Top World News
'First to surrender': GOP lawmaker breaks from Trump with grim warning about his 'legacy'
U.S. Representative Don Bacon of (R-NE) broke from Donald Trump on Saturday with a grim reminder about what the congressman says could be Trump's "legacy."Bacon, who has spoken out about Trump's attitude regarding Ukraine and the war Russia has imposed on it, over the weekend weighed in on a recent proposal from the Trump administration to end the brutal foreign war by forcing numerous concessions from the victim nation.Over the weekend, Bacon took to social media to push back against that plan, posting an image of a wasteland with three distressed eagles and the words, "In the war between Ukraine and Russia, the first to surrender was America."He issued a grim warning with the image, writing, "This will be President Trump’s legacy if he forces this surrender plan on Ukraine."Ex-Republican insider Stuart Stevens added, "It will be the Republican Party's legacy."It will be the Republican Party's legacy. https://t.co/NDyxNq1TAp— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) November 22, 2025
'Disquieting horror': NYT analyst exposes how ICE has 'shattered' lives of legal residents
People who are here legally have had their lives "shattered" by ICE, too, according to interviews conducted by an analyst with the New York Times.Sarah Wildman, a staff writer and editor in Opinion for the NYT, spoke "to a half-dozen people and their families who have been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention." According to Wildman, "Each was re-entering, or was already in the country legally. No one was smuggled across the border.""None of the people we spoke to had a recent criminal record. (Three had minor nonviolent brushes with the law, all in the distant past; one received a pardon.) All were treated like suspected violent criminals, forced into tiny cells, dressed in prison uniforms, manacled for transfer. Those we spoke to were held for anywhere from 10 days to over 70 days. The experience shattered their equilibrium," the analyst wrote. "Immigration and Border Patrol officers have long held extremely broad discretionary powers to welcome or reject noncitizens arriving in the United States. And this is far from the first wave of xenophobia to hit America. But something different is happening now in the breadth and ferocity of efforts to change the makeup of this country."Wildman went further in calling attention to viral videos of brutal ICE operations."The videos circulating on social media are brutal and terrifying — the often violent arrests, people pulled screaming from their cars, out of day care centers, away from their children and their spouses. What should give Americans equal pause is the inhumanity happening beyond the cameras, away from the view of judges and lawyers and the media. Due process is not a constitutional right afforded only to citizens; legal restrictions on unlawful detention apply to all people on U.S. soil," she wrote. "The stories we were told call into question both the constitutionality and the morality of how the Trump administration is directing immigration policy. That immorality, once unleashed, may ultimately be aimed at others in this country, regardless of immigration status. If a woman returning from vacation with her young children can be suddenly removed from her family and her life, how can we believe that any of us will remain safe?"According to Wildman, "There was a disquieting sameness to the horror that was described to us.""Those we interviewed despaired at how the detention centers were kept purposefully, horrendously cold, forcing some of them to huddle up against strangers. They spoke of lights left on 24 hours a day and of interstate transfers that came without notice. They described food that was inadequately distributed and made them unwell," she wrote. "Of being forced to urinate and defecate in front of fellow detainees and guards. Of being humiliated and mocked by officers. All referred to a destabilizing lack of information, the dreadful understanding that they could be held for weeks or months without anyone informing them why they were being held at all."Read the piece here.
Members Of The Royal Family Gathered For The Queen's Coffin Procession In London
The Queen's coffin will lie in state at Westminster Hall until her funeral on Monday.View Entire Post ›
'It was every night': New report exposes MAGA lawmaker's purported sex worker scandal
Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) on Thursday was hit with yet another report alleging reckless behavior, including hiring numerous sex workers.The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday that it had opened an investigation into Rep. Mills over several issues, according to a new report. The following day, investigative political reporter Roger Sollenberger dropped a report of his own.In a piece on Substack called "Sex Workers & A Secret Charity: The Story Of Cory Mills’s ‘F------ Bananas’ Afghanistan Mission," he reports, "The embattled Florida Republican’s political origin story is shrouded in its own scandal."According to the report, Mills leans into his Afghanistan mission as a sort of "origin story." But there's more of that tale to be told, according to the veteran reporter."But people familiar with the Afghanistan mission say Mills has never told the full story—and that if he did, the public would have a very different image of him. For one thing, three sources said Mills hired sex workers during the Afghanistan operation, on several occasions," he wrote on Thursday. "The revelations come as Mills finds himself increasingly isolated politically, with a battery of scandals—domestic assault allegations, his military record, and most recently a restraining order for cyberstalking and revenge porn—sparking public rebuke from MAGAfied Republican colleagues."Sollenberger goes on to report that the mission itself succeeded despite the lawmaker."While Mills often casts himself as key to the Afghanistan rescue—including in congressional remarks—three people familiar with the effort said the operation’s success was more in spite of Mills’s involvement than because of it," the report states.He continues:"The team planned to land in Afghanistan, but they were re-routed to Tbilisi, Georgia, where they staged the operation from a hotel and waited for the go signal. In Tbilisi, however, Mills set the team on edge with what three people familiar with the events described as reckless and unprofessional personal behavior. This included hiring sex workers with his friend more than once, even after they were told to stop."“It was every night,” one source said, according to the report. Another person purportedly said, “That happened three nights in a row to the point where I said, ‘I’m done, I don’t want to associate with it.'"According to Sollenberger, "I obtained a photo of Mills with one of the sex workers, which a person with knowledge of the events confirmed as authentic."Read the full piece here.
'International incident': 'Terrifying standoff' as US troops mistakenly invade Mexico
American troops "pulled up on a Mexican beach" and created a "terrifying standoff," according to a new report.According to at least one news report, "American troops pulled up on a Mexican beach in a dramatic escalation of tensions after Donald Trump threatened to bomb the country.""US 'contractors' arrived by boat on Monday at Playa Bagdad, driving signs into the sand near where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico," the Thursday report states. "Alarmed witnesses quickly alerted officials and heavily armed Mexican security personnel rushed to the scene on trucks mounted with machine guns in a terrifying standoff."The report continues:"The Pentagon, in a deeply embarrassing statement, admitted that its troops were mistaken when they landed on the beach. The Mexican personnel watched as the Americans drove six signs into the ground, which said: 'Warning: restricted area.' Written in English and Spanish, they claimed that the beach was the property of the US Department of Defense and had been declared restricted by 'the commander.' They also said unauthorized access or photography was not allowed in that area and that 'if you are found here, you may be detained and searched.' Mexico's foreign affairs ministry said its navy removed the signs from the sand, which it believed were on Mexican territory."Ex-prosecutor Ron Filipkowski chimed in on social media on Thursday:"Apparently dips--- Hegseth’s 'lethal warfighters' landed inside the Mexican border by mistake and created an international incident."Read more here.Apparently dipshit Hegseth’s “lethal warfighters” landed inside the Mexican border by mistake and created an international incident. pic.twitter.com/iaXFCEorZc— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 20, 2025
'This sounds ominous': Foreign ally told to 'buckle up' for new peace deal being imposed
New details have emerged about a Ukraine peace plan secretly worked up between the U.S. and Russia – and how Trump administration officials intend to impose its conditions.President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff has been drafting the 28-point plan with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, according to reporting from Tuesday night, and Politico Playbook reported Wednesday the White House will soon unveil the agreement to end the three-and-a-half year war to an end."So this is one way to distract from the Epstein files," Playbook reported. "A senior White House official [says] they expect a framework for ending the conflict to be agreed by all parties by the end of this month — and possibly 'as soon as this week.'""Buckle up," the report added.Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, along with a pair of four-star general and other senior U.S. military officials, made a highly unusual trip to Kyiv on Wednesday to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of his talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Trump administration officials said a plan was on the table to end the Russian invasion."But here’s the thing: This new peace plan has seemingly had no direct input from Ukraine, nor from America’s allies in Europe," Playbook reported. "And we have no sense yet of the details, of what’s been hammered out on the thorniest questions around Russia’s seizure of vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children or the security guarantees being offered to Ukraine in the aftermath."The White House feels confident an agreement will be reached because, as administration officials said, Zelenskyy is under too much pressure to turn it down."What we are going to present is reasonable," a senior White House official said.Russian officials apparently agree, and Playbook noted "this sounds ominous."“We feel the Russian position is really being heard," Dmitriev, the Russian envoy. "[This is a proposal] to address the Ukraine conflict, but also how to restore U.S.-Russia ties [and] address Russia's security concerns. It's actually a much broader framework, basically saying, 'How do we really bring, finally, lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.'"A senior White House official was asked to comment on Europe's possible input on the agreement and dismissed the issue entirely.“We don't really care about the Europeans,” the official told Playbook. “It's about Ukraine accepting.”
Trump confronts 'game-changer' as cruelty provokes 'unbelievably radical' revolt: analysts
Comments made by Pope Leo and a widely spread attack on President Donald Trump by Catholic bishops on his harsh immigration policies should give his administration pause that the ground beneath them is shifting — and not in a good way, it was warned Monday.The hosts of “Morning Joe,” noted the Pope calling the treatment of undocumented immigrants a “grave injustice” and combined that with a statement from America’s Roman Catholic bishops asserting, “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”That led MS NOW's Joe Scarborough to tell his panel, ”One of the most remarkable things I've seen is Pope Leo, Catholic bishops, doing something unbelievably radical. I'm sure the White House thinks this is radical Republicans. They are quoting Jesus Christ, and they are quoting Jesus Christ from the pulpit, and they are showing how un-Christ-like these ICE raids are, where they're ripping children from their mothers' hands.”“They are going into schools.,They are tearing teachers out. I mean, this is the Catholic bishops and Pope Leo. This is a game changer.” “I know, I know, people have people outside the faith community may not understand this, but this is a game changer,” he added. “And Pope Leo saying, ‘Oh, really? You call yourself pro-life just because you're against abortion, but you support this inhumane treatment of immigrants?’ No, no, no, those those two don't square up.” - YouTube youtu.be
Trump can't grasp the terrifying reality of what he just promised
On Oct. 29, just before meeting China’s President XI Jinping, Donald Trump posted on his social media network Truth Social that “because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”The US stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992 — that is, detonating nuclear warheads. It regularly tests “delivery vehicles,” the missiles that would be used to carry the nuclear weapon to its intended target. The most recent of these tests took place early on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the coast of California. It’s possible that Trump simply does not understand the difference between these two things.Observers speculated that Trump’s nuclear test announcement was a response to Russia’s recent test of its Burevestnik missile, which is nuclear-capable — meaning it could carry a nuclear warhead, though it did not during the test — and powered by nuclear energy. Some pointed out that it would be the Department of Energy, rather than the Pentagon, that would carry out a test detonation of a nuclear weapon. Trump’s use of the phrase “on an equal basis,” given that China and Russia are not detonating nuclear weapons, was comforting to some.Whatever he meant, it’s worth considering how this latest episode of existential terror imposed from above highlights what depths of apocalyptic misbehavior are now considered normal when it comes to how nuclear weapons countries behave toward one another.The missile Russia tested was designed to deliver a nuclear weapon without being intercepted by missile defense systems, using nuclear power to extend its flight time much longer than non-nuclear powered missiles. The Russian government also claimed to have tested its Poseidon torpedo, also nuclear-capable and nuclear-powered, and designed to be used in coastal waters to create a huge wave of irradiated water that would wash ashore.Neither of these, nor the ICBM test, amount to a “nuclear test.” But, should the US conduct a test explosion of a nuclear warhead, it would be adding to the environmental burden that has led to nearly half a million deaths, by one scholarly estimate, from the over 1,000 test nuclear detonations the US has carried out. (This is about half of the over 2,000 total tests carried out worldwide between 1945 and 2017.) The health and environmental effects of this testing are ongoing, and the United States hasn’t come close to cleaning up after its earlier nuclear tests.To take just one example, waste from tests conducted in the Marshall Islands is still sitting in the Runit Dome, a cracking concrete structure on Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll that is under constant threat from worsening storms as a result of climate change. US nuclear testing has rendered Marshallese ways of life untenable for the long term, with no real prospects for full remediation on the horizon. (ICBM tests launched from Vandenberg are aimed at the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein Atoll, a less dramatically destructive but still significant burden on a place that has long paid a high price for the maintenance of US nuclear weapons.)Still, even if Trump is responding to recent nuclear tests that didn’t happen, this is largely in keeping with how nuclear-armed countries tend to justify changes in their nuclear policy as reciprocal responses to unprovoked aggression, no matter what the facts are. What’s more certain, however, is that if the US tests a nuclear weapon, Russia and China are far more likely to begin testing nuclear weapons of their own, as Russia has already threatened. This would lead to more environmental damage, more health consequences across the globe, and more normalization of nuclear explosions as part of the business of doing politics.It seems as if much of the press has lost sight of the actual stakes here. The Washington Post‘s coverage of Trump’s announcement, for one, skipped over all the reasons a nuclear test might actually be undesirable and instead merely named “far-reaching consequences for relations with adversaries” as the real thing its readers should be worried about. If that is indeed the main concern, conducting multiple missile tests a year that signal the US’s willingness to use ICBMs should be viewed for what it is — a gesture that keeps nuclear war on the mind of governments around the world as a real possibility, a norm of global politics rather than a collective fate that must be avoided at all costs.The reality is, Americans share the unfortunate situation of everyone else in the world of being first and foremost potential victims of nuclear weaponry, vulnerable to the whims of the leaders they have theoretically empowered to control the country’s thousands of nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are much, much more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear arsenals have been maintained using advanced computer modeling for decades. The fact that nuclear test explosions have entered even the far reaches of possibility, even for an administration which embraces brutal violence with such open enthusiasm, is cause for alarm and collective action against the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human life.It’s easy to dismiss a “test” as something less than the full terrifying reality of nuclear weapons use. In some cases, this is true. Underground nuclear tests are less immediately hazardous to human and environmental health than atmospheric tests, which the US stopped conducting in 1962. An ICBM test does not involve the detonation of a nuclear weapon.But the scale and political importance of a nuclear weapon test means any indication of a willingness to use it under any circumstances has political significance. Historians have noted that one of the main reasons the United States ultimately decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to test whether they would work as expected.We should not let nuclear testing once again become part of nuclear-armed countries’ business as usual. A nuclear explosion is a nuclear explosion, and the fallout will be all of ours to deal with.Emma Claire Foley is a Program Associate at Global Zero. She runs the Global Zero Military Incidents Project, which collects and analyzes open-source data to track the risk of conflict involving nuclear-armed states. She received her A.M. in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
Naive Trump triggered this unthinkable horror to save his skin
“Russia unleashed a massive combined attack on Kyiv” last night, The Guardian reports. “Five people were hospitalized, including one man in critical condition and a pregnant woman, after a series of powerful explosions sounded in the city and air defenses were activated. …“Pictures posted on social media showed different sites in flames and residents gathering in rubble-strewn streets outside apartment buildings.”The child victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes are apparently not the only ones who‘ve paid the price for Donald Trump’s long relationship with that notorious pedophile.Epstein’s “partying” with Trump has apparently also led to thousands of civilian deaths abroad, the collapse of America’s credibility around the world, and a serious threat to the future of democracy in Europe.Trump’s coverup may well represent a form of treason, the aid and comfort to an enemy attacking an ally during time of war. It should lead, at the very least, to impeachment.Right now, the largest nation in Europe, a democracy and an ally, is under violent attack by a brutal dictator intent on reestablishing the Soviet empire. In a threat to European democracy itself, Ukraine is getting pummeled every day because Donald Trump refuses to respond in a meaningful way.But why?In Epstein’s emails, he boasts of offering to advise Russia’s senior-most officials about how to manipulate Trump:“I think you might suggest to putin that [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] lavrov can get insight on [Trump by] talking to me…”Consider Trump’s secretive and beta-submissive behavior toward Vladimir Putin, especially in Helsinki when he trashed our intelligence agencies and sucked up to Putin, and more recently with his red carpet in Alaska, and it’s impossible to ignore what this newest Epstein revelation implies.If Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine is a direct or indirect result of things Trump did with Epstein, it’s naked treachery. Consider the pattern: ever since Trump came back into the White House, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have exploded in their ferocity and brutality.Recently, a missile strike by Russian forces hit the city of Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine and killed at least 20 people including nine children. Apartments collapsed around weeping parents who pulled bodies from the rubble; a baby only a few months old was among the victims.In another attack, a children’s hospital in southern Ukraine was struck, shattering windows, strewing blood-soaked medical stretchers across the grounds, all while about a hundred people were inside.Schools, kindergartens and residential buildings have been leveled in multiple towns, as the Russian military targets civilian infrastructure with vicious abandon. They’re daily destroying Ukraine’s fuel and electric grids with the goal of freezing that country’s people into submission as winter approaches.These are not accidents of war. They’re the deliberate targeting of civilians, children, doctors, classrooms, apartment buildings, homes, and hospitals. Russian drones hunt civilians down the streets of Ukrainian cities, sometimes smashing the windows of their homes as they chase people indoors to kill them.And all of this — the horror of what’s happening in plain sight that’s the clear result of Trump’s repeated and pathetic kowtowing to Putin — appears, from the Epstein emails, that it may be getting so much worse over the past 10 months because Putin took Epstein’s advice and threatened Trump with exposure.We still don’t know what was said in that room in Helsinki because Trump covered it up, making sure we’d never know. He ordered his American interpreter to move away from his private conversation with Putin, and afterward seized and destroyed her notes.Similarly and more recently, in Alaska, Trump dismissed his aides and rode with Putin privately in his car where they engaged in another lengthy, secretive conversation.That’s the behavior of a man with something to hide, who’s terrified by some horrible secret; it’s not the behavior of a leader defending the national interest of the United States or our European allies.On top of that, Trump has been placing private phone calls to Putin repeatedly ever since he was reinstalled in the Oval Office.No previous American president throughout our 249-year history had ever conducted such meetings and repeated communications in secret with the murderous leader of a hostile foreign power. None has ever tried to cover up meetings with such men.When we place Trump’s bizarre, unprecedented secrecy next to Epstein’s emails in which the billionaire pedophile tells European and Russian contacts that he could offer “insight” into Trump, the outlines of a deeply troubling possibility emerge.At this moment, it’s only speculation, but it’s one hell of a big if. Because Trump himself keeps doing things — including trashing NATO and betraying Ukraine in ways that only benefit Putin — and therefore demand a serious, honest investigation.We now know — from the emails released this week — that Epstein wrote that Sergei Lavrov could “get insight” from him and that Russian Ambassador Churkin “understood Trump” after their talks.And the Russians, as the world knows, never, ever let such juicy material go to waste. Former KGB senior intelligence officer Vladimir Putin is a man trained to find the soft spot in any opponent and apply the exact right pressure to make them bend to his will, and it’s looking more every day like that’s exactly what’s happening here.Trump was “best friends” with Epstein for more than a decade. They lived near each other in both New York and Palm Beach, and partied publicly together. They traveled on Epstein’s jet repeatedly. They allegedly shared women.These don’t prove blackmail, but the possibility that Epstein passed along compromising details to Lavrov or even Putin is staggering.Imagine Putin, alone with Trump in Helsinki way back in 2018, quietly signaling that he knew more about Epstein, Trump, and underage girls than Trump could survive being exposed.A soft whisper. Perhaps simply sliding a note card to Trump with the words “Epstein, girls” on it.And then Trump goes out to meet the press after their meeting, shoulders down looking beaten, and lavishes Putin with praise while trash-talking his own intelligence and military officials. What the hell?Even former Harvard President Larry Summers was horrified, writing to his friend Jeffrey Epstein on July 16, 2018, moments after the Helsinki meeting:“Do the Russians have stuff on Trump? Today was appalling even by his standards.”Epstein replied to Summers the next day:“My email is full with similar comments. wow. Im sure his view is that it went super well. he thinks he has charmed his adversary.. Admittedly he has no idea of the symbolism. He has no idea of most things.”The idea that Putin threatened Trump in that first private meeting is only a hypothesis, of course. But the secrecy Trump immediately imposed — and his repeatedly whipped-dog-like servile behavior to this murderous dictator in the years since — makes such a moment impossible to rule out.If something like that did occur, if Putin delivered even the hint of a threat and Trump immediately bent over and bowed down and has ever since, it would explain Trump’s world-changing behavior and why he’s so seriously damaged the interests of America while abandoning our European allies.Is there anything else that could possibly explain why Trump has spent years refusing to confront Putin for anything, no matter how shocking or monstrous the Russian dictator’s behavior?It would also explain his silence in the face of Russian assassinations, Putin’s bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, and now the horrific nightly devastation of Ukraine and Putin‘s kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children.If Trump was intimidated in that private moment, if Putin used Epstein’s information as a weapon, then the cost of Trump’s fear of exposure has been measured in thousands of Ukrainian civilian deaths, including far more children then even Epstein himself victimized.It’s been measured in the suffering of the millions of Ukrainians now facing the possibility of freezing to death this winter without power, as Putin relentlessly and nightly targets their energy grid while Trump plays golf, bulldozes the White House, and throws elaborate parties.It’s measured in America’s humiliation on the world stage and in the bone-deep terror felt across Europe as Putin tests the resolve of NATO and his officials explicitly threaten the Baltics.The sheer scale of harm that could have flowed from this one corrupt, degenerate, perverted man’s desperation to protect himself is absolutely breathtaking.If it turns out that this is what actually happened, it would make historic betrayals like Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, Robert Hanssen, and even the petty treacheries that toppled ancient republics look small by comparison, because none of them placed the survival of modern, worldwide democracy itself at risk.This isn’t an accusation: it’s the unavoidable suspicion forced upon us by Trump’s own secrecy.He hid his conversations with Putin from his own government and even from the American people. He created a vacuum where certainty should exist. And now, into that vacuum, flows Epstein’s boast that he was willing to provide Russia with usable, exploitable insights into Trump’s vulnerabilities and psychology.Trump has refused the basic transparency required of every president who interacts with a hostile foreign leader. If he’d behaved like every president before him, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.But he didn’t.Instead, he has bizarrely, inexplicably kissed Putin‘s ass repeatedly and publicly in ways that have astonished and horrified our intelligence and military officials, as well as those of our allies.And now he’s in the process of purging any among our military ranks and intelligence services who he appears to suspect may not go along with his inexplicable behavior.Because Trump’s so frequently surrendered America’s, Ukraine’s, and NATO’s best interests to Putin’ s desires — and now we learn Epstein offered to advise Putin on how to blackmail (or at last control) him — we must now investigate every plausible explanation for his actions, no matter how disturbing.Just releasing Epstein’s emails isn’t even close to enough to answer these questions.Congress, what’s left of our independent media, and the FBI must investigate not only Epstein’s crimes and connections but the terrifying possibility that American foreign policy has been warped by a president desperately trying to shield himself from the exposure of unforgivable behavior.That investigation must be thorough, public, and relentless; it must meet the high standards of the internal and public investigations into Richard Nixon‘s criminality in 1974, at the very least.If true, the possibilities raised by Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine and kowtowing to Putin are far worse than anything Nixon could have conceived in his wildest fantasies.If Republicans have an ounce of integrity left they’ll not only sanction investigations that could lead to criminal prosecutions; they’ll convene impeachment proceedings.The American people deserve to know whether blackmail, intimidation, and Trump’s personal vulnerability have cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and shaken the foundations of Western democracy. As well as ignoring — or participating in — the destruction of the lives of hundreds of young girls.The stakes are too high, the damage too great, and the possible treason too severe to accept anything less.
Cash-strapped Kennedy Center letting FIFA use facilities rent-free for weeks: report
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts will be postponing previously booked events so the Donald Trump administration can let FIFA, the cash-rich governing body of international soccer, use the facilities for free in late November into early December.According to a report from the Washington Post, the televised draw for the 2026 World Cup will occur at the nation’s cultural center which has been reeling from poor ticket sales and longtime donors cutting off funds since the president fired the board, took over control and installed his own people.Since the takeover, major acts have cancelled after the president complained the Kennedy Center offerings were “woke,” with ticket sales collapsing, and acts that did fulfill their contractual obligations playing before a sea of empty seats.Despite the cash crunch, Trump’s people have agreed to waive rent for FIFA, which has had the effect of putting off or cancelling previously scheduled shows that would provide much-needed revenue.The Post’s Janay Kingsberry and Rick Maese are reporting the FIFA World Cup draw scheduled for Dec. 5, “... will occupy performance spaces and other sections of the Kennedy Center for almost three weeks, according to the documents and a center employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agreement.”The report notes that the event was originally planned for Las Vegas before Trump swooped in and convinced FIFA President Gianni Infantino, a frequent guest at White House events, to move it to Washington D.C.According to the report, “The Kennedy Center currently quotes a standard rate of $39,000 to rent the Concert Hall and $18,000 for the Eisenhower Theater. Those are rates for single nights, suggesting a multiweek rental of much of the campus, such as FIFA’s, could cost significantly more.”The popular Kennedy Center Honors program is slated to take place just two days after the FIFA takeover, with staffers worried about the limited amount of time to pull together the annual televised event.According to a report in September from the Guardian, artists have been facing halls with up to 80 percent of seats unoccupied creating a major financial shortfall.Less than a week ago it was reported that the Washington National Opera was looking into moving to a new location with Artistic Director Francesca Zambello stating, "It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center. But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options."You can read more on the FIFA handover here.
Trump throwing lavish dinner 'with a lot of pomp' for Saudi crown prince in a week: report
President Donald Trump is planning a dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman reported on Thursday."Invitations have been going out for a Nov. 18 dinner PRESIDENT TRUMP is throwing for Saudi Crown Prince MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN in D.C.," Sherman posted on X. "Not a state dinner because he's not officially the head of state. But a formal dinner with a lot of pomp. Some members of Congress, members of admin and biz leaders all invited."Trump has long sought to cultivate a strong relationship with the Saudi crown prince, who has postured himself as a moderate reformer of his country but has been accused by human rights observers of suppressing dissent and consolidating absolute power.The issue came to a head during Trump's first term, when Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident critic of the regime, was reportedly murdered on the Saudi prince's orders at an embassy in Turkey.Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward has alleged in his writings that Trump bragged about helping the Saudi royals cover up this killing.
Trump just sent an ominous warning with his latest manufactured crisis
For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that US bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth — it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other US interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.As a US armada gathers off Venezuela, a US special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) — the “Nightstalkers” — the same unit that, in US-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.Western media portray the 160th SOAR as an elite helicopter force for covert missions. But in 2005, an officer in the regiment blogged about joint operations with the Wolf Brigade as they swept Baghdad, detaining civilians. On Nov. 10, 2005, he described a “battalion-sized joint operation” in southern Baghdad and boasted, “As we passed vehicle after vehicle full of blindfolded detainees, my face stretched into a long wolfish smile.”Many people seized by the Wolf Brigade and other US-trained Special Police Commandos were never seen again; others turned up in mass graves or morgues, often far from where they’d been taken. Bodies of people detained in Baghdad were found in mass graves near Badra, 70 miles away — but that was well within the combat range of the Nightstalkers’ MH-47 Chinook helicopters.This was how the Bush-Cheney administration responded to Iraqi resistance to an illegal invasion: catastrophic assaults on Fallujah and Najaf, followed by the training and unleashing of death squads to terrorize civilians and ethnically cleanse Baghdad. The United Nations reported over 34,000 civilians killed in 2006 alone, and epidemiological studies estimate roughly 1 million Iraqis died overall.Iraq has never fully recovered — and the US never reaped the spoils it sought. The exiles Washington installed to rule Iraq stole at least $150 billion from its oil revenues, but the Iraqi parliament rejected US-backed efforts to grant shares of the oil industry to Western companies. Today, Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, India, the UAE, and Turkey — not the United States.The neocon dream of “regime change” has a long, bloody history, its methods ranging from coups to full-scale invasions. But “regime change” is a euphemism: the word “change” implies improvement. A more honest term would be “government removal” — or simply the destruction of a country or society.A coup usually involves less immediate violence than a full-scale invasion, but they pose the same question: Who or what replaces the ousted government? Time after time, US-backed coups and invasions have installed rulers who enrich themselves through embezzlement, corruption, or drug trafficking — while making life worse for ordinary people.These so-called “military solutions” rarely resolve problems, real or imaginary, as their proponents promise. They more often leave countries plagued by decades of division, instability, and suffering.Kosovo was carved out of Serbia by an illegal US-led war in 1999, but it is still not recognized by many nations and remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main US ally in the war, Hashim Thaçi, now sits in a cell at the Hague, charged with horrific crimes committed under cover of NATO’s bombing.In Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloody war and occupation, the United States was eventually defeated by the Taliban — the very force it had invaded the country to remove.In Haiti, the CIA and US Marines toppled the popular democratic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis of corruption, gang rule, and despair that continues to this day.In 2006, the US militarily supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install a new government — an intervention that gave rise to Al Shabab, an Islamic resistance group that still controls large swaths of the country. US AFRICOM has conducted 89 airstrikes in Al Shabab-held territory in 2025 alone.In Honduras, the military removed its president, Mel Zelaya, in a coup in 2009, and the US supported an election to replace him. The US-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a narco-state, fueling mass emigration — until Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, was elected to lead a new progressive government in 2021.Libya, a country with vast oil wealth, has never recovered from the US and allied invasion in 2011, which led to years of militia rule, the return of slave markets, the destabilizing of neighboring countries, and a 45 percent reduction in oil exports.Also in 2011, the US and its allies escalated a protest movement in Syria into an armed rebellion and civil war. That spawned ISIS, which in turn led to the US-led massacres that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in 2017. Turkish-backed, al-Qaeda-linked rebels finally seized the capital in 2024 and formed a transitional government, but Israel, Turkey, and the US still militarily occupy other parts of the country.The US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership that only half the population recognized as a legitimate government. That drove Crimea and Donbas to secede and put Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, setting the stage for the Russian invasion in 2022 and the wider, still-escalating conflict between NATO and Russia.In 2015, when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement assumed power in Yemen after the resignation of a US-backed transitional government, the US joined a Saudi-led air war and blockade that caused a humanitarian crisis and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis — yet did not defeat the Houthis.That brings us to Venezuela. Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the US has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. US presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots — attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean — have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by US senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.Yet Trump still claims to be “ending the era of endless wars.” His most loyal supporters insist he means it — and that he was sabotaged in his first term by the “deep state.” This time, he has surrounded himself with loyalists and sacked National Security Council staffers he identified as neocons or warhawks, but he has still not ended America’s wars.Alongside Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean, he is a full partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran. He has maintained the global empire of US military bases and deployments, and supercharged the US war machine with a trillion-dollar war chest — draining desperately needed resources out of a looted domestic economy.Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as secretary of state and national security adviser was an incendiary choice for Latin America, given Rubio’s open hostility to Cuba and Venezuela.Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made that clear when he met Trump in Malaysia at the ASEAN conference, saying: “There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina.” At Lula’s insistence, Rubio was excluded from talks over US investments in Brazil’s rare earth metals industry, the world’s second largest after China’s.Cuba bashing may have served Rubio well in domestic politics, but as secretary of state it renders him incapable of responsibly managing US relations with the rest of the world. Trump will have to decide whether to pursue constructive engagement with Latin America or let Rubio corner him into new conflicts with our neighbors. Rubio’s threats of sanctions against countries that welcome Cuban doctors are already alienating governments across the globe.Trump’s manufactured crisis with Venezuela exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of his foreign policy: his disastrous choice of advisers; his conflicting ambitions to be both a war leader and a peacemaker; his worship of the military; and his surrender to the same war machine that ensnares every American president.If there is one lesson from the long history of US interventions, it’s that “regime change” doesn’t bring democracy or stability. As the United States threatens Venezuela with the same arrogance that has wrecked so many other countries, this is the moment to end this cycle of imperial US violence once and for all.
