Análisis de Aaron Blake, CNN

La entrega el jueves de la medalla del Premio Nobel de la Paz por parte de la líder opositora venezolana María Corina Machado al presidente de EE.UU., Donald Trump, fue de inmediato motivo de burla entre los opositores de Trump.

El presentador nocturno de ABC, Jimmy Kimmel, incluso mostró una serie de premios que ha ganado (o bromeó sobre haber ganado, como el premio “Persona Blanca del Año” de los Soul Train Awards 2015), y se los ofreció a Trump a cambio de que el presidente retirara a ICE de Minneapolis.

La situación ciertamente es graciosa, en cierto modo. La insaciable sed de reconocimiento de Trump lo llevó a aceptar un “Premio de la Paz de la FIFA” recién inventado, que evidentemente fue creado para ganarse su favor después de que no logró obtener su ansiado Nobel. (La ceremonia del mes pasado fue realmente algo fuera de lo común). Y ahora Trump ha aceptado la medalla Nobel de otra persona, incluso cuando el comité Nobel ha dejado muy claro que el premio en sí no es transferible.

Pero de otra manera, no es realmente motivo de risa, como mostró el sketch de Kimmel.

Si bien este tipo de pleitesía se ha vuelto la norma con Trump, resulta especialmente indignante en este caso.

Se podría perdonar a cualquiera por pensar que Machado se sintió presionada a entregar la medalla. Y de cualquier manera, todo esto plantea la posibilidad de que algunas decisiones de política exterior muy serias, con implicaciones enormes, estén siendo influenciadas, al menos en parte, por halagos personales.

La saga comenzó el año pasado, cuando Trump inició un esfuerzo muy poco sutil para hacer campaña por un premio Nobel.

Cuando el premio en octubre fue otorgado a Machado por sus esfuerzos para contrarrestar a Nicolás Maduro, ella pareció percibir una oportunidad.

Rápidamente dedicó su premio al presidente de EE.UU. que tanto lo deseaba, mientras sugerentemente resaltaba su papel en la transformación del Gobierno de Venezuela.

“Estamos en el umbral de la victoria y hoy, más que nunca, contamos con el presidente Trump, el pueblo de Estados Unidos, los pueblos de América Latina y las naciones democráticas del mundo como nuestros principales aliados para lograr la libertad y la democracia”, publicó en X.

En una entrevista posterior con Christiane Amanpour de CNN, Machado volvió a hablar de por qué dedicó el premio a Trump, pero esta vez con una petición más explícita: que ayudara a poner fin a la “guerra” de Maduro contra Venezuela.

“Necesitamos la ayuda del presidente de Estados Unidos para detener esta guerra, porque se trata de vidas humanas”, dijo.

Machado no respondió directamente cuando se le preguntó si estaba pidiendo una intervención militar estadounidense, pero tampoco lo negó.

Menos de tres meses después, eso fue lo que obtuvo. El 3 de enero, el Gobierno de Trump lanzó una breve misión para derrocar a Maduro.

Sin embargo, ese mismo día, en una conferencia de prensa, Trump sorprendió a muchos —y decepcionó a los activistas prodemocracia venezolanos— al negarse a respaldar a Machado como sucesora de Maduro.

Trump dijo que sería “muy difícil para ella ser la líder” y agregó dos veces que ella no “tenía el respeto dentro del país”.

Dos días después, Machado apareció con uno de los presentadores favoritos de Trump, Sean Hannity de Fox News, quien sugirió otro posible gesto. Dijo que había oído “en algún lugar” que ella podría realmente darle a Trump su medalla Nobel.

Machado indicó que eso pronto sucedería… y eso pasó.

Una forma de interpretar todo esto es que la campaña de presión

By Betsy Klein, Devan Cole, Sunlen Serfaty, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration took a major step toward giving President Donald Trump’s sweeping new ballroom the green light with the appointment of four new officials to a key Washington, DC, board this week.

The new members of the Commission of Fine Arts, one of two commissions that must review the ballroom plans, were revealed in a court filing Thursday in a lawsuit seeking to stop construction. Trump had gutted the existing six-member board in October as East Wing demolition got underway.

Trump’s project requires a review from the CFA and approval from the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), where the president has already installed a number of loyalists.

The NCPC met earlier this month to receive a preliminary presentation on the project from the White House and its architect, Shalom Baranes. Meanwhile, CFA’s work advising the federal government on public buildings, national memorials, and coins and medals, among other key areas, has ground to a halt.

The appointments are the latest move underscoring the president’s deep interest in and attention to making aesthetic changes to the White House and Washington, DC, to suit his style and taste. Trump, a former real estate developer, has been personally involved in the ballroom project details, from floor plans to marble selection, touting its progress in recent meetings with world leaders and business titans.

The new CFA members include Mary Anne Carter, a former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts who is a close friend of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles; art critic and conservative commentator Roger Kimball; architect James McCrery, who was previously hired to helm the ballroom construction; and Matthew Taylor, a White House official who is working on Trump’s proposed National Garden of American Heroes.

There is apprehension, according to a source closely following the projects, that the new members could “rubber stamp” the ballroom and other Trump-envisioned projects.

Executive residence staff will offer a formal presentation of the project to the CFA on February 19 and again on March 19, according to a declaration from Heather Martin, deputy director of the White House office of administration.

Congressional approval? White House says ‘no’

The revelation comes a week before a federal judge in Washington, DC, is set to hold a major hearing in a challenge to Trump’s ballroom project. The nation’s top historic preservation group has asked the judge for an order blocking any further work on the project until it is reviewed by the CFA and approved by both Congress and the NCPC.

US District Judge Richard Leon declined last month to step in on an emergency basis to outright halt construction of the ballroom, but said he was holding the White House to its word that it would

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to review whether police warrants that allow access to large amounts of cellphone location data to identify people near a crime scene are constitutional.

The practice of issuing geofence warrants has divided lower courts, some of which have ruled that it constitutes the kind of sweeping warrants that are prohibited under the 4th Amendment.

The high court has been considering at least two appeals on the issue in recent weeks. One came from a man convicted of robbing a bank in Virginia in 2019 who was identified after police collected cellphone location data from Google.

Police were able to identify cellphones that pinged location data to apps near crimes. They were then able to identify the phone’s owner. But in the process, the appeals allege, the police obtained anonymized location data from millions of other people who were not involved in crimes.

Eight years ago, a divided Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement generally needed to establish probable cause before accessing cellphone tower data to identify suspects. In that case, Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority with the then four-justice liberal wing. Three current justices – conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – were in dissent.

In the Virginia case, police say Okello Chatrie passed a note urging a bank teller to “hand over all the cash” and that he needed “at least 100k and nobody will get hurt and your family will be set free.” Initially, police were unable to identify a suspect, but officers noticed on security cameras that the suspect was using his phone prior to the robbery.

Law enforcement served a geofence warrant on Google seeking location data for every device near the bank within an hour of the robbery.

Chatrie was later convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

“When magistrate judges receive requests for geofence warrants, they need to know what rules apply,” his attorneys told the Supreme Court. “The same is true for tech companies that wish to cooperate with law enforcement while also protecting their users’ privacy and complying with the Constitution.”

The federal government has argued that the warrants do not constitute a search for 4th Amendment purposes and it notes that users must opt in to location services on their phones, which they might do in order to access real-time traffic information, for instance.

Google, which received most of the warrants, changed its policy last year to shift how the data is stored so that it is far harder to comply with the warrants. Because of that, the federal government told the Supreme Court, the case is effectively moot.

“Google’s policy change,” the government said, “significantly diminishes the frequency with which geofence-warrant issues will arise in future prosecutions.”

The-CNN-Wire
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