Tag: donald trump

Trump cuts off $10B in funding to five blue states for child care, social services over fraud fears

The Trump administration is cutting off more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding meant for a handful of Democrat-led states over concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens, officials told The Post Monday.

The Department of Health and Human Services will freeze taxpayer funding from the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and the Social Services Block Grant program.

At least $7.35 billion in TANF money will be prevented from going to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York.

The CCDF funding block of nearly $2.4 billion affects all those states.

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There’s Compelling Evidence That Someone Connected to the Trump Administration Profited Off the Invasion of Venezuela by Placing Large Bets on Polymarket

Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi have long garnered a reputation for facilitating cheating and insider trading — allowing an athlete, for instance, to place a bet on a game they could then lose on purpose.

Now there’s compelling evidence that someone with inside information about the Trump administration’s regime change plans in Venezuela used that foreknowledge to profit massively from the conflict.

As spotted by researcher Tyson Brody, an unidentified user bet tens of thousands of dollars on various predictions that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro would be imminently “out” or that the US forces would show up “in Venezuela by” a specified date during the runup to the incursion.

The account “existed for only one week and quickly became the biggest ‘yes’ holder in the Maduro out market,” Brody tweeted.

The evidence of insider trading is compelling, to say the least, given the highly suspicious timing. The account invested over $30,000 less than two days before the United States launched its invasion to kidnap Maduro and his wife and “profited $400,000 in less than 24 hours,” as sports entrepreneur Joe Pompliano calculated in a post on Bluesky.

“Seems pretty suspicious!” he added. “[Secretary of defense] Pete Hegseth making some beer money on the side?” Brody joked.

“Insider trading is not only allowed on prediction markets; it’s encouraged,” Pompliano argued.

Who was behind the Polymarket account remains a mystery. Accounts on markets like Polymarket are anonymous, and payouts are in cryptocurrency, making them hard to track.

As Semafor reported over the weekend, news organizations also had early intel of the US raid on Venezuela, but held off publishing the information so as not to put US troops in danger.

In other words, could it have been an insider at a New York or Washington newsroom who was trying to make a buck — or was it an operative inside the Trump administration?

Prediction markets have long raised concerns over exactly these types of situations. Case in point, one Polymarket user made $1 million in 24 hours in early December after betting on Google’s 2025 Year in Search rankings. Per Forbes, the account had a “near-perfect record of 22 correct predictions out of 23 attempts.”

As The American Prospect points out, critics of the Trump administration have long accused officials of dabbling in similar behavior. The administration has also allowed the prediction market to flourish by dropping enforcement cases in the crypto world and failing to introduce meaningful regulations.

Even Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which owns the president’s social network, Truth Social, entered the prediction markets business last year, showing a pointed appetite for the space.

“Of course insiders shouldn’t be able to get rich off of policy decisions — but even more concerning is the possibility that people are skewing policy outcomes in order to make their bets pay off,” Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka told The American Prospect.

One thing’s for sure: while insiders profit, those without that privileged information lose out — and when the bets are on a deadly conflict, innocent people stand to suffer as well.

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US spy jet mysteriously circles drug smuggling hotspot off Mexico’s coast as Trump threatens military action

The US Navy’s P-8 Poseidon was spotted circling a drug-smuggling hub off Mexico‘s coast on Monday morning.

Flight tracking websites spotted the aircraft conducting surveillance and reconnaissance operations miles offshore from Tijuana.

The city has long been plagued by violent organized crime and is considered a major corridor for cartel operations. 

The P-8 took off from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington, flew through Oregon and California, made several loops off the Mexican coast and southern California, and then returned to base.

Equipped with advanced sensors capable of detecting both surface and underwater targets, the P-8 is often used to monitor suspicious vessels and maritime movements. 

The flight comes just days after Donald Trump issued a warning to Mexico over drug trafficking, suggesting a military action similar to one carried out in Venezuela over the weekend. 

The President said drug cartels continue to dominate large parts of Mexico and criticized the government for failing to confront them decisively.

‘The cartels are running Mexico, whether you like it or not,’ he said. ‘It’s not nice to say, but the cartels are running Mexico.’

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Moaist Propaganda Shill and Tech Millionaire Neville Roy Singham Reportedly Funded Marxist Group that Organized Anti-US Protests After Tyrant Maduro Was Arrested on Saturday

In August 2023, The New York Times published a rare informative and honest piece of journalism. The New York Times exposed the so-called anti-war group Code Pink as a Communist China shill or front group.

Kristinn Taylor reported at the time.

Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, 68, has deep roots in the Democratic Party, having served as the campaign manager for the 1992 presidential campaign of former California Governor Jerry Brown. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Evans served as a host for Obama fundraisers in Hollywood with her then husband Max Palevsky (who passed away in 2010 at age 85) and as a campaign bundler.

Evans married Singham, 69, in 2017.

Trump was the only U.S. president to not start any new wars in his first term, yet the so-called antiwar group Code Pink stood against him in his first term – and now in his second term.

It is clear Code Pink is not an “anti-war” group. Instead, Code Pink is a shill for the communists.

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Kamala Harris Humiliates Herself Condemning Capture of Maduro

It’s been over a year now since her humiliating loss to President Donald Trump, yet for some reason, Kamala Harris still hasn’t figured out that she’s a joke and should fade away into the sunset rather than subject herself to future embarrassment for opening her mouth.

Like many other Democrats who have decided that opposing the capture of a dictator is the hill they want to die on, Kamala took to X on Saturday to condemn Donald Trump’s successful military operation that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

I guess she’s still on the DNC email list for the latest talking points.

“Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable,” she claimed. “That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before. Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price.”

Her post continued:

The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to.

This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman. If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.

The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home.

America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.

As I pointed out yesterday, Trump has not gotten us into another war. This was a surgical strike that accomplished its objective without a hitch. The statement is curiously similar to pretty much every other Democrats’ statement on the successful mission.

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Democrats Fundraise in Protest of Trump Admin’s Capture of Venezuelan Socialist Dictator Nicolás Maduro

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is fundraising in protest of the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s illegitimate socialist dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. 

“Another day, another unconstitutional war from Trump, who thinks the Constitution is a suggestion,” an email from the DNC reads, per Town Hall. “Congress has war powers — but Republican cowards are hiding under their desks while Trump orders an unauthorized attack against Venezuela. Trump promised peace, but has delivered chaos.”

“The most important thing we can do is elect more Democrats who will check this administration’s power,” the email continues. 

The email was reportedly sent the same morning President Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro for a long list of crimes, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin also released a statement condemning the arrest and claiming the Trump administration acted illegally. 

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Trump’s New Energy Doctrine: Regime Change, Then Drill

President Donald Trump has embarked on his own regime-change mission. And this time the United States intends to keep the oil.

American Special Operations Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in a daring raid, nabbing the Venezuelan leader from his bed early Saturday morning before sending him north aboard the USS Iwo Jima to New York, where he will face criminal charges related to an alleged narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The leftist strongman had ruled the South American state for more than a decade.

Now Trump will take over. “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he told reporters during a Mar-a-Lago press conference, deputizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to manage in the interim as “a team.”

Though long a critic of the foreign entanglements that defined the presidencies of his Republican predecessors, Trump insisted he could do regime change right. “We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world going in.” He will not, however, clean house.

Trump claimed Delcy Rodríguez, a Maduro loyalist and the current Venezuelan vice president, was already willing to work with the United States to remake the country. He said it would be “very tough” for opposition leader María Corina Machado to assume power. Just hours after perhaps the most consequential decision of his tenure, the once ostensibly isolationist president was suddenly and remarkably open-ended in his commitment to rebuild a nation thousands of miles away from his own. Of a potential American occupation force, Trump said, “We are not afraid of boots on the ground.”

Even if the newly announced nation-building mission may be something of a flashback to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Trump did not echo the language of the War on Terror. He spoke for nearly an hour. Not once did the president, or his assembled people, say the word “democracy.”

He ordered the removal of the foreign head of state to instead preserve American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela under Maduro had opened its arms to China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia by way of both trade and military cooperation. The White House alleged that this amounted to a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, a 19th-century precedent named for then-President James Monroe’s opposition to colonial meddling in the Americas by the Europeans. “They are now calling it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’” the current president quipped before the press.

The turn of phrase was new. The strategy is not. The White House has shifted its focus to North and South America to establish what the new National Security Strategy released late last year described as “the Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The stated goal: U.S. dominance in the region. The specific application as described by the president last month: Any nation harboring drug cartels is “subject to attack.” Even as the administration designated drug cartels as terror organizations, sanctioned Maduro and members of his own family, and sent the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to blockade Caracas, the Venezuelan authoritarian doubted Trump.

The two leaders spoke as recently as last week in an attempt to avoid a conflict. The negotiations eventually broke down, according to Rubio, after Maduro failed to accept one of the “multiple opportunities to avoid” the kind of military intervention that led to his arrest. “We’ll talk and meet with anybody but don’t play games while this president is in office,” the diplomat warned, “because it’s not going to turn out well.”

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WOW: Trump Shares Video Questioning if Tim Walz Ordered the Assassination of Minnesota Lawmaker Melissa Hortman to Cover Up Somali Fraud Scheme

President Donald Trump has shared a video questioning whether Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was involved in ordering the assassination of State Representative Melissa Hortman to cover up the Somali fraud scheme.

The post, which Trump shared on his Truth Social platform, suggests Hortman’s murder may have been tied to her efforts to expose a multi-billion-dollar money laundering operation funneling funds to illegal immigrants, particularly Somalis, through corrupt government rackets in childcare and healthcare.

Last summer, Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were gunned down in their home by a man posing as a police officer. Democrat State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were also targeted in a separate incident at their residence on the same night. Miraculously, the Hoffmans survived.

Vance Boelter, a 57-year-old man who was later arrested for the shootings and indicted on six federal charges, including stalking and murder.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Minnesota, Boelter conducted “extensive research and planning” before embarking on a “murderous rampage targeting Minnesota’s elected officials and their families.”

It was soon revealed that Boelter was appointed to the Governor’s Workforce Development Board by Walz, and in his confession, he claimed he was ordered to do the assassinations by the governor himself.

The post Trump shared, originally from X user @LightOnLiberty, asks, “Was Minnesota State Rep Melissa Hortman murdered because she voted against and was exposing a multi-billion dollar money laundering fraud going to illegal immigrants in Minnesota?!”

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“Cocaine Mills”: Trump Puts Three More Latin American Countries On Notice

President Trump soon after the overnight into early Saturday brief invasion of Venezuela and nabbing of President Nicolas Maduro – now in US custody on American soil – put more Latin American countries on notice, calling them essentially “cocaine mills” which ship ‘poison’ into the United States.

The not-so-veiled warnings and threats were issued to the governments of Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba – the latter which has been a Washington enemy stretching many decades back into the height of the Cold War.

In the comments, Trump again called Maduro as a “narco-terrorist” while fielding a question about the implications for neighboring countries, before linking the Venezuelan leader to his ally Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

“He has cocaine mills, he has factories where he makes cocaine and they’re sending it into the United States” Trump said of the Colombian leader, adding, “he does have to watch his ass.” 

And on Cuba, the warning was more veiled, as he described his administration is “going to be something we’ll end up talking about” as Washington suppose wants to “help the people” of this “failing nation” akin to Venezuela. 

“It’s very similar in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we also want to help the people who were forced out of Cuba and are living in this country,” he continued, in reference to Trump’s own significant support base among Cuban-Americans.

Among the more interesting and somewhat post-Venezuela regime change remarks by Trump were aimed just south of the border. Trump again put Left wing, or perhaps more accurately center-left Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo on notice.

Trump described that the drug cartels are basically running the country, and that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico” and that the government is “frightened” of them.

“They’re running Mexico. I’ve asked her numerous times: ‘Would you like us to take out the cartels?’ ‘No, no, no, Mr. President, no, no, no, please.’ So we have to do something,” he said in a phone interview with Fox.

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80 people killed in US raid on Venezuela – NYT

The death toll from the US raid to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro has risen to at least 80, which includes both soldiers and civilians, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing a senior Venezuelan official.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez confirmed that US forces had killed a “large part” of Maduro’s security detail in the operation, without giving a figure. Venezuelan officials also accused the US of hitting civilian areas but have not released an official death toll yet.

Meanwhile, Cuban officials say 32 of its citizens, including military personnel, were killed in the attack. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has announced that January 5th and 6th will be official days of mourning.

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