Tag: donald trump

The Inconvenient Truths Within Trump’s New National Security Strategy

Recently, the Trump administration, as most administrations do at the beginning of their four-year term, issued a National Security Strategy—I guess we would call it a white paper—outlining the approach of the administration to foreign affairs and the protection of the security in the United States.

It’s written in a different style than past reports, different than the first term. And it has a lot of emphasis, as most do, on sections of the world. But what has caused the most controversy are two things.

Abroad, the report tells Europe that it’s experiencing “civilizational erasure,” and gives advice to the Europeans about what they must do to correct that, but in a manner of brotherly love or help, which the Europeans, of course, will see as condescending and interference into their internal affairs, except they want us to do it in the NATO part of the equation, but not the EU part. And that’s caused a lot of controversy.

The other is, the critics feel that it’s not critical enough of Russia and China. But if you read it very carefully, the whole point of its Pacific discussion is to bolster the alliances of Japan and South Korea, and to warn China to keep away from Taiwan and Australia.

And then, when we get to the economic domestic aspects of the National Security Strategy, it’s all aimed at China. It’s all aimed at China. It just says that we cannot be a successful, dominant power in the world, and we don’t want any other power to be dominant. And by inference, that’s Russia and China. But on matters of trade, under matters of natural resources, under matters of the South China Sea, it’s aimed at China.

And it does say explicitly that the old paradigm that previous, both Republican and Democratic, presidencies had adhered to, namely, the more money you invest from us and put it over there in China, and the more that you import their products here, even though you’re dealing with an asymmetrical trade system—and I think the report uses the word that it’s free but not fair—don’t kid yourself. That ensuing prosperity will not create a huge consumer class who desires freedom and liberty and then will become a force for the democratization of China. That’s not gonna happen.

Instead, that foreign exchange extravaganza will be put into the largest ship-building—and I mean military ship-building—the largest aircraft production, and the largest small arms and major arms industry in such a short time that we’ve ever seen. And that’s what China’s doing. And that is outlined.

The other controversy is: Why didn’t the National Security Strategy be more condemning of Russian President Vladimir Putin? It says that the Europeans have promised to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on military matters and have promised to increase that to 5%, which would be extraordinary.

And of course, the paper says that they should and they must be watched to keep their promises, but it doesn’t really condemn Vladimir Putin in the strongest of terms.

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Susie Wiles Let’s Slip She Stands With Massie On War Powers & Venezuela

Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles said the following as part of the controversial Vanity Fair interview in reference to Venezuela policy: “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then (we’d need) Congress.”

But only last month when President Trump was asked about this issue, he said, “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”

All of this could come to a head if enough Congressional leaders, especially on the Republican side, decide to grow a spine and stand up to the White House’s foreign policy adventurism down south – which polls show is not supported by most Americans.

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution. It aims to halt any potential attack on Venezuela after Trump has threatened that the US military hitting land targets would happen ‘soon’.

Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the bipartisan bill has 31 co-sponsors, including three Republicans: Reps. Thomas Massie (KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Don Bacon (NE).

Massie has of course been at the forefront of Trump criticisms, and he’s again helping lead the charge on Venezuela pushback, amid the huge American presence in the southern Caribbean.

“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” Massie said in a statement upon the bill being introduced. ‘

“Congress has the sole power to declare war against Venezuela. Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.” This viewpoint is precisely what Wiles has voiced in her comments to Vanity Fair.

According to a brief summary of the Trump admin’s rationale: 

A central legal question is whether the administration can treat anti-cartel maritime strikes as a form of armed conflict falling within the President’s independent Article II power or within some existing statutory authorization.

CRS reports the Trump administration has asserted drug trafficking and terrorism “involving or associated with Maduro” threaten U.S. national security, and that it reportedly told Congress U.S. forces are in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels – an assertion that other experts and government lawyers reportedly questioned. This framing signals the administration’s likely legal posture without requiring anyone outside government to guess at classified briefings.

Also, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) is simultaneously seeking to reign in the drone strikes on alleged drug boats with his own war powers legislation. No Republicans have signed on to his initiative.

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Trump Administration Responds to Ilhan Omar’s Claim that ICE Agents Targeted Her Son and Pulled Him Over

The Trump Administration has fired back at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after she made a disturbing claim about her son being targeted by immigration enforcement recently.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Omar alleged on Sunday during an interview with a local news outlet that ICE agents pulled her son over and demanded that he produce documentation to prove that he was a U.S. citizen.

Once he produced his passport identification, they let him go.

“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar claimed in an interview with Esme Murphy on WCCO.

Omar also claimed during the interview that immigration agents previously entered a mosque attended by her son. The agents supposedly left without incident.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security responded on X to Omar’s assertion about her son being pulled over and did not mince words.

“ICE has absolutely ZERO record of its officers or agents pulling over Congresswoman Omar’s son,” the post reads. “With no evidence, it is shameful that Congresswoman Omar would level accusations to demonize ICE as part of a PR stunt.”

“Allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE. What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” the post adds.

“Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests.”

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White House Chief of Staff Suggests Regime Change in Venezuela Is Real Goal of Boat Strikes

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has suggested that the goal of the US bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the waters of Latin America is the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to a two-part report published by Vanity Fair on Tuesday.

Wiles discussed President Trump’s Venezuela strategy in an interview with Vanity Fair reporter Chris Whipple on November 2, 2025. “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will,” she told him.

While Trump and his top officials have been clear about their desire for regime change in Venezuela, they have framed the bombing campaign against boats as an effort to stop drug shipments to the US. Wiles’s comments suggest that the campaign’s real purpose, at least at the start, is to pressure Maduro.

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US OBLITERATES 3 More Venezuelan Drug Boats Just Hours After President Trump Designates Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

United States Southern Command on Monday announced that Joint Task Force Southern Spear took out three narcotrafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific. 

A total of eight “narco-terrorists” were killed in the strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US SOUTHCOM said.

Video from the strikes shows massive explosions on each boat, turning them into burning piles of rubble.

US Southern Command said in a statement on X,

On Dec. 15, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted lethal kinetic strikes on three vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking. A total of eight male narco-terrorists were killed during these actions—three in the first vessel, two in the second and three in the third.

Trump signed an executive order earlier on Monday to designate fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) and empower his administration to take on the “concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries.”

This will likely be used to justify the defense of America against drug cartels further, as the order directs the Secretary of War and Secretary of Homeland Security to “update all directives regarding the Armed Forces’ response to chemical incidents in the homeland to include the threat of illicit fentanyl.”

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President Trump Drops a Bomb: “The Election Was Rigged in 2020. We Have All the Ammunition… It’s Coming Out in Truckloads”

President Donald Trump made a shocking admission this past weekend. His statements were making waves in political circles.

Trump says his administration is about to release “truckloads” of evidence PROVING the 2020 election was “RIGGED” by Democrats.

He added that he has evidence Gavin Newsom is rigging California elections with mail-in ballots.

“They’re professionals at cheating because we won in 2016 by a lot. The election was rigged in 2020. We have all the ammunition, all the stuff, and you’ll see it come out. It’s coming out in truckloads”

“California more than any other place is so rigged. It’s such a rigged election — If the vote in California was legitimate, which it’s not, they have 38 million ballots. Everything is mail-in voting. They mail out 38 million ballots, and they come in. Where the hell did they go, and where did they come from?

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Trump Is Using the ‘Misinformation’ Censorship Playbook Republicans Attacked Biden For

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson recently complained about alleged “lies, smears and AI deepfakes that are designed to deceive Americans” about President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Pressed on whether the government was talking with social media platforms to stem this purported misinformation, the spokesperson said, “Yes and we are also putting resources forward to ensure DHS combats this.”

It wasn’t so long ago that candidate Trump and his Republican allies were decrying the Joe Biden administration for pressuring platforms to police misinformation. The Trump administration seems to have warmed to the idea. 

Many on the left, who previously supported giving the government greater power to combat so-called misinformation, are and should rightly be fearful of a Trump administration empowered to censor speech it disagrees with.

The DHS announcement signals a deeper shift toward government-driven moderation of online speech—a shift that threatens to turn every administration into a speech arbiter. The power to dictate what can be said on the internet is inherently prone to abuse, no matter who holds it. The stakes are high.

Jawboning for Me but Not for Thee

Under the First Amendment, federal and state governments cannot censor speech they dislike, so instead of blatantly shutting down a news organization or online platform, government actors often try to force a company to do their bidding through more subtle means. These demands often happen behind closed doors, backed by an implicit—or sometimes explicit—threat that refusal will bring government retaliation. Because the government wields so much power over businesses, these companies understand they are in a weak position to resist. This practice is called “jawboning.”

When the Biden administration made public and private demands that social media companies remove “misinformation” and “disinformation” related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it ended up at the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri. The Court ultimately punted by ruling that individual social media users who claimed their speech was suppressed lacked standing to sue. 

This was disappointing. Internal emails from various social media companies showed that senior leaders felt they had no choice but to comply with the administration. Meta’s leaders internally said that they needed to change policy because they had “bigger fish to fry with the Administration.” YouTube claimed it needed to keep Biden officials happy since they wanted to “work closely with the administration on multiple policy fronts.” Amazon moved to “accelerate” its policy changes ahead of a call with Biden officials. Thankfully, the Supreme Court did at least uphold the principle that jawboning is wrong and unconstitutional in another case, NRA v. Vullo. 

Today, the Trump administration appears to be invoking Murthy as cover for its own pressure campaigns against online platforms. Apple removed an app that allowed users to report sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in real time. After complaints from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Meta removed a Facebook group that shared information about ICE agents. Now, the DHS says it is communicating with social media companies about supposed immigration misinformation. It would be naive to suppose it hasn’t applied any pressure during those talks.

It is entirely possible that the government can point to specific acts of illegality. It’s also possible that some of this content violates platform policies. For example, Meta claimed it removed the Facebook page with information on ICE agents for violating its “policies against coordinated harm.” It is possible this group was persistently violating this policy. But as long as these companies remain vulnerable to government pressure, we cannot simply trust officials who insist their demands are legitimate.

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The Siren Song of War

In October of 2002, I shocked many in my Congressional District and beyond by voting against giving President George W. Bush authorization to use military force in Iraq.

The night before that vote, my older sister told me a Knoxville television station had conducted a poll which found that in its viewing area 74 percent were for the war, 9 percent were against, and 17 percent were undecided.

When I pushed the button at about 3:00 the next day to cast that vote, I wondered if I might be ending my political career. My vote was so highly publicized that it was clearly the most unpopular thing I had ever done.

However, after three or four years and much to my amazement, that vote became the most popular of the more than 16,000 I cast during my 30 years in the U.S. House.

Unfortunately, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that the Congress passed then is once again relevant because President Trump and his advisers seem to think it gives them authority to go to war in Venezuela without the declaration by Congress called for in our Constitution.

When we went to war in Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s total military budget was about 2/10 of one percent of ours. Venezuela’s is even less. Neither of those two countries were or are capable of attacking us in any serious way. Neither has even threatened to do so.

Two polls in late November by CBS News/YouGov and Reuters/Ipsos both showed that about 70 percent of the American people were opposed to going to war in Venezuela, and probably most of the other 30 percent did not really want such a war but just did not want to oppose President Trump.

While the overwhelming majority of the American people do not want more dangerous illegal drugs coming into this Country, far more drugs are coming from China and Mexico and various other places. If we take action against Venezuela, which country is next?

Just before we went to war against Iraq, U.S. News & World Report had a story headlined “Why The Rush To War?” We should be asking the same thing today.

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Ending the Woke Monopoly: White House Takes Aim at Higher Ed’s Ideological Capture

Last week, the White House convened an education roundtable with U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon titled, “Biased Professors, Woke Administrators, and the End of Free Inquiry on U.S. Campuses.”

Secretary McMahon opened the event by stating, “It was an honor to be at the White House today with this dedicated coalition of students, faculty, institutional leaders, and policy advocates to highlight the issue of woke ideology and the capture of our institutions of higher education. DEI policies have turned universities from free marketplaces of ideas to purveyors of manufactured ideological conformity, chilling free speech and undermining academic rigor.”

She explained, “We are committed to working with higher education leaders to reverse course from these decades of decline.”

The Secretary highlighted actions taken by the Trump Administration, including dissolving DEI programs, enforcing merit-based practices, and guiding universities to comply with federal law, noting that over 400 institutions have made substantive changes. The U.S. Department of Education is working to incentivize universities to operate with fairness, academic rigor, and civil discourse.

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Decades of Global Drone War Made Trump’s Caribbean Killing Spree Possible

On September 2, 2025, a small fishing boat carrying 11 people was targeted by a U.S. Reaper drone off the coast of Venezuela. Hellfire missiles were fired. Two survivors clung to the wreckage. Their identities and motives were unknown. Their behavior showed no hostility. Moments later, the drone operator launched a second strike — the so-called “double tap” — killing the final survivors. This scene is shocking, but it should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the U.S.’s drone wars. This tactic is familiar from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and, most recently, Gaza, where the Israeli military has used much worse violence to conduct genocide.

The U.S.’s first drone strike in the Caribbean, and the footage of the incident, reignited a debate about a conflict that Washington refuses to call a war — because it isn’t one. Instead, the Trump administration is using sheer violence to terrorize non-white populations and, as usual, has normalized lethal force far from declared battlefields and without any legal mandate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved at least 21 additional strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, killing at least 87 people. He has aggressively defended the very first operation, insisting he would have authorized the second strike as well — despite claiming he did not see it. Hegseth even misinterpreted the visible smoke on the video as the “fog of war,” seemingly unaware that the term refers to uncertainty in conflict, not the physical aftermath of a missile strike.

The details matter because they reveal something essential: the senior leadership overseeing these operations does not appear interested in the law, accuracy, or the basic meaning of proportionality. Instead, it has embraced escalation and mass murder as official policy.

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