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‘Serial Killer Empire’: US Kills 3 in Boat Strike, Bringing Trump Murder Count in ‘Make-Believe War’ to 230
"This is neither 'peace' nor 'strength,'" said one policy expert. "It's gruesome."
Sep 10, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about a shift in the Pentagon's boat bombing operations, in which the US in recent days has begun interdicting suspected refueling vessels for drug boats in Ecuador's territorial waters—but he made clear that the military is also still killing people aboard boats, as it did Wednesday in the latest bombing in the Caribbean.
US Southern Command announced that Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—the recently rebranded name of the Trump administration's expanding military operation that it says is aimed at stopping drug trafficking—had executed its latest "lethal kinetic strike" on a boat operating along known "narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three people that the US claimed were "narco-terrorists."
"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking," said US Southern Command, releasing no evidence of the boat's illegal activities.
International legal experts have emphasized that the US is not in an authorized military conflict with drug cartels and that drug trafficking under international law is treated as a crime by law enforcement agencies—not as an act of force that the US can legally respond to with military action.
Officials and military service members involved in the strikes may be liable for war crimes or murder, experts have warned. Some of the at least 230 victims of the boat bombings since last September have been identified, with family members saying they were not even involved in drug trafficking.
Historian Alexander Aviña used the term "serial killer empire" to describe the Trump administration after the latest bombing.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America noted that the announcement by US Southern Command Wednesday night was the first in more than a year of attacks in which the strike order was "not attributed to a person."
Isacson also pointed out that according to Customs and Border Patrol data, there is little, if any, evidence that bombing boats and killing crew members and passengers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean has done anything to stop the flow of drugs into the US.
Outside the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Rubio told reporters Wednesday that as the US also begins conducting joint operations with Ecuador to interdict suspected refueling vessels in the country's territorial waters, "we have to operate according to their laws."
In those operations, people aboard the boats have been removed and handed over to Ecuadorian authorities before the US has conducted strikes.
Rubio at one point referred to the lethal boat bombings as operations that took place "earlier, last year," but also emphasized, "We still blow up ships if need be."
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group said the administration is continuing its campaign of "illegal killing in a make-believe war."
The latest boat bombing also came as Rubio announced that the US was designating Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang, as a foreign terrorist organization, empowering the administration to freeze the group's assets in US financial institutions.
The designation does not give the US the legal authority to carry out military strikes against Los Tiguerones or other gangs the administration has designated as terrorist groups—but a key element of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere's expansion in Latin America has been joint military operations, including a US-Ecuadorian joint attack on a dairy farm where officials had claimed drug traffickers were operating.
The new designation "is part of [the administration's] narrative about a new 'War on Terror' against the narcos," said Finucane.
Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that Los Tiguerones has had diminishing power and influence in Ecuador in recent years and expressed surprise at the designation.
Ecuadorian gangs "operate at the lowest links of the chain" of drug trafficking operations in Latin America, González told the Times. “They provide services, like moving cargo from point A to point B. Ecuadorian groups are not decisive, they aren’t major players.”
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'There Is Absolutely No Justification': Bessent, Rubio Urged to End Sanctions Impacting Iranian Students
"There is no world in which the US preventing young Iranians from taking English proficiency tests leads to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and yet that appears to be the rationale for this cruel new policy.”
Aug 31, 2026
A leading grassroots advocacy group for the rights of Iranian Americans called on the Trump administration Monday to rescind the recent message it sent when it announced new sanctions against ordinary Iranians—"that the US is at war with the Iranian people"—and to ensure that "humanitarian, educational, and cultural" entities are exempt from the sanctions.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, warning of the "escalating harm caused by the imminent suspension of long-standing general licenses that had enabled American universities, educational testing and assessment organizations, and other entities to provide educational opportunities to Iranian nationals."
The group appealed to Bessent and Rubio following reports that the Education Testing Service, which administers the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), has suspended testing in Iran following the sanctions. The Duolingo English Test, developed by the language course platform Duolingo, has also been made unavailable in Iran and for students with Iranian IDs.
Despite the fact that President Donald Trump's new sanctions, called "Operation Economic Outcast," are purported to target the Iranian government as it restricts access to the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the US-Israeli war against Iran, the policy changes have "no conceivable impact on the Iranian government," wrote NIAC president Jamal Abdi.
"Instead, it is already being felt by American entities and Iranian students," Abdi wrote. "Iranian students have been barred from taking key exams required for academic studies by US organizations."
Abdi called on the administration to immediately reinstate 31 CFR § 560.544, which authorizes "certain educational activities by US persons in third countries," and Iran General License G, which authorizes educational exchanges.
“The Trump administration would be wise to bolster the limited educational, humanitarian, and cultural channels that exist between ordinary Iranians and the United States, rather than send a message that the US is at war with the Iranian people.”
"For years, Iran was among the nations with the highest demand for TOEFL examinations," he wrote. "Regrettably, the severing of these key global educational testing platforms will create major hurdles for Iranian nationals pursuing international education."
The administration's policy changes leave Iranian students facing "overlapping barriers to studying in the United States: a travel ban preventing Iranians from securing US visas, alongside sanctions restricting access to English proficiency exams, educational services, and enrollment in US universities," said NIAC.
“There is no world in which the US preventing young Iranians from taking English proficiency tests leads to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and yet that appears to be the rationale for this cruel new policy,” said Abdi in a statement. “The Trump administration would be wise to bolster the limited educational, humanitarian, and cultural channels that exist between ordinary Iranians and the United States, rather than send a message that the US is at war with the Iranian people.”
Abdi also urged Bessent and Rubio to reverse the suspension of licenses for Iranian Americans to send remittances to family members in Iran and those that allow sports matches between Iran and the US. The latter suspension, he wrote, "carries significant risk of complicating the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and reflects poorly on the US as a host nation while yielding no discernible benefit."
The exemptions that have been suspended by the White House, said Abdi, "were first established over a decade ago to resolve harmful unintended consequences of US sanctions, such as cutting ordinary Iranians off from academic opportunities."
"Now, it appears that these have become very much intended consequences aimed at the Iranian people, which is a self-defeating message for the US to send to Iranians and the world,” Abdi continued. “There is absolutely no justification for this."
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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.
Aug 29, 2026
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.”
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'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."
Aug 29, 2026
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.
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'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.
Aug 28, 2026
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.”
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Stephen Miller Embodies the Dark Fascist Heart of Trump's White House
A video of a speech he gave on July 16 is an unintentionally revealing survey of the Trump team's violation of basic legal principles, endangering the rule of law, and its consistent record of falsehoods, endangering public trust in the national leadership.
Aug 28, 2026
The video is not long, just 16 minutes and 25 seconds. But in that short time it provides a remarkable capsule of the Trump administration's ongoing crusade against its critics. In one chilling moment after another, it captures the mentality of that campaign; its content, tone, and style; and its complete disregard for factual accuracy.
The video, taped on July 16, records the words of Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security adviser, addressing a multinational audience assembled at the State Department for the opening session of meeting convened by Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the title "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism." In his welcoming address, Rubio defined the meeting's focus: "far-left political terrorism" that he declared has been a "blind spot" in US counterterrorism doctrine, but would now be directly in the government's sights.
Following Rubio to the podium, Miller delivered various—and sometimes unsettling—amplifications on that theme. After an opening passage declaring that under President Trump's leadership, "We have taken the necessary and essential action of formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our republican form of government," Miller went on to proclaim that "for the first time in American history," all US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are working together "to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country." Then, in one of many questionable passages, he went on with an implied suggestion that the authorities should reject suspected terrorists' claims of their legal rights. Miller put it this way:
One of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely pretextual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence. This is the tactic that the left always uses to try to protect itself from facing criminal punishment. It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must fall on deaf ears. When the leftist, who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordered notion of justice, protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has been perpetrated against him.
That doesn't quite say explicitly that a person accused of left-wing terror does not have the same rights that other criminal defendants have in US courts—but it is hard to read Miller's words in any other way. (The following speaker, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, sounded a very different tone, declaring that "in the fight against domestic terrorism, we must respect the constitutional rights, freedom of speech, association, and assembly of all Americans... the Treasury will act based on suspected unlawful conduct by these terror organizations, not because of their beliefs or ideologies." I have no way to know whether those words were in Bessent's prepared text or if he was directly responding to Miller's statement, but in either case they may have brought some relief to listeners who value the rule of law.)
At another point in his speech, Miller falsely told his listeners that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have experienced an "8,000% increase in violent assaults," adding that "these are not one-off episodes. This is repeat, systemic, organized, funded insurrection, an armed resistance against the federal government." Miller's figure is contradicted by the Homeland Security department's own public statements. In January, the department reported that threats to ICE personnel, not actual assaults, had risen by 8,000% in the previous year, while violent attacks had gone up by "more than 1,300%"—less than one-sixth of Miller's alleged increase. That lower figure may have been overstated too, as indicated by a Los Angeles Times investigation of court records in LA and four other cities (San Diego; Portland, Oregon; Chicago; and Washington, DC). More than a third of the cases they reviewed ended in dismissals or acquittals, the Times reporters found, and a majority of the alleged assaults had not caused any injury to the federal agents involved.
A few minutes later, Miller raised a quite different and somewhat peculiar issue: "When you look at these violent antifa demonstrations and you see any photograph of those who were assembled—to be blunt, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They’re all deformed in some way—in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism... If you look at two photographs and you see a normal American in the street and you see an Antifa protest, why do the people that are violently demonstrating—why is there not one normal-looking person among them?" Miller did not explain exactly what he finds odd in the protesters' appearance—and unlike most of his talking points, that one seems to be uniquely his, not one commonly heard from others in the Trump orbit.
In another questionable passage, Miller claimed that the phenomenon of "jury nullification" has regularly enabled leftist terrorists to escape conviction for their crimes. He explained the term this way: "This is when a person is obviously guilty of a crime but the juror, because they’re ideologically sympathetic to the perpetrator, will not sentence them to the crime which was obviously committed," adding, "We’ve seen in the United States, again and again, individuals who are part of left-wing organizations who’ve committed assaults against ICE officers or federal law enforcement, who’ve been brought to court, where clear evidence has been presented against them, that the jury has refused to convict for purely political reasons."
Miller gave no examples and cited no facts to support the implication that persuading jurors to acquit guilty defendants has been a deliberate tactic employed by leftist organizations. In past statements, he has explicitly cited at least one specific case: the acquittal last December of a Los Angeles tow-truck driver who was arrested after moving an ICE vehicle while the officers were arresting a suspected illegal immigrant. The defendant, Bobby Nunez, was charged with stealing federal government property, an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. At his trial, his lawyers argued that the ICE agents' SUV was blocking a driveway, that Nunez towed it only one block away, and that it was out of the agents' possession for just 13 minutes.
Without having heard their deliberations, we have no way to know how the jurors reasoned in reaching their not-guilty verdict, if that decision stemmed principally from opposition to ICE operations and Trump's immigration policies, or if they based their conclusion on other grounds, perhaps that the charged offense was disproportionately severe and the possible penalty unfairly harsh. Stephen Miller wasn't in the jury room either, but he showed no visible uncertainty when he denounced the verdict as "another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city." From there he went off in another direction: "The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire legal system"—a comment that it's hard to see as anything but an argument that people with the wrong ethnic identity are not legitimate participants in America's justice system.
Incidentally, nothing in any of the news stories I read about that trial gave any indication that Nunez was connected with any "left-wing organization." Nor did photographs of him show anything obviously "not normal" or "deformed" in his appearance (unless those words apply to anyone who doesn't look like a non-Hispanic white man).
Miller said nothing in his State Department speech about a different issue that has undermined far more cases than any real or imagined political bias in juries—findings by numerous judges that law enforcement agents and government lawyers prosecuting supposed antifa activists and other protesters have crossed legal or ethical boundaries, misrepresenting facts and exaggerating or completely fabricating criminal charges.
That pattern is documented in a recent report by the investigative journalism organization ProPublica. Their reporters reviewed hundreds of case records and found numerous comments from federal judges criticizing "unlawful," "unethical," and "unseemly" government actions. Specific abuses cited by judges included findings that "the government filed statements generated by artificial intelligence that referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored facts, and filed declarations with inaccurate dates."
(One striking example is from a judge's decision granting a petition from a man seeking release from ICE detention. In her opinion memorandum, the judge noted that ICE and Homeland Security department officials had submitted a document "purporting to show" that the man had a record of "minor convictions for marijuana possession in 2009." The judge went on: "The Petitioner was four years old in 2009, and the Respondent indicated that the document was supplied by ICE and likely presumed to relate to the Petitioner because the individual in those records had the same name, despite the differences in birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names, and immigration status. This sloppiness further validates the Court’s concerns about the procedures utilized by the Respondents depriving people present in the United States of their liberty.")
It was no surprise that Miller did not mention prosecutors' failings in his speech, since that would have been inconsistent with the message he was delivering. Theoretically, it's not categorically impossible that he has been more candid in private conversations with Trump—after all, presidential advisers, particularly on national security issues, are expected to provide unwelcome truths and not just say things their boss wants to hear. If we don't know what was said or not said in meetings that were not disclosed to the public, we can't judge with absolute certainty how straightforwardly Miller might have spoken in those discussions. But numerous reports of his public statements over the years reveal a consistent pattern of misrepresented facts and policy ideas even more virulent than Trump's, making it virtually impossible to believe that his advice in private has been significantly more balanced or rational than what he has said in public over the years.
The "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" did not get much media attention, perhaps because it did not produce very much new information substantiating the premise that "left-wing terrorists" are linked in a far-reaching multinational conspiracy that is now the most urgent danger facing the United States and the international community. Stephen Miller's 16-minute speech did not present any facts or ideas that have not been heard many times before, so it didn't make many headlines either. But it is newsworthy for a different reason—an unintentionally revealing survey of the Trump team's violation of basic legal principles, endangering the rule of law, and its consistent record of falsehoods, endangering public trust in the national leadership. Those two trends represent a clear and present threat to human rights and democratic government in this country, and should be spotlighted at every opportunity while we can still report and resist them.
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Dozens of US Lawmakers, Groups Demand Rubio Secure Release of Sama Safi From Israeli Detention
Members of Congress urged the US secretary of state "to act swiftly and use every tool at your disposal" to ensure the 20-year-old is freed.
Aug 25, 2026
Dozens of US lawmakers came together on Tuesday to demand the immediate release of Sama Safi, a 20-year-old American psychology student with "a severe complex chronic health condition" who was "arbitrarily and wrongfully detained" by the Israeli military nearly three months ago.
Safi was abducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on June 2 as "part of a series of raids targeting Birzeit University students that morning that wrongfully detained three other young women: Natalie Abu Diah, Leila Khalil, and Joulan Abu Awad," the members of Congress wrote to President Donald Trump's top diplomat. "This targeting of Palestinian students is not an isolated incident but part of what United Nations human rights experts have called a systematic policy to 'undermine the right to education.'"
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the US-armed IDF has engaged in a military campaign in the Gaza Strip widely decried as genocide—killing over 73,000 people and damaging most civilian infrastructure, including schools—while Israeli troops and settlers have also ramped up violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Safi has been charged with being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Israel labels a "terrorist organization." Her lawyer, Leah Tsemel, told Agence France-Presse that she denies the allegation.
The young US citizen has familial Mediterranean fever, "which requires regular monitoring, daily medication, and recurring specialized biologic treatment abroad," the only Palestinian American in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and 40 of her colleagues from both chambers highlighted in their letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"Sama's medical condition has rapidly deteriorated after being subjected to abysmal detention conditions in the months since armed Israeli soldiers raided her family's home in the occupied West Bank in the middle of the night and tore her from her family," they wrote. "Her doctors have warned of irreversible and life-threatening damage to her internal organs if her detention continues. You have a duty to secure the safety and security of US citizens abroad, and we urge you to act quickly to prevent further irreparable harm to Sama by securing her immediate release."
Over the past few months, Safi "has been transferred through multiple facilities," the letter details. She has seen and endured "serious physical violence by guards against detainees, including frequent physical assault, shackling, and the throwing of gas and stun grenades into already overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells," along with "repeated verbal abuse and being placed in painful stress positions, as well as the presence of rapidly spreading infectious skin disease, rats, and mattresses reeking of feces."
"These inhumane conditions and violence towards detainees are not unique to one facility. They are systemic and well-documented throughout Israel's vast military prison system, where thousands of Palestinians are held every day, many indefinitely and without charge," the letter stresses. "In December, the United Nations Committee Against Torture denounced Israel’s application of 'a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment' in these prisons, including evidence of sexual violence, electrocution, waterboarding, systemic denial of medical care, denial of adequate nutrition and water, and deprivation of clothing, sleep, and access to hygiene facilities."
The six senators and 35 members of the House of Representatives are backed by a diverse coalition of 85 organizations, and they pointed out that earlier this month, over 100 groups also called on Rubio to find a way to free Safi from Israeli detention.
"It is your responsibility to ensure the safety of all Americans abroad, with no exceptions," the lawmakers reminded Rubio. "Her life
is at risk on your watch. We urge you to act swiftly and use every tool at your disposal to secure the immediate release of Sama Safi so that she can receive the medical care she urgently needs and return to her family, her studies, and the life and freedom that every 20-year-old deserves."
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'Tremendous Victory for the Rule of Law': Trump-Rubio 75-Nation Visa Ban Struck Down
"At its heart," said one of the legal challengers to the rule imposed by the State Department, "this case is about keeping families together."
Aug 22, 2026
A federal judge in New York has ruled that President Donald Trump and the US State Department overstepped their authority when they suspended the processing of visa applications for people from 75 nations earlier this year, a move that critics at the time called a "travesty," cruel, and counter to the rule of law.
US District Judge Jeannette Vargas, a Biden appointee, ruled Friday that the pause in visa applications—which Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed was necessary to prevent immigrant visitors from freeloading on US taxpayer dollars—was “contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority.”
Diana Konate, deputy executive director for policy and advocacy at African Communities Together, which took part in the legal challenge, said the ruling was a "tremendous victory for the rule of law."
“This unlawful and racist ban caused immeasurable harm, cruelly keeping families and loved ones apart," Konate said. "Today, we are elated to tell our community members: this ban is no more.”
Vargas determined that the policy first announced by Rubio in January “runs afoul” of the Immigration and Nationality Act by mandating “the refusal of visas to eligible applicants without any basis in law."
According to the Associated Press:
Vargas said the policy also undermines the congressional requirement that puts consular officers at the forefront of any visa decision.
“Congress imbued these officers with exclusive authority and discretion to determine if an immigrant is eligible for a visa based upon review of specific and detailed criteria set forth in the statute,” she wrote. “The Policy, which categorically prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of the applicant, represents a direct abrogation of this statutory scheme.”
The policy was challenged by two nonprofit organizations along with 11 individuals, including six whose family members had been refused visas. The remaining five are outside the country and had filed “employment-based petitions” to come to the United States.
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), one of the other nonprofits behind the suit which led to the ruling, welcomed the decision in a statement on Saturday, calling it "an important victory for families who faced prolonged uncertainty and separation because of a policy that treated applicants differently based on their country of origin rather than their individual circumstances."
"At its heart," said Anna Gallagher, CLINIC's executive director, "this case is about keeping families together."
"The suspension of lawful visa issuance across 75 countries separated spouses, parents and children who were simply following the legal immigration process," Gallagher said. "Catholic social teaching calls us to uphold the dignity of every person and recognize the family as the foundation of society. Today’s decision affirms both those values and the rule of law, allowing families to once again move forward toward reunification.”
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'Lethal and Illegal Economic Aggression': Trump, Rubio Rebuked for New Sanctions on Cuba
One Cuban diplomat accused the Trump administration of waging "economic warfare that actually kills people without bombs."
Aug 21, 2026
The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its campaign of economic pressure against Cuba, imposing sanctions on nine state-owned companies and three officials—a move critics condemned as an escalation of a decadeslong embargo amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
"The Cuban regime has long sponsored a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing subversives, largely operating under the pretext of educational or cultural exchange," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dubiously claimed. Citing an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in May, he announced new sanctions against entities including the Cuban Ministry of Construction and the mining group GEOMINSAL.
Also sanctioned were three leaders of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, an international solidarity group, including ICAP president Fernando González Llort, a member of the so-called Cuban Five who served 15 years behind bars in the US after being convicted—critics say unfairly—of espionage in 2001 for infiltrating exile groups plotting terrorist attacks targeting Cuba's socialist government.
"The Trump administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms—none of which are afforded to its people—by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and communist violence across the world," Rubio said.
Rubio—who has falsely claimed that his parents fled communism in Cuba when they actually emigrated during an earlier US-backed dictatorship—added that the new sanctions "make clear that the Trump administration will not tolerate the Cuban regime’s efforts to fund its repression or continue its decadeslong campaign of subversive anti-American activities."
Responding to the fresh sanctions, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused Rubio of having a "failed obsession against Cuba" and seeking to "punish Cuban companies with the deliberate purpose of harming our economy and preventing the government of Cuba from guaranteeing basic services to the population, which are already in a critical situation as a result of the blockade."
Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Ernesto Soberón asked on social media: "What is [Rubio] afraid of? If he's so convinced that the Cuban government is incompetent, why does he need to impose new sanctions that collectively punish the Cuban people and also attempt to prevent Cuba's trade relations with third parties?"
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington, DC-based think tank, accused the US administration of "escalating its lethal and illegal economic aggression against Cuba."
CEPR research associate Pedro Labayen Herrera said in a statement that “these sanctions are the latest move in a more than 60-year US economic siege on Cuba, which has intensified since January’s naval blockade, an overt and illegal act of war."
“By targeting the island’s mining, metals, construction, and trade sectors, the administration will further restrict the Cuban government’s ability to manage a deliberately designed crisis that UN experts recently warned could become a ‘silent Gaza,'" he added.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the broader US economic blockade of Cuba 33 times.
The new US measures follow months of escalating aggression against Cuba by the Trump administration, including threats and reported preparations to attack, an oil blockade that critics say is causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and a Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment of former President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
The oil blockade has hit especially hard given the January US invasion of Venezuela—which supplied between one-third and half of Cuba's energy needs—and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
The Trump administration also reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the government of longtime revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
The fresh sanctions follow last month's State Department report baselessly claiming that Cuba aims to "conquer" the United States and is backing “left-wing terrorism on American soil" while using dozens of US civil society groups, activists, journalists, and elected officials to further Havana's supposedly nefarious goals.
“Rather than publishing unfounded, far-fetched claims of a Cuban-led campaign to subvert the United States as a pretext for military action against Havana, Washington should recognize that over half a century of strangulation has failed to bring about regime change," Herrera said on Thursday. "Instead, US policy has crippled the country’s economy and healthcare system, depriving its people of a dignified life and contributing to significant levels of out-migration."
“The Trump administration must lift all sanctions, respect Cuban sovereignty, and engage diplomatically," he added, "or risk further immiserating the Cuban people and widening a crisis that will reverberate throughout the hemisphere."
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House Democrats Probe Use of Trump's NSPM-7 to Target 'Left-Leaning Political Groups'
"We are deeply troubled by public commitments to deploy the full force of the State and Treasury departments against loosely defined 'far-left networks' and their alleged 'enablers.'"
Aug 19, 2026
Dozens of Democrats in the US House of Representatives this week announced a congressional inquiry into the use of a widely decried memo from President Donald Trump to persecute "political dissent" and target "left-leaning political groups."
Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern (Mass.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Delia Ramirez (Ill.) revealed Tuesday that they, along with over 20 others, wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month to demand answers about the recent "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" and directives under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7).
"Specifically, we are alarmed by the Department of State's new ideologically driven visa restriction policy and the Department of Treasury's pledged financial enforcement mechanisms directed against civil society," they wrote. "These policies dramatically escalate the administration's deliberate and targeted attempts to silence any person, organization, or institution critical of its policies and abuses of power on a global scale."
"We are deeply troubled by public commitments to deploy the full force of the State and Treasury departments against loosely defined 'far-left networks' and their alleged 'enablers' and urge you to immediately reverse course," the lawmakers continued. "Rather than relying on law enforcement data—which consistently identifies right-wing violent extremists and white supremacist organizations as the predominant domestic terrorism threat—this administration has instead taken actions that manufacture an ideological enemy."
The visa policy "bars foreign nationals from entry who 'finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal far-left terrorist networks' and defines 'far-left terrorist networks' as those with explicit aims to 'undermine the political foundations of free and self-governing societies,'" the letter details. "This rhetoric and policy embody the core characteristics of fascist statecraft—using the security apparatus of the state to repress and criminalize political opponents and dissenters rather than specific violent acts."
The letter notes the impacts of the administration's policies beyond the United States, warning that "seeking to export an ideological mandate to more than 65 countries creates a dangerous precedent that authoritarian governments will eagerly exploit to delegitimize and criminalize political dissent and justify their own crackdowns on peaceful opposition."
"Foreign nationals fleeing political persecution abroad—including persecution by governments that label peaceful dissidents 'leftist terrorists' to discredit them—may find themselves barred from the United States under the very same vague and subjective standard," the lawmakers wrote. "Expanding transnational intelligence-sharing under this ill-defined and hyper-politicized definition of violent extremism opens the door to transnational repression—including cross-border monitoring and harassment—of international activists, researchers, and political dissidents, as well as potentially any individual within their networks."
"We also risk fracturing critical alliances with governments whose own laws strictly protect political speech, civil liberties, and human rights—protections that these very policies are undermining here at home," the Democrats stressed.
The letter also calls out White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's description of leftists as "the enemies of civilization" and a "cancer" that can "destroy a society," as well as Bessent's comparison of leftists to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda—when he said that "the unified front between international Marxism and the radical Islamic movement need not share the same ultimate vision to share the same immediate enemy of free and self-governing societies."
Rubio has similarly called leftists "the enemies of civilization" and recently faced criticism for a "McCarthyite" State Department report claiming that the Cuban government has, for decades, "infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history." The document is seen as a signal that Trump may deliver on his threat to try to take over the island nation by force.
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