, was in that building where the young people were shot up this past weekend. So, he got a visa, a student visa, in 2000 and then apparently was granted a green card through the visa diversity program in 2017. Now the Trump administration is saying, based on this one person, they’re going to end this? What exactly is the diversity visa program, what’s called a green card program, and what would it mean?

MAE NGAI: First of all, I want to say that it’s utter tragedy, what happened at Brown and at MIT. And this is typical of the Trump administration to weaponize unfortunate instances like this to pursue a different agenda. The diversity visa program was passed by Congress in 1990. It allows for 50,000 green cards to be given to people in a lottery system. Now, people may know that the regular system, you have to have a family member in this country or a guarantee of employment from an employer. So, the diversity option through the lottery is just for anybody.

Now, they instituted that in 1990 in the hopes of bringing in more white people, Irish, you know, Eastern Europeans, etc. But what happened in the diversity was that a lot of people who got the lottery were from Africa or other countries. So, there have been calls in Congress to get rid of it, because it’s not what it was intended for, which was to make the immigration stream more white.

And I think all of these things are just indices of the Trump administration’s bigger agenda, which is to make this country a white Christian nation. To strip people of their citizenship, they’re going to go after certain kinds of people. Obviously, we see in the mass deportation system, we see in their end to the amnesty programs and refugee programs, and we see in the attempt to eliminate the diversity — which actually has to be done by Congress. But, you know, they do all these things because they don’t like the color or the politics of the people who come to this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Last quick question, a federal judge this week ruled the Trump administration broke the law by limiting congressmembers’ access to ICE jails. Can you talk about the significance of this? We have 20 seconds.

MAE NGAI: Well, the Trump administration acts with no oversight whatsoever, whether it’s the Supreme Court or Congress. He is acting like a dictator, an authoritarian. And it’s just a terrible thing, and the American people have to protest and oppose these.

AMY GOODMAN: Mae Ngai, we want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of Asian American studies and history at Columbia University, author of several books, including the award-winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! currently accepting applications for our video news production and digital fellowship programs. Learn more at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

US Is Legally Obligated to Provide Asylum. SCOTUS May Help Trump End It Anyway.


The federal government is appealing a case from Trump’s first term to reinstate an asylum ban at the southern border.

By Victoria Valenzuela , 

Truthout

December 19, 2025

Asylum seekers queue before crossing to the U.S. for their asylum appointment at El Chaparral crossing port in Tijuana, Mexico, on January 13, 2025.

GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP via Getty Images

Immigrant justice advocates are worried that the Trump administration’s attempt to reinstate an asylum ban at the U.S.-Mexico border through an appeal at the Supreme Court will put asylum seekers in harm’s way.

Asylum is a way for people to escape dangerous conditions such as violence, war, consequences from climate change, or persecution for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Each year, tens of thousands of people present themselves at the border to seek asylum. In 2023, the U.S. granted asylum to 54,350 people.

“People have sought safety at the border from all over the world fleeing violence, persecution, and discrimination, and that is really why asylum is so critically important,” said Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA. “People are fleeing real life-threatening harms, and this is really the mechanism for them to find a way for safety.”

Under the first Trump administration, people seeking asylum at the United States-Mexico border would typically be met by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who would turn them away. While some cases of asylum seekers being turned away at the San Ysidro border crossing occurred in 2016, the turn-back policies, called “metering” by the government, weren’t written and widely instituted until the first Trump administration. This turn-back policy created a humanitarian crisis at the border that impacted thousands of people seeking refuge from danger.

In response, immigrant justice lawyers representing 13 plaintiffs sued to overturn the asylum ban in Noem vs. Al Otro Lado in 2017. The lawsuit was filed in July 2017 by Al Otro Lado, along with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the American Immigration Council, and other organizations located near the border.

Related Story

Report: Trump Administration Seeking to “Decimate” Asylum Seekers’ Rights at UN
Officials reportedly propose only allowing asylum seekers to seek protection in the first country they enter. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout September 12, 2025

“Customs and Border Protection officers would confront people literally standing at the line and obstruct them from coming in,” said Melissa Crow, the director of litigation for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, who has been involved with the case since 2017. “They thought that would somehow make their blocking of access to the asylum process legal.”

Under the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and U.S. immigration law, the U.S. has a legal obligation to provide asylum and pathways to citizenship to people who meet the qualifications for a refugee.

Crow said that when asylum seekers would try to cross the border at the time this ban was in place, they would be told that there was no capacity. She said that during the discovery phase of the trial, however, it was uncovered that the “excuses were pretextual.”

The case was originally heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego before the federal government attempted to appeal the case to the Ninth Circuit Court, but the judge affirmed that the turn-back policy is unlawful.


The Supreme Court expects to hear arguments in the spring, with a decision anticipated for the summer.

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the case and expects to hear arguments in the spring, with a decision anticipated for the summer.

One of the plaintiffs in Noem vs. Al Otro Lado, an asylum seeker the legal team refers to as “Bianca Doe,” is a transgender woman who sought asylum at the U.S. border in early 2017 after suffering extreme physical and sexual violence in both Honduras, her home country, and Mexico. When she presented herself at an official port of entry, border officials turned her back. Fearing for her life in Tijuana and desperate to reach safety in the United States, she attempted to climb a fence on a beach to come into the United States, but a border officer threatened to call the Mexican police.

She wasn’t allowed into the U.S. until Noem v. Al Otro Lado challenged the policy keeping her from entering the country. Now, advocates like Fischer worry that reimplementing the asylum ban would bring back that desperation and fear facing many asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, she said, which allows bad actors to profit and take advantage of those vulnerabilities at the border.


“The ability for people to seek asylum at the border is really a life-or-death issue.”

“The ability for people to seek asylum at the border is really a life-or-death issue,” Fischer said. “People must have the ability to present themselves and be able to seek this critical protection. Policies that are intended to block access to asylum or deter people from seeking asylum really only add to the violence and chaos and the real struggles that people have at the border.”

While the government wants to turn back people seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, not all asylum seekers are subject to the same crackdown. Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the targeting of the southern border specifically — while European or white South African immigrants are allowed to continue seeking asylum — is due to U.S. racism. To her, the attack on asylum did not come as a surprise.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration accepted 59 white South African refugees, affirming their assertion of being victims of “racial discrimination,” while Black and Afghan refugees have been denied refuge in the U.S.

“We’ve already seen in our detention centers people with protected status be detained and attempted to be deported, so why would they not go after the big fish, asylum at large, and just cut off that mechanism unless it’s for white folks of a certain class bracket that they would like to populate the United States,” Limón Garza said.


“We’ve already seen in our detention centers people with protected status be detained and attempted to be deported, so why would they not go after the big fish, asylum at large, and just cut off that mechanism.”

She also said that she has seen a decrease in the amount of people seeking asylum at the southern border since the start of the second Trump administration. She believes it’s due to the increased kidnappings and raids in the U.S. “People are really second guessing, like, ‘Do I want to go to the United States?,’ because if you’re leaving danger, would you go to a place that’s just as dangerous, if not more? Why would you want to go to a place where you would just end up in a detention center in horrible conditions?”

Limón Garza is also concerned that the attack on asylum at the southern border will open the door for broader attacks on asylum recipients in the U.S.: “It’s all interconnected.”

“We have to look around, look at our resources, and make a plan so it doesn’t go unchecked,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do yet, but we will respond.”

Fischer said that ending asylum would mean thrusting people back into the same danger they fled. Rather than trying to ban asylum, she said, the federal government should instead be building reception systems so that people who are arriving to seek safety have access to lawyers, social workers, and the resources they need to start putting down roots in their new communities, as well as more legal pathways to citizenship.

“I think as much as communities are really stepping up and stepping out to protect their immigrant friends and neighbors, it is really, really critical for the Trump administration to stop their mass deportation and mass detention machine and really turn a new lease on their treatment of people seeking safety in immigrant communities,” Fischer said.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Victoria Valenzuela
Victoria Valenzuela is an independent journalist in California covering criminal justice, feminism and activism. She recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a master’s degree in specialized journalism with a focus on social justice and investigations. Her work has been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, LAist, Bolts, ScheerPost and more. In the past, she has worked with The Marshall Project and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She has also held fellowships with ProPublica, the Law and Justice Journalism Project, and most recently was an Uprising Fellow with Justice Media.

Flag linked to Christian Nationalism and Jan. 6 hung at U.S.  Education Dept.

By Djembayz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35047065

Stephen Prager

December 17, 2025  

COMMON DREAMS

The union for US Department of Education workers has raised alarm about a top department official’s display of a flag with Christian nationalist associations that was flown during the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol building.

The flag was spotted outside the Washington, DC, office of Murray Bessette, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, according to a report on Monday from USA Today. However, it’s not clear how long it’s been displayed there.

The stark white banner, emblazoned with a pine tree and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”—a reference to John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government”—was first used during the American Revolution and flown by six schooner privateers known as “Washington’s Cruisers” for naval operations and supply capture missions.

The flag was flown sporadically throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, most prominently in New England. But it remained relatively obscure until recently.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained in November, it has undergone a revival among proponents of Christian nationalism over the past decade:

Its affiliation with Christian supremacist politicians largely began in 2013 after being reintroduced as a symbol of supremacy by Dutch Sheets, a highly influential leader in the New Apostolic Reformation, today’s most powerful Christian supremacist movement.The NAR is an anti-democratic Christian supremacist movement that seeks to control all areas of national life, from the halls of Congress to one’s living room, compelling all Americans to align their lives with NAR’s worldview. According to NAR leaders, those who oppose them are not just wrong but under the control of the demonic, and are even possibly demonic entities themselves.

Sheets, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, helped to mobilize thousands of Christian followers to the Capitol leading up to the January 6 riot, where supporters of the president sought to violently overturn the electoral victory of his opponent, former President Joe Biden. The pastor referred to the recognition of Biden’s election as “an evil attempt to overthrow the government of the United States of America.”

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was spotted on multiple occasions at the Capitol on that day and at other “Stop the Steal” events protesting Trump’s 2020 election loss. It has continued to cause controversy in the years since.

In 2023, the right-wing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was seen flying the flag outside his New Jersey beach house. Alito blamed his wife for the flag flying outside their property just weeks before a documentarian published a secret recording of him expressing his desire to return the country to “a place of godliness,” and agreeing with radical right-wing groups who he said refuse to “negotiate with the left.”

The flag has also been displayed by several Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has expressed many Christian nationalist viewpoints, including a distaste for the idea that the Constitution requires the separation of church and state.

Its appearance outside Bessette’s office is not the first time a government agency has displayed the flag during the second Trump presidency. In June, the Small Business Administration also displayed it during a ceremony, though only for about a day, according to Wired.

Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, said in a statement that the agency “has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists.”

“Since January, hardworking public servants at the US Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization,” she added. “Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag—one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism.”

The use of a flag with Christian nationalist affiliations is especially noteworthy at the Education Department, which has been at the center of Trump’s push to “bring back religion in America” and promote “Judeo‑Christian principles.”

Trump has endorsed state-level policies requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, which he called a “major step in the revival of religion.” In September, he also said that he would soon roll out a policy to provide “total protection” for prayer in public schools, which has long been considered unconstitutional when sponsored by school or state officials.

Trump is taking the 'imperial presidency' to extremes Nixon only dreamed of: analysis

Alex Henderson 

December 21, 2025

ALTERNET

Back in 1973 — when President Richard Nixon's second term was underway following his landslide reelection victory over liberal Democratic nominee George McGovern — the late author Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. generated a great deal of discussion with the release of his book "The Imperial Presidency." Schlesinger's book raised a lot of questions about the powers of the U.S. government's executive branch, and the term "imperial presidency" become synonymous with presidential overreach.

Nixon's critics, including Schlesinger, viewed him as a glaring example of a president failing to respect the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution.

The New York Times' Peter Baker applies the "imperial presidency" concept to President Donald Trump in an article published on December 21, and he emphasizes that Trump is crossing many lines that Nixon wouldn't have dared to cross.

"In his first year back in office," Baker explains, "Mr. Trump has unabashedly adopted the trappings of royalty just as he has asserted virtually unbridled power to transform American government and society to his liking. In both pageantry and policy, Mr. Trump has established a new, more audacious version of the imperial presidency that goes far beyond even the one associated with Richard M. Nixon, for whom the term was popularized half a century ago. He no longer holds back, or is held back, as in the first term. Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 unleashed."

Baker adds, "The gold trim in the Oval Office, the demolition of the East Wing to be replaced by a massive ballroom, the plastering of his name and face on government buildings and now even the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the designation of his own birthday as a free-admission holiday at national parks — it all speaks to a personal aggrandizement and accumulation of power with meager resistance from Congress or the Supreme Court."


It was 249 years ago, on July 4, 1776, that the United States' Founding Fathers forcefully rejected monarchy with the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia. And Baker, in his article, warns that Trump's second presidency is "arguably the closest" the United States "has come during a time of general peace to the centralized authority of a monarch."

"Mr. Trump takes it upon himself to reinterpret a constitutional amendment and to eviscerate agencies and departments created by Congress," Baker observes. "He dictates to private institutions how to run their affairs. He sends troops into American streets and wages an unauthorized war against nonmilitary boats in the Caribbean. He openly uses law enforcement for what his own chief of staff calls 'score settling' against his enemies, he dispenses pardons to favored allies and he equates criticism to sedition punishable by death. Mr. Trump's reinvention of the presidency has altered the balance of power in Washington in profound ways that may endure long after he departs the scene."

Baker continues, "Authority once seized by one branch of government is rarely given back willingly. Actions that once shocked the system can eventually become seen as normal. While other presidents pushed the limits, Mr. Trump has blown right through them and dared anyone to stop him."

According to political historian Matthew Dallek — who teaches at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. — Trump is carrying out a massive power grab.

Dallek told the Times, "His second term, in many respects, represents not simply a break from presidential norms and expectations. It's also a culmination of 75 years in which presidents have reached for more and more power."

Peter Baker's full article for The New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).

'Really dangerous': Inside the uproar at Trump's FDA

U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Michael San Jose, 60th Medical Diagnostics and Therapeutics Squadron lab technician, performs antibody titration inside the David Grant USAF Medical Center laboratory March 25, 2020, at Travis Air Force Base, California. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. James Hodgman)

Dr. Celine Gounder,

 KFF Health News

December 20, 2025 


Six days after a senior FDA official sent a sweeping internal email claiming that covid vaccines had caused the deaths of “at least 10 children,” 12 former FDA commissioners released an extraordinary warning in the Dec. 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

They wrote that the claims and policy changes in the memo from Vinay Prasad, the head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, pose “a threat to evidence-based vaccine policy and public health security” and break sharply from long-standing scientific norms.

What is unfolding inside the FDA is not a narrow dispute over covid vaccines. It is an attempt, according to critics and vaccine scientists, to rewrite the rules governing the entire U.S. vaccine system — how risks are weighed, how benefits are proved, and how quickly lifesaving shots reach the public. Former agency leaders warn that if these changes take hold, the consequences could be lasting: fewer vaccines, slower updates, weakened public trust, and more preventable outbreaks.

Prasad made clear he sees the moment as corrective. “Never again will the US FDA commissioner have to himself find deaths in children for staff to identify it,” he wrote, telling employees the agency’s mission, and its “worldview,” would change.

Prasad’s email reopened old arguments about covid vaccines, using what is generally considered weak and misleading science in the peer-reviewed research community. He claimed that FDA staff had found “at least 10” deaths in children that happened “after and because of” covid vaccination, using reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

The VAERS system is notoriously crowdsourced, meaning anyone can contribute, and scientists say it serves only as a clearinghouse for reports. For example, a person could file a report saying that after getting a flu shot, their hair turned purple. Though that report would remain in the database until it was reviewed, it cannot prove the cause of medical events. But Prasad argued that the true number of deaths was likely higher because many cases go unreported.

On Substack, Inside Medicine reported Dec. 11 that Prasad used incomplete information and that a Dec. 5 internal FDA memo set the pediatric death toll from covid shots somewhere between zero and seven. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote, “The FDA’s investigation into deaths caused by Covid vaccines is still ongoing and there’s no final count yet of those deaths.”

Prasad also accused the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of downplaying the risk of heart inflammation, called myocarditis, in young men; criticized the agency for approving shots for teenagers; and suggested that school and workplace vaccine mandates may have “harmed more children than we saved,” adding that “we do not know if we saved lives on balance.”

By comparison, more than 2,100 American children died of covid itself since the pandemic began, the CDC reported.

Based on his erroneous and misleading claims about covid vaccines, Prasad proposed a major overhaul of how vaccines are approved. He said the FDA should stop relying on immune markers to establish the efficacy of shots, such as antibody levels, and instead require large placebo-controlled randomized trials that track hospitalizations and deaths before approving most new vaccines.

Many immunologists and vaccine experts say it’s unethical to test vaccines known to be effective against disease with a control group that would receive a placebo, exposing them to infection.


“There is a rock-solid principle in bioethics that it is unethical to test any drug or vaccine against a placebo if it is known to be safe and effective. The reason is that such placebo-controlled trials would effectively deny patients access to a vaccine that could prevent a dangerous infectious disease,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University.

Prasad called the current flu vaccine system an “evidence-based catastrophe,” questioned the approval of vaccines for pregnant women based on immune response alone, and raised concerns about giving multiple vaccines at once. He told staff to rewrite FDA guidelines to match his new “worldview” and said anyone who disagreed with his “core principles” should resign.

The former FDA leaders expressed alarm in the NEJM article. They said Prasad is exploiting public frustration over the federal response to covid to spark doubt about the entire childhood vaccine system, which could undo decades of success in protecting children from deadly diseases.

“This is really different. And it’s really dangerous. And people will be hurt, particularly by the vaccine decisions,” former FDA commissioner Robert Califf said in an interview. He also warned that Prasad’s proposed policies — which he noted echo positions on vaccines held by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist — could shake the entire vaccine market.


“The goal of RFK seems to be to make it impossible for vaccines to be available in the U.S.,” he said. If the proposals advance, he added, “it won’t be a viable business.”

Hilliard pushed back sharply on those concerns, writing: “The American people deserve evidence-based science. Prasad’s email lays out a philosophical framework that points us toward that higher standard. We will soon release documents laying out that framework and data confirming how the COVID vaccine resulted in children’s deaths that previous leadership failed to properly investigate.”

For generations, the childhood vaccine program has depended on clear rules, strong safety systems, and public trust. Experts say Prasad’s ideas, based on claims they argue are not supported by real evidence, could make it much harder to test, approve, and deliver vaccines to families.

Fueling Parental Doubt


Prasad’s memo indicates he considers VAERS reports as proof that vaccines caused children’s deaths. The system, though, is designed to be only an “early warning system” for potential safety issues with vaccines that can be investigated further.

“VAERS signals should never be taken as proof of true vaccine risks without careful, confirmatory studies,” said Katherine Yih, an epidemiologist and longtime investigator with the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a CDC program.

Doing so, scientists say, directly feeds public fear at a time when many parents are already unsure whom to trust.

“Causation requires converging evidence, not just one report or coincidence,” said Robert Hopkins, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.


Prasad’s framework, however, treats uncertainty as a reason to halt development entirely.

Experts fear this doubt won’t stay limited to covid vaccines. Once parents start to question the FDA’s honesty, they may begin doubting long-standing vaccines for measles, polio, or whooping cough — shots that have protected children for decades.

“Science must be transparent,” Gostin said. If families believe the FDA is misusing data or silencing experts, confidence in the entire vaccine system can collapse, he said. “There’s a public narrative that people have lost trust in science, but that’s not true. The vast majority want the FDA to make decisions based on the best scientific evidence. Once they believe that the agency is marginalizing scientists and cherry-picking evidence, their trust will plummet.”

Delicate Vaccine Pipeline

Prasad’s new framework will likely make it far harder for companies to produce or update vaccines. The 12 former FDA commissioners warned that requiring clinical trials for all new or updated shots would slow vaccine improvements and leave people unprotected. His plan, they wrote, “would impede the ability to update vaccines in a timely fashion, especially for respiratory viruses.”

For fast-changing viruses like flu and covid, this could be disastrous. There’s simply not enough time to run full clinical trials every time a virus mutates.

There are also major business effects. Vaccine development is costly, and companies may decide the U.S. is no longer worth the risk. If companies slow down or leave the market, families could face shortages, fewer innovations, and fewer protections for their kids.

‘Checks and Balances’

Science depends on open and public debate. Prasad’s memo warned his employees against it. In addition to demanding that FDA staff members who disagree with him resign, he said their disputes should stay private and called leaks “unethical” and “illegal.”

Susan Ellenberg, a former director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, warned that Prasad risks destroying the process that makes science credible. “If disagreement is treated as disloyalty, you lose the only mechanism that keeps science honest,” she said.

Without strong internal debate, safety reviews become weaker. “You lose the checks and balances that make vaccine safety science credible,” said Kathryn Edwards, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who served on the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network during the covid pandemic.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

The upside of Crypto's tanking value

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

Dean Baker
Common Dreams

December 21, 2025

I realize most people have not been shorting crypto, although that would have been a smart move in the last couple of months. But the general public is nonetheless a big gainer from the sharp drop in crypto prices since October highs.

In fairness, the sum may not be “trillions,” more likely somewhere a bit over a single trillion. But in the era of Donald Trump, trillions would be far more accurate than most of what comes out of the president’s mouth.

Crypto and Counterfeit Currency

Before doing the numbers, it’s worth laying out the basic story. Imagine that a tremendously talented gang of counterfeiters was able to produce hundred-dollar bills that were indistinguishable from the ones printed by the Treasury. Suppose that they printed up tens of billions of these bills and got them into circulation.

The gang would be able to buy all sorts of things with their counterfeit money, possibly creating general inflation, but almost certainly pushing up the price of items in short supply, like houses, and tickets to big-name concerts and major sports events, like the Superbowl and the World Cup.

If some supersleuth detective figured out a way to recognize the counterfeit bills, they could then remove trillions of dollars of fake money from circulation. This would benefit the general public by reducing demand in the economy and reversing the run-up in the price of housing and Superbowl tickets.

It is the same story with plunging crypto prices. Crypto has no inherent value, but people with large fortunes in crypto can demand large chunks of what the economy produces. If the value of crypto plunges, they are less able to pay high prices for houses and Superbowl tickets. To put it simply: there’s more for everyone else.

This is why those who don’t have big bucks invested in crypto should applaud the plunge in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest. This isn’t like shares of stock, where the price can affect the ability of a company to make a useful product such as cars or computers. The only possible impact of lower crypto prices on production is that we will make less crypto. The horror! The horror!

Doing the Numbers

I’m not sure what exactly happened in early October, but it seems the world became much less friendly to crypto for some reason. Bitcoin hit a peak value of $124,800 on October 4th. Its price has since fallen sharply, standing at $85,900 at the close of trading on December 17th. The other major crypto currencies had similar tumbles.

In total, between early October and this writing on December 17, the major crypto currencies lost a total of more than $1.2 trillion in market capitalization. This would be enough to send every household in the United States a check for $10,000. In other words, it is real money.

Lacking a crystal ball, I can’t say whether this is just a temporary low, from which these currencies will bounce back or it’s a step towards reaching their fundamental value (zero). In any case, as it stands now, the crypto bros have lots less money to push up prices for houses, resort hotels, and all sorts of other things they do with their money. That’s a good story.

EU delays Mercosur trade deal amid farmers' protests and political divide

PETITE BOURGEOIS LANDOWNERS

The European Union has delayed the signing of a trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc, as protests by farmers and push back from key member states France and Italy expose the political fault lines running through Europe’s agricultural policy.


Issued on: 19/12/2025 - RFI

Farmers protest against the EU-Mercosur trade deal in Brussels, 18 December

. REUTERS - Yves Herman

The signing of the agreement between the EU and Mercosur, 25 years in the making, has been pushed back until January.

The European Commission informed the Mercosur countries of the delay on Friday, after opposition from France and Italy ended hopes of sealing the pact on the margins of Thursday's EU leaders’ summit.

The agreement would create the world’s largest free-trade area and boost EU exports of cars, machinery, wines and spirits to Latin America at a time of mounting global trade tensions.

But the backlash from Europe’s farming community – already simmering over subsidies, imports and disease controls – proved decisive.

Farmers descend on Brussels to protest EU Mercosur trade deal

Tractors and tear gas

Thousands of farmers descended on Brussels on Thursday, driving around 1,000 tractors into the Belgian capital as the Mercosur deal loomed over the summit.

While the protest was largely peaceful, tensions flared near the European Parliament, where fires were lit and objects including potatoes and bottles were thrown at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons.

Paris and Rome argue that the current text does not sufficiently protect European farmers from being undercut by cheaper imports from agricultural heavyweight Brazil and its neighbours.

Together, Italy, France, Hungary and Poland account for more than the 35 percent blocking minority required in the European Council – a threshold that was reached after Italy decided on Wednesday to push back against the deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron struck a cautious note at the summit, saying it was “too soon” to say whether Paris would back the deal next month and insisting that “fundamental changes” were needed.

Italy has called for tougher safeguard clauses, tighter import controls and stricter standards for Mercosur producers.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sought to project confidence despite the setback.

“This evening, we have achieved a breakthrough to pave the way for a successful completion of the Mercosur agreement in January,” she said, after abandoning plans to travel to Brazil this weekend for a signing ceremony.

Germany, Spain and the Nordic countries remain strong supporters of the pact, seeing it as a way to bolster exports as Europe grapples with Chinese competition and an unpredictable White House.

Disease outbreak deepens anger

The anger in Brussels reflects wider grievances among farmers – particularly in France, where the handling of a cattle disease outbreak has reignited protests and sharpened opposition to Mercosur.

In southern France, farmers have been blocking roads in protest at the government’s response to an outbreak of lumpy skin disease, a virus affecting cattle. This has fuelled resentment over what many see as a long-term decline in French agriculture caused by foreign competition and excessive regulation.

The government has responded by deploying the army to speed up vaccinations, flying in hundreds of thousands of doses and drafting in military veterinarians.

The aim is to vaccinate 750,000 cows within a month, as authorities seek to contain the outbreak ahead of the year-end holiday period.

The crux of the farmers' anger is a policy of slaughtering entire herds when the virus is detected – a measure the government says is necessary to prevent the disease spreading across France, home to the EU’s largest cattle herd.

Some farmers’ unions argue the policy is devastating livelihoods and compounding long-standing frustrations.

Macron has linked the domestic crisis directly to the broader trade debate, doubling down on his pledge not to endorse the Mercosur deal unless protections for European farmers are significantly strengthened.

French farmers were among those who travelled to Brussels this week to protest, as local grievances converged with fears over global trade.

(with newswires)

France rolls out 'strong protection' label for 63 marine areas

France has launched a new “strong marine protection zones” label across 63 sites in its waters – taking a concrete step towards a pledge made in June at the UN Ocean Summit in Nice.


Issued on: 19/12/2025 - RFI

Europa Island, one of France’s Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, lies within waters now covered by the country’s “strong protection” marine label. AFP - SOPHIE LAUTIER

The French government says the label is meant to ensure strict protection in parts of the ocean where human activity is limited or banned. Its stated goal is to place 14.8 percent of French maritime waters under strong protection by 2026.

The zones cover areas where activities such as fishing, tourism or hydrocarbon extraction are either prohibited or tightly regulated. The government says the aim is to conserve the most remarkable marine ecosystems and species.

The 63 newly labelled sites include the Cordelière Bank in the Scattered Islands in the Mozambique Channel, the marine core of Port-Cros National Park in the Mediterranean and a reserve off the Île de Ré on the Atlantic coast.

Together, these areas form the first group of sites officially recognised under the new protection label.

How Europe’s appetite for farmed fish is gutting Gambia's coastal villages

Vast maritime space

"Strong protection" is a French government label designating marine areas with strict limits on human activity. But critics say it does not meet international standards for fully protected marine areas, which typically prohibit all extractive and damaging activities.

France now says more than 450,000 square kilometres of its maritime waters fall under strong protection. The country describes itself as having the world’s second-largest maritime domain.

Despite that figure, the government acknowledges the scale of the challenge ahead. Strong protection zones currently account for less than 5 percent of French maritime waters.

That remains far short of the 14.8 percent target set for the end of 2026.

When the commitment was announced in June, the environmental NGO Bloom said it did not represent a real step forward.

Bloom, which campaigns for ocean protection, argued that along the Atlantic coast and in the Mediterranean, many of the areas receiving the new label were zones where bottom trawling was already banned.

This meant the measure largely formalised existing restrictions rather than extending protection in practice, Bloom said.

What Happens to a Sanctioned Oil Tanker?

By RFE/RL staff - Dec 20, 2025

• Following one ship, the Mikati, can demonstrate how EU sanctions disrupt operations but often fail to fully remove vessels from service.
• 
  
• Ownership changes, flag switching, and ship-to-ship transfers remain central tools for sanctions evasion.
• 
  
• U.S. sanctions appear significantly more effective than EU measures in reducing tanker productivity and trade flows.

A 58,000-ton oil tanker called the Mikati was ploughing through the waters of the Indian Ocean one day when it got some bad news from faraway Brussels: it had been added to a list of sanctioned vessels in Russia’s shadow fleet.

The story of the Mikati, currently passing through the English Channel, illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the European Union sanctions regime that now includes some 600 ships.

The EU listed the Mikati in July, following a similar decision by Britain in November last year. Built in 2003, its advanced age makes it a typical shadow fleet vessel -- as does the behavior that preceded its designation.

Suspicious Behavior

According to data provided to RFE/RL by Windward, a maritime intelligence company, the Mikati went through a series of name changes, was sold to an anonymous owner, and repeatedly turned off its AIS location transponders in the period before it was sanctioned.

This latter is regarded as a dangerous shipping practice by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and is only permitted under special circumstances. The Mikati also changed the flag it was registered under, switching to Sierra Leone.

“Sierra Leone's government outsourced management of its ship registry to a private company based in Cyprus,” Windward analyst Michelle Bockmann told RFE/RL, adding that the country was “the flag registry of choice” for shadow vessels.

Taken together, these indicators were evidence enough to get the Mikati blacklisted. The EU included the Mikati in its 18th sanctions package against Russia on July 18. It had an immediate impact.

Two days later the ship arrived in waters off Kochi, home to one of India’s largest oil refineries. But it did not unload the full cargo it had picked up in Russia’s Barents Sea port of Murmansk a month earlier.

The Mikati pauses off the coast of India on July 29. "The EU has now the ability to sanction ports in third countries for what they call the frustration of EU restrictive measures," said economist Benjamin Hilgenstock.

It’s not clear if there was a hitch or if the Mikati was following pre-arranged plans.

“Sometimes ships are sanctioned when they're already under way, so someone will have to give the buyer a call and ask if the deal is still on,” Benjamin Hilgenstock, a senior economist at the Kyiv-based KSE institute, told RFE/RL.

“They may be told ‘we need to figure this out first, so maybe wait a bit’ -- or ‘we’ll take your oil but only if you give it to us for a little less money,’” he added.

The Samoan Connection

In any case, something was stirring behind the scenes.

On July 25, the Mikati changed its registered owner and commercial manager, moving from Azerbaijan to Samoa, a nation of some 200,000 people in the South Pacific not known for having a thriving shipping industry.

The company listed, Alga Oceanic Ventures, appears to have no Internet presence.

Its address is a business complex called La Sanalele, where its neighbors have included another shipping manager, Faleola Nexus Ltd, operator of an oil tanker named Orion -- sanctioned by Britain and Ukraine for illicit trading in Russian crude.

Another neighbor was a Taiwanese company called Pro-Gain Group Corporation that was sanctioned by the United States in 2018 in connection with illegal dealings in North Korean coal and oil.

The Mikati’s sudden ownership switch was followed by a new voyage, north along the coast to Mangalore. There, on August 3, it signaled that it had unloaded.

“The 11-day delay was probably related to its sanctions and having to get new insurance,” Bockmann said. “That's a really good example of how EU sanctions are disruptive. But they have very little teeth.”

Indeed, despite sanctions, the Mikati unloaded its oil and stayed in service. Sanctioned vessels can’t visit EU ports or get Western insurance and have trouble finding professional crew. But they maintain the “right of innocent passage” through international waters.

An October study by kpler, a trade analytics company, found that “Russia has sustained its crude exports despite the logistical challenges posed by the recent escalation of sanctions targeting shadow fleet tonnage.”

EU vs US Sanctions

Sanctions imposed by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) were deemed considerably more effective than by the EU.

“This data set shows that India is OK with accepting European- and UK-sanctioned vessels, but they don't want to accept the OFAC-sanctioned vessels. And probably this shows that India is a bit more reluctant to find themselves in prospects of secondary sanctions by the US,” kpler analyst Panagiotis Krontiras told RFE/RL.

The kpler data details reductions in productivity, measured by the fall in kilometers traveled and tons of cargo carried, for ships under each sanction regime. For the US, there was a 70 percent average decline, for the EU -- 30 percent.

EU Sanctions Envoy David O’Sullivan told RFE/RL that “sanctions are always a bit leaky” and it was always possible to find “examples of a vessel that has nonetheless continued” to operate.

But, he added, “our figures show that once a vessel is sanctioned, it drops its ability to carry Russian oil by about 73 percent.”

Furthermore, while O’Sullivan estimates the EU has now sanctioned two-thirds of Russia’s shadow fleet, OFAC has hit around 40 percent, according to kpler data. While the EU has repeatedly added new vessels this year, OFAC has not added any since January.

The US Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.

In any case, while the Mikati has continued sailing, it has not been very productive. Windward data shows that after unloading in Mangalore, it sailed through the Suez Canal and anchored at Port Said for a week in August -- where it picked up oil in a ship-to-ship (STS) transfer from another blacklisted tanker, the Noctis. Such transfers are not illegal but are a frequent practice for evading sanctions.

The Mikati engages in a ship-to-ship oil transfer with another sanctioned vessel, the Nocturnis, off the coast of Egypt on August 22.

'Loitering' Off China

The Mikati took the oil to Ningbo, China, arriving on September 29, but didn’t discharge it until October 15. Again, the reason for the delay isn’t clear. Bockmann noted that it “remained loitering around the port area for a protracted period of time,” part of a pattern of “highly uneconomic behavior.”

Again, this is typical of sanctioned vessels.

“Once you're sanctioned, you have two choices: either go Russia-India or Russia-China. And that's why there is this huge productivity drop,” said kpler analyst Krontiras.

An unsanctioned vessel would seek to pick up new cargo somewhere rather than traveling home empty on what’s known as a “ballast leg.”

“But now they don't have this option...they have to go back to Russia, pick up another cargo, and this is a very long ballast leg,” said Krontiras.

The Mikati did just that. Windward data also shows it once again switched off its transponders between December 10-12, near Russia’s main Baltic crude export port, Uts-Luga. On December 18, it was heading southwest through the English Channel.

“Destination likely India or China, or even STS. No indication,” noted Bockmann.

By RFE/RL

U.S. Sanctions 29 Shadow Tankers to Further Pressure Iran and Venezuela

Iranian tankers arriving in Venezuela in 2020 (Venezuela on X)

Published Dec 19, 2025 4:42 PM by The Maritime Executive

The Trump administration is exerting more pressure on Iran after adding a total of 29 shadow fleet tankers to its sanction list. They asserted that the move is expected to deprive Tehran of petroleum revenue that is being used to fund its military and weapons programs. The exports are also being sent to Venezuela to help maintain its oil production.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) asserts that the Iranian regime has increasingly been depending on shadow fleet tankers to export petroleum and petroleum products through deceptive shipping practices. In a further move to rein in Iran, OFAC designated 29 sanction-evading vessels and their management firms, adding to a growing list of vessels that have been sanctioned by the Trump administration as part of a broader “maximum economic pressure” campaign.

Also targeted is Egyptian businessman Hatem Elsaid Farid Ibrahim Sakr, whose companies are said to be facilitating the illicit exports, and who is associated with seven of the 29 shadow fleet vessels. The businessman allegedly owns and operates multiple companies that have been responsible for transporting large quantities of Iranian petroleum products in the Persian Gulf region, often in coordination with Iran’s Ministry of Defense.

“As President Trump has said repeatedly, the United States will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” said John K. Hurley, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.  “Treasury will continue to deprive the regime of the petroleum revenue it uses to fund its military and weapons programs.”

OFAC highlights that the new designations are part of the Trump administration’s systematic actions against the shadow fleets, which Iran has been relying on to evade sanctions and transport petroleum to end users mostly in Asia. Since taking over in January, the administration has sanctioned more than 180 vessels responsible for shipping Iranian petroleum and petroleum products, in the process driving up costs for Iranian oil exporters and reducing the revenues that Tehran receives for each barrel of oil sold.

Notably, the vessels included in the new sanctions are crude tankers sailing under the flags of Palau, Panama, the Cook Islands, Barbados, and Jamaica.

The Trump administration has also threatened to stop any sanctioned tanker involved in Venezuela’s oil trade. Iran, earlier this year, was sending large ships to Venezuela, which is used as distillates to keep Venezuela’s operations functioning. The distillates are a critical component for Venezuela's production and to meet domestic energy needs due to the poor state of Venezuela’s domestic refineries. 

Ukraine Hits Russian Shadow Tanker in Mediterranean for First Time

By Charles Kennedy - Dec 19, 2025

Ukraine has hit an empty oil tanker of Russia’s shadow fleet in the Mediterranean in the first such drone attack in this sea in another escalation of the Ukrainian strikes on Russian vessels. 

The Qendil tanker, flying the flag of Oman, was targeted and hit by drones, Ukraine said on Friday. 

The vessel was empty, and its blow-up does not pose an environmental threat, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg. 

Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on empty vessels of the Russian shadow fleet in recent weeks.  

As a result of this, oil tankers carrying Russian oil appear to be avoiding the fastest Black Sea route to the Turkish straits and travel along the Georgian and Turkish coasts to avoid drone attacks from Ukraine, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.  

At least two tankers that have loaded oil from Novorossiysk, the Russian port on the Black Sea, have recently traveled along the Georgian and Turkish coasts instead of taking the shortest route to the Bosphorus Strait, according to the data compiled by Bloomberg.   

The detour along the Georgian and Turkish coasts would add about 350 miles, or 70%, to the journey of an oil tanker from the port of Novorossiysk to the Turkish straits.

Crude oil exports from the Russian terminals on the Black Sea were much lower in November than originally planned as bad weather and Ukrainian attacks on infrastructure have delayed loadings and departures. 

Ukrainian attacks have also crippled Russia’s fuel exports from the Black Sea ports in recent weeks.  

Ukrainian forces have increasingly targeted Russian oil-refining, storage, and export infrastructure using drones and missiles. The campaign has gained intensity in recent months, with the Center for European Policy Analysis noting a shift in strategy “from smaller-scale strikes on storage tanks to targeting hard-to-replace refinery equipment, like cracking units, much of it western-made and subject to sanctions.” 

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

Ukraine strikes Russian shadow fleet tanker in Mediterranean

By Alexei Doval & Euronews
Published on 19/12/2025

 
Ukraine hit Russian-linked tanker Qendil with drones in the Mediterranean on Friday, marking the first shadow fleet strike outside Black Sea.

Ukraine struck a Russian-linked oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, marking the first time it has targeted vessels from Russia's shadow fleet outside the Black Sea, an official from Ukraine's security service SBU said.

The Oman-flagged tanker Qendil was hit by aerial drones more than 2,000 kilometres from Ukrainian territory in what an SBU source described as "an unprecedented special operation". The vessel sustained critical damage and can no longer be used, the source said.

The attack occurred in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Ship tracking data showed the Qendil's last position on Friday morning was off the coast of Crete, sailing parallel to Libya's coast.

The vessel was empty at the time of the strike and posed no environmental threat, according to the SBU source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Video provided by the SBU showed several explosions on the tanker's deck.

What is known so far?

The Qendil departed from Sikka in India and was bound for the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga, according to ship tracking data from MarineTraffic.

Satellite images analysed by AFP showed the vessel made a U-turn overnight on Friday, when it was more than 250 kilometres from the coasts of Greece and Libya.

The tanker is not currently on the United States Treasury's sanctions list for Russian shadow fleet vessels, though maritime intelligence firms have identified it as carrying high sanctions risk.




"Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and earn money that went to the war against Ukraine," the SBU source said. "From the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target."

The strike represents a major expansion of Ukraine's campaign against Russian energy infrastructure, which previously focused on land-based targets such as refineries and oil rigs. In recent weeks, Ukraine has widened its operations to maritime targets across multiple seas.

In late November, Ukraine struck two tankers from Russia's shadow fleet — the Kairos and Virat — with Sea Baby naval drones in the Black Sea near Turkey's coast.

Both vessels were empty and heading to Russia's Novorossiysk oil terminal to load crude oil. The Kairos caught fire and was later stranded off Bulgaria's coast, whilst the Virat sustained damage in two separate strikes.

Ukraine also struck oil platforms in the Caspian Sea in December, marking another geographic expansion of its deep-strike operations.

Putin pledges 'response'


Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference on Friday that attacks on oil tankers would not disrupt supplies or achieve their intended results.

"Right now news is coming in: another of our tankers in the Mediterranean Sea has been attacked," Putin said. "There will always be a response from our side."

Turkey has not yet commented on the Mediterranean attack, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned in early December that the war was threatening navigational safety in the Black Sea.

The shadow fleet consists of tankers that use opaque ownership structures, flags of convenience and irregular shipping practices to transport Russian oil despite Western sanctions.

The fleet of hundreds of often ageing vessels has been crucial to Russia's ability to continue exporting oil and funding its war effort.