Tag: donald trump

JUST IN: Judge Immergut Permanently Blocks Trump From Deploying National Guard Troops to Portland

Judge Karin Immergut issued a permanent injunction blocking President Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Oregon.

Last month a federal appeals court temporarily blocked President Trump from deploying Oregon National Guard troops to Portland after a judge issued a Temporary Retraining Order (TRO).

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated Judge Karin Immergut’s TRO last month after it halted an order issued by a three-judge panel from the court.

President Trump previously called up hundreds of California National Guard Troops to Portland to circumvent the judge’s order blocking Oregon National Guard Troop deployment.

Trump also activated up to 400 Texas National Guard troops for deployment to Oregon, Illinois and other states amid violent, anti-ICE protests.

On Friday evening, Immergut issued a permanent injunction and blocked Trump from deploying troops to Portland.

Trump can appeal Immergut’s ruling.

NBC News reported:

A federal judge in Oregon on Friday issued a permanent injunction barring the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard on the streets of Portland in response to protests against the president’s immigration policies.

“This Court arrives at the necessary conclusion that there was neither ‘a rebellion or danger of a rebellion’ nor was the President ‘unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States’ in Oregon when he ordered the federalization and deployment of the National Guard,” U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, wrote in her ruling.

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Supreme Court Issues Emergency Order Temporarily Blocking Full SNAP Payments

The Supreme Court has issued an emergency order blocking SNAP funding amid the ongoing Schumer Shutdown.

Here’s more from the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds.

A judge had given the Republican administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued the ruling, putting a temporary stay on an earlier order issued by a Rhode Island judge that required the Trump administration to disburse the full SNAP payment amount in the month of November.

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Trump’s Weight-loss Drug Deal: Cheaper Shots, But Is It MAHA?

President Donald Trump has unveiled a sweeping action to slash the cost of the nation’s most expensive weight-loss drugs, casting it as a turning point for both healthcare affordability and economic fairness. In what the White House calls a “historic” agreement with pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the administration announced that prices for popular GLP-1 agonists (weight-loss drugs) such as Ozempic and Wegovy will drop by more than two-thirds under a new initiative known as TrumpRx. The program is a government-backed platform that allows Americans to purchase prescription drugs at discounted rates negotiated by the administration.

The measure, described by officials as one of the largest single reductions in drug prices in U.S. history, aims to make medications long seen as luxury treatments accessible to millions of Americans battling obesity and related conditions.

Applause for the move was far from unanimous. Within the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) camp — the wing of the movement that believes real health starts with prevention rather than prescriptions — the mood was restrained. Critics argue that the deal hands pharmaceutical companies both market dominance and political validation, locking Americans further into a medical model driven by patented injections.

The Deal

The White House framed the deal as a landmark victory for American consumers:

The agreement represents a historic reduction in prices for Americans on the two drugs with the highest annual expenditures in the United States, both of which help adults struggling with diabetes, heart disease (Ozempic and Wegovy only), obesity, and other conditions.

Under the terms of the new arrangement, the monthly cost of Ozempic and Wegovy will fall from about $1,000 and $1,350, respectively, to $350 when purchased through TrumpRx. Prices for Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Orforglipron, once approved, will be reduced from $1,086 to an average of $346. If — or rather when — the FDA later authorizes the Wegovy pill or similar oral GLP-1 drugs currently in development, “the initial dose of those drugs will be priced at $150 per month” through the portal.

The administration said the new pricing will allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity treatments “at a dramatically lower cost to taxpayers than that proposed by the Biden Administration.” Under the agreement, Medicare will pay just $245 a month for drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. That is less than half of prior proposals.

According to the fact sheet:

These low prices will enable Medicare to cover Wegovy and Zepbound for patients with obesity and related comorbidities for the first time.

Beneficiaries “will pay a co-pay of just $50 per month.” Plus, “state Medicaid programs will also have access to these medications at these prices.”

The deal also extends to other high-cost medicines. Eli Lilly’s Emgality, a migraine therapy, will now cost $299 per pen, down $443 from its list price. Trulicity, another diabetes treatment, will fall to $389 per month, a reduction of nearly $600. Novo Nordisk’s insulin products NovoLog and Tresiba will be capped at $35 per monthly supply.

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Hegseth Says US Strikes Another Drug-Smuggling Boat, Killing 3 Onboard

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military carried out another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that was transporting illegal drugs to the United States on Nov. 6.

Hegseth stated on social media that the strike targeted a vessel run by a “designated terrorist organization,” killing three people on board whom he described as “narco-terrorists.”

“The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters,” he stated on X, noting that the strike was conducted under President Donald Trump’s direction.

No U.S. armed forces were harmed in the operation, according to the Pentagon chief.

This was the 17th reported U.S. military strike on drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September, as the Trump administration intensifies efforts to combat drug trafficking. More than 60 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in these strikes.

Hegseth warned that U.S. military operations against drug smuggling vessels will not stop until the illegal drug flow into the United States ends.

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Trump Admin Must Fully Fund Food Stamps for November: Judge

The Trump administration must pay the approximately $9 billion to fully fund food stamps for November, a federal judge ruled on Nov. 6.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must pay states the money by Nov. 7 to distribute to the approximately 42 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants, according to an oral order from Judge John McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.

“People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable,” McConnell said.

USDA officials had declined to fund SNAP amid the government shutdown, arguing that they could not use contingency money or revenue from tariffs. McConnell, in response to a lawsuit, recently said that the administration could either partially fund November benefits with contingency money or fully fund benefits for the month with that money and the tariff revenue.

“If the Government does want to use its discretion to use funds available to make a full payment of SNAP benefits for November 6, then it must expeditiously resolve the administrative and clerical burdens it described in its papers … but under no circumstances shall the partial payments be made later than Wednesday, November 5,” McConnell wrote in a temporary restraining order on Nov. 1.

The government chose to partially fund the November benefits using the contingency fund, which it said contained $4.6 billion. The government stated that it would not use the tariff revenue, or Section 32 funds, because if it were to, then child nutrition programs funded by that revenue might eventually run out of money.

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Venezuela’s Oil, US-Led Regime Change, and America’s Gangster Politics

The United States is dusting off its old regime-change playbook in Venezuela. Although the slogan has shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists,” the objective remains the same, which is control of Venezuela’s oil. The methods followed by the US are familiar: sanctions that strangle the economy, threats of force, and a $50 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as if this were the Wild West.

The US is addicted to war. With the renaming of the Department of War, a proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion, and more than 750 military bases across some 80 countries, this is not a nation pursuing peace. For the past two decades, Venezuela has been a persistent target of US regime change. The motive, which is clearly laid out by President Donald Trump, is the roughly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Orinoco belt, the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.

In 2023, Trump openly stated: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil… but now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re making a dictator very rich.” His words reveal the underlying logic of US foreign policy that has an utter disregard for sovereignty and instead favors the grabbing of other country’s resources. .

What’s underway today is a typical US-led regime-change operation dressed up in the language of anti-drug interdiction. The US has amassed thousands of troops, warships, and aircraft in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The president has boastfully authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

On October 26, 2025, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on national television to defend recent US military strikes on Venezuelan vessels and to say land strikes inside Venezuela and Colombia are a “real possibility.” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, in the same news cycle, mused that if he were Nicolás Maduro he’d “head to Russia or China right now.” These senators aim to normalize the idea that Washington decides who governs Venezuela and what happens to its oil. Remember that Graham similarly champions the US fighting Russia in Ukraine to secure the $10 trillion of mineral wealth that Graham fatuously claims are available for the US to grab.

Nor are Trump’s moves a new story vis-à-vis Venezuela. For more than 20 years, successive US administrations have tried to submit Venezuela’s internal politics to Washington’s will. In April 2002, a short-lived military coup briefly ousted then-President Hugo Chávez. The CIA knew the details of the coup in advance, and the US immediately recognized the new government. In the end, Chávez retook power. Yet the US did not end its support for regime change.

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VIPS MEMO: What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPS)

SUBJECT: What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

Dear President Trump:

We are deeply concerned about where the United States seems to be headed in its Venezuela policy and urge you to demand that the Intelligence Community give you clear, unfiltered, “truth-to-power” analysis, as well as covert action options in Venezuela.

Flying blind into an unprovoked war against a Latin American government, even one weakened by years of U.S. “maximum-pressure” sanctions, risks a conflagration that could draw Russia into the conflict and offers zero probability of establishing a legitimate, pro-U.S. successor government.

We see a classic storm of politicization brewing in the Intelligence Community, to which we devoted our careers, as a result of blatant pressures that it give you the “right” answer – fabricating or exaggerating a pretext for direct military intervention in Venezuela.

The State Department’s cancelation of views that don’t coincide with its own, and the intelligence community leadership’s firing of senior analysts whose classified, honest analysis contradicted unfounded Administration allegations that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the Tren de Aragua gang and is using it to attack the United States have chilled collectors’ and analysts’ willingness to provide you unbiased, neutral, accurate intelligence.

We have seen this before – during numerous intelligence and foreign policy debacles, including the fake allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we remember the disastrous consequences for the country and its leaders.

There is room for some debate on the rationale for some sanctions on Venezuela. Maduro’s management of elections has been correctly questioned, for example. But U.S. opposition to the changes ushered in by the late President Chávez’s election in 1999 has been, for most of these 26 years, implacable.

The U.S. government, under Presidents from both parties, has imposed sanctions to paralyze the country’s economy; identified, trained, and funded opponents, including some who have resorted to violence similar to that we accuse the government of; and – even more important – has supported several failed attempts to overthrow the Chávez and Maduro Governments (with varying levels of involvement), including a blatant attempt to assassinate Maduro in plain daylight.

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Trump Drafting Executive Order On Election Integrity After Alleging Ballot Fraud In California

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said an executive order is being drafted to strengthen U.S. elections and curb mail-in ballot fraud, after President Donald Trump alleged that California’s mail voting system “is rigged” and parts of it are under “legal and criminal review.”

“The White House is working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country and to ensure that there cannot be blatant fraud, as we’ve seen in California with their universal mail-in voting system,” Leavitt told reporters during a Nov. 4 briefing. “It’s absolutely true that … there is fraud in California’s elections. It’s just a fact.”

Leavitt’s comments followed a Truth Social post by Trump earlier in the day, in which he renewed his criticism of mail-in voting and suggested criminal investigations were underway.

“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote.

“All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review.”

When asked what evidence the White House had to support those claims and which authorities were conducting the purported reviews, Leavitt said she would provide evidence of fraud to reporters after the briefing, alleging that “fraudulent ballots are being mailed in the names of other people, in the names of illegal aliens who shouldn’t be voting in American elections.”

The White House has not disclosed details of the upcoming executive order. The president has repeatedly promised sweeping changes to election procedures, including a nationwide ban on universal mail-in voting and electronic voting machines.

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Trump’s embrace of former Al Qaeda leader at White House is the height of hypocrisy

Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, said in an interview Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s decision to meet with Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former commander of Al Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and once had a $10-million U.S. bounty on his head, is the height of hypocrisy and not even smart politics because he is not a viable leader.

Ritter was asked by Judge Andrew Napolitano if he ever thought he’d see the day that Al-Sharaa, an Islamist whose nom de guerre was Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, would be welcomed in the White House.

Ritter said, “Some lines can’t be crossed.”

“You can’t have had thousands of Americans sacrifice their lives — tens of thousands of Americans sacrifice their bodies and their minds” to pursue terrorists after 9/11, only for Trump to call al-Sharaa a “tough guy” in a tough neighborhood and let bygones be bygones.

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With Venezuela, Trump poised to make mistake of epic proportions

After another week of extra-judicial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, the U.S. is now reportedly preparing to hit military targets in Venezuela.

International condemnation of the strikes has been widespread. For example, Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Europe, accused the U.S. of ignoring international and maritime law in an interview on Thursday.

But the neoconservative lobby inside the Trump administration is unmoved.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the lead proponent of regime change in Venezuela, has pushed for these actions — allegedly as part of an effort to get tough on drug cartels, framing the Latin American nation through a “narco-terrorism” lens.

Washington’s “narco-terrorism” frame has pedigree; the DOJ indicted Maduro on narco-terrorism charges in 2020, but today’s drug threat picture looks different from that narrative.

Strategically, the label misaligns ends and means: it invites military solutions to problems that the DEA and Coast Guard still characterize primarily as law-enforcement interdiction.

It also simplifies a complex geopolitical picture, all the while increasing the risk of entangling the U.S. in an open-ended conflict in the Western Hemisphere.

The DEA’s 2024–2025 threat assessments identify fentanyl as the top U.S. drug danger, synthesized mainly in Mexico with precursors from China. Meanwhile, UNODC data show record coca cultivation and cocaine output centered in Colombia, with Venezuela functioning primarily as a transit route.

Yet, Washington’s “counternarcotics” rhetoric has already translated into military escalation, and with it come significant diplomatic, economic, and political risks.

Escalation might threaten U.S. energy interests, particularly Chevron’s limited license to import Venezuelan crude, a lifeline for U.S. Gulf Coast refineries that remain reliant on the country’s uniquely heavy oil.

Escalation could also bolster Maduro rather than undermine him. For a leader whose “anti-imperialist rhetoric” enhances domestic legitimacy, U.S. aggression is politically beneficial.

Caracas has already surged troops and naval deployments along key coastal routes and encouraged auxiliary mobilization, explicitly linking the moves to U.S. buildups in the Caribbean.

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