Tag: donald trump

US Carries Out Large-Scale Strikes Against ISIS in Syria

US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that they have carried out “large-scale” airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, saying the hit multiple sites belonging to the terror group as part of their commitment to “pursuing terrorists” and in retaliation for the mid-December incident in which an ISIS infiltrator attacked and killed two US troops and an American civilian translator in Palmyra.

The strikes began Saturday evening, and CENTCOM claimed multiple coalition partners participated, though only Jordan has actually confirmed being involved so far. 35 sites were reportedly hit in the strikes, involving 90 “precision munitions.”

Details of what exactly was hit are unclear, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported three checkpoints within the Deir Ezzor Governorate were attacked by coalition strikes, though they noted that no damage was done and no casualties were reported in those cases.

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Trump Threatens Cuba, Suggests Rubio Could Serve as the Country’s President

President Donald Trump asserted that Cuba was vulnerable after he kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He demanded that Havana make a deal with Washington or face additional aggression from the US.

“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” the President wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Venezuela that killed over 100 people and captured Maduro. Some of those killed were Cuban soldiers who were serving as Maduro’s bodyguards.

“Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE! Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last week’s USA attack,” Trump wrote. “And Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”

Following the capture of Maduro, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened several other nations in our own hemisphere. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.

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Nostalgia isn’t strategy: Stop the Monroe revisionism and listen

“[T]herefore you may rest assured that if the Nicaraguan activities were brought to light, they would furnish one of the largest scandals in the history of the country.”

Such was the concluding line of a letter from Marine Corps Sergeant Harry Boyle to Idaho Senator William Borah on April 23, 1930. Boyle’s warning was not merely an artifact of a bygone intervention, but a caution against imperial hubris — one newly relevant in the wake of “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Venezuela.

The Trump administration has amplified the afterglow of its tactical success with renewed assertions of hemispheric hegemony through a nostalgic and often ahistorical reading of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite the administration’s enthusiasm for old-fashioned hemispheric imperialism, the historical record ought to caution for restraint, not revisionism.

When modern American officials invoke the Monroe Doctrine, they often do so with a confidence that suggests its meaning is settled and its record vindicated. Historically, the doctrine — both in meaning and in application — was far more contested than modern enthusiasts let on. Indeed, the high-water mark of American imperialism in the Caribbean exposed the high costs and meager returns of micromanaging neighboring states.

Critics of the president’s muscular approach to Latin America have often cited the recent Middle Eastern record of U.S. interventionism as a warning. While such comparisons have limits, the Latin American record offers little reassurance of its own. For all the confidence of its modern champions, the meaning and application of the Monroe Doctrine was never fixed, codified, or uncontested.

The apex of American military hegemony in the Caribbean basin, often justified under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine, came during the so-called Banana Wars. From the 1890s through the early 1930s, U.S. forces intervened in seven countries, including decades-long occupations of Haiti and Nicaragua. Over this period, successive presidents used military force to protect American agricultural interests from nationalization and labor unrest and to prevent Latin American debt defaults that policymakers feared might invite European intervention.

Despite new waves of wistfulness in some corners of the MAGA movement, such interventions were not uniformly popular on Capitol Hill or in the general populace, and by the mid-1920s, the tide had turned against such acts of naked imperialism. Bolstered by the anguish of World War I, a diverse set of domestic voices, religious pacifists on one end, to xenophobic populists on the other, viewed military action in the Caribbean as wasteful, pointless, and morally abhorrent.

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White House Amplifies Shocking Claims Of US Super Soldiers Deployed In Maduro Raid

White House Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt amplified claims about American special forces super-soliders deployed advanced weaponry during the extraction phase of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

Leavitt reposted an alleged account from a Venezuelan security guard at Maduro’s compound describing what happened when Delta Force operators descended from helicopters in pitch-black conditions. This account was originally posted on X by California-based political activist Mike Netter, who is seeking to recall left-wing Governor Gavin Newsom.

“On the day of the operation, we didn’t hear anything coming. We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react,” the security guard on Maduro’s compound said. This account was considered credible enough for Leavitt to repost.

Here’s the full account from the security guard that reads Venezuelan forces were unable to comprehend the modern battlefield, where drones, sonic weapons, and we’re sure insane helmet-mounted optics with AI, just made an unlevel playing field, in which the guard said, “Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything.”

Full account:

This account from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro is absolutely chilling—and it explains a lot about why the tone across Latin America suddenly changed.

Security Guard: On the day of the operation, we didn’t hear anything coming. We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.

Interviewer: So what happened next? How was the main attack?

Security Guard: After those drones appeared, some helicopters arrived, but there were very few. I think barely eight helicopters. From those helicopters, soldiers came down, but a very small number. Maybe twenty men. But those men were technologically very advanced. They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.

Interviewer: And then the battle began?

Security Guard: Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything.

Interviewer: And your own weapons? Didn’t they help?

Security Guard: No help at all. Because it wasn’t just the weapons. At one point, they launched something—I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.

Interviewer: And your comrades? Did they manage to resist?

Security Guard: No, not at all. Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.

Interviewer: So do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?

Security Guard: Without a doubt. I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.

Interviewer: And now that Trump has said Mexico is on the list, do you think the situation will change in Latin America?

Security Guard: Definitely. Everyone is already talking about this. No one wants to go through what we went through. Now everyone thinks twice. What happened here is going to change a lot of things, not just in Venezuela but throughout the region.

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Former British Spy Chief Backs Trump’s Efforts to Take Control of Greenland

A former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency has argued that it would be good for “European security” if U.S. President Trump succeeds in taking control of Greenland.

Amid increasing speculation over the fate of the island, with suggestions that the U.S. would be willing to either provide financial compensation to the 57,000 Greenlanders or potentially use military force to annex the strategically important Danish territory, European leaders have reacted with shock and indignation.

However, former British Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Dearlove has argued that it would be in Europe’s interests to cede control of Greenland to the United States, as only America has the military prowess necessary for long-term deployments in the Arctic territory or the might required to deter hostile actors such as Communist China or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Speaking to TalkTV, Sir Richard said: “There is a strong argument for reinforcing Europe’s security by putting a much greater representation of American forces, which are the only ones that can effectively cope up in Greenland.

“Now, I would have thought that it’s possible for Denmark and the United States to make some agreement. Why the hell don’t the Danes lease them Greenland for a hundred years?

“I think it’s really important that we look at this, not in terms of, ‘Gosh, isn’t Trump doing dreadful stuff?’ It’s about European security and the safety of the area in which we live.”

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How Marjorie Taylor Greene Went From QAnon Acolyte to MAGA Exile

Pundits have offered elaborate explanations for the evolving views of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican whose resignation from Congress takes effect today, but I don’t think you need a detailed theory to explain this woman’s journey from QAnon acolyte to MAGA exile. You just need to recognize one central fact about her: She actually believes things. Some of the things she’s believed are absurd, but that’s secondary. She has beliefs, and she’s willing—not always, but more often than the average D.C. pol—to put those beliefs ahead of other considerations.

You could already catch a hint of this during Greene’s original 2020 congressional campaign. Back then, she attracted national attention for her past interest in QAnon, a tapestry of conspiracy theories in which President Donald Trump was supposedly secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to defeat a cabal of elite satanic pedophiles who consume children’s blood. In those days, articles about Greene frequently linked her to another Q-friendly figure, the Colorado congressional candidate Lauren Boebert, who entered the House at the same time as Greene and eventually had a contentious falling out with her. (Greene was booted from the Freedom Caucus after she reportedly called Boebert a “little bitch.”) But even in 2020, anyone paying close attention could have seen an important difference between the two candidates. Greene had actually embraced the Q worldview (though she insisted that she had come to reject it). Boebert, asked about QAnon on the conspiracist show Steel Truth, had replied by saying she “hope[d] that this is real”—a statement delicately phrased to appeal to the Q-ish voting bloc without committing her to its worldview. Boebert was playing a cynical political game. Greene, for better or for worse, was a believer.

Not just a believer: a particular kind of believer. Most Americans don’t spend their lives soaking up the dogmas of the two big parties’ competing fan bases. To the extent that they pay attention to politics, they often adopt their views piecemeal, mixing opinions from the left and the right and, sometimes, from strange folks on the fringes. So you might be, say, an affluent woman in an Atlanta suburb, founder of a CrossFit gym, who rarely reads the op-ed pages of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal but scrolls frequently through Facebook, absorbing rumors that the typical Times or Journal reader might regard as nuts. That was Greene, part normie and part weird—weird, in fact, because she was so normal.

The most infamous idea Greene expressed in her pre-congressional days came in 2018, when she wrote a Facebook post blaming that year’s California wildfires on space lasers controlled by the Rothschild banking family. The Rothschilds play a starring role in many antisemitic conspiracy theories, so when Greene’s post resurfaced in 2021, many people concluded the congresswoman was not merely loopy but an antisemite. Greene responded that she simply hadn’t known that the Rothschilds are Jewish. Maybe she really didn’t know, or maybe that was a lie. But if any congressperson could plausibly claim such naivete, it would be Greene. This wasn’t the Rothschild tale of someone who grew up surrounded by anti-Jewish folklore; it was the Rothschild tale of someone surrounded by folklore that had fallen out of its original context and floated like driftwood in a digital sea.

Sometimes someone with that sort of background comes to Washington, gets acclimated, and drops those early influences like a striver carefully eliminating every trace of his hometown’s accent. But Greene didn’t. She kept believing things, and that led to trouble with her party.

Even during Donald Trump’s first stint in the White House, you could see a simmering tension between two types of MAGA—the kind that was basically just pro-Trump, and a wilder, woolier bundle of Trump-era currents on the populist right. (One way to tell the difference: Check whether someone’s skepticism about the national security state disappears when the three-letter agencies pursue people not named Trump.) Greene was, along with Florida’s Matt Gaetz, the most notable Republican from the second group to have made it to Congress. Their views did not always track with the party line, particularly when it came to foreign policy. Greene once joined Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a self-described socialist from Michigan, in signing a letter asking the government to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and she did it the very same week she joined a Republican push to censure Tlaib for some comments about Israel.

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The Venezuela Technocracy Connection

The US bombing of Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro cannot be rationally explained as a drug enforcement operation, or even solely about recovering oil. The bigger picture is Technocracy.

In the early morning hours of January 3, 2026, the United States military launched military strikes on Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores have since been transported to the New York City to face charges relating to gun crimes and cocaine trafficking.

The move has divided the MAGA base—and the American public more generally—with a large portion of President Donald Trump’s base viewing it as a betrayal of the principles he claimed to champion. Specifically, Trump has claimed for years he would not start new wars of aggression.

While Trump has stated that taking out Maduro is not about launching new wars but instead a calculated attack to take out a man he blames for America’s fentanyl crisis, the facts tell another story.

Was Maduro’s Capture About Drug Trafficking?

In May 2025, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released its 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA). This report mentions Venezuela trafficking fentanyl to the US a total of zero times. Instead, it blames Mexican cartels for the manufacturing and trafficking of fentanyl. This should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention, as these facts are common knowledge among the US government and drug-trafficking researchers.

A second key point is that although Trump and neocon Secretary of State Marco Rubio have repeatedly sought to tie Maduro to drug cartels, there remains scant evidence for the claim.

The US government previously claimed Maduro was the head of the drug-trafficking group Cartel de los Soles (also known as the Cartel of the Suns). However, many skeptics have claimed the group doesn’t actually exist. During Trump’s first term, Maduro was indicted as the alleged leader of this cartel. In 2025, during his second term, Cartel de los Soles was officially designated a foreign terrorist organization.

However, when Maduro was brought to NYC and officially charged, the US Department of Justice dropped the allegations from their indictment. The lack of charges relating to Cartel de los Soles is a signal that the US government does not believe it has strong enough evidence to convict Maduro in court. Instead, they have changed their tune and are now claiming Maduro was involved in cocaine trafficking.

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Did Trump Accidentally Pardon Accused Jan 6 Pipe-Bomber?

It took nearly five years for the FBI to finally arrest someone for planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, but the suspect may avoid serving a prison sentence thanks to the language in President Trump’s sweeping pardon of those who participated in Jan. 6 mayhem.

In that pardon issued on the day of his 2025 inauguration, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 people convicted of offenses springing from the Jan 6 demonstrations. Next, seeking to free some 1,500 others from convictions or pending prosecutions, Trump wrote, “I do hereby…grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

It seems immaterial that the charges against Brian Cole Jr for planting bombs came after Trump’s pardon, notes former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori, writing at Politico: 

Trump could have specified that the pardon applied only to people who had been convicted or charged “as of the date” of his pardon…but there is no such language in Trump’s proclamation. Lest there be any doubt, the Supreme Court made clear more than 150 years ago that presidents have the constitutional authority to do this — that is, to issue “preemptive pardons” for past conduct even if that conduct has not been charged at the time of the pardon.  

In another context — relating to Trump’s pardon of those who sought to send alternate slates of electors to the 2020 Electoral College — Trump’s DOJ has claimed it has the power to determine which crimes Trump intended to include, but courts may take a dim view of that kind of de facto delegation of presidential pardon power, particularly where the plain language of the pardon is unambiguous and deliberately sweeping.

Federal prosecutors are behaving as if they fully appreciate the pardon’s potential to set Cole free and render their efforts futile. In both court filings and remarks in a hearing, they avoided using language that links Cole’s alleged actions to Jan. 6.   

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Greenland mining firm hires Trump-tied lobbyists amid US invasion threats

The company suing Greenland for the right to mine rare earth minerals has hired a lobbying firm deeply connected to the Trump administration, increasing the threat of US action against the territory.

This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!

Energy Transition Minerals announced yesterday that it hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm run by Brian Ballard, a major donor and fundraiser for Trump, to assert what it says are its claims on the territory. Attorney General Pam Bondi, along with Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, were both hired by Trump straight out of Ballard Partners.

The news comes as the White House steps up its rhetoric over Greenland, saying this week that it was exploring all options to take control of the territory, including a military invasion.

Energy Transition Minerals, an Australian mining company, was given a license nearly twenty years ago to explore the Kvanefjeld deposit, which contains over 11 million metric tons of rare earth minerals, including large quantities of uranium. The size of Kvanefjeld makes it the largest thorium deposit, the second-largest uranium deposit and overall the third-largest rare earths deposit in the world.

In a world hungry for new energy sources, Kvanefjeld’s significance can’t be overstated.

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Fact-Checking All of the Mysteries Surrounding Donald Trump and Penn

t was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two world leaders could not have been further apart. The Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man who’d just received a painful enema. Or, as grizzled, now-banished White House aide-de-camp Steve Bannon describes it in Siege, Michael Wolff’s decadent and depraved follow-up to 2018’s Trumpworld tell-all Fire And Fury, “like a beaten dog.”

Speculation within Trump’s inner circle was that Putin must have something on Trump. The pee tape? Evidence that Don Jr. tried to buy Hillary’s emails? His tax returns? Nah. As Bannon told Wolff, “nobody gives a fuck” about that stuff. But, he wondered, “What if they have his college transcript?”

Ahh, the college transcript. Trump famously graduated from Penn’s Wharton School in 1968 — a fact he reminds audiences of over and over again. (Per Penn’s student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, he publicly name-dropped Wharton 52 times between June 2015 and January 2018.) But despite all his humblebragging about that Wharton degree, Trump has never allowed his academic performance there to be made public.

“This was a major, major thing with Trump — that people might think he’s stupid,” Michael Wolff told me around the time of Siege’s publication earlier this summer. “The focus of that for Trump is the college transcripts, which are apparently terrible. I’ve spoken to friends of Trump from that time, and this was a guy that was obviously not interested in school and possibly never read a book in his life. For everyone that had known him then and years afterward, the assumption was that he had terrible grades, he was a lackluster student at best.”

In truth, Trump’s Wharton GPA is just one of many mysteries surrounding the 45th president’s relationship with Penn, Philadelphia’s most powerful private institution, which, unwittingly or not, helped unleash Trump on the world. Over the years, there have been rumors about how Trump might have gotten into Penn in the first place, and how much — or how little — he’s donated to the school as an alum. There are tales about Trump’s social life as a Penn undergrad — did he, in fact, have a fling with Candice Bergen? And there are stories — including one particularly juicy one — about the Penn careers of Trump kids Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, all of whom followed in their old man’s red-and-blue footsteps.

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