Tag: donald trump

Republican Socialism Goes Nuclear: Trump Bets $80 Billion on Government-Backed Energy

Since President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the federal government has trademarked its own version of Republican socialism by nationalizing steel production and taking equity stakes in chip manufacturers and mining projects. Now, it’s getting involved in the nuclear power sector. 

On Tuesday, Westinghouse Electric Company announced that it had entered “into a strategic partnership” with the federal government, Brookfield Asset Management, and uranium fuel supplier Cameco Corporation to build “at least” $80 billion worth of Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactors across the country. The agreement was made “in accordance” with Trump’s May executive order, which called for the deployment of 10 new large nuclear reactors in the U.S. by 2030, according to Westinghouse. 

The details of the agreement are still a bit murky, but the federal government will underwrite at least some of these projects, while others might be financed by Japan. On Tuesday, Japan’s trade ministry pledged to invest $550 billion into American projects, in exchange for lower tariff rates from the Trump administration. Included in this package was an “artificial intelligence and a nuclear reactor construction initiative that was expected to be worth up to $100 billion and involve Mitsubishi Heavy [Industries] and Toshiba,” reports The New York Times. 

The deal might also allow the federal government to take an equity stake in America’s largest nuclear power company. Bloomberg‘s Liam Denning writes that as long as the U.S. government follows through on its financial commitment, “it would then get a 20% share in any dividends paid out by Westinghouse above a $17.5 billion threshold.” If these projects are up and running within the next “three years or so” and “Westinghouse is deemed at that point to be worth at least $30 billion, the company may then be required to do an initial public offering with the government getting warrants that may convert into an equity stake,” according to Denning. 

Nuclear power is clean, reliable, and safe, but forcing taxpayers to bet on its future success is risky. After thriving throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, the industry has been plagued by P.R. disasters and project failures that have hampered nuclear power for much of the last 30 years. 

Recent efforts to revive the industry have not done much to build public confidence. A failed nuclear power plant project in South Carolina, which featured two AP1000 reactors, left ratepayers on the hook for millions of dollars, although Brookfield Management is considering reviving the project, according to the Associated Press.

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US Military Officials Involved in Latin America Campaign Required To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements

US military officials involved in the Trump administration’s military campaign in Latin America have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.

The report said the request is highly unusual, since US military officials are already required to keep secrets from the public, though it also acknowledged that the Pentagon has previously used NDAs under the leadership of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The news comes as members of Congress have complained about the Trump administration’s lack of transparency about the campaign, which has involved bombing alleged drug-running boats and a substantial military buildup, and a push toward a regime change war to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The US War Department has not provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the boats it has been bombing are carrying and hasn’t provided any information about the people it has been killing in strikes that amount to extrajudicial executions at sea.

In an interview on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been very critical of the bombing campaign, affirmed that Congress hasn’t received any information about the people the Pentagon has been targeting. “No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said. “So, at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings.”

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Hegseth Announces 14 Killed In New, Largest Single Attack On ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Boats

Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth has announced yet more strikes on alleged drug vessels operating off South America, in what’s becoming a weekly thing. This latest strike involved four total boats – in what looks to be the largest single set of strikes yet.

Unlike most of the some nine strikes recorded thus far, these fresh attacks were on the Pacific side of Latin America, and not directly off Venezuela’s coast. There’s been only one other prior instance, announced earlier this month, of such operations on the Pacific side.

The attacks against several vessels occurred Monday. Hegseth disclosed on Tuesday, “Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific.”

“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth continued.

The death toll was high in comparison with other attacks which stretch back several weeks. Hegseth continues in his statement on X:

Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike. A total of 14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor.

All strikes were in international waters with no U.S. forces harmed. Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue. 

This note about cooperation from Mexican authorities is interesting, and shows that not all regional governments are against the heightened Pentagon action off their shores – or else they are simply too scared of the Trump administration to say ‘no’.

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US Officials Disagree With Trump on Venezuela

In the waters of the Caribbean, a surprisingly large U.S. fleet sits with Venezuela in its sights. It includes over 10,000 troops, Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships and a secretive special-operations ship.

The fleet is built for war on Venezuela or its drug cartels, but it is engineered to put enough pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to push him from power. The justification for the war is stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. by Venezuelan drug cartels; the justification for the coup is that Maduro is the head of those cartels.

But U.S. officials – often those in the best place to know – have disagreed with all three aspects of the military action: the significance of Venezuela’s drug cartels in the flow of drugs, and especially fentanyl, into United States; the role of Maduro in those cartels; and the use of the military to fight them. For their disagreement, many of those officials have left or been forced from their jobs.

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that military force is necessary to stop “narco-terrorists” who are smuggling a “deadly weapon poisoning Americans. He has claimed that “every boat,” the U.S. military strikes off the coast of Venezuela is “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl” and “kills 25,000 on average – some people say more.”

But current and former U.S. officials disagree. While most of the boats the U.S. military has sunk have been in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, U.S. officials say that that passage is neither used to transport fentanyl nor is it used to transport drugs to the United States. 80% of the drugs that flow through that passage is marijuana, and most of the rest is cocaine. And those drugs are headed, not to the U.S., but to West Africa and Europe. Most of the fentanyl that finds its way into the U.S. comes from Mexico.

The military strikes on Venezuelan boats cannot be justified by the war on drugs and “are unlikely… to cut overdose deaths in the United States,” according to officials. “When I saw [an internal document on the strikes],” a senior U.S. national security official said, “I immediately thought, ‘This isn’t about terrorists. This is about Venezuela and regime change’.”

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90% of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl. The dissenting American officials are in agreement with international bodies. The  2025 UNODC World Drug Report assesses that Venezuela “has consolidated its status as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops.” The report says that “[o]nly 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela.” The EU’s European Drug Report 2025 corroborates the UN report: it “does not mention Venezuela even once as a corridor for the international drug trade.”

U.S. intelligence also disagrees on the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is at the head of the Venezuelan drug cartels. The Trump administration has insisted that “Maduro is the leader of the designated narco-terrorist organization Cartel de Los Soles.”

Again, though, U.S. officials disagree. A “sense of the community” memorandum dated April 7, 2025 that puts together the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directly contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is the leader of Tren de Aragua (TDA) drug cartel.

The memorandum clearly states that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.” It states that the intelligence community “has not observed the regime directing TDA.”

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Election Interference Litigation: Trump’s Case Against the Des Moines Register and Pollster Moves Forward

Back in 2018, I launched a podcast very loosely tied to what I’ve done for a living for many years, and so I called it “Shaping Opinion.” The very first topic I sought to cover was how political polls are used to shape public opinion and influence the vote. 

Needless to say, I didn’t get any takers who were willing to put themselves out there on this issue, and not just in that first year. This has always been one of those topics I’ve been ready to seize on if any new studies or indisputable proof would come up that would give me a chance to dig in. But no matter who I approached, people got awful shy on this one, especially after the presidential race of 2020. 

Of course, this is one of those topics where you can trust your own eyes and ears, and your powers of observation over time. In every presidential election cycle, Democrats are over-sampled and Republicans are not. Pollsters say there are reasons for this, but they never tell the full truth. 

You can count on public polls telling you early and often that the Democrat candidate is dominating. At some point around the conventions, polls will say each candidate saw a “post-convention bounce,” but the Republican candidate’s bump is always temporary and fleeting. The Democrat candidate’s bounce is always framed as the start of the home-stretch run where he or she is a likely winner. 

This is to condition the voters into assuming the Democrat will win. Social psychologists often say that most people like a winner, so for many, once they have a sense from the polls who the likely winner will be, that’s who they decide to vote for. 

Anyone with common sense who has seen this pattern over at least three election cycles can detect for themselves that polls are commonly used to shape opinion, not reflect it. 

So last year, when a well-respected pollster from Iowa named J. Ann Selzer published her final numbers for “The Iowa Poll” three days before election day, many of us were extremely curious. She released what was the final Des Moines Register presidential election poll, which had Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three points. 

Fox News called this a “shock poll” that “showed a seven-point shift from Trump to Harris from September, when he had a four-point lead over the vice president in the same poll.” 

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WSJ: Trump Offered to Build White House Ballroom for Obama in 2010

President Donald Trump offered to build a White House ballroom for President Barack Obama in 2010 — but the Obama administration never took up his offer, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The Journal reported:

For at least 15 years, Trump had tried and failed to build a grand ballroom at the White House that could host extravagant dinners for world leaders, lawmakers and celebrities. In early 2010, President Barack Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod got a call from Trump, then a real-estate developer and reality television star. They were connected via MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who had closer ties with Trump at the time.

“He said, ‘You have these state dinners in sh—y little tents,” Axelrod recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘I build ballrooms. I build the most beautiful ballrooms in the world. You can come to Florida and see for yourself.’ ”

Trump offered to build a modular ballroom at the White House that could be deconstructed. “I was thinking, we’re in the middle of a recession, I’m not sure about this,” Axelrod said. Axelrod suggested that Trump get in touch with Obama’s social secretary about the ballroom. They didn’t connect.

The Journal noted that Trump had approached the ballroom the way he had approached other building projects in the past — discovering how to control the regulatory process, or finding loopholes, to allow construction.

The ballroom is being built with funding from private donors, with costs reaching an estimated $350 million.

The Washington Post editorial page defended Trump’s ballroom project, noting that even Obama and Biden administration alimni had admitted the need for an indoor space — as opposed to the current arrangement, which forces esteemed guests to walk across the grass and to use portable toilets outdoors at large gatherings.

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CIA provided contradictory intel on Hamas during Trump-brokered peace deal, envoys reveal

As U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner worked to secure a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, they faced an unexpected obstacle: conflicting intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In a revealing interview with “60 Minutes,” Witkoff disclosed that while mediators from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt assured them Hamas was open to negotiations, the CIA delivered daily briefings insisting the militant group would reject the deal. The discrepancy raises critical questions about the reliability of U.S. intelligence and its role in high-stakes diplomacy.

The Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan faced skepticism from regional players and international observers. Yet Kushner and Witkoff, leveraging personal relationships with Arab leaders, believed Hamas could be persuaded to accept key concessions—including a hostage release and ceasefire.

According to Witkoff, while Qatar’s emir, Turkey’s president and Egypt’s leadership privately signaled Hamas’ willingness to engage, the CIA’s assessments painted a starkly different picture.

“We were getting, because of our relationships… we were hearing that Hamas was positive on the deal,” Witkoff told “60 Minutes.” “And yet I was reading intelligence reports every day and getting briefings from the CIA three times a day and those intelligence briefings were suggesting that Hamas was going to say no.”

The contradiction forced Kushner and Witkoff to make a crucial judgment call: trust their diplomatic sources or defer to the CIA’s warnings.

Did the CIA mislead or misinterpret?

The White House defended the intelligence community’s role, with an official telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided “critical support” throughout negotiations.

“It is the responsibility of the intelligence community to provide full scopes of assessments to the negotiating team to ensure they have the full range of information and can achieve the best possible outcome—as they did,” the official said.

But according to BrightU.AI‘s Enoch, Witkoff’s account suggests the CIA’s assessments may have been flawed—or deliberately skewed. The implications extend beyond Hamas, reinforcing long-standing concerns about intelligence politicization, particularly regarding Russia, Iran and other geopolitical flashpoints.

A pattern of distrust in U.S. intelligence

This incident adds to a growing list of credibility issues surrounding U.S. intelligence agencies. President Donald Trump famously clashed with the CIA, accusing it of undermining his policies. Sens. Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard have also voiced skepticism about intelligence assessments on Russia and Syria.

The Hamas episode underscores a recurring dilemma: when intelligence contradicts firsthand diplomatic feedback, which should policymakers trust?

Ultimately, Kushner and Witkoff’s gamble paid off. Hamas accepted the ceasefire, freeing hostages and opening the door to further negotiations. But the revelation that the CIA’s intelligence directly contradicted mediators’ assurances raises troubling questions. Was the CIA misinformed—or was it pushing an agenda? And if intelligence agencies can be so wrong on Hamas, how reliable are their assessments on Iran, Russia or China?

For now, the Trump administration celebrates a rare diplomatic victory. But the deeper lesson may be that in an era of intelligence wars and geopolitical deception, sometimes the best intelligence comes not from classified briefings—but from trusted allies on the ground.

As the U.S. navigates future conflicts, the balance between intelligence analysis and real-world diplomacy will remain fraught. The Hamas case serves as a stark reminder that truth in foreign policy is often elusive—and sometimes, the most reliable intelligence comes from those who refuse to take “official assessments” at face value.

Watch the video below where Trump was lauded for the historic peace deal in Gaza.

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Report: State Department Officially Dismantled ‘Disinformation’ Agency

The State Department has officially canceled the Global Engagement Center (GEC) as part of President Donald Trump’s mission to shut down the “censorship industrial complex,” according to a report.

Paul Sperry, a senior investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations, wrote that the State Department officially closed the Global Engagement Center.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in April that the State Department would close the GEC.

“Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC),” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for the Federalist, stating that to protect free speech the “censorship industrial complex must be dismantled.”

Rubio contended in the op-ed that then-President Barack Obama transformed the GEC, which was meant to target international terrorism, to cover any and all “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”

He wrote at the time:

This pivot was no accident. Obama’s man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel, touted his efforts to protect “democracy” while redefining it so that “democracy” came to mean silencing the part of the electorate he doesn’t like.

In 2019, Stengel directly equated President Trump’s campaign with foreign and terrorist propaganda, writing, “Trump employed the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians and much the same scare tactics as ISIS.” That same year, Stengel wrote an entire article about, “why America needs a hate speech law.”

The secretary of state said the GEC was an “enthusiastic partner” in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which monitored alleged disinformation during the 2020 election.

“The EIP pretty much exclusively singled out accounts and narratives associated with President Trump and his supporters and, in fact, directly flagged President Trump’s tweets, along with his family members and friends of the administration,” Rubio noted.

“With its multimillion-dollar budget, paid for by American taxpayers, GEC funneled grants to organizations around the world dedicated to pushing speech restrictions under the guise of fighting ‘disinformation,’” Rubio continued.

Rubio stated that one recipient of American taxpayer dollars was the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which ranked outlets based on the likeliness that they would spread disinformation.

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Trump Citizenship Audit to Cut Section 8 Housing and Other Benefits to Illegals

While the government remains shut down because Democrats demand free healthcare for illegal immigrants, President Trump has ordered a sweeping audit of federal programs to ensure that other taxpayer-funded benefits are not being distributed to illegal aliens.

The order encompasses at least 28 major programs across multiple federal agencies. Housing audits include the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program and public housing.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing 13 programs, including Head Start, Community Health Centers, Medicaid, and the Title X Family Planning Program, as well as a range of behavioral health and substance abuse grants.

Nutrition and welfare initiatives such as SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) are also included in the audit.

In addition, the Department of Labor has been directed to verify immigration status within workforce programs such as WIOA, senior and youth job training, and migrant and seasonal worker initiatives.

The Department of Education will apply enhanced verification to Pell Grants, student loans, and career and technical education programs.

Together, these reviews represent one of the most comprehensive federal efforts to ensure that public benefits are reserved for American citizens and legal residents.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner has ordered a nationwide audit of public housing authorities, requiring them to verify the citizenship or legal immigration status of all Section 8 recipients within 30 days of receiving HUD’s notice.

The directive, issued on August 31, 2025, stems from President Trump’s February 19, 2025, Executive Order 14218, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.”

Under the order, authorities must provide proof of citizenship or eligible immigration status, along with recipients’ names, addresses, and unit information. Failure to comply could trigger a review of HUD funding or program eligibility.

Federal law has barred illegal aliens from receiving Section 8 assistance since 1980, but Turner said the audit aims to ensure proper enforcement and prevent applicants from leaving citizenship fields blank.

He also signaled that new rules may address “mixed-status” households containing both citizens and illegal aliens. A similar effort was made during the first Trump administration in 2019 but was later reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.

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President Trump Seems Itching for Multiple Wars in the Western Hemisphere

Donald Trump seems to be following through in his second term as president on the threat of a United States war on Venezuela he made in his first term. Significant US military force has been recently placed near Venezuela ready for attack, the US has already destroyed several boats near Venezuela and killed most the people on them in a claimed effort to counter “narco-terrorism,” and Trump last week said he has authorized Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation and is considering attacks on land in Venezuela.

The justification the Trump administration presents for all this is that it is part of the US government’s drug war, an endeavor that has meted out death, destruction, and rights abuses decade after decade as drug use in America continues along. The Trump administration also re-characterizes alleged drug transport as “narco-terrorism” in an effort to gain legal and public support for hostile actions.

Trump seems not to be content to go to war against just Venezuela whose President Nicolás Maduro he has proclaimed is a drug kingpin. Trump on Sunday pegged the president of neighboring Western Hemisphere nation Colombia with the same accusation used against Maduro. Here is how Trump put it in a Sunday post at his Truth Social page:

President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia. It has become the biggest business in Colombia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America. AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF PAYMENT, OR SUBSIDIES, WILL NO LONGER BE MADE TO COLOMBIA. The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc. Petro, a low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely. Thank you for your attention to this matter! ~ President Donald J. Trump

Notice Trump’s comment that the Colombia president “better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” That is a threat of war.

Will Trump stop with just these two countries in a Western Hemisphere war spree? Trump, after regaining the presidency earlier this year, took actions in apparent preparation for war on Mexico as well – actions in line with Trump’s comments since his first term supportive of war on Mexico and argued to be for protecting Americans from drugs and terrorism as with wars on Venezuela and Colombia.

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