From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Melissa O’Rourke

The U.S. intercepted and seized a vessel in international waters near Venezuela, marking the second such operation in recent weeks, multiple outlets reported Saturday.

The U.S. Coast Guard led the operation with assistance from other branches of the military, U.S. officials told CNN.

The interdiction follows on the heels of the Dec. 10 seizure of a sanctioned tanker off the Venezuelan coast. It also comes just days after President Donald Trump announced a sweeping blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers arriving to or leaving the South American nation, the ruling regime of which he designated a foreign terrorist organization.

“The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping,” Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social. “I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

When asked following the first seizure what the U.S. would do with the confiscated oil, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The operations come amid months of escalating U.S. pressure on Venezuela.

American armed forces have steadily increased their presence and operations in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, including numerous strikes on drug smuggling vessels. The buildup has fueled speculation about a potential full-scale confrontation with Maduro or even a material push for regime change.

Trump reportedly offered Maduro a deal in late November to vacate power in exchange for safe passage for him and his family. The U.S. also placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro in August, the largest sum ever offered for a sitting head of state.

In announcing the blockade Tuesday, Trump warned the “illegitimate Maduro Regime” that the “Armada” surrounding the country “will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.” He also demanded that Maduro “return to the United States of America all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”

Despite the growing pressure, Maduro dispatched two non-sanctioned vessels Thursday carrying oil to China, Reuters reported.

The Coast Guard referred questions on the operation to the White House, which did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Melissa O’Rourke

A growing number of ultra-wealthy Chinese nationals are turning to U.S. surrogates to have children on American soil, taking advantage of America’s largely unregulated market and birthright citizenship, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

In one such case, Chinese video game billionaire Xu Bo has sought parental rights for at least four unborn children in Los Angeles, having already fathered or arranged surrogacy for at least eight additional children, according to the WSJ. The trend coincides with intensifying debates over the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of U.S. citizenship for anyone born in the country, a policy the Trump administration has sought to reinterpret.

Xu appeared in a 2023 confidential court hearing by video from China, telling the judge he hoped to have about 20 U.S.-born children, with a preference for boys, to inherit his business, the outlet reported. Several of the children were reportedly being cared for by nannies in Irvine, California, while awaiting paperwork to travel to China.

Last month, Xu’s ex-girlfriend claimed in a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo that he had 300 children living across multiple properties in different countries, according to the WSJ. Duoyi Network, Xu’s company, disputed the 300 figure but confirmed that through years of U.S. surrogacy, Xu has “only a little over 100” children.

“The boss does not accept interview requests from anyone for any purpose,” a representative for Duoyi Network said in an email to the WSJ, adding that “much of what you described is untrue.”

Neither the Duoyi Network nor Xu could be reached for comment.

Xu is far from alone.

In May, police launched a child abuse investigation into Chinese national Guojun Xuan and his wife after a two-month-old in their care was hospitalized with a head injury. The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services subsequently removed 21 children from the couple’s custody, including some born to surrogates.

Notably, Xuan served as a senior Chinese government official for at least two decades with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region People’s Congress, responsible for repressive policies contributing to ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found in July.

Nathan Zhang, founder and CEO of IVF USA — a network of fertility clinics in the U.S. and Mexico catering to wealthy Chinese clients — also told the WSJ that a growing number of extremely wealthy foreign clients are commissioning dozens, or even hundreds, of U.S.-born children to create what he described as an “unstoppable family dynasty.”

One Chinese businessman reportedly sought more than 200 children at once through surrogacy. Zhang said the individual was “speechless” when asked how he planned to raise all the children, according to the outlet.

Another California surrogacy agency owner said he had helped fulfill a request from a Chinese parent seeking 100 children, with the “order” spread across multiple agencies.

Wang Huiwu, another Chinese executive, reportedly used U.S. surrogates and egg donors to father ten girls, with the intention of marrying them off to influential men. He purchased dozens of eggs from models, a finance Ph.D. and a musician at costs ranging from $6,000 to $7,500 each, people familiar with his company told the WSJ.

The CEO of a New York IVF clinic helping connect Chinese parents with surrogacy agencies said that when a client requests three or four simultaneous surrogacies, agencies — which typically receive $40,000 to $50,000 per surrogacy, in addition to payments to the surrogate carriers — often respond enthusiastically.

“I’m getting positive feedback from the surrogacy agencies, they’re like, ‘This is a big one! I want to do this!’” the CEO told the outlet.

U.S.-based surrogacy arrangements involving foreign nationals more than quadrupled from 780 carrier cycles in 2014 to 3,240 cycles in 2019, accounting for nearly 40% of the U.S. total, researchers from Emory University found. Between 2014 and 2020, 41% of international surrogacy clients were from China.

Following reports of Chinese national Guojun Xuan’s abuse of children in his care, Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida introduced the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy Act, which would ban the use of surrogacy in the U.S. by people from certain foreign countries, including China.

“America’s surrogacy system is meant to help individuals build families – it should never be the avenue to allow abuse, neglect, or deceit of innocent women and babies,” Scott said in November while introducing the bill. “And it’s terrifying that this might be at the hands of foreign adversaries with the sole intent of having a child that is a U.S. citizen.”

The Supreme Court is expected to consider President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship in early 2026.