LIVE COVERAGE
Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend
More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.
Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like "being in middle school when there's a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency," yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words "transistor" and "transgender" to claim Biden's CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but "if you weren't transgender, (you) didn't qualify." Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed "worst president in U.S. history" took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is "exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares."
Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.
A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.
Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.
They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he finished the job by blowing up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain.
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in an event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."
Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.
Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.
Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.
Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky
Trump Regulators Issue Key Permit for Proposed $100 Million Underwater Data Center Off Maine Coast
Residents of Eastport, Maine are set to attend a public hearing Monday evening on two proposed ordinances to halt the construction of large artificial intelligence data centers, with proponents of the proposals hoping the coastal city's planning board will be able to prevent the build-out of a 27-acre, $100 million facility that a Massachusetts-based developer aims to build underwater—right near Eastport's working waterfront.
The public hearing is being held days after President Donald Trump's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted a preliminary permit for DeepGreen Holdings, LLC, the firm managed by luxury real estate development Louis Wolfson, which aims to build the facility that would be powered by tidal energy.
The 48-month permit does not allow DeepGreen to start construction, but gives approval for engineering and environmental studies needed to secure funding and officially begin the project.
DeepGreen would use ocean water to cool the heat created by the facility's massive computer servers. The company has also proposed using ocean tides to power turbines that would generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity.
The approval came weeks after FERC asked DeepGreen to amend its application, lowering its energy output from 51 megawatts to 15 megawatts and creating scalable project phases.
The community has mobilized against the proposed data center since DeepGreen applied for the permit in February, with the Eastport City Council voting unanimously earlier this month in support of a 180-day moratorium halting all progress on the center.
The local policymakers said the moratorium would give the city time to consult with the planning board about the two citizen-led initiatives to pass new ordinances—one that would permanently ban data centers in Eastport, which the city's legal counsel has said could be put to voters with a minor formatting change to the question, and another that would require voter approval for any new industrial or commercial development larger than 10,000 square feet in the ocean or 25,000 square feet on land.
The second ordinance was found by the legal counsel to be "unenforceable and unlawful," as the town is not permitted to regulate elections via ordinance.
But residents, officials with the Sipayik Passamaquoddy community, and local groups like Eastport Coalition for Healthy Oceans are all pushing to stop DeepGreen and the development it incorporated a month before applying for the permit, DeepGreen Western Passage SPV, or special purpose vehicle.
DeepGreen has also applied for a permit to build an underwater data center in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
Opponents say thermal pollution from the project would be destructive to the habitat of lobsters off the coast of Eastport, which are crucial to the city's fishing economy and working waterfront. They have also raised concerns that a data center off the coast would harm tourism as well as whales and other marine wildlife.
One local opponent, commercial fisherman and renewable energy developer Nathan Curtis, said DeepGreen carries "unmitigated risks of thermal pollution.”
The proposed data center would "require continuous ocean cooling, converting Western Passage into an unmetered industrial heat sink," wrote Curtis in a letter to FERC before the commission issued the permit. "Continuous thermal discharge into the water column threatens local water temperatures, localized current dynamics, and critical benthic habitats that support Eastport’s commercial fisheries and working waterfront.”
Wolfson denied that the data center, which was approved for an energy output up to 15 megawatts, would harm the coastal region of Eastport.
"As a property manager and developer who has operated within coastal dynamics for 40 years, I have too much respect for working waterfronts to introduce a project that threatens them," said Wolfson in a letter to Monitor Local.
But Eastport resident Suellen Hendrix, who was part of a local effort to gather signatures in support for the proposed ordinances, told Maine Public that locals appear unconvinced by any assurances from the data center developer.
"Everyone was behind 'we don't want this data center,'" Hendrix told Maine Public. "Nobody was questioning, 'Well, we need the jobs.' Nobody was questioning why it should be here because no one really wants it here."
As Common Dreams reported last week, as the Trump administration and AI executives have aggressively pushed for the expansion of data centers, public support has collapsed, with 75% of respondents to a poll by Embold Research saying they would not support a data center near where they live.
"This has happened nationwide, folks, it's nothing new," Dwayne Tomah, a historian with the Sipayik Passamaquoddy community adjacent to Eastport, told a crowd of data center opponents at a recent rally on the town's waterfront. "We've got to resist."
Trump-GOP Budget Law Pushes SNAP Enrollment to 17-Year Low as Millions Lose Aid
Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is now at its lowest point in 17 years thanks to cuts made in the Republican Party's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) on Wednesday published the latest update to its series of reports tracking the impact of SNAP cuts, and it found that there are roughly 5 million fewer people participating in SNAP thanks in large part to the cuts made in the 2025 GOP budget law.
Since the law's passage, enrollment in SNAP has decreased in every US state except Alaska.
While enrollment has fallen by an average of 12% across the US over the last year, eight states have seen participation plummet by 20% or higher. Arizona has seen the largest overall drop in participation, with 45% fewer people enrolled in the program over the last year.
"The declines started before the harmful 2025 Republican reconciliation law’s enactment, suggesting factors at play in addition to that law," CBPP explained. "But in almost all states, declines in SNAP participation accelerated after the 2025 Republican reconciliation law, and we expect that trend to continue."
CBPP also projected participation would fall even further in the next year given that the biggest changes made to SNAP funding won't fully kick in until 2027, when "most states will have to pay between 5% and 15% of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states."
"The amount a state will have to pay will be based on current error rates, factoring in errors that states are making today," CBPP emphasized. "The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people."
CBPP's latest report on SNAP cuts comes after ParentsTogether Action released a survey of SNAP beneficiaries on Tuesday finding that two-thirds of families who rely on the program have already seen benefits decrease over the last year.
The survey shows 75% of SNAP beneficiaries also report that affording food is one of their biggest economic challenges, echoing earlier surveys showing that buying groceries has become a major source of stress for Americans overall.
SNAP recipients described to ParentsTogether Action how the SNAP cuts have impacted their finances.
"They took over $120 off our SNAP," said a Kansas mother named Brandi. "We have a hard time keeping up with bills. I get [Supplemental Security Income], and that is my only income for my daughter and myself."
An Oregon woman named Amanda, meanwhile, described seeing her benefits cut by more than half after she found a job.
"We were receiving $400 a month, but after I reported my new income and reapplied, our benefits dropped to just under $200," she said. "We also didn’t receive any benefits for one month during the process."
Ailen Arreaza, executive director of ParentsTogether Action, said the SNAP cuts are forcing families to make an "impossible choice" on whether to prioritize paying for food, healthcare, or their utility bills.
"These cuts are not filtering out 'waste, fraud, and abuse' like the administration would like us to believe," Arreaza explained, "they are parents deciding between paying the electric bill and putting food on the table, or skipping meals so their kids can eat. Families should not have to make these choices."
'Yet Another Trump Grift': Congress Called to Stop US Takeover of Venezuelan Oil Fields
Trump administration officials are claiming that talks between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Venezuelan government regarding control of the country's oil fields will ultimately secure "America's energy future for generations to come"—but analysts on Friday called on lawmakers to halt President Donald Trump's "colonial" push to take over the reserves.
As Axios reported, officials including Rubio and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have been involved in talks with Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez about taking an ownership stake in more than a dozen oil fields in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo regions, which have about 90 billion barrels of oil reserves. In all, Venezuela's vast reserves—the world's largest—contain about 300 billion barrels.
The deal would double US oil reserves at a time when Americans have seen gas prices skyrocket and oil firms reap profits as a result of Trump's war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—events to which countries that have expanded renewable energy sources have proven far more resilient, according to data from JP Morgan Commodities research.
Despite that resilience, the Trump administration has reportedly approached the talks as a way to lock the US into generations of continued reliance on planet-heating oil extraction. According to Bloomberg, one deal under consideration is a 100-year lease on the oil fields.
Axios reported that in return for giving the US an ownership stake—something Trump began privately discussing before US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro in January—Venezuela "would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue" to the South American country.
Tyler Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program, said that if the deal is finalized, "Trump will likely transfer operational control to US oil companies," which donated heavily to his campaign.
The proposed deal would open "the door to Trump’s typical bilateral transactional corruption" and bestow "lucrative opportunities for the oil companies he chooses to reward," said Slocum.
“In the nearly eight months since Trump’s illegal January 2026 Venezuelan invasion, the Trump administration has managed a $13 billion slush fund gleaned from its control over Venezuelan oil sales, with zero transparency, and little to no public oversight or accounting," Slocum continued. "The president has no authority to negotiate a deal where the federal government takes control over foreign oil production facilities, and Congress must intervene and put an end to Trump’s oil-fueled imperialism."
One opposition leader in Venezuela, where Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to travel next week to discuss increasing oil production by US companies, said the deals currently being discussed amount to "a land grab—a massive land grab."
Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of The Collapse of Venezuela, said the country's National Assembly "should deny authorization for this predatory deal."
Following Trump's invasion of Venezuela in January, energy historian and Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew told The Guardian, "US dominance over Venezuelan oil reserves allows the US to regard Venezuelan reserves as its own reserves: a source of oil from which the United States can draw and that nobody else has access to."
"I think that’s how the administration is conceiving of this—excluding China, excluding Russia, but I think also excluding other potential customers for Venezuelan oil,” Brew said. “It sounds colonial, because it is.”
The president's "effort to establish a South American kleptocracy is an outrage," said Slocum. "There’s been no improvement in human rights in Venezuela, so Trump’s move is further evidence that his illegal actions in Venezuela are all about controlling oil with no public accounting, transparency, or oversight. This is yet another Trump gift for Big Oil.”
'Democracy Is Under Attack': Civil Rights Lawsuit Aims to Block Trump Assault on Mail-In Voting
A day after a federal judge lifted her injunction on President Donald Trump's executive order targeting mail-in ballots, a quartet of civil rights groups on Thursday filed fresh claims in their lawsuit challenging the administration's weaponization of the US Postal Service to attack the right to vote under the pretense of fighting nearly nonexistent fraud.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP, Common Cause, and Black Voters Matter Fund argued in the US District Court for the District of Columbia that Trump’s March 31 executive order unlawfully attempts to federalize important parts of election administration—especially voter eligibility verification and mail-ballot delivery—by presidential fiat, without authorization from Congress, while creating serious risks of disenfranchisement and misuse of personal data.
The plaintiffs—and many legal experts—argue that the US Constitution gives the states and Congress the authority to regulate federal elections, not the president.
"Our democracy is under attack," NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson said Thursday in a statement. "No federal entity should be allowed to implement last-minute rules that disenfranchise voters and override state election laws."
"This new USPS rule is a direct assault on the fundamental freedoms of millions of Americans—particularly Black voters, communities of color, seniors, military members, and rural residents—just weeks before a critical election,” Johnson added, referring to November's pmidterms. "We will not stand idly by while the voices of the people are silenced. We must protect every eligible citizen’s right to cast their ballot.”
Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, warned that “these mail-in ballot restrictions threaten to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who rely on mail voting to participate in our democracy while balancing work, caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, and other realities of daily life."
"The Trump administration is trying to limit access to the ballot, sow confusion at the polls, and to use the ensuing chaos as an excuse to exert power over agencies and processes in a politicized way," Hewitt added. “We will not let this or any administration further undermine our democratic process. We will fight to ensure our elections are free and fair, and that eligible voters are not shut out—especially Black voters and other voters of color, who are frequently targeted by voter suppression schemes.”
Several courts had ruled against Trump's order. But this week, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to proceed with its plans, and on Wednesday US District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was compelled to lift her injunction on the executive order as a result of the high court's decision.
Also on Wednesday, the groups behind the case before Talwani moved to block the Postal Service rule, as did a coalition of two dozen Democratic state attorneys general, whose initial challenge had resulted in the ruling from the Supreme Court—which found that the AGs filed their first suit prematurely.
Republicans including Trump—who has repeatedly voted by mail—have used fearmongering and disinformation to push the nearly nonexistent “threat” of voter fraud, especially in regard to mailed ballots, and noncitizens voting in US elections.
“Mail-in voting is so safe that even the president has used it twice this year,” Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said on Thursday. “The Postal Service exists to deliver our mail, not to be weaponized by this administration to silence voters. Common Cause will keep fighting to protect a democracy where people choose their leaders—not the other way around.”
Trump’s March order is part of a broader attack on voting rights that includes pushing an updated version of Republicans’ so-called SAVE America Act, which would mandate proof of citizenship and strict photo ID requirements to register to vote in federal elections. The legislation, which was passed by the House of Representatives in February, is stalled in the narrowly split Senate, where it lacks the support of 60 lawmakers needed to avoid a Democrat filibuster.
"Mail-in voting gives people the freedom and flexibility to participate in our democracy, and we should be honest about what these efforts to restrict it are really doing: creating barriers to the ballot under the guise of election security," Black Voters Matter Fund co-founders Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown said in a joint statement Thursday. "We are not fooled. This is the same old playbook—manufacture confusion, create unnecessary hurdles, and chip away at voting access."
“When the same politicians who defend their own access to mail-in voting move to restrict that access for others, the hypocrisy is hard to ignore," Albright and Brown continued. "We cannot allow voter suppression to be repackaged as voter protection or allow political interference to determine who gets to participate and whose voice counts."
"This is not about making democracy more secure; it is about reshaping who can fully participate in it," they added. "We will continue to call these efforts what they are and fight for every eligible voter’s freedom to make their voice heard.”
Iran War Trump Said Would Be Quick Has Now Lasted 6 Months With 'No End In Sight'
The illegal war with Iran that President Donald Trump said would be over in a matter of weeks entered its sixth month on Friday, and there is little sign of it wrapping up in the near future.
A Friday report in The Washington Post marking the six-month anniversary of the illegal war noted that Trump's ability to decisively win the conflict declined markedly "after Iranian leaders discovered that they could withstand intense bombardment and slowly degrade the world’s most powerful military with a cheap combination of mines and drones."
The biggest weapon in Iran's arsenal has been its ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for petroleum. Since the strait's closure, oil and gas prices have soared, costing US consumers an estimated $71.5 billion more to fill up their cars than they otherwise would have paid.
Trump this week has tried to claim that the strait has actually been reopened, but the Post found that the president's proclamations do not match reality.
"More than 100 ships traversed the Strait of Hormuz on average every day before the war," the Post wrote. "Just five went through on one day this week, according to Kpler, a commodities and shipping tracker."
A Friday report in The Associated Press focused on the White House's announcements this week of new measures to put economic pressure on Iran, which are a sign that the administration no longer thinks it can use military force to force Tehran's hand.
"The turn to using sanctions as the cudgel of choice," wrote the AP, "comes as the administration weighs diminished munitions stockpiles after months of war, sparking concerns that the prolonged conflict could undermine US military readiness in other parts of the globe."
The AP also flagged a shift in rhetoric from Trump, who once promised the war would end quickly but now says he's "not in a hurry" to end the campaign.
Harrison Mann, a former US Defense Intelligence Agency officer, wrote in an analysis published by Zeteo on Thursday that Trump has "lost the Iran War in every way possible in less than six months," which he said would mark "the arrogant, violent end of American dominance in the Middle East."
In fact, Mann argued that Trump lost the Iran War three different ways: The first in his failed attempt to force regime change in Tehran, the second in an aborted campaign to incite an Iranian Kurdish uprising, and finally in his desperate efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
All of these failures have combined to put Iran in a decisively stronger position than it was in before the war began, Mann wrote.
"After another four months of Trump threats, half-hearted bombing runs, and not one but two US blockades of Iran, Tehran’s military exercises formal authority over at least a third of the ships transiting the strait," he wrote. "Plus, it now regularly shoots at 'unauthorized' ships with impunity."
US Rep. Don Breyer (D-Va.) summed up the failure of Trump's war in a Friday social media post.
"When Trump began his illegal, unpopular war with Iran, he said it would last a week," Breyer wrote. "SIX MONTHS later: The administration has lied about our casualties and the deaths of civilians, the stated objectives haven't been met, Iran has a new economic weapon in the Strait of Hormuz, the region is less stable, our prices are higher, our allies are angry, our adversaries are emboldened, and there's no end in sight."
Health Aid Cuts in Secret Trump Deals Will Inflict 'Preventable' Death, Disease on Global South: Report
"It will be patients who will pay the ultimate price," said one global health advocate.
The US Congress has pushed back against President Donald Trump's efforts to slash foreign aid, which has long been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike—but a new report on more than a dozen Memoranda of Understanding that the White House has reached with countries that have long relied heavily on healthcare assistance shows that the administration is underspending "congressionally appropriated global health funds by potentially billions of dollars," as it pushes its "America First Global Health Strategy."
That's according to Public Citizen, which on Sunday joined Partners In Health in releasing an analysis of documents that the two nonprofits obtained after suing the Trump administration and filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The groups reviewed the MOUs that have been signed for 18 out of 34 countries whose agreements have been negotiated by the US State Department, including Rwanda, Liberia, Burundi, and Madagascar.
Although Congress has voted to keep foreign aid levels relatively constant—rejecting a budget that called to slash global health spending by $6.2 billion before approving one that proposed a $615 million decrease in spending—the report finds that the MOUs cut foreign health aid by about $2 billion by 2030, compared to 2024 levels.
“These documents suggest that the Trump administration is on course to underspend on global health by billions of dollars compared to what Congress has ordered, risking lives and allowing diseases to spread,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at Public Citizen. “The administration must answer how and when it intends to invest the missing billions for health.”
Overall, funding for programs that aim to prevent the spread of diseases including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and Ebola—which is currently spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo's fastest-spreading outbreak on record—is set to be reduced by 59% from historical spending, according to the MOUs viewed by Public Citizen and Partners in Health.
Some countries would see their health assistance from the US plummet even more, with Rwanda's MOU stipulating a 97% reduction in US health aid. Liberia is set to receive 84% less funding for health initiatives by 2030, and Burundi is set to lose 78% of its aid.
"Partners In Health provides direct care in Rwanda, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, along with seven other countries, and expects under-spending of these funds to impact patients’ access to care," said Public Citizen.
The MOUs also demand that the countries meet strict co-financing requirements to make up for their lost funding, and governments in poor countries across Africa could face penalties "which could worsen funding cuts" if they miss the co-financing targets.
"The planned decreases in US funding are larger for several countries than the funding increases from partner governments," reads the report. "For more than half of countries (11 out of 18), co-financing commitments fall short of the US government’s cuts over five years compared to baseline US government funding."
Countries are likely to struggle to meet the co-financing requirements in the MOUs, warned Public Citizen and Partners In Health.
Malawi would be required to secure new healthcare funding equal to 56% of the country's total health expenditure, the report found. With Uganda also facing co-financing requirements from international health organizations including the Global Fund and Gavi, the East African country would be required to mobilize funds equal to 44% of its total health budget.
"These funding cuts will cause death and disease that is preventable,” said Vincent Lin, associate director of health policy and advocacy for Partners In Health. “The State Department is setting up other countries for failure with the co-financing requirements outlined in these agreements, but it will be patients who will pay the ultimate price.”
Maybarduk told The Washington Post that Sierra Leone will be required under its MOU to fill a 71% health funding gap by 2030.
“It’s going to be very difficult, and if a country like that falls behind, and then is punished for that, then of course the health problems compound," said Maybarduk.
The State Department denied to the Post that the Trump administration will not spend all the foreign health assistance funds appropriated by Congress; it suggested that more of the money than usual may go to religious organizations as well as an "innovation fund" to support US technology that aims to fight disease.
Last week, Public Citizen sued the Trump administration under FOIA to obtain the rest of the MOUs that remain hidden from the public.
The White House, said the group, "has kept the public in the dark about the full details of its plans for the future of US support for global health."
"The State Department has negotiated these bilateral agreements," the group said, "on rushed timelines with limited participation from civil society and affected communities."
Talarico Protests as Texas Swing County Plans to Close 92 Polling Places
“The most powerful people in this county, the most powerful people in this country, don’t want us to be able to vote easily."
Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is pushing for one of Texas' most important swing counties to drop plans to close nearly a third of its polling places before November's midterms.
Amid public outcry, the Commissioners Court for Tarrant County—which contains Fort Worth and borders Dallas—plans to hold a vote on Tuesday on whether to shutter 92 of the polling places used in the 2022 election, many of which serve the city's poorer and minority populations.
If Democrats flip the Senate this November, the road to that outcome will almost certainly run through Texas. A Democrat has not won a statewide election there since 1994, but Talarico may be in a position to break the trend—leading Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in most polls.
Tarrant County narrowly supported then-Rep. Collin Allred, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2024. Talarico said the closure of polling places was meant to suppress turnout and help Republicans cling to their advantage in the state.
“The most powerful people in this county, the most powerful people in this country, don’t want us to be able to vote easily,” Talarico said at a press event Sunday, during which he argued that the closures would result in longer travel for voters and lower turnout, especially in heavily Black and Latino communities.
"We're here fighting for the rights of everybody," Talarico added. "The problem is when we let voting rights become a partisan issue. That's when we walk down a very dangerous path in this country."
Proponents of the closures have described them as a way for the county to save money, rather than a political tactic.
“We’re clearly not trying to suppress the vote,” state Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-66), the chairman of the Texas House Elections Committee, told the Associated Press. “That’s a silly accusation.”
But Republican officials in Tarrant County have, in the past, explicitly tied closures of certain voting locations to partisan aims. In 2024, Republican County Judge Tim O'Hare attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove several early voting sites on college campuses, a move that the county's GOP chairman said would have been "a serious win for Republicans in Tarrant County."
In 2025's off-year elections, Republicans voted 3-2 to reduce the number of polling locations by more than a third and cut funding for free bus rides to the polls for low-income residents. The previous year, they introduced new rules blocking what they derided as "left-wing" groups from registering voters inside county buildings.
At the state level, meanwhile, Texas has carried out unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to hand more US House seats to Republicans at the behest of President Donald Trump. And following Trump's false assertions that his loss in the 2020 election was marred by fraud, Texas introduced several new restrictions on mail-in voting that were found to have significantly reduced turnout.
Tuesday's scheduled vote in Tarrant County comes after commissioners opted to table an earlier proposal that would have shuttered nearly half the county's polling places.
An analysis of that plan showed that the lowest-income third of ZIP codes would lose nearly 58% of their Election Day polling sites, while the highest-income third would lose just under 22%. Majority-minority ZIP codes would have lost nearly 52% of their polling places, while majority-white ones would have lost just a third of theirs.
A similar analysis has not yet been conducted for the new proposal. But civil rights groups still argue that the proposal will disenfranchise many voters.
"Cutting the number of poll sites, especially at such a large scale, will harm Tarrant County voters and their right to participate in the democratic process—and cause particular harm to Black, Latino, and [Asian American and Pacific Islander] voters who already face significant barriers to exercising that fundamental right," wrote groups including the ACLU, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Texas Civil Rights Project, in a letter to the Commissioners' Court on Friday.
They emphasized that the polling places slated to close under the new proposal were clustered in areas such as south and southeast Fort Worth and central and eastern Arlington, which have predominantly nonwhite populations.
Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat who is running to unseat O'Hare as county judge and spoke alongside Talarico on Sunday, argued that while it was an improvement on the earlier proposal, "dropping 92 Election Day polling places is crazy."
"We should not compare this proposal to the worst proposal," she said. "We should compare it to the access that Tarrant County voters actually had in 2022."
'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': Retired Israeli Generals Decry Settler Terrorism Against West Bank Palestinians
"Once a society behaves this way, that society is doomed."
Several retired Israel Defense Forces generals are publicly denouncing their own government for permitting settlers living in the illegally occupied West Bank to wage a campaign of violence against the Palestinian population.
As The New York Times reported on Monday, the retired generals have been touring the West Bank in recent days to witness first-hand the damage that has been done to Palestinians' livelihoods by the Israeli settlers, whose violent actions have grown so outrageous that even US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee described them as "terrorists."
Ephraim Sneh, retired brigadier general and former minister of health, did not mince words in describing the settlers' campaign of attacking Palestinian villages.
"This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply," said Sneh.
Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, likened the attacks on Palestinians to the kinds of pogroms once suffered by Jews living in Europe.
Agmon also said that the Israeli government's tacit support of these attacks bodes ill for the future of Israel.
“Once a society behaves this way,” said Agmon, “that society is doomed.”
The tours of the West Bank are being organized by Yaakov Or, a retired Israeli general who spent much of his career working inside the occupied territory.
According to the Times, Or begins every tour with a speech where he emphasizes the importance of speaking out against what he says are indefensible atrocities.
"When I take you to see what is happening in the West Bank, you will have two choices," Or said during the start of a recent tour. "You can stay silent, and be complicit, or you can speak out, and tell everyone you know about what is happening."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend once again downplayed the significance of settler attacks on Palestinians, describing them as rogue actions taken by troubled individuals.
"We are talking about a very small handful of people," Netanyahu said, "usually young people who come with all kinds of distress and problems, often from home, and I am determined to stop this."
The Israeli prime minister also said that attacking Palestinian villages "harms the settlement movement" and "gives us a bad name around the world."
Netanyahu on "settler" terrorism:
We are talking about a very small handful of people, usually young people who come with all kinds of distress and problems, often from home, and I am determined to stop this.
You want to enter a village? You will not enter. That is not your… pic.twitter.com/MlnKxlaxlB
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 30, 2026
Palestinian Christian theologian Munther Isaac pointed out that the Israeli government itself has been actively working to push Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank, pointing to recent Israeli demolitions of homes in the town of Birzeit.
"This is what ethnic cleansing looks like in Palestine," wrote Isaac.
Birzeit: Israeli occupation forces demolished two inhabited residential buildings. Each was four stories high, with every floor covering 250 square meters.
This is what ethnic cleansing looks like in Palestine. pic.twitter.com/XsYu92VUFw
— Munther Isaac منذر اسحق (@MuntherIsaac) August 31, 2026
Human rights organizations for months have been sounding the alarm about the situation in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have routinely attacked Palestinians at their own homes.
An analysis published by the Carter Center last month found that “settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank,” as “more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks and home demolitions this year—double the daily rate of the previous three years.”
Trump Accused of Using Iran War Energy Crisis as 'Cover for a Resource Grab' in Venezuela
"Oil reserves in Venezuela will do nothing to lower families’ bills today," said one campaigner.
President Donald Trump was accused over the weekend of exploiting an energy crisis of his own creation to make the case for what he dubiously characterized as "the biggest oil deal in world history" with Venezuela, a country that the US illegally attacked earlier this year in an operation to abduct its then-president, Nicolás Maduro.
“Trump drove up gas prices by launching a devastating war with Iran. Now he is using the energy crisis he created as cover for a resource grab of Venezuela’s oil," Allie Rosenbluth, US program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement on Sunday. "The announcement confirms his aggression against Venezuela was about securing power, profits, and fossil fuels."
The newly announced agreement—which Trump and Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, said involved the development of fields with potentially 65 billion barrels of oil—came as gas prices in the US remained above $4 per gallon. According to AAA, this month is "poised to set a new record as the most expensive August at the pump," as the national average price for a gallon of gas has been above $4 every day of the month for the first time.
Rosenbluth, like other analysts, questioned the impact of Trump's deal with Venezuela on the US energy crisis, which has become a major political problem for the president and his Republican Party heading into the midterms.
Trump, who has significant fossil fuel company holdings, claimed the deal would "substantially lower gas prices" and help replenish the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is at its lowest level in decades after the president ordered the release of 172 million barrels following Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to US aggression.
Trump tries to retroactively justify his war of aggression against Venezuela by saying he will use its oil to replenish America's strategic reserves, which are depleted because of his aggressive war of choice against Iran. What is wrong with this "logic"? https://t.co/Grh3ov8Jhw
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 30, 2026
Trump announced the deal with Venezuela on Friday, which marked six months since the US and Israel started bombing Iran.
"Oil reserves in Venezuela will do nothing to lower families’ bills today," said Rosenbluth. "Increasing production of this extremely heavy and dirty crude would take years and billions of dollars. A bet on new Venezuelan oil production that may take a decade or more to materialize is a bet against solving the climate crisis already destroying lives and livelihoods every day. The immediate winners are the oil companies and private investors given access to Venezuela’s resources, while Venezuelans lose sovereignty, and communities in Venezuela and along the US Gulf Coast face more pollution and harm."
“Trump’s attacks on Iran and Venezuela expose the vicious cycle of fossil fuel dependence: Wars secure access to oil, oil fuels violence and militarization, prices become more volatile, and fossil fuel companies profit while ordinary people pay," Rosenbluth added. "Real energy security comes from phasing out fossil fuels and investing in affordable, renewable energy.”
Gerald Kepes, president of the consultancy firm Competitive Energy Strategies, noted in an interview with NPR that the US has no "government-owned operational capability per se in the oil and gas sector," raising the question of "who's going to operate on the ground?"
Chevron is currently the only US oil company actively producing in Venezuela. NPR reported that "there's a private Venezuelan company involved in the deal," but the details remain murky.
'Mobster Language': Trump Says Venezuelan Oil Will Replenish US Reserves
"I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media," one journalist wrote.
President Donald Trump was accused of naked gangsterism and revisionist history on Sunday when he announced that Venezuelan oil would be used to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
"One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The 'topping out' process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The oil in question comes from a deal announced between the governments of Trump and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday, which would allow the US to take majority control of 65 billion barrels worth of Venezuelan oil preserves. While Rodriguez has spoken favorably of the arrangement, it is hard to know how freely she speaks and acts given that her predecessor Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by US forces in January.
"Describing oil you are looting by force as a 'Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States' is straight mobster language," Drop Site News journalist Ryan Grim wrote on social media in response to Trump's statement on Sunday.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?"
Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, also commented on the imperialism inherent in Trump's remarks, writing: "I feel like I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media."
In an article on Sunday entitled "Trump’s Venezuela Oil Grab Reprises Industry’s Neocolonial Past," Bloomberg reported that the oil deal reminded some analysts of 20th century US colonialism in Latin America.
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez told Bloomberg that Venezuela is “functioning as a protectorate of the US in all but name,” and that the current deal “isn’t furthering the interests of Venezuelans. It’s about securing the economic and security interests of the United States.”
New York University associate history professor Alejandro Velasco, meanwhile, compared today's Venezuela with the Central American "Banana Republics" that were heavily influenced by the US-based United Fruit Company during the first half of the 20th century.
The Venezuelan people “are entirely at the whims of whatever the US government, by way of these companies, is going to give to them,” he told Bloomberg. “Venezuela is a client state now.”
Both Rodriguez, the economist, and Robinson questioned whether the deal would survive a change in Venezuela's government.
“If I were an investor in Venezuela right now, I would be asking myself if there’s going to be a government in the future that will repudiate the contracts,” Rodriguez told Bloomberg.
Robinson, meanwhile, wrote on social media, "It's obvious that a democratic Venezuela would never hand over its oil to the US, so the US actually strongly opposes democracy in Venezuela."
Other experts pointed out that Trump lied about how the Strategic Petroleum Preserve (SPR) was depleted in the first place. While President Joe Biden did drawn upon the reserve in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump has also relied on reserves to offset the impact of his war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As of August 21, the SPR held 289.7 million barrels, a 30% decrease from the start of the year, according to the Energy Information Administration. It is supposed to fall further to 243 million barrels per Trump's orders, Drop Site News reported.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?" Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, asked on social media.
It is also unclear how quickly any Venezuelan oil could top out the SPR, given that Venezuela's oil industry has been weakened by sanctions and mismanagement and needs substantial investment and work before it can increase production, according to Reuters.
At the same time, Drop Site pointed out that Delcy Rodriguez made no mention of gifting the US oil when she laid out more details of the deal on Saturday night. According to the acting Venezuelan leader, the deal would last 25 years and the country would maintain “ownership of and sovereignty” over the oil “while leveraging capital, technology, and operational expertise to support the recovery of a strategic industry that has been severely affected by sanctions," as Reuters reported.
In response, Francisco Rodriquez outlined a series of questions about the deal, including how Delcy Rodriguez's remarks compared with Trump's.
"President Trump has also said that with immediate effect, the United States' strategic oil reserve will begin to be supplied through a gift from Venezuela. Can you explain under what conditions this gift is being made?" the economist asked the Venezuelan leader on social media on Sunday. "Which articles of the law or Constitution allow you to give away Venezuelan oil property? And if that flow begins immediately, as President Trump says, does that mean it will be supplied from current production, and therefore imply lower revenues for the national treasury in the immediate term?"
'Embarrassing': Google Maps Renames 'Lake Ontario' as 'Lake America' in US
The name change followed President Donald Trump's executive order and "served as a reminder that billionaires will always side with authoritarians, because authoritarians will always protect billionaires at the expense of democracy and the working class."
Tech giant Google faced widespread criticism over the weekend for becoming the first major online map provider to change the name of "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" for its US users, after President Donald Trump ordered the name change in an executive order on Thursday.
Google presented the decision as a procedural one in its statement on Saturday:
The US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, people using Maps in the US will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.
However, advocates, lawmakers, and commenters saw the shift as another example of Big Tech in general, and Google in particular, caving to Trump's whims. Notably, the CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, attended Trump's inauguration with a host of other Silicon Valley moguls.
"This is so embarrassing for @Google and served as a reminder that billionaires will always side with authoritarians, because authoritarians will always protect billionaires at the expense of democracy and the working class," Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media.
Zero integrity over at @Google.
Resign, @sundarpichai.
Fuck you, @googlemaps. pic.twitter.com/ERxPc5sZ88
— Killed by Google (@killedbygoogle) August 30, 2026
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) threatened the company with congressional questioning for its capitulation, writing on social media: "Hey @Google, how about an option for thinking people vs. cultish sheep? I don’t wanna have to see your brown lips from Trump. How about calling it what it is? Don’t forget, when the Majority changes in the House and Senate, you might have some answering to do. Correction. WILL."
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), in response to another social media post about the change, wrote sarcastically, "That's definitely going to make food more affordable."
Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, asked, "Is Google really so terrified of Trump that it has to play along with his childishness?"
Is Google really so terrified of Trump that it has to play along with his childishness? pic.twitter.com/tHOrwJoiCy
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 30, 2026
Trump biographer Seth Abramson chastised the company, writing, "Thing #1 that you *do not do* for a psychopath: appease them."
While Google was the first digital map provider to make the change, it will not be the last, according to Wired, which reported that Apple and Bing are expected to follow suit. All three companies changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America following Trump's redesignation at the start of his second term.
Trump did receive pushback from other quarters at the time, with The Associated Press losing access to presidential events because it refused to change its style guide to prefer "Gulf of America."
This new name change, which Trump issued as part of an ongoing trade war with Canada, has also met with resistance both within and beyond the US.
On the day of Trump's order, MapQuest announced simply, "We're not changing it."
We’re not changing it. pic.twitter.com/NdeE9v2BNO
— MapQuest (@MapQuest) August 27, 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the name change in a social media post on Thursday, pointing to the Indigenous origins of the name Ontario.
"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means 'the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.' The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America," he wrote. "We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now, and always."
The upstate New York-based Seneca Nation on Friday asked Trump to rescind the order, saying it violated an over 225-year-old treaty signed by President George Washington and the Haudenosaunee confederacy, of which the Seneca are a member.
Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said the name change showed "blatant disrespect" to Indigenous groups, adding, "The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action."
On Saturday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a billboard on the lake's edge that reads, "Lake Ontario, now and always" in English and French.
It’s Lake Ontario, now and always. pic.twitter.com/KNahtPAMeJ
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) August 29, 2026
"President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario," Ford said.
Trump Threatens NBC's Welker With 'Punishment' for Doing Her Job
"Trump, like all authoritarians, wants to silence those who disagree with him," Sen. Bernie Sanders said in response.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to threaten NBC journalist Kristen Welker with "rebuke or punishment" from the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, after she accurately reported that his endorsement had netted "mixed" results for Republican candidates this election cycle.
In a second post on Sunday, Trump also lashed out against reported polling results, writing, "THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE!"
"Trump, like all authoritarians, wants to silence those who disagree with him," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media in response. "Now he's trying to punish an NBC journalist for reporting on his mixed endorsement record. Sorry, Mr. President. In America, we believe in democracy and the First Amendment. FIGHT BACK."
Welker made the remarks that enraged Trump during a pre-"Meet the Press" promotion on NBC's Washington, DC affiliate station. They were backed up by NBC reporting that six candidates Trump endorsed for House and governor had lost their Republican primary races in August.
"Trump makes clear that he thinks it's the government's role to go after journalists who anger him."
"Kristen Welker, the Unpopular 'Hostess' of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has 'mixed results' on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the US Senate, and 98% for the US House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment," Trump wrote.
He also appealed to the head of the FCC directly, saying, "I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously."
"Trump is getting more explicit about weaponizing the FCC," CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter noted in a thread on social media. While he pointed out that the FCC cannot legally punish Welker and has limited power by design, its chair Carr "has been responsive to Trump's posts in the past..."
Indeed, Carr has a history of targeting Trump critics.
In September of 2025, he pressured ABC into briefly removing Jimmy Kimmel from the air following remarks he made surrounding the Trump administration's response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk's death.
In March, Carr wrote a post on social media that appeared to threaten to revoke the broadcasting licenses of news outlets that criticized Trump's war on Iran, responding directly to Trump's own social media rant against war coverage.
In April, he ordered Disney's eight ABC stations to file their broadcast renewal requests years early, prompting ABC and Disney to file a First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC earlier this month. The renewal requests, which Carr denies were retaliatory, came a day after Trump again criticized Kimmel for making jokes about First Lady Melania Trump.
Stelter concluded: "Trump invoked Carr's name, complimented the 'fine people' of the FCC, and said he hopes the commission will 'take this Threat to our Country very seriously.' ABC is already in court fighting the FCC's unprecedented actions; it's reasonable to think NBC will be targeted next."
Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times Pete Baker wrote on social media that, with his threats against Welker, "Trump makes clear that he thinks it's the government's role to go after journalists who anger him."
"Are there really any Americans left who think this man is paying any attention to any problem any person in the United States is having right now," Trump biographer Seth Abramson wrote on social media in response to Trump's tirade. "As far as I can tell there's not a single second of his day taken up by anything but what personally interests and enriches him."
'Horrific': Masked Israeli Settlers Attack, Injure Palestinian Woman and NBC Crew
Another journalist called the assault "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
Israeli settlers attacked and wounded a Palestinian woman and four NBC team members who were interviewing her in the West Bank on Saturday, amid ongoing settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The settlers, who were wearing masks, drove up as Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family were telling NBC about how settlers forced them from their home in the town of Jalud.
“They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley told the outlet.
Make This Go VIRAL
Masked Israeli Settlers ATTACK Palestinian Woman and NBC News Crew in the West Bank
NBC correspondent Matt Bradley was struck twice pic.twitter.com/EMmWGsNk2X
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 30, 2026
Bradley was hit twice on the arm by the attackers, who carried sticks. They also threw rocks. Abdullah, Bradley, West Bank-based cameraman Khaldoon Eid, producer Producer Lawahez Jabari, and a driver were all injured in the ambush and treated afterword. Abdullah remained in the hospital as of Saturday night.
Both Eid and Jabari also described the assault.
“We didn’t expect that—that they would come to attack,” Eid told NBC. “We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses.”
Jabari said, "Suddenly a car came to us,” adding, "the settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”
Jeremy Diamond, a CNN correspondent in Jerusalem, called the incident "horrific" on social media and said it was "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
The NBC crew and their interviewee were not the only targets of such violence on Saturday, as attacks continued in the town of Qusra, where settlers have been conducting a nearly three-week siege of three Palestinian homes. Settlers pepper sprayed Palestinian workers, threw rocks at a building, and besieged a fourth home with at least four Palestinian residents inside, according to Hareetz and Al Jazeera.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Saturday's attacks, characterizing them as “criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Qusra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in fulfilling its missions, and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”
Yet Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued on social media:
1. The settler wouldn't do this to Americans had they not received a green light from the Israeli gov.
2. Israel's gov would not have given such a green light unless it felt confident that the US gov—and Amb. [Mike] Huckabee—wouldn't lift a finger to defend the Americans.
Journalists trying to report in both Gaza and the West Bank have long been targets of both settlers and the Israeli military. The IDF was found to be the leading killer of journalists worldwide for the third year in a row in 2025, and even before the Gaza genocide began in 2023, there were cases like the IDF killing of Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in 2022.
The attacks on the NBC team also come amid an uptick in setter violence in the West Bank since 2023, which humans rights observers say is enabled by the Israeli government. Netanyahu's government has expanded settlements in the West Bank despite the fact that they are illegal under international law.
Judge Rules the Trump Admin Can't Deport International Students for Free Speech
"A federal judge just ruled that the Trump admin's use of immigration law to deport me and other noncitizen students for pro-Palestinian speech is unconstitutional. No one should fear speaking up for Palestine," Mahmoud Khalil said.
The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it moved to deport or rescind visas from international students who spoke up for Palestinian rights and criticized Israel's genocide in Gaza, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
Northern District of California Judge Noël Wise, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, said that the administration's actions violated both the First Amendment of the Constitution protecting free speech and the Fifth Amendment ensuring due process.
"Stated plainly, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not the government’s to take," Wise wrote.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement early in the second Trump administration despite holding a green card, celebrated the ruling on Saturday.
"A federal judge just ruled that the Trump admin's use of immigration law to deport me and other noncitizen students for pro-Palestinian speech is unconstitutional. No one should fear speaking up for Palestine," Khalil wrote on social media.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations also welcomed the decision in a statement on Saturday:
This ruling reaffirms a fundamental American principle that the government cannot deport people simply because it dislikes their political views. Students do not surrender their constitutional rights at the classroom door, and international students do not surrender their freedom of expression when they come to study in the United States. Criticizing the policies of a foreign government, including the genocidal government of Israel, is protected political speech.
The lawsuit was brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in August 2025 on behalf of The Stanford Daily, Stanford University's student newspaper, and an anonymous female plaintiff. The newspaper argued that student reporters on visas refrained from covering pro-Palestinian protests on campus out of fear of being deported, while the Jane Doe was a noncitizen who had spoken out on behalf of Palestine and now was worried about government retaliation.
"The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to," the paper's editor-in-chief George Porteous wrote on social media on Friday.
In particular, the lawsuit challenged two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Secretary of State Marco Rubio used to justify seeking the deportations of Khalil, Columbia student Moshen Mahdawi, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk. The first allows the secretary of state to deport a noncitizen for speech if the secretary “personally determines” the speech “compromises a compelling foreign policy interest.” The second allows the secretary to revoke visas entirely at their own discretion.
Wise agreed that the provisions violated the Constitution and offered a rousing defense of free speech.
“In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength," she wrote. "That strength is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.”
FIRE said the decision was the "first in the country to squarely rule on the constitutionality of these statutes" and that it would "reverberate in similar proceedings around the country."
“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement Friday. “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”
'One Big Military Theft': Trump Announces Deal for US Control of Venezuelan Oil Fields
"This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies," one Democratic senator said. "Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty."
President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Friday that his government had "secured majority US control" of Venezuelan oil reserves containing 65 billion barrels of oil.
The announcement followed on reporting from Axios that a deal was in the works, prompting criticisms that such a move would be "colonial" and calls for Congress to reject any such proposal.
"Let's be clear: This isn't a win," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote on social media in response to the announcement. "This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty."
When US forces invaded Caracas and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife First Combatant Cilia Fores on January 3, Trump's own words following the invasion confirmed suspicions that he acted largely to gain access to the country's oil.
"These are some of the largest crimes of our lifetimes."
“We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be,” he said in a press conference following the attack.
Friday's deal, which seems like an attempt to make good on that promise, was also announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, who provided more details.
According to Venezuelanalysis:
Rodríguez stated that the deal will involve private corporations developing 17 “strategic fields” with 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. She echoed Rubio’s $100 billion investment claim and pledged that the projects would yield $209 billion in tax revenues. According to the acting president, the announced agreement “ushers in a new era of growth and prosperity.”
However, economist Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argued that the agreement was actually a bad deal for Venezuelans.
"President: According to your figures, this agreement will generate tax revenues of just $3.22 per barrel of Venezuelan oil. This represents 4.7% of the current price, and less than half of the royalty rate contemplated in concessions granted by Juan Vicente Gómez," he wrote on social media, addressing the current Venezuelan leader and referring to a Venezuelan dictator from the early 20th century.
Joseph Bouchard, a journalist and researcher who focuses on Latin America, agreed with Rodriguez's criticism of the deal, writing on social media that "Trump [was] 'generously' buying billions of barrels of Venezuelan oil at less than 5% its market price. He's stealing their oil for his own family and cronies' profit. Guessing this may be used as a chip to manipulate the midterms. These are some of the largest crimes of our lifetimes."
Francisco Rodriguez had earlier pointed out that the deal violated the Venezuelan Constitution, which holds that all minerals and hydrocarbons are “inalienable public domain," according to Venezuelanalysis. For the deal to go through, therefore, Venezula would have to alter its Constitution.
Former head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth noted on social media that "senior Venezuelan officials, all fearing arrest, are hardly in a position to negotiate vigorously, making the whole thing seems like one big military theft."
On the plus side, no one has to argue whether the United States is imperialist anymore. https://t.co/nsb87JUARw
— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) August 29, 2026
Trump is under pressure to lower gas prices that have spiked due to the fallout of his war on Iran, which entered its sixth month on Friday, and promised in his announcement, "This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future."
However, The Associated Press pointed out: "A significant drop in US gas prices tied to the agreement should not be expected immediately. Experts have repeatedly warned that a substantial boost in Venezuelan oil production will not happen quickly as repairing and expanding infrastructure takes years and requires billions of dollars."
Exploiting Venezuela's oil reserves would also exacerbate the climate crisis, which just this summer intensified a deadly heatwave in Europe and is supercharging an El Niño that could contribute to a significant increase in food prices in 2026 and 2027.