On Monday, the United States formally designated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his allies in government as members of a foreign terrorist organization called Cartel de los Soles, a group that doesn’t exist.

“There’s no such thing as the cartel,” Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said by phone from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on Monday. Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, is a pejorative Venezuelan term for corrupt figures in the armed forces who take money from drug traffickers; the name is a reference to the sun insignia on their uniforms. It was coined more than 30 years ago, Gunson said, as journalistic shorthand, “and it hung around as a kind of jokey label.” It’s as if President Donald Trump classified the “deep state” as a criminal

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