Tag: donald trump

After Killing Three Indian Mariners, US Bombs Another Tanker in the Gulf of Oman

US Central Command announced on Thursday that it bombed an oil tanker for the third time this week in the Gulf of Oman as part of its enforcement of the blockade of Iranian ports, which comes after India confirmed the previous US attack on a tanker killed three Indian crew members.

CENTCOM said its latest attack targeted the Guinea-Bissau-flagged tanker Jalveer. “A US aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles into the ship’s engine room after the crew repeatedly failed to comply with directions from US forces,” the command said.

Indian media on Thursday identified the three Indian mariners who were killed by the previous US attack on the Palau-flagged oil product tanker Settebello as Shivanand Chaurasiya, Patnala Suresh, and Aditya Sharma, a 23-year-old deck cadet who was on the ship for training to become an officer.

Aditya’s father, Rajesh Sharma, called the US attack a war crime and said his government should take a strong stance. “My last conversation with him was on Sunday. I request the government to take a strong stance against the US. I will say it is a war crime to attack a commercial ship with a missile,” Rajesh told NDTV.

“There are a lot of ways to control those cargo ships, you can send a military, you can arrest the crew members, you have no right to attack them with deadly missiles,” he added.

According to CENTCOM’s numbers, its forces have “disabled” nine civilian commercial ships while enforcing the blockade. “The blockade is being enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman,” the command said.

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Trump Says US Will Be ‘Taking’ Iran’s Kharg Island

President Trump on Thursday threatened Iran with a third straight night of bombing and said that the US would eventually be “taking” Iran’s Kharg Island, an island deep in the Persian Gulf that serves as a major oil export hub.

“The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” Trump added.

During the full-scale US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran from February 28 to April 8, the US positioned Marines and US Army paratroopers in the region for potential ground operations to target Iranian islands and the country’s coast. A report from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein recently revealed that some members of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne were deployed to Israel.

Klippenstein cited a military source who told him that the deployment to Israel was part of a US-Israeli joint contingency plan completed since February to seize Kharg Island and carve out coastal territory inside Iran.

Later on Thursday, Trump told Fox News that his “preference” would be to take Kharg Island but that he doesn’t know if “America would have the stomach for it.” Any US ground operation to take the island would almost certainly result in major US casualties since the invading troops would face significant drone and missile attacks.

Trump again compared the potential operation to take over Iranian oil infrastructure to his attack on Venezuela to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Since then, the US has taken control of Venezuela’s oil exports, though the US war with Iran is much different since the US has faced much stiffer resistance, and the entire country is mobilized for war.

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Trump Snaps On Iran, Vows To Decimate Power Plants, Key Infrastructure

President Donald Trump said he is preparing new strikes against Iran’s infrastructure after accusing the Islamic Republic of dragging its feet on peace talks and warning the regime that it will “have to pay the price.”

Trump told Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst in a phone call Wednesday that he is “getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges.”

The president also accused Tehran of “tapping the United States alone when it comes to the negotiating process,” according to Yingst.

The comments came hours after Trump issued a fiery Truth Social post following the downing of a US Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.

“They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” Trump wrote Wednesday morning.

He also declared that Iran’s military had been devastated.

“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! ” he added.

During his conversation with Yingst, Trump reportedly described the dramatic survival of the two Apache pilots involved in Monday’s incident, calling it a “miracle.”

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An Unwarranted War, a Global Economic Drag

When the US-Iran conflict escalated earlier this year, the immediate concern centered on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz.

But the real danger was never confined to crude oil. The crisis has evolved into a broader energy, logistics, fertilizer, food and financial shock.

What began as a regional conflict has become a structural drag on the global economy.

Prolonged pain

Recent warnings by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank underscore the same point.

Even if military hostilities continue to ease, energy systems, shipping networks and commodity supply chains will require many months – and in some cases years – to normalize. The result is likely to be a weaker global economy in the second half of 2026 and throughout 2027.

The core issue is persistence. The IMF warns that prolonged energy disruptions could push the world toward recessionary conditions. The World Bank expects rising energy prices in 2026, while the IEA reports tightening supplies, falling inventories and continuing refinery disruptions.

The world faces a prolonged period of elevated energy costs, fragmented trade routes, higher insurance premiums, supply-chain restructuring and slower productivity growth.

US: Resilient but increasingly stagflationary

The United States is better positioned than most advanced economies because of domestic energy production and continued AI-led investment. Yet, higher fuel, petrochemical and transport costs are already feeding through the economy.

Gasoline prices remain well above pre-war levels, while energy-intensive industries face sustained cost pressures.

Growth is likely to remain positive through 2027, but below pre-conflict expectations. Inflation may prove more persistent than policymakers anticipated.

The principal risk is not recession but a stagflationary environment characterized by slower growth, elevated prices and tighter financial conditions.

By targeting Iran’s strategic capabilities while expanding military deployments across the region, the US has contributed to a prolonged risk premium in global energy markets.

At the same time, it has left Europe, Japan, South Korea and much of the developing world highly vulnerable to the resulting energy shock.

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US Begins Another Round of Attacks on Iran

On Wednesday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it was launching another round of attacks on Iran as Iranian media began reporting blasts across the southern part of the country.

The attacks marked the second day in a row that the US launched strikes on Iran and came after President Trump threatened more bombings. US War Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that the US would be attacking the Islamic Republic.

“CENTCOM will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be,” Hegseth told reporters outside CENTCOM headquarters in Florida not long before the strikes started.

On Wednesday morning, the president said on Truth Social that Iran has “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price.” He also claimed in the post that Iran had been “completely defeated” despite its ability to launch missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office later in the day, Trump was more explicit in his threat. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” he said.

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A DOJ Brief Preposterously Insists That Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ Was Politically Neutral

In a brief filed on Friday, Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. argues that a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s brazenly corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is moot because the Justice Department does not plan to implement the idea. Woodward also notes that the lawsuit, Floyd v. Department of Justice, is based on the premise that the fund was designed to benefit Trump’s supporters, excluding Democrats who claim they were victims of Republican “lawfare and weaponization.” And that, he says, is simply not true.

Trump himself cast doubt on both of those arguments in a Meet the Press interview that aired two days after Woodward filed his brief. The president suggested that the fund, which was part of a May 18 “settlement agreement” that resolved his lawsuit against the IRS, might not be dead after all. And he described the intended beneficiaries as people who “have been hurt so badly by radical-left lunatics” who “worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe.”

As the contrast between Woodward’s arguments in court and Trump’s comments on TV illustrates, the Justice Department’s portrayal of the Anti-Weaponization Fund is completely divorced from reality. Woodward’s description of the fund, which he officially approved by signing the “settlement agreement,” glides over the reasons why it provoked the bipartisan backlash that persuaded Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to ditch the idea two weeks after announcing it.

The pretext for the Anti-Weaponization Fund was a lawsuit in which Trump preposterously claimed that IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn’s illegal leaking of his tax returns had caused “at least” $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And even if he had filed his lawsuit on time, he would have faced the challenge of showing that the IRS was responsible for the crimes of a man it did not employ.

Despite those legal weaknesses, the Justice Department never mounted a defense. That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the lawsuit, which pitted Trump against agencies he oversees in a case where both sides were represented by attorneys who work for him. The situation was so bizarre that Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, questioned whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed.

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Inflation rises to 4.2 percent in May, highest level in 3 years

The annual inflation rate increased to its highest point in three years as the cost of energy and other goods rose due to the Iran war, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Wednesday.

The consumer price index (CPI), a popular gauge of inflation, rose 4.2 percent over the past 12 months and 0.5 percent in May alone.

The CPI increase matched the Wall Street consensus and marks the first time that it has surpassed 4 percent since May, 2023, making it the highest rate since April of that year.

Energy prices rose 3.9 percent in May after having risen 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March, accounting for over 60 percent of the monthly all-items increase.

The Energy Information Administration reported that the average price for gas reached $4.49 in mid-May, compared to $4.09 in mid-April. In June, the national average has so far dropped to $4.15, according to AAA. 

The price of fuel has kept increasing as peace talks between the U.S. and Iran drag out, likely threatened by the latest exchanges, which could threaten an already fragile two-month ceasefire.

The food index also saw an increase of 3.1 percent over the past year, with a 0.2 percent rise in May. All other items saw a nearly 3-percent increase in the last year after also rising by 0.2 percent in May. 

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Trump Says US ‘Must Respond’ After US Apache Helicopter Shot Down Near Iran

President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that the US “must respond” after the US military told him that a US Army Apache helicopter was shot down by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz.

His post came after US Central Command said that its forces rescued two crew members from the helicopter, and media reports said that the US was probing whether Iran was responsible for the incident, which came a day after a US F/A-18 fighter jet bombed an oil tanker that was trying to reach Oman. So far, Iran hasn’t taken credit for shooting down the helicopter, but it has made clear it will respond to US attacks on ships.

“I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president added.

According to The Associated Press, the two crew members of the Apache spent about two hours in the water before being rescued by a 24-foot unmanned boat.

Tuesday’s incident comes after Iran struck Israel in response to Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israel then launched strikes on Iran, and President Trump called on the two sides to “stop shooting,” but shortly after his statement, CENTCOM announced the strike on an oil tanker.

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Trump DOJ Announces Largest-Ever Effort to Denaturalize U.S. Citizens Accused of Immigration Fraud or Concealing Serious Crimes

The Trump DOJ is dramatically expanding its campaign to revoke US citizenship from naturalized Americans accused of hiding terrorism ties, violent crimes, immigration fraud, and other serious misconduct during the naturalization process.

The new push, according to reports, marks one of the most aggressive uses of denaturalization in modern American history and reflects President Donald Trump’s broader America First effort to restore consequences inside an immigration system that has been abused for decades.

The Department of Justice announced cases against roughly a dozen foreign-born US citizens, with targets originally from countries including Iraq, Somalia, China, India, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Bolivia.

Officials said the cases involve allegations ranging from concealed terror affiliations and war crimes to child sexual abuse, sham marriages, false identities, and immigration fraud.

The message is quite clear: American citizenship is not a shield for foreign criminals who lied to obtain it. Naturalization, they argue, is a privilege granted by the United States—not a loophole for people who concealed dangerous pasts.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would pursue those who misrepresented themselves to become Americans.

Anyone “who intentionally concealed their criminal histories or misrepresented themselves during the naturalization process will face the fullest extent of the law,” Blanche said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

One of the most serious cases involves Ali Yousif Ahmed, who obtained citizenship after claiming he fled Iraq in 2009 because al Qaeda terrorists had attacked his family. Authorities now say Iraq sought his extradition in 2019 after he allegedly murdered two Iraqi police officers while serving as an al Qaeda leader.

Federal officials allege Ahmed omitted that information from the U.S. government. The case has become a stark example of why Trump officials say deeper scrutiny is needed before and after citizenship is granted.

Another case involves Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, who naturalized in 2007 and later pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support for terrorists and belonging to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

The Justice Department argues that joining a terrorist organization within five years of naturalization can be grounds for revoking citizenship. For immigration hawks, the case underscores the danger of treating citizenship as irreversible even when national-security issues emerge.

The crackdown also includes Oscar Alberto Pelaez, a Colombian-born Catholic priest convicted in the United States of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, including sodomy. Authorities allege he lied about the crimes during the naturalization process.

Another target, Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, allegedly entered into a sham marriage to obtain citizenship. Other cases include individuals accused of using false identities, concealing serious crimes, or committing immigration fraud.

In a separate announcement, the Justice Department said it is seeking to denaturalize Manuel Rocha, a former American diplomat who admitted in a criminal case to acting as a Cuban spy.

The Rocha case points to a broader concern: the United States must be willing to revoke citizenship when people obtain it through deceit and then use American status against American interests.

Denaturalization has historically been rare. Between 1990 and 2017, the federal government filed just over 300 such cases, averaging roughly 11 per year.

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US Army preparing for first executions in 65 years – ABC News

The US Army is preparing to carry out its first executions of death-row service members since 1961 if President Donald Trump orders them, ABC News reports, citing an internal planning document.

Trump has advocated wider application of the death penalty as a deterrent against violent crime.

ABC News reported on Saturday that the plan – known as Operation Resolute Justice – was circulated internally in February and requires the military to be ready to carry out executions “no later than 150 days from the date of presidential approval of the death sentences.”

The preparations reportedly include reviewing execution procedures and transferring the four death-row inmates from the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith downplayed the preparations as a “standard component of our continued planning,” noting that Trump has yet to issue a specific order, as quoted by the publication.

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