US Officials Say Regime Change in Venezuela Is the Real Goal of Military Action in the Caribbean

US officials have told The New York Times that the real goal of the US military buildup in the Caribbean, and the bombing of boats in the region, is regime change in Venezuela.

The policy is being largely driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long wanted to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power. Back in 2019, when the first Trump administration attempted to back a coup against Maduro, Rubio posted a photo on Twitter of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the moment he was being brutally murdered in an apparent threat to the Venezuelan leader.

The Trump administration claims that Maduro is the leader of a drug cartel, but has not produced any evidence for the charge. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials have forcefully rejected the accusation and have pointed to data that shows the majority of the cocaine that is produced in Colombia doesn’t go through Venezuela.

President Trump has also framed the military campaign in the region as a response to overdose deaths in the US due to fentanyl, but fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, and it does not go through the country on its way to the US.

The Times report, which was published over the weekend, reads: “Several current and former military officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers say that while fighting drugs is the pretext for the recent US attacks, the real goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power, one way or another.”

The US began bombing boats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean on September 2. According to numbers released by President Trump, at least 17 people have been extrajudicially executed by the US military since the campaign began. US officials have said the Trump administration is considering direct strikes on Venezuelan territory, which could lead to a full-blown war with the country.

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Israeli Foreign Ministry Says It Won’t Allow Aid Flotilla To Break Blockade on Gaza

The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Monday issued a threat to the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is attempting to break Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza, warning that it wouldn’t allow the boats to breach the Israeli blockade.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also labeled the flotilla as “Hamas,” suggesting that Israel may target the boats with military strikes. Earlier this month, two of the boats came under drone attack while they were in port in Tunisia, causing fires and damage but no injuries to the crew.

“Statement Regarding the Hamas Flotilla (‘Sumud’): This flotilla, organized by Hamas, is intended to serve Hamas,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote on X. “Israel will not allow vessels to enter an active combat zone and will not allow the breach of a lawful naval blockade.”

The ministry said that if the “flotilla participants’ genuine wish is to deliver humanitarian aid rather than serve Hamas, Israel calls on the vessels to dock at the Ashkelon Marina and unload the aid there, from where it will be transferred promptly in a coordinated manner to the Gaza Strip.” But the IDF continues to block food aid and humanitarian goods from entering Gaza despite an ongoing famine in the Palestinian territory.

Dozens of boats are participating in the Sumud Flotilla, marking the fourth attempt this year to break Israel’s blockade, and the first time multiple vessels are being used in a single effort. According to a flotilla tracker, a total of 51 boats are heading to Gaza, with the majority currently off the coast of Libya.

The first boat to try to break the blockade this year, the Conscience, came under Israeli drone attack off the coast of Malta in May, halting its journey.

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Congress Must Not Rubber Stamp Trump’s Murder Spree

The Trump administration reportedly wants Congress to rubber stamp the president’s murder spree in the Caribbean and to endorse possible attacks on other countries:

Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.

When Congress approved the 2001 AUMF, it made the mistake of giving the president extraordinary, open-ended authority to wage war against Al Qaeda, which then morphed into a unending global campaign. Ever since then, every administration has abused that authority to target a number of armed groups that had nothing to do with the original attacks on the United States. The bill described in this report would be far worse than the 2001 AUMF by endorsing a much more wide-ranging campaign when there is absolutely no military threat to this country. Congress was wrong to endorse endless war in 2001. It would be insane to endorse an even worse version of endless war when there is no reason for it.

The Trump administration seeks to merge the “war on terror” with its new campaign against cartels by pretending that the latter are terrorists, but all of this is a lie. The drug trade is a serious problem, but it is not one that can be solved by the military. It is not terrorism, and drug traffickers aren’t terrorists. All that involving the military will do is kill a lot of civilians by design.

Drug traffickers aren’t lawful targets. Congress can’t give the president the authority to murder civilians. Trump’s barbaric boat attacks are illegal under U.S. and international law no matter what Congress does with this bill.

We need to reject the administration’s war framing in its entirety. While they may want to claim that there is an armed conflict that lets them kill these civilians, no such conflict exists. None of the groups that they have wrongly designated as terrorist organizations is engaged in an armed conflict with the United States. There is no war to be fought. When the administration uses force against alleged cartel members, they are just summarily executing suspected criminals outside the law. This is as illegitimate and despicable as it gets.

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White House slashes medical research on monkeys and other animal testing, sparking fierce new debate

The Trump administration has canceled nearly $28 million of federal grants for animal testing as major federal health agencies are phasing out research on live animals in favor of new alternatives, a joint investigation by CBS News and The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, has found.

“We’re witnessing a watershed moment right now,” said Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of White Coat Waste, an animal rights nonprofit. “We have an administration that’s skeptical of spending, skeptical of establishment science. … We are trying to slash and burn as much animal testing funding as possible.” 

The pressure for change comes from an unlikely coalition of animal rights activists and bipartisan members of Congress who want to halt what animal rights groups estimate as $20 billion a year in federal spending for animal experiments. Long considered a cause of the left, the animal rights movement has expanded and gained steam under the Trump administration. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading the charge against high drug costs, vaccine safety and the grinding approval process required to bring innovations to market.

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Weird: Kamala Accuses Trump of Being Communist Dictator – Forgets to Mention Her Father Was a Marxist Economist

The crazy lady who can’t string two sentences together is making the rounds this week to promote her new book.

During her MSNBC interview with Rachel Maddow, Kamala compared President Donald Trump, the most important free-market capitalist in the world today, to a communist dictator.

Kamala Harris:  A tyrant. We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now with Donald Trump.  And these titans of industry are not speaking up.

Kamala comes out of hiding to promote her book and says that Donald Trump is a “communist dictator.” pic.twitter.com/UMdSjOEWxg

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 23, 2025

This is rich coming from the daughter of a communist.

Donald J. Harris is a Marxist economist who authored a book in 1978 titled, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution.”

REALLY? apparently she forgot that her father is a Marxist and so is she.. pic.twitter.com/Z0JTt3Suto

— Merry (@merrylynn06) September 23, 2025

The apple did not fall far from the tree with Kamala.

But it is stunning that she accused Trump of being the communist – coming from today’s openly Marxist Democrat Party with leaders like AOC and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani who is a member of the Democrat Socialists of America party.

Democrats are ALWAYS projecting.

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U.S. Secret Service disrupts telecom network that threatened NYC during U.N. General Assembly

The Secret Service has disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York tri-state area that investigators say posed a serious potential disruption to New York’s telecom systems and a possible threat to the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week.

In the largest seizure of its kind, the U.S. Secret Service announced Tuesday that the agency found active SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings located at more than five sites. In total, law enforcement discovered 300 SIM servers – over 100,000 SIM cards – enabling encrypted, anonymous communication and capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute. Officials say the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of services attacks with the ability to block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. 

“This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” U.S. Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool said in a video released by the agency.

An official briefed on the investigation told reporters that this week, the sophisticated network “could text message the entire country within 12 minutes,” later adding, “This was well organized and well funded.”

Telephonic threats to multiple senior U.S. officials this past spring – including multiple people protected by the Secret Service – first triggered the investigation, but officials say the network was seized within the last three weeks.

“We cannot share which officials were targeted out of concerns for their privacy, but as the forensics investigation continues, we do expect that we will find more targeted officials once we get through that data,” McCool said. 

Early analysis shows the network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals known to U.S. law enforcement, including members of known organized crime gangs, drug cartels and human trafficking rings, according to multiple officials briefed on the investigation. The U.S. Secret Service says it is combing through the more than 100,000 SIM cards in an ongoing, exhaustive forensic analysis.

“Each SIM basically has the equivalent data of a cell phone. So we’re working through every call, every text, every search made on those SIM cards,” an official told CBS News, adding, “Early analysis indicates that this network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement here in the U.S.”

The equipment was found within 35 miles of the United Nations in New York, ahead of the U.N. General Assembly. Investigators also found 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, plus computers and phones.

“This isn’t a group of people in a basement playing a video game and trying to play a prank,” one official said. “This was well organized and well funded.”

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Kamala Harris Admits She Snubbed Pete Buttigieg as VP Pick Because He’s Gay – “Too Big of a Risk”

The mask slipped again.

Failed presidential hopeful Kamala Harris confessed in her upcoming memoir, 107 Days, that Pete Buttigieg was her “first choice” for running mate during last year’s election, but she chickened out because he’s gay.

In excerpts published by the far-left rag The Atlantic, Harris whines about how Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man.”

“But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, ‘Screw it, let’s just do it.’ But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”

So much for Democrats being the party of “inclusion.” Behind closed doors, Harris admits what conservatives have been saying for years: identity politics is nothing more than a tool to manipulate voters, and even Democrats don’t trust the country to accept their own rhetoric.

Responding to Harris’ remarks, Buttigieg told Politico on Sept. 18 that he was “surprised” by the passage and argued that Americans deserve “more credit” than assuming they would reject such a ticket.

“You just have to go to voters with what you think you can do for them,” he said. “Politics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.”

It can be recalled that Harris had not won a nationwide primary vote before becoming the nominee. Kamala Harris was chosen only when Joe Biden dropped out.

When pressed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Harris delivered her trademark word salad and denied discriminating against Buttigieg, while in the very same breath admitting his sexuality was a “real risk.”

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Charlie Kirk Versus Tyler Robinson: The Shooting Was Over the Battle for Free Speech

When he was shot, Charlie Kirk was answering questions at a TPUSA campus event, engaging in the very essence of what conservatives believe in – debate. He welcomed dissent and even gave priority for those who disagreed with him to “come to the front of the line”.

“Prove me wrong” was the message emboldened twice on the tent above Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, signaling that an open exchange of ideas was encouraged.

For Kirk, the marketplace of ideas was central to his understanding of democracy, where disagreements could be hashed out through conversation, persuasion, and ultimately, elections.

One of the defining traits of the modern left is its emotional inability to tolerate disagreement. Rather than engaging in debate, many leftists respond with outrage, dismissal, and personal or even physical attacks when confronted with opposing viewpoints.

For leftists, political differences are not seen as part of a democratic conversation but as threats to identity or morality, making dialogue itself unbearable.

This is why conservatives so often encounter friends or relatives who walk out of a room, hang up the phone, or sever relationships when faced with views that challenge their own.

Their reaction is not intellectual but emotional, rooted in a belief that opposition to their views is inherently “hate” and therefore intolerable.

Assassin Tyler Robinson’s behavior reflects the disturbing alternative leftist view. In a text exchange with transitioning boyfriend Lance Twigg, Robinson admitted to killing Kirk and justified it by first writing, “I had enough of his hatred”.

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Chicago Cubs Sued for Allegedly Using Facial Recognition on Fans Without Consent at Wrigley Field

A federal lawsuit filed in Illinois claims the Chicago Cubs and their security contractors used facial recognition technology on fans at Wrigley Field without following basic legal requirements under state privacy law.

The proposed class action, lodged on September 15, 2025, says the team and two private security firms captured biometric data without proper notice or permission.

The legal complaint names the Cubs alongside Blue Star Security, LLC and Security Services Holdings LLC, which operates under the name Protos Security.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

Together, they are accused of deploying facial recognition tools at Wrigley Field that scanned the faces of attendees without providing the written disclosures or obtaining the signed releases required by Illinois law.

The suit states that this happened to “millions of fans.”

Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), passed in 2008, sets out some of the most protective rules in the country when it comes to biometric data.

The statute prohibits the collection of biometric identifiers, like fingerprints or facial geometry, unless the person is informed in writing and gives signed authorization.

Lawsuits can be brought by individuals even if they haven’t suffered financial or emotional harm, a position backed by the Illinois Supreme Court in Rosenbach v. Six Flags.

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NASA is no longer a space agency. Its new official status is pretty shocking. Here’s what happened

A new order by the Trump administration issued late last month states that NASA will operate as a national intelligence and security agency. According to it, the space agency will now have a different set of primary functions, which includes “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.” The revelation was made by NASA Watch founder Keith Cowing, as the issue didn’t exactly make headlines at the time. Keith was once a scientist at the space agency, and now closely watches everything that happens there. So, does this mean that NASA will go forward and develop spycraft instead of spacecraft? According to reports, the order is more about labour concerns rather than about the work NASA does. A report from Futurism states that the order adds “NASA to the Federal Service Labour-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), excluding it from collective bargaining representation.”

This sparked discontent among NASA employees, who staged a protest outside NASA’s Washington, DC, headquarters earlier this week. The change in the status of the space agency came as the president eliminated the union rights for thousands of federal employees. Several lawsuits had been filed to stop the order. As this news made headlines, the thing about NASA becoming a spy agency was sidelined. However, that is expected to have labour implications for the people working at the agency. Government Executive quoted the vice president of the Goddard Engineers, Scientists and Technicians Association, Monica Gorman, as telling those gathered at the protest, “A huge part of the reason that I have that independence, and that my colleagues do, is that as a union-represented worker I know that I am protected from unfair retaliation.”

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