LIVE COVERAGE
Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend
More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.
Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like "being in middle school when there's a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency," yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words "transistor" and "transgender" to claim Biden's CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but "if you weren't transgender, (you) didn't qualify." Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed "worst president in U.S. history" took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is "exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares."
Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.
A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.
Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.
They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he finished the job by blowing up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain.
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in an event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."
Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.
Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.
Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.
Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky
‘Perfect Storm’ of Trump’s War and Super El Niño to Drive Food Prices Even Higher
Experts are warning that a combination of a super El Niño climate pattern and two separate wars is threatening to put further upward pressure on food prices over the next several months.
A study released by Oxford Economics on Wednesday projects that global food prices will rise by 12% in 2026 and by 5% in 2027 due in large part to the fertilizer shortage caused by the closure in the Strait of Hormuz and increased grain prices caused by Russia's war with Ukraine.
The strait's closure, which began after President Donald Trump launched an illegal war with Iran in February, cut off a major shipping lane for fertilizer, whose price Oxford Economics projects will surge by 22% this year.
The four-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, meanwhile, is putting a strain on grain supplies, as the two countries combined account for 30% of global wheat exports.
And the two wars might not be the biggest driver of higher food prices.
The Independent on Friday reported that the Met Office, the UK's official weather forecasting service, is projecting this year's El Niño will be "the largest since the 19th century," with sea temperatures projected to reach 3ºC above their long-term average in the coming months.
Professor Adam Scaife, head of long range forecasting at the Met Office, told The Independent that he has "never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts," describing the projected increase in ocean temperatures as "an unprecedented event."
Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical hazards at University College London, told The Independent that the Met Office's forecasts "suggest that the world is in for one hell of a ride."
“The astonishing and unprecedented amount of heat building across the eastern Pacific Ocean," McGuire said, "is all but certain to make this the most powerful El Niño in living memory possibly even the biggest in several centuries."
McGuire said that this heat would manifest itself in several destructive ways over the next year, such as "bringing drought and wildfire conditions to the Amazon and parts of Australia, torrential rainfall and floods to California, and a reduced South Asian monsoon."
In an interview with CNBC published Friday, trade and agriculture analyst Noel Fryer noted that North America and Europe have experienced very hot summers that has "decimated" some crops and has hurt grazing prospects by reducing the available supply of grass and hay.
And all this occurred, Fryer added, before the full impact of El Niño has arrived.
“It’s just a huge mix of different issues and we don’t know how they’re going to end," said Fryer. "It’s a perfect storm."
Top OpenAI Executive Labels Social Security a ‘Fraud’ That Must be Dismantled
A top executive at one of the world's biggest artificial intelligence companies drew backlash on Tuesday for describing Social Security as "a kind of accounting fraud" that will have to be dismantled.
Dean Ball, head of strategic futures at OpenAI who previously worked in President Donald Trump's White House, wrote in a social media post that while Social Security may have once been a "reasonable affordance" to people who "were dealing with an economic depression and a world war," it was nonetheless "accounting fraud, whose debt is coming due and is coming due fast."
Ball concluded his post by informing younger generations of Americans that "unwinding the great fraud... is your job, whether you wish it to be or not."
Ball's attack on Social Security drew a swift rebuke from David Segal, a former Democratic Rhode Island State Representative and founder of Demand Progress, who observed that it undercut other AI executives' claims that their technology would create an era of unprecedented abundance.
"AI is gonna shoot productivity to the moon," wrote Segal, "oh and also society can't afford to pay old people $2,000 per month anymore starting today."
Author Lincoln Michel similarly spotted the contradiction between AI industry vows that the technology "is going to give us [universal basic income] and we'll never work again" and Ball's declaration that "our main mission is to destroy Social Security."
Henry Burke, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, argued that Ball's analysis of Social Security revealed the true priorities of Big Tech elites.
"It's notable that the Abundance guy turned OpenAI hack considers Social Security to be a 'fraud' that must be remedied," wrote Burke, "and not the reckless tax breaks successive Republican presidents have given away to the wealthy which have exploded the national debt."
Putting aside policy arguments, many critics pointed out that Ball's call to dismantle Social Security was a major political loser.
Polling analyst Lakshya Jain, citing survey data showing vast and bipartisan support for Social Security, informed Ball that his rhetoric about the program is optimal for "anyone who wants to unite the whole of America (against them)."
Josh Orton, president of We Demand Justice, marveled at the politically tone deaf messaging coming from an executive at a company whose own CEO has said that "my job is to help people destroy jobs" with AI.
"These AI guys are not just condescending elitists," wrote Orton, "they're tremendously stupid about politics. It's incredible."
Max Steele, senior communications director at gun safety advocacy group Everytown, made a similar observation.
"Is it possible these guys are doing a performance art piece on the worst possible PR run in recorded history?" Steele asked.
Journalist Jon Schwarz questioned why Big Tech companies have been allowed to amass so much economic and political power in the US if their executives want to destroy the country's most popular social insurance program.
"It's a bad idea," wrote Schwarz, "to have our society run by people like this who are so far out of touch with reality that they are functionally insane."
'Yet Another Trump Grift': Congress Called to Stop US Takeover of Venezuelan Oil Fields
Trump administration officials are claiming that talks between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Venezuelan government regarding control of the country's oil fields will ultimately secure "America's energy future for generations to come"—but analysts on Friday called on lawmakers to halt President Donald Trump's "colonial" push to take over the reserves.
As Axios reported, officials including Rubio and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have been involved in talks with Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez about taking an ownership stake in more than a dozen oil fields in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo regions, which have about 90 billion barrels of oil reserves. In all, Venezuela's vast reserves—the world's largest—contain about 300 billion barrels.
The deal would double US oil reserves at a time when Americans have seen gas prices skyrocket and oil firms reap profits as a result of Trump's war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—events to which countries that have expanded renewable energy sources have proven far more resilient, according to data from JP Morgan Commodities research.
Despite that resilience, the Trump administration has reportedly approached the talks as a way to lock the US into generations of continued reliance on planet-heating oil extraction. According to Bloomberg, one deal under consideration is a 100-year lease on the oil fields.
Axios reported that in return for giving the US an ownership stake—something Trump began privately discussing before US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro in January—Venezuela "would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue" to the South American country.
Tyler Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program, said that if the deal is finalized, "Trump will likely transfer operational control to US oil companies," which donated heavily to his campaign.
The proposed deal would open "the door to Trump’s typical bilateral transactional corruption" and bestow "lucrative opportunities for the oil companies he chooses to reward," said Slocum.
“In the nearly eight months since Trump’s illegal January 2026 Venezuelan invasion, the Trump administration has managed a $13 billion slush fund gleaned from its control over Venezuelan oil sales, with zero transparency, and little to no public oversight or accounting," Slocum continued. "The president has no authority to negotiate a deal where the federal government takes control over foreign oil production facilities, and Congress must intervene and put an end to Trump’s oil-fueled imperialism."
One opposition leader in Venezuela, where Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to travel next week to discuss increasing oil production by US companies, said the deals currently being discussed amount to "a land grab—a massive land grab."
Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of The Collapse of Venezuela, said the country's National Assembly "should deny authorization for this predatory deal."
Following Trump's invasion of Venezuela in January, energy historian and Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew told The Guardian, "US dominance over Venezuelan oil reserves allows the US to regard Venezuelan reserves as its own reserves: a source of oil from which the United States can draw and that nobody else has access to."
"I think that’s how the administration is conceiving of this—excluding China, excluding Russia, but I think also excluding other potential customers for Venezuelan oil,” Brew said. “It sounds colonial, because it is.”
The president's "effort to establish a South American kleptocracy is an outrage," said Slocum. "There’s been no improvement in human rights in Venezuela, so Trump’s move is further evidence that his illegal actions in Venezuela are all about controlling oil with no public accounting, transparency, or oversight. This is yet another Trump gift for Big Oil.”
Suspecting 'Insider' Dealings and 'Corruption,' Raskin Probes Donald Trump Jr.'s Venture Capital Firm
Just two years ago, 1789 Capital Management "was a struggling venture capital firm that earned consistently disappointing results by serially investing in total market flops," but after recruiting President Donald Trump's eldest son in the wake of the 2024 US election, it "suddenly had the Midas touch," a key congressional Democrat highlighted this week, launching an investigation.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—a lawyer who managed the historic second impeachment of the president—revealed Thursday that the previous day he had sent a letter demanding answers from Donald Trump Jr., who is a partner at 1789 Capital, as well as company president Omeed Malik and chief investment officer Christopher Buskirk.
After the president's son joined the firm, just four days post-election, Raskin wrote, "you became the overnight darling of the venture capital world, rocketing from $150 million in assets under management to an astonishing $3 billion. A trio of businessmen with heretofore lackluster records in the market was suddenly running the hottest firm in the United States, picking out with almost clairvoyant accuracy winner after winner by investing in companies that would soon come to win hugely lucrative federal government contracts and grants and favorable regulatory actions."
"How did this miraculous transformation in the fortunes of your LLC come about?" he wondered. "Was it indeed magic? Or was it rank corruption, a toxic blend of trading on insider knowledge, and the use of insider political influence to steer major federal contracts and other financial benefits to Donald Trump Jr.'s new favorite businesses?"
"Based on his own personal business resume, Don Jr. may have been an unlikely choice to originate investments for an upstart venture capital company. His rare solo ventures—outside the paternal eye of the Trump Organization—have been well-documented flops, including investing in dry oil wells, hydroponic lettuce farms, and an African mining company," Raskin noted. "But despite his proven record of business investment failure, Don Jr. has become the lucky charm for 1789 Capital."
Raskin's letter provides a series of examples in which 1789 Capital has identified "companies that are about to receive massive influxes of cash from the Trump administration or to benefit from significant changes in federal policies and regulations."
"On the day Donald Trump was elected, Vulcan Elements was a small startup with no active manufacturing facilities and no history of fulfilling government contracts," he detailed. "Then 1789 Capital invested several million dollars. Soon after this investment, Vulcan Elements boasted that it had been raking in federal dollars throughout its capital raise, securing nine different government contracts in the past eight months."
"While the list of 1789 Capital portfolio companies that have benefited from favorable administration decisions is too long to explore in full here, three additional companies with strikingly similar success stand out," he wrote.
There's Anduril Industries, "an American technology company founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, a prominent Trump donor who has been dubbed 'the godfather of Republican fundraising on the West Coast,'" which got an enormous $22 billion contract that was previously assigned to Microsoft just weeks after Trump's inauguration, the letter notes. Then, it was reported that the VC firm was acquiring a stake in the company, which in March won another $20 billion contract from the US Army.
The letter also points out Juul, which "notoriously ushered in an epidemic of youth vaping in the United States by aggressively marketing its e-cigarettes to young people" and "had suffered a series of setbacks that nearly bankrupted the company" before Trump's return to office. Just months after 1789 Capital quietly acquired a $5 million stake in the company, the Food and Drug Administration ditched previous efforts to ban its products and allowed the marketing of five products.
Raskin's final example is the online prediction market Polymarket—which, at the time Trump was reelected, was banned from operating in the country by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and faced a federal investigation. Last summer, the Department of Justice closed that probe and the CFTC signed off on an acquisition that allowed the company to enter the US market. The letter notes that "a few short weeks later, it was revealed that 1789 Capital had already acquired a sizable stake in Polymarket."
"Alas, it is now impossible to believe that your firm's astonishing growth and success are due to anything other than insider political influence and thoroughgoing corruption," the congressman wrote to the trio. "Indeed, President Trump recently admitted that his oldest sons have 'inside information' with 'almost anything they do.'"
In a statement to MS NOW, which had early access to Raskin's letter, counsel AJ Merton dismissed the accusations as "unsubstantiated talking points," adding that "repackaging press clippings on congressional letterhead does not turn news headlines into evidence, and that practice is a hallmark of partisan stunts and politically motivated harassment, not oversight."
However, Raskin still wants answers from 1789 Capital by September 9. He's demanding a list of investments, communications with federal officials or contractors, records on how government policies may impact the firm, documents on the hiring of Trump's son, and more. He also told the firm to preserve all communications between its employees and the administration.
'Where Is Congress?' US Kills 4 More Bombing Another Boat in the Caribbean
The US military continued President Donald Trump's deadly boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers on Monday with its second strike in as many days, bringing the death toll since Sunday to six, with at least 227 people killed overall.
After announcing a Sunday bombing in the Pacific Ocean that killed two, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said on social media Tuesday that under the direction of Cmdr. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere executed a lethal kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists."
While Trump's boat strikes began last September, Donovan took over SOUTHCOM in February. He said Tuesday that "Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels. We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks. SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the US homeland."
Critics of the boat bombings and related military action on land in Latin America, including many Democrats in Congress, have condemned the Trump administration's attacks on vessels as "war crimes, murder, or both," but both GOP-controlled chambers have so far failed to pass war powers resolutions to rein in or end the strikes.
Responding to SOUTHCOM's social media post, Amnesty International USA issued its latest denunciation of "this horrific boat strike campaign," and asked, "Where is Congress?"
Looking ahead to the next presidential election or later, David Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute wondered, "What Democrat will promise to prosecute these murderers?"
In addition to being blatantly illegal under US and international law, as various experts around the world have argued, the strikes are seemingly ineffective at stopping the flow of drugs into the United States, according to recent reporting.
After Monday's strike, journalist Alex Horton pointed to his July report with three Washington Post colleagues that the strikes haven't reduced the amount of cocaine entering the country, "but they're prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing, and interviews with current and former US and foreign officials."
One senior Colombian security official told the newspaper that "there was a dissuasive effect in one type of transportation... So it has forced them to seek out other methods. Taking the drugs out through ports has increased, stockpiling it on large ships."
An Ecuadorian naval intelligence official said that "the business is so extraordinarily profitable that the cartels do not mind paying freight costs that are five or even 10 times higher... They know that while the United States may destroy one speedboat, they will successfully get 10 semisubmersibles—or other speedboats that evade detection—through."
Angelo Guisado, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, similarly highlighted the campaign's ineffectiveness on Wednesday. He called out SOUTHCOM for "delighting in the slaughter of innocents while the world burns," and leaving over 200 people dead "so far without a scintilla of proof narco-trafficking has been affected, just wanton barbarity for shits and giggles."
'Mobster Language': Trump Says Venezuelan Oil Will Replenish US Reserves
"I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media," one journalist wrote.
President Donald Trump was accused of naked gangsterism and revisionist history on Sunday when he announced that Venezuelan oil would be used to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
"One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The 'topping out' process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The oil in question comes from a deal announced between the governments of Trump and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday, which would allow the US to take majority control of 65 billion barrels worth of Venezuelan oil preserves. While Rodriguez has spoken favorably of the arrangement, it is hard to know how freely she speaks and acts given that her predecessor Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by US forces in January.
"Describing oil you are looting by force as a 'Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States' is straight mobster language," Drop Site News journalist Ryan Grim wrote on social media in response to Trump's statement on Sunday.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?"
Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, also commented on the imperialism inherent in Trump's remarks, writing: "I feel like I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media."
In an article on Sunday entitled "Trump’s Venezuela Oil Grab Reprises Industry’s Neocolonial Past," Bloomberg reported that the oil deal reminded some analysts of 20th century US colonialism in Latin America.
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez told Bloomberg that Venezuela is “functioning as a protectorate of the US in all but name,” and that the current deal “isn’t furthering the interests of Venezuelans. It’s about securing the economic and security interests of the United States.”
New York University associate history professor Alejandro Velasco, meanwhile, compared today's Venezuela with the Central American "Banana Republics" that were heavily influenced by the US-based United Fruit Company during the first half of the 20th century.
The Venezuelan people “are entirely at the whims of whatever the US government, by way of these companies, is going to give to them,” he told Bloomberg. “Venezuela is a client state now.”
Both Rodriguez, the economist, and Robinson questioned whether the deal would survive a change in Venezuela's government.
“If I were an investor in Venezuela right now, I would be asking myself if there’s going to be a government in the future that will repudiate the contracts,” Rodriguez told Bloomberg.
Robinson, meanwhile, wrote on social media, "It's obvious that a democratic Venezuela would never hand over its oil to the US, so the US actually strongly opposes democracy in Venezuela."
Other experts pointed out that Trump lied about how the Strategic Petroleum Preserve (SPR) was depleted in the first place. While President Joe Biden did drawn upon the reserve in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump has also relied on reserves to offset the impact of his war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As of August 21, the SPR held 289.7 million barrels, a 30% decrease from the start of the year, according to the Energy Information Administration. It is supposed to fall further to 243 million barrels per Trump's orders, Drop Site News reported.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?" Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, asked on social media.
It is also unclear how quickly any Venezuelan oil could top out the SPR, given that Venezuela's oil industry has been weakened by sanctions and mismanagement and needs substantial investment and work before it can increase production, according to Reuters.
At the same time, Drop Site pointed out that Delcy Rodriguez made no mention of gifting the US oil when she laid out more details of the deal on Saturday night. According to the acting Venezuelan leader, the deal would last 25 years and the country would maintain “ownership of and sovereignty” over the oil “while leveraging capital, technology, and operational expertise to support the recovery of a strategic industry that has been severely affected by sanctions," as Reuters reported.
In response, Francisco Rodriquez outlined a series of questions about the deal, including how Delcy Rodriguez's remarks compared with Trump's.
"President Trump has also said that with immediate effect, the United States' strategic oil reserve will begin to be supplied through a gift from Venezuela. Can you explain under what conditions this gift is being made?" the economist asked the Venezuelan leader on social media on Sunday. "Which articles of the law or Constitution allow you to give away Venezuelan oil property? And if that flow begins immediately, as President Trump says, does that mean it will be supplied from current production, and therefore imply lower revenues for the national treasury in the immediate term?"
'Horrific': Masked Israeli Settlers Attack, Injure Palestinian Woman and NBC Crew
Another journalist called the assault "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
Israeli settlers attacked and wounded a Palestinian woman and four NBC team members who were interviewing her in the West Bank on Saturday, amid ongoing settler violence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The settlers, who were wearing masks, drove up as Aida Ahmed Abdullah and her family were telling NBC about how settlers forced them from their home in the town of Jalud.
“They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley told the outlet.
Make This Go VIRAL
Masked Israeli Settlers ATTACK Palestinian Woman and NBC News Crew in the West Bank
NBC correspondent Matt Bradley was struck twice pic.twitter.com/EMmWGsNk2X
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 30, 2026
Bradley was hit twice on the arm by the attackers, who carried sticks. They also threw rocks. Abdullah, Bradley, West Bank-based cameraman Khaldoon Eid, producer Producer Lawahez Jabari, and a driver were all injured in the ambush and treated afterword. Abdullah remained in the hospital as of Saturday night.
Both Eid and Jabari also described the assault.
“We didn’t expect that—that they would come to attack,” Eid told NBC. “We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses.”
Jabari said, "Suddenly a car came to us,” adding, "the settlers had sticks, I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”
Jeremy Diamond, a CNN correspondent in Jerusalem, called the incident "horrific" on social media and said it was "the latest instance of unacceptable and alarming settler violence toward journalists and Palestinians."
The NBC crew and their interviewee were not the only targets of such violence on Saturday, as attacks continued in the town of Qusra, where settlers have been conducting a nearly three-week siege of three Palestinian homes. Settlers pepper sprayed Palestinian workers, threw rocks at a building, and besieged a fourth home with at least four Palestinian residents inside, according to Hareetz and Al Jazeera.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Saturday's attacks, characterizing them as “criminal acts of violence committed in the villages of Qusra and Jalud by a handful of rioters who violate the law, cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in fulfilling its missions, and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”
Yet Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued on social media:
1. The settler wouldn't do this to Americans had they not received a green light from the Israeli gov.
2. Israel's gov would not have given such a green light unless it felt confident that the US gov—and Amb. [Mike] Huckabee—wouldn't lift a finger to defend the Americans.
Journalists trying to report in both Gaza and the West Bank have long been targets of both settlers and the Israeli military. The IDF was found to be the leading killer of journalists worldwide for the third year in a row in 2025, and even before the Gaza genocide began in 2023, there were cases like the IDF killing of Palestinian-American reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank in 2022.
The attacks on the NBC team also come amid an uptick in setter violence in the West Bank since 2023, which humans rights observers say is enabled by the Israeli government. Netanyahu's government has expanded settlements in the West Bank despite the fact that they are illegal under international law.
Judge Rules the Trump Admin Can't Deport International Students for Free Speech
"A federal judge just ruled that the Trump admin's use of immigration law to deport me and other noncitizen students for pro-Palestinian speech is unconstitutional. No one should fear speaking up for Palestine," Mahmoud Khalil said.
The Trump administration violated the Constitution when it moved to deport or rescind visas from international students who spoke up for Palestinian rights and criticized Israel's genocide in Gaza, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
Northern District of California Judge Noël Wise, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, said that the administration's actions violated both the First Amendment of the Constitution protecting free speech and the Fifth Amendment ensuring due process.
"Stated plainly, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not the government’s to take," Wise wrote.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement early in the second Trump administration despite holding a green card, celebrated the ruling on Saturday.
"A federal judge just ruled that the Trump admin's use of immigration law to deport me and other noncitizen students for pro-Palestinian speech is unconstitutional. No one should fear speaking up for Palestine," Khalil wrote on social media.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations also welcomed the decision in a statement on Saturday:
This ruling reaffirms a fundamental American principle that the government cannot deport people simply because it dislikes their political views. Students do not surrender their constitutional rights at the classroom door, and international students do not surrender their freedom of expression when they come to study in the United States. Criticizing the policies of a foreign government, including the genocidal government of Israel, is protected political speech.
The lawsuit was brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in August 2025 on behalf of The Stanford Daily, Stanford University's student newspaper, and an anonymous female plaintiff. The newspaper argued that student reporters on visas refrained from covering pro-Palestinian protests on campus out of fear of being deported, while the Jane Doe was a noncitizen who had spoken out on behalf of Palestine and now was worried about government retaliation.
"The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to," the paper's editor-in-chief George Porteous wrote on social media on Friday.
In particular, the lawsuit challenged two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Secretary of State Marco Rubio used to justify seeking the deportations of Khalil, Columbia student Moshen Mahdawi, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk. The first allows the secretary of state to deport a noncitizen for speech if the secretary “personally determines” the speech “compromises a compelling foreign policy interest.” The second allows the secretary to revoke visas entirely at their own discretion.
Wise agreed that the provisions violated the Constitution and offered a rousing defense of free speech.
“In the United States, free speech, including the freedom to criticize the government and its leaders, is not a sign of our democracy’s fragility. It is evidence of its strength," she wrote. "That strength is diminished when members of our society—citizens and noncitizens alike—must self-censor and ‘behave’ or suffer the government’s retaliation.”
FIRE said the decision was the "first in the country to squarely rule on the constitutionality of these statutes" and that it would "reverberate in similar proceedings around the country."
“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement Friday. “Today’s ruling proves that free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”
'One Big Military Theft': Trump Announces Deal for US Control of Venezuelan Oil Fields
"This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies," one Democratic senator said. "Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty."
President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Friday that his government had "secured majority US control" of Venezuelan oil reserves containing 65 billion barrels of oil.
The announcement followed on reporting from Axios that a deal was in the works, prompting criticisms that such a move would be "colonial" and calls for Congress to reject any such proposal.
"Let's be clear: This isn't a win," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote on social media in response to the announcement. "This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty."
When US forces invaded Caracas and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife First Combatant Cilia Fores on January 3, Trump's own words following the invasion confirmed suspicions that he acted largely to gain access to the country's oil.
"These are some of the largest crimes of our lifetimes."
“We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be,” he said in a press conference following the attack.
Friday's deal, which seems like an attempt to make good on that promise, was also announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, who provided more details.
According to Venezuelanalysis:
Rodríguez stated that the deal will involve private corporations developing 17 “strategic fields” with 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. She echoed Rubio’s $100 billion investment claim and pledged that the projects would yield $209 billion in tax revenues. According to the acting president, the announced agreement “ushers in a new era of growth and prosperity.”
However, economist Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argued that the agreement was actually a bad deal for Venezuelans.
"President: According to your figures, this agreement will generate tax revenues of just $3.22 per barrel of Venezuelan oil. This represents 4.7% of the current price, and less than half of the royalty rate contemplated in concessions granted by Juan Vicente Gómez," he wrote on social media, addressing the current Venezuelan leader and referring to a Venezuelan dictator from the early 20th century.
Joseph Bouchard, a journalist and researcher who focuses on Latin America, agreed with Rodriguez's criticism of the deal, writing on social media that "Trump [was] 'generously' buying billions of barrels of Venezuelan oil at less than 5% its market price. He's stealing their oil for his own family and cronies' profit. Guessing this may be used as a chip to manipulate the midterms. These are some of the largest crimes of our lifetimes."
Francisco Rodriguez had earlier pointed out that the deal violated the Venezuelan Constitution, which holds that all minerals and hydrocarbons are “inalienable public domain," according to Venezuelanalysis. For the deal to go through, therefore, Venezula would have to alter its Constitution.
Former head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth noted on social media that "senior Venezuelan officials, all fearing arrest, are hardly in a position to negotiate vigorously, making the whole thing seems like one big military theft."
On the plus side, no one has to argue whether the United States is imperialist anymore. https://t.co/nsb87JUARw
— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) August 29, 2026
Trump is under pressure to lower gas prices that have spiked due to the fallout of his war on Iran, which entered its sixth month on Friday, and promised in his announcement, "This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future."
However, The Associated Press pointed out: "A significant drop in US gas prices tied to the agreement should not be expected immediately. Experts have repeatedly warned that a substantial boost in Venezuelan oil production will not happen quickly as repairing and expanding infrastructure takes years and requires billions of dollars."
Exploiting Venezuela's oil reserves would also exacerbate the climate crisis, which just this summer intensified a deadly heatwave in Europe and is supercharging an El Niño that could contribute to a significant increase in food prices in 2026 and 2027.
'Break Up Big Medicine': Taking On Healthcare Industry Greed Could Save US Families $6,000+ a Year
One expert said the options are to "watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care."
As millions of working-class Americans suffer from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans' cuts to the already dysfunctional US healthcare system, a leading anti-monopoly group this week released a report with recommendations to restore "affordability and control to patients, clinicians, and communities across the country."
"The healthcare crisis didn’t happen by accident, it is the direct result of decades of neoliberal policy choices that handed more power to corporate healthcare giants while families paid the price," said Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP).
"The choice now is clear: Continue to watch the US healthcare system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a healthcare system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care," she explained. "This agenda presents a roadmap for how to do it."
Harper and Emma Freer, AELP's senior policy analyst for healthcare, co-authored the new report, "Break Up Big Medicine," with contributions from a trio of other experts. One of them is Dr. Will Flanary, an independent ophthalmologist in Portland, Oregon.
"The US healthcare system, once made up of mostly independent practices like mine, is now dominated by Big Medicine behemoths—including private insurance conglomerates, Big Pharma manufacturers, pharmaceutical middlemen, megahospitals, and private equity-backed practices—whose only fiduciary duty is to executives and investors," he wrote in the foreword. "This makes it increasingly difficult to keep my practice afloat and uphold my oath, resulting in moral injury."
"So, I now have a second career as an advocate," who goes by "Dr. Glaucomflecken" on social media. "What my patients need most is bold policy reforms to break up Big Medicine and build a better healthcare system, one where they can access affordable, high-quality care and independent physicians like me can thrive."
The report notes that "between 2005 and 2025, the annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage nearly tripled, from $12,214 to $35,119," US patients pay nearly three times as much for prescription drug prices as people in other countries, and "the United States spends more than $15,000 per person on healthcare each year—roughly one-fifth of our entire economy, and more than twice what peer nations spend, in return for worse patient outcomes on a variety of metrics."
Costs continue to rise, with The Wall Street Journal reporting last week that, according to benefits consulting giant Aon, US workers with employer-sponsored insurance are expected to spend an average of $5,297 on healthcare this year, or $388 more than last year. Another consultant, WTW, found that US employers expect their healthcare costs will rise 11.1% next year.
Meanwhile, six "corporate behemoths" in the sector—Cardinal Health, Cencora, Cigna, CVS Health, McKesson, and UnitedHealth Group—"now rank among the Fortune 15, making nearly $34 billion in annual profit," collectively, as AELP detailed Thursday. "Big Medicine now employs more than four in five US doctors," and practices must spend time completing, "on average, 40 prior authorizations per physician per week, time that would be better spent on patient care."
"Our current healthcare crisis is the result of several decades of federal policymaking by both political parties based on the flawed premise that empowering private insurers to ration access to healthcare, rather than addressing the underlying root causes of high prices, would effectively contain costs," the AELP report says.
The publication lays out a four-part "treatment plan" to save Americans $795 billion annually, or more than $6,000 per household: break up Big Medicine, bring down healthcare prices, build capacity, and bolster enforcement of existing laws.
The first section highlights how some solutions already exist in Congress, pointing to various bills, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) Break Up Big Medicine Act, their Patients Before Monopolies Act with Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Val Hoyle's (D-Ore.) Patients Over Profits Act, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon's (D-Pa.) Take Back Our Hospitals Act, and the Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act, introduced by Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Merkley, and Warren.
The second section calls for standardizing and capping "healthcare prices across public and private payers using traditional Medicare reimbursement rates for inpatient and outpatient services and negotiated drug prices as benchmarks." It urges a ban on prior authorization, an end to patient cost-sharing obligations, investments "in public options that eliminate Big Medicine administrative waste," and passage of Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) Medicines for the People Act.
The third section calls for investments in the US prescription drug manufacturing base as well as in providers, "especially safety-net hospitals in rural and low-income metro areas, independent medical and dental practices, community pharmacies, and primary care physicians."
The final section calls on Congress to "close loopholes that allow anti-competitive business practices, which Big Medicine uses to drive up prescription drug costs," specifically promoting the repeal of the 1987 safe harbor for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other pharmaceutical middlemen, and the prohibition of "price discrimination, spread pricing, self-preferencing, network discrimination, and sole-source or exclusive contracting terms across all payers." It further advocates for an increase in funding for antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice.
"For decades, healthcare reform has focused on expanding private coverage and putting more money into a broken system while allowing corporate giants to consolidate power and drive up costs," said Freer. "Working families have paid more only to receive lower-quality care.
"Americans need a new policy paradigm that actually takes on the root causes of the crisis: consolidation, corporate control, and lack of competition," she argued. "This agenda is about moving beyond the status quo to build a healthcare system where patients come first, clinicians can thrive, and every American can afford the care they need."
The report comes amid renewed scrutiny of the president's "most favored nation" deals with Big Pharma, with Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for the watchdog Public Citizen, saying last week that "Trump has three kinds of drug pricing policy: fake, exaggerated, and not-real-yet, probably-won't-happen."
After pointing out on social media Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April agreed to publicize the deals for medicines listed on the direct-to-consumer website TrumpRx, and "months later, still crickets," Warren wondered, "Why should Americans believe this isn't just another Trump handout to fatten Big Pharma's pockets?"
Additionally, as Americans have started contending with the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump last year, as well as the GOP's refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which has caused premiums to skyrocket, there have also been renewed calls for shifting the United States to a universal healthcare system.
A study published earlier this month by researchers at Yale University suggests the Medicare for All Act that's been repeatedly introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would save more than $1 trillion and over 114,000 lives annually.
"At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ we need Medicare for All now more than ever," Sanders said in response to the study. "The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All."
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and the author of books including Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, noted in his Thursday coverage of AELP's report that "while it's complementary to a Medicare for All approach, single-payer insurance is not mentioned."
"In tandem with moving toward a Medicare for All system, we have to address consolidation that is the cause of healthcare being so expensive, with degraded quality, and the squeezing of healthcare professionals," Freer told Dayen. "Otherwise we end up with something like Medicare Advantage for All, which would be disastrous."
US Diplomat Who Resigned Over Gaza Condemns Biden Officials Who Defended Genocide—And Now Claim to Regret It
"They actually had the power to stop unconditional arms assistance to Israel," said Hala Rharrit. "They enabled it 100%."
Recent expressions of regret by top Biden administration officials who vehemently defended the United States' billions of dollars in military aid to Israel as it was bombarding Gaza have not gone far with former diplomat Hala Rharrit, who was retaliated against for speaking out about the US policy before she ultimately resigned, and who condemned her former colleagues recent "PR game" this week.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Rharrit said the former officials who have mused that they would now support withholding weapons from Israel, or that they should have backed such a move while serving under President Joe Biden, are "just so despicable."
"They're so disgusting," Rharrit said. "Those individuals, particularly [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan and a handful of others, actually had the power to save human lives. They actually had the power to stop unconditional arms assistance to Israel, right? The Israelis were not killing the Palestinians by themselves. The Israelis were killing the Palestinians with American bombs, with American jets, with American everything. We enabled it 100%. They enabled it 100%."
"They’re so disgusting."
Former US diplomat Hala Rharrit, who resigned in 2024 over Gaza, responds to the Biden officials who’ve recently claimed they should have done more on Gaza.
Watch early by joining MEE's YouTube membership ➡ https://t.co/kSRg1sVXCo pic.twitter.com/szijxYjczk
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 27, 2026
Rharrit, who resigned as the Arabic language spokesperson for the US State Department in April 2024, six months into Israel's US-backed assault—which has been called a genocide by leading human rights organizations and Holocaust experts—spoke to MEE months after former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US should have called for a ceasefire earlier than it did, "such that the suffering the people endured, the loss of the children, so many others, could have been averted.”
Sullivan last year said—weeks before a ceasefire was finally agreed to—that he'd had a change of heart regarding providing Israel with weapons, and that he would no longer support the policy.
In November, Sullivan added in an interview with The Dartmouth that "it’s fair to say that there were a lot of objections from a lot of parts of the international community about the US continuing to support Israel over the course of last year—2024—and over the course of this year in 2025. I think a lot about what we could have done differently."
Rharrit told MEE that "it's despicable that now they're trying to make themselves look like, 'Oh we should have done better and we're so sorry.'"
The former diplomat emphasized that the apology tour has taken place as it's become increasingly clear that "America has changed" in terms of its views on Israel, Palestine, and the United States' decadeslong, unconditional support for the Israeli military—despite US statutes like the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Leahy Laws, which bar the government from providing military aid to countries that block humanitarian assistance and that are accused of human rights abuses.
A poll released this week showed that large majorities of Democratic voters in the first six states that will vote in the 2028 presidential primaries support cutting off weapons aid to Israel, and another survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies in March found that just 32% of Americans viewed Israel positively, compared with 47% in 2023.
"America is forever changed," said Rharrit. "Americans no longer support these forever wars, they no longer support unconditional arms assistance to Israel. They no longer agree with US policy in the Middle East. And so now... they're doing a PR game. This is just pure PR."
Rharrit and other officials who resigned over the US policy on Israel and Gaza "were vindicated," she said. "Of course we were right the whole time, because it's international law. It's US law. I abided by my oath to the Constitution... That is exactly what I did. That is exactly why I resigned."
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said Rharrit is one of "a rare breed" of diplomats.
"During this genocide I've met courageous diplomats and officials who denounced it at real personal cost," said Albanese, whom the Trump administration targeted with sanctions earlier this year. "Imagine foreign policy built by more of them. Because the problem is never one unfit minister/head of state: It's whole spineless cohorts around them."
After Supreme Court Ruling, 4th Circuit Tosses Verdict Against US Company for Abu Ghraib Torture
"History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice," said Salah Al-Ejaili, one of the Iraqi plaintiffs.
The US Supreme Court recently delivered a "lethal blow" to lawsuits filed under an 18th-century law, including a case brought by Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib as part of the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, whose landmark verdict was struck down on Friday by a federal appellate court.
The Iraqis' case against US military contractor CACI Premier Technology was first filed in 2008, and eventually led to a trial and retrial in 2024. That November, a federal jury found the company liable for torture at the notorious prison in Iraq, and ordered it to pay the three prisoners a total of $42 million.
After unsuccessfully seeking another trial at the US District Court for the District of Virginia, CACI turned to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which this past March upheld the historic verdict in favor of the three tortured men: middle school principal Suhail Al Shimari, fruit vendor Asa'ad Zuba'e, and journalist Salah Al-Ejaili.
Then came the Supreme Court's June decision in Cisco Systems v. Doe, which effectively reversed the high court's 2004 ruling on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), nullifying "a vital law that could check corporate abuses and provide an essential remedy to those whose rights have been violated," as University of California, Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky wrote earlier this week.
As legal experts feared, the 4th Circuit reconsidered the CACI verdict in the wake of the June decision, and determined that "just as the court concluded that the Cisco plaintiffs' ATS claims—including aiding and abetting torture—must be dismissed, so too must we dismiss plaintiffs' claims here—conspiracy to commit torture" and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the Iraqis alongside other law firms, responded with a Friday statement calling out both the Supreme Court and CACI.
"As radical and regressive as the Supreme Court's decision in Cisco is," Azmy said, "it will never change this fundamental truth: A jury heard voluminous testimony and unanimously concluded CACI was responsible for the torture and abuse of dozens of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, including these plaintiffs, rendering CACI, in the words of a foundational ATS-human rights case, 'hostis humani generis'—an 'enemy of all mankind.'"
"We remain in awe of the bravery and dedication of our clients, who fought for 18 years for justice for themselves, their families, and other survivors of horrific human rights abuses," Azmy added. "This Supreme Court may continue to do great damage to human rights cases, but it cannot take the courage and dignity away from our clients' historic achievement."
One of the plaintiffs in the case, Al-Ejaili, also took aim at the country's highest court, which is dominated by right-wing justices.
"What we did in pursuing accountability for 18 years for the torture we suffered at Abu Ghraib was a big thing. We trusted a US jury with our stories, and they believed us and sided with us—this is the most important part of the case," he said Friday. "History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice."
Iran War Trump Said Would Be Quick Has Now Lasted 6 Months With 'No End In Sight'
Trump has "lost the Iran War in every way possible in less than six months," said one critic.
The illegal war with Iran that President Donald Trump said would be over in a matter of weeks entered its sixth month on Friday, and there is little sign of it wrapping up in the near future.
A Friday report in The Washington Post marking the six-month anniversary of the illegal war noted that Trump's ability to decisively win the conflict declined markedly "after Iranian leaders discovered that they could withstand intense bombardment and slowly degrade the world’s most powerful military with a cheap combination of mines and drones."
The biggest weapon in Iran's arsenal has been its ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for petroleum. Since the strait's closure, oil and gas prices have soared, costing US consumers an estimated $71.5 billion more to fill up their cars than they otherwise would have paid.
Trump this week has tried to claim that the strait has actually been reopened, but the Post found that the president's proclamations do not match reality.
"More than 100 ships traversed the Strait of Hormuz on average every day before the war," the Post wrote. "Just five went through on one day this week, according to Kpler, a commodities and shipping tracker."
A Friday report in The Associated Press focused on the White House's announcements this week of new measures to put economic pressure on Iran, which are a sign that the administration no longer thinks it can use military force to force Tehran's hand.
"The turn to using sanctions as the cudgel of choice," wrote the AP, "comes as the administration weighs diminished munitions stockpiles after months of war, sparking concerns that the prolonged conflict could undermine US military readiness in other parts of the globe."
The AP also flagged a shift in rhetoric from Trump, who once promised the war would end quickly but now says he's "not in a hurry" to end the campaign.
Harrison Mann, a former US Defense Intelligence Agency officer, wrote in an analysis published by Zeteo on Thursday that Trump has "lost the Iran War in every way possible in less than six months," which he said would mark "the arrogant, violent end of American dominance in the Middle East."
In fact, Mann argued that Trump lost the Iran War three different ways: The first in his failed attempt to force regime change in Tehran, the second in an aborted campaign to incite an Iranian Kurdish uprising, and finally in his desperate efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
All of these failures have combined to put Iran in a decisively stronger position than it was in before the war began, Mann wrote.
"After another four months of Trump threats, half-hearted bombing runs, and not one but two US blockades of Iran, Tehran’s military exercises formal authority over at least a third of the ships transiting the strait," he wrote. "Plus, it now regularly shoots at 'unauthorized' ships with impunity."
US Rep. Don Breyer (D-Va.) summed up the failure of Trump's war in a Friday social media post.
"When Trump began his illegal, unpopular war with Iran, he said it would last a week," Breyer wrote. "SIX MONTHS later: The administration has lied about our casualties and the deaths of civilians, the stated objectives haven't been met, Iran has a new economic weapon in the Strait of Hormuz, the region is less stable, our prices are higher, our allies are angry, our adversaries are emboldened, and there's no end in sight."
'Yet Another Trump Grift': Congress Called to Stop US Takeover of Venezuelan Oil Fields
"Handing over Venezuela's oil wealth to the US contravenes the Constitution and is not in the interest of the Venezuelan people—much more when it is done at gunpoint," said one analyst.
Trump administration officials are claiming that talks between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Venezuelan government regarding control of the country's oil fields will ultimately secure "America's energy future for generations to come"—but analysts on Friday called on lawmakers to halt President Donald Trump's "colonial" push to take over the reserves.
As Axios reported, officials including Rubio and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have been involved in talks with Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez about taking an ownership stake in more than a dozen oil fields in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo regions, which have about 90 billion barrels of oil reserves. In all, Venezuela's vast reserves—the world's largest—contain about 300 billion barrels.
The deal would double US oil reserves at a time when Americans have seen gas prices skyrocket and oil firms reap profits as a result of Trump's war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—events to which countries that have expanded renewable energy sources have proven far more resilient, according to data from JP Morgan Commodities research.
Despite that resilience, the Trump administration has reportedly approached the talks as a way to lock the US into generations of continued reliance on planet-heating oil extraction. According to Bloomberg, one deal under consideration is a 100-year lease on the oil fields.
Axios reported that in return for giving the US an ownership stake—something Trump began privately discussing before US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro in January—Venezuela "would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue" to the South American country.
Tyler Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program, said that if the deal is finalized, "Trump will likely transfer operational control to US oil companies," which donated heavily to his campaign.
The proposed deal would open "the door to Trump’s typical bilateral transactional corruption" and bestow "lucrative opportunities for the oil companies he chooses to reward," said Slocum.
“In the nearly eight months since Trump’s illegal January 2026 Venezuelan invasion, the Trump administration has managed a $13 billion slush fund gleaned from its control over Venezuelan oil sales, with zero transparency, and little to no public oversight or accounting," Slocum continued. "The president has no authority to negotiate a deal where the federal government takes control over foreign oil production facilities, and Congress must intervene and put an end to Trump’s oil-fueled imperialism."
One opposition leader in Venezuela, where Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to travel next week to discuss increasing oil production by US companies, said the deals currently being discussed amount to "a land grab—a massive land grab."
Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of The Collapse of Venezuela, said the country's National Assembly "should deny authorization for this predatory deal."
Following Trump's invasion of Venezuela in January, energy historian and Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew told The Guardian, "US dominance over Venezuelan oil reserves allows the US to regard Venezuelan reserves as its own reserves: a source of oil from which the United States can draw and that nobody else has access to."
"I think that’s how the administration is conceiving of this—excluding China, excluding Russia, but I think also excluding other potential customers for Venezuelan oil,” Brew said. “It sounds colonial, because it is.”
The president's "effort to establish a South American kleptocracy is an outrage," said Slocum. "There’s been no improvement in human rights in Venezuela, so Trump’s move is further evidence that his illegal actions in Venezuela are all about controlling oil with no public accounting, transparency, or oversight. This is yet another Trump gift for Big Oil.”
Destruction of East India Company Gives US Lawmakers a Blueprint for Confronting Big Tech: Historian
The instruments to take apart entrenched corporate power "still exist," but current governments are "lacking... the political nerve to use them," said historian William Dalrymple.
A historian who has written four books about the British East India Company is warning that big technology companies in the US are amassing similar levels of unchecked power and will need to be reined in.
In a New York Times op-ed published on Friday, William Dalrymple described how the British government eventually realized that it had allowed the East India Company—key to the British Empire's rise in the 18th and 19th centuries—to become too powerful and decided to finally clamp down.
The situation faced by the British Parliament in the 19th Century was strikingly similar to the situation faced by US lawmakers today, Dalrymple explained, as the East India Company had spent decades spending money to capture influence within the government.
"Around one in 20 members of Parliament sat on the East India Company’s board," the historian wrote, "and more than a fifth of the company’s directors sat in Parliament at some point; about 40% of members of Parliament were shareholders."
In the contemporary context, the executives of the nation's largest tech firms are spending lavishly to curry favor with lawmakers and government officials of both major parties
Writing in The Nation last month, investigative journalist David Moore detailed the massive political spending of major tech firms in the 2026 midterms, noting that "Super PACs working on behalf of crypto, AI, and AIPAC donors are the highest-spending groups on independent expenditures to influence voters this cycle—combining to spend more than $180 million so far, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records."
In addition to political clout, the East India Company in its day also had the power to raise its own army, which at its peak topped 200,000 soldiers, twice the size of England's own armed services.
Dalrymple pointed out that this is one power that today's Big Tech firms do not have, although he argued that they have been increasingly integrating themselves into the US military-industrial complex.
"In June 2025 the US Army commissioned the chief technology officers of Palantir and Meta and OpenAI’s chief product officer as lieutenant colonels in a new Reserve unit," he noted. "The new dispensation puts tech executives straight into a position of federal power, which in one way puts them ahead of their 18th-century counterparts."
The government finally dropped the hammer on the East India Company, Dalrymple said, after the bloody Indian Rebellion of 1857, as they feared the firm's "greed and self-interest" would cause the British Empire to lose what it considered its most valuable colony.
"The company’s navy was disbanded and its army passed to the Crown," wrote Dalrymple. "In 1858 the governor general of India announced that the company’s Indian possessions would be nationalized and pass into the control of the British Crown."
Less than two decades later, what was once the most powerful private corporation in world history shut down after the expiration of its charter.
What this shows, concluded Dalrymple, is that "states can master corporations," even if those corporations have their own private armies.
However, he said that while the instruments to take apart entrenched corporate power "still exist," it appears our current governments are "lacking... the political nerve to use them."
Dalrymple's op-ed was echoed thematically by a Friday op-ed written by SFGATE travel editor Silas Valentino, who argued that the city of San Francisco has not gotten any benefit from the current artificial intelligence boom, despite being the home of OpenAI and Anthropic, the world's two biggest AI firms.
In particular, Valentino argued that the AI firms have done nothing to give back to the city and alleviate its affordable housing crisis. In fact, Valentino found that the AI firms' initiatives in the city appear to be mostly self-serving.
"OpenAI says it has invested in our community, but so far, that’s meant less than a million dollars in 'SF civic contributions,'" Valentino wrote. "And worst of all, some of that is for things like AI training programs... That’s not improving the city; it’s OpenAI trying to make more money."
Valentino also noted that Anthropic last year teamed with the Tipping Point Community nonprofit group, which was founded by current San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, to provide free training on the company's Claude chatbot.
"In the years since language models like ChatGPT and Claude proliferated to usher in the AI boom," the travel editor wrote, "I’m only counting negatives for nearly everyone trying to figure out a way to live here."
Valentino concluded by warning that if Lurie and his administration "don’t demand these companies start giving back and enhance our city for the better, they’ll continue ruining our city without pause."