Tag: donald trump

State Department Approves $3.5 Billion Missile Sale to Saudi Arabia

The State Department has approved a $3.5 billion sale of air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia ahead of President Trump’s planned visit to the country.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said the sale includes 1,000 AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, related equipment, and US government contracting services. The missiles can be fired by Saudi Arabia’s fleet of US-made F-15 fighter jets.

President Trump is scheduled to arrive in Saudi Arabia on May 13 and is expected to announce a series of new arms sales to the Kingdom. According to Reuters, he could unveil over $100 billion in weapons deals.

Axios has reported that, on May 14, Trump will attend a summit in Saudi Arabia of leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which include the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman.

The visit to Saudi Arabia will mark Trump’s second foreign trip after his brief visit to Italy for Pope Francis’s funeral. According to Middle East Eye, the Saudis have made clear to the administration that they don’t want to discuss normalizing relations with Israel.

Saudi officials have made clear that normalization is off the table as long as the genocidal war in Gaza continues. “Saudi Arabia is serious not to be tricked into anything that regards Israel during the upcoming visit. It was made clear in DC,” an Arab official told MEE.

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Donald Trump fired national security adviser Mike Waltz for ‘plotting with Israel’s leader to bomb Iran’

President Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser Mike Waltz because he was plotting with Israel‘s leader to attack Iran, it was claimed last night.

Waltz, 51, was thought to have been fired because he accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat about plans to attack Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group, causing global embarrassment for the Trump administration.

But last night the Washington Post reported the real reason for Trump’s ire was that Waltz huddled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s White House visit in February and ‘appeared to share the Israeli leader’s conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran,’ according to a source.

Trump was angered that Waltz ‘engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump.’

The source said: ‘Waltz wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution. 

It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it. You can’t do that. You work for the president of your country, not the president of another country.’

Waltz, a former Green Beret, was sacked from his position as head of the National Security Council (NSC) on Friday and will now become ambassador to the United Nations, a ‘massive downgrade move to save face’, according to one Trump insider.

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Entire CIA Workforce Gets Buyout Offer from Trump Administration

In a bombshell turn of events, the Central Intelligence Agency has offered to buy out its entire workforce as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping initiative to streamline the bloated federal bureaucracy.

The shocking revelation dropped Tuesday, when the CIA became the first intelligence agency to allow employees to quit their jobs immediately in exchange for eight months of full pay and benefits.

The mass downsizing “is a bid to bring the agency in line with President Trump’s priorities, including targeting drug cartels,” officials told The Wall Street Journal.

The CIA buyout offer mirrors the federal civilian employee buyout proposal Trump made last month, which senior administration officials projected could ultimately save taxpayers $100 billion annually.

The resignation period began Jan. 28 and ends on Feb. 6.

In an email to federal civilian employees last week, the Office of Personnel Management suggested there’s no assurance that those who don’t resign won’t be laid off.

“If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce,” the OPM email read.

“At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency, but should your position be eliminated, you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.”

This sentiment was echoed in a Washington Post report late Tuesday.

“A supervisor in a government agency now run by allies of billionaire Elon Musk told staff early this week that layoffs across the federal government are ‘likely’ after Thursday’s deadline to accept the deferred resignation offer,” the outlet reported.

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Judge rules Trump order pulling security clearances from law firm unconstitutional

Afederal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie was unconstitutional and blocked the administration from enforcing it.

The president signed an executive order in March that pulled the security clearances of some of the firm’s staff, claiming the law firm engaged in “dishonest and dangerous activity,” and essentially barred its attorneys from federal buildings.

The firm sued the administration over the order, accusing the administration of targeting the firm for its representation of Democratic clients, such as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Judge Beryl A. Howell decided to skip a trial over the case and ruled that the president’s actions amounted to unlawful coercion, and violated the First and Fifth Amendments.

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Teacher calls for the assassination of Trump, supporters

The latest chapter of leftists and Democrats advocating for violence, even murder, has arrived.

There long have been statements by that community that call for the removal or elimination of President Donald Trump, verbiage that one report called “assassination prep.”

Now an instructor from a school in Maine has turned blunt, with JoAnna St. Germain of Waterville Senior High calling on the Secret Service to kill Trump and his supporters.

On Facebook, she insisted the federal agency “step up” and avoid a civil war by killing Trump and his supporters.

She claimed it would not constitute assassination, since she turned conspiracy theorist with the claim Trump is not a legitimate president “duly elected by the American people.”

She said, “If I had the skill set required, I would take them out myself.”

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European Union Continues Sabotaging Trump’s Ukraine Peace Efforts

The European Union at this point seems much more open about its willingness to sabotage Trump efforts toward achieving peace in Ukraine. 

The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas has told the Financial Times in a fresh interview this week that the bloc will not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea under any circumstances. Really, this should be the most obvious and ‘easiest’ concession to make, but alas Brussels is saying no!

The White House is seeking to pressure the Zelensky government to get to the negotiating table fast, and the quickest and easiest concession would be expected to center on letting go of Crimea, which Moscow declared part of the Russian Federation after a 2014 popular referendum.

“I can’t see that we are accepting these kind of things. But we can’t speak for America, of course, and what they will do,” Kallas said. “On the European side, we have said this over and over again… Crimea is Ukraine.”

“There are tools in the Americans’ hands that they can use to put the pressure on Russia to really stop this war,” Kallas continued. “President Trump has said that he wants the killing to stop. He should put the pressure on the one who is doing the killing.”

This has basically been the Ukrainian government’s position all along as well. For this reason, she said Brussels and other European capitals are still focused on “working with the Americans and trying to convince them why the outcome of this war is also in their interest, that Russia doesn’t really get everything that it wants.” But again, Crimea should be the easiest issue.

On the question of the scenario where Washington successfully resets relations with Moscow and eventually withdraws arms and intelligence support for Kiev, she said:

“It is clear that these types of discussions are going on in certain member states and maybe hopes that we don’t really have to support [Ukraine] any more,” said Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister. “But it’s also a false hope, because if you look at Russia, that is investing more than 9 per cent of its GDP on the military, they will want to use it again.”

Currently the US is reportedly seeking to convince Kiev and Europe of a de jure recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea and de facto recognition of Russian areas of control in eastern Ukraine, based on a ‘freeze’ of battle lines.

Trump presidential special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg told Fox News this week that Ukraine is ready to make territorial concessions, but wouldn’t consider any ceded territory as a permanent situation. 

“Not de jure forever, but de facto, because the Russians actually occupy that and they’ve agreed to that. They know that if they have a ceasefire in place, which means you sit on the ground that you currently hold, that’s what they’re willing to go to,” Kellog said. “You have your line set, and they’re willing to go there,” Kellogg emphasized. 

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No, Trump Did Not Just Bring Back Segregation to Schools

Once again, the mainstream media is distorting the facts. Following the Justice Department’s recent dismissal of a decades-old desegregation case in Louisiana, critics rushed to frame the action as a rollback of civil rights or, worse, a return to racial segregation in schools. But the facts do not support this narrative.

In 1966, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to desegregate schools in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The resulting federal consent decree mandated the dismantling of the district’s racially segregated school system.

By 1975, the court found the district had achieved integration. However, the case remained open for decades due to administrative oversight, including the death of the presiding judge, and no formal court action was ever taken to close it.

In April 2025, as part of a broader review of dormant cases, the DOJ under the Trump administration formally moved to dismiss the order.

According to a joint filing with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, there had been “zero action by the court, the parties or any third-party” in nearly 50 years.

The DOJ’s official press release, titled “Justice Department Dismisses Half Century Old Louisiana Consent Decree,” stated: “No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.

For the school district, remaining under the outdated court order meant compiling and submitting annual data to the DOJ on hiring practices, student discipline, and demographics. It imposed a bureaucratic burden on a small district with fewer than 4,000 students.

Local officials described the process as time-consuming and unnecessary, diverting limited staff and resources from more pressing educational needs.

For the DOJ, maintaining the inactive case consumed time and attention that could be better directed toward active civil rights enforcement.

Despite these facts, critics quickly claimed the dismissal would lead to “resegregation.”

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Judge Orders Trump Admin To Disburse $12 Million In Funding To Radio Free Europe

A federal judge ruled on April 29 that the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) must disburse the funding appropriated by Congress to the nonprofit news organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary restraining order sought by the media group, directing USAGM to immediately disburse over $12 million in funding for the month of April to Radio Free Europe.

Lamberth said the plaintiff had shown it would suffer irreparable harm absent a restraining order, noting that USAGM’s actions to terminate the grants agreement “threaten the very existence” of the group.

The judge also stated that Radio Free Europe is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that USAGM had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by terminating the grants agreement.

Lamberth said the Trump administration must seek congressional approval to take such action, noting that it “has no residual constitutional power to refuse” to spend appropriations by Congress.

“It is, after all, Congress that makes the laws in this country. In this case, for example, it was Congress who ordained that the monies at issue should be allocated to RFE/RL,” Lamberth stated, referring to the acronym for Radio Free Europe.

The judge also determined that USAGM’s decision to change the grant agreement after the start of the fiscal year was “arbitrary and capricious.”

According to the court order, USAGM presented “a radically different grant agreement” in mid-April, leaving little time for a meaningful negotiation as Radio Free Europe was running out of funding.

“If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders,” Lamberth stated.

USAGM moved to terminate Radio Free Europe’s grant agreement following President Donald Trump’s order directing officials to eliminate non-statutory components of the agency. USAGM has an annual budget of around $900 million and operates networks broadcasting in more than 60 languages and around 100 countries.

The cutbacks affect the organizations and agencies under its umbrella, including Voice of America (VOA); the Office of Cuba Broadcasting; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other organizations such as Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

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Making Sense of Trump’s Tariffs

Trump’s entire political history is a cautionary tale against confusing elite and media fury for heartland sentiment. A certain strategic coherence and a common tactic unite Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in pursuit of the overarching goal of making America great again. The bigger concern is not that there’s no method to his apparent madness, but that the implementation of his ambitious national and international agenda could be imperilled by incompetence and bumbling, as with the amateurish use of Signal chat groups for highly sensitive discussions.

There are three components to each of Trump’s domestic and foreign policies that he is pursuing with a sense of urgency with wounds still raw from how the DC swamp-dwellers derailed his first term. Domestically, he is dismantling Net Zero, DEI and gender self-ID policies that have imposed exorbitant tax, regulatory and compliance costs on American consumers, producers and institutions. They have also deepened identitarian divisions and conflicts that threaten to destroy social cohesion and unleash an orgy of national self-abasement. Internationally, he wants to step back from forever wars that have taken a heavy toll on American blood and treasure, distribute the burden of defending Western interests and values more equitably among allies – J.D. Vance is surely right to say that being a ‘permanent security vassal’ of the US is neither in its nor their interest – and reverse the decades-long drift into globalisation and globalism that have deindustrialised America and ‘Gulliverised’ its freedom of action in world affairs with normative restraints. Mass immigration is a seventh on-border pathology that straddles domestic and foreign policy. Between them, the suite of domestic and international policies will, he believes, restore national pride and identity, stop America being ripped off by security and trade partners, re-shore manufacturing capacity and re-establish America as the word’s most powerful industrial and military power.

This is where the paradigm-shifting tariffs come in. Benjamin Brewster is credited with having written in the Yale Literary Magazine way back in February 1882 that “in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is”. In orthodox economic theory, free trade and globalisation create winners all round. In practice, they’ve created winners and losers, widening inequality both within and among nations. ‘Free’ trade has rewarded ‘everywhere’ elites even while its prescriptions have immiserated the ‘nowhere’ folks and denuded America’s manufacturing strengths. The inequitable distribution of the burdens of globalisation has shredded the social contracts between governments and citizens. People are citizens of nations, not of economies. Nationalism requires the prioritisation of citizens over business. Policies that enrich Chinese while impoverishing Americans, that make China stronger while hollowing out America’s industrial-cum-military might, are the antithesis of this foundational social compact.

Trump’s instinct may well be right that globalisation had shifted the trading balance to America’s net disadvantage and the new equilibrium that eventually settles after his rupture of the existing world trading order will reposition the US to recover lost ground. The WTO, for example, has proven to be not fit for purpose in enforcing fair-trade rules on a predatory non-market economy of China’s size and a mercantilist bloc like the EU. Time will tell if the punitive tariffs are a ‘shock and awe’ negotiating tactic to recalibrate the trading order or an attempt to compel trading partners to capitulate to arbitrary US demands. Trump is taking an audacious gamble that efforts by others to threaten American financial primacy as they de-risk from the US by diversifying to other markets and suppliers will quickly run into hard limits. Besides, how many countries will, if pushed to the choice, opt for long-term strategic dependence on China rather than the US? Will we? The scramble for bilateral deals with Washington, by countries that hold weaker trade cards than the US and are rushing to placate Trump, may prove a harbinger. For example, hit with 18% tariffs, Zimbabwe has suspended tariffs on US goods in order to build a ‘positive relationship’ with the Trump Administration. And the administration has worked the miracle of converting British PM Keir Starmer into a champion of free speech and increased defence spending while cutting health and foreign aid spending.

Michael Pettis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in Foreign Affairs on April 21st, notes that the world trading order became increasingly cumbersome as countries externalised domestic economic imbalances into trading imbalances through a complex maze of tariffs, non-tariff barriers and subsidies. Trump’s policies aim at the transformation of this global trade and capital regime that subordinated the needs of individual economies to the demands of the global system. A new equilibrium of individual and global needs could result in better-balanced economic growth, higher wages and trade parity.

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Trump DOJ Suing Blue States Over Unconstitutional Climate Laws That Threaten U.S. Energy Security

The Trump Justice Department is suing multiple blue states over ridiculous progressive climate laws that they claim are unconstitutional and which threaten United States energy security.

Returning the country to a state of energy independence was one of the pillars of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. It’s extremely important and not just to our economy. Energy independence is a national security issue.

The left wants to destroy the fossil fuel industry and they’ve been quite open about that. Yet as we just saw in Spain, using only green and renewable energy sources doesn’t work.

FOX News reports:

DOJ sues four blue states over ‘unconstitutional’ climate laws threatening US energy security

The Justice Department (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against four Democrat-led states: Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Vermont, over what it calls unconstitutional climate policies that threaten U.S. energy independence and national security.

The move follows President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14260, Protecting American Energy from State Overreach, directing federal action against state laws that burden domestic energy development.

“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi…

The DOJ filed complaints Tuesday against New York and Vermont over newly passed “climate superfund” laws, which would impose strict liability on fossil fuel companies for alleged contributions to climate change.

New York’s law alone seeks $75 billion in damages from energy firms. According to the DOJ, these laws are preempted by the federal Clean Air Act, violate the Constitution, and infringe on federal foreign affairs powers.

This is absolutely necessary. When the power goes out, all bets are off.

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