Tag: donald trump

US and Ecuadorian militaries burn homes and torture workers in “Operation Total Extermination”

The US-Ecuadorian joint military operation launched March 3, ostensibly against drug cartels, has turned Ecuador into a proving ground for unleashing military violence upon every country in the hemisphere in furtherance of US hegemony.

Neither the Pentagon nor the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense, which has dubbed the onslaught “Operation Total Extermination,” have reported casualty figures.

Subsequent reports, however, have made clear that the Pentagon and Ecuadorian forces are following a scorched-earth policy aimed not at cartels but civilians, akin to that employed by the military dictatorships in Central and South America over the last century.

Last Friday, the Ecuadorian Armed Forces boasted on social media that “Ecuador and the US destroyed” the training grounds and a vacation home of the Border Commands—a drug trafficking group formed by former Colombian FARC-EP guerrilla fighters along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border.

The announcement included aerial videos showing military helicopters bombing rural properties and rustic homes in the northeast town of Santa Rosa, Sucumbíos Province. “During the subsequent search, weapons and other evidence linked to illegal activities were found,” the publication claims.

The US Southern Command, the branch of the US armed forces that oversees forces in Latin America, issued an accompanying statement indicating the US and Ecuador had launched “lethal kinetic operations against Designated Terrorist Organizations.”

Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, added: “At the request of Ecuador, the Department of War executed targeted action to advance our shared objective of dismantling narco-terrorist networks.”

The following day, Saturday, President Daniel Noboa shook hands with Donald Trump at the “Shield of the Americas Summit” in Miami, where the fascist American president announced a “brand new military coalition” against drug cartels. “The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our militaries,” he declared.

To capture drug traffickers, Trump might have simply called for the arrest of Noboa himself, whose billionaire family’s Noboa Trading Co. has been caught shipping cocaine to the Balkans in crates with bananas sold under the Bonita label.

Instead, in real time, the true character of this coalition was shown in Sucumbíos, where local news reporters were informing Saturday that the US and Ecuadorian militaries had bombed the homes of peasants and small farmers and tortured agricultural workers who deny any illegal activities.

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Raskin Launches Probe of Scheme to Sell Insider Access to Trump Truth Social Posts

“Are you helping the president sell people advance access to market-moving information?”

That’s the opening line of a Thursday letter that US House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sent to Kevin McGurn, interim CEO of President Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) Corp.

TMTG runs Trump’s Truth Social platform and earlier this month announced plans to launch “Truth API” by August 1. API, or application programming interface, lets software applications talk to each other. Critics have warned that the new endeavor will give Wall Street firms faster access to posts by the president and other top accounts.

“Trump Media’s target market for buyers of this service is ‘high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms,’ which would each pay a
handsome $100,000 monthly subscription fee,” Raskin wrote. “Nearly half of each fee would go directly into the pocket of Donald Trump, who owns roughly 41% of the company’s shares through a trust that he continues to control.”

“Put another way, Trump Media will soon be selling early access to President Trump’s so-called ‘Truth’ missives to the most sophisticated investment firms in the world,” he stressed. “This insider-information scheme will enable Wall Street to profit from the president’s frequent market-moving posts on major businesses and cash in on swings in stock prices caused by the president’s buying and selling (or pumping and dumping, if you prefer) of publicly traded stocks to unwitting retail investors.”

As Investopedia pointed out Thursday: “In recent months Trump has posted about new developments in the Iran War, which is particularly important for buyers and sellers of futures contracts who are trying to ascertain where oil prices are headed. Over the past year, he has also posted about tariff policy, government investments in publicly traded companies, and other corporate news developments.”

Additionally, as Raskin highlighted, “Trump has promoted over 20 companies on his Truth Social account shortly after purchasing the companies’ stocks, including government contractors where the Trump administration exerted substantial ability to move markets in those companies’ favor. Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm, 1789 Capital, has posted a staggering 200% investment return since his father’s return to the White House, with the president recently admitting that his oldest sons are coventurers in his corruption.”

Once the new service is up and running, “whenever President Trump uses Truth Social to announce that a ceasefire is imminent, or prematurely leaks US jobs data, his customers will now be able to front-run the market using their privileged access to his social media posts, leaving retail investors, pension plans, and retirement accounts irreparably disadvantaged,” he warned. “This is precisely the type of harm that federal securities laws are designed to prevent.”

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Pirro Dismisses Lincoln Reflecting Pool Vandalism Criminal Case Against Former Olympian David Hearn

The Justice Department on Friday dismissed the Lincoln Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn.

David Hearn, the former Olympian who was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for destruction of property for vandalizing the Lincoln Reflecting Pool last month, was indicted by a grand jury on felony charges earlier this month.

Hearn is a three-time Olympic canoeist.

David Hearn denied any wrongdoing.

Hearn was charged with felony destruction of government property. He was facing 10 years in prison.

A grand jury in the DC Superior Court returned the indictment.

During a press conference earlier this month, US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro said Hearn “violently and forcefully” ripped up the sealant.

However, on Friday, Pirro said the damage to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool was the result of “flawed installation by the contractor.”

“It was not until after the return of the indictment [of Hearn], that the [Department of Interior] provided additional documents to the [US Attorney’s Office in DC] indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026,” Pirro’s office wrote.

Hearn’s attorneys said in a statement to CNN reacting to the decision:

“The Trump administration’s case against David Hearn should never have been brought.

Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong.

The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology.”

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Trump: Minnesota’s ‘gross incompetence’ — not Iran — behind water system hacks

President Donald Trump says Minnesota is to blame for a recent cyber-attack against the state’s water system.

While speaking on Friday at his cabinet’s historic Camp David meeting, President Trump called the North Star State’s leadership grossly incompetent after the breach reportedly affected over 30-water systems.

“We heard in ⁠Minnesota there was a cyberattack, ​and they blame it on Iran. ​I don’t think so,” Trump said. 

“I think I blame it on ​Minnesota because they’re grossly incompetent,” he continued.

“I think the governor is behind it,” he said of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D-Minn.). “I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack.”

His statements follow a New York Times report citing federal investigators who concluded that the cyber incident was likely carried out by Iranian threat actors.

“The tradecraft used, and the absence of a ransom demand, had led analysts to tentatively conclude that it was the work of Iranian hackers,” the Times reports. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is continuing its investigation into the breach, which authorities say might have affected utilities across at least six other states as well.

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Senate Committee Votes to Block Part of Trump Admin’s Effort to Dismantle Department of Education

Republican Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (A-AK) are working with Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) on a bill to block part of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Department of Education (ED). 

On Thursday, the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee approved the bill, S. 5046, in a 13-9 vote to prohibit ED from moving special education and several other education offices to other federal agencies, Politico reported. 

The bill is in response to ED entering into at least a dozen interagency agreements (IAAs) to move certain functions to other departments as the Trump administration waits for Congress to follow through on the president’s campaign promise to eliminate the department. Officially ending the department would take an act of Congress, as it was Congress that created it 45 years ago under President Jimmy Carter.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has called the IAAs “proof of concept” and said she hopes Congress will be more willing to end ED if lawmakers see the successful transition of major functions to other federal agencies. A spokesperson for ED called the new bill “entirely premature.”

A statement from ED spokeswoman Savannah Newhouse says:

Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve.

Collins called the bill “straightforward” and said it keeps the administration of certain education programs “where Congress specifically put them and where they belong.”

Murkowski claimed the programs Congress told ED to oversee are there “for a good reason.”

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, we’re talking about children, whether it’s children with special needs, whether it’s children in our elementary schools, whether it’s our Native students — making sure that we don’t lose that focus,” Murkowski said.

The bill would specifically stop the agency from moving the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, as well as the offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education, and Indian Education to other federal agencies. The bill is in addition to Congress approving non-binding language in the most recent spending bill telling ED it has no authority to move functions to other departments. 

The bill does not halt every interagency agreement, although Democrats want to stop those too, according to the report.

The future of the bill is “unclear,” per the report. However, Kaine told the outlet he hopes it is considered in appropriations discussions. The bill is directly at odds with a House bill the Education and Workforce Committee voted on last month to permanently move certain ED functions to other agencies. 

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Bureau of Land Management Approves First-Ever AI Data Center on Public Lands

A little over a year ago, on July 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order announcing that “my Administration will utilize federally owned land and resources for the expeditious and orderly development of data centers.”

And indeed, just last month, on June 26, 2026, the Trump administration approved the first-ever commercial AI data center on public land.

The Townsite Data Center would be located on 88.5 acres of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Eldorado Valley. It would sit within the city limits of Boulder City, Nevada, a historic community of fewer than 15,000 people southeast of Las Vegas, often referred to as the “gateway to the Hoover Dam.”

The facility would draw as much as 167 megawatts of electricity—more than Boulder City itself consumes—and place two warehouse-scale buildings, parking lots, an electrical substation, battery storage, backup generators, powerlines, and a brand new road in the middle of desert tortoise habitat.

And yet, Bruce Sillitoe, the BLM’s Las Vegas Field Office Manager, approved the AI data center in June without preparing a new environmental assessment or soliciting any public comment.

Instead, the agency relied on a prior analysis conducted for a completely different proposal: a solar-energy and battery-storage project called Townsite Solar 2, which was first proposed by the same Houston-based company that now wants to build a data center there instead.

The maps below, obtained from the BLM’s Plan of Development, show the location of the proposed Townsite Data Center relative to Las Vegas and Lake Mead, and Boulder City. “Development of data center and AI infrastructure is a top priority [of] the United States Government,” the Plan of Development says.

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US Intel Chiefs Back Trump’s Claim China Interfered In American Elections

A fact sheet released July 30 by the White House Government Transparency Task Force says China and its proxies bought, stole, or hacked voter data belonging to as many as 220 million Americans, including some information that was not publicly available.

The fact sheet pairs that finding with the intelligence community’s official definition of election interference, which includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter data.

It notes that, for a foreign country’s actions to amount to “election interference,” they do not have to change the actual results.

“That definition includes a foreign power’s targeting of voter registration infrastructure or data,” the task force states, citing declassified documents produced by the U.S. intelligence community.

The fact sheet was approved by the heads of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the White House.

Representatives from those agencies—as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation—also coordinated with the White House before Trump’s July 16 address and “approved the factual statements” drawn from intelligence documents used in the speech, the task force states.

Election Interference Defined

In his speech, Trump said China has long been meddling in U.S. elections, including that it was “working to influence” the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden was ultimately declared the winner.

Trump did not explicitly claim that China managed to change the 2020 result, and neither did the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The spy chiefs did say in the fact sheet that voter-registration data is itself part of election infrastructure and could be manipulated in ways that affect election results, for instance by preventing groups of voters from casting their ballots.

“Adversaries could alter data to potentially prevent individual voters or groups of voters from voting, causing delays on election day or forcing voters to use provisional ballots,” the task force states, citing intelligence community documents.

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REVEALED: Trump Administration Using Alien Removal Court for First Time in History to Deport ISIS Terrorist Who Plotted Election Day Terror Attack

It has been revealed that the Trump Administration, in the first-ever application to the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, is seeking to deport an ISIS-aligned terrorist whose sons were arrested for planning a mass casualty attack on election day.

According to an unclassified Justice Department document, “Nazira Haji Zada is the subject of an FBI national security investigation and is being investigated for crimes related to international terrorism.”

Her son, Abdullah Haji Zada, and son-in-law, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were arrested by the FBI after they “conspired to relocate their female and juvenile male family members, including NAZIRA, to ISIS controlled territory in Afghanistan, while they would remain in the U.S. to conduct an attack on behalf of ISIS.”

“The FBI has developed information that NAZIRA is a supporter of ISIS, has formally pledged loyalty to ISIS, and supported TAWHEDI and ABDULLAH’s conspiracy. The FBI is further aware that NAZIRA, in collaboration with TAWHEDI, worked to indoctrinate her children with ISIS ideology and have them pledge loyalty to ISIS. NAZIRA worked with TAWHEDI to radicalize the family and to conceal their pro-ISIS teaching and planned family relocation to ISIS-controlled territory from her unsuspecting husband Abdul Haji Zada,” the memo reads.

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US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference

A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at ‌a global conference taking place in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screenshots and posted them online.

Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map ​displayed halfway during a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements.

A Reuters analysis found the ​image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that ⁠signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company said it was investigating the report.

The State Department said ​it took “full responsibility” for the confusion caused and that the map had been produced by a team member who ​hastily changed the slide deck before the event.

The map showed Nigeria, where the U.S. currently has several hundred troops deployed, as landlocked in the Sahara Desert. Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa, was relocated to the Horn of Africa, while Ivory ​Coast in West Africa was placed on the other side of the continent.

Screenshots of the map first appeared ​in a Substack post by AIDS expert Emily Bass and were widely shared on LinkedIn, with one post garnering some ‌40,000 views.

“Whoever ⁠created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” wrote Matt Petit, who focuses on AI and geopolitics at the Atlantic Council, in the post.

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Huh? Trump Responds to Fauci’s Refusal to Answer Questions, Says He “Respects” Biden’s Autopen Pardon

President Trump on Wednesday responded to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s refusal to answer questions before the Senate Homeland Security Committee earlier, invoking his Fifth Amendment right more than 100 times as Senate Republicans grilled him over the COVID pandemic and his many lies. 

Senator Rand Paul announced that the committee will vote next week to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer questions and suggested that his invocation of the Fifth Amendment was unlawful.

Trump was asked whether he thinks Fauci should be held in contempt during a press conference at the White House. Trump did not comment on whether Fauci should face repercussions for his refusal to testify.

“Well, I watched the whole thing today, but more importantly, I was a part of the whole Fauci. I inherited Fauci. He was here from the 1980s, so I had him for a period of time, and I disagreed with him on a lot,” Trump said, noting that “I would have had to close down the whole country if I listened to him.”

“I went the Federalist way, which is basically let the governors decide, and generally speaking, the Republican governors did very well. The Democrat governors did not very well,” Trump continued.

“But Fauci wanted to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as you could get. I mean, made a lot of mistakes, and he wasn’t a big factor for me. He was a very big factor for Biden, and if you remember, even though we were sort of prime time in terms of that whole disaster of COVID, far people died fewer in the Trump administration than in the Biden administration.”

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