Tag: donald trump

Trump Ready To Place More US Troops In Poland Amid Russia Threat

  • Trump told President Karol Nawrocki the U.S. is prepared to expand its 8,000-strong military presence in Poland.
  • The meeting underscores Warsaw’s push for stronger U.S. security guarantees amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.
  • Nawrocki, a conservative close to Trump’s movement, won the election narrowly on a “Poland first” platform while pledging support for Ukraine but opposing NATO membership.

US President Donald Trump told his Polish counterpart the United States was ready to increase its military presence in the Central European nation, one of the countries on NATO’s so-called “eastern flank” warily watching Russia’s actions.

Trump welcomed conservative President Karol Nawrocki to Washington in an event highlighted by a flyover of US F-16 fighter jets honoring a Polish military pilot who had died last month in a crash.

Asked if he planned to keep US forces deployed to Poland, Trump replied in the affirmative.

“We’ll put more there if they want,” he added, while citing the United States’ “tremendous relationship” with Poland, one of the more important military and political allies of Ukraine during its war with Russia.

“We never even thought in terms of removing soldiers from Poland.”

“We’re with Poland all the way, and we’ll help Poland protect itself,” Trump added.

Warsaw has long sought an increased US military presence in Poland. The United States has based troops in Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and other European nations since the end of World War II, initially to serve as a deterrence to Soviet aggression on the Continent.

The first permanently stationed US troops arrived in Poland in March 2023. There are an estimated 8,000 US troops now garrisoned in Poland, some on a rotational basis.

Nawrocki added that it is “the first time in history” that Poland has been happy to host foreign troops.

Nawrocki, a vocal admirer of the US leader, said after the talks with Trump that the two presidents had discussed bolstering troop levels, adding that Trump had strongly guaranteed Poland’s security.

“The success of his [Nawrocki’s] special relationship with the MAGA movement and with President Trump would be if the United States increased its presence in Poland,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters a day earlier — a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

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Was Trump’s Venezuelan boat attack a ‘war crime’? Experts say extrajudicial killings violate international law

In a video posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, crosshairs hover above a black-and-white image of a speedboat cutting through water. Seconds later, the boat explodes into a ball of flames.

The president said defense officials had carried out a strike against 11 “terrorists” from the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, Tuesday morning as part of the administration’s escalating war against drug cartels.

Legal experts and former national security officials have disputed the president’s legal authority to launch extrajudicial killings against suspected drug traffickers, raising consequential questions on both the administration’s growing conflict with Venezuela, and the president’s anti-immigration agenda.

“There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea,” according to Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at research and advocacy group, Washington Office on Latin America. “Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense.”

Lethal force against civilians in international waters “is a war crime if not in self-defense,” according to Isacson. “‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”

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The Feds Defend Their Tortures Again

While the public’s attention this summer has been drawn to masked ICE agents arresting folks without warrants, presidentially imposed sales taxes on goods emanating from foreign countries that have been invalidated by three federal courts, and the fruitless Kabuki dance between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, last month, the federal government continues its slow assault on the Constitution at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In April, the feds suffered a major setback when a military judge ruled that evidence obtained under and as a result of torture is inadmissible at the trial of Ammar al-Baluchi, who is one of the five remaining defendants accused in the attacks of 9/11. Al-Baluchi is the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the attacks. So-called because Osama bin Laden was the person designated by the feds as the mastermind until they murdered him and his family – without any 9/11-related charges having been filed against him – in his home in Pakistan.

Mohammed and al-Baluchi were to have been tried together, along with their three alleged accomplices when the feds decided that the torture of Mohammed was too egregious for them to defend in a public courtroom.

So, the prosecutors then initiated plea negotiations with Mohammed’s defense lawyers, which resulted in a plea agreement that was accepted by the court, the defense, the prosecutors and their bosses in the Department of Defense. Then the Secretary of Defense at the time, Lloyd Austin, overruled the general in charge of the prosecutions and directed the prosecutors who had initiated, drafted and publicly accepted the plea agreement to ask the court to nullify it.

Following standard rules of criminal procedure, the court declined to nullify the Mohammed plea agreement since, by the time Sec. Austin objected to it, it had become a binding contract. An appeals court disagreed, and the Mohammed case is now back in the military trial court without a trial date.

There is no trial date because there is no trial judge assigned to the case. The trial judge who accepted Mohammed’s guilty plea has since retired, and no judge has been assigned; nor are any judges volunteering for the case. The case docket consists of 40,000+ pages of documents for a judge to read prior to trial.

Whoever the judge is will be the fourth on the case. The prosecution team has changed as many times as well.

Why is this happening? Largely because military justice is to justice as military music is to music – slow, heavy, ponderous, unending and repetitive. Had President George W. Bush not created, and his successors not accepted, the crafting of a Devil’s Island 90 miles from Florida and instead permitted the Department of Justice and civilian federal judges to handle these cases, they would have been resolved 20 years ago.

But Bush believed that at Gitmo his torturers could do as they wished. He argued that because Gitmo is in Cuba, the Constitution didn’t apply, federal laws couldn’t be enforced and those meddlesome federal judges couldn’t interfere.

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Hegseth Doesn’t Rule Out Regime Change in Venezuela, Suggests More US Strikes on Boats Are Coming

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday didn’t rule out the possibility of the US military pursuing regime change in Venezuela and suggested more US strikes on boats in the region were coming.

Hegseth made the comments in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday morning, the day after the US bombed a boat in the Southern Caribbean that it claimed without evidence was carrying drugs, marking the first US kinetic military action in the name of combating drug trafficking, though the real purpose of the attack may be part of a new push to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“We have assets in the air, assets in the water, assets on ships because this is a deadly serious mission for us, and it won’t stop … with just this strike,” Hegseth said. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate.”

When asked if the goal was regime change in Venezuela, Hegseth said that was a “presidential decision” and added that “we’re prepared with every asset that the American military has.”

Brandan P. Buck, a historian and Foreign Policy Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, told Antiwar.com that it was unlikely the Trump administration would have much success trying to combat drug trafficking with military strikes.

“The US military’s strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat is a significant escalation in the long and failed war on drugs. It is unclear if the administration’s goal of deterring drug trafficking through lethal force will be achieved, but such a strike is unlikely to succeed in this way,” Buck said. “As long as the United States remains a multi-billion-dollar drug market, criminal organizations will continue to take risks for massive profits. One strike on one drug-running boat is unlikely to change that calculus.”

Buck also noted that it was unclear what the administration’s real goal is. “The strike also raises alarming questions about its true near- and long-term objectives. It is plausible that the Trump Administration is using the strike as a trial balloon for expanded military action against cartels throughout the region, or against the Maduro regime in Venezuela,” he said.

“Either would present troubling questions about executive authority to authorize military action in a post-Global War on Terror world and significantly raise the likelihood of plunging the US into another prolonged war,” Buck added.

The US has claimed that Maduro is the leader of the Cartel of the Suns, a term used to describe a network of Venezuelan government and military officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking, but it does not actually exist as an organization. Despite the lack of a structured organization, the US recently labeled the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist group and increased the bounty on Maduro’s head to $50 million over claims of “narco-terrorism.” Maduro and other Latin American leaders have strongly denied the US claims.

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Trump Again Suggests He Could Back European Troops in Ukraine With Air Power as Part of a Security Guarantee

President Trump suggested in an interview with the Daily Caller published on Tuesday that he would be willing to back a European troop deployment in Ukraine as part of a security guarantee for a potential future peace deal, an arrangement Russia has made clear it would never accept.

Trump was asked if he was considering using US troops for security guarantees, and he said “no,” but made clear he was open to the idea of using US air power, something he has previously suggested.

When asked if he would use US planes for the security guarantees, Trump said, “Maybe we’ll do something. Look, I’d like to see something get solved. They’re not our soldiers, but there are, five to 7,000, mostly young people, being killed every single week. If I could stop that and have a plane flying around the air every once in a while, it’s going to be mostly the Europeans, but we, we’d help them. They, you know, they sort of need it, and we’d help them if we could get something done.”

The insistence from European officials on sending troops to Ukraine could be what ends up sinking the peace process. Russia has said that it must be involved in talks on security guarantees for Ukraine, but European leaders continue to discuss the idea with Ukrainian officials without Russian involvement.

Trump was asked how his support for the potential security guarantees squares with an “America First” foreign policy and pointed to the fact that NATO countries are now purchasing US weapons for Ukraine, although a recent deal that will arm Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles will be partially funded by US military aid.

“Look, we were spending hundreds of billions of dollars in that war. Now we sell equipment to NATO. I got them to go from two to five. Nobody thought that was, and pay. We sell equipment to NATO. We don’t sell it to Ukraine. We sell it to NATO. They pay for the equipment. We’re not spending any money on the war,” Trump said.

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Trump gives green light for $2m ICE deal with notorious Israeli spyware company

The Trump administration appears to have unfrozen a stalled $2 million Biden-era contract with Paragon Solutions (US) Inc., a spyware company founded in Israel whose products have been accused of facilitating the surveillance of journalists and activists.

On Saturday, a public procurement database showed that a stop work order on the September 2024 deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been lifted, technology journalist Jack Poulson reported on his All-Source Intelligence Substack.

The deal does not specify what ICE will be getting as part of the deal, beyond describing an agreement for a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.”

An individual who answered a phone number listed for Paragon on the contract declined to comment.

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Trump’s DOJ Seeks Access to Voting Equipment Used by Missouri Clerks Following 2020 Election

Two Missouri clerks reported they were contacted by the Trump Department of Justice recently. The DOJ is seeking access to election machines used by the clerks in the 2020 election.

The two county clerks were contacted in recent weeks by Andrew McCoy “Mac” Warner, a Trump DOJ official.

According to far left Missouri reporter Jason Hancock at NPR the two clerks were identified as Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis and McDonald County Clerk Jessica Cole.

Jasper County is a rural southwestern county in Missouri on the border with Kansas. It’s largest city is Joplin, Missouri. And the county seat is in Carthage, Missouri. This is a VERY red area in the Show Me state that went for Trump in 2020 72% to 26% to Joe Biden.

McDonald County is located in the southwest corner of southern Missouri. The county seat of this rural county is Pineville. McDonald County voted for President Trump 82.3 percent to 15.9 percent for Joe Biden.

President Trump won the former bellwether state by 15.4 percentage points in 2020 – it was too big to steal.

The Trump DOJ reportedly wants access to the voting machines in these two counties to physically inspect and possibly take into custody.

Charlie Davis told Jason Hancock that he was also contacted by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft about the machines.

Davis said he replaced the machines after the 2020 election.

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Trump calls Epstein files ‘irrelevant’ as Massie petition picks up steam

President Donald Trump on Wednesday cast the Jeffrey Epstein controversy as “irrelevant” amid an effort on Capitol Hill to force a vote to release all files related to the deceased sex offender.

“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the push for more transparency in the Epstein matter.

“From what I understand, I could check, but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given,” the president said. “But it’s really a Democrat hoax because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”

The comments came as a group of survivors joined House members in a push to compel the Justice Department to release records so far withheld from Congress.

ABC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Jay O’Brien asked the victims for their reaction to Trump’s characterization that it is a “hoax.”

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Department of War?

Last week President Trump took steps to re-name the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” The President explained his rationale for the name change: “It used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound. We want defense, but we want offense too… As Department of War we won everything… and I think we… have to go back to that.”

At first it sounds like a terrible idea. A “Department of War” may well make war more likely – the “stronger sound” may embolden the US government to take us into even more wars. There would no longer be any need for the pretext that we take the nation to war to defend this country and its interests – and only as a last resort.

As Clinton Administration official Madeleine Albright famously asked of Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell when she was pushing for US war in the Balkans, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

So yes, that is a real danger. But at the same time, the US has been at war nearly constantly since the end of World War II, so it’s not like the “Defense Department” has been in any way a defensive department.

With that in mind, returning the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all – as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our warmaking.

If we return to a “War Department,” then we should also return to the Constitutional requirement that any military activity engaged in by that department short of defending against an imminent attack on the US requires a Congressional declaration of war. That was the practice followed when it was called the War Department and we should return to it.

Dropping the notion that we have a “Defense Department” would free us from the charade that our massive military spending budget was anything but a war budget. No more “defense appropriations” bills in Congress. Let’s call them “war appropriations” bills. Let the American people understand what so much of their hard-earned money is being taken to support. It’s not “defense.” It’s “war.” And none of it has benefited the American people.

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The Case for an Interim Agreement With North Korea

Striking a nuclear deal with North Korea is the most courageous foreign policy project left unfinished from President Donald Trump’s first term. The arc from war scare and “fire and fury” to détente and “love letters” stretched over three years until its engagement phase was derailed by the failed Hanoi summit and the onset of Covid-19. Six years on, statements by the White House and the Kim regime indicate a willingness to return to talks. That is welcome, because progress toward establishing a stable U.S.–DPRK relationship remains in the interests of both sides, even accounting for the dramatic improvement in the North’s international position since 2021. 

The South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington last week would have been a good opportunity for the White House to begin to adopt a new approach. Frontloading heavy demands on denuclearization foreclosed progress on other worthy issues in 2018–2019. To make headway in 2025, the U.S. must shift from “denuclearization first” to “regular engagement first,” and accept that complete denuclearization is a long-run aspiration. Trump should pitch the North on an interim deal that couples three public unilateral U.S. concessions with a private offer of sanctions relief calibrated to verifiable limits on the North’s fissile material production.

Kim Jong Un’s reciprocation is never guaranteed, but it is in America’s interests to broaden his horizons beyond fighting Russia’s war against Ukraine, international cybercrime, and untrammeled development of nuclear missiles that can strike the United States.

The 2019 Hanoi summit, the last substantive high-level U.S.–DPRK meeting, was meant to implement the four aspirations of the 2018 Singapore Joint Statement: establishing a new U.S.–DPRK relationship, building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and repatriating the remains of American soldiers who died in the Korean War. Pending a leader-level accord on denuclearization, both sides were reportedly ready to make unprecedented progress on the other three goals by signing agreements declaring a symbolic end to the Korean War, establishing liaison offices in each other’s capitals, facilitating economic investment, and repatriating remains of more U.S. soldiers.

But talks on denuclearization quickly collapsed. Trump walked away from a DPRK offer to dismantle at least part of its Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium facility and formally halt nuclear and missile testing in exchange for the lifting of all post-2016 UN sanctions on its civilian economy. The U.S. position began with a demand for the North to freeze and dismantle all its nuclear production facilities—not only Yongbyon—in a definite period in exchange for relief from the UN sanctions. At some point the U.S. side reportedly increased its demand to include total relinquishment of North Korea’s nuclear program, including all facilities and all weapons. This “Libya model” offer bore the imprint of John Bolton, Trump’s then-National Security Advisor, and was probably designed to sabotage the talks, since Kim certainly knew of Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly death less than a decade after he relinquished his nuclear program.

Trump and Kim both gambled that the magic of a leader-level summit would allow them to achieve sweeping goals. Each devalued pre-summit talks that could have produced a more incremental, more achievable deal. Kim refused to even authorize his working level diplomats to discuss denuclearization. And the White House went ahead with the summit knowing a viable deal was not on the table. 

What is unclear from the public record is the extent to which either side, facing maximalist requests, toned down their own position to try bridge the gap. That incremental approach, which tends to de-emphasize the goal of complete denuclearization, is the best path forward.

North Korea’s willingness and capacity to harm U.S. interests is now greater than ever. Its arsenal of warheads has reportedly grown from 15 to 50 since 2016 and it is estimated to have sufficient fissile material for 40 more. It continues to test and refine ICBM designs that can strike the continental U.S., including solid-fueled models that can be dispersed and launched at short notice. North Korea’s geopolitical ambit has also spread to Europe. It has sold Russia billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition to support its war effort in Ukraine. In June 2024 Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty, and 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to fight in Russia’s Kursk region. In return, Russia has granted the country access to advanced missile and reconnaissance technologies. At the same time, Russia and China have relaxed their enforcement of the post-2016 UN sanctions, reducing pressure on the North’s civilian economy.

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