The Trump administration unveiled additional details Monday evening about its new oil deal with Venezuela. The administration said in a press release that the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital will take a 35 percent equity stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a private company that is Venezuela’s second-largest private oil…
Page A5From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 September 2026
Shutdown vote looms as Trump administration unveils new Venezuela oil deal, collects $38.5 million in DEI settlements.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear: there is no connection between a possible government shutdown and the administration finalizing new terms on the Venezuela oil deal. None. These are two completely separate workstreams, running on completely separate — well, they're running in the same week, but that's a coincidence of the congressional calendar, not a — look, government doesn't stop just because funding might.
And on the DEI settlements — Deloitte at $21.5 million, IBM at $17 million — this isn't a 'hit list,' that's activist framing. This is contract compliance. These are companies that entered into agreements with specific terms, and when terms aren't met, there are consequences, that's just accountability, that's not — okay, the Examiner did call it a hit list, and I suppose when you've got two companies named in a row with specific dollar figures next to their names, I can see how a reasonable person reading a list starts feeling like it's a list. But it's not a list-list.…
…(cont) The point is, none of this is about revenue. The Venezuela deal is about energy security, the settlements are about compliance, and the shutdown fight is about spending discipline. Three unrelated priorities, three separate — I mean, together they total, what, over 38 million dollars from two companies plus a new oil arrangement, in the same stretch where the government's own lights might go dark over funding a continuing resolution. I'm not saying that looks bad. I'm saying it doesn't have to mean anything just because it happened in the same two weeks.
Look, government's complicated. You've got Oversight holding hearings, you've got House leadership doing the vote-averting thing they do, you've got whoever's desk the oil deal sits on releasing 'additional details' — that phrase alone should tell you it's a process, not a payout. Additional details get unveiled all the time. That's called transparency. I'd call it transparent. I'd call it —
Actually, you know, I don't write the memos, I just talk about them. All I'll say is: when the money's flowing on the same calendar page where the government's threatening to run out of it, that's not my department to reconcile. Ask Ruth.
“They'll shut down the government over paying for your kid's school lunch, but somehow there's always money for a new oil deal and always time to squeeze eight figures out of two companies with nothing to show for it back home. That's not fiscal discipline, that's a very specific kind of broke — broke for you, flush for them.”
“The Venezuela deal and the shutdown vote are two totally separate calendars, that's just how Congress schedules things — well, they happen to land the same month, but calendars are calendars. The settlements are compliance, not a hit list, even if the Examiner called it one.”
The receipts
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leaders will speak Tuesday as lawmakers prepare to take up a Senate-passed stop-gap funding bill aimed at averting another government shutdown by the Sept. 30 deadline. The continuing resolution, if passed, would extend government funding through Dec.
As the saying goes, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” American companies doing business with the federal government have once again been forewarned about the risks of engaging in DEI practices. To ignore these warnings can be very costly for the company, its shareholders, and employees.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.