Tag: donald trump

Trump’s Horrific, Illegal Iran War Has ‘Costs Us Billions While Making Us Less Safe’

A group of experts says that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, which has been massively expensive and has made Americans less safe, shows the need for a radical overhaul of US foreign policy.

Scholars at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts on Wednesday are holding a webinar to present ideas for reducing the US military footprint and using the savings to invest in programs that will directly benefit working-class Americans.

In a video posted on social media ahead of the webinar, PERI experts advocated for making major changes to US foreign policy, which they argued has left the country overstretched.

“The Iran War costs us billions while making us less safe,” says a message accompanying the video on PERI’s social media account. “By reining in military spending and taxing the wealthy to pay their fair share, we can fund critical services like universal preschool, infrastructure investments, and Medicare for All.”

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Trump Maps Out $200 Billion in Korean Investment, but the Biggest Deals Aren’t Done Yet

President Donald Trump put some yuge numbers on the table Wednesday: up to $200 billion in South Korean investment for American energy projects, including Alaska LNG, eight nuclear power plants, and a massive natural gas power project in Texas.

The announcement finally gives shape to part of the $350 billion investment package South Korea agreed to as part of last year’s trade deal with Washington. Of that total, $150 billion was set aside for shipbuilding and another $200 billion for strategic investments selected in cooperation with the United States.

From Reuters:

“Thanks to the agreements my administration has secured with the Republic of Korea, they will invest up to $200 billion,” Trump said.

He said that the investment would include the construction of eight large-scale nuclear power plants, a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Alaska and a 6-gigawatt power generation facility in Texas.

The announcement is part of a series of economic and investment deals Trump is highlighting ⁠ahead of November’s midterm elections, as he seeks to reinforce his economic record amid voter concerns over the Iran war and high gasoline prices. The Alaska LNG project also comes as Republicans seek to retain incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan who faces Democrat Mary Peltola. Sullivan was in the Oval Office for the Wednesday announcement.

The Alaska LNG project includes an 807-mile (1,299-km) pipeline carrying natural gas from the North Slope to a liquefaction facility on Alaska’s southern coast, allowing the fuel to be shipped to Asian markets. The project is designed to transport about 3.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and produce up to 20 million metric tons of LNG annually, according to the White House.

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First Them, Then Us: America’s Shift from Police State to Prison State

“If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.”—Robert Reich

America, you got fooled. Again.

For starters, the war on illegal immigration was never just about illegal immigration.

If you fell for that, chances are you’re still falling for the government’s oldest trick: manufacture a crisis, identify an enemy, frighten the public, declare an emergency, and then use the resulting fear to justify another expansion of government power.

Terrorism. Crime. Drugs. National security. Illegal immigration.

Different threats. Same playbook.

Take a legitimate problem—or inflate it into an existential menace—and suddenly constitutional safeguards become inconveniences, extraordinary powers become necessities, and anyone who questions the government’s methods can be accused of siding with the enemy.

Immigration is a perfect example.

A highly charged issue that pushes all of the knee-jerk, polarizing buttons when it comes to deep-seated fears and prejudices, immigration has been the perfect vehicle for the Trump administration’s political fearmongering and authoritarian power grabs.

Trump has repeatedly described illegal immigration in the language of invasion, criminality and national-security emergency.

Yet a closer look suggests a far more complicated reality.

A 2026 Cato Institute analysis of Census data found that undocumented immigrants were incarcerated at a rate of 674 per 100,000 people in 2024, compared with 1,195 per 100,000 native-born Americans. Legal immigrants had an even lower incarceration rate of 303 per 100,000. Cato concluded that both legal and undocumented immigrants are less crime-prone than native-born Americans.

So, what is the government’s end game?

We’ve been so fixated on the overt cruelty, unapologetic authoritarianism, thuggish brutality, and blatantly unconstitutional abuses of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that we missed the larger menace taking shape behind it.

While the country fights over who should be allowed in, who should be kicked out, and who can participate in a pay-to-play scheme that benefits the oligarchy, the government continues building the infrastructure of a prison state.

This is the real power grab.

The government is using its so-called war on illegal immigration to normalize something far more dangerous: a system in which due process can be bypassed, people can be detained and moved beyond easy public scrutiny, government agents can wield extraordinary enforcement powers with minimal accountability, and constitutional protections can be treated as optional whenever the government invokes security.

Immigration is the testing ground.

The precedent being established and the tactics being trotted out and normalized are the real danger. Because once the government establishes that it can suspend the Constitution’s safeguards for one disfavored group, there is nothing magical that keeps those powers confined to that group.

We are all at risk.

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History Will Tell How Canada’s Spies Helped Trump in Cuba

Canada has long assisted the US bid to suffocate Cuba. And the roots of intelligence sharing undercut the idea of Ottawa standing up to US bullying.

On Saturday the Globe and Mail confirmed that Canada has long spied on Cuba for the US. In “Canadians passed intelligence to U.S. at time of alleged attacks in Cuba: source”, Robert Fife reports, “A Canadian diplomat was sharing intelligence with American spies in Havana and Canadians were using satellite equipment brought into Cuba by the United States when officials from both countries began experiencing debilitating symptoms caused by alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia.”

The long story about the 2017 “Havana syndrome” describes how a Canadian diplomat gathered human intelligence on the island, which was often passed on directly to a CIA agent at the US embassy. Another source told Fife that “Canadians were using satellite equipment brought in surreptitiously by the United States.” The information gathered was sent to the intelligence division at Global Affairs, CSIS and to Five Eyes partners (US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand). Fife added, “the two sources said the Canadian embassy’s intelligence-gathering was valued by the U.S. because of Canada’s longstanding friendship with Cuba. Unlike the Americans, Canadian diplomats had better access to Cuban officials and were allowed to travel outside of Havana.”

As has been documented by multiple sources, including the 2015 International Journal article “Our men in Havana: Canadian foreign intelligence operations in Castro’s Cuba”, Canada has spied for the US since the Cuban revolution. In fact, Washington’s request for Canadian spying assistance is part of the reason Ottawa didn’t sever diplomatic relations with Havana after the 1959 revolution. In the 2007 book Three Nights in Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and the Cold War World Robert Wright explains: “Recently declassified State Department documents have revealed that, far from encouraging Canada to support the embargo, the United States secretly urged [Prime Minister John] Diefenbaker to maintain normal relations because it was thought that Canada would be well positioned to gather intelligence on the island.”

Ottawa did not let Washington down. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s NSA, listened to Cuban leaders’ secret conversations from an interception post in the Canadian embassy in Havana and Canadian diplomats were among the first to alert the US to incoming Soviet arms and troops before the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A senior Canadian official, close to Washington, in Inside Canadian intelligence: exposing the new realities of espionage and international terrorism “admitted that the U.S. made ‘far greater use’ of our intelligence during the Cuban Missile Crisis than has been revealed.” Pentagon and State Department sources cite the UK and Canada as the only countries that “supply any real military information on Cuba” with Canada providing “the best” military intelligence.

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Trump Junks Biden’s Title IX Rules, Now Defines Sex by Biology

The Department of Education said Monday it will formally remove the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations and restore rules issued during President Donald Trump’s first term.

The change takes effect Tuesday. Under the final rule issued Monday, the Education Department’s anti-discrimination policy will recognize sex as male or female at birth. It formally removes Biden-era regulations that extended protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity to students and employees at federally funded schools.

The 2024 rules also forced schools to use transgender students’ pronouns and changed how schools handle harassment complaints. A federal court struck down the rules in January 2025.

The Education Department then told schools it would enforce the 2020 rules. Monday’s action puts that change into the published federal regulations; schools have already been operating under the earlier rules.

The department said the last lawsuits over the Biden rules were dismissed in August, clearing the way for it to formally remove them. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the move would make the written regulations match the court rulings and the rules her department has been enforcing since Trump returned to office:

Today’s rulemaking clears the Biden Administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration. Thanks to today’s action, the published Title IX regulations faithfully reflects court orders and Congressional intent—reducing confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions. We will continue to relentlessly champion equal opportunity for all Americans and hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.

The rule follows a 2025 executive order from Trump directing federal agencies to recognize only male and female as sexes and apply that definition when enforcing laws against sex discrimination.

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Watchdog Says Trump Control of $400 Million Political War Chest a ‘Clear-Cut Violation of Campaign Finance Law’

An election spending watchdog on Friday accused President Donald Trump of committing a “clear-cut violation of campaign finance law” through his stated control over spending decisions made by the MAGA Inc. super political action committee.

Citing decades of legal precedent, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) argued that federal office holders are prohibited from directing spending for super PACs, which raise money outside the scope of federal campaign laws.

Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at CLC, noted that Trump has stated publicly on multiple occasions that he will decide where MAGA Inc.’s $400 million war chest will be deployed in the 2026 elections—which Ghosh said would be flatly illegal.

“Our laws are clear: No federal officeholder or candidate is allowed to direct the money raised or spent by a super PAC,” said Ghosh. “President Trump, MAGA Inc., and anyone else who breaks campaign finance laws must be held accountable to help ensure that our political system is free of corruption.”

Last week, CLC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that cited statements Trump made to reporters, whom he told funds raised by MAGA Inc. were “my money that I control.”

This statement alone, the group said, was “a remarkable admission of a serious campaign finance violation.”

The complaint then asked the FEC to seek “appropriate sanctions for any and all violations” of campaign finance law committed by Trump and MAGA Inc., “including civil penalties sufficient to deter future violations and an injunction prohibiting the respondents from any and all violations in the future.”

While MAGA Inc. has a formidable stash of campaign cash at its disposal, it is unclear how much of an impact it will have on the 2026 midterms given that polls show the president and his party are in a deep hole with voters.

A report from The New Republic published last week revealed that the pro-Trump super PAC is plugging significant money into at least 17 districts that the president won by more than five points in 2024, and six districts that he won by more than 10 points.

David Wasserman, elections analyst for Cook Political Report, told The New Republic that this spending in pro-Trump districts is “an acknowledgment that things have shifted in a huge way since 2024.”

“Republicans have hemorrhaged support among independent voters, they’ve got a real enthusiasm problem,” said Wasserman, “and as a result, districts that ordinarily would vote handily for Trump and Republicans are now in play.”

A Friday report in The Washington Post examined the states where Trump is preparing to campaign in the coming days, and found the president is being deployed in deep-red states such as Alabama and Oklahoma.

“Oklahoma is a state Trump won in 2024 with 66% of the vote—and won all 77 counties,” the Post reported. “In Alabama, Trump won with 65%.”

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FDA Commissioner Nominee Says Every Vaccine On US Market Is Safe, Effective

The doctor nominated by President Trump to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told senators this week that vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective.

Dr. Heidi Overton, the nominee, said that if confirmed, she could use her scientific training and clinical background to describe to the American public what is currently known about products that fall under Food and Drug Administration oversight.

“And what is currently known is that the vaccines that have been approved by the FDA meet the standards for safety and efficacy,” she said.

Overton, 37, also endorsed the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, saying it is not lethal and that it is the best tool in the public health response to measles outbreaks that are ongoing in the United States.

She said that mifepristone, an abortion pill, was safe and effective because it had been approved by the FDA. Overton wrote in a 2023 article that chemical abortion through products such as mifepristone was “dangerous to women,” drawing criticism from Democrats in the Senate.

As Zachary Stieber reports further for The Epoch Times, Overton would take the helm of an agency that has been under acting leadership since Dr. Marty Makary stepped down in May.

While signing an executive order in August that encouraged breaking up the measles combination vaccine, Trump told reporters that the vaccine is possibly “quite lethal” and that separate shots for measles, mumps, and rubella appeared to be “not at all lethal but just very effective.”

When asked after the signing, the White House declined to provide any citations for Trump’s description of the vaccine.

Leaders in the Make America Healthy Again movement recently called for removing vaccines containing messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), an outspoken vaccine proponent, has been asking people whom Trump nominated to serve in high-level health positions about Trump’s comments, as well as other questions about vaccines, during their confirmation hearings before the Senate Health Committee, the panel he chairs. Chris Klomp, selected to be the top deputy to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently voiced support for vaccines in response to Cassidy, as did Dr. Nicole Saphier, tabbed to become surgeon general.

Cassidy said on Sept. 24 that Kennedy, whom he voted for, made him guarantees but later backtracked on those promises, citing directives from the president.

Kennedy’s department did not return a request for comment.

Cassidy asked Overton how she would handle it if she made guarantees and the president then directed her to go against them.

“I’ve had robust discussions with the president,” said Overton, who was part of Trump’s first administration.

“I would give him my best advice, and I would follow the statutory requirements for the role of FDA commissioner regarding individual product determinations for safety and efficacy, and that would be what would guide every decision if confirmed to this role.”

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“Extraordinary Rendition All Over Again”: U.S. Deportees Sent to Equatorial Guinea Beaten, Imprisoned

Two men deported from the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arrested by local police forces and transferred to a prison earlier this month, in apparent retaliation for speaking out about conditions they faced in the Central African country. Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, were both deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11, police forces arrived at Hotel Bamy in the city of Malabo, where more than two dozen people have been confined after their deportation from the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a country they have no ties to, as part of President Trump’s secretive “third-country” agreements. Birhane and Soliman say they were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. While confined at the hotel, U.S. deportees have decried denial of medical care and legal assistance, and abuses they’ve described as psychological torture.

“Starting in November 2025, … the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator,” says human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante. “The State Department reports that the U.S. has been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison.”

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‘I don’t worry about it’: Trump rejects AI safety concerns, renames technology ‘super intelligence’

President Donald Trump shrugged off concerns that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could expand beyond human control, arguing that the rising technology may create a massive economic opportunity for the United States.

When asked about recent safety incidents involving tech companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, Trump maintained that he was unconcerned.

“I don’t worry about it,” Trump said. “You know, It’s a huge industry. It’s really the industrial revolution — maybe bigger. … And we’re leading, and we’re building tremendous, you know, trillions of dollars’ worth of places. And why should we give that up?”

Trump argued that any security or safety issues stemming from AI should be resolved by the technology companies that created them. He added that, if required, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) would step in to enforce compliance.

“If something is bad, they have to fix it. And if they don’t fix it, that’s why you have the Department of Justice,” he said. “You don’t give up $1 trillion or more — 2 or 3 or $4 trillion industry — because you think something like that, we will straighten it out if and when a problem occurs.”

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry released a statement on Saturday noting that it “respects” Trump’s decision to rebrand artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” after he announced the change at the UN General Assembly last week.

Over the past week, Trump has repeatedly argued that “super intelligence” is a more fitting descriptor, claiming the word “artificial” makes the technology sound “fake.”

However, Chinese officials have avoided using the term in official government communications, despite Trump stating that Chinese President Xi Jinping favored the phrasing.

President Trump’s comments come amid growing concern from leading researchers and officials that AI is advancing faster than humanity can manage. However, Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that the DOJ intends to use existing criminal statutes to target misuse rather than serving as a proactive regulatory body, stating that “we’re prosecutors, not regulators” and maintaining that current laws are sufficient to handle compliance.

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Iran ‘Fully Prepared’ To Resume War, We Don’t Trust Trump: Iran FM

The two big weekend Iran war developments are 1) President Trump has rejected Tehran’s seven day ceasefire roadmap proposal, and reportedly plans to resume bombing Iran – likely after the November midterm elections; 2) the Iranian government announced Sunday its forces have targeted 19 ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the past two nights, per Fars News Agency.

The Fars report indicated the Iranians hit 12 vessels Friday night and 7 more Saturday – though Western sources have been slow to report or confirm this, and the Pentagon has not initially commented.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has meanwhile once again emphasized in the wake of Trump’s rejection of the latest proposal that on the one hand Tehran stands ‘ready’ for renewed fighting and won’t back down – and on the other has not yet abandoned diplomacy.

“We are fully prepared for the war to be resumed. We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” Araghchi told NBC News Meet the Press on Sunday.

He was specifically asked about the Friday Wall Street Journal report which strongly suggested Trump is ready to resume bombing the Islamic Republic after the midterms.

But Araghchi offered the key caveat and opening: “At the same time, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose,“ he said.

The top Iranian diplomat further make clear his country is not backing off its initial conditions to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz:

Our proposal is very clear. We are ready to open the strait if certain things are done by the U.S. And these certain things are not new, have not come from the space. These are our rights, that we want to be respected. First of all, we want to end this war of aggression. They started this war eight months ago with the hope that in two, three days, you know, they can win the war. It’s now eight months. And we want it to be ended. We want our money, our assets, which are illegally frozen, to be released. We want, you know, to be able to sell our oil. So we want certain things that the U.S. has already committed itself to in the previous, you know, deals.

The main conditions can be summarized as the end of the war on all fronts, the release of frozen assets and the end of the naval blockade.

The NBC show host tried to hold Araghchi down on Iran’s insistence that its funds be unfrozen and returned – which is proving a tall ask from a White House which has unleashed its ‘Economic D-Day’ campaign seeking to totally isolate Iran.

The interview transcript is quite illustrative of the main impasse:

KRISTEN WELKER: But Mr. Foreign Minister, the ambassador’s point was the United States is not going to unfreeze assets on the front end. It’s not going to lift sanctions on the front end. Is it possible to negotiate a new peace plan at this juncture? Or has diplomacy failed?

FOREIGN MINISTER ABBAS ARAGHCHI: Well, why aren’t they ready to release our money? It is our own money. It is not, you know, any other’s money.

KRISTEN WELKER: Because they want to see some actionable items from Iran, like opening the Strait of Hormuz, before they do that. Has diplomacy failed, Mr. Foreign Minister?

FOREIGN MINISTER ABBAS ARAGHCHI: Well, there is always hope for diplomacy. But to be honest with you, we have no reason to come back to diplomacy and engage with this administration once again, because of how they’ve behaved in the past two years. You know, in 2025 they offered negotiations…

And so clearly the situation is back to square one in terms of the stalemate that’s been on from the beginning, and has persisted for seven months, as Washington finds itself in yet another quagmire in the Middle East.

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