Tag: donald trump

US To Launch “New Phase” Of Venezuela Operations, Options Include Overthrowing Maduro: Report

One day after the FAA issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), or an alert notifying pilots of potential serious hazards in certain airspace, for the Maiquetía Flight Information Region above Venezula, Reuters reported that the US is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days, citing four U.S. officials.

Amid a sharp escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on President Nicolas Maduro’s government, including proliferating reports of looming action as the US military deployed forces to the Caribbean amid worsening relations with Venezuela, two of the sources said covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro, while two US officials told Reuters the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro.

A senior administration official on Saturday told Reuters that nothing had been ruled out regarding Venezuela.

“President Trump is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Before the Reuters report, six airlines had already cancelled flights to Venezuela on Saturday after the US aviation regulator warned major airlines of dangers from “heightened military activity” amid a major buildup of American forces in the region, as well as a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela and urged them to exercise caution.

Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s TAP, Chile’s LATAM, Colombia’s Avianca, Brazil’s GOL and Trinidad and Tobago’s Caribbean have suspended their flights to the country, said Marisela de Loaiza, president of the Venezuelan Airlines Association (ALAV). Panama’s Copa Airlines, Spain’s Air Europa and PlusUltra, Turkish Airlines, and Venezuela’s LASER are continuing to operate flights for now.

The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. He has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade. 

Maduro, under whose rule Venezuela has experienced crushing hyperinflation and a collapse in its oil production sector amid staggering corruption, has contended that Trump seeks to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt. He also has characterized U.S. actions as an effort to take control of Venezuela’s oil.

A military buildup in the Caribbean has been underway for months, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

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New Jersey Governor-Elect Mikie Sherill Threatens to Withhold Federal Taxes to Resist Trump

The incoming governor of New Jersey is threatening to withhold federal taxes from the Trump administration.

In an interview with comedian Jon Stewart, Mikie Sherill said she had thought about witholding tax dollars “all the time” and concluded that is “great idea.”

“If they’re not gonna run the programs, then what are we paying them for?” she said.

“It’s like, you know, you’re paying us for a service and they’re not delivering. So let’s stop paying for it.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom has also floated withholding tax dollars, but this turned out to be an empty threat.

“We’re assessing it, we have looked into it, and Finance is looking across the spectrum of options,” he said in an interview with Politico back in June.

“But it’s limited, because most of that distribution and transfer comes from individual taxpayers,” he continued.

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Trump Stands by Huckabee After Unannounced Pollard Meeting

n 1987, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for selling national secrets to Israel. Last July, nearly a decade after his parole, the disgraced former Naval intelligence analyst met with U.S. Ambassador to Mike Huckabee at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.

The meeting was his first with U.S. officials since his release and immigration to Israel. A break with precedent, the move by Huckabee, even all these years after the crime, still alarmed intelligence officials.

The Trump administration was left in the dark. “The White House was not aware of that meeting,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told RealClearPolitics. It was reportedly left off the public schedule of the ambassador. And yet, the administration still condoned the actions of the U.S. envoy to Israel.  

“The president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Leavitt added, “and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel.”

The case sent shockwaves through both Washington and Tel Aviv at the time of the conviction. The rare spy who offered his services to an ally, Pollard pled guilty, confessing to selling thousands of pages of secret documents to the Israelis for cash, vacations to Europe, and promised future payments to be wired to a Swiss bank account. A federal judge dismissed pleas for mercy even after Pollard’s cooperation led to the indictment of an Israeli air force officer.

The episode came at the height of the Cold War when the CIA was on the lookout for Soviet, not Israeli, spies. The press had dubbed 1985 the “Year of the Spy” as President Ronald Reagan vowed to combat espionage wherever it might fester. “We’ve added resources, people, and top-level attention to this task,” Reagan said during a November radio address that year. “We will not hesitate to root out and prosecute the spies of any nation.”

The FBI nabbed Pollard two years later outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., during a failed attempt to gain asylum.

Pollard was released from prison in 2015 during the Obama administration. After his parole restrictions expired in December of 2020, at the tail end of the first Trump administration, the former spy emigrated to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted him on the tarmac, telling Pollard “You’re home.”

The private jet that flew him there was reportedly owned by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Republican megadonor who was a benefactor of both Netanyahu and Trump.

Pollard has no regrets for his actions. He told the New York Times, who first broke the news of his meeting with Huckabee, that it was necessary because the U.S. had cut Israel out of intelligence sharing. During that interview, the former spy, who was granted Israeli citizenship while incarcerated, reportedly called Trump a “madman who has literally sold us down the drain for Saudi gold.”

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FBI Concludes Would-Be Trump Assassin Thomas Crooks Acted Alone

The FBI has concluded that would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks acted alone.

Thomas Crooks was able to climb on top of a roof next to Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania rally and put Trump in his scope.

A bullet grazed President Trump’s ear on July 13, 2024 during his Pennsylvania rally. One rallygoer was fatally struck in the head. Two other rally attendees were wounded, one critically.

A Secret Service sniper fatally shot Thomas Matthew Crooks after he took several shots at Trump and rallygoers.

The so-called ‘security lapses’ and circumstances surrounding the assassination attempt against Trump raise questions about how Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to pull everything off by himself.

Thomas Crooks flew a drone over the Butler fairgrounds at least twice on the day of the Trump rally.

He flew his drone at approximately 3:50 – 4:05 pm that day – during the time the Secret Service was having connectivity issues.

According to WaPo, Secret Service agents never directed local police to secure the roof that Thomas Crooks used to take 8 shots at Trump and rallygoers.

It was previously reported that the Secret Service never picked up radios that were set aside for them by local law enforcement in Butler County at Trump’s rally on July 13.

A photo of Thomas Crooks was taken shortly before he somehow managed to get up onto the roof of the building.

At 5:14 pm, just one hour before the assassination attempt of Trump, a member of the Beaver County sniper team took a photo of Crooks checking his cell phone.

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Trump’s tariffs expected to bring in $1 trillion less than expected – and that could drastically change his $2,000 check plan

President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs program will cut the national deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, $1 trillion less than expected, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

The tariffs imposed in the first year of Trump’s second term in the White House would cut primary U.S. deficits by $2.5 trillion if they are left in place as they are until 2035, by the CBO’s reckoning.

Such a reduction would also mean a massive decrease in borrowing, saving the country a further $500 billion in interest and bringing the total to $3 trillion, which is still well short of the $4 trillion the office forecast in August and would make only a relatively small dent in the total national debt, which currently stands at $38 trillion.

White House spokesman Kush Desai reacted to the downgrade in expectations by saying, “The fact of the matter is that President Trump is set to raise trillions in revenue for the federal government with tariffs – whose costs will ultimately be paid by the foreign exporters who are reliant on access to the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market.”

But the revised forecast threatens to complicate the president’s plan to send out tariff dividend checks worth “at least” $2,000 to American citizens, even as the U.S. Supreme Court is still weighing up whether the tariffs are even legal in the first place.

Trump said in a Truth Social post on November 10 that only “FOOLS” opposed his tariffs and declared: “We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price.

“We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was not much clearer about the practicalities during an interview with ABC News’s This Week around the same time, saying only that the “$2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, lots of ways.”

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Trump Announces He is Terminating Temporary Protected Status for Somalis in Minnesota — EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

President Donald J. Trump just delivered a brutal Friday night nuke to the Somali enclave in Minneapolis, announcing the immediate termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis, a move that opens the door to rapid deportations in the heart of Ilhan Omar’s district.

The termination of TPS for these Somali migrants comes after years of exploding crime and the massive Feeding Our Future Medicaid fraud scandal that saw some of the stolen money funneled to the al-Shabaab terror group.

US Attorney Joseph Thompson believes “billions of dollars in taxpayer money” have been stolen from welfare fraud schemes.

“To be clear, this is not an isolated scheme,” Thompson said in September. “From Feeding Our Future to Housing Stabilization Services and now Autism Services, these massive fraud schemes form a web that has stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer money.”

Over 70 defendants, almost all Somali, have already been charged in the scheme, with more indictments expected.

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Rand Paul Slams Alcohol And Marijuana Interests Over Federal Hemp Ban, Announcing He’ll File A Bill To Reverse It Next Week

A GOP senator says he’ll be filing a bill next week to protect the hemp industry from an impending federal ban on most cannabinoid products. He’s also calling out alcohol and marijuana interests for allegedly “join[ing] forces” to lobby in favor of the prohibitionist policy change, which will restrict access to a plant and its derivatives that are often used therapeutically—including by members of his Senate colleagues’ families.

In an interview on “The Chris Cuomo Project” podcast that was posted on Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) previewed his plan to push back against the hemp ban that was included in major spending legislation President Donald Trump signed into law last week.

Paul has been sounding the alarm for weeks about the potential consequences of the hemp recriminalization provisions, which he says would cause mass job losses and a $25 billion industry to be “wiped out.”

As he previewed during a separate webinar organized by the Kentucky Hemp Association on Wednesday, the senator told Cuomo that he intends to introduce legislation next week that would make it so state policy regulating hemp cannabinoid products—with basic safeguards in place to prevent youth access, for example—”supersedes the federal law.”

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White House crafting executive order to thwart state AI laws

An executive order that could soon be signed by President Donald Trump would thwart states’ artificial intelligence laws by launching legal challenges and withholding federal funding, according to a draft of the order obtained by CNBC on Wednesday.

The draft surfaced shortly after Trump publicly called for a single federal standard on AI “instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes.”

The draft order would give Attorney General Pam Bondi 30 days to establish an “AI Litigation Task Force” whose sole task is to challenge state AI laws.

Those challenges would be issued “on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment,” the draft says.

The order also directs Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to notify states with contested AI laws that they are ineligible for funds under the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program. BEAD is a more than $42 billion program that has allocated funding to all U.S. states and territories.

The order, which was first reported by The Information, is not yet finalized. A White House official told CNBC that any discussion around it is just speculation until it is officially announced.

As written, the EO would be a major win for the burgeoning AI industry, whose leaders — including Sam Altman’s OpenAI, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and other Silicon Valley titans — oppose an inconsistent state-by-state policy approach.

It would be just as big a blow to state lawmakers across the country who have sought to pass bills that would place guardrails on the nascent technology.

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Trump is turning Gaza into a brutal colonial protection racket

The West has spent two years partnering Israel in its campaign of wanton destruction in Gaza. Now the United States – with the permission of a cowed United Nations Security Council – has appointed Donald Trump to preside over the ruins.

Like a Roman emperor, the US president will be able to dictate the fate of Gaza’s people with a simple gesture. Whatever he decides – whether the thumb turns up or down – it will be called “peace”.

Trump’s most likely side-kick in this depraved charade will be Tony Blair, the former British prime minister. He won his war-crime spurs more than 20 years ago, when he joined one of Trump’s predecessors, George W Bush, in launching an illegal invasion of Iraq and a subsequent, catastrophic occupation that left that country in ruins too.

Satire cannot do justice to this moment.

The eradication of Gaza could be achieved only with the complete hollowing out of international law – the legal global order that was established many decades ago to prevent a third world war and the horrors of the Holocaust.

Marking the demise of that era, the Security Council voted 13-0 this week to endorse Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza, with only Russia and China daring to abstain.

The dissenting representatives of the crumbling legal order – from the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Francesca Albanese, the UN’s legal expert for the occupied territories – have been isolated, vilified and sanctioned by the Trump administration. No one appears to be willing to come to their defence.

Quite the contrary. Germany, whose own genocidal rampage across Europe more than 80 years ago once left it a pariah state and drove the creation of the new legal order, now confidently leads the way in flouting those very rules.

It has resumed supplying Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the slaughter, justifying the decision on the grounds that Israel is murdering fewer Palestinians during Trump’s duplicitous “ceasefire”.

On Wednesday, Israel broke the ceasefire once again, killing more than 30 people in a series of air strikes, including 20 women and children.

Even the current “peace” allows Israel to occupy some 58 percent of Gaza in a depopulated “Green Zone”, effectively partitioning the territory for the forseeable future. Daily, Israel bombs families sheltering in the wreckage of the enclave’s interior, declared a “Red Zone”. And Israel continues to block the entry of food and medicines, including the temporary housing needed as winter rains deluge the territory.

Is this what, 19 years ago, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state, meant when she spoke of the coming, painful “birth pangs of a new Middle East”?

Now, it seems, they have arrived in full force – and the region has never looked more terrifying.

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Trump buys millions in Boeing bonds while awarding it contracts

Trump bought up to $6 million worth of corporate bonds in Boeing, even as the Defense Department has awarded the company multi-billion dollar contracts, new financial disclosures reveal.

According to the documents, Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Boeing bonds on August 28. On September 19, he bought more Boeing bonds worth between $500,000 and $1 million. In total, Trump appears to have bought at least $185 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds since the start of his presidency.

Kedric Payne, Vice President of the Campaign Legal Center, told RS in a phone interview there is “absolutely” a conflict of interest in Trump’s purchase of Boeing, especially since it is “a government contractor that is connected to military actions that the president controls almost unilaterally.”

Trump also bought between $1 and $5 million worth of Intel bonds in August, a week after the Trump administration took a 10% stake in the company. “I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER,” Trump posted on Truth Social on August 25. Trump purchased Intel bonds on August 29.

The partial purchase of the chip manufacturer, done under the auspices of driving technology research vital to national security, drew praise from some advocates of corporate accountability, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Others raised concerns about how the U.S. government could maintain fairness. “Will the government favor firms in which it owns stakes over other competitors that might have better technology or processes?” asked Peter Harrell, a Non Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Since the U.S. government’s partial ownership could give the Trump administration far more influence over the company, Trump’s personal investment in Intel could blur the lines between personal, corporate, and national interests. Intel has said the government’s partial ownership would be passive, with the government agreeing to “vote with the company’s Board of Directors on matters requiring shareholder approval, with limited exceptions.”

Upon entering office, Trump did not move his assets into a blind trust run by an independent trustee that could not be directed by the Trump family. Instead, he opted to hand over his business empire to his sons. The White House did, however, insist that the bond purchases were made by independent financial managers “using programs that replicate recognized indexes when making investments.”

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