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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 renaming “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, when 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.
Even his clusterfucks demand ceaseless fealty. 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 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 also such a petty dolt he's 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." Sure you have, Donnie.
"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
‘Perfect Storm’ of Trump’s War and Super El Niño to Drive Food Prices Even Higher
Experts are warning that a combination of a super El Niño climate pattern and two separate wars is threatening to put further upward pressure on food prices over the next several months.
A study released by Oxford Economics on Wednesday projects that global food prices will rise by 12% in 2026 and by 5% in 2027 due in large part to the fertilizer shortage caused by the closure in the Strait of Hormuz and increased grain prices caused by Russia's war with Ukraine.
The strait's closure, which began after President Donald Trump launched an illegal war with Iran in February, cut off a major shipping lane for fertilizer, whose price Oxford Economics projects will surge by 22% this year.
The four-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, meanwhile, is putting a strain on grain supplies, as the two countries combined account for 30% of global wheat exports.
And the two wars might not be the biggest driver of higher food prices.
The Independent on Friday reported that the Met Office, the UK's official weather forecasting service, is projecting this year's El Niño will be "the largest since the 19th century," with sea temperatures projected to reach 3ºC above their long-term average in the coming months.
Professor Adam Scaife, head of long range forecasting at the Met Office, told The Independent that he has "never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts," describing the projected increase in ocean temperatures as "an unprecedented event."
Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical hazards at University College London, told The Independent that the Met Office's forecasts "suggest that the world is in for one hell of a ride."
“The astonishing and unprecedented amount of heat building across the eastern Pacific Ocean," McGuire said, "is all but certain to make this the most powerful El Niño in living memory possibly even the biggest in several centuries."
McGuire said that this heat would manifest itself in several destructive ways over the next year, such as "bringing drought and wildfire conditions to the Amazon and parts of Australia, torrential rainfall and floods to California, and a reduced South Asian monsoon."
In an interview with CNBC published Friday, trade and agriculture analyst Noel Fryer noted that North America and Europe have experienced very hot summers that has "decimated" some crops and has hurt grazing prospects by reducing the available supply of grass and hay.
And all this occurred, Fryer added, before the full impact of El Niño has arrived.
“It’s just a huge mix of different issues and we don’t know how they’re going to end," said Fryer. "It’s a perfect storm."
Top OpenAI Executive Labels Social Security a ‘Fraud’ That Must be Dismantled
A top executive at one of the world's biggest artificial intelligence companies drew backlash on Tuesday for describing Social Security as "a kind of accounting fraud" that will have to be dismantled.
Dean Ball, head of strategic futures at OpenAI who previously worked in President Donald Trump's White House, wrote in a social media post that while Social Security may have once been a "reasonable affordance" to people who "were dealing with an economic depression and a world war," it was nonetheless "accounting fraud, whose debt is coming due and is coming due fast."
Ball concluded his post by informing younger generations of Americans that "unwinding the great fraud... is your job, whether you wish it to be or not."
Ball's attack on Social Security drew a swift rebuke from David Segal, a former Democratic Rhode Island State Representative and founder of Demand Progress, who observed that it undercut other AI executives' claims that their technology would create an era of unprecedented abundance.
"AI is gonna shoot productivity to the moon," wrote Segal, "oh and also society can't afford to pay old people $2,000 per month anymore starting today."
Author Lincoln Michel similarly spotted the contradiction between AI industry vows that the technology "is going to give us [universal basic income] and we'll never work again" and Ball's declaration that "our main mission is to destroy Social Security."
Henry Burke, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, argued that Ball's analysis of Social Security revealed the true priorities of Big Tech elites.
"It's notable that the Abundance guy turned OpenAI hack considers Social Security to be a 'fraud' that must be remedied," wrote Burke, "and not the reckless tax breaks successive Republican presidents have given away to the wealthy which have exploded the national debt."
Putting aside policy arguments, many critics pointed out that Ball's call to dismantle Social Security was a major political loser.
Polling analyst Lakshya Jain, citing survey data showing vast and bipartisan support for Social Security, informed Ball that his rhetoric about the program is optimal for "anyone who wants to unite the whole of America (against them)."
Josh Orton, president of We Demand Justice, marveled at the politically tone deaf messaging coming from an executive at a company whose own CEO has said that "my job is to help people destroy jobs" with AI.
"These AI guys are not just condescending elitists," wrote Orton, "they're tremendously stupid about politics. It's incredible."
Max Steele, senior communications director at gun safety advocacy group Everytown, made a similar observation.
"Is it possible these guys are doing a performance art piece on the worst possible PR run in recorded history?" Steele asked.
Journalist Jon Schwarz questioned why Big Tech companies have been allowed to amass so much economic and political power in the US if their executives want to destroy the country's most popular social insurance program.
"It's a bad idea," wrote Schwarz, "to have our society run by people like this who are so far out of touch with reality that they are functionally insane."
Destruction of East India Company Gives US Lawmakers a Blueprint for Confronting Big Tech: Historian
A historian who has written four books about the British East India Company is warning that big technology companies in the US are amassing similar levels of unchecked power and will need to be reined in.
In a New York Times op-ed published on Friday, William Dalrymple described how the British government eventually realized that it had allowed the East India Company—key to the British Empire's rise in the 18th and 19th centuries—to become too powerful and decided to finally clamp down.
The situation faced by the British Parliament in the 19th Century was strikingly similar to the situation faced by US lawmakers today, Dalrymple explained, as the East India Company had spent decades spending money to capture influence within the government.
"Around one in 20 members of Parliament sat on the East India Company’s board," the historian wrote, "and more than a fifth of the company’s directors sat in Parliament at some point; about 40% of members of Parliament were shareholders."
In the contemporary context, the executives of the nation's largest tech firms are spending lavishly to curry favor with lawmakers and government officials of both major parties
Writing in The Nation last month, investigative journalist David Moore detailed the massive political spending of major tech firms in the 2026 midterms, noting that "Super PACs working on behalf of crypto, AI, and AIPAC donors are the highest-spending groups on independent expenditures to influence voters this cycle—combining to spend more than $180 million so far, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records."
In addition to political clout, the East India Company in its day also had the power to raise its own army, which at its peak topped 200,000 soldiers, twice the size of England's own armed services.
Dalrymple pointed out that this is one power that today's Big Tech firms do not have, although he argued that they have been increasingly integrating themselves into the US military-industrial complex.
"In June 2025 the US Army commissioned the chief technology officers of Palantir and Meta and OpenAI’s chief product officer as lieutenant colonels in a new Reserve unit," he noted. "The new dispensation puts tech executives straight into a position of federal power, which in one way puts them ahead of their 18th-century counterparts."
The government finally dropped the hammer on the East India Company, Dalrymple said, after the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, as they feared the firm's "greed and self-interest" would cause the British Empire to lose what it considered its most valuable colony.
"The company’s navy was disbanded and its army passed to the Crown," wrote Dalrymple. "In 1858 the governor general of India announced that the company’s Indian possessions would be nationalized and pass into the control of the British Crown."
Less than two decades later, what was once the most powerful private corporation in world history shut down after the expiration of its charter.
What this shows, concluded Dalrymple, is that "states can master corporations," even if those corporations have their own private armies.
However, he said that while the instruments to take apart entrenched corporate power "still exist," it appears our current governments are "lacking... the political nerve to use them."
Dalrymple's op-ed was echoed thematically by a Friday op-ed written by SFGATE travel editor Silas Valentino, who argued that the city of San Francisco has not gotten any benefit from the current artificial intelligence boom, despite being the home of OpenAI and Anthropic, the world's two biggest AI firms.
In particular, Valentino argued that the AI firms have done nothing to give back to the city and alleviate its affordable housing crisis. In fact, Valentino found that the AI firms' initiatives in the city appear to be mostly self-serving.
"OpenAI says it has invested in our community, but so far, that’s meant less than a million dollars in 'SF civic contributions,'" Valentino wrote. "And worst of all, some of that is for things like AI training programs... That’s not improving the city; it’s OpenAI trying to make more money."
Valentino also noted that Anthropic last year teamed with the Tipping Point Community nonprofit group, which was founded by current San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, to provide free training on the company's Claude chatbot.
"In the years since language models like ChatGPT and Claude proliferated to usher in the AI boom," the travel editor wrote, "I’m only counting negatives for nearly everyone trying to figure out a way to live here."
Valentino concluded by warning that if Lurie and his administration "don’t demand these companies start giving back and enhance our city for the better, they’ll continue ruining our city without pause."
Suspecting 'Insider' Dealings and 'Corruption,' Raskin Probes Donald Trump Jr.'s Venture Capital Firm
Just two years ago, 1789 Capital Management "was a struggling venture capital firm that earned consistently disappointing results by serially investing in total market flops," but after recruiting President Donald Trump's eldest son in the wake of the 2024 US election, it "suddenly had the Midas touch," a key congressional Democrat highlighted this week, launching an investigation.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—a lawyer who managed the historic second impeachment of the president—revealed Thursday that the previous day he had sent a letter demanding answers from Donald Trump Jr., who is a partner at 1789 Capital, as well as company president Omeed Malik and chief investment officer Christopher Buskirk.
After the president's son joined the firm, just four days post-election, Raskin wrote, "you became the overnight darling of the venture capital world, rocketing from $150 million in assets under management to an astonishing $3 billion. A trio of businessmen with heretofore lackluster records in the market was suddenly running the hottest firm in the United States, picking out with almost clairvoyant accuracy winner after winner by investing in companies that would soon come to win hugely lucrative federal government contracts and grants and favorable regulatory actions."
"How did this miraculous transformation in the fortunes of your LLC come about?" he wondered. "Was it indeed magic? Or was it rank corruption, a toxic blend of trading on insider knowledge, and the use of insider political influence to steer major federal contracts and other financial benefits to Donald Trump Jr.'s new favorite businesses?"
"Based on his own personal business resume, Don Jr. may have been an unlikely choice to originate investments for an upstart venture capital company. His rare solo ventures—outside the paternal eye of the Trump Organization—have been well-documented flops, including investing in dry oil wells, hydroponic lettuce farms, and an African mining company," Raskin noted. "But despite his proven record of business investment failure, Don Jr. has become the lucky charm for 1789 Capital."
Raskin's letter provides a series of examples in which 1789 Capital has identified "companies that are about to receive massive influxes of cash from the Trump administration or to benefit from significant changes in federal policies and regulations."
"On the day Donald Trump was elected, Vulcan Elements was a small startup with no active manufacturing facilities and no history of fulfilling government contracts," he detailed. "Then 1789 Capital invested several million dollars. Soon after this investment, Vulcan Elements boasted that it had been raking in federal dollars throughout its capital raise, securing nine different government contracts in the past eight months."
"While the list of 1789 Capital portfolio companies that have benefited from favorable administration decisions is too long to explore in full here, three additional companies with strikingly similar success stand out," he wrote.
There's Anduril Industries, "an American technology company founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, a prominent Trump donor who has been dubbed 'the godfather of Republican fundraising on the West Coast,'" which got an enormous $22 billion contract that was previously assigned to Microsoft just weeks after Trump's inauguration, the letter notes. Then, it was reported that the VC firm was acquiring a stake in the company, which in March won another $20 billion contract from the US Army.
The letter also points out Juul, which "notoriously ushered in an epidemic of youth vaping in the United States by aggressively marketing its e-cigarettes to young people" and "had suffered a series of setbacks that nearly bankrupted the company" before Trump's return to office. Just months after 1789 Capital quietly acquired a $5 million stake in the company, the Food and Drug Administration ditched previous efforts to ban its products and allowed the marketing of five products.
Raskin's final example is the online prediction market Polymarket—which, at the time Trump was reelected, was banned from operating in the country by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and faced a federal investigation. Last summer, the Department of Justice closed that probe and the CFTC signed off on an acquisition that allowed the company to enter the US market. The letter notes that "a few short weeks later, it was revealed that 1789 Capital had already acquired a sizable stake in Polymarket."
"Alas, it is now impossible to believe that your firm's astonishing growth and success are due to anything other than insider political influence and thoroughgoing corruption," the congressman wrote to the trio. "Indeed, President Trump recently admitted that his oldest sons have 'inside information' with 'almost anything they do.'"
In a statement to MS NOW, which had early access to Raskin's letter, counsel AJ Merton dismissed the accusations as "unsubstantiated talking points," adding that "repackaging press clippings on congressional letterhead does not turn news headlines into evidence, and that practice is a hallmark of partisan stunts and politically motivated harassment, not oversight."
However, Raskin still wants answers from 1789 Capital by September 9. He's demanding a list of investments, communications with federal officials or contractors, records on how government policies may impact the firm, documents on the hiring of Trump's son, and more. He also told the firm to preserve all communications between its employees and the administration.
Amid Civil War, Sudan's Humanitarian Crisis Worsening Due to 'Lack of Action': UN Official
Over three years into a civil war in Sudan, the humanitarian crisis is getting worse in the African nation due to "a lack of action" by the international community, a United Nations leader told the UN Security Council on Monday.
The war between the government's Sudanese Armed Forces and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023. Now, "more than two-thirds of the people of Sudan are in desperate need of lifesaving support," said Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
"Humanitarians are seizing every opportunity to reach those in need. But we need protection for civilians. We need de-escalation," Fletcher stressed, detailing efforts to provide aid throughout the country. "Across Sudan, our teams navigate frontlines, drone attacks, insecurity, and bureaucratic red tape."
"I usually end these briefings with three asks: Uphold international humanitarian law, fund the response, and help end the conflict. But today I won't because this council has heard those asks again and again," he explained. "Instead, the ask is that we not have another meeting where the council simply describes the problem."
According to Fletcher: "Sudan does not suffer from a lack of analysis. It suffers from a lack of action. The people of Sudan need food, water, and medicine. Yet the world sends drones, weapons, and mercenaries. The people of Sudan need sustained, courageous diplomacy. Yet the world is too often indifferent and distracted. The people of Sudan need peace and dignity. Yet others use Sudan's land and people as pieces in a regional struggle for power, gold, and pride."
"This council is not powerless," he emphasized. "The international community is not powerless. The tragedy of Sudan is not that we do not know what to do. It is that we have not yet found the will to do it."
Fletcher also pointed to remarks to the Security Council from Rosemary DiCarlo, under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, who noted the deadly impact of drones and that the true death toll "is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands."
Roughly 13 million people have been displaced, making it hard to tally deaths, but "brutal mass killings and atrocities, abductions of women and girls, and mass rapes are recurring patterns," DiCarlo said, declaring that "the consequences of this conflict will be long-lasting and should shock us all."
The Security Council meeting came less than three weeks before a two-decade-old Darfur arms embargo is set to expire, absent a new agreement. The US envoy in attendance, Massad Boulos, called for broadening the embargo to cover all of Sudan.
"The United States has put forward a strong resolution that provides for four key things," he said, including "expanding the arms embargo across the entire territory of Sudan," applying the restrictions to all armed parties, making clear that it applies to drones, and strengthening surveillance of violations.
Earlier this month, US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) led 20 senators in demanding that the Trump administration go beyond denouncing Sudan's paramilitary group and take "concrete action" to prevent more mass atrocities. They wrote that "these actions should include ceasing certain US arms sales to external actors that are fueling this war, including the United Arab Emirates, which continues to arm the RSF."
'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.
'Break Up Big Medicine': Taking On Healthcare Industry Greed Could Save US Families $6,000+ a Year
One expert said the options are to "watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care."
As millions of working-class Americans suffer from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' cuts to the already dysfunctional US healthcare system, a leading anti-monopoly group this week released a report with recommendations to restore "affordability and control to patients, clinicians, and communities across the country."
"The healthcare crisis didn’t happen by accident, it is the direct result of decades of neoliberal policy choices that handed more power to corporate healthcare giants while families paid the price," said Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP).
"The choice now is clear: Continue to watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care," she explained. "This agenda presents a roadmap for how to do it."
Harper and Emma Freer, AELP's senior policy analyst for healthcare, co-authored the new report, "Break Up Big Medicine," with contributions from a trio of other experts. One of them is Dr. Will Flanary, an independent ophthalmologist in Portland, Oregon.
"The US healthcare system, once made up of mostly independent practices like mine, is now dominated by Big Medicine behemoths—including private insurance conglomerates, Big Pharma manufacturers, pharmaceutical middlemen, megahospitals, and private equity-backed practices—whose only fiduciary duty is to executives and investors," he wrote in the foreword. "This makes it increasingly difficult to keep my practice afloat and uphold my oath, resulting in moral injury."
"So, I now have a second career as an advocate," who goes by "Dr. Glaucomflecken" on social media. "What my patients need most is bold policy reforms to break up Big Medicine and build a better healthcare system, one where they can access affordable, high-quality care and independent physicians like me can thrive."
The report notes that "between 2005 and 2025, the annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage nearly tripled, from $12,214 to $35,119," US patients pay nearly three times as much for prescription drug prices as people in other countries, and "the United States spends more than $15,000 per person on healthcare each year—roughly one-fifth of our entire economy, and more than twice what peer nations spend, in return for worse patient outcomes on a variety of metrics."
Costs continue to rise, with The Wall Street Journal reporting last week that, according to benefits consulting giant Aon, US workers with employer-sponsored insurance are expected to spend an average of $5,297 on healthcare this year, or $388 more than last year. Another consultant, WTW, found that US employers expect their healthcare costs will rise 11.1% next year.
Meanwhile, six "corporate behemoths" in the sector—Cardinal Health, Cencora, Cigna, CVS Health, McKesson, and UnitedHealth Group—"now rank among the Fortune 15, making nearly $34 billion in annual profit," collectively, as AELP detailed Thursday. "Big Medicine now employs more than four in five US doctors," and practices must spend time completing, "on average, 40 prior authorizations per physician per week, time that would be better spent on patient care."
"Our current healthcare crisis is the result of several decades of federal policymaking by both political parties based on the flawed premise that empowering private insurers to ration access to healthcare, rather than addressing the underlying root causes of high prices, would effectively contain costs," the AELP report says.
The publication lays out a four-part "treatment plan" to save Americans $795 billion annually, or more than $6,000 per household: break up Big Medicine, bring down healthcare prices, build capacity, and bolster enforcement of existing laws.
The first section highlights how some solutions already exist in Congress, pointing to various bills, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) Break Up Big Medicine Act, their Patients Before Monopolies Act with Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Val Hoyle's (D-Ore.) Patients Over Profits Act, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon's (D-Pa.) Take Back Our Hospitals Act, and the Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act, introduced by Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Merkley, and Warren.
The second section calls for standardizing and capping "healthcare prices across public and private payers using traditional Medicare reimbursement rates for inpatient and outpatient services and negotiated drug prices as benchmarks." It urges a ban on prior authorization, an end to patient cost-sharing obligations, investments "in public options that eliminate Big Medicine administrative waste," and passage of Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) Medicines for the People Act.
The third section calls for investments in the US prescription drug manufacturing base as well as in providers, "especially safety-net hospitals in rural and low-income metro areas, independent medical and dental practices, community pharmacies, and primary care physicians."
The final section calls on Congress to "close loopholes that allow anti-competitive business practices, which Big Medicine uses to drive up prescription drug costs," specifically promoting the repeal of the 1987 safe harbor for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other pharmaceutical middlemen, and the prohibition of "price discrimination, spread pricing, self-preferencing, network discrimination, and sole-source or exclusive contracting terms across all payers." It further advocates for an increase in funding for antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice.
"For decades, healthcare reform has focused on expanding private coverage and putting more money into a broken system while allowing corporate giants to consolidate power and drive up costs," said Freer. "Working families have paid more only to receive lower-quality care.
"Americans need a new policy paradigm that actually takes on the root causes of the crisis: consolidation, corporate control, and lack of competition," she argued. "This agenda is about moving beyond the status quo to build a healthcare system where patients come first, clinicians can thrive, and every American can afford the care they need."
The report comes amid renewed scrutiny of the president's "most favored nation" deals with Big Pharma, with Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for the watchdog Public Citizen, saying last week that "Trump has three kinds of drug pricing policy: fake, exaggerated, and not-real-yet, probably-won't-happen."
After pointing out on social media Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April agreed to publicize the deals for medicines listed on the direct-to-consumer website TrumpRx, and "months later, still crickets," Warren wondered, "Why should Americans believe this isn't just another Trump handout to fatten Big Pharma's pockets?"
Additionally, as Americans have started contending with the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump last year, as well as the GOP's refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which has caused premiums to skyrocket, there have also been renewed calls for shifting the United States to a universal healthcare system.
A study published earlier this month by researchers at Yale University suggests the Medicare for All Act that's been repeatedly introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would save more than $1 trillion and over 114,000 lives annually.
"At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ we need Medicare for All now more than ever," Sanders said in response to the study. "The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All."
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and the author of books including Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, noted in his Thursday coverage of AELP's report that "while it's complementary to a Medicare for All approach, single-payer insurance is not mentioned."
"In tandem with moving toward a Medicare for All system, we have to address consolidation that is the cause of healthcare being so expensive, with degraded quality, and the squeezing of healthcare professionals," Freer told Dayen. "Otherwise we end up with something like Medicare Advantage for All, which would be disastrous."
US Diplomat Who Resigned Over Gaza Condemns Biden Officials Who Defended Genocide—And Now Claim to Regret It
"They actually had the power to stop unconditional arms assistance to Israel," said Hala Rharrit. "They enabled it 100%."
Recent expressions of regret by top Biden administration officials who vehemently defended the United States' billions of dollars in military aid to Israel as it was bombarding Gaza have not gone far with former diplomat Hala Rharrit, who was retaliated against for speaking out about the US policy before she ultimately resigned, and who condemned her former colleagues recent "PR game" this week.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Rharrit said the former officials who have mused that they would now support withholding weapons from Israel, or that they should have backed such a move while serving under President Joe Biden, are "just so despicable."
"They're so disgusting," Rharrit said. "Those individuals, particularly [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan and a handful of others, actually had the power to save human lives. They actually had the power to stop unconditional arms assistance to Israel, right? The Israelis were not killing the Palestinians by themselves. The Israelis were killing the Palestinians with American bombs, with American jets, with American everything. We enabled it 100%. They enabled it 100%."
"They’re so disgusting."
Former US diplomat Hala Rharrit, who resigned in 2024 over Gaza, responds to the Biden officials who’ve recently claimed they should have done more on Gaza.
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— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 27, 2026
Rharrit, who resigned as the Arabic language spokesperson for the US State Department in April 2024, six months into Israel's US-backed assault—which has been called a genocide by leading human rights organizations and Holocaust experts—spoke to MEE months after former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US should have called for a ceasefire earlier than it did, "such that the suffering the people endured, the loss of the children, so many others, could have been averted.”
Sullivan last year said—weeks before a ceasefire was finally agreed to—that he'd had a change of heart regarding providing Israel with weapons, and that he would no longer support the policy.
In November, Sullivan added in an interview with The Dartmouth that "it’s fair to say that there were a lot of objections from a lot of parts of the international community about the US continuing to support Israel over the course of last year—2024—and over the course of this year in 2025. I think a lot about what we could have done differently."
Rharrit told MEE that "it's despicable that now they're trying to make themselves look like, 'Oh we should have done better and we're so sorry.'"
The former diplomat emphasized that the apology tour has taken place as it's become increasingly clear that "America has changed" in terms of its views on Israel, Palestine, and the United States' decadeslong, unconditional support for the Israeli military—despite US statutes like the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Leahy Laws, which bar the government from providing military aid to countries that block humanitarian assistance and that are accused of human rights abuses.
A poll released this week showed that large majorities of Democratic voters in the first six states that will vote in the 2028 presidential primaries support cutting off weapons aid to Israel, and another survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies in March found that just 32% of Americans viewed Israel positively, compared with 47% in 2023.
"America is forever changed," said Rharrit. "Americans no longer support these forever wars, they no longer support unconditional arms assistance to Israel. They no longer agree with US policy in the Middle East. And so now... they're doing a PR game. This is just pure PR."
Rharrit and other officials who resigned over the US policy on Israel and Gaza "were vindicated," she said. "Of course we were right the whole time, because it's international law. It's US law. I abided by my oath to the Constitution... That is exactly what I did. That is exactly why I resigned."
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Rharrit is one of "a rare breed" of diplomats.
"During this genocide I've met courageous diplomats and officials who denounced it at real personal cost," said Albanese, whom the Trump administration targeted with sanctions earlier this year. "Imagine foreign policy built by more of them. Because the problem is never one unfit minister/head of state: It's whole spineless cohorts around them."
After Supreme Court Ruling, 4th Circuit Tosses Verdict Against US Company for Abu Ghraib Torture
"History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice," said Salah Al-Ejaili, one of the Iraqi plaintiffs.
The US Supreme Court recently delivered a "lethal blow" to lawsuits filed under an 18th-century law, including a case brought by Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib as part of the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, whose landmark verdict was struck down on Friday by a federal appellate court.
The Iraqis' case against US military contractor CACI Premier Technology was first filed in 2008, and eventually led to a trial and retrial in 2024. That November, a federal jury found the company liable for torture at the notorious prison in Iraq, and ordered it to pay the three prisoners a total of $42 million.
After unsuccessfully seeking another trial at the US District Court for the District of Virginia, CACI turned to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which this past March upheld the historic verdict in favor of the three tortured men: middle school principal Suhail Al Shimari, fruit vendor Asa'ad Zuba'e, and journalist Salah Al-Ejaili.
Then came the Supreme Court's June decision in Cisco Systems v. Doe, which effectively reversed the high court's 2004 ruling on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), nullifying "a vital law that could check corporate abuses and provide an essential remedy to those whose rights have been violated," as University of California, Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky wrote earlier this week.
As legal experts feared, the 4th Circuit reconsidered the CACI verdict in the wake of the June decision, and determined that "just as the court concluded that the Cisco plaintiffs' ATS claims—including aiding and abetting torture—must be dismissed, so too must we dismiss plaintiffs' claims here—conspiracy to commit torture" and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the Iraqis alongside other law firms, responded with a Friday statement calling out both the Supreme Court and CACI.
"As radical and regressive as the Supreme Court's decision in Cisco is," Azmy said, "it will never change this fundamental truth: A jury heard voluminous testimony and unanimously concluded CACI was responsible for the torture and abuse of dozens of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, including these plaintiffs, rendering CACI, in the words of a foundational ATS-human rights case, 'hostis humani generis'—an 'enemy of all mankind.'"
"We remain in awe of the bravery and dedication of our clients, who fought for 18 years for justice for themselves, their families, and other survivors of horrific human rights abuses," Azmy added. "This Supreme Court may continue to do great damage to human rights cases, but it cannot take the courage and dignity away from our clients' historic achievement."
One of the plaintiffs in the case, Al-Ejaili, also took aim at the country's highest court, which is dominated by right-wing justices.
"What we did in pursuing accountability for 18 years for the torture we suffered at Abu Ghraib was a big thing. We trusted a US jury with our stories, and they believed us and sided with us—this is the most important part of the case," he said Friday. "History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice."
Iran War Trump Said Would Be Quick Has Now Lasted 6 Months With 'No End In Sight'
Trump has "lost the Iran War in every way possible in less than six months," said one critic.
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."
'Yet Another Trump Grift': Congress Called to Stop US Takeover of Venezuelan Oil Fields
"Handing over Venezuela's oil wealth to the US contravenes the Constitution and is not in the interest of the Venezuelan people—much more when it is done at gunpoint," said one analyst.
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.”
Destruction of East India Company Gives US Lawmakers a Blueprint for Confronting Big Tech: Historian
The instruments to take apart entrenched corporate power "still exist," but current governments are "lacking... the political nerve to use them," said historian William Dalrymple.
A historian who has written four books about the British East India Company is warning that big technology companies in the US are amassing similar levels of unchecked power and will need to be reined in.
In a New York Times op-ed published on Friday, William Dalrymple described how the British government eventually realized that it had allowed the East India Company—key to the British Empire's rise in the 18th and 19th centuries—to become too powerful and decided to finally clamp down.
The situation faced by the British Parliament in the 19th Century was strikingly similar to the situation faced by US lawmakers today, Dalrymple explained, as the East India Company had spent decades spending money to capture influence within the government.
"Around one in 20 members of Parliament sat on the East India Company’s board," the historian wrote, "and more than a fifth of the company’s directors sat in Parliament at some point; about 40% of members of Parliament were shareholders."
In the contemporary context, the executives of the nation's largest tech firms are spending lavishly to curry favor with lawmakers and government officials of both major parties
Writing in The Nation last month, investigative journalist David Moore detailed the massive political spending of major tech firms in the 2026 midterms, noting that "Super PACs working on behalf of crypto, AI, and AIPAC donors are the highest-spending groups on independent expenditures to influence voters this cycle—combining to spend more than $180 million so far, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records."
In addition to political clout, the East India Company in its day also had the power to raise its own army, which at its peak topped 200,000 soldiers, twice the size of England's own armed services.
Dalrymple pointed out that this is one power that today's Big Tech firms do not have, although he argued that they have been increasingly integrating themselves into the US military-industrial complex.
"In June 2025 the US Army commissioned the chief technology officers of Palantir and Meta and OpenAI’s chief product officer as lieutenant colonels in a new Reserve unit," he noted. "The new dispensation puts tech executives straight into a position of federal power, which in one way puts them ahead of their 18th-century counterparts."
The government finally dropped the hammer on the East India Company, Dalrymple said, after the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, as they feared the firm's "greed and self-interest" would cause the British Empire to lose what it considered its most valuable colony.
"The company’s navy was disbanded and its army passed to the Crown," wrote Dalrymple. "In 1858 the governor general of India announced that the company’s Indian possessions would be nationalized and pass into the control of the British Crown."
Less than two decades later, what was once the most powerful private corporation in world history shut down after the expiration of its charter.
What this shows, concluded Dalrymple, is that "states can master corporations," even if those corporations have their own private armies.
However, he said that while the instruments to take apart entrenched corporate power "still exist," it appears our current governments are "lacking... the political nerve to use them."
Dalrymple's op-ed was echoed thematically by a Friday op-ed written by SFGATE travel editor Silas Valentino, who argued that the city of San Francisco has not gotten any benefit from the current artificial intelligence boom, despite being the home of OpenAI and Anthropic, the world's two biggest AI firms.
In particular, Valentino argued that the AI firms have done nothing to give back to the city and alleviate its affordable housing crisis. In fact, Valentino found that the AI firms' initiatives in the city appear to be mostly self-serving.
"OpenAI says it has invested in our community, but so far, that’s meant less than a million dollars in 'SF civic contributions,'" Valentino wrote. "And worst of all, some of that is for things like AI training programs... That’s not improving the city; it’s OpenAI trying to make more money."
Valentino also noted that Anthropic last year teamed with the Tipping Point Community nonprofit group, which was founded by current San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, to provide free training on the company's Claude chatbot.
"In the years since language models like ChatGPT and Claude proliferated to usher in the AI boom," the travel editor wrote, "I’m only counting negatives for nearly everyone trying to figure out a way to live here."
Valentino concluded by warning that if Lurie and his administration "don’t demand these companies start giving back and enhance our city for the better, they’ll continue ruining our city without pause."
'America Is For Sale': Trump Reportedly Trying to Hand Private Developer Part of Yosemite
"Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else."
Even while repeatedly serving the interests of destructive industries, President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have claimed they are committed to protecting US national parks—but the Republican administration is now working to give a private developer a piece of Yosemite, NOTUS reported on Friday.
Specifically, according to unnamed sources and government documents, federal staffers are working on a potential land exchange to give a quarter-mile strip of land in California's Yosemite National Park "to a company that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital."
The developers own 83 acres west of the park, and Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori—whose company did not respond to a request for comment—aims "to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite's central thoroughfares," providing "the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests," NOTUS detailed.
The sources told NOTUS that political leaders at the US Department of the Interior "want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks," and that "the political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual."
The National Park Service, which is part of the department, said that "no final decisions have been made," but any proposals "would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes."
The revelation—which came during National Park Week—was met with outrage.
Ripping the possible "secretive, backroom deal," as "an attack on the American people that own this national park," Mark Rose, the National Parks Conservation Association's Sierra Nevada program manager, told NOTUS that "it would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal."
We are opposed to private developers building driveways and special access into our parks. The ultra wealthy can wait in line and go through the gate just like everyone else. www.notus.org/agencies/tru...
[image or embed]
— AltYellostoneNatPar (@altyellonatpark.org) August 28, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford said in a statement that "Yosemite is not Donald Trump's to give away. This secretive deal betrays the purpose of our national parks and the promise our government has kept since Abraham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for the public and for generations to come."
"For more than 150 years, each generation has carried forward the responsibility to protect this sacred landscape and pass it on intact," Blackford continued. "The Trump administration is betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of Yosemite to a private developer. We will use every tool at our disposal to stop this corrupt giveaway."
While the looming land swap could move forward without any sign-off from Congress, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) was among those who spoke out on social media Friday.
"Our parks belong to all of us," the congressman emphasized. "These places should be protected for every generation, not sold off to Trump's ultrawealthy friends to profit off of. I will fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be up for grabs if this domino falls."
Columnist and self-described "recovering attorney" Wajahat Ali declared, "America is for sale," and American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said, "Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else."
While other critics condemned the reported efforts as "disgusting," "sickening," and "shocking," journalist Chris D'Angelo commented, "I would say this is shocking, but things have been headed in this direction since Trump reentered office."
After Trump won a second term in 2024—having secured campaign funds from Big Oil, and run on a promise to "drill, baby, drill"— one of his early actions post-inauguration was declaring a "national energy emergency" intended to boost the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry.
Since then, while cashing in on his second presidency—including via stock transactions made this year as fuel prices soared due to his illegal war with Iran—Trump has continued to push policies that help polluters and other rich allies. For example, last week the administration delivered a "one-two punch" to national forests, taking aim at a pair of rules intended to protect such lands.
The Center for Biological Diversity warned this week that the Trump administration's proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would "open pristine public lands to road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development," and, according to the group's analysis, put 400 species on an "extinction fast track."
"More roads mean more sediment in streams, more fragmentation of wildlife habitat, more human access to places wildlife depend on for refuge, and more wildfires in forests already facing unprecedented climate change-fueled risk," the center stressed. "The roadless rule has held that line for a generation. Without it the losses to wildlife, water, and the wild places that define the American landscape will be irreversible."
This article has been updated with comment from the Sierra Club.
'Sadism': Trump DHS Boasts of Deportation Flight to Haiti in 'Propaganda' Video
"These are our neighbors and coworkers who were legally living and working here," said one advocate. "Stripping away their protections and then threatening them with deportation is cruel beyond words."
By releasing a video of Black men wearing handcuffs and prison uniforms being hauled onto a deportation flight, the US Department of Homeland Security appeared to be fulfilling a key objective of President Donald Trump's decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, said one immigration policy expert on Thursday.
President Donald Trump "hates Haitians," said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, "and the White House wanted videos of Black people in chains, so they stripped them all of status."
Reichlin-Melnick said the video, which also features a Haitian song and the text "Temporary Meant Temporary. Leave Now" on screen, was "propaganda for an audience of people that thrills to the sight of Black men being led in chains" and whom Trump's mass deportation agenda and racist attacks on Haitians, Somalis, and other refugee populations are aimed at satisfying.
The video was released a week after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent a charter flight with 161 Haitians on board to Haiti, where gang violence, kidnappings, and humanitarian crises that have continued more than a decade after the 2010 earthquake have pushed the US State Department to maintain its highest "Do Not Travel" warning for Americans.
The administration said that flight would be the first of many, following the US Supreme Court ruling in June that allowed DHS to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
The National Office of Migration in Haiti said last week that the Haitians aboard the ICE flight had not benefited from TPS, but were people who were facing removal proceedings due to criminal convictions or who had entered the US without authorization.
In the video—as in the Trump administration's persistent rhetoric about its mass deportation operation, which it claims is targeting "the worst of the worst" violent criminals—DHS suggested the Haitians who have been granted TPS for years pose a danger to the US public, despite the fact that criminal convictions make people ineligible for the protected status.
"TPS holders had been living and working legally and paying taxes," said Drop Site News—taxes, Reichlin-Melnick stressed, that do not permit them to benefit from federal assistance programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Medicaid.
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the "sadism" depicted in the DHS video was "unrelenting."
The video was released as Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami called on the Trump administration to "rethink" its decision to end TPS for Haitians following an August 23 gang attack outside the country's capital of Port-au-Prince, in which at least 47 people were killed and at least 50 were kidnapped.
"The country is not safe, that Haiti is still a house on fire," Wenski told OSV News. "This should cause our administration to rethink its decision to send back into Haiti over 300,000 Haitians."
A bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would extend TPS for Haitians through early 2029, and "would pass very easily" if Trump "would voice his support," said Wenski.
Cory Archibald of the anti-Zionist group Track AIPAC called for prosecutions of top White House officials including Trump, Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, "all the way on down to the masked chuds joyriding in this video and loading these men onto planes."
"All of them are guilty," she said, "and all of them should be prosecuted."
Progressives Warn Democrats Endlessly Invoking Hasan Piker to 'Get Their Shit Together'
"Every Democrat talking about Piker is handing the midterms to Trump."
Progressives this week have grown increasingly frustrated with the oxygen that Democratic lawmakers are wasting invoking the name of left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, warning that too many in the party are falling for a trap that so obviously favors President Donald Trump and Republicans with midterm elections just slightly more than two months away.
"Democrats need to get their shit together. I'm tired of hearing about Hasan," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a social media post on Thursday.
"Whatever 3D chess you think you're playing is only pushing away real people," Mitchell added. "Stop obsessing over a streamer. We’re fighting authoritarianism here."
Chuck Idelson, a progressive Democratic voter and retired union official based in California, agreed.
"Exactly," Idelson said in response to Mitchell's declaration. "The obsession with Piker is the rabbit hole the GOP is counting on to focus the Democrats on anything other than the horror show of what Trump is doing to this nation. Every Democrat talking about Piker is handing the midterms to Trump."
As The Independent reports: "All of this is occurring under the spectacle of a national media frenzy surrounding Piker and the Democratic Socialists of America, whom journalists have made the focus of their questions to Democrats of all stripes. And some Democrats are beginning to air publicly their resentment over party leaders like Jeffries falling into what they call a Republican trap."
While much of the discourse around Piker is taking place on the airwaves and social media, Newsweek reported this week on an Echelon Insights poll conducted in April that "found that Piker remains largely unknown among Democratic voters," results that underscore "the gap between his enormous online following and his reach with the broader electorate."
Common Dreams reported earlier this week how critics have viewed the obsession with Piker on the part of establishment Democrats and certain members of the corporate media as a "mass psychosis event."
"I am begging everybody to spend less time arguing about Hasan Piker and more time attacking Republicans," said Mike Nellis, a City Councilman in Chicago representing the city's 32nd Ward, on Friday.
"The election is in about two month," added Nellis. "Lock the fuck in."